Saturday night. Shepherdstown, West Virginia. The Opera House. Ms. Angela Perley and her Howlin’ Moons will be coming to town, ready for blow your face off your face. We recently caught up with Ms. Perley for a Q&A that we’ll publish later this week. For now, check out what she had to say about her single “Athens,” which also won first place recently in the 2014 International Songwriting Contest. Heavy praise, right? Click the play button above these words and you’ll see why.
Here’s what she had to say:
I wrote the song a couple years after I moved away from Athens (Ohio). I feel like I really grew as a person in Athens and have so many memories there, so it is a very bittersweet song to me. It’s a very personal song and it started out as a solo fingerpicking number. I played it at a late night house party in Columbus that Chris and Billy were at and I shared it with them and they liked it.
I never thought “Athens” would work as a full band song but Chris and Billy kept bringing it up. So about a month later, we tried to play the song at a band practice. We ended up arranging it, keeping the solo version in mind for the beginning and last verses, and it worked. When we took it into the studio, it got more aggressive and that is when we came up with the idea to extend it and include the instrumental reprise we put at the end of the album (and which we play back to back in the live version).
So, as we like to say, there you have it. Again, she’ll be performing at The Opera House in Shepherdstown Saturday night. The fun kicks off at 9 p.m. You’ll be there to check out the live version, right?
