New Artist Spotlight: Gloriana

Each year at Country Radio Seminar (CRS) Country music artists take time to do talk to more than just radio people and it was at the Nashville Convention Center where I had the opportunity to talk with the four members that make up Gloriana, Tom and Mike Gossin, Cheyenne Kimball and Rachael Reichart. We discussed everything form where they band members are from to the first time they heard their song on the radio, when the group met and their experience in the studio with Grammy winner Matt Serletic (Matchbox 20, Willie Nelson). We also conversed about how they were gonna work Little Jimmy Dickens into their Opry performance on March 6th, 2009.

Matt: Where are you guys from Originally?

Mike Gossin: Tom and I, we grew up and Upstate NY…

Matt: Oh really, what part?

Mike: Utica..

Matt: Cool, I grew-up in the foot of the Adirondacks, a little town called Mayfield.

Mike: It's a small world…This will be a fun interview then.

Tom Gossin: Our dad is an outdoors type of guy, loves to go hiking. We grew-up there and we moved to Wilmington, NC about 10 years ago. And the ladies are from…

Cheyenne Kimball: I was born in Jacksonville, NC but was raised in Dallas, Texas.

Rachel Reinert: I was born in Sarasota, FL and then spent 5 years in Marietta, GA, and moved to Southern California until I was 17 and moved out here after graduating high school.

Matt: So how did the group come together?

Mike: We met when we were 2 or 3 or 4, when we were babies…(laughs), actually we were playing together as a duo in North Carolina and we always dreamed of moving to Nashville to start a group and about a month after moving here we were looking for female singers to work with and were looking on mySpace, of all things, which was so 08 of us, or was it 07?

Rachel: it was 07…

Mike: So it was so ’07 of us. And we contacted her through MySpace trying not to creep her out too much, saying, do you want to get together, we’re thinking about starting a group…

Tom: We sent her some pics and stuff, you know, we kept it real (laughing)

Rachel: you couldn’t resist (all laugh)…No actually, I had some friends that knew them and said they were cool guys and were gonna reach out to me so the three of us got together and started to make some music as a three piece. We were playing 3rd & Lindsley (in Nashville) one night when Cheyenne happened to be at one of our shows and came up and asked after one of our sets if she could play and write with us some time. And shortly after that how and when Gloriana was born.
Tom: We knew once the four of us sang together that, we all looked around, this is it...

Matt: Like the clouds parted…

Cheyenne: there were rainbows everyhere (sings Gloriana like hallelujah)…

Mike: and then they made a movie about us called “Fantastic 4.” It’s great. Cheyenne’s the big rock dude…(laughing)

Cheyenne: I was about to say that! (laughing)

Matt: What is it about Gloriana that you think helps you stand-out from other vocal groups out there?

Cheyenne: We get compared to Little Big Town a lot, and it’s funny because people will say “you’re like a new little big town or something” but then they see us play and then say “oh, you’re nothing like that.” We’ve got a completely different sound than they do but we get compared because of the blond, brunette and guys thing…

Mike: the two girls and two guys.

Cheyenne: I actually met them at a luncheon and got so star struck, I love them and I couldn’t talk…

Rachel: and she never gets star struck…We think they’re really, really great and they bring something unique to country that is wonderful…

Cheyenne: They did pave the way for us because had we come out before them I don’t think anyone would’ve understood us.

Mike: Our sound is very different because our harmonies are different…

Tom: We grew up on great vocal groups, obviously the Beatles, The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac…

Matt: Crosby Stills…

Tom: Oh, absolutely, dude. We took a lot of time on our vocal harmonies to make sure we did stuff that other people don’t do with their vocals.

Matt: How did you guys manage to get signed to Emblem and Matt Serletic?

Tom: Mike and I had met Matt Serletic a couple of years ago and he gave us his info and said, “keep me in the loop if you do anything new,” so we wrote our first song together, it’s called “Time To Let Me Go,” It’s actually gonna be on the record, so we wrote it, made a demo and I said, “I gotta send it to that guy Matt” and see if he’ll wanna do something with it, and help us out. He loved it and flew us out to LA to talk about doing some stuff together.

Rachel: At the same time, Matt is our producer but he also runs the label and had experience running Virgin Records and Melisma Records, so at the time he was starting up the record label, and he signed us originally to a developmental deal before working together and ended up signing our record deal with him in July.

Tom: But the timing was perfect because they were looking for their first act to launch the label with, they wanted something that they thought was big enough to launch a label and they thought “its you guys” so we were like, “cool, let’s go.”

So you’re working with a grammy-winning, Platinum producer, that’s gotta be awesome for a new act…

Rachel: he’s brilliant…

Tom: The coolest thing about him, though, is that he really wants our involvement in the whole process. We all play instruments, we arranged all the vocals, and we were there for the whole recording…

Mike: We played on the album…

Matt: So he doesn’t get in the way of the music?

Rachel: No not at all.

Cheyenne: Yeah,

Tom: Right, he wanted it to be our record, not his record so he did a very fabulous job.

Rachel: And it’s amazing too, obviously things have happened very quickly for us as a band but at the same time Cheyenne was doing her own thing, her own career
and the guys have been playing since they were five years old and I have been playing since childhood and we’ve all been at this for the last 10-15 years of our lives, trying to make things happen for ourselves and it didn’t really click until we got together…

Mike: …Then it all happened so fast, so it was the right move, I guess…

Matt: Kind of how it happens, right?

Rachel: Yeah, so when they say overnight…

Have you guys heard your single while driving around or seen the video while hanging around at home?

Cheyenne: Yes! The first time we heard our single was when we were in San Jose, it was hilarious because we had been on our radio tour for 11 weeks or so and had a couple of weeks yet. People were telling us that they’ve heard it on the radio but we were so busy and it was just one of those things where it wasn’t hitting us yet because we’d go to a radio show and get in a van and go to another radio show and leave again so when we heard it, it was surreal. We cranked it up and I videoed it on my phone and we got so excited. About two weeks later CMT added our video and we turned on CMT specifically for that and had to go to a meeting so as we were getting in the car one of our radio guys said “uh, your video’s on TV” and we ran out of the van to see it.

Matt: You are going out on tour with Taylor Swift and Kellie Pickler. How exciting is it to be on the tour with the artist in the country?

Mike: It’s ridiculous. We never thought that would happen for us as fast as it did, but we set out to make the best record we could make and work hard as we could and I think it was the hard work we did on the radio tour that got our song played before the (official) release and Taylor ended up hearing it and she called us up and personally asked us if we wanted to go out on tour with her, before someone else picked us up and asked “do you want to go on tour with us?” and we said “OK?!”

Cheyenne: We haven’t even talked with her yet in person yet, only over the phone so it’s a great opportunity.

Matt: You are playing the Grand Ole Opry tonight (March 6, 2009). That has to be another watershed moment for Gloriana?

Mike: Oh Yeah! We’re really honored to be there, it’s our first time and we’re just really thrilled and excited.

Rachel: There’s been a lot of great firsts for us and for all of us this is something we’ve dreamed of doing for a long time andsuch an honor and we just found out that Little Jimmy Dickens is gonna be there, after being sick for a long time, he’s gonna be there and I can’t wait to meet him..

Tom: We only get to play two songs, you know, so the second song we’re gonna do is the 18 minute version of “Stairway To Heaven” so we can get a lot of stage time...