Nashville band chooses Whitefish for recording next album

There’s something special about the West for Steevie Steeves and Jon Decious. A songwriter’s retreat in Wyoming six years ago brought the two Nashville musicians together, and after their band Towne’s successful extended-play release they again ventured into the mountains.

This time they landed in Whitefish, as their publisher had them staying in a remote cabin and recording at SnowGhost Music.

“When the opportunity arose, we were like, ‘Oh my gosh,’” Decious said. “Good things just tend to happen to us out here.”

The band’s sound is unique, a mix of country, folk and pop, spare in instrumentation but strong with Steeves’ vocals and Decious on guitar.

As Steeves points out, the band is aptly named.

“We’re not super country, and we’re not big-city pop either. We’re kind of in the middle. You’ll visit the country roads a bit, and you’ll visit the city, but you end up in Towne,” she said.

The two noted how often Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham comparisons are made, and noted that the foundation of their relationship actually began over Fleetwood Mac.

The two described hanging out for the first time in Decious’ sparsely furnished Nashville apartment.

“He had nothing in there,” she said. “It was just a futon and a record player on the floor.”

“She [flipped through my records and] came to ‘Rumours’ by Fleetwood Mac,” Decious added. “She just put that thing on and we just laid on the carpet and sang every word.”

Since then, the two have been writing and performing together while Steeves waited tables and Decious worked as a farmhand. After the success of their EP, they got the chance to pursue their passions full time.

Coming to Whitefish was a welcome break from the competitive music scene of Nashville, Steeves said. A change of scenery was one way to hit a creative reset button and cultivate some new ideas.

“What’s cool about going to a new place, is first of all we were in a cabin. No service, no interruption, no electricity. We wrote with candles in the dark,” she said.

Getting away from the grind of home brought out some creativity as well.

“The song that we actually wrote in the cabin came from me going on this rant about how much I hated waiting tables. As much as I hated the job, I needed it to survive. It had been this driving force, like ‘get the hell out of this restaurant.’ The song we wrote ended up being called ‘Waitin’.”

“It’s certainly not something we would’ve written in Nashville,” Decious added. “But when we came out here we really got what we’re looking for, and these people are the sweetest most talented cats that we had never met. It felt like we had known them our whole lives after just sitting for an hour or two. Those people are rare. So we hold them pretty dear.”