In Session: Embe Esti
SCHENECTADY – Perhaps one of the most innovative original bands in the Capital Region, Embe Esti, is really starting to stretch its legs. A self-proclaimed “intercontinental rhythmic band,” they cherry-pick tons of genres ranging from Latin, to North African, to Middle-eastern and more. The band certainly knows how to groove! Now, working on a new EP, the band has its eyes fixed firmly on the horizon, as they continue to hone their craft.
I had a chance to sit down with the band this past week. What follows is our conversation.
Lucas Garrett: Thank you, everyone, for taking time tonight to sit down for a chat. Why don’t you all introduce yourselves and tell us what you do in the band?
Lady T: I’m Lady T. I am the lead vocalist in Embe Esti. I also play percussion, sometimes flute, and write most of the lyrics.
Mike Dimin: I’m Mike Dimin, and I’m the bass player. I write a little bit, but mostly just play bass.
Scott Collins: My name is Scott Collins, and I play guitar in the group. We all write tunes together. Usually, Mike or I, or Lady T. will bring us a song idea and we’ll flesh it out as a tune. I write a lot of the core melodic material that we use from there.
Aaron Shields: My name’s Aaron Shields, and I’m the drummer. Nice to meet you, Lucas.
LG: Nice to meet you too, Aaron. Nice to meet everyone. How did the band begin?
SC: I had an idea that I wanted to do something electric. I’d been playing in an acoustic band for a while that was Middle Eastern influenced. I had an itch to play electric guitar, so I reached out to Mike and talked to him about it. Originally, we were going to go with an Afro-beat feel. That was what was inspiring me: more hypnotic one-two chord things. Then, we decided to expand out a little bit: Lady T, and a different drummer, Bob Morris. Bob left, and Aaron joined. That’s been the lineup of the band since then. We’ve expanded our sound – there’s still a lot of North African and West African influences – but we bring in Arabic and silk road sounds, too. It’s pretty much a rock band.
LG: Where did the name Embe Esti come from?
Lady T: We’re pretty collaborative. Everybody came up with ideas to shoot around and see what sticks. I came up with the idea of taking the first letter of everyone’s first name. At the time, it was ‘m’ for Mike, ‘b’ for Bob, ‘s’ for Scott, and ‘t’ for Taunya. Phonetically, it’s pronounced “Embe Esti.”
LG: That’s cool. How long have you been a band?
MD: We started in 2017. Just as we were hitting our stride, it was March 21st of 2020. We had this really big gig planned – first gig with Aaron – and then COVID hit. Everything got delayed. Through that time, we’ve been writing and working on stuff. I’ve been doing this a long time, as you can tell by the grey in my beard. I no longer want to play with people I don’t like. We all genuinely – even though we span so many generations – get along really well.
LG: For those who haven’t seen an Embe Esti show, if they were to read this article having never heard of you, why should they go to your show? What can they sink their teeth into, rather than go somewhere else?
SC: Great drumming, singing, and bass playing, as a starting point. We have a unique sound; we bring in a lot of different influences and mix them in a pretty interesting way. The caliber of the musicianship is really high in this group – everyone’s playing at a high level. We’re determined to do the best live show we can.
Lady T: When I’m on stage introducing, I say, “We’re intercontinental because we draw from African rhythms, Latin rhythms, Mediterranean…” But we also bring in the diasporic sounds. That’s blues, jazz, rock ‘n roll. We have all of that and you can hear it in the way we deliver it.
MD: The music’s danceable. Everybody’s moving and grooving. Even some things that we do in odd meter, it’s still danceable. I don’t think we say, “Oh, let’s make this sound danceable.” It just comes out.
LG: What are some of your influences for everyone in the band?
MD: My background is Motown, jazz, and a lot of funk.
Lady T: For me, I grew up on Motown. That’s going to be something I’m always drawn to: the blues-y side of stuff, and some showmanship. I play percussion, and try to dance around on stage. We try to get the audience interacting with what we’re doing: call-and-response, giving them instruments to shake while they’re listening to our music. I really found my musical expression when I was in college. I was a goth-punk chick. To go from Motown to goth-punk industrial…
LG: It’s a little different there!
Lady T: Just a wee! But then also, the more ethereal sounds you might found in a yoga class. That’s where I draw my inspirations.
AS: I grew up in the church. That informed my influence on the drums. I’ve also done jazz, marching band… I have a diverse background in music. I listen to different types of music – oldies, calypso, reggae, Afro-beat – so that comes out in my playing and helps me blend better with everybody else; everybody has a different taste. I try to use the different tastes in music that I listen to, to communicate with everybody else.
SC: I grew up in upstate NY, so there was a lot of classic rock radio growing up: Pink Floyd; Doors. My dad listened to a lot of 50’s and 60’s music, and a lot of classical music. Some of the songwriting and composition stuff came from there. I went to Berklee for my undergrad, and got deep into jazz waters pretty quickly. Being in Boston, I got exposed a lot to world music, and was listening to a lot of different artists there.
All of that got me on the path of exploring jazz through different lenses. I was trying to apply those ideas to Arabic music, North African music, and Indian music. I did my grad study at Cal Arts and studied Balkan music in particular. I’ve played in everything from country and western, to bluegrass, to world music groups, and everything in between.
LG: What’s the band working on right now?
SC: We’re working an EP, currently. If I had to be realistic about a time frame for it, I’d say it’ll be out in early 2024.
LG: Do you have any details about it, yet?
SC: We don’t have a title, yet. The album will be either five or six songs. Largely, I’ll work on a track until I get exhausted and can’t work on it anymore. Then, I’ll do another one.
LG: As creatives, I think we can always hear something more that we’d like to put in there.
MD: As a band, we prefer to record in a live setting to an audience. It makes mixing and overdubbing harder, but I think the energy we get is worth it. The last record, we got a lot of our tracks from a show we did at the Jive Hive.
LG: I love those guys! That’s awesome. I’d like everyone to answer this question: what is one thing they’d like to do in the band, and what is the direction they’d like to see the band go?
MD: For me, it’s really the little things right now that I’m trying to bring to the band. Little things in the arrangements that make it them that much tighter; you do something once in the song, and your audience is expecting to hear it again, but you never give it to them. Those are the things I’m looking for, in terms of arrangement. That’s what I’m looking to do.
SC: There’s a big reason I play with live musicians as opposed to recording stuff on my own. Part of it is the energy. Between playing with other people on the collaborative ideas, getting ideas from people, and giving things back. I feel extremely fortunate and blessed to be playing with everyone in this group. Part of that collaboration is that people are going to come up with different things than you have… things you never would have on your own. In terms of goals for the band, my biggest secret goal – ever – is that I’d love to play on Saturday Night Live! It was a show I watched religiously as a kid, and it’s been a benchmark of something I wanted to do. Until we can get on there, I just want to play great music with great people, and try to move audiences.
AS: I want us to play on a lot more stages. More exposure. That’s the one thing I’d like to see with our band.
Lady T.: The biggest goal I have for us is to get on a label. I want to find a home so we can distribute our music. Locally, I want to play the Egg, man! Personally, what I’d like to do is really focus on developing my voice so I can do a more diverse range of music, and maybe a couple songs in Spanish or another language. Just to broaden the horizon. I’ve been working on incorporating some sign language into my lyrics, so that when I’m performing, I can do some of that.
LG: Lastly, before we go, I wanted to discuss Stop Making Sense. As it so happens, Talking Heads have recently had that concert re-released. If you have seen it, what is your impression?
SC: I want to see the re-release. I loved the original. I love the theatricality and the arrangements. They took a lot of chances with the music. It’s just such an interesting concert experience. It came out in a decade where there are a lot of people doing interesting things in that genre. Tom Waits did Big Time right around then, which is also a really interesting concert movie with conceptual footage. It’s a pretty great thing. It’s sad what happened to [Talking Heads] after, in terms of the in-fighting and the lawsuits. I know that Tina Weymouth (bass) and Chris Frantz (drums) did a thing called The Heads. I believe Johnette Napolitano was singing for that. I deeply regret that I never got to see one of those shows. It’s great they’re re-releasing it. It’s a pretty fantastic experience.
LG: When I listen to Embe Esti, one of the main bands that jump out at me are Talking Heads. They had the Latin and North African sounds, as well.
SC: Do you know the David Byrne/Brian Eno album, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts?
LG: Not too well.
SC: They brought in a lot of rhythmic elements, but they did it with old technology. It was tape loops, at the time. It was a major pre-cursor to hip-hop. There’s a lot of that and African influence on that record, too. Thank you for that comparison, because that’s someone who’s near and dear to my heart. That’s a really cool reference.
LG: It’s definitely one of the things I think of when I hear your work. Thank you, everyone, for your time today!
[everyone]: Thank you!
Upcoming Concerts: Embe Esti will be performing at Art on Lark, an event that runs from 11am-5pm, in Albany on Oct. 21st, and at the Stable Gate Winery in Castleton-On-Hudson on Oct. 28th at noon.
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