Singer Edward Droste On His Grandparents’ Piano

David Gerlach: We have an excerpt of a conversation from Bomb’s Issue 112. Summer 2010. It’s writer Rick Moody interviewing singer-musician Edward Droste of the band Grizzly Bear.

The category freak folk is sometimes used to try and describe their music. But this type of sound–where did it come from? I’m talking way back. Beyond late night sessions – the band seeking some sort of musical perfection. What are its roots?The answer to this kind of question is often a surprise. So here’s Edward Droste on growing up around the piano with his grandparents. This is Blank on Blank.”

Rick Moody: “So your mother teaches music and your grandfather ran the music department at Harvard. Is that right?”

Edward Droste: “Yes.”

RM: “So what was your childhood relationship to all that music being around?

ED: “I had a great relationship with music. It was a kind of a weird sort of Brahmin WASPY… My grandfather had that sort of accent that was ‘where are you, what is this accent?’ And my mother was a teacher for children. But in terms of the music that they would listen to and surround me with, there was a lot stuff like Benjamin Britten and composer Randall Thompson and Ceremony of the Carols and stuff like that. That’s what my grandfather listened to. He also loved a lot of classic vocal jazz kind of stuff.”

RM: “Ella Fitzgerald?”

ED: “Yeah. And Louis Armstrong. “A-Tisket, A-Tasket. He was very much into sort of the concept of us gathering around a piano and singing together, which is sort of an antiquated concept I think these days. I’m sure it happens. But I think it was a much more prevalent form of entertainment 70, 80 years ago. After dinner, before dinner. And I grew up in the summers when I was with my grandparents doing that. I remember having friends visit and them being a little bit intrigued, not judging or anything, but sort of being mildly mystified by this sort of weird, olden-day style of being together. It was cocktail hour and sing some songs on the piano together.”