Phil Barry and Sarah Fuerst, members of The Corn Fed Girls, are working on a full-length album and will bring their new duo to Grand Rapids’ SpeakEZ Lounge on Wednesday. (Story, video).
In the Blood: Phil Barry and Sarah Fuerst of Thunderbolt & Lightfoot grew up with acoustic music. (Photo/David Specht)
THE BAND: Thunderbolt & Lightfoot
THE MUSIC: Indie-folk
WHERE YOU CAN SEE THE BAND: 8 p.m. Wednesday at SpeakEZ Lounge in Grand Rapids; 12:30 a.m. Saturday night on the Hill Stage at Earthwork Harvest Gathering.
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Phil Barry and Sarah Fuerst cut their teeth in loud rock bands, and they’ve spent nearly 16 years in the six-piece Americana ensemble The Corn Fed Girls.
So paring things down to just an acoustic guitar and two voices as the new Kalamazoo indie-folk duo Thunderbolt & Lightfoot represents a dramatic – and inspiring – shift in direction.
“In many ways, it’s the most enjoyable thing I’ve ever done musically, but it’s also the freakiest thing I’ve ever done musically,” says singer-guitarist Phil Barry, a founding member of the Kalamazoo rock band Knee Deep Shag back in the 1990s. “There’s nothing there really. If I mess up a guitar part, everybody hears it.”
On the Air: Thunderbolt & Lightfoot performing during Local Spins on WYCE.
Adds Fuerst, a one-time member of indie-rock’s Doxie: “We grew up, I guess. I still like loud music, but I grew up in a family of folkies and my dad played bluegrass so it was always in my blood to play the more acoustic stuff as well.”
Indeed, that “more acoustic stuff” and the duo’s striking harmonies are showcased brilliantly on Thunderbolt & Lightfoot’s debut EP, recorded at Ian Gorman’s La Luna Recording in Kalamazoo and released in June. Check out a video below of their recent in-studio performance of a song from the new album during the Local Spins on WYCE radio show.
Grand Rapids audiences will get a chance to hear more from the duo when Thunderbolt & Lightfoot plays SpeakEZ Lounge at 8 p.m. Wednesday as part of the Local Spins Wednesday series. Kalamazoo’s Knight & Rose will open the show. (They also play Earthwork Harvest Gathering outside Lake City on Saturday night.)
The debut EP
Taking their cue, in part, from the legendary Simon & Garfunkel – as well as acts such as The Milk Carton Kids and Gillian Welch & Dave Rawlings – Thunderbolt & Lightfoot represents a spinoff from Kalamazoo’s Corn Fed Girls, in which Fuerst (bass) and Barry (guitar) continue to perform.
The challenge, Barry says, has come in creating a “fully formed sound where it’s just guitar and voices” compared with the much bigger arrangements of The Corn Fed Girls.
“I started writing songs that lent more to a scaled-back approach with a lot of finger-style guitar and vocal harmony parts. For what we’re trying to do, the scaled-down approach seems to work well for us,” says Barry, who listened to his mom’s Simon & Garfunkel albums as a child. “It’s an old model. It’s been around forever, but it kind of never gets old.”
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The duo also is working on new material for an upcoming full-length album.
Fully Formed Sound: Thunderbolt & Lightfoot.
“Up until this point, I’ve been writing most of the material and Sarah will add her parts,” says Barry. “But we started recently doing co-writes which has been the plan the whole time, so we’re excited about that. We’re culling songs for a full-length which we’re hoping to record in coming months.”
In the meantime, they’ll continue to hone their live show in upcoming performances at intimate venues such as SpeakEZ Lounge while raising their profile in the burgeoning West Michigan folk scene.
“That’s the beauty of it, really. It’s so diverse,” Barry says of the current musical climate. “I feel like in some ways we’re a part of that, but we’re also on our own trajectory.
“So far, the goal is to play smaller listening-style rooms as opposed to big noisy bars, so I guess we’re a little bit different than other local groups in that way. But it’s just an amazing community to be part of.”
Get more information and listen to more of the band’s music at thunderboltandlightfootband.com.
VIDEO: Thunderbolt & Lightfoot (Video by David Specht)
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