Shake Go Home calls Nashville home
ISSUE: 05/01/07 > A&E > Shake Go Home calls Nashville home
It’s not every day that a town acquires a great new band, unless of course you live in Nashville, Tenn.
After all, Nashville is Music City. It’s a city saturated with musicians, tons of talent and plenty of hopefuls. This creates a haven for music fanatics and a whole lot of competition for striving artists.
With a countless number of musicians trying to get noticed, success can only be attained one way: by standing out. That’s precisely what new-to-town band Shake Go Home has managed to do.
“You can’t compare us to anything out there right now,” drummer John Arrotti said. “You don’t listen to us and say, ‘I think I just heard that on the radio.’”
The band, which recently relocated from Denver, delivers a refreshing sound that can’t be pinpointed easily. Best described as funky rock, with a bluesy, folk-like twist, Shake Go Home can hardly be labeled by a single genre.
The band is made up of four members: Lilly Hiatt as the lead singer, Eric Knutson as lead guitar, Arrotti on drums and Jeff Montoya as the bassist.
“All four of us are very different,” Arrotti said. “I think that’s one of our high points. We’ve found a very good way to blend it all together.”
Different indeed, the band’s influences are drawn from just about everywhere. Hiatt, who is also the band’s lyricist, grew up listening to Neil Young, Pearl Jam, Bob Dylan and of course her father, John Hiatt. Unlike many kids of musicians, she didn’t openly pursue music until a later age.
“I was really shy about it,” Hiatt said. “I sang in the school choir and stuff but didn’t perform solo until my senior year of high school.”
“She’ll bring in a song and show it to us and it’ll end up sounding completely different,” Arrotti said.
Knutson, who studied classical music in college, adds yet another dimension to the band’s unique sound.
“I basically started playing because of The Beatles,” Knutson said. “Influences from The Police also seem to show when I play with Shake Go Home.”
As for Arrotti, it was Carter Beauford of the Dave Matthews Band who turned him on to drumming.
“He’s the guy who made me want to play drums in the first place,” Arrotti said.
Montoya, who also studied the music industry in college, got his start at an early age.
“When I was 12, I saw an Aerosmith concert. I knew from then on what I was supposed to do.”
The first band Montoya played in was a middle school cover band called “7/8ths.”
“We were horrible but I learned a lot from it.”
All four members of the group met while attending the University of Denver and came together as a band in the summer of 2005. They recorded a couple of tunes they’d been developing in Arrotti’s basement and sent their unfinished demo to Nashville, Hiatt’s hometown. The demo attracted some attention from Vector Management and the band decided to relocate.
So far, Shake Go Home has secured opening slots for artists such as Sonya Kitchell and Tea Leaf Green and has played several venues around town including The Basement, 3rd and Lindsley and Mercy Lounge.
With the guidance of John Hiatt as producer, they are currently working on finishing their third EP and setting up their next string of shows.
In a city where new musicians can easily be overlooked as just another one of millions, Shake Go Home has something pretty unique, both vocally and instrumentally.
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