When your friend asks you to create a film score, you do it—and when that same film falls through, you take that music and create your own self-titled EP. At least that’s what happened for Alberta Cross lead singer Petter Ericson Stakee and Jamie Biden, the longtime friends who have combined talents for their latest venture, Dicey Hollow.
The pair spent their time writing and collaborating in upstate New York, tending towards a country-folk vibe for their newly released six-titled EP. Here, DuJour caught up with Stakee who dishes on everything from track favorites to balancing two bands to future collaborations.
Obviously you have Alberta Cross as a full-time gig, so what made you dive into Dicey Hollow?
I was out touring a lot and my friend Jaime was doing a sound-set thing for this new film. We wrote for something we thought was going to be a movie for a novella, but then we got carried away and just started writing a bunch of stuff for fun and it all came together. We would just jam and make songs together. We wanted to release [the songs] somewhere instead of just keeping them to ourselves.
Do you have any favorite songs on the EP?
“Silver and Sand” and “Rose of Maine” are my favorites. I like “Howl at the Moon” as well. I think the other ones are… not stoner, but more mellow.
How do you go from rock to a mixture of folk and country?
I feel like I’ve been doing a mix of stuff my whole life. Even with Alberta Cross we can have a lot of rock songs, but I also like to play more soulful stuff. We like to mix it up. Some of the more popular songs of Alberta Cross are a little bit of soul tracks with some grit to it. They have that backbone.
It seems you prefer a one-man show or a two-man show. What attracts you to keeping a tight-knit group?
I’ve been playing in bands my whole life with a bunch of people and after a while it got really hard with too many opinions. In Dicey Hollow me and Jamie write everything together, but in Alberta Cross I write everything and I have a production head so I know the sounds. With writing and stuff like that with the structure and the skeleton of the track I like to do it myself most of the time. Alberta Cross almost feels like a band with a bunch of people. We had a lot of people playing back there for the EP and the Alberta Cross record. Dicey Hollow might just be me and Jamie on the picture, but other people contribute. A lot of bands are like that these days—one guy might be on the picture, but it’s still a family kind of band vibe in a live way and sometimes in the studio too.
How do you balance Alberta Cross and Dicey Hollow?
The Dicey Hollow thing really just came together now when we just released this EP and I think it’s going to be an ongoing project—a fun thing me and Jamie are doing. For the next EP we do we might do something crazy like go to the desert and do grittier tracks or something.
Will you be taking these songs on the road?
Dicey Hollow is going to be doing some shows. We’re looking forward to that. We’re looking forward to making it a little different from what Alberta Cross is used to. It’s very connected because we all like playing with the same group of people and we all have our secret jams. I have this secret jam in the East Village now. We’d turn up and tell our buddies and just play late at night. Jamie is part of that very much. It’s the same kind of family, but a little bit different with a few different projects.
