North Texas Daily

Although they’re no strangers to the city of Austin, Duncan Fellows is discovering the Austin City Limits stage for the first time.

The Austin-based band formed in 2012 between friends who attended the University of Texas. Now the five-man band is stretching its legs with its first appearance at the Austin City Limits festival.

From playing out of a house on Duncan Lane to one of the biggest stages in Austin, the band has come a long way. Lead singer Colin Harman, drummer Tim Hagan, bassist David Stimson, keyboardist and vocalist Jack Malonis and guitarist Cullen Trevino comprise the indie-rock band.

They sat down with the North Texas Daily to talk about their album “Both Sides of the Ceiling,” the recording at Denton’s Redwood Studio and the future of their music.

So this was your official festival debut. How has the experience been?

DF: This is the festival that we all grew up going to. We all went to college at UT, so coming to ACL was a staple. There’s a lot of great shows here, so when we got the email to be invited, it was actually the same person who I emailed like five years ago to get us a show at Lamberg’s Barbeque. It was super salesman-like. We actually dug up that old email and it was like, ‘Three reasons why you should book Duncan Fellows at Lambert’s Barbeque.’ It was like a Buzzfeed article.

What were the three reasons? 

DF: We would bring people, they would drink beer and they’d make alcohol sales. It was really cringe-y.

Did you feel any pressure getting ready for ACL?

DF: There’s certainly a level of ‘OK, ACL is a real big deal’ and for us, we’re like, ‘we have to have our s**t together [and] we can’t mess around.’ But we were just excited more than anything.

Tell me a little about “Both Sides of the Ceiling.” 

DF: With a lot of albums, you can go one way the whole time or another. For us, we were trying to capture light and dark — emotionally and mentally. For us, it was a progression of the first five songs sounding [a certain way] and five songs [sounding] another way, with the mood being lighter in the first five songs and darker in the latter half.

What is your process for prepping an album?

DF: One of us will have an idea that we’ll bring to a person. If it ends up being fleshed out by the two of us, we’ll bring it everybody else and either it makes it or it doesn’t. We fight over it a little. When we’re all excited for a song, we all want to push it in different ways and that gets fleshed out, but it starts with [one idea].

You recorded this album in Denton. How was this experience different from others?

DF: Good old Denton. We’d record all day, sweat our asses off, chill for the night, wake up and get Hypnotic Donuts and do it all over again. It was great. There was no AC in the middle of summer. We did a few days there to track because with recording, you’re getting the instruments first, so we [recorded] that there and did the rest at our buddy’s house [in Denton]. He had a home studio there.

What’s next for Duncan Fellows?

DF: Obviously playing gigs, but for the most part we’re focused on writing. We’re balancing day jobs with writing and life, but we’re figuring it out and trying to tour more.

Featured Image: Duncan Fellows are fresh off the stage after their debut festival performance at Austin City Limits. Duncan Fellows is an Austin-based band who recorded their first album at Denton’s Redwood Studio. Kelsey Shoemaker