Living in Music City, we gain an appreciation for the talented musicians here everyday. However, the sheer volume of music can sometimes be overwhelming and repetitive, and something totally out of left field generally grabs our attention, for better or worse. Enter Nashville based trio roco, who we found on the better end of the aforementioned scale, and are set to release their debut album, Pidgin Tongue, on May 17.
The definition of a pidgin or pidgin language is a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups that do not have a language in common; typically, a mixture of simplified languages or a simplified primary language with other languages’ elements included. This is important, because, when roco began, the three members, Ashly Badgett, Joey Kirby, and Colin Pauley, were coming from fairly contrasting musical worlds (prog rock, singer-songwriter, pop), and were struggling to find a voice for a musical project. They had to create a sort of musical pidgin language to forge the direction of the band.
The result, based on the single “e. silver” below, is a quirky bit of cabaret pop that really works musically. The band tells us, “Inspiration for our record Pidgin Tongue comes from quirky film scores and sounds that create an environment and help tell a story. During the writing process, we’d have peculiar noises pop into our heads and we didn’t always know how to convey those thoughts to one another. So, over time, we formed our own pidgin tongue which allowed us to communicate our thoughts and create a fluent sound.”
Head below to watch the awesomely done video by Scott Harper for the single “e. silver,” which was made using a lot of miniatures and some cool stop motion animation. It works perfectly with the quirky first single from roco’s upcoming debut.
Whoa! now that I know the definition of pidgin language, the Pidgin Tongue concept is a really cool idea for a record in this capacity. Cool video and really cool song. dig the bgvs.