Columbus indie rock band Third Culture Kid joined WYSO Music director Juliet Fromholt for a live studio session and interview following the release of their latest single, “Bluebird,” on September 30. The performance featured Katie Larson (guitar and vocals), Toby Burgess (guitar and vocals), Eric Trent (drums), and Gabe Abkey (bass). The band played “Bluebird” live on Kaleidoscope, as well as several other songs from their forthcoming EP, which is slated for release next year. Their first album, Still Life, came out in 2022. In the interview, Katie and Toby talked about starting the band after a fateful meeting in Yellow Springs. They also spoke about how the group has become more collaborative over time as the musicians have learned each other's musical “vocabulary”.
Third Culture Kid was born out of chance of Katie Larson and Toby Burgess, who remain the band’s chief writers. “The origin story actually started here in Yellow Springs,” Katie told Juliet. “Toby and I met at Porchfest. We were both Cedarville students. I followed him into the forest and tripped on some rocks and got a bloody knee, and that’s how we started.” As Toby “half-carried” Katie back to her car after her fall, the pair started talking about music, a passion they shared. Before long, they were playing house shows together with bassist Christian Hinojosa, the third founding member of Third Culture Kid.
However, when the band started to record their first album, they encountered a problem: their songs had too many parts, and they had too few musicians to play them. Katie and Toby told the story on Kaleidoscope:
Katie Larson: “I wrote a lot more acoustic [songs], but Toby likes to write punk rock bangers”
Toby Burgess: “And too many parts, honestly”
K.L.: “And too many parts, yeah. So we’re in the studio, recording 5 different parts. Toby’s tracking drums, tracking guitar, Christian’s tracking bass.”
T.B.: “And then we played them live and we’re like, ‘We can’t do this.’”
The solution was to recruit two more musicians, Eric Trent and Gabe Abkey, to the band. While Toby and Katie said they split songwriting duties 50-50, they also told Juliet that the band’s approach has become much more collaborative since their ranks expanded.
K.L.: “We’ve actually become more collaborative in the writing process. For the next EP that’s coming out, we went to a cabin to record everything. Eric came up with some of the drum parts for that, Gabe was producing, Christian was there writing some bass lines. We really focused on our own instruments and thought about things that would compliment the song and the writing.”
T.B.: “We could also actually play everything with a band, and see how it would feel live. The first album was so piecemeal— partially recorded in dingy basements and my dorm room. We just had no idea what we were doing. It’s great now that we can get everyone in the same room and flesh everything out in person.”
The band members have also forged a sense of personal connection— something that was often missing from their previous bands. That personal chemistry creates a greater capacity for musical communication, they told Juliet. “You know, you’re speaking a [musical] language with people,” Toby said, “We out start speaking foreign languages, and the more we play together, we start to learn each other’s vocabularies.”
Third Culture Kid’s latest single, “Bluebird,” is available now on digital streaming platforms. For more information about the band, visit their Instagram page or website.
Text by Peter Day, adapted from a live interview by Juliet Fromholt from November 1st, 2023.
