PHOTO: Courtney Armitage
*repeat repeat
interview by Britton Strickland
*repeat repeat is a Nashville band that terms their music “surf rockcandy.” The energy they bring to the stage is truly contagious, and after talking with the front-couple Jared and Kristyn Corder, I found that genuine energy beaming the golden-hearted duo. I had a chance to sit down with them at Live on the Green, Nashville’s annual music festival that is free to the public, where shared the stage with Colony House, Car Seat Headrest, and Cold War Kids.
Their 2017 album Floral Canyon encompasses rock styles both old and new, and there are a few more shows that you can catch on this album’s tour. And if this album leaves you wanting more, new music is on the way for next year! Dive into our conversation below.
I’ll start with the most important part: I heard you guys have a lot of animals.
Jared: Yeah, 11 pets. We’re all about the animals! We have 4 dogs, 5 cats, an African Grey Parrot, and an off-the-track racehorse.
I love ‘em all, but I would die to have a parrot.
Jared: He is amazing, and we love him very much! But, he’s the closest thing we have to a toddler. Because dogs, they want your attention, but you can keep them busy. Cats, it’s all about diversion; if they’re peeing on the couch, you just put a litter box there by the couch and they stop. And horses, they’re kinda your forte, Kristyn.
Kristyn: Yeah they’re my territory.
Jared: But birds are the animal that sometimes don’t even know what they want. “Like what do you want!?”
Which is funny, because they can talk!
Jared: Yeah! Like, he knows we’ll come to him if he says “night night,” so he says it for everything. He just hangs out upstairs, downstairs, out in the yard, in the bathroom, doing all this stuff. Now, he just squawks and squawks, but he can’t tell us what he wants. They’re very loyal, so all he wants is just to be on me and give me kisses.
I could talk about animals all day, but let’s talk about you. You guys met here in Nashville, right?
Kristyn: We met here in 2012 after I moved here, and we’ve been married for 6 years. I joined the band while we were engaged. I can’t imagine being in a band from anywhere else! Nashville is the best city!
What’s it like working together every day?
Kristyn: It’s the best thing! Some people would probably kill each other, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Where are y’all’s roots originally?
Jared: I’m originally from Phoenix, and graduated Arizona State with a degree in classical guitar. I knew that I wanted to move to a music city because Arizona isn’t really big on that. I had spent plenty of time in L.A. because it was nearby; I used to play up the strip. New York was too expensive. So I came to Nashville! With Paramore and Kings of Leon being from here, there was a great indie rock and rock scene coming out of here. I didn’t know a single person or anything. I literally jumped in feet first, and it was wild.
Well I would say you made it. You’re playing Live on the Green!
Jared: It’s truly crazy. And we don’t play hometown shows very often, and we’re homebodies. We’re on the road all year, and we have all these people wanting to see us.
Kristyn: Somebody asked me recently, and I did the math. I think we’re on the road between a third to half of the year. Tours, weddings, holidays.
Jared: We’re gone a ton. So these hometown shows are our one time to ever get to see our friends. And they all know where to find us.
So how do you balance both music and personal life, especially in a setting like this?
Jared: We’ve both been on the other side of the music world. [Kristyn] has done PR and graphic design for bands. We put on East Nashville Underground, which was this music festival where I worked with booking agents and promoters to put that on. And we play music! We’ve seen what it’s like to been an asshole as a musician, and we don’t want to be that!
Kristyn: We care so much for our friends, fans, and supporters.
Jared: They all know how nice we are to a fault, and our tour manager will be like, “I’m so sorry. They’ll talk to you for hours if I don’t pull them away.”
I was reading things that you’ve done in the past and I see the energy your bring to the stage, and I totally get that vibe! It’s refreshing to see that because there are a lot of lame musicians out there.
Jared: We just did our first meet-and-greet in Nashville, and there was probably 200 people that came by. And that was truly awesome! These are people that could just come see us anytime, which is wild.
Kristyn: You could literally just show up on our porch and we’d be like, “Hey, what are you doing? Do you want coffee?”
Jared: We’ve seen artists leave like 500 people at a meet-and-greet, and we can’t do that. If we get to a point like that, I guess we’ll just have to schedule them for like 5 hours. Some of these people drive a long way just to see us! And they wait in line to meet us. To meet us?! We’re just normal humans.
Kristyn: We’re just the people with the million animals!
Jared: Here’s the thing. If you’re really good at drywall or plumbing, nobody waits in line to meet you. But there’s no difference between doing that and what we do, other than we’re just good at music. We’re not good at plumbing! Honestly, I’d wait in line to meet some of the people that work on our house! “I can’t believe you did this! How did you do this?” It’s just the name of this industry, but people that want to meet us, I’m not going to blow them off.
And that’s becoming more of a rarity.
Jared: My thought is that the band should be having just as much as the crowd. And if the band is having more fun than the crowd, the crowd should match that. I want all of our band to have a blast. Walking on that stage and there being thousands of people, that’s a privilege, not a right. I want to work to earn that praise.
It seems that you’ve worked hard and earned that!
Jared: When I get on the stage, I want to sweat my balls off and run all around. I want to walk off that stage barely being able to breathe! I want these people to wait in line to see that we’re working hard for them. The second you think you’re too cool for school, that can be tricky territory.
That’s the Nashville way! You seem like East Nashvillians. Am I right?
*for those not in Nashville, East Nashville is the young, hip part of town. At least that’s what all the old folk say.
Jared: We used to be until about 2 months ago. We lived in the same house for 8 years, but we decided to move to a farm about an hour away. All our friends and family got bought out, and everyone is getting older and having babies.
Kristyn: Too many animals, and we need acreage.
You can’t keep a horse in this city!
* stage hand walks by with Colony House’s big, on-stage sign
Jared: I love that sign. I want a big, neon asterisk to put on stage.
Yeah, so tell me about your name.
Jared: We were trying to think of names, and I was in the shower. I was looking at the shampoo bottle, and I saw “Lather, rinse, *repeat, repeat.” So for a quick minute, we were “*repeat, repeat”, but too much punctuation does a band no good. Because promoters hate you, no one can get it right. So we stuck with the asterisk. No one has it! And if you’re reading this, don’t get an asterisk! We claimed it first!
You’re the only one with one!
Jared: There are too many patterns in band names. Like, I feel The Weeknd started leaving out letters.
Like all the restaurants and business being named “______ & _______.”
Jared: We were talking about that, and if we ever started an artisanal restaurant, it would be named “Flask & Funnel.”
Kristyn: We were putting whiskey into a banana flask once, and we needed a funnel. How Nashville is that!
Jared: But if you’re starting a band, use something else! No asterisk! There are a lot of others.
I want to ask you guys about is your podcast.
Jared: We have 2 new podcasts in the works. One is about breaking down songs that are one-hit-wonders. Songs that are really popular that everyone recognizes but know nothing about. It’s called, “Oh Yeah! That Song!” Episode 1 is “Steal My Sunshine” by Len. Episode 2 is “Lovefool” by The Cardigans. Songs that even if you don’t know the name, you know the song.
* TBH, I didn’t know either of the songs at the time of the interview, but I googled them, and I immediately recognized them.
Jared: The other one was inspired by our long car rides with our tour manager, Brandon. Late at night, I read him memes. I sit on Instagram and describing the pictures. Our favorite TV show is “The People’s Couch,” and it’s where you watch people watch TV shows. A podcast where you listen to someone describe memes.
Brandon (tour manager): There’s a picture of a guy wearing a business suit . . .”
Jared: And he slaps the top of the car and says “You can fit so much fucking spaghetti in this bad boy!” It’s gonna be a hit!
So your current podcast . . .
Jared: It’s currently on hold. We left the old episodes up because we wanted people to get a sense of who we are. We had on a bunch of friends in the music industry on shooting the shit. Like Mark Maron, but less serious.
I’m looking forward to keeping up with your episodes! Okay I think Brandon is trying to pull me away.
Jared: See we can talk for hours! Man, this has been great, and we’re so glad we got to chat for a bit. Come to the farm sometime!