Interview: South for Winter Share Story Behind Recent Release, "Twine"

With elements of folk, gypsy, jazz, and blues, South for Winter’s varying sound is united by delicate harmonies, intricate guitar-work, and earthy vocals. Within its first year, the trio quickly developed an impressive resume - releasing two EP’s, completing both a 15-state national and an international tour, and receiving recognition from Lightning 100 Radio as a top rising artist in Nashville. The trio is now recording its debut album at The Tracking Room in Nashville with Grammy-nominated producer Matt Leigh.

What’s the story behind “TWINE”? “Twine” is based on the metaphor of a love story between a Beaver and a Sparrow, with the Beaver creating a beautiful home for the Sparrow and trying desperately to hold onto him with a fragile piece of Twine, while knowing that stability will never be what the Sparrow wants. It describes the feeling of blindly holding onto a dream that will never come true until the harsh impossibility of the dream is finally accepted, and a bittersweet release can occur.

Lyrically and melodically, the song was kind of an out-of-the-blue inspiration for Dani (our lead female vocalist). She showed it to the band and everything fell into place very naturally - the song almost wrote and composed itself, and we knew we had the first single off our debut album.

How did the formation of South for Winter come to be? Two of us, Nick (lead male vocalist/guitarist) and Dani (lead female vocalist) met in South America on a volunteer trip in 2014. With Nick being from New Zealand and Dani from Colorado, we never imagined that jamming together on a rooftop in Peru and writing a song together would later lead to us being together in a band. In 2017 we decided to officially form a duo in Nashville as South for Winter and, while looking for a graphic designer on a Facebook page, somehow ended up with a cellist (the best accident - we love you Alex!). We’ve been full steam ahead ever since.

When did you all know that you wanted to pursue a musical career? Each of us had different moments, but all of us knew early on this is what we wanted to do - Alex trained classically as a cellist from 9 years old and studied cello performance at Hope College before moving to Nashville to pursue music. Nick played in several bands in New Zealand since middle school and was even a full-time musician with an indie-rock band there before South for Winter began. Dani was previously pursuing a career as a pop solo artist/songwriter. However, when South for Winter began in September 2017, each of us pretty much put our individual projects on the back burner to focus on it.

What advice would you give to other musicians? If you believe in what you’re creating, push yourself as hard as you can. Keep writing new material, keep touring, keep sending those emails and attending all the networking events - eventually, if it’s truly what you’re meant to be doing, things will happen. But behind every success is a lot of hard work.

What can fans expect in the upcoming months? “Twine” is the very beginning of an exciting year for us, as Twine is the first single we’ll be releasing off our debut album. We’ll now be releasing another single every few months until the full album comes out in 2020, so stayed tuned for our next single this July! We’ll also be hitting the road a fair amount this summer, so keep an eye on our website for tour dates coming up.

Do you have any shows coming up? We’re planning our summer touring, so many shows are still in the works - however, a confirmed one we’re really excited about is playing in the main theater of Isis Music Hall (Asheville, NC) on July 11. We’ll also be playing here in Nashville at Historic Rock Castle’s summer festival series on July 20, which will be a great time!

Connect with South for Winter by visiting www.southforwintermusic.com.