“It’s hard when you’re the opening opener. We’re the first of three acts and we were surprised at how many people get here that early,” says Dov Rosenblatt, one half of The Wellspring. He’s joined in the Wellspring by Talia Osteen and together they produce indie pop harmonies laced with string arrangements and piano melodies. They’ve been touring as the “opening opener’ for the Pete Yorn tour with Ben Kweller. And while it can be hard to be the first of three, it would be in the interest of any music lover to show up in time to see them live. The band’s going places – and we say that not because they have the support of a travel agency, but because they’re really talented.
The Wellspring took some time to answer a few questions for PopWreckoning during their Kansas City stop.
Bethany, PopWreckoning: Well, I’m just going to start at the beginning since there isn’t too much information out there about you. How did you meet and form the Wellspring?
Dov, The Wellspring: We met in New York. I was in a band called Fools for April and we had a meeting with Talia who was working in film actually.
Talia, The Wellspring: I started in production and development at a film production company that produced fine arts movies. I had been working in film for five years and had gone to film school at USC. Dov came in for a general meeting about placing their music for movies and I was like, “I love your music.” I had been involved with music my whole life as well, but hadn’t thought of making it a career move.
D: And I hadn’t thought of how to make it a career.
T: We just had to do it together.
D: Exactly.
T: We got along really well and he had me sing some harmonies on his songs for his other band and we kept in touch. I was quitting my job a little over year. We started writing. I sent him my poetry. I went through a breakup, was quitting my job and had a lot to write about. That’s how we started. 
PW: The Wellspring came together just within this last year, but you guys met how long ago?
D: That meeting was like two years ago.
T: Two and a half years ago.
PW: Pretty fast.
D: Yeah, it all just kind of happened. And then when we started writing together, we still weren’t thinking of it in terms of being a band, it was just we were songwriting and potentially going to pitch it to other artists. Then people just really encouraged us once we recorded it – we recorded it with both of our singing since we thought, “Let’s have a male version and a female version lead.” Talia suggested that we just do a duet and from there we decided to just sing everything together. So we harmonized everything. It just kind of snowballed. People said, “You guys have a good sound, just the two of you.”
T: The first time we were asked to sing it was for a City Winery event in New York. The first one was for Haiti. It was just for fun at first and then it snowballed. We we were noticed by the CEO of a company called Travel Livings which has a company called Lastminutetravel.com and he liked our music. He was a big music in general. I met him through a charity that I was involved in and he was involved in as well. I had come to know him pretty well and when I told him that this was what I wanted to do, he was behind it 100 percent. The most expensive part aside from recording sometimes is the touring, especially for a band like us that doesn’t have a label. For a travel company, it is kind of a no-brainer to pair up. So we did.
PW: Are you the first band that they’ve paired with?
D: Yeah, we’re the guinea pig. We’ll see how it goes. It’s been great. They’re great and really smart. They also leave a lot of it up to us to come up with ways to work it. Like they’re giving out a free flight at every show. People text in to win. So it’s great for us and it’s great for them because people hear about LastMinuteTravel.com and people get a free flight.
PW: It’s a great idea. I’m surprised this is the first I’ve heard of a travel agency pairing up with a band.
D: Yeah. Now it’s going to happen – all of a sudden you’ll hear about Expedia and Travelocity jumping on the bandwagon. It does make sense. It’s just synergy.
T: And it gave us that extra push to know that we were on the right track and knew what we were doing. I had another job offer in LA and he was working with another producer, writing songs for other artists. It was a leap for both of us to move from New York to LA to do the record and decide that this was what we were going to do full-time.
PW: Did you move out to LA because of Last Minute Travel?
D: No. That was another way that everything just fell into place. Separately we had each been planning to move to LA. Talia was looking at getting another job in film and I was going to be working with a producer there. So we moved and the timing was just perfect. That’s when everything – really the day that I packed up to my car to move, we postponed it because we had a meeting with the travel company and then we moved. Then we recorded an EP.
T: The producer we were working was in LA and a lot of the musicians, except for Dave Eggar, our cellist, who is in New York, everyone else was in LA, so it just worked out.
PW: You said earlier that you [Talia] were sending poems to Dov, is that kind of how the writing process works where one is more the lyricist and the other comes in with instrumentals.
D: Yeah, it definitely started off that way, but with every band you kind of find your own voice and now we write a lot more together. But it started off with Talia sending lyrics and I would send back to her a musical idea for it. Pretty recently we started getting the strength to write in front of each other instead of remotely.
T: So even when we would write the lyrics and music separately, we’d produce the demo together. Even coming up with the drum part that we’re programming in or the string parts, we’d do that together and the harmonies. Now that we’re obviously much closer, we’re not too shy to write in front of each other or together.
D: Eh, I still ask you sometimes to leave.
T: Ok. haha. Well, a lot of times when we’re looking for an idea or a lyric or concept…we were last night, after a show, looking through a book of poems that I wrote because we hadn’t had time prepping for tour. It’s been so crazy that last night was the first night that we had a moment. Last night was the first time we had a moment. Sometimes it still comes separately.
PW: So you guys, since you’re on tour and it can be kind of hectic, have you been looking toward a full release?
D: Yeah, this has been great because we can see..we put out an EP and we have a bunch of new songs since then that we’re playing at these shows, so we’re really getting to see from the crowd which ones will make it to the album. We definitely want to do a full-length when we’re finished because we’ll be that much tighter, obviously, after all these shows.
PW: Has the reaction been pretty good then since you’ve been on tour.
D: Yeah, it’s been amazing. Better than we even expected. It’s hard when you’re the opening opener. We’re the first of three acts and we were surprised at how many people get here that early. We got really lucky because the people that we’re touring with, Ben Kweller and Pete Yorn, have…
Enter Ben Kweller
Ben Kweller: Ah, hellfire.
T: Haha.
D: Speaking of which.
Ben: You’re interviewing people? Yeah! (smiles, slams door and exits)
D: Perfect timing. We were just saying how lucky we were to be touring with them. They just both attract serious music lovers and they’re on time for the show and into discovering new music.
T: They’ve been shockingly attentive. At the end of every song, just getting that immediate feedback from crowds who have never heard us before is just so amazing. We’re used to playing Hotel Cafe in Los Angeles or RockWood, Stage 2 in New York and there are a lot of people that haven’t heard us.
PW: So for people who haven’t heard you before, how would you describe your sound and maybe what are some of your influences.
D: We have been saying that it’s folk pop. I know that some of our songs do have a pop sensibility to them, but are not as slick as what some people say is pop nowadays, especially on the radio.
T: Right. We were looking at the genres when we were flying, but I think we’d be called Americana. We’d also be indie rock pop. It’s hard to categorize.
D: Indie-folk-rock-pop-jazz-blues.
T: Haha, what else can we throw in there?
D: I was just telling someone the other day, some guy, I think it was some guy at the casino from the other night who was completely wasted and gone, but I was like, “We’re melodic folk metal.”
T: That’d be interesting. I’ll just start screaming on stage.
D: Influences? They’re all over. The obvious one would be the Beatles.
T: Simon and Garfunkel.
D: Carole King A lot of that old school songwriting. Then Elliott Smith, Wilco.
T: Death Cab for Cutie. We’ve been lucky to meet some people who inspire us as well. Rachael Yamagata was and is one of my favorite artists. Her song “Elephants” is one of my favorite songs. We got to meet her and sing with her. Now we’re good friends.
D: Mew.
T: Yeah, and you listen to Pete.
D: Yeah, Pete Yorn is one of my favorite artists.
PW: All good influences. So where does the name the Wellspring come from?
T: One of my favorite books of poetry is called “The Prophet” by Kahlil Gibran. There’s a chapter in there called “On-Self Knowledge,” and there’s a quote in there that you’ll never know, you can’t measure the true depth of the hidden wellspring of your soul. When we started writing together, the first two weeks and even since then, the writing just kept pouring and it seemed like we really tapped into something that we just didn’t even know where it came from. Once we started, it just came.
D: I had written with a lot of people, but once we started working together, the chemistry, it just worked naturally.
T: I think we use water as a metaphor in a couple of our songs and it just seemed to flow. It made sense.
D: Oooh, nice pun there – flow – she just can’t help it.
PW: Now, this is your first major tour.
D: Right.
PW: What have you found to be your tour essentials, your survival kit, if you will?
T: We’re still figuring it out. Today we had our most successful packing of the van actually.
D: Yeah, we’re really proud. I took a picture of it actually.
PW: A picture?
D: Yeah. Haha. It’s really difficult to figure out to get all of the stuff. (showing a phone pic). Look at all the empty room there for the luggage. Now that’s a work of art, I think. I don’t like to toot my own horn. It took a bunch of shows to figure out – drums on the right then bass amp. Haha. But let’s see, tour essentials..our drummer, Chris, has been teasing us that we’re kind of a tekkie band. And we are, we have our laptops…our van is like a little office because we like knowing everything that’s going on, where we’re going on.
T: GPS, obviously.
D: Yes, but a lot of bands like to rely on everyone to tell them. Then, everything we get backstage, we take with us.
T: The waters.
D: Yes, the waters, that’s what I meant.
T: Right. Water is what we drink.
D: Water and diet coke.
T: We’re not used to the crazy cold weather we’ve been getting in a bunch of states, so I brought my comforter and like three different jackets and pillows.
PW: You guys lucked out, you hit Kansas City on a warm day.
D: We go to Minneapolis tomorrow and we were hearing like 20 inches of snow up there. We’re in big trouble. Today was beautiful when we rolled in here.
T: The other stuff that we wanted to bring on tour were mics and recording equipment so we could write on the road and record.
PW: Alright. Is there anything else you want to include in this interview that I didn’t cover?
T: We’re doing a behind the scenes webseries with vimby.com and it’s going to premiere on ArtistDirect first and then it will go on Vimby and our site as well.
D: Yeah, it’s going to be like an episode a week of shows and behind the scenes.
T: The first show for that is in Chicago at the Vic.
PW: Do you guys have to film it yourselves?
D: Yes, we have a camera that we use, but they have people filming too, to give it a bit more of a professional quality. We love keeping in touch with people, on our Facebook page especially. We were just saying that it is so fun nowadays with instant gratification. You meet people at a show and 10 minutes later you’re conversing with them on Facebook about the show and keeping in touch. That’s a big part of it. Up until now we’ve been in our cave writing and recording and now we finally get to present the music to people and see how it goes over. We get to meet people. That’s the best part of it.
Find more from the Wellspring at thewellspringmusic.com.
