Summary

In this episode from 2015, we dive into how Year of October has grown and evolved, especially with the release of their latest album, Golden Days. Phlecia and Josh Sullivan, who started out making acoustic music together, have really expanded their sound. Now performing as a trio, they’ve moved into a heavier, more dynamic style that reflects how far they’ve come.

We talk about the making of Golden Days, which they recorded and produced themselves, something that marks a big step forward in their creative journey. They also share stories from the road, as their regional touring continues to grow.

Of course, Nashville’s music scene plays a big part in their story too. Felicia and Josh talk about how being surrounded by such a rich, competitive environment has shaped their writing, their performances, and how they work together as a team.

This conversation gives a closer look at the way their music has developed over time, and how collaboration has been at the heart of it all.

What We Wrote in 2015

Phlecia & Josh Sullivan are Year of October, creatively and personally joined together. Originally from Kentucky, the band has been in Nashville for a few years, touring regionally and self-recording and self-producing their two albums thus far. Year of October is outside of our circle within Nashville, and I actually discovered them via Bandcamp!

Links

• Year of October
• Year of October on Bandcamp
• You may also like our conversation with Sam Lewis
• After you buy music or see a show, please toss some support into our Tip Jar
• Sloane Spencer now hosts a Gen X sleep podcast, Sleep with Rock Stars

Show Notes

• Phlecia and Josh Sullivan talk about how Year of October has evolved over the years, especially with the release of their latest album, Golden Days.
• The duo, originally from Kentucky and now based in Nashville, share how they’ve grown from an acoustic project into a full band with a much bigger sound.
• We dig into their songwriting process, which has always been collaborative, and that teamwork has played a big role in shaping their current style.
• Golden Days is a big milestone for them. It’s a self-recorded, self-produced album that captures where they are now creatively and professionally.
• They talk about hitting the road and expanding their touring efforts across the region, using this album as a way to connect with new audiences.
• Being part of the Nashville music scene has had a major impact on their growth. They open up about what it’s like to navigate such a competitive and inspiring environment.
• Throughout the episode, they offer a real look at what it takes to build a distinct musical identity, and the hard work that goes into every step of that journey.

Takeaways

• Phlecia and Josh Sullivan of Year of October have come a long way since they first started making music together. Their latest album, Golden Days, really shows how much their sound has grown and evolved.
• Golden Days was completely self-recorded and produced, which gave them full creative control. It also helped them take their music to a wider audience through more regional touring.
• Living in Nashville has been a huge part of their journey. Being surrounded by so many talented artists has pushed them to grow, not just as musicians, but also in how they approach live performances.
• They’re already looking ahead to their next album and are excited to keep developing their sound. A lot of that inspiration comes from the connections and experiences they’ve had in the music scene.
• Their focus on authenticity extends beyond the music. Even the album artwork is intentionally simple, something that feels true to who they are and sticks with you.
• When it comes to songwriting, it’s very much a team effort. Phlecia and Josh usually start ideas together and build on them collaboratively, making sure the final product reflects both of their voices.

Mentioned in this Episode

• Year of October
• Bandcamp
• University of Kentucky
• Strange Connections
• Red Ember
• Oliver Ocean
• Sky Temple Blues
• JD Wilkes
• Dirt Daubers
• Dick's Sporting Goods
• John Michael Montgomery
• Drivin n Cryin

Recommended If You Like

Country Fried Rock, Year of October, Sloane Spencer, Phlecia Sullivan, Josh Sullivan, Golden Days album, Nashville music scene, Kentucky musicians, self-produced music, regional touring, acoustic music, indie rock band, Bandcamp recommendations, songwriting process, live performances, Nashville venues, creative community, music collaboration, music industry insights, contemporary folk music

Transcript

Speaker A

00:00:00.160 - 00:00:37.990

Welcome to Country Fried Rock. I'm your host, Sloan Spencer. Today I'm talking with Felicia and Josh Sullivan, better known as the band Year of October.

Their recent album Golden Days demonstrates their growth as a band, working together, primarily writing as a duo, but performing as a trio or full band.

Originally from Kentucky and now residing in Nashville, this self recorded, self produced release is helping Year of October expand their regional touring schedule. Year Never. Guess how I found this band. Coming up in my conversation with Year of October today on Country Fried Rock.

Speaker B

00:00:38.070 - 00:00:43.270

My guests today on Country Fried Rock are Josh and Felicia of Year of October. Welcome.

Speaker C

00:00:43.510 - 00:00:45.030

Thank you. We're glad to be here.

Speaker B

00:00:45.350 - 00:01:01.030

So I was just saying, off the air, I said, I actually found you through Strange Connections via Bandcamp, which Bandcamp totally rules, by the way, but they make suggestions based on things you've purchased in the past, and occasionally I pay attention to that. And I was like, oh, my gosh, I love these people. I need to find them.

Speaker C

00:01:01.550 - 00:01:04.190

That's awesome. I didn't even know Bandcamp made suggestions.

Speaker B

00:01:04.510 - 00:01:11.390

They do. Well, it's. It pops up at the bottom of your screen based on your previous purchases. And I guess they have some magic algorithm.

Speaker C

00:01:11.550 - 00:01:13.150

That's really cool. Yeah.

Speaker B

00:01:13.230 - 00:01:18.910

Yeah. But as I was doing a little homework for the show, I saw that y' all went to University of Kentucky.

Speaker C

00:01:19.150 - 00:01:21.350

Yes, we did. We both graduated from there.

Speaker B

00:01:21.350 - 00:01:23.230

Are you still recovering from basketball season?

Speaker C

00:01:23.470 - 00:01:25.070

Oh, my gosh. It killed me.

Speaker B

00:01:27.630 - 00:01:32.830

Longtime listeners know my husband went to University of Kentucky, so I have learned about basket.

Speaker C

00:01:33.690 - 00:01:37.250

Yes, Blue Bleeds Deep, but it was.

Speaker B

00:01:37.250 - 00:01:43.250

Good for me because I actually understand basketball, unlike the fact that I'm a lifelong Southerner who still doesn't understand football.

Speaker C

00:01:43.250 - 00:01:47.290

Is a whole nother deal. Yeah. If you're in sec, you have to know a little bit about football.

Speaker B

00:01:49.209 - 00:01:53.050

Anyway, well, so sorry for the ending of the season, although the ride up there was great.

Speaker C

00:01:53.450 - 00:01:54.090

Thank you.

Speaker B

00:01:54.490 - 00:01:56.890

As a band, how did you all come together?

Speaker C

00:01:57.290 - 00:02:22.390

Well, Josh and I, we met at UK and we actually dated.

We dated for about a year before we started playing music together because we both knew that we played music separately, but we didn't really want to mess up our relationship if the music stuff didn't work out. So we dated for a year, and then we were like, we should write together.

And so it kind of started with just me and him playing some acoustic songs that we had written, and that's how we started out.

Speaker B

00:02:22.870 - 00:02:24.950

Okay, so that's not the usual story.

Speaker C

00:02:25.510 - 00:02:25.910

No.

Speaker B

00:02:26.790 - 00:02:30.550

You were dating, then you said, hey, let's write together, and then where did it go?

Speaker C

00:02:31.020 - 00:02:58.620

Well, we wrote several songs and then we got some of our friends together because we knew the songs we were writing. We love acoustic music, but what we wanted to do was not play in an acoustic band.

So we were writing for a full band, and so we got some friends together, and then we started filling the songs out and making it into the more rock music that we play. And so that's where it went, and that's how it was when we recorded our first album. We were just still feeling things out.

Speaker B

00:02:59.140 - 00:03:01.300

Things have expanded for y' all musically since then?

Speaker C

00:03:01.780 - 00:03:22.980

Oh, yes, yes. Much more. We found our sound a little more, and in the first album, like I said, we were filling things out and we didn't really have a set band.

We were just getting it done so we could get our name out there to get shows. So with this album, we had a set band.

It was me, Josh and Greg who played drums with us, and it made it a little more fluid on Golden Days, I feel like.

Speaker B

00:03:23.460 - 00:03:30.620

And so then when y' all are playing out live, you were able to use the same people that you took into the studio or did you add some other folks when y' all recorded?

Speaker C

00:03:30.940 - 00:03:48.540

It's pretty much the same people. Right now. We just play as a three piece.

Josh, and it was Greg, but he just recently moved back to Utah, so we've got another guy playing drums with us. But what we added in the studio on Golden Days was bass, because Josh is originally a bass player, so he played bass and guitar on the record.

Speaker A

00:03:48.780 - 00:03:58.060

Hey, y', all, this is Sloan Spencer, the host of Country Fried Rock. We've had an incredible year with more people finding us on the radio and our podcast than we ever imagined.

Speaker B

00:03:58.140 - 00:03:59.730

Thank you all so much.

Speaker A

00:04:00.920 - 00:04:03.560

Careful what you wish for, you just might get it.

Speaker C

00:04:03.640 - 00:04:07.240

Hey, this is Alicia from Year of October on Country Fried Rock.

Speaker B

00:04:07.320 - 00:04:10.520

Y' all have been playing kind of around the region, I guess.

Speaker C

00:04:10.840 - 00:04:35.860

Yeah, we play in Nashville sometimes during the week because we both work full time jobs at a bank during the day to support what we want to do. So we work playing Nashville during the week, and it's a lot of fun.

Play shows with a lot of our friends, and then on the weekends, we travel all around Tennessee and back into Kentucky to our homes. And we played in Alabama a little bit, and the shows are great.

It's always different crowds, but all the people are really receptive of our music and it's a lot of fun to play it.

Speaker B

00:04:36.260 - 00:04:40.740

I should have said that y' all have been in Nashville for a while, even though you originally formed In Lexington.

Speaker C

00:04:40.900 - 00:04:45.620

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. We've been in Nashville going on four years. Yeah, almost four years now.

Speaker B

00:04:46.020 - 00:04:49.300

What does being in such a creative community like that do for you all?

Speaker C

00:04:49.860 - 00:05:28.000

It's really crazy. I never really knew what it was like until I moved down there. And working at the bank has opened my eyes to see that everyone really does play music.

Like, everyone we meet. Like, oh, I either write or I play in this band or I'm a producer.

Like, everyone you meet has something to do with the music industry, and it's been really cool. And I think that that has made us better musicians because playing in Nashville, you have to be on top of your game every single show.

Everybody watching you is a musician, and they're all great. So you are like, I have to live up to that standard.

So I think that living in Nashville has probably made us better in our performance and better in everything.

Speaker B

00:05:28.240 - 00:05:31.920

Do you have particular venues you enjoy? I know everybody kind of has their little pet places.

Speaker C

00:05:32.960 - 00:05:42.980

We really like playing. There's a place called Pooh Bar in East Nashville and then Spring Water Supper Club over by Centennial Park. Both of those are a lot of fun for us.

Speaker B

00:05:43.380 - 00:05:52.260

I'm familiar with both. That's a little bit outside of the normal loop of folks that we have gotten to know through the show. So who else is in your circle musically?

Speaker C

00:05:52.660 - 00:06:26.800

We've been playing with some people actually from my hometown that have recently moved to Nashville.

I'm from Western Kentucky and a little bitty tip and a bunch of people from there are moving to Nashville now because it's only about a two hour drive. We have a band called Red Ember that plays with us. Yeah, they're kind of alt bluegrassy kind of thing.

They have a Punch Brothers feel and they're awesome. We play with them a lot. There's another band called Oliver Ocean that we play with, and then there's some guys called Sky Temple Blues.

They fit our sound a little better. They're a bluesy rock band. They're awesome.

Speaker B

00:06:26.960 - 00:06:29.440

JD Wilkes is from Paducah originally as well.

Speaker C

00:06:29.440 - 00:06:30.400

Yeah, yeah, he is.

Speaker B

00:06:30.480 - 00:06:37.530

He was on the show a while back with Dirt Daubers and, you know, all his various projects. But Paducah is a funky little creative community now as well.

Speaker C

00:06:37.770 - 00:06:53.210

Yeah, it's awesome. Since I moved, actually, they've really grown a lot in the music industry. I know they did that.

They had that initiative to bring in artists from all over the world to downtown Paducah to build it back up, and that's really helped the creative movement in Paducah.

Speaker D

00:06:53.210 - 00:06:53.610

A lot.

Speaker B

00:06:53.690 - 00:06:55.930

It transformed it. I mean, it really did.

Speaker C

00:06:55.930 - 00:07:06.440

Yeah, it was awesome. They started that probably my senior year of high school, maybe a little before that.

And so I left and then all of this awesome stuff came to downtown Paducah. So it's cool to go back home now.

Speaker B

00:07:06.440 - 00:07:16.920

Lake City, South Carolina, which has neither a lake nor is it a city, is actually doing something similar. And it's, it's not there where Paducah is yet. But I mean, it's stunning the difference just in two years.

Speaker C

00:07:16.920 - 00:07:17.800

It's crazy.

Speaker B

00:07:18.040 - 00:07:25.400

As I said, I lived in Kentucky for five years and my brother in law lives in Owensboro, so I don't get quite as far west as Paducah, but I'm familiar with the area.

Speaker C

00:07:25.480 - 00:07:28.840

Yeah, yeah, we played Owensboro not too long ago. That's good.

Speaker B

00:07:29.150 - 00:07:29.470

Cool.

Speaker A

00:07:29.550 - 00:07:39.870

I'm your host, Sloan Spencer. You can keep in touch with us on Facebook. But I really like Twitter where we are at Country Fried Rock ending with R O K. And if you want.

Speaker B

00:07:39.870 - 00:07:41.390

To see pictures of my shoes, my.

Speaker A

00:07:41.390 - 00:07:48.230

Dog and my lunch, stop by Instagram. But whatever way you like to hang out, stop by and say, hey, hey.

Speaker C

00:07:48.230 - 00:07:57.740

This is Alicia from Year of October on Country Fried Rock. If you want to find out more about us and where we're playing, you can check us [email protected] it's neat to.

Speaker B

00:07:57.740 - 00:08:11.860

Hear overlap of different circles of folks in music that are based in Nashville.

Now when you all are doing the shows, are you trying to partner up with other bands when you go places or do you have bands in those places that you're looking to team with?

Speaker C

00:08:12.740 - 00:08:38.800

Yeah, we partner up a lot of the times when we go to Paducah, we play with the same sort of people that we're playing with in Nashville now because we both have big draws back there and so it's fun to be able to travel with your friends. But we also, we go up to Lexington a lot and play and we have a lot of friends up there that are different.

We play with different bands when we go up there. But it's really cool. We've got a good vibe going now. People who are really supportive. That's great, everybody.

Speaker B

00:08:39.360 - 00:08:44.800

So tell me a little bit more about getting into record specifically for what became Golden Days.

Speaker C

00:08:45.200 - 00:08:56.370

I'm going to pass the phone off to Josh for that one because he actually produced the record. He went to school for audio engineering so we do it at our house and he does all of it. So I'm going to has the phone up.

Speaker B

00:08:56.610 - 00:09:01.570

Question was, tell me a Little bit about what ultimately became the recording for Golden Days.

Speaker D

00:09:02.050 - 00:09:57.280

It was pretty interesting because, like Felice was saying, with the first record, it was not only was it the first record we did as a band, it was the first record that I had produced. And then I'd recorded myself. I'd done some single tracks. So doing Golden Days, I had a little bit more of a feel as to what I was going for.

And it was definitely a process. Each song was, you know, we took it song by song and, you know, we'd lay down all the drum parts first.

We have scratch vocals with guitar, and those were just scratch tracks. And then we'd lay down the drums, and then I would kind of layer everything else over top of it.

It was pretty exciting because there were some songs that were very fresh and we could really develop them more in the studio. And our...