At Portland International Airport, live music fills the terminal with bands like The Apricots

Portland International Airport’s woody new terminal has quickly become a hot new community space in town. “You can come here and sort of gather your wits about you, get ready for your journey or wait for people, meet people, meet your family,” Curtis Robinhold, executive director of the Port of Portland told OPB’s “Think Out Loud” back in August.

But on one particularly cloudy afternoon in November, travelers also got to indulge in some dreamy tunes by Portland band, The Apricots. The indie-folk-rock outfit – which includes Chloé Serkissian, Molly Evered, Jeremy Reeves, Jake Mackie and Logan Hazen – performed four songs at the new terminal, as part of a music session produced by OPB.

This was not the first time Portland International Airport hosted a live music performance in the space. The airport has a music program that involves local musicians performing at the new terminal. The program hosts over 20 rotating musicians across genres, in hopes of creating a “relaxing, pleasing and stress-free environment for travelers through the use of live music.”

Related: For airports, background music no longer is an afterthought

While not part of PDX’s music program, The Apricots were one of the many musicians present that November day. The band sat down with OPB’s Cameron Nielsen to take us through their songwriting process and how the city of Portland has influenced their sound. Below are excerpts from the interview, edited for clarity and length.

Cameron Nielsen: Can you talk a little bit about how the band formed?

Molly Evered: Chloé (Serkissian) and I were paired as freshman-year roommates in college randomly, and we just never stopped hanging out and-

Chloé Serkissian: We gathered some friends along the way.

Evered: We moved to Portland after graduating with another friend and we were in a folk trio called Pacific Trio and that was the baby egg of what is now The Apricots. We moved into a bigger sound direction and found these really great guys.

Nielsen: What are you trying to communicate through your music?

Serkissian: That’s a great question. I think that we talk a lot about and sing a lot about mental health honestly. How we kind of find ourselves in this world, dealing with what’s going on inside of ourselves and outside of ourselves. That’s typically how I do a lot of the writing.

I find that I write these songs as a last resort when I’m feeling really, really crappy. And it seems to be like this feeling of if I don’t write it down and put it down into a piece of art, then I’m going to explode or implode or something or both. So I think we’re trying to communicate belonging and trying to connect with people on the struggles of being a human being because it’s hard. But also, we want to dance a little bit. So we’re trying to meld those two worlds together.

Nielsen: How has Portland influenced the musical journey of The Apricots?

Evered: When we first moved here, we were playing open mics every week and farmer’s markets and just meeting whoever we could and connecting to people. And we’ve found that the Portland music community is so warm and so willing to bring in and accept new people. I think we’ve always felt really supported and there’s so many talented artists in Portland.

I think there’s no shortage of people who amaze me and I think that pushes us too, to want to be better but also support them at the same time. It feels like the place that we were meant to grow as a band.

Serkissian: I also think that Portland has some of the best small cap venues, independent venues from many places that I’ve visited or been in. There are a huge number of 200 person rooms independently owned that are just amazing. And the opportunity to play those has been just the best. It is something that I definitely don’t take for granted because it gives you an outlet. You have this band, you have your music, and you have whatever you’ve created, but you need a place to share it and you need a place for people to commune and gather around it. And it’s been so fun to have all these venues that we’ve loved as artists or as people, and then get to play them as artists.

Logan Hazen: The Portland scene itself, once you find it, is super dense and there’s a bunch of different pockets of different genres. I’ve only been playing with these guys for a year-ish.

I was just navigating the music in Portland and like Chloé said, there were a whole bunch of small venues, and I was just trying to find people to play with. Everyone was so nice about The Apricots. Everyone was so friendly about ‘em and they’re like, “Yeah, you should definitely try playing.” I was like, “Okay, I’m going to try.”

There’s just all these amazing branches of venues that are getting bands out there in Portland. You just have to find it and once you find it, it’s there. It’s crazy.

Nielsen: What’s next?

Serkissian: We’re recording soon. We’re hoping to tour this summer. We’re coming out with a live EP actually in a couple days (released Nov. 18, titled “The Apricots Live from Stone Fruit Studios”), we’re writing more and kind of sinking into what we’ve got going on.

This is kind of a newish group within the past year, so I think we’re starting to find our footing and I’m really excited for what we’re going to do next.