Josh Arnoudse and Raky Sastri have been collaborating on film, music, and other projects together since 1999. The pair from Massachusetts has recently begun rising to fame playing with artists such as The Lumineers, The Joy Formidable, and Josh Ritter. They bring their folk-pop sound brilliantly alive in their live show with one-of-a-kind qualities highlighting their talents and strengths as performance artists. I had the chance to talk to Arnoudse about You Won’t and the exciting things they’re doing, and here’s what he said.
Before releasing your debut album Skeptic Goodbye in 2012, what did you do prior to forming your band? And what inspired you to form the band initially?
“Raky and I collaborated on many theater projects and short films long before we ever played music together, and we spent almost two years in another band prior to forming this one. You Won’t started as a recording project for a bunch of songs I had written but it pretty quickly became our sole focus once we started playing shows.”
You have a reputation for unorthodox live performances. How would you describe your live performance? How has it changed since your first live shows?
“The most obvious change is probably the exponentially increasing number of instruments that Raky produces from his perch at Mission Control Stage Left. Also, I think we’ve gotten a lot more adventurous in terms of interacting with the crowd and slipping some weird interludes between our songs.”
Coming from the East Coast, how were you able to spread your music and touch audiences across the country and even in Canada?
“We were fortunate enough to land some great supporting tours this year with The Lumineers and The Joy Formidable, and that put us in front of a lot of eyeballs and eardrums that might not otherwise have encountered us.”
How would you describe your style of music? What do you hope listeners will appreciate the most about it?
“I describe our music as melodic fuzzy strummy percussive indie folky rocky. I hope listeners will appreciate our brevity.”
If you could choose any three artists to tour with, who would they be and why?
“Lucius, because they are superb. Bombadil, because they are sublime. The Suitcase Junket, because he is superhuman.”