Our August Artist of the Month is Seattle-based folk-rock duo, Ivan and Alyosha! Ivan and Alyosha is comprised of vocalist, Tim Wilson, and guitarist/pianist, Ryan Carbary. The two originally founded the band in 2007.

After multiple show cancelations due to personal crisis, line up changes and the chaos of the pandemic, Ivan & Alyosha almost called it quits. Now with a renewed sense of purpose and settling in to their status as a two piece, Ivan and Alyosha will be releasing their fourth studio album, All We Ever Had, on August 25th.

Watch or listen to Ivan & Alyosha’s exclusive performance & interview with Marco Collins! 

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Ryan:

“No, I love, I love wonder so much.

Ryan when he writes a song, he does, like, fully produced demos of the song. And they sound incredible and it’s his voice and it’s all this instrumentation and sometimes we actually have a hard time recreating kind of the magic of that of those like original demos in the studio.

Whereas when I do a demo, it’s like acoustic vocal, it sounds like crap. But that’s like all I’ll ever do. And then the only other time I’ll sing the song is when hen we record.”

 Song 1 – “Wonder”

Ryan:

“No, I think even in the process of recording that song, the producer Owen who’s incredible, he was telling Chris McHugh, he was like – barely hit the drums. And Ryan and I looked at each other and we’re like, no, dude, like, he’s, he’s got to dig in. Like, this is a rock song. Like it’s big. It’s big, as big as you can get.

That’s how I heard this song. I mean, like, at least musically, is a big song. And the demo that we did for it a couple of years ago, was big, and it felt big. And the guitars were big and I wanted to sing it hard, you know.

And I think I kind of forget that we all went through a global pandemic, like in the last couple of years, and that song really came out of that time of just some of that anxiety and you know, in the midst of the chaos in the midst of the noise, like, why is it this way? And where are we going? And let’s go, let’s go do something. Let’s go. Do big thing.

So let’s dream big let’s let’s work quicker, you know, I don’t want to waste any more time I don’t want to deal with a lot of just the frustration that I was dealing with at the time anymore. So I think that song  is about the fear that we all felt.

So ‘Can’t Fight the Feeling’ is my pandemic song.”

Song 2 – “I Can’t Fight the Feeling”

Ryan:

“The demo has the whistle melody and just an acoustic and my voice and I think when we went in to record it in the studio in Nashville, I don’t know if I necessarily, I didn’t think we would keep the whistle but we did, which gives it a really fun vibe and that intro.

But we sit and we recorded the whole record kind of in like a Nashville style which was everybody plays all at once. We would listen to the demo and then we would have like a reference for the song and the reference was a George Michael song called ‘Waiting’ I think with it’s got like this big push.

So I thought it would go kind of more of like a pop like almost like Beck way, but it was quite a bit more simple and it’s extra execution for the finished product I guess so, but I in my head I heard George Michael or some sort of like weird blend of George Michael and Beck. I don’t know so I really love how the song came out. I just love it”

Song 3 – “Don’t Want to Waste Anymore Time”

Check out Ivan & Alyosha’s current videos, merch and website HERE!