Petter Ericson Stakee and Jamie Biden (yep, Vice President Joe Biden's nephew) first got together collaborate on a movie score that never actually happened, but it wasn't a total bust. While working together, the pair realized something felt right. That's how musical duo Dicey Hollow came to be (a Tennessee friend helped them choose the name). Taste of Country chatted with the group's Biden about the formation of DH and what "country colors" will stick out to traditional country fans.

What was it about the creative collaboration that felt right?

Every time we got together we just really enjoyed playing together and ideas seemed to come pretty easy and just had a lot of fun doing it. There wasn’t a lot of pressure to get something done at that point.

But you knew you wanted to form a band?

It wasn’t like, "Hey let’s start a band and let’s make a record that sounds like x" ...  Me and Petter both love steel guitars. We were lucky to have a lot of good friends of ours contribute to the record, play on the record. So it was kind of like we took it as it came, which ended up being a fun way to approach it.

What's the inspiration behind this self-titled EP?

There wasn’t anything specific that formed the project, but background wise me and Petter meet in the middle on a lot of things. He had so many other influences growing up in Europe and me growing up in the States … I like everything from War on Drugs to Sturgill Simpson. I listen to all sorts of stuff. You never know what seeps into your brain when you’re doing it, as opposed to locking into one genre of music or one sound, things can get kind of boring like that. We like to cross-pollinate.

We definitely spent time to sit down to talk about some of these songs. I don’t think we set out to write songs about specific things but just trying to convey certain emotions. We were in a similar headspace in different ways over the course of that year and a half that we worked on the record. The stories and the ideas behind the songs are definitely something we talked through and talked about — hopefully that comes through to a certain degree, you know?

Definitely. Do you have a favorite track on this record?

I think "Silver and Sand" is, you know, a really nice song if I had to choose one. It kind of represents the whole vibe of the whole project. I think it’s kind of representative of it the most.

The video is absolutely beautiful.

I’m so glad you enjoyed it. We were super lucky to have friends of mine, Brody Baker and Josh Hartnett. They had actually worked and collaborated together on a music video before. They did a Kid Cudi video, the "Pursuit of Happiness" video, a couple years back. Brody directed and Josh produced so when I was thinking about putting a video together for the record I went to them and asked them if they’d be up for it. They were and they really captured the spirit of the song and the vibe of the project really beautifully. We were lucky to have them do it.

You’ve got that Americana/folky sound. What about Dicey Hollow will appeal to straight country lovers?

I think there’s definitely some country colors on there … There’s a good amount of pedals and lap steel on the record and violin. Some really nice string work on the record … I feel like there’s pieces on there that will hopefully be relatable to people who are more into more mainstream country. Hopefully there’s colors on there that they can pick up.

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