Everest

Formed in Los Angeles, the indie alt-country outfit Everest brings together five singer/songwriters whose résumés include prior stints alongside Earlimart, Sebadoh, the Folk Implosion, Slydell, Mike Stinson, Great Northern, Alaska!, John Vanderslice, and the Watson Twins. Drawn by shared respect for one another’s accomplishments, the musicians united around a shared goal of crafting classic-sounding pop in the vein of Wilco and Calexico. Russell Pollard, Jason Soda, Joel Graves, Rob Douglas, and Derek Brown came together in 2007 and quickly established rapport. Graves voiced particular enthusiasm for the chemistry, noting, “I’m getting to play with my favorite singer, my favorite bass player, my favorite guitar player, and my favorite drummer. It’s the band I’ve always wanted to be in.”

The group entered New Monkey studio in August 2007 alongside Foo Fighters producer Mike Terry to lay down airy, acoustic-rooted material using vintage gear. Within a compressed schedule of two weeks tracking, one week mixing, and a single afternoon of mastering, the debut album Ghost Notes was completed and subsequently pitched to labels. It found a home on Neil Young’s Vapor Records, which already housed Tegan and Sara and Jonathan Richman; the band then prepared to support the May 2008 release with live dates. Two years afterward they delivered On Approach, issued jointly by Warner Brothers and Vapor. Exhaustive touring followed, yet the major-label affiliation proved brief. Early in 2011, worn down by nonstop road work, the group parted ways with the label and regrouped. Linking with producer Rob Schnapf, whose credits encompass Beck, Elliott Smith, and numerous others, Everest pursued a deliberate, methodical approach while shaping the third album Ownerless, scheduled to appear on ATO in summer 2012.