Rising stars Gem & Tauri are one the fastest growing duo’s in the dance music scene that you don’t want to miss. The duo comprised of Emma Montalvo and Courtney Simmons started DJing right before the pandemic hit and have already become a force to reckon within the melodic dubstep scene. During the pandemic, they made appearances across livestreams such as Seven Lion’s Visions streams, Anjuna’s Club Quarantine, Dirtybird, and many others. They’ve become beloved members of Ophelia Records and have already come out with hit tracks such as ‘Hear My Call’, ‘All You Need’, and “Call Me Home’. Fast forward to present day, the duo has played at Red Rocks, the Gorge Amphitheater, and most recently Electric Zoo.
We had a chance to interview Gem & Tauri at Electric Zoo where we talked everything about their latest music, upcoming tour, archery, and gaming.
Its so impressive that you’ve only started your duo project right before the pandemic hit. How did the both of you get inspired to start producing as Gem & Tauri?
Courtney: At first we were very timid and shied away from production. One it’s a male dominated field. And two, we didn’t even know where to start and with no real lead on where to go next. So it was really fortunate with Jeff where he’s like, let’s start a studio session and I can be your engineer and you just tell me what you want. That’s how it started and I felt like it was my duty to learn more.
Besides learning from Jeff, how else are you sharpening your production skills?
Courtney: I did an icon intro program just this last year on how to use Ableton and produce with them. It’s become a good fun experience learning how to use different production techniques, and obviously our knowledge for production is still pretty beginner. I’m gonna be honest about that and I’m not gonna like tell everybody we’re making all of our music on our own because we have a lot of people that help us. Jeff being one of ’em and Trivecta as well.
Emma: Yes Sam is a big help. We did that song ‘Hear My Call’ with him. Yeah, we did a song with him, you know, we’re working on a couple other collabs, which we are not ready to announce yet,
You recently released ‘Crash Into Me’ with Tyler Graves. How was working with him and tell us more about the track.
Emma: I work on the songwriting side of Gem & Tauri, so I wrote ‘Call Me Home’ and I have worked on some of Jeff’s projects, tweaking vocals to make them work with the songs. I’m also very good friends with Tyler Graves so it was very easy to work with him. Once we did ‘Hear My Call’, we were like let’s do another.
Courtney: It’s fun though that Emma can take on the songwriting cause it’s something I’m not good at. I’m better with production and that was actually the first song that I spent more time in Ableton to actually putting some production work into, which was really fun for me. And so it was more of a collaborative process. That last song we just put out and with Tyler, we just shared a note pad on iCloud and we had a basic chorus and then it was like ok, I wanna do a verse right here and a verse right here. But then we want to switch to melody right here.
Are there any female artists that you want to collab with next?
Courtney: We just went on after Pretty Pink and we would love to collab with her next. We could do some bassy melodic house that would vibe with her techno vibe.
Emma: I feel like our sounds could vibe. They would definitely hit.
What else do you have planned for the rest of the year?
Emma: We have a tour that we will be announcing in a couple of days. It’s a headline tour from the east to west coast all across the U.S. and we are very excited about it. This will be our very first headlining tour, not just one offs, like fully routed, cohesive, with artwork behind it. Choosing people for us is always so much fun as well. I love looking through newer artists to like bring them in, you know?
Courtney: So yeah, that’s a fun part for us wanting to give other people the opportunities we’ve been given, cause there’s a lot of talented people out there that just don’t have the right support. And if we can get to know them and bring them up on stage with us, that would be great.
How do you guys like to keep yourselves occupied while on tour?
Courtney: We play a lot of Zelda, Breathe of the Wild. We are big Zelda people, I think we got a lawyer cuz of Zelda, to be honest.
Emma: We watch girly Netflix shows like Good Girls. We also watch Great British Baking Show which is one of our favorite past times.
That’s awesome that you are gamers, do you have any other interesting hobbies?
Courtney: We just got our first bow and arrow, so we are going to be doing archery. that’s mainly just because of the Renaissance fairs we attend.
One last fun question to wrap things up, what is your favorite comfort food?
Emma: Chicken nuggies.
