Life of Dillon
Life of Dillon
Life on Overload
by Ally Abramson
Life Of Dillon is a British band consisting of brothers Robert and Joe Griffith and their friend David Keiffer. The self-proclaimed acoustic house band is blowing up with their new single “Overload,” coming off of their EP “Prologue” which comes out April 14th. This up-and-coming band has a happy, easy-going attitude that is reflected in their music. Life of Dillon is touring this summer with Meghan Trainor and can be found on YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. Recently, they chatted with us about their music, experiences and goals.
Obviously your band name is very special to you. Why don’t you tell me about the story behind it?
Robert Griffith: We went to Brazil last year. We had been in London a long time and we needed a bit of time off. We went to where we were born in the North.
David Keiffer: Well, Joe and Robert were born there, I wasn’t.
Robert Griffith: Right. We were enjoying the holiday and all, getting drunk, going to the beach and stuff. One day this guy just comes over as we’re hanging out. [His name was] Dillon. And [he] just starts talking to us.
David Keiffer: He was very free spirited. We felt like his personality and his energy embodied what we were making at the time. One of us might’ve said, “we’re trying to live life like Dillon,” or something.
Joe Griffith: Yeah. At that time we weren’t trying to do anything on a grand scale. We were just trying to get music on YouTube. It was like an afterthought, we just needed a name. It was actually probably one of the first ones we came up with.
That’s an interesting story. Tell me about your upcoming EP, “Prologue.”
Joe Griffith: There’s a lot of feel-good stuff on the EP. A lot of the music is inspirational or positive in general. They all have a very acoustic sound to them. We’ve got some country influences, some reggae ones…
David Keiffer: Like pop, but they’re not all the same. Our background is with producing and writing so we have a ton of songs. It was more like the music that we had that made the group, rather than the group that made the music. It was pieces that we brought together. Each piece has a different feel to it because we want to write hits. We want to write music that is successful. So out of all of the music we have we picked our favorites. The first five are a few of those.
Life Of Dillon
Do you guys have a favorite song on the EP then?
Joe Griffith: I don’t know. I mean I like them all. It depends on the version. We just played at Live in the Vineyard a couple of days ago, and my favorite was “Dreams” hands down. I just thought it was amazing. But right now on the record, my favorite is “Blue Birds.” So it depends. When we play our music to people, everyone has a different favorite. Some people will like different ones. For us, we just hope they like any of them, so that’s good!
Well yeah it’s great that everyone likes different songs because it means each one is reaching different people.
Joe Griffith: We hope so!
When you guys perform, do you have any pre show rituals that you do?
David Keiffer: We all have these kind of personal training exercises that we do, so if you were to walk past our room before we went on stage it’d be crazy. We can give you an example if you want! (Various odd noises ensue, laughter as well.) Now imagine all of those at the same time!
Robert Griffith: Hopefully not for much longer. We’ll get so good and improve. We won’t need it!
It must be very interesting back there! You guys are bringing your vocal warm ups on tour with Meghan Trainor this summer. Are you excited, nervous? Where are you at?
David Keiffer: Well yeah, we’ve only dreamed of being able to tour America so being able to actually do it is incredible!
Joe Griffith: It’s also so much fun. It’s the kind of thing that you never think is possible. We all wanted to be real musicians, but it’s not the kind of thing that happens for many people, even if you’re good. You need a bit of luck, and I guess we have that luck. We were realists. We started out as producers/writers. Our focus is still that because that’s what we love to do. Being an artist was always something we dreamed of doing and now it’s just unreal. It’s going to be fun no doubt.
Robert Griffith: It’ll also be amazing to interact with fans, because we’ve seen the numbers go up on Spotify, etc., but we haven’t heard it on the radio. To see someone singing our songs live would be incredible, I mean we’ve seen it on Instagram, but to see it live would be mind blowing.
Life of Dillon
Who would you say inspires you guys, both as artists and as people?
Robert Griffith: I think the greatest performer of all time, hands down, is Michael Jackson. He could dance, he could sing, he was an all-around entertainer. The guy started the concept of music videos where you’re actually performing. It’s not just looking at the camera and singing, there was a story to it. There are only a few artists out there that are the best and I always go back to him.
Joe Griffith: We all have different influences. Personally mine are more of singer-producers that I’ve dealt with or seen over the past few years, and some older ones as well.
David Keiffer: Yeah and for me I love the singer/songwriter thing. I feel like they’re very much involved with the whole process.
If you guys could pick anyone to collaborate on a song with, whom would that be?
David Keiffer: Ellie Goulding is pretty special. We’d love to work with a female vocalist and we really think she’d fit our style of music. We’d also love to collaborate with someone not really in the limelight now, we’d love people to come up like that, people that are just starting out.
Tell me about your single “Overload.”
Robert Griffith: “Overload” is a song we did off the bat, super quickly, in one day pretty much.
Joe Griffith: When we laid it down, like the guitars and stuff, we expected to go back and change it, but we ended up using the original tapes like from my bedroom. It’s crazy. We record everything at home so rough and they just liked it. They were like, “Don’t touch it, just leave it as it is!” which was weird because as the artist you’re going to be much more of a perfectionist. It’s about a breaking point where you realize that what you’re doing in life isn’t necessarily what you want to be doing and you do something else.
How would you describe your sound?
David Keiffer: We feel like we’ve come up with the phrase “acoustic house.” Really good vibes with tropical feels on top of a slower house beat, mixed with a dash of guitar.
Robert Griffith: We like to be up-tempo and energetic, happy music. We want people to tweet at us, things like “your song makes me feel happy in traffic” things like that.
Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: April 5, 2015.
Photos copyright ©2015. Courtesy of Sony Music Entertainment. All rights reserved.