MountainCity on How They Want to Help People Encounter Love in Fresh Ways through Music

When the creativity of music is mixed with the power of love, something magical happens. And since 2016, the Denver-based husband-and-wife duo MountainCity comprised of worship leaders Dave and Tara Powers has been releasing monthly singles and hosting weekly streaming sessions on Facebook Live (Wednesdays at 7:30pm MST) where they sing love songs, tell love stories and interact with their virtual audience - now more than 8,000 strong!! 

Drawing inspiration from contemporaries like JohnnySwim, Johnny and June and Joey & Rory, MountainCity is revolutionizing the love song genre. Their songs cover - and celebrate - it all... faith, love and loss, fulfilled and failed dreams, promises made and broken, all with the intent of giving some language to people's experiences, and encouragement to go love some more. 

Q:  Thank you for doing this interview with us.  Who is MountainCity? 

A: It's a privilege for us to do this interview with you all! Thank YOU! :) MountainCity is comprised of Dave and Tara Powers, a Denver-based duo that may very well be singlehandedly revolutionizing the entire love song genre. Lyrics that strive to honor, treasure and untangle the essence of love merge with a sophisticated blend of folk-pop, country, blue-eyed soul, electronic remixes and instrumentals to form a rich sonic palette that sounds just as current as it does classic. We have 2 delightful sons, and we just celebrated 14 years of marriage in September of 2017! Along with Dave, Tara is a singer-songwriter, and Dave has played guitar for 28+ years! :)

Q:  Why did you pick the name MountainCity?

A: We went through a long and arduous process to find the name "MountainCity". Names are very important to us so we took it seriously. We wanted a name that fit our Colorado culture, something that could stand the rest of time, could represent our passion for people and for nature, and something that was 4 syllables or less. Ha! .... Seriously though...

Q:  How did the two of you come together? 

A: I was playing music at an outdoor venue just outside of Boulder, Colorado, August 28th, 2002. Right in the middle of the 3rd song in my set, Tara came walking down the middle isle. I almost fell over and passed out, taking notice of her immediately, and became quite distracted from the music! I kept stealing glances at Tara, who was sitting neatly in the front row in a jean skirt and black leather jacket. OW OW!! Over the next 6 months, we spent time developing a beautiful friendship, and in March of 2003, I called Tara's dad and asked him for his blessing to date his daughter. Later that evening, we went on our first date, overlooking several Colorado Front Range cities, perched on a lonely mountain road nestled in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Dated for 3 months, engaged for 3 months, married on September 13, 2003. BOOM!! When you know, you know! :)

Q:  Your bio mentions that you want to revolutionize the love song genre. How would you go about revolutionizing it?

A: Great question! First of all, we're not even sure that there is a "love song genre" (We may or may not have made that up), but we'd like to help create it if it's not already in place. We resonate with love deeply. Love songs are our favorite! And, love seems to get distorted in our minds and hearts over time. Life throws serious curveballs and all of us are capable of losing a genuine connection with love. Our hope is to help people encounter love in fresh ways through our music, the stories that we tell, and through our lives in general. We've noticed that much of popular music has a tendency to cheapen love (the infamous "booty jams"), and we're trying to create art that invites people to explore the rich, omni-directional facets of love. We believe that love is sacred, and so, even though we try not to take ourselves too seriously, we do try to shine a light on some good examples of geniune love. Maybe this approach and mindset might influence songwriters, artists, and the general populace, but that still remains to be seen! :)

Q:  Tell us more about your style of music?

A: Our musical influences are fairly diverse and when we were narrowing down which genre we should lean into, we realized that we could just be honest to the art that's in us instead squishing into a genre. Around the same time, we realized that music-listening culture is playlist oriented right now. People are creating playlists on streaming platforms everyday, so we thought, "What if we made love song playlists?" That idea became our goal! That being said, we have mixtures of Folk, Pop, Acoustic, Country, Blue-eyed Soul, and some EDM influences. Weird weird weird... and really fun!! :)

Q:  You've released a series of singles... Is there a particular song that really seems to resonate with people?

A: On Spotify, the 2 songs that seem to resonate the most are "Growing Old With You" and "Being With You". Here are a couple links to read a little bit about each song and check out the lyrics too, if you'd like: Growing Old With You: https://mountaincity.bandcamp.com/track/growing-old-with-you 

Q: I believe you are working on a 7-song Christmas EP.  Will there be any originals?  When will it be released? 

A: Yes!! We're VERY excited about this 7-song Christmas EP! It will be released exclusively on our website on Monday, November 13, and on then about 24 hours later, it will be available on virtually every major music purchasing and streaming platform on Tuesday, November 14. We included one original song on this EP and it's called, "It's Christmas Time". It turned out pretty dang good, thanks to the expertise of our Producer for this project, Dave Wilton, aka "The Mastermind", "The Cut-Paste-Quantize-The-Bass Wizard", and "The Sound-wave Whisperer"). 

Q:  Speaking of love,what is your definition of love?  And has your understanding of love changed over the years?

A: Oh man, oh man... our understanding of love has changed significantly over the years! We have explored many fabulous definitions of love and one of the discoveries we made was that sometimes, you can find a definition for something by observing it's opposite. When the opposite becomes clear, you can see the real thing with added clarity. That being said, for years, we assumed that the opposite of love is hate. But we are starting to wonder if that's not correct. What if lust is the opposite of love? We heard someone say that love is when you give of yourself and lust is when you take for yourself. This feels profound, and so that's not THE ONLY definition for love that we have, but we feel that it's a significant one at least. :) 

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