What happens when you combine a reignited love of music with a sharp, seasoned professionalism? What about Southern influence combined with a hybrid LA-UK style? The answer to both these questions is Outpost Drive. The young independent band draws from a blend of British folk-rock and American country roots, crafting a unique sound to go with their name. Members and husband-and-wife team Mary Bragg and Willow Robinson sat down with MB to talk about their creative process and the mark Mobile has made on their music.
Willow, you’re from the UK and Mary Bragg, you’re from Mobile. Tell us about your musical journeys and how y’all met and formed the band?
Willow: I’m also a solo artist, and I moved out to LA to study music. I was making an album out there when I met Mary Bragg. We actually met at a gig I was performing and started dating about a year later.
Mary Bragg: I was living out in California at the time.
Willow: Yeah, we were both living out there. And we started dating long before we were doing music together. I knew that she had been a singer when she was growing up, but she’d stopped singing. When we were dating, I was the musician, and she was just very enthusiastic about my music. Our music career together came out of nowhere. Suddenly, she started singing again. I’d never even heard her sing because she was so self-conscious about it for about two years while we were dating.
Mary Bragg: And then we got married in Alabama, in Mobile at St. Paul’s. We ended up moving to England, but I had to get my UK visa. I moved back to Alabama to wait for it, so we were separated for a while. While I was at home, I started going to Cedar Street social club in downtown Mobile with my mom who dragged me there. I was so nervous. I hadn’t sung in front of anybody in so long. But they handed me a guitar and somehow got me to sing. Kat Deal, who plays a lot in downtown Mobile, she really got me singing that night. This was around March of last year, so it’s very recent. I was in Mobile for a couple more months and was just playing shows all the sudden, all the time while Willow was in the UK. When we were back together, we wrote our first song together, which was our first single “Go Back To Sleep,” and then formed Outpost Drive pretty soon after that.
What’s the story behind your band name “Outpost Drive”?
Mary Bragg: It’s the street we were living on in LA. Our whole relationship kind of started on that street. And it’s where Willow’s parents were living when he was born as well. So, it’s just this weird correlation.
Willow: It was like complete coincidence, this kind of roundabout synchronicity. We were hunting for names [for the band]. You come up with lots of combinations of words. Some of them were cool, but they didn’t have any real personal meaning to them. I think I was in the shower or something and it kind of dawned on me that Outpost Drive would be a cool name.
Mary Bragg: He ran out into the kitchen in a towel and was like, “It’s got to be Outpost Drive!”
Willow: I think I suggested it and then you were like, “Yeah, it’s so good.” I think we just settled on it because it would always have significance in our mind. It’s like a tattoo with significance: if you get bored of it, at least you can rest assured that it means something.
Y’all released your first EP “Handsome Adolescence” in May. Your song “Mobile, Alabama” talks about the Gulf and oak trees and getting out to Cedar Street. Mary Bragg, what was it like capturing the feel of the Port City in that song?
Mary Bragg: It was very nostalgic for me because I hadn’t lived at home since I was 18. I left and moved to Nashville because I think I’d kind of really wanted to escape Mobile and was like, “I’m gonna go out and live in a big city and disappear.” I was too cool for school and couldn’t appreciate what was right in front of me. When I had to move home during my visa process, I realized all the things that have been there in Mobile my whole life. It’s home and it’s given me so much. It has lifted me up. And it has all the people I love in the world, basically, besides the people I’ve met in England, of course. Mobile has some of the most incredible people, and I just love them so much. They’re so kind. And it’s a beautiful place to live as well. I could have written probably 40 verses. But yeah, it’s very nostalgic for me.
What are the perks and challenges of being a husband-and-wife team? Do you equally handle every role or do you both have different specialties?
Mary Bragg: It’s taken a lot of figuring out to get it to a place where we sort of know how we both work creatively, because obviously, we’d never written songs together before until last year.
Willow: Mainly the hardest thing was learning how to communicate in two different ways. Because on one hand, you’re in a relationship and you’re supporting each other. And then in a creative sense, you have to critique each other and bring each other up on things. So, you’re trying to be supportive to the person that you’re also having to criticize. It’s a really difficult, nuanced communication skill. If you’re well-slept and feeling good, you can communicate well enough to just about get by, but when you’re working super hard and stressed out, you end up having a lot of disagreements.
Mary Bragg: But then it’s still the best thing ever because we know each other so well, that we can be vulnerable and open. There’s not that having to break the ice with some songwriters, where you meet somebody for the first time and then you have to write a really vulnerable song. I think [Willow is] my dream co-writer, for real.
What do you hope listeners will take away from your music, whether it be your sound or your lyrical influences?
Mary Bragg: I want people to have fun, love the music, relate to it and feel like they’re not alone and that they can express themselves freely. I’ve grown up loving music so much, it’s kind of helped me through every kind of emotion and facet of my life forever. And I think I’m definitely not alone in that.
Willow: I love the stories and the lyrics, but I’m more focused — because I do a lot of the production and kind of the instrumental side of things — on trying to have those impactful feelings. I remember when I was a kid, I’d listen to certain songs, and it just kind of blew my mind. For me, it was always a massive guitar solo or something, those incredible moments of dramatic music. So, I’m always trying to somehow replicate that feeling.
What’s been in the works recently and what’s next for y’all?
Mary Bragg: We have a new single out called “Country Revival.” It’s a song I started writing last year. Country music is really having a moment, and as an Alabamian, I’m obsessed with the fact that I’ve moved to England and now, all of a sudden, Willow’s best friends are telling me how much they love country music. It’s blowing my mind. The song is about the disbelief that country’s having this revival worldwide.
Willow: It was a song Mary Bragg was trying to forget about and I made her revisit it. It came together so nicely. It’s interesting because lyrically it’s like, obviously Mary’s very much from the South and can call herself country, but instrumentally, it’s like an English person’s interpretation on what country music sounds like, so I hope it has a unique flair to it.
Mary Bragg: We also have an EP coming out that we’re going to start dropping, I think sometime in September. It’s going to be called “Among the Pines,” I think. We recorded in Montreal. And then we started recording our debut album as well, so we’re in the process of that and it’ll come out after the EP.
Left The cover of Outpost Drive’s debut EP, “Handsome Adolescence.” Right Outpost Drive’s cover for their single, “Mobile, Alabama,” which focuses on the impact the Port City has made on Mary Bragg. The song would later feature alongside four other tracks on their “Handsome Adolescence” EP. photo by Lee Marriott
