Perpetual Motion- Josie Quick and Tom Carleno-Interview

I spoke to Josie Quick and Tom Carleno from Perpetual Motion regarding their upcoming release Go With The Flow.

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:03

Hi everyone, this is Keith MuzikMan Hannaleck with the Final on Final Podcast, and today we are with Josie Quick and Taram Tarlino. Um Josie's violin player and Tom plays acoustic guitar on the Perpetual Motion project that they worked together on a new album coming out called Go with the Flow on September 4th. Welcome.

Speaker 3 0:27

Hi there. Hi there. Thanks for having us.

Speaker 1 0:29

A little tongue-tied there. Perpetual, that's a tough one. If you haven't had enough coffee, uh it gives me so you you folks have uh been a couple for some time, right?

Speaker 0:45

We have been, yeah. Well, we've been together since 1990. Um see we got married in '92. And we've been performing, we've perpetual motion's been a thing that whole time.

Speaker 1 0:57

So oh wow. That is a long time. Now, based on what what what I've done uh covering you folks, is there actually a seven-year period where you hadn't released something per for uh perpetual motion, or did I miss something in between there?

Speaker 3 1:16

No, it's been uh seven years. Uh yeah, I I I'm a little surprised too.

Speaker 1:24

Yeah, the last album was 2019. And of course, you know, there was that whole pandemic thing that happened right after that. So it's kind of derailed things for everyone. But uh yeah, it's been a while.

Speaker 1 1:36

So during all that time period, what you folks uh been doing? Have you been touring, recording different projects? What have you been up to?

Speaker 1:46

We've been writing the music that went on this album, um, and just uh well and I started writing uh working on a new solo guitar album and then that kind of then morphed into doing the new Perpetual Motion album. Um we we've also worked on some other artists' projects during that time as well, so adding some parts to for other recordings. So we've been busy.

Speaker 1 2:19

I've seen you come up here and there, that's why I asked that. I know you've been com making contributions, so just wondering you could be a little more clear on you know some of the things you've done. But uh reaching back in time for both of you, um what are some of your backgrounds and and influences and how did you come together? You want to go first?

Speaker 2 2:43

Um sure. I will go I gotta think back. Think back.

Speaker 3 2:50

Yeah, well, I studied classical violin at the University of Denver's Lamont School of Music, and um just kind of after uh graduating, I wanted to go in different directions, and part of that was connecting with Tom, uh wanting to you know just do non-classical and non-bluegrass things, and I wasn't quite sure what that was going to be.

Speaker 3:18

Um And I started as you know, wanting to be a I wanted to be a rock star. You know, I started playing guitar at 14 and had visions of of touring as a in a rock band. But I in the 80s I met uh Steve Mesplay of Wind Machine, if you remember him, and I began studying guitar with him and got into the acoustic finger style thing. And that's Josie and I got together and I was writing some finger style pieces, and I thought, oh, you know what, let's let's collaborate here, let's do some more kind of acoustic jazz influenced stuff.

Speaker 3 3:58

Yeah, and so the um the thing was is that he used this as kind of a pickup line in order to to get to get me to to get together with him. He did this uh this line of I have written some music and I wanted to know what a violin might sound like on it. And I thought, yeah, he's angling for a date, but I'll say okay.

Speaker 4:23

So I would like to say, hey, the line worked, right?

Speaker 3 4:29

It did work. I'll I'll do that.

Speaker 4:31

It was sincere.

Speaker 1 4:34

Well, that must have been interesting for you, Josie, with all that Latino influence that comes into his playing. You're you're probably thinking, now how am I gonna sound that way to to compliment him as he plays?

Speaker 3 4:47

Well, you know, that's funny because that all that Latino kind of stuff is really my idea. I'm I became very enamored with world music styles, and I would write I would write a thing and I'd go to him and say, Here, play this like um like uh Gabriela of Rodrigo and Gabriela, and he's like, What do you think?

Speaker 5:07

Yeah, she she's really the one. Josie really brought in the the Latin influence into the band. And so I've had to kind of had I've had to learn how to fake my way through sounding like a flamenco guitar. Oh, don't say fake your way through.

Speaker 2 5:23

I'm not a flamenco guitar, but you always want me to stuff.

Speaker 5:28

But yeah, it's she's really brought the Latin influence into what we do.

Speaker 1 5:32

I see. Okay. So how long did it take you to get this album together?

Speaker 2 5:40

Uh two years?

Speaker 5:42

Um maybe two to two, two or three? Yeah, no, actually, I think we started well I started recording some solo things in 2022, and then in 23 we started working on this album. So about three years. Yeah.

Speaker 1 5:57

You have your own home studio or software, or how do you do it?

Speaker 3 6:02

We we did a little bit of both on this one. We started out at a studio, and as we progressed, we started doing more and more things at home and then bringing them to our engineer at at the studio for mixing or what have you.

Speaker 6:20

Okay. And we've done a lot of uh projects for other artists here at our home studio. We'll record our parts here.

Speaker 1 6:30

So you're always busy with music then.

Speaker 3 6:33

We are. We are we both teach. So we teach our instruments, so we're always busy teaching and uh gigging around around the Denver area.

Speaker 6:44

And um Yeah, over these seven years since our last album, we've been steadily gigging, you know, as much as possible. So um we like to say being full-time musicians means you have a whole bunch of part-time jobs. Gigging, recording, composing, and all that.

Speaker 1 7:02

Right. So that's just in the Denver area, or do you go uh road trips?

Speaker 3 7:09

We have we've done some road trips. We had some things scheduled and then the pandemic hit us, and then it was hard for us to reconstitute the tour that was canceled because after the pandemic, most of those venues shut down, unfortunately. But um so currently we're pretty much in the Denver area, but we do hope to change that.

Speaker 7:32

Yeah, we did some house concerts in Idaho and Salt Lake and Utah.

Speaker 1 7:39

You know, it's funny when you mentioned the pandemic, um, a lot of musicians got together and hunkered down and came out with some great music because that was their only focus. They couldn't go anywhere, so they just stayed in the studio and kept recording and ended up coming up with some really great projects.

Speaker 3 7:56

Yeah, it's true. Yeah. And a lot of the stuff that is on this album did come from the pandemic. We uh we kind of hunkered down and tried to make as much teaching income as we could during the pandemic.

Speaker 2 8:10

Right.

Speaker 1 8:12

Well, I really enjoyed it, and um what I like to tell artists too is that I I don't look at you know, if if you provide a one sheet and then another sheet about an explanation of each track, I don't look at that because I don't want to be influenced in any way before I listen and write about it. Right. And this time, just for that one time, I looked at it's amazing. And that's why I said, but I said that you know, how you two got together, it's like, oh, that's nice. I really need to make a note of that, you know. That that was one of the rare times that I actually looked at it and went, oh, okay.

Speaker 8:52

Yeah. Well Josie wrote that song, and yeah, she she says, It's amazing that we we found each other. It really is.

Speaker 3 9:02

Yeah, yeah, we're lucky. We're very lucky.

Speaker 1 9:05

Yes. I mean working together, living together, you know, your partners and and so many different things, so many aspects of your lives, and it's a beautiful thing.

Speaker 2 9:18

Yeah, it is. It's an amazing thing.

Speaker 1 9:26

So what are your plans now going forward getting this album out, um officially releasing September 4th?

Speaker 3 9:33

Yeah, we're trying to something a little different. We're um going to release it on Bandcamp initially, and we don't have a solid plan for releasing it to the greater the greater world.

Speaker 9:48

Well it'll go out on the the the other platforms later. Yeah. Um we want to have it on Bandcamp exclusively for first. Uh but we do have a single coming out on all the streaming platforms to start with.

Speaker 3 10:03

Right. And that'll be coming out on um July 3rd of mine. Yeah. That's right. That's right, July 3rd.

Speaker 1 10:13

I see. I like Bandcamp. Uh it seems that um they really do take care of their artists.

Speaker 3 10:20

Yeah, and that's why we wanted to try them. Uh we haven't released things exclusively there before, and we do have a our discography is on Bandcamp, so you can find everything there. Um but we wanted to try try it this way just because you know the music landscape has changed, marketing landscape has changed so much. So I'm doing it a shot.

Speaker 1 10:46

It does yeah, it keeps evolving, and it's like you wonder what's going on sometimes, right?

Speaker 10:52

Right, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, and it's so different from since our last release seven years ago. It's like the whole marketing plan is is different. So we're trying to figure out a good way to to navigate it this time. So we'll we'll give it a shot.

Speaker 3 11:07

Um we're hopeful that uh people will find us on Bandcamp and uh find the rest of our music and and enjoy it.

Speaker 1 11:16

Good start. I I really like that. Um I was using Spotify a lot for my embed streams on the uh reviews, and I I decided to I'd rather use Bandcamp first as my first choice, and I'm staying with that now.

Speaker 3 11:29

So Yeah, yeah, nice.

Speaker 1 11:34

So what do you folks listen to? I mean, do you have album collection? Do you have a big vinyl collection that you like to spin? Do you ever have time for that?

Speaker 3 11:44

We love to well, we listen to a lot of Beatles, it seems.

Speaker 11:49

Um I mean the Beatles have always been that was an early influence of mine. I you know, I grew up listening to classic rock. So Beatles, Queen, uh The Who, Emerson Lake and Palmer. Yeah, and I still listen, love to listen to that stuff. Mainly I listened to in my car when I'm driving. That's that's where I listen to music mostly is driving.

Speaker 3 12:11

Yeah, and and I grew up, of course, listening to all that stuff too, and I love it. But as I mentioned, I somewhere along the line, I well, I first fell in love with jazz and uh uh was working uh studying jazz, especially Stefan Grappelli, um who was uh played in the Heart Club of France with Django Reinhardt and so I spent a lot of time kind of studying that music and listening to a lot of that, which is where It's Amazing came from. It's kind of influenced there. And um and then I I started falling in love with uh world music, uh and sp especially like Afro-Cuban, uh flamenco kinds of things, but but others as well. So I listen to a lot of jazz and I listen to a lot of world music stuff, flamenco.

Speaker 1 13:05

That's great music. What about you, Tom? Do you like to listen to that music as well?

Speaker 13:10

I do. Yeah, I I do. Um you know, Josie really when when she and I got together, sh you know, I I liked jazz, but I I wasn't really um it wasn't it wasn't my main listening thing, but when we got together, she started sharing things that she listened to. And you know, listening to like the gypsy swing, like she mentioned, Stefan Grappelli and Django Reinhardt, I'd never really listened to that before, and she got me into that kind of stuff. Um so yeah, I l I love all kinds of music.

Speaker 3 13:42

Yeah, we we have very diverse tastes.

Speaker 1 13:46

Which is so who's the one that does the who's the one that does all the techie stuff?

Speaker 3 13:52

All the techie stuff? I think that well, uh it depends on which side of the techie stuff. I do most of the like marketing website y stuff, but Tom's Tom has been handling the band camp page. I must say he's done a very nice job of it.

Speaker 14:07

Um neither one of us are really techies.

Speaker 3 14:13

Yeah, that's the problem.

Speaker 1 14:20

Just enough to be dangerous?

Speaker 3 14:22

Yeah, yes, right. Exactly. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, and both of us are yelling at the computer in our respective offices.

Speaker 1 14:30

Um my god, I've been doing that since uh the early 90s. I still yell at the computer.

Speaker 2 14:40

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 14:41

If you've ever seen that gif of the baboon who throws the laptop off the desk, that's me sometimes. I just feel like that monkey.

Speaker 1 14:51

That's funny. So do you plan on taking this music to the road? Once once everything kicks off for your publicity campaign and and it gets out there, uh you're gonna spend the fall bringing the music to the masses? Or you're just gonna wait and see what happens?

Speaker 3 15:09

Um we're we're we've got some shows scheduled here in Denver, and uh I'd like to try to put together uh farther afield um haven't to put work into that yet, just trying to get the release happening right now.

Speaker 15:27

Yeah, but we've got several shows in Denver once the album comes out. Um so yeah.

Speaker 2 15:33

Yeah.

Speaker 1 15:36

All right. Well, it's been great talking to you both for the first time after all these years.

Speaker 3 15:41

Yeah, and we had met, and I and I don't know.

Speaker 15:45

I mean, we've known you for several years. You've done reviews of our previous albums, but I yeah, I think this is the first time we've actually spoken.

Speaker 1 15:54

It is, yeah. Yeah, so just to remind everybody, um Josie Quick and Tom Carlino of Perpetual Motion, releasing Go with the Flow on September 4th this year. Thank you boy both for uh joining me today, and uh hope we can uh talk again soon sometime.

Speaker 3 16:12

Yeah, thank you for having us, Keith.

Speaker 1 16:14

We've we've really enjoyed it.

Speaker 3 16:16

Yes, thank you so much, Keith. We appreciate it.

Speaker 1 16:19

Appreciate your time. Take care.

Speaker 3 16:21

Okay, you too. Bye. Bye bye.

Speaker 1 16:23

Bye back.