Artist: Amistat
Hometown: Rosenheim, Bavaria, Germany
Latest Album: What We Are EP (releasing March 21)
Which artist has influenced you the most – and how?
The godfather of indie-folk, Ben Howard! When we first started out as Amistat playing and writing music back in 2012, his album Every Kingdom had just come out. It was the first time ever that we had heard a sound like his. His lyrics, melodies, especially the style of guitar tuning, and the way he used his guitar as a percussive element captured us and had us mesmerized. It’s to this date the most inspiring piece of music we’ve ever come across and we listen to it on repeat, still.
What rituals do you have, either in the studio or before a show?
The last hour before going on stage is holy to us and very important for us to get in the zone. We meditate for about half an hour (individually), then Josef runs through his vocal warm up routine (15 minutes). We brush our teeth (most important!) and just before going on stage we have this ritual that the entire team meets backstage for a toast – it’s actually reciting an old Irish poem. Every day someone else gets to take the lead on it:
“There are good ships and wood ships, ships that sail the sea, but the best ships are friendships and may they always be.”
What’s the most difficult creative transformation you’ve ever undertaken?
We started out as buskers on the streets of Melbourne. We did that full time for about 7 years. After that time we felt like nothing is really changing and that in order to grow we needed to change something again. We moved to Brighton, England and wanted to try busking there. After about three weeks and 24/7 of rain we decided to move to Berlin. There we had to kind of rethink the whole busking thing and came up with the idea of putting on small house shows in people’s living rooms. That’s what we did and lived of for about two years. Then COVID hit and everything kind of stopped. During that time we honed down on the social media content and it all grew from there.
What’s one question you wish interviewers would stop asking you?
“What’s it like being twins?”
If you didn’t work in music, what would you do instead?
Jan would be a golf professional, Josef would be soccer professional.
Photo Credit: Anja Kaufmann
