It’s time now for a Tiny Desert Concert. It’s a series where we bring local Arizona bands and musicians into the KJZZ studios to play a couple of songs and talk about their music.Today, we hear from The Sugar Thieves. This award-winning Phoenix band draws from the blues, Americana, jazz and folk to create their own blend of contemporary American music. Headed by husband-and-wife duo, Mikel Lander and Meredith Moore, the band has been steadily refining their sound since 2006, and they are expecting to release a new album in 2019.
But, things have changed since they started. This year, Lander and Moore welcomed their second daughter into the family and the demands of parenthood have changed how they approach their music. Both say being parents has brought so much joy to their lives and music, but it also makes the unpredictable job of being a musician a lot harder.
The Show spoke with Lander and Moore at KJZZ's East Valley bureau, and started by telling their story — how did they meet? And how did the band come to be?
Full conversation
MEREDITH MOORE: I have loved to sing my entire life. I was always in church choir growing up, but I really had some issues with stage fright and I never, ever thought that I would get up in front of a group of people and sing openly, really with emotion.
And when I moved out here, I'd never been to Arizona. I didn't know anybody, and I thought, what better time to try my hand at performing? And so I happened to have an apartment next to the Yucca Tap Room, and I had heard that Monday nights were open mic night.
So I just popped in and there was a gentleman sitting at the bar with a guitar. I approached him and asked him, "hey, would you be willing to back me up on a couple of songs"? He said, "well, what do you sing?" And I said, "I don't really know anything, but if you could just play some blues and gee or something, I'll just make it up." And he kind of looked at me like I was crazy. Like what? But he jumped up with me and no, this wasn’t Mikel Lander. This happened to be Scotty Johnson of the Gin Blossoms, he was emceeing at that time.
And so he and I played together, and he invited me to start a little side group with him. We called it, Meredith Moore and the Funk Trunk, and it was songs that I was writing. So all of a sudden I was hanging out with these absolutely fantastic musicians, and they were allowing me to write music, which I had never really done before in that capacity.
So that was such a cool experience for me. And, through this music scene, I met Mikel Lander, actually opened for him at a little Cajun cafe. And we do a lot of the music we write is about, you know, how we met and periods of time in our relationship. You know, when we're away from one another and then, of course, starting a family.
LAUREN GILGER: Right. So, Mikel, from your point of view, when did this sort of turn into a band project?
MIKEL LANDER: Well, once we started writing together, we walked into another open mic at the old Big Fish pub and kind of took over the open mic and they said, well, why don't you come in and start doing to do other things? After the open mic was kind of dwindling, we started doing that and we invited some friends out to as just kind of an open jam and a couple, you know, including Shea Marshall, just never left.
And so next thing we knew, we had a band and we did the international Blues Challenge a couple times, went to Memphis, made the finals, played at the Orpheum in Memphis. We were the Mikel Lander Meredith Moore Band, and no one can remember that name or, you know, that band with the girl with the dreads and the red dress, it needed a name. And a friend of ours had recommended Sugar Thieves and didn't fit at the time, but we felt when we went there we stole enough sugar, to make that our name.
GILGER: All right, so you’re going to play a song for us, which one?
LANDER: We're going to do “Anytown, USA,” this is one of our newer songs that hasn't been released yet.
(Music)
GILGER: In the course of the last several years, you've also started a family. You've become a mom. You were still performing and working while you were pregnant. I understand. How has that changed things? You write the music together. How has becoming a family and starting a family changed your music?
MOORE: Well, we definitely have a lot to write about, that's for sure. We have a lot of joy. We have two beautiful daughters and so what we used to do a lot is he and I would go out and play these duo shows during the week, weeknights, you know, at a hotel or a hotel lobby or something where we call them wallpaper gigs. You're kind of in the background, you know, and that's part of the deal. You know, you have those kinds of shows sometimes.
And so we would take advantage of that time as opposed to getting depressed and feeling our souls sucked from our bodies while we played behind, a group of people eating steaks and having conversation, we started to just make stuff up and we started to write music that way. It was live, so we had to, it had to sound good, you know? It had to sound good, you know? And so, when we were put on the spot like that, we came out with a lot of great tunes.
After kids, that writing time went away because I no longer accompany Mikey on the, a lot of the weeknight, you know, kind of wallpaper stuff. I send them out either as a solo all by himself up there or he'll bring, you know, one of our guys out to play. But, I do miss a lot of that time. I'm not writing as much, but Mikey is writing a lot.
GILGER: So I want to also talk about this idea of being working musicians with two little kids, including a 7 month old. Right. Usually the narrative, right is, you know, you quit music to have a family or you do not have a family because you want to be a musician and you need to be on the road and playing those kinds of gigs all the time. How do you balance that?
LANDER: It’s tough.
MOORE: Grandma.
LANDER: Grandma’s, yeah. Granny nanny’s as we call them.
MOORE: My parents moved out here from Nebraska the day after we had our older daughter, Lily. If it weren't for the grandparents, we would probably not be able to pursue a career in music, at least not as a main, you know, stay.
Although it would be one of those hobby groups that, you know, gets to go out and play once in a while. We get to do this full time because of family. And, like Michael mentioned, we're really so lucky we get to be at home with our children while they're tiny and, before they start school. And then, you know, in the evenings we go out and play and sing to folks.
And also, it's an opportunity to get out of the house and be together. So the gigs, you know, even those wallpaper gigs, like, wow, I'm really looking forward to that tonight. It's good to see you.
LANDER: It's good to see you.
MOORE: Yeah, Good to see you. We're high fiving and on stage like yeah, we get to hang out for a little bit. So it's really cool and it's an ever changing thing. Our music, our band. This will be forever. You know, we'll have changes in our life and the band will change a little and grow and evolve in different ways. We'll be right there with it. So it's fun. It's good.
GILGER: Alright you’re going to take us out on a song, which one?
MOORE: We're going to do “Lullaby” for you guys. This is one that we wrote a couple of years back. It's featured on our album Plywood Palace as one of our very favorites, and I hope you guys love it.
(Music)
This performance was filmed at KJZZ's youth media center, SPOT 127. If you’re in a band or know of one you’d like to hear on air, send us a note at [email protected].
