Taxiway

The original intent of Taxiway was to provide Aurand with an outlet for a collection of songs he was writing, all of which felt like they needed a musical vehicle other than his standard acoustic guitar and vocal arrangement. Aurand says, “I initially planned to make instrumental music that resembled the songs on my travel playlist, songs to listen to while the plane taxied down the runway, the quiet, tense moment before takeoff. When the pandemic hit, I decided to keep my mind occupied by writing real songs rather than just making instrumental loops. I began missing the thrill of traveling, which brought new significance to the name.” He drew from influences like Bjork, The Postal Service, and The XX and began recording in the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since Aurand shared a small one-bedroom apartment with his wife, who was studying for her bar exam only ten feet away, he had to figure out creative ways to make music without disturbing her. He recorded his vocal parts in a hushed manner, softly crooning into the microphone rather than singing loudly and forcefully. Gently strummed guitar replaced the abrasive hitting of the past. He omitted distortion pedals and power chords altogether in favor of reverb and delay effects. The resulting sound was unlike anything he’d previously recorded.

After a few months of writing, recording, and re-recording multiple times, he ended up with a four-track self-titled EP of songs from those bedroom recording sessions. He released the EP online to a positive response.

Then something happened in late 2020 that changed things: A vaccine was approved, an actual *end* to the pandemic seemed possible, and Aurand’s musician friends started chatting about performing live again in 2021. It made him consider the live equivalent of Taxiway sonically.

He realized that he couldn’t bring Taxiway to its full potential on his own. He also admitted that he couldn’t truly replicate the EP’s multi-layered, drum machine-centered sound in a live setting. He needed help in the form of additional musicians, and he needed to rearrange the songs for live instruments.

One night in the fall of 2020, he played guitar through a new reverb pedal he’d just purchased. He played the main riff from the song “Ten Miles High” but played it significantly slower, with the reverb settings turned up high. This made him realize how he could arrange the songs for a band; Turn the tempos down, turn the reverb up. He also needed to eliminate the EDM/electronic influences. He could do this with just one guitar, one bass guitar, and one drummer.

Aurand scrapped the EP and started from scratch. In this arrangement, he recorded nine demo tracks (five new songs and the four songs from the EP): Slower tempos, no dance beats, no synths, no samples…just guitar, bass, and drums. He sent the demos to his two friends, Joseph Jared (bass) and Caila Singleton (drums). Since they were still social-distancing, they knew it would be a while before they could play together, much less play a live show, but they kept in constant touch with each other, and they continued to send demos as he completed them.

Eventually, they convened in early March 2021 and began working on the debut album, Aurand, choosing to record in a professional studio. They recorded at The Bomb Shelter in Nashville, TN, where he had previously recorded albums and EPs with other projects. They completed the album quickly in July 2021, with Singleton’s drum tracks recorded in a single session and Jared’s bass tracks recorded over two sessions.  The result is a blanket of lush reverb, pulsing bass riffs, and sparse yet intricate drumming, intended to grab the audience’s attention not by yelling at them but by calmly inviting them in. Aurand says, “I think 2020 left us all with an anxious, simmering intensity that needed to be channeled by turning the volume down, rather than up.”

They played their first show as a three-piece band at the Springwater Supper Club on July 21, 2021, which also happened to be Aurand’s three-year wedding anniversary. Their album, Absence, is set for release on November 5, 2021.