Capybara vs. a capybara

Remember our interview with the band Capybara? They met a real capybara named Caplin Rous, and they sang a song to it. Caplin even added some of his own “eeps” to their song “Magpies.”

more about “Capybara vs. a capybara“, posted with vodpod

The Awkward Off Vs. Capybara

Before their show with RANGE LIFE ENTERTAINMENT at DOBIE THEATER in AUSTIN, TX, I met with CAPYBARA.

They claim to be influenced by little more than their upbringing and their mustaches. Their shows are accompanied by a giant cut-out of Shaquielle O’Neal’s head. These childhood friends are just as fun and jangly in person as their music. How can you go wrong with mustache talk and dinosaur facts?

Full Transcript (Audio):

Nichole Bennett: Here we are around the table. I am Nichole, and I am with a band that is named Capybara. Do you guys want to introduce yourselves?

Darin Seal: I’m Darin

Jared Horne: I’m Jared.

Mark Harrison: I’m Mark.

Joel Wrolstad: And I’m Joel.

MH: And together we’re…

Capybara: Capybara!

JH: Yeah…

DS: Jared didn’t participate in that.

JH: We hope that we’re close enough to the microphone.

NB: I think it’s fine. So you guys have been on the road a lot. You’ve been drinking a lot at coffeshops. You’ve been doing all sorts of things. If you could pick a superpower to help you out with this journey—or just in your normal life—what would you pick?

DS: I would grow a really nice mattress on my back. It would just be on me all the time.

NB: That’s a very practical superpower.

JH: I would be a good woodworker. Like, a decent wordworker—not a good one.

NB: Do you just want to continually make furniture?

JH: I want to make decent furniture. That’s it. I’m not greedy.

MH: I would have very good gliding powers. I would find high places and glide around for ages.

JW: I would like to not have to sleep and not be tired. That would be awesome—to seriously answer your question.

NB: The band Capybara just met a real-life Capybara named Caplin Rous. And “Rous” is R-O-U-S I believe.

DS: It stands for Rodent of Unusual Size.

NB: Which is a Princess Bride reference.

DS: And she pronounces it “rose.” We love that thing. I legitimately miss it.

JH: Yeah it’s really sweet.

MH: It’s straw-like fur.

JH: Just very cuddly and soft.

JW: The best part is when it’s very happy when she scratches it right all of its hair stands up like a puffer fish or a porcupine. It’s amazing.

JH: It makes little chirping sounds.

MH: Oh my gosh, the sounds that it makes are way better than the sounds that we make.

NB: Maybe we should do some Caplin field recordings.

DS: And I would rather listen to that than our album.

MH: To summarize our experience with the most famous capybara, we did look on eBay and various other sources on how to acquire a capybara. Here in Texas there is a breeder that will sell them for $600, but don’t let that word get out because we want it.

DS: We want all of them.

JH: We want the next batch.

NB: Alright, nice segue way into the album itself. You guys have a new album out. What is up with that?

MH: Well, the name of the album is called Try Brother, and we recorded it in Taos, New Mexico. We all decided to quit our jobs at the very end of last year, and we moved down to Taos, New Mexico to find some solitude away from our lives that we were living, which included many raucous nights of  gambling and many drug-filled nights.

DS: Yes, those are lies.

JH: Big lies.

DS: That is funny because we are the lamest band in existence.

MH: It was really a question of life or death. We had to stop doing what we were doing and have a life change, and music was the thing that picked us up off of our feet.

DS: In the end, I think we really learned from…

MH: …each other. No, but Try Brother came out of three months of recording and figuring out how to work together. We’ve all worked together before in various musical groups, but this was the first time all of us together as a group. We all went to high school together. It was a fun little escapade.

DS: But we were all in different cliques. Joel was a jock. Jared was a nerd. Mark was a student council prep. And I was the bad boy.

JH: Except we were all just losers. Except for Mark—Mark was a really popular guy.

DS: Mark was our high school mascot, the blue jay.

[thunk]

NB: I think that just was a blue jay.

DS: A bird just hit the window.

JH: Which serves it right for flying around at night. It may have been a bat.

NB: Crunchy or smooth peanut butter?

JH: Smooth!

DS: Crunchy.

JH: Smooth!

MH: Crunchy.

JH: Smooth! The more you say it, the more it counts. Smooth!

NB: If you had to describe Capybara’s sound as an amusement park ride, what would you choose?

DS: I wouldn’t.

NB: You’re going to turn down that opportunity?

DS: No, I’m not.

JH: That was a nice setup.

MH: When people say “If you had to…”, we always give them a hard time. But, since we have to say something. An amusement park ride? Maybe like a lazy river.

JH: Or maybe like those cars that are on the rails that you can still turn the steering wheel. The thing about those rides though is that they were fun before you could drive. When you could drive it was like, hey I’m driving but worse.

DS: That reminds me of the number one rule of doing go-carts. It’s don’t do it if there is someone over 40.

JH: Because they will take it way too seriously.

DS: They seriously will.

NB: I always end up with the slow car for some reason. They are not created equally.

MH: Joel and I actually worked at our local Worlds of Fun in Kansas City. We were both part of the railroad team crew, which was the only manually-operated vehicle or ride at all at this park. We were only there for five days before the other 65-year-old guys on the team didn’t really appreciate us as young whippersnappers.

JW: They also had wicked mustaches, and we were just punks.

JH: Not much has changed.

MH: They demoted me to the back of the train where I had to make up things and talk to people. I had to be like “On your left you will see where Steven Spielberg shot Jurassic Park.” And then people would be like “Huh, really? No way!”

DS: Apparently all of your clientele were from Canada.

NB: We are outside the Dobie Teather on the campus of The University of Texas, and the reason is that they are teamed up with Range Life. Hopefully we’ll get to talk to Todd later. What is it like doing a multimedia project like that with film and music?

MH: I think that it is something that has really great potential that we are just starting to experiment with right now. I think it’s a really great opportunity to go around and present different types of art and to ask people to give up their night and watch something that is a little out of the ordinary in an event in a city near them. I think the more that we figure out how to package that in the space that we’re given in each of these different cities the more potential you have. Maybe some people were into the movie. Or maybe the movie is something that you were taking a chance on, but the music is definitely something that captivated you and made you feel a part of this thing and inspires you to do your own thing.

NB: Do you guys feel like you are reaching more people through that?

MH: Certainly.

NB: Maybe people that have come for the movie and then checked out the band?
MH: Certainly that’s been the case.

JH: I think there have been several instances where people have decided to stay after one of the movies. We’ve only been able on this tour to meet up with Range Life only a few times. At each of these events there seems to be a couple of people who are willing to stick around and subsequently seem to enjoy it.

JW: I’d say Texas is the biggest turnout yet.

MH: A lot of people in this city, for sure, really appreciate all of the arts. Being a big festival town and all that—it’s awesome that people are willing to take a chance. I think it’s also cool to be in and around a University. That’s something that we haven’t exactly experienced yet this tour to connect with people who are in college and pretty much ready and willing to try out anything as long as the people who ask them to go to something have mustaches or look really creepy as they are spilling out of several vans.

NB: Speaking of vans…

JH: I thought you were going to say “Speaking of mustaches”

NB: I was actually going to go either way with that. Speaking of mustaches…

MH: 1…2…3…

Capybara: Mustache!

NB: Well, we’ve covered that then. So, if you could trade your van for a dinosaur what would it be?

DS: Deinonychus.

JH: He was thinking about that all day. I would trade it for one of those in Jurassic Park that shoots stuff out of its glands.

MH: Schnoz?

JH: That black tar-y stuff.

DS: Speaking of Jurassic Park, Velociraptors in real life were actually much smaller, so the Velociraptors in the movie were actually modeled after Deinonychus, but Velociraptor sounds cooler. “Velocity” and “raptor”—could you put together two cooler words into a dinosaur name?

MH: Do we want our main mode of transport to kill things? I would pick Brontosaurus because it would take very little gas. It would be very natural.

JH: And it would take like ten years to get somewhere.

DS: And it would take huge dumps.

JH: It wouldn’t take a lot of gas, but it would make a lot of gas.

NB: Carbon neutral. So you guys are doing some odd things for a touring band. You are teaming up with film tours, playing house shows, DIY places like Houston’s Happy Fun Land.

JH: Super Happy Fun Land.

NB: Oh man, I missed an adjective. So what advice would you guys have for a band just starting out?

MH: At the very beginning when we were booking all of the shows when we were trying to figure out where we were playing and who we were going to play for, it really is a risk you take to go out and be willing to do anything. Part of that that keeps you on your toes is not playing the same thing every night. You have to adjust the show itself and your performance based on the space you are in. But my advice is if you’re going to do it, don’t be too quick to criticize yourself. Find a way to enjoy yourself because it is something that is cool no matter what. It’s something that not a lot of people get to do, and it’s a privilege for sure. And that’s our serious answer. The funny answer is…

DS: Eat your beets.

JH: Bring something fun along like a game or a book. Not a book.

NB: Don’t read, kids!

JH: Joel just mumbled something.

DS: I think he said “ball of string,” which is what Joel spends most of his time playing with.

NB: What can we expect in the future from Capybara?

MH: That is something that we have also been thinking about lately. We are trying to build a machine that will also let us look into the future. Before we get to finishing that project—which will happen soon…

DS: You’ve just got to get off my back about it. I’ve been working on it okay? Day in, day out. I just need a couple more weeks.

MH: I briefly talked about how we recorded this album. We just kind of went and tried to figure it out as for the first time being a group. We just gave ourselves these three months to figure out whatever we could and to take that out on the road for the rest of the year.

DS: This album was very much a learning process for all of us—learning how to work together as a whole, learning how to record with the equipment we had, learning how to write as a team. We all write, and we all play a bunch of the instruments. I think the next piece of recording that we do…I don’t know what it will be, but I’m really excited to find out because we already have a lot of it figured out in terms of the process, but now we can really expand creatively.