3 is a Magic Number: An Interview with Joey Eppard from 3

Julie Frish: What influenced your music? You have a very unique sound.

Joey Eppard: I grew up in a musical family so I wasn’t really paying attention to what was cool or popular in music at the time, I was more listening to my dad’s music collection.

JF: So do you play several different instruments?

JE: Yeah, I am known for playing guitar, but I am also a bit of drummer. Anything with strings, really.

JF: How did you learn to play? Did you just pick it up one day, or did you have formal training?

JE: No, just life experience. My dad is a great guitar player, but he never really taught me anything. He taught me passion for music. So I just kind of took my own style, which was finger picking.

JF: How would you describe your music to someone who has never heard it before?

JE: I couldn’t describe it. We just kind of do our own thing. We all have unique voices on our instruments. It is all about the new rock umbrella. I tell people we are all about song, but we can really play our instruments, too. You just kind of have to experience it live to get a feel for who we are.

JF: What inspires you musically?

JE: Well, in life, whatever comes our way, we just learn to deal with it and make the best of it. We have had a lot of ups and downs and we love making music. So we take those experiences and that’s what keeps us going.

JF: If for any possible reason you couldn’t do music anymore, what would you do?

JE: That’s a good question. I would probably be a monk and live out in the mountains somewhere, just meditating for hours on end.

JF: Would you ever consider playing a different kind of music besides rock?

JE: Of course! We do already. [Our music] falls under the rock umbrella of rock, but we bring a lot of different genres to what we do. For example, for certain aspects of what we do, there is a lot of flamenco and Latin. We just have fun. We have side projects too. For example, the drummer and I have a side project, the “Fourth Wall Music Collective.” That’s basically a jam band playing mostly soul and funk. 3 has had time in the past when we were a little bit funkier.

JF: Why the band name “3”? Does it have to do with the original three band members?

JE: 3 has nothing to do with the original three members. The number three to me is the key to our existence. We live in this world where some people live on one side of the coin and some on the other, you know like good or evil, republican or democrat. You know we divide things down the middle but in reality we just can’t give a polarity. We need a balance and once we get that, we can transcend to the next level, so I see it as sort of a triangle. We try to be that musically. I was just obsessed with the number three. We experience time as past, present, future, we live in a three-dimensional physical space and we have a mind, body, and soul. Everything in three’s. Musically, 3 draw from three genres in a way.

JF: Thanks so much for meeting with me.

JE: You are very welcome. Enjoy the show.