Last month, songwriters Drew and Ellie Holcomb released their latest album, Memory Bank. Comprised of 12 original titles – and one cover – written by the husband and wife alongside their close group of collaborators, it holds a singular place in their respective careers.
For one thing, it’s the first full-length LP they’ve released as a collaboration between Drew’s project, Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors, and Ellie Holcomb. Since Ellie, who was initially part of the Neighbors, exited the band in 2012 to focus on her solo music, both songwriters have forged incredible stories.
Ellie has earned three Dove awards and Billboard Top 10 success, and Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors have consistently notched high chart placements, including their recent #1 Americana hit, “Find Your People,” which has also garnered 500 million streams.
But more significant than the pair’s coming together for Memory Bank is the inspiration behind the album:
“My dad used to say ‘Memory Bank’ on family vacations as a kid,” Drew tells Raised Rowdy. “You know, ‘Don’t expect to inherit anything. I put all of my money in the memory bank’…It’s a perspective we’ve [He and Ellie] always both shared.”
While it’s an older idea, the timing of this release is serendipitous, as it’s nearly 20 years since Drew and Ellie were married in 2006. And (as any long-term partners know), the ability to find peace and beauty in simple blessings – and “bank” them for support over the rocky moments – becomes more important with time and age.
Memory Bank captures this idea perfectly both in its lyrics and sonic space. From the c’est la vie soulfulness of “Rain or Shine” to the patient, stripped-down balladry of “Brick by Brick,” the album zeroes in on what’s really important in life.
We caught up with Drew and Ellie while they’re on the road together:
RR: It seems like this is going back to your roots as a band, because Ellie, you used to be in the Neighbors full-time. Is that how it feels on tour?
EH: Oh man, it’s honestly been a delight. We are having so much fun live. And actually, it’s interesting – we’re not going with Drew’s band guys for this run. We have a different crew with us. But looking back, you know, for eight years I was married to the lead singer, and since then it has been really sweet to give each other space. To kind of go and create and be the different artists that we are.
I think that space created a really beautiful mutual respect that has enabled us to come back together like we are right now, and it has been so fun. You know, it took us about 20 years for our egos to die to be able to be like, “Oh, we can. We can approach this with the spirit of curiosity.” And it’s been really fun to kind of bring these songs to life, because we wrote a lot of them on the road together.
RR: Yeah, when did you start writing these songs?
DH: So there’s four songs on the record that kind of came before everything else. And those are: “Bones,” “Carry the Water,” “We Can Go Dancing,” and “Brick by Brick,” which were written about a year and a half ago, then released. And so we [Drew and Ellie] went on the road last February and thought, “Well, we have these four songs. I wonder if we could actually, like, make a whole proper record.” And that’s really where the writing together accelerated.
The next eight songs, plus the cover of “Shut Up and Dance” were all sort of created in that time. So Ellie and I wrote all eight of those songs with each other and with a co-writer. Four of them were written in one week on the road.
EH: Three of them we wrote in one day. It was like lightning in a bottle.
DH: Yeah, I mean we wrote these songs really fast, but we lived them for 20 years first. There was a lot of history there that we had not written together. I think the timing was just right.
RR: What has it been like working together?
EH: One of the things I’m enjoying the most is watching somebody I love like, push past ego, insecurity, wounding. I mean, we’ve had our fair share of hard knocks that we’ve caused each other in collaborating before, and so we’re kind of pushing past that and growing. I know we have lots to learn, and it has been so invigorating to kind of put ourselves out there in a new way and try something new, and with the spirit of surrender and fun. It has been great.
RR: When you were writing these songs, were you planning to turn it into an album?
DH: We were definitely sort of dreaming. And part of it was we hit, you know, we’ve been doing this acoustic duo tour where we play each other’s songs together for, you know, six or seven years. It was starting to get a little bit…honestly, like an elephant in the room that we hadn’t made a project together.
At the same time, we didn’t know what we wanted the record to sound like until we had the songs written. But we wanted it to reflect the sort of simplistic approach that we have in our live show, just guitar and vocals and not a ton of production going on. More just creating space for those songs and the vocals to sort of shine. And so there were definitely some creative notions that were influencing how we were writing and recording. But they were done in the spirit of making this record reflect the duet nature of the project.
To see that collaboration live and in person, catch Drew and Ellie Holcomb on their current headlining tour. And listen to Memory Bank below!