WORDS / LAUREN MCCORMICK
PHOTO / BRANDON OTTO

From humble beginnings in Conway, Don’t Stop Please is a jazz-influenced sextet with obvious ambition. They just released a new self-titled album in early November under their label Let’s Talk Figures, and they are beyond thrilled with the way it turned out. It perfectly layers vocals on top of horns with a plethora of instruments, and a female vocalist adds an elegant presence into the mix.

The Idle Class sat down to talk with Joel Ludford and Anna Horton, 2/6 of Don’t Stop Please, and of Handmade Moments, a jazz trio, which also includes Don’t Stop Please’s Nick Caffrey on bass.
No one in Don’t Stop Please holds the title of “bassist” or “drummer” – each member is a multi-instrumentalist and their live show is like a game of musical chairs. Joel and Anna tend to hold down the lead vocal spots, though Will Krzeszinski, Will King and Robert Gaiser all sing as well.
Their previous EP, Crowded Car (which was released in August of 2012) was a bit more of a struggle to release due to some analog recording issues.
“Crowded Car was a good one, the songs were good, but we were kind of rushed in making it and the mixing. There were some technical difficulties.” It’s obvious that they feel that this newest album is a better representation of what they’re all about.
“It’s much more delicate, not as much our live or bar material.”
These songs are more appropriate for an acoustic setting, much less of a dance album in comparison to Crowded Car, yet still perfectly uplifting.
Don’t Stop Please tackles a lot of the daily social implications of our everyday lives and our globalized economy, along with the consequences that come with those daily choices we make. The songs on their newest release are the product of going to college and realizing that most of the things you are doing and the decisions you are making are affecting people and future generations around the world.   Joel puts it plainly yet precisely in admitting, “It’s a wild time to be alive, and a lot of this music is dense with thoughts on that and where we’re going.”
To Don’t Stop Please, a show is not just a time to play music and do what they love, but furthermore it’s an opportunity to utilize the platform of the 300+ people sitting in front of them to listen to something that matters.
The band recently toured west to Boise, ID, joining fellow Arkansans SW/MM/NG at Treefort Music Festival, along with the remarkable Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings. These guys have made their way around the states, often making stops in Colorado and Chicago, the latter seeming to be the resounding favorite place to play among band mates. They truly enjoy life on the road, but they admit having to figure things out along the way as well.
Joel says, “It’s not how it used to be with touring. It used to be a lot more profitable to go out and tour. You used to be able to take your band out and show up, say you have some rock and roll and they’ll pay you some money, but nowadays you have to plan it out a lot farther ahead of time. You’re a lot less of a commodity because there’s a lot of people out playing music just like you.”
Their strategy is to spread their music online and create a demand for them to come to these cities, particularly big ones like Chicago and New York. Smart, to say the least, but it truly seems like keeping in touch with their fanbase across the country is a priority for Don’t Stop Please, and they genuinely appreciate anyone taking the time to listen to them.
Anna does all the booking for their tours, and describes the difficulty in planning them. She admits, “It’s all really hard, but one of the hardest things is figuring out where to go. Finding people there, finding bands to play with, where the good venues are. It’s best to talk to people who live there, so a lot of the places we tour are suggestions of people that we know there. That’s one of the struggles.”
The transition from Conway to Fayetteville has been very energizing for the band. They moved to Fayetteville in early spring of this year, and they love how it’s a town of people trying to escape the mid-America grind. Don’t Stop Please relishes the progressive culture that Fayetteville thrives on, and it seems to be a lot of what the band thrives off of. “Local food, local music, local art, and local culture all are combined here, and anywhere where one survives I think you will find a lot of the other… It’s a community of artists.” They joined this open-armed local community in Northwest Arkansas, and that’s something that they didn’t find in Conway.    “People are out and about more in Fayetteville, supporting each other with their dollar, and that’s not something that was happening in Conway.” The move to Fayetteville was a clear choice, and along with them is a huge community of musicians working towards the same thing and everyone is extremely supportive of one another.
Don’t Stop Please’s next show will be on New Years Eve at George’s Majestic Lounge alongside Andy Frasco. Anna puts it perfectly in saying, “If you want to listen to our music, I’m honored.”

VISIT: DONTSTOPPLEASE.COM

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