Alex & Sierra on Touring With Andy Grammer, Writing With John Legend

Alex & Sierra are hitting the road with Andy Grammer on their The Good Guys and a Girl tour! We caught up with our fave duo the night before their first show, chatting about what surprises fans can expect on tour (they're happening!), their favorite songs to perform live and what it was like to write with John Legend. Check it out below.

What are you most looking forward to about the tour?

Sierra: I think we're most looking forward to being on the road in general. Touring is our favorite thing to be able to do musically. And we're also just really excited to share a tour bus with Andy because we've both been really big fans of his for a really long time. ... I think we're really, really excited to be on the road with someone we've looked up to for a really long time.

What are your tour bus essentials?

Alex: So, we've done one tour and we were super unprepared for that one. This is our second one and I think we're still pretty super unprepared for this one.
Sierra: We forgot towels...
Alex: We forgot towels, we forgot net storage and a plethora of other things that we'll realize pretty soon. But essentials? I mean, you gotta have video games. You gotta have video games on the bus.
Sierra: A good pillow.
Alex: A good pillow! That's really important.
Sierra: A blanket … so you can snuggle.

You said you're sharing a bus with Andy, too?

Alex: Yeah! So, he actually was kind enough to invite onto his bus with him and his band and his crew so we could party on it. We've got twelve people on one bus.

Wow! Has anything crazy happened already?

Alex: Not yet. We just hopped on last night and left around 11 or 12, and we've just been cruisin' through the night, so not quite enough time for anything crazy…
Sierra: Well, the one day it rains in L.A., it rains the hardest [during] the hour that we're loading the bus, and as soon as we're done loading it stops raining.

Are you guys going to be playing any new songs or covers this tour?

Alex: Actually, we have a little surprise in store. We're going out just acoustic on this tour, so we've been able to really switch all of the songs up. … Everything feels new, at least to us. There may be a few surprises here and there, we'll see.

Any hints you can give us?

Alex: Any hints? Hmm.
Sierra: I don't know if we can say any hints without giving it completely away…
Alex: Maybe, it's somewhere at the end… okay, we've added something to the end of a song. A little something. A little something.

I'm intrigued.

Alex: I'm sure there will be video up very soon!

What is the most meaningful song for you guys to perform live?

Alex: It's nice because when we're performing live, we're really … able to make every song our own. When you record it, there's a lot of people and there's a lot of opinions thrown around about how it should be recorded and how it should go on the album. But when we do these songs live, it's pretty much 100% us creating them.

Is there one song in particular that really stands out to you?

Alex: There's one called "All for You" that was one of the first songs that we wrote. I think that's just a special song in general. That's usually one of our last songs of the set. We like to save it until the end. it's one of our favorites.

Speaking of special songs, one that I was sad to see not make your album was the one written by Harry Styles and John Legend. Can you speak about that at all?

Alex: Yeah, it was a really beautiful song. We were actually writing with John Legend back in February or March last year and it was very surreal for us to be in a room with him. And he was kind of talking about how he and Harry had written a song together and how people had started to like it and he asked us if we wanted to put our vocals on it, and we did. It was a beautiful song, but ultimately… it was beautiful when Harry sang it, and it just took away when there were two voices. It was really good for one person to sing from one point of view. So, instead of doing the song because it was fun and a pretty song, we liked it and … we were very honored to be able to put our voices on it, [but] we wanted to make sure it was done right.

No regrets after he won the Oscar for Best Original Song?

Alex: Yeah! We heard about that -- we didn't watch the Oscars, but it's just pretty incredible to write with someone who just won an Oscar. It's really neat. It's been crazy to me think that we've been able to experience that.

You guys make such a great couple. How do you manage to separate -- or do you separate -- your relationship from your career?

Sierra: They kind of go hand-in-hand. The thing is, it's not like our career is in an office or something. I mean, we make music, so it's not like we're like, "Oh hey, it's a work day, we're not speaking anymore." We don't really think of what we do as work. I don't know, it comes easily to us so we don't know anything about separating one from the other.
Alex: And then when we're on tour, it's kind of like we're taking a big vacation together.

Do you manage to have some time to explore and have little getaways while on tour?

Alex: Yeah, that's like our favorite part of being on the road! Every once in a while ... in certain cities you get to really explore. We're going to a lot of places I've never been to in my life. We're going to Portland [Oregon] in just a few days and I've never been there. Hopefully we get at least a couple of hours to explore. But definitely! Anytime you get to go and learn about a new place, it's great.

Is there a particular city you're most looking forward to visiting?

Sierra: It's kind of funny. It's the ones that we've never even heard of that we end up falling in love with the most. We're both really excited to go to Portland. I'm excited to go to Maine because I've never been to Maine.
Alex: New Orleans should be fun, especially when you have a big group people that have been on the bus together for two weeks already. I think New Orleans is gonna be really good. It is kind of funny because it's the places you've never heard of that being the coolest part of the whole tour.

What is the coolest moment you've had as a band?

Alex: Oh, man. We were honored to play Radio City Music Hall.
Sierra: No one in the band had ever played it.
Alex: That was a pretty incredible moment to walk out on that stage and think bout where we were. All of us kind of feel that way -- that it was special.

What is the best interaction you've had with a fan?

Sierra: In their own ways, as cheesy as it sounds, every interaction with a fan is really special. Only because we've been fans for other people for so long that we're still in awe that someone feels like that about us. … One that always sticks out to me that I remember, there's this little girl that was three or four years old, and I picked her up -- her mom let me hold her -- and she wanted to sing one of our songs with me. It was so crazy because I remember being little and loving Disney princesses and stuff, so to see a little girl so happy to see a song with us -- that was really cool.

For more from our exclusive interview with Alex & Sierra -- in which we ask them St. Patrick's Day-themed questions and they discuss their pre-show ritual (hint: it involves an R. Kelly song!) -- be sure to keep your eyes peeled on PopCrush next month.

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