29 Apr The Shadowboxers: A Q&A

Good morning South Florida! Today is the first day of SunFest 2015!

It’s going to be an incredible festival, as you may have heard by now. It’s a big job to kick off five days of sunshine, spectacular art*, and live music. Fit for the job is the Atlanta-born band, The Shadowboxers.

Scott Schwartz (vocals and guitar), Matt Lipkins (vocals and keyboards), and Adam Hoffman (vocals and guitar) crossed paths while attending Emory University. The trio took a chance by entering the 2008 Emory Arts Competition and took home the grand prize, which included $3,000 and years of bragging rights.

The boys recently relocated to Nashville, Tennessee, where they were kind enough to chat about touring with the unstoppable Indigo Girls, their intriguing online cover series, and lugging trampolines to Greenland.

How are you liking Nashville?

Adam: We like it! We’ve only been here about three months. We moved in the dead of winter, so we’ve kind of been holed up, the five of us working. One of the reasons we moved here was so we could really hunker down and focus. In Atlanta we all kind of had our separate things, aside from the band…We knew that moving to Nashville the five of us would really devote all of our time to Shadowboxers, so we everyday we’re writing, recording, rehearsing, something.

Scott: I think that we’re really happy that we put in the time to get our band started in Atlanta before we moved to Nashville, because it’s the equivalent of being an actor and moving to LA. There’s so much talent and so many people like you. I’m glad we sort of have the momentum already.

Matt: Atlanta was like the girlfriend [who] wasn’t the one you were going to get married to, but you really loved her and you needed to put in the time to know how to be a good husband eventually. Nashville is probably that time to say, I really need time to work on me. [Laughs.]

You guys competed and won the 2008 Emory Arts Competition. Do you feel that recognition helped fast track your career?

Scott: I think practically, yes, it was really helpful because with the prize money. I bought my amp that I use today. Matt put a lot of money towards the keyboard he uses today, and Adam bought his pedal board. Financially, it was a great boost to get us off the ground and able to play.

It’s hard to say where we would be if we didn’t win, but I know it gave us some legitimacy on the campus and it made people more likely to ask us to play at certain events because they knew we were at least good enough to win that competition.

I’ve read extensively about your tour with Indigo Girls. What surprised you most about them or that experience?

Adam: They are such prolific songwriters, and such incredible musicians. Not knowing them personally in any way, you just have to have just immense respect for them, which we had.

Getting to meet them and figuring out that they are just as good people as they are artists, it was really eye opening. They just completely took us under their wing and were such role models for us in every aspect. They were so good to us all around, and for no other reason than that they liked us. I think we were all just blown away by their generosity, and the way they’ve been able to stay so humble and so grounded through the success that they’ve had.

Scott: A band coming out of college, five guys touring around the country, there can be some temptations that comes with that [experience]. Being on the road with the two of them and their level of professionalism was perfect for us to get the experience of touring without succumbing to any of those temptations.

It was very professional. They show up on time. Everything they do is with a purpose and with intention, and we learned from that. That was just the way it was on their tour. They were not very strict about it, but they just command such a level of respect and professionalism.

What is the difference between a good show and a great show?

Matt: That’s a question! A great show is just not just when we do a good job and perform to the best of our abilities, but also when the crowd gives back just as much.

When you get the energy from the crowd, and you can tell how excited they are to be there and how much fun they’re having, it’s impossible for them not to affect our performance. It brings [the show] to a level we wouldn’t be able to reach if we were playing in front of a crowd of people who were just having a fine time or not really listening much. I think that’s what separates a good show from a great show: a great audience.

What can SunFest fans expect to see and hear from you on Wednesday, April 29?

Adam: I think we’re going to get to play in front of a lot of new fans at this festival, and fans that have maybe never heard us, which for us is a real blessing. I think our show now, and our sound, is much more cohesive. I think what people can expect is a lot of funk, a lot of soul, and obviously the three-part harmonies is a big part of what we do. Maybe if they’re lucky we’ll throw in a few dance moves.

What do you do immediately after playing a gig?

Scott: Immense, Immense amounts of cocaine. We just jump offstage and dive into a bowl of cocaine. [Laughing]

Matt: We’ll go to the merch booth. We love meeting with fans after shows– talking to them, learning about them, finding out how they know about us, or what they thought of a show.

Scott: We usually take a second to cool off and then go around to the merchandise booth with our CDs and T-shirts and just take pictures, sign, and just engage with the fans. And we do all this naked.

You have a cover series on YouTube. I love your Frank Ocean cover! Can you tell me a little about this series?

Adam: I think our cover series is pretty self-explanatory, but we weren’t trying to do the YouTube cover thing, where you cover the “Top 40” song of the week. When we first started as a band, we had just as many original songs as we did covers. Because we were the only band at Emory, we played every event, party, and dance marathon that possibly existed. Covers have always been a big part of what we do. And also learning covers really helps to influence the originals we end up writing.

With the cover series we wanted to choose songs that we loved and that was really the only criteria. It’s all over the place. We went from Crosby, Stills and Nash to Frank Ocean, and I think somehow there’s continuity there.

What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

Scott: When I was growing up playing sports, my dad told me early on to not let the opponents see you sweat. I always thought that was good advice because when we perform I think we want it to look easy, like it’s effortless.

There’s a lot of work that goes in to what we do, so when we get on stage, I think it’s about making it look easy, that we’re not working as hard as we are. That’s something I always think about whenever I’m performing, not letting you [the fans] figuratively see me sweat out there. The work is already put in.

Matt: We played a show at the Mercy Lounge in Nashville, back in December, and we were talking to a horn player backstage and he said something, and I’ll never forget it, he said, “Make sure to bring extra underwear.” He’s so right.

Cheesy hypothetical time: If you were all stranded on a deserted island and could each bring one thing with you, what would you bring?

Band: Are we talking tropical or more of like a northern atmosphere?

Let’s go with a northern atmosphere, I like that.

Band: So maybe somewhere off of Greenland? Iceland and Greenland. [Laughing]

Band: Are we wearing shoes already?

Yes, you’re fully clothed.

Adam: I might bring a hardback copy of “The Little Prince.” That’s what I’m bringing. I would read it every day, front to back.

Matt: I would bring a chess board and try to get really, really good at chess. [Laughing]

Scott: I think I would bring a big trampoline. It would be fun for the whole family.

Band: That’s nice, I like that. You could sleep on the trampoline.

When are you happiest?

Scott: Trampolining. [Laughing]

Matt: Playing chess.

Adam: When reading something by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. When are we happiest?

Band: Anytime I’m in Greenland, really.

Adam: This is probably cliche, but anytime we’re on stage. We’ve had a lot more experience on a stage rather than in a studio. As we were saying earlier, there’s such an energy between the audience [during] a show that you can’t replicate it, which is why I think live music is still such a massive medium in an age where everything can be watched on an iPhone screen. People still go see live music because you can’t replicate it in any way. The feeling we get on stage is unlike anything else.

Matt: If we go on a hiatus for a long time without playing a show, there’s always like a moment in that first show when the energy just picks up, and we look at each other, and it’s all just an unspoken, Wow, it’s good to be back. Echoing what Adam said, we’re all musicians and we’re all writers, but we’re also all performers. That’s something we’ve all been doing since we were kids. We just love it.

The Shadowboxers play today, Wednesday, April 29, at 6:15 p.m., on the Tire Kingdom Stage

*The art show begins on Friday, May 1.