Upstate Unplugged: Jocelyn & Chris at White Lake Studios April 30th

Interview: Jocelyn & Chris (Arndt)
By: Rob Smittix

Photo By: Tina Pelech

RRX: First of all, thank you for doing this today. RadioRadioX and Xperience are certainly big fans of Jocelyn and Chris. We play your music often and you’ve been very kind to us over the years, so we appreciate that.

JA: Oh, that’s awesome. We love you guys. It’s amazing what you guys do for the music community, so we’re really happy to do this.

RRX: Oh, I appreciate that we’re trying, you know? So, we’ve got the Upstate Unplugged show Thursday, April 30th at White Lake Studios, very excited about that… very intimate setting there. I’ve only been to one event so far but I plan on going to every other one for the foreseeable future. I bet you’re excited for this as well?

CA: Definitely, yeah and I’m with you on going to every one I can. The setting is so cool. It’s such a tiny room and it sounds absolutely amazing. We’re gonna do something kind of cool, we’ve been doing this thing at our recent shows where we take some of the set and we do it full band and then other parts of the set we do it semi-acoustic. Just to make it as intricate of an experience as we can and this time we’re gonna switch up the order and start with the semi-acoustic stuff and then get into the full band. It should be really fun.

JA: It’s gonna be cool, we have a cool set list planned. I’m excited for it to unfold.

RRX: Absolutely. Anyone that hasn’t been to one of these, I’ve been trying to push it out… there’s very limited seating, so you better get your ticket now while they last.

CA: Oh, yeah!

JA: It’s cozy, totally for sure!

RRX: It’s cozy, but I mean… this is a recording studio setting. I’ve been to a number of recording studios in my day and White Lake kind of takes the cake, they really got the nice setup over there.

JA: Oh yeah, you’re right on. I mean… we might be a little biased because all of our albums we have recorded in this studio, it’s actually where we are right now! I feel very at home in this studio, I love it here. But I mean, there’s no reason not to love it here. It’s amazing like Chris said it sounds amazing. This whole series is very much like a listening room experience, it’s super intimate. Like you said, it’s cozy. Get right up in your face and vice versa, which I love as a performer to be able to connect and talk with the audience. You get a little rapport going. There’s a back and forth. It’s really special, honestly, so I’m excited.

RRX: I’m in a band with my brother, he’s the drummer, so we’ve got a lot of other elements and space between us. With you two being up front has there ever been any sibling rivalry over the years? How does that work?

CA: There have been sibling rivalries but not really related to music. They’re usually like… Jocelyn, why haven’t you taken out the trash? Chris, why haven’t you done the dishes? That kind of thing.

JA: Normal stuff, nothing too crazy.

CA: No, with the music stuff… I guess we are both in the front of the stage but we also both have pretty clearly defined roles. Namely, I am not a vocalist. I sing some background stuff and I enjoy that but being the front-man of the band is very much Jocelyn’s territory and her gift. I’m just happy to be there playing some lead guitar sometimes.

JA: I mean, honestly, I think we balance each other out. That’s true for the performing. It’s also true for the songwriting. It’s always been like that. We’ve always written together since we were kids and I think we balance each other out in that way. I will say, we’ve only ever performed with each other.

RRX: Wow.

JA: So it’s like we have an unspoken language. One thing that comes to mind though, I forget when this happened… Chris, maybe you remember? When we had to switch sides of the stage?

CA: Oh, that is bizarre.

JA: I tend to flail around a lot and I kept hitting Chris’s back. We did have to switch back at one point so that I wouldn’t keep clocking him but… No other sibling stuff really except for the occasional me whacking him by accident.

RRX: That’s funny. Chris, you mentioned that you’re not a vocalist and you recognize Jocelyn as the front person of the band but oh my God… who would ever want to sing next to Jocelyn? Because Jocelyn’s gonna blow everybody away! You’ve got those chops.

CA: (Laughs) It’s an intimidating person to share a stage with for sure.

JA: This guy can sing too. Especially the more recent stuff, he’s on all the background vocals, so he’s in the mix.

RRX: Nice. Now, I did hear that you both got scholarships to Harvard and I was just kind of sidebar wondering, what’s it like to be smart? Because I went to Albany High, it’s kind of the same thing.
(Both Laugh)

JA: Oh man, I will tell you that we’re huge nerds and you probably have more real world experience.

CA: We were in a band, I don’t know… I never felt like I was the smartest person in the room there, in high school or anywhere else.

JA: We did some recordings, our original music…

CA: We did, yeah.

JA: …with our college app, so that had to count for something.

RRX: It sure does. No, that’s pretty cool. I always tried to be smart. So what do you guys have up and coming? Anything that you’re working on?

CA: Yeah, well… we got the show which we’re really excited about. And like Jocelyn said, we’re putting together a set that is unlike anything we’ve really ever done. Some really new stuff, some really old stuff, some stuff that we haven’t played since before COVID.

JA: But in Spanish.

CA: Yeah, Spanish, some multilingual stuff. But other than that we’ve been doing a lot of songwriting with some of the other artists on the label. There’s this artist Margo Macero, who if you’re in the Capital Region and you don’t know about Margo, you definitely should. She is so talented and awesome.

RRX: I love Margo, she is awesome.

JA: She’s so killer. She’s the real deal. She’s amazing.

CA: Earlier you cracked that joke about sharing a stage with Jocelyn and I feel like she’s one of the few people who I’ve seen go up and sing with Jocelyn and pull it off. It’s really cool to see you guys sing together.

JA: We had the privilege of working with her to write the music for her debut record. Which I think is in the recording process now. I’m excited to see where those songs go. But yes, we’ve got that… I mentioned Spanish. We are in the process of doing something cool, which is we’re reworking some of our selected tracks, some of our favorite songs into Spanish. And recording Spanish versions of them, which has been really fun. We have recorded one and we’re working on another, so we’re gonna try to break that out live at the show on April 30th. It’s gonna be fun.

RRX: That will be interesting to see. David (Bourgeois) told me a little bit about these Spanish tracks. There’s a lot that really goes into that.

JA: Oh my gosh, yeah, it is more intensive than I imagined. You know, it’s funny… I feel like the best way to approach it is like a puzzle, you know? Because we’ve created these songs in English, in our own world, right? I’ve always been like the words person, so working with the translator to translate songs in Spanish so that they still have the same feel and still have the same themes, and they’re still relatable in that way… but then there’s also the performance aspect. It’s been a very challenging puzzle.

CA: Jocelyn’s lyrics use a lot of idioms and wordplay too and to translate that…

JA: It’s a lot of me asking, how would you say this in Spanish? And they’re like… you would not say that. So we had to bridge that gap. It’s been fun.

RRX: The only thing I remember in Spanish is dos cerveza por favor, because you always gotta order two at once. Well, excellent. Anything you’d like to add?

JA: We’re Jocelyn and Chris, if you don’t know us, if you’re out there listening, now you do. Welcome to the family! We’ll see you on April 30th at White Lake. It’s gonna be a really, really special night.

For Tickets to Upstate Unplugged Thursday April 30th  7pm for Jocelyn & Chris CLICK HERE!