Half Stack are making names for themselves as bonafide Oakland cowpoke. Rising within their own indie country scene as of late, the band’s Wings of Love was mostly written while frontman Pete Kegler was living out his days on a 200-acre ranch in Half Moon Bay. The result of this work is something immediately redolent of both the bay and the red dirt of Half Stack’s contemporaries, making for a scrappy, rootsy album that is sure to carry the band further on their way up the Americana charts.
Wings of Love is releasing on vinyl via Forged Artifacts in the U.S., and on cassette via Breakfast Records in the E.U. It’s due for release on 25 September.
Please tell us a bit about yourself. Where are you from and how did you get started in music? Any defining moments along the path to present day?
Half Stack is a band in Oakland. Three of us are originally from the East Bay, and the other two are from Southern California. We all met during college in Santa Cruz. What a chill place! It seems like we all got started with music in different ways. Some of us started playing in bands in high school. A couple of us started deejaying at our college radio station, which quickly led to trying out the band thing for ourselves. When we got to Oakland we were playing in other bands and decided to start one together. We had similar appreciation for certain types of rock music, and even better was that we all really had fun together. That’s what has really stood out along the way. All the fun. The jokes. The laughs. The tunes!
As an artist, how do you define success?
$Money$
But actually, if someone wants to listen to our music and come to a show, that is a success.
What do you find to be your greatest struggle when it comes to the music business?
$Money$
And, we love making music together and playing shows. It’s been really difficult to not be able to do that right now.
What do you think is the most realistic goal you can achieve as an artist/band? What do you hope to achieve?
To perform in front of friends and for our parents to buy the music on bandcamp. Really if we can keep making music together and people want to listen to it, that will be an achievement. We are excited to tour again. It’s fun to go to all sorts of different places. We love driving around together and eating big dinners. And the shows!
Outside of music, what do you like to do that you feel contributes to the creativity that you tap into for your music?
The music community we are a part of is inspiring and we are constantly influenced by our peers. We all tap into other things for inspiration too; watching big home runs, going dyno on the wall, making pasta.
Words by: Jonathan Frahm