When I Grow Up I Want to Be Reactionary Records

Is it crazy to open a record store in 2009?

Paul Tilghmon doesn’t think so. He opened Reactionary Records in February 2009 across from The Earl in Atlanta, Georgia (465-A Flat Shoals Ave). They’re open Tuesday-Sunday 12PM-7PM (and sometimes later). They have everything from punk to soul to hip-hop, mostly in vinyl form. You won’t find everything, but you will find something.

Reactionary Records operates on the principle that people who are dedicated to their music will seek it out. Vinyl lovers are the scavengers of the music world; the hunt is half of the fun. So while other Atlanta music stores go under (R.I.P. Earwax Records), maybe stores should start catering to their discerning vinylphiles. Paul’s store offers just that…with a heap of musical knowledge.

Stores like Reactionary offer hope that, even with the Great Internet Circus, music lovers can always find that dusty piece of vinyl art that they’ve hunted.

Reactionary Records has lots of in-store performances, and every Tuesday and Thursday 3PM-5PM (eastern) they have an in-store radio show called  Killed By Radio.

Rest Well, Vic Chesnutt

Last night Twitter was a confused frenzy of reports about Vic Chesnutt. At 45, this Athens musician died after being in an overdose-caused coma. You can read the New York Times’ report of it here.

I debated whether to post on here about Vic’s coma and death, and I decided against it. It was news, yes, but I had nothing to add. You could find out anything you wanted to know from the frantic twitters of the music industry or the speculations of blogs. His family and friends were probably wearied from all the attention, and one more blog post wouldn’t mean anything. I felt so much sadness for this human being that I didn’t even know. It was as if his death represented a fragility we all experience. I couldn’t treat it like a news story, and I knew I couldn’t add anything.

But today I learned that Kristin Hersh created a donation page for Vic’s family, and I thought it appropriate to share that. She shares about her friendship with Vic and asks for donations to help defray his family’s expenses.

In her words:

I never saw the wheelchair—it was invisible to me—but he did. When our dressing room was up a flight of stairs, he’d casually tell me that he’d meet me in the bar. When we both contracted the same illness, I told him it was the worst pain I’d ever felt. “I don’t feel pain,” he said. Of course. I’d forgotten. When I asked him to take a walk down the rain spattered sidewalk with me, he said his hands would get wet. Sitting on stage with him, I would request a song and he’d flip me off, which meant, “This finger won’t work today.” I saw him as unassailable—huge and wonderful, but I think Vic saw Vic as small, broken. And sad.

[...]

And if I’m honest with myself, I admit that I still feel like he’s here, but free of his constraints. Maybe now he really is huge. Unbroken. And happy.

The Good Guys Always Win at Rebuilding Venues

On June 19, 2009 of this summer, a fire destroyed the Georgia Theatre, an important Athens, GA venue. This historic building was an important landmark for the Athens music scene. Ever since, the community of Athens has been working to raise the funds to help rebuild it. On their website, the Georgia Theater is accepting donations in return for perks like behind-the-scenes tours, merchandise, invitations to the ribbon cutting, and name recognition.

Some Athens bands are also trying to help bring the theater back. Dead Confederate is giving away their latest LP Dirty Ammo with a donation, and $1 of each purchase goes toward helping to rebuild the Georgia Theatre. It features live songs and covers recorded at The Earl in Atlanta, GA.

Venice is Sinking is also helping out. Before the fire, they recorded their third album in the Georgia Theatre. (You can read more about this in our summer interview with the band). They’ve decided to collect donations for making the album , with every cent of profit going toward the Georgia Theatre, its staff, and Wilmot Greene (the theater’s owner).

In the age of click-download-done, it’s refreshing to see bands trying to break distributional boundaries. It’s even better when it helps out a good cause.

Good luck to Athens, GA and her Georgia Theatre!

The Awkward Off Vs. Magnolia Electric Co.

While touring for their latest album Josephine, MAGNOLIA ELECTRIC CO. stopped by the 40 WATT in ATHENS, GA for a show. I was lucky enough to talk to frontman Jason Molina a bit before the show.

Beyond nervous, I got meet one of my musical heroes, Jason Molina. We talked about how vinyl media has influenced his album crafting, and he explained how their no-nonsense production emerged. When faced with the decision between studio and stage, Molina would choose the kitchen table. He’s not surprised to his lost things in weird places, so he’s taken to shredding his song notebooks and burning his unfinished song tapes. th

Full Transcript (Audio):

Nichole Bennett: I’m Nichole and I’m at the 40 Watt in Athens, GA. I am lucky enough to be with the one and only Jason Molina.

JM: How do you do?

NB: …who is rumored to be one of the hardest-working people in the showbiz.

JM: No. Well, I do write a lot. I do put a lot of sweat into it. I work a lot harder putting together songs, groups of songs and song cycles and the bigger picture of songs, than the entertainment side of it.

NB: So if you had to tell the story of Magnolia Electric Co. going back to Songs: Ohia and back to some of your solo stuff, would it be a pop-up book or a graphic novel?

JM: Definitely a graphic novel with no words.

NB: A silent graphic novel. I think I’d like to read that. Well I guess you wouldn’t read it.

JM: Yeah me too.

NB: Speaking of how hard you work, is anywhere home for you? I know you live in London now, away from your band.

JM: Correct, the band is still in southern Indiana. I still have a house in Indianapolis and hope to one day get back to Chicago. For the time being I’m trying to make London work. Just circumstance led to me living there, and it’s a difficult place to find musicians. Well, it’s difficult to find people without a preconceived notion of what I want out of playing music. Just getting four musicians together to play and see what happens has been really difficult. It’s been a really rocky road. It’s been two years. I’ve ended up flying people from the U.S. over and people from other places in Europe to come and play. Since Josephine was finished, I’ve finished about six projects. I’m working. I write a lot of songs. It just hasn’t been as easy. I know most places in the U.S. if you just throw a rock, you’re going to hit a good musician.

NB: So your latest record is Josephine. The other week, I was playing it for someone and then playing some of your older stuff for them so they could get an idea of some of the changes in a backwards anthology. And I’ve been searching for the word to describe the difference with the new album. It’s not necessarily more minimalistic. It’s almost less bombastic. Is that something that was intentional or something that just arose organically?

JM: While I was writing these songs that became the Josephine LP, I was thinking about things to leave out. I would come up with a lot of ideas, and before committing them to a tape or an arrangement with all of these ideas, I would see if there was any reason to have these other things. Usually there wasn’t a reason because it was kind of forced. I would extract parts. In Josephine there are a lot of references musically to a lot of records I’ve done in the past. So no only lyrically is it a cyclical…cycle. Hah, a cyclical cycle. There’s a lot of lyrical references to older records. There are musical passages that are in there bookending some brand new songs. So I really put everything in there.

NB: Coming from a consumer point of view, I only see the finished product. I know you had to cut some songs out. But to me it’s a very complete, almost vinyl, package with a side A and a side B.

JM: Exactly.

NB: Is that something that you had intended?

JM: Always. For every record I’ve done it like that. For most of the time I’ve been making records, I’ve had the CD as an option. I grew up listening to records. When I write songs, and I start to see a record coming together I don’t see this 78 minute long piece of work. I love doing a side A and a side B. It’s almost like every song is a chapter and then there’s a break in the book and you get the rest of the chapters. Hopefully, when you get to that last song you get a fully-realized story.

NB: You were saying that this one borrows lyrically and somewhat musically from some of your earlier work, and you do have some pretty pervasive themes and metaphors throughout your work. It’s almost not so much about events and stories as it is about feelings. I guess you could take it from there.

JM: Yeah, the listener has to come up with their own story. If tied to the actual sonic imprint of the record, like the recording style and the musical arrangement and the lyrics. If those things all come together then I don’t feel like something was added at the end to add atmosphere. For instance, if you have a finished song. It’s in its best state for you as an artist, and then you decide “let’s add some freaky reverb or delay” to this part. If the piece doesn’t call out for that, then I would feel like I was committing a sin against the song. The song didn’t ask for it.  A lot of the mood to the records comes through just the way of recording. Some of the most renegade records that we did were on a four-track or in someone’s basement with a couple of rickety mics and some duct tape and, you know, a wing and a prayer. These are albums that are still in print and people are still seeking out, and I think that’s grade. If the skeleton, the bones of the thing, are good—the lyrics and the attitude going in to the project—if that’s solid, then the other things that people latch onto like if this is a higher production value record or if this sounds home recorded. That stuff is incidental to me if the song is good. Some of my favorite music was recorded in the 20s and 30s in a hotel room with a microphone and a guy on a guitar just banging his heart out.

NB: And with recent music, so many people are going back in and tweeking their music. There are so many layers now, and it’s almost brave to have things be so bare.

JM: There can be no end to adjusting songs. Even when you’re recording in an analog world, you could spend weeks or months on a song and still do a hell of a lot to it. I want our songs to be a document of what we have with as many arms and voices and shit to pound on that we can do live. Then, if we wanted to go back and add something that we couldn’t do live, if the song required a little bit more, then that’s fine. The song will call out for that.

NB: So that being said, do you prefer studio or stage? I guess that would make them very similar.

JM: A kitchen table. Studio, for sure. I could live in a studio, and in a lot of ways I really wish I did. I’m not really interested in all of the technical elements of recording because I’ve put all of my energy and self-learning into writing songs. I know the value of having a good technician there to document this is just amazing because I don’t have to worry about that. Some people love it, and it actually spark a hell of a lot of creativity. While I’m trying to put together a basic chord progression and make sure that the lyrics have a solid landing ground, I know there a lot of musicians who are thinking of exactly what to do to get this one sound while they are still in the process of writing. It’s just a different way of working, but I would prefer the studio. I really enjoy the studio.

NB: You have some hobbies other than music, don’t you? You do a bit of art.

JM: I do. I do a lot of painting and drawing. On the road I don’t get much done. It’s hard to do in the van, but I work small now and not have paint out because paint in a van rolling down the highway gets hard. It’s hard to write lyrics in the van too. You might have 9 hours in the van, but it’s just awkward to write. I do everything in longhand, and it’s just crazy. It’s mayhem, but I do find myself getting a notebook full of ideas and sometimes a full song. If that doesn’t work out, I just get the pencils out and start drawing.

NB: What type of painting do you like to do?

JM: It’s lots of scribbles and just a little bit of color. It’s all really abstract stuff. I mean I do stupid drawings all the time just for fun, like cartoonish things. I do a little bit of figural stuff. The stuff that was inside the Sojourner box set were mine, but that was just a one off project that I was doing.

NB: Speaking of writing lyrics, is songwriting something that happens in which every song kind of comes similarly or are you just walking around and something comes to you? To me, songwriting is this magical thing.

JM: It’s rare that I’m hit with a lightening bolt of lyrical inspiration, but I may have an idea for a song. I’ll keep that with me. It may just go into my notebook. I may just keep it with me all day and keep revisiting it. I’m not the guy that sits down and has a song title in mind. I like the blank page and the challenge. The pencil and the page: I look at it, and I know I’m going to be sweating over it for a long time. There’s a lot that goes into the paper shredder. I’ll tell you. I actually started shredding lyrics recently because in London people go through everyone’s trash. It’s not that I’m worried about somebody finding my stuff, but there’s times I’ll be walking like a quarter of a mile from my house, and I’ll find part of a notebook of mine just laying in the park. Someone has found that in the trash and dug it out. I mean, it’s still trash, but that is really disturbing to see. You aren’t anywhere near your house and you’re walking. I’m like “That looks like my handwriting. What the fuck!” That’s just really weird.

NB: Wow!

JM: I’ll never forget one time I moved out of a place, and I left two days worth of clothes in my room. I was totally out of my room, and this was already worked out with the landlord that they weren’t going to have anybody in there. I wasn’t sure when I was going to be getting into the new place so I just left some basic things: a change of clothes and some shoes in a little pile. I go back, and my stuff’s all gone. I’m like “Shit! What happened to this stuff?” A year goes by…a couple of tours and stuff, and I’m in a thrift store in the same town that I used to live in and there’s my fucking stuff!

NB: Whoa!

JM: I bought my shoes back and the two rock t-shirts that I had were on the rack. I don’t know if they had been sitting there all that time or if they had finally made it to there. It was disturbing to buy that stuff back. I moved from Chicago and gave everything that I didn’t need to the Salvation Army. Three years when we move back, lo and behold, I’m like “There’s that fucking casserole dish of ours. It’s 25 cents, but I know its ours.” My whole life is kind of like that. It was most disturbing, though, to find my lyrics laying in the street.

NB: I can see why you’ve taken to shredding, but there’s something to permanence. Do you ever want any of them back out of the shredder?

JM: No. At new years I always ditch all of the songs that are totally unfinished. I burn them.

NB: Very interesting.

JM: I’ve been doing it for years and years, and it’s very liberating. It’s probably not the best thing in the world as far as pollution goes to burn a bunch of tapes. I’m not burning studio tapes here. I’m talking about cassette recordings. Four-track recordings and all of these half-filled notebooks of songs that just didn’t get finished. If I let that stuff accumulate, I’ll have a heart attack because I’ll look at that and think that it’s three years of work in order to get one finished product out of that.

NB: Do you ever read press about yourself?

JM: The label sends me a packet. After a record has been out for a year or something they’ll send me a paper copy of just a spectrum: some of the good stuff, some of the bad stuff, all of the really terrible stuff, and a little of the foreign stuff—just to get a handle on it. They know that I don’t read it all, so they don’t send me everything. I’m intrigued by it. I like to glance at it. A shitty review of a record doesn’t really hurt my feelings except when they’ve gotten it completely wrong on the factual side. This isn’t so much the case now, but in the cycle of Josephine, I’m getting the question all the time and the criticism that it’s been three years since Jason put out a record. What’s he been doing? And I’m like “Fuck you! Why don’t you fucking call me!” Because I did three records that just aren’t out yet and six more since November. So when they take the record at hand to task by saying “Well I guess he just hasn’t had any ideas, or he’s being lazy.” I’m like “Well, no. You’re wrong.” But that passes, in two seconds I couldn’t care less. The reason this is coming up is because no one asked me what I was doing. I would have said. I mean, it’s not a secret. I’m workin’.

NB: If you could be any animal what would you be?

JM: I’m like ten.

NB: That’s fine. You can say all ten.

JM: A wolf. A bat. A ram. Black spider. Snake. Sea serpent. An owl. That’s my starting.

NB: Thank you very much.

JM: That’s a ninja question!

The Awkward Off Vs. The Coathangers

Behind stage at THE EARL in ATLANTA, GA I was surrounded by the four lively ladies of THE COATHANGERS.

These ladies are just as energetic in person as they are in their live show, and we had more fun than should be allowed. We complained about lazy internet reviewers and how girl bands are judged more on their looks than boy bands are. They offered great advice for new bands, especially with regard to snack foods. They shared the secret to the glue that keeps them together, told me all about smashing a cardboard city for their music video, and discussed the best things to drop kick.

Full Transcript (Audio):

Nichole Bennett: I’m Nichole. I’m at The Earl in Atlanta, and I’m lucky enough to be with the lovely ladies of The Coathangers.

The Coathangers: Wooooooo!

NB: Do you guys want to go around and introduce yourselves?

Julia Kugel: Hi, I’m Crooked, and I play guitar.

Merideth Franco: I’m Minnie. I play bass.

Candice Jones: I’m Bebe. I play keyboard.

Stephanie Luke: And I’m Rusty. I play drums!

NB: So if somebody came to you and said they wanted to do a documentary on The Coathangers, but it had to be in animation. Would it be in computer animation or claymation or regular animation?

SL: I think old school. Like Popeye. Or the old black and white Mickey and Minnie ones where they don’t talk.

CJ: Steamboat Coathangers.

SL: That’s a good question. Do we want to go old school?

JK: Claymation would be cool too.

CJ: Really animation in general.

JK: As long as we’re not in it.

NB: Any moments in Coathanger’s history that would stick out…that you can see in clay or animation?

SL: Us falling off the edge of our minds.

NB: That would do well in clay I feel.

JK: Setting your shirt on fire.

SL: There are so many.

JK: We’ll have to save them for the documentary.

NB: Speaking of video, I just saw your “Stop Stomp Sompin’” video. Was that as much fun to video as it was to watch?

The Coathangers: Yeah!

CJ: It might have been more fun.

SL: Yeah that was great fun. Our friend Dave Hahn came up with the general idea. We kind of wanted to do something with monsters and aliens. We came up with it along with some other friends.

JK: And so many people donated their time helping us paint those cardboard boxes.

SL: And there was baby powder everywhere. When you see them smashing the buildings and dust flies up that’s baby powder. It got over everything. We had a bitch of a time cleaning that place up.

NB: Did anybody get to keep the skyscrapers?

SL: We kept some of them, and eventually we were like “We don’t have anywhere to put this.” We kept destroying them again at shows.

CJ: After the shoot, though they had been so smashed.

JK: We love garbage.

SL: We’re like garbage collectors.

NB: Do you guys prefer studio or stage?

JK: Recording is hard in its own way and fun in its own way. On stage it’s instant gratification.

SL: I like stage. You just get to wild out. It seems like it’s the it’s the 30, 35, 35 minutes that are the best part of the day. It doesn’t matter what kind of bullshit we’ve been through that day. When we get on stage it’s like a total release. We put a lot of energy into it. I don’t speak for everyone, necessarily. We do rage.

NB: I haven’t seen you guys live yet, but I have seen pictures. It looks like you guys have a lot of fun. Any songs that are your favorite to perform live?

CJ: I like “Down With the Sickness,” a cover to perform live. Merideth has a good “oooh ah ah ah ah.”

NB: If The Coathangers had a catch phrase, what would it be?

JK: Do it!

CJ and SL: Party!

CJ: Scramble!

SL: Get it!

JK: We have a lot of catch phrases.

SL: I’m gonna get you!

JK: How about “Long hair, don’t care.” All of those.

SL: Check. Fact.

CJ: Man, you really got us started now.

NB: Do you guys feel influence by where you come from? I know you are probably tired of hearing “You sound like such and such band,” but I wonder how much where people come from influences their music.

SL: I think where we come from, the Dirty South, influences us.

JK: It’s whatever we’ve been through in our lives.

SL: We’ve seen a lot of Atlanta bands. I wouldn’t say they influence us, but they definitely light a little fire under our butts. But I think our influences are more personal. But being from Atlanta…we’re all about representing Atlanta because Atlanta has represented us nicely.

CJ: It is what it is. We are influenced by the humidity and the mosquitoes.

NB: You guys are notorious, or famous, for your band glue. You guys really click, or that’s what people say.

CJ: It’s because we huff glue together before the show.

NB: Is there a secret?

CJ: It’s because we’re friends. It’s kind of like being sisters except you have a choice on whether or not to remain friends, and we choose to remain friends.

JK: At this point, I don’t know if we have a choice.

CJ: I think you might be right about that.

SL: Yeah, I’d be spending my time with these bitches anyways. I might as well be creating something.

NB: You see so many bands where that is backwards. They are together because of the music first.
SL: I don’t understand how that works. You do go through so much shit emotionally and mentally and psychologically. I think that’s where many bands miss the mark. They are playing the set, but they aren’t playing it together. They are just playing their parts. I don’t like seeing that. I like seeing a well-mushed-together PB&J.

JK: Sometimes that tension helps, but it’s just not us.

NB: Yeah for most two-fer bands they just wander around la la la. But with four people it must take more.

CJ: It takes about an hour to make any decision.

SJ: Just to get out and go to the gas station takes about thirty minutes because I’m always looking at crap I don’t need, like magnets.

NB: Do you guys ever read press about yourselves?

CJ: Yeah but not often.

JK: We try not to.

SL: Especially the blogs because they are mean. I love it when people comment on stuff that has nothing to do with your music. “Those girls look like they came out of American Apparel.”

JK: “They’re not even that cute.”

CJ: “They’re not hot, but they’re not ugly.”

SL: If it was a guy band, I doubt you would be like that. It’s just because we are a girl band that they think we give a shit. We kind of do. But not really!

NB: And then we get into this internet gobbledygook. The reviews begin to sound canned after a while, and they like to make up genres. And they label you “punk.” What does “punk” mean to you guys, and do you feel that label fits?

JK: No.

SL: It kind of baffles us. I think it’s because we’re loud, and we don’t play that great.

JK: And we speak our minds.

SL: I think “punk” is more of a mentality, a lifestyle, of not really giving a shit what other people think. It’s about giving a shit about what your agenda is. It’s not even an agenda. It’s just the way you live you live. People think “punk” is about mohawks and peeing on people’s cars, but it’s also about feminism and respect and…

JK: Doing the damn thing.

CJ: We are riding the yes-wave. Not no-wave, yes-wave.

SL: We didn’t call ourselves that. We just play what comes to us. We’ve never been a label, and we don’t know anything else.

JK: I guess you wouldn’t classify us as rock ‘n’ roll, and you wouldn’t classify us as du-wop.

CJ: We’re not jazz.

JK: We could be screamo. Femme-core.

NB: If you could replace your arms with anything, what would it be?

SL: We love questions like this!

JK: I would replace my arms with money.

MF: I would replace one with a bubble wand.

SL: I can’t replace mine with any kind of food. Emily would replace hers with cheesy poofs. That’s our tour manager.

CJ: I would replace one with a pencil or a pen because I’m always looking for one that I lost. The other one might be a string or something. My cat would like that.

SL: I would replace mine with two taps, one involving Jameson whiskey and the other a never-ending supply of PBR.

NB: So when this happens I want to hang out with you guys. What kind of advice do you have for bands that are just starting out?

SL: Don’t listen to anybody.

JK: Except people that encourage you.

MF: Do what you want to do.

JK: And try not to try to sound like anyone.

CJ: Take snacks when you go on tour.

SJ: Something other than chips. You’ll have a diet of nothing but chips and Taco Bell.

NB: What is The Coathangers favorite thing to punch or drop kick?

CJ: Kittens.

SL: Babies. Newborns! Once they get to six months, they really don’t fly as well. Or ex-boyfriends.

CJ: Anything really. We like to kick things.

The Awkward Off Vs. Handsome Furs

Before their show, HANDSOME FURS met me for an interview at THE EARL in ATLANTA, GA.

I was immediately stoked because Dan was wearing a shirt from my favorite East Atlanta record store, Reactionary Records. Later in the interview, we were joined by Paul Tilghmon, the store’s owner, who was confused to find himself in the middle of an interview.

We touched on all of the bases: dog farts, smoking with inhalers, and punk squats used for music videos. Alexei and Dan are just as nice as you would imagine, and they aren’t nearly as tired as you would think of interviewers asking them about being a couple and in a band.

After ragging on the FCC and censorship for a spell, we compromised by making up our own swear words and went straight into the interview. “Consarnit! Dagnabit!”

Special thanks to Matt Crisler for taking photographs and for being my concert buddy.

Full Transcript (Audio):

Nichole Bennett: On that note. I am Nichole. I am at the Earl in Atlanta, and I am lucky enough to be surrounded by members of Handsome Furs.

Alexei Perry: We’re only two. I’m Alexei.

NB: Yeah! I was going to ask you to introduce yourselves.

AP: And that’s Dan.

Dan Boeckner: Dan right here.

NB: So, if you had to tell the story of Handsome Furs, would it be a pop up book or a graphic novel?

DB and AP: Graphic novel.

NB: That was very quick.

AP: We read a lot of graphic novels, so it’s easy.

NB: I was going to ask you about your videos. Before the recorder got turned on, we were talking a lot about farting dogs and other such things. Your video for “Face Control” was just released.

AP: That was a really fun one to shoot.

NB: Yeah, I was going to ask if they were as much fun to shoot as they are to watch.

AP: Yeah, we are really fortunate to always work with friends, doing the directing and all the filming and everything. That was done by a guy name Scott Coffey out of Portland. We went there for two days and had to bang it out as quickly as possible.

NB: Wow.

DB: Yeah, we shot that video in under 48 hours for a budget of under $5,000. For indie rock videos, even…a lot of them clock in at twenty grand. We shot it at a punk squat next door to Scott’s house.

AP: And he just befriended them…you know. He was like “You guys do this anyway. Can we throw a party at your house?”

DB: We bought them beer and that made everybody happy. The first night was the interior shooting, and the next day was the outdoor stuff. The first night we were shooting it to look like a party, but it actually turned into a party.

AP: A really great party. It went so late. We were like, this isn’t going to match the shots anymore—the sun’s coming up.

DB: And it became difficult to act as we got really drunk.

NB: Do you guys prefer studio or stage?

DB and AP: Stage.

NB: You guys look like you have a lot of fun. I’ve seen you at both of the South By Southwests that I’ve been.

DB: Generally I like playing the new stuff.

AP: Yeah I think the new stuff is most exciting. You are on your toes trying to figure everything out, and when it all works out it’s really triumphant.

NB: I think for my first Handsome Furs experience….wow I wish this was on video.

DB: We’ll describe it for our radio listeners.

AP: Neil from The Cinnamon band just came in and handed us his inhaler because he needs to have a smoke.

DB: Smoke your face off.

NB: Oh, my first Handsome Furs experience. I was sneaking my way to the front of the tent, and the whole stage is rocking. Alexei’s Corona keeps earthquaking its way to the edge, and she keeps grabbing it just in time.

AP: Yeah we have a lot of fun on stage. Whoa a bug!

NB: I really do need to get into videoing these.

DB: It’s a creature…a cockroach.

NB: Narration—a cockroach creature just flew up into an old wasp’s nest.

AP: This is really good radio.

DB: Solid radio.

NB: Maybe I should get into TV. This is just like Prairie Home Companion with Handsome Furs. And I heard that when you guys do recordings, you do sort of a first-take thing. It sounds very fresh.

AP: That’s kind of our policy. We try to make it sound as live as possible, and we don’t want to do a lot of tinkering. Because we work with a drum machine, there is already that element of programming. While we are trying to do a recording, we try to do it as raw as possible.

NB: On a scale of one to definitely, how tired are you guys of interviewers asking you what’s it’s like to be married and in a band?

AP: I’m only really tired of that when they are lazy enough to use that as their angle. What happens a lot is when that question gets asked, it’s usually followed by “What couple band do you compare yourself to?” I’m like, “fuck off.” Ike and Tina Turner. Not really. I understand. It’s interesting. Honestly any journalist that is interested in us, we want to be as open and friendly as possible. And that fact is inescapable. That’s what we are. We have a very good time on stage. It’s hard not to notice that we are very much in love. It doesn’t tire me. It just tires me if the followups are lame.

NB: Yeah I read some that were totally focused on that.

AP: Yeah, we don’t write love songs. You’ve got the wrong band if you are trying to peg us as a cute couple. We love each other, but that’s about as far as it gets as far a songwriting.

DB: Yeah, absolutely.

NB: That being said, do you read press about yourself? I think that would be kind of nerveracking.

DB: I do sometimes. Yeah, for sure. Anybody who says they don’t read their press is lying.

AP: Yeah, it’s like “Do you not read?” I’m interested in new music so I go to blogs and magazines and such. So of course I’m going to end up reading some of it.

DB: It’s also that you can make the metaphor that it’s like you’re at a house, and there’s a door. There’s an entire room of people who are talking about you. Some of them are saying good things, and some of them are saying mean things. You know that’s happening. You know that’s going on. You have the ability to hear what they are saying without them know you are listening to them. Of course people do that! People make art, and they put it out in the world. They’re fucking vain.

AP: The truth is that there is also a really humbling part to that fame or notoriety or whatever because everything that you do is so immediately given back to you. I’m curious to know that. I wouldn’t fucking play live if I didn’t care what people thought.

DB: The trick is not to read it too much and not to take it too seriously.

AP: And also some bands that read it too much try to construct themselves in a way to be audience-friendly or critic-friendly, and that is something I’m totally against. I cannot choose my audience. I’m thrilled with whoever comes.

DB: You can’t change your art to match what you think people are thinking. And you can’t turn the tarot-internet babble into “We should write our songs in more of a major key” or “We should make our tempos faster.” “We should sing about this instead of singing about that.” You can’t do that. It’s just impossible. Everybody is as loud as everybody else on the internet, so there’s no way of judging.

NB: It’s a weird era that we live in. It’s sort of an A.D.D. internet mentality. And you can be anonymous…totally anonymous. You can be as mean as you want or as super nice as you want. It’s a strange set of extremes. You aren’t going to bother to post on the internet if it’s like “ah, meh.”

DB: I remember years ago when Wolf Parade was just starting out, I read something really awful on the Montreal music scene blog. At the start of that whole Montreal music scene…

AP: You’re basically like, “I know this person!”

DB: Well, the thing is I didn’t know that person, but I found out who he was. We weren’t friends or anything. His name was Dave. I went to a show…

NB: Dave, now your name is released on the internet.

AP: You are outed!

DB: Dave, as far as I know doesn’t make music or play music. He’s just a large internet presence. So, I saw him at a show. He was considerably younger than me. I think we were watching Comets on Fire. I was like “You’re the guy who wrote X on the Internet. Why did you write that? Like, really?” Then, he basically ran away from me. That experience really changed my relationship with reading reviews and such.

NB: How would you describe your sound to a five year old?

DB: Loud.

AP: It’s going to make you dance, baby!

NB: You guys do something that is brave, especially with having an electronic element. Your sound is pretty sparse. Usually with two people bands will try to cover that up. I was wondering if that was conscious or just came about organically.

AP: Yeah, it’s conscious in that it’s just us, and we just use the instrumentation that we have. And I think sonically what you do reflects on how you feel about the world, and how I feel about the world is totally dissatisfied with how empty things are. So I use that as a backdrop.

NB: We are getting a music and a show. Background music provided by Tree. On that note—so many bands are so very symphonic. It’s nice, but it’s refreshing to have something that is sparse and fresh.

DB: You know, in these tough economic times.

AP: You’ve got to keep things cheap.

NB: Noise costs money!

AP: We can’t afford xylophones!

DB: In these tough economic times, only the upper-upper class can afford a harmonium or a cello player or a bunch of violin players. It’s a band of the people, you know. The people’s music.

NB: If you could break one world record, what would it be?

DB: Most sweat on stage.

AP: Really? Mine is so lame, and it has to do with spicy food. That is all because of my father.

DB: I thought your world record would be to read more books than anyone.

AP: Yeah I want to read more books. That’s good too. I said that earlier today. So, yeah.

DB: Alexei secretly wants to own every single book ever published.

NB: What advice would you offer an up-and-coming band?

AP: Just tour. Play as much as you can, and do it with every earnest bone you have in your body.

NB: Which is something that you guys are really known for, and something that you guys really put yourselves into. Is this tour going well?

DB and AP: Yeah.

NB: You just came from Chapel Hill.

DB: Yeah, this leg of the tour is going good.

AP: Yeah that’s really my only thing to tell new bands is to play as many live shows as you possibly can.

DB: Yeah focus on playing live. Don’t focus on getting a great song to put on your Myspace page or getting a manager or signing with a record label. Just go on tour. Play shows in front of people. Record labels are going to be completely obsolete in the next five years, and the only thing people are going to be able to judge a band on is…Hey!

[Paul Tilghmon enters]

AP: We just bought records from him.

DB: Yeah we just went to…

NB: Reactionary Records! Did you guys pick up anything cool?

AP: We got Recommendations from Radio City

DB: And The Jags.  Which Paul wouldn’t sell me because they were his only copies.

Paul Tilghmon: I’ll sell them to you.

DB: Which means another trip to the store. We go Joe Gibbs and Phyllis Dillon. The Gibbs is a compilation and Phyllis Dillon’s One Life to Live. And I got a t-shirt too. You should support your local record store.

NB: Yeah I need a t-shirt before I move.

DB: Schoolkids Records shut down in Chapel Hill.

AP: Yeah we were pretty bummed because we wanted to go there.

DB: Support your local record stores and buy vinyl.

NB: I’m biased, but it’s my favorite. What are some of your favorite places to play?

AP: I’ll just go with some of the more recent ones because there’s a lot. Bucharest was amazing. Belgrade. Zagreb fantastic. Every show in Helsinki is life-changing and amazing. Philly was really great. New York is always beautiful.

DB: Detroit was pretty cool. We played a free show outside for the Comerica City Fest. Anybody could come.

AP: A lot of families…a lot of dancing kids.

DB: Not really our usual crowd but definitely a fun time.

NB: If you can get little kids to dance, then you’ve accomplished something.

DB: Little kids will dance to anything.

AP: They are very selective. No, no, no they are a very discerning crowd!

DB: Little kids will dance to Napalm Death.

NB: And I will end on if you could be any animal, what would you be?

AP: Dan would be an otter!

DB: I would be an otter. You would be a jaguar, I guess.

AP: We’ve discussed this a lot.

NB: It sounds like a recent discussion. I should just get these two to interview each other. Thank you very much!

The Awkward Off Vs. Venice Is Sinking

After their show at THE EARL in ATLANTA, GA band members of VENICE IS SINKING joined me for an interview.

Before finally shutting down the club on that Sunday night, we were able to talk about the many things that interest Venice is Sinking. We set the record straight and credited the horn parts on their latest record to the correct person. We talked about the influence of Athens on their music, and they backed up my theory that every musician from Athens is, was, or will be in the band Dark Meat. In an eerie prelude to that summer’s tragic Georgia Theatre fire, we talked about the album they recorded there and the importance of “musical mistakes.” We also talked about the internet’s double-edge influence on bands, fans, and press and we found out that Lucas (the drummer) loves every cereal in the grocery aisle.

Special thanks to Matt Crisler for taking photographs of the show and for being my concert buddy.

Full Transcript (Audio):

Lucas Jensen: My name is Lucas Jensen!

Nichole Bennett: My name is Nichole. I’m in the Earl in Atlanta, GA, and I’m lucky enough to be surrounded by members of Venice is Sinking. Would you guys mind going around and introducing yourselves?

Daniel Lawson: Lucas already went.

Lucas Jensen: My name is Lucas Jensen! I play drums!

James Sewell: I’m James Sewell, and I play keyboards.

DL: And trumpet.

JS: And trumpet.

DL: I’m Daniel Lawson. I play guitar, and I also sing.

NB: If you were to tell the story of your band, would it be a comic book or a pop up book?

DL: We were just talking about pop up books.

LJ: I think we would have to go with pop up book. In person maybe we are goofier, but our music is more ornate or pretty. Some sort of glittery griffin with some fairies kind of pop up book.

DL: I think it captures our whimsical side and our artistic depth.

LJ: I’m just kidding. I don’t want any fairies at all near us. We’ll leave that for the Tori Amos set.

DL: We talked about doing this though…back when we thought we would have money for things.

JS: Before global warming, the economy….World War II.

LJ: Yeah that was back before 9/11.

DL: We were just fetuses.

LJ: That’s true. Before 9/11 we were at some point. Everything changed that day. It’s not good to joke about that still?

DL: I guess not.

NB: It’s almost acceptable.

LJ: We were going to say before that we are not commenting on 9/11. Pop up book it is.

NB: So your latest album has been gaining a lot of press, and I heard that it was a more democratic album than your first one. As in, the whole band was involved in the making of this one—is that true?

DL: Yeah. I think with the first record I had a lot of songs lying around before we were even a band, so we ended up using those. With this one, it was just a lot more collaborative. Like James came in with that bit that is the thematic…

JS: The Azar theme.

DL: …that main melody that is intertwined throughout the record—that’s all James. There’s that one day, Lucas, where you, me, and Karolyn…

LJ: It was two days, and we wrote three songs or something. We wrote “Sun Belt.” “Ryan’s Song” was just this instrumental we had, and we turned it into something one day. We did something else too…we finished “Iron Range.” It was like, wow those were a great two days, and then we took months off and didn’t do anything. I think Daniel had these songs, and it was more of his project…and that’s not saying it shouldn’t be..

DL: I brought stuff early in on this record, and we all fleshed it out.

JS: Yeah that was the fundamental difference. Even if you had the fundamental idea of what a song would be, it wasn’t all done. When I first joined in 2005—because I’m not the first keyboard player—I was told the parts to play basically, and they were within the limits and ranges not only of the old keyboard player but of the old keyboard, which was considerably smaller. It had like one sound you could switch on. So for the new record, it was a more collaborative songwriting effort but also for the individual parts like the keyboard part.

DL: Yeah, and you got to do the horn charts and stuff for “Okay.” That’s all you.

LJ: Which somehow managed to go uncredited on the records, but now we will set the record straight. The song “Okay” off Azar by Venice is Sinking: horn arrangements by James Harold Sewell.

DL: Junior.

LJ: Junior. So there we go. Maybe BMI can put that in there.

NB: I believe on your website you say that this album talk about a location’s ability to influence. You guys are out of Athens, which is well-known for it’s music and it’s billions and millions of musicians. How do you feel that being located in Athens has affected you guys.

DL: It’s certainly helped. There’s somewhat of a cache trying to book shows out of town if you are from Athens.

LJ: People are definitely interested in the scene—everything from B-52’s to Pylon to Widespread Panic. There are a lot of people out of Athens that people don’t even talk about. Matthew Sweat got his start there and The Glands…the whole E-6 thing with Neutral Milk Hotel, Olivia Tremor Control. If you know indie rock, there’s a lot of great indie rock from there. It’s a wonderful music town. There’s so much influence too.

DL: It’s a great place to start out as a band. As a really young band you could play every week if you wanted to. There’s plenty of venues.

LS: And you can have a different audience as well. There are going to be different people at different venues.

DL: For somewhere like Clemson, I’d imagine it’s a little more limited.

NB: Limited.

LJ: Not to discredit Clemson at all.

NB: No, no no. There are definitely places that could be venues, but it’s the audience that is more keen on cover bands and jam bands.

LJ: No problem with jam bands and cover bands, though. They definitely serve their purpose, and there are even quite a few popular ones. It’s not our scene necessarily, but we certainly don’t begrudge that. [In Athens] there are so many musicians living together that everyone has their own thing, their own side projects along with collaborations.

NB: Dark Meat.

LJ: Yeah Dark Meat. Everybody’s in that band. Our old bassist actually was in it for a while.

NB: Raise your hand if you are in Dark Meat.

LJ: Our old bassist Steve [Miller] threw out sandwiches for them for a while. That was kind of his job. Obviously it influences us, but more than that—getting back to the locations thing—ther’s a song on our last album CSX about moving out of our old practice space. It has a very southern feel to it. People don’t actually hone in on this in our music, but it’s actually pretty southern. The third record is going to be even more so. We like plenty of British bands, but I feel like there is an Americana thing even if it isn’t twangy or country. A part of that is that in Athens you are surrounded by kudzu, train tracks, and porches. Moths and mosquitos.

Benjamin Weikel [from The Helio Sequence]: Big fucking bugs.

LJ: Yeah you guys don’t have bugs like that in Portland.

BW: Yeah there was one time before a show…I was out back, and I always stretch before I play. There was a black widow hanging from a water spout. I was like, wow, black widow. That’s a big spider. Then I went a little further down, and this wood spider comes out. It was as big as my hand. I was terrified.

LJ: Did you see the cockroaches? This probably doesn’t happen in Oregon, but in some of the old houses here, they are just there. The exterminator can come, but they are just part of your existence.

DL: My cat eats them.

NB: Speaking of the new album, I heard that you guys are doing a Cowboy Junkies Trinity thing. Is that true?

LJ: Yeah that record was recorded a year ago, actually. Which is kind of depressing that we haven’t put it out yet, but we had to put this one out in order.

DL: It always takes so much longer.

LJ: Yeah, we are going to put this one out on vinyl.

DL: It was recorded in Georgia Theatre. They shut it down for one week, and we recorded it with Dave Barbie using just two stereo microphones.

LJ: Unidirection, I think. I mean, we don’t know that much about this, but you can hear where everyone is placed on the stage, if that makes any sense. It’s like flattening 3-D a little bit. You can hear that placement. We used only two mics. We recorded directly to tape.

DL: It’s totally live, but it’s not a live record like you would think of.

LJ: There’s no clapping.

DL: Yeah no one was in there, it was just a big empty room, us rolling take after take.

LJ: Like The Trinity Sessions, we tried to pick the best one. We played a lot louder than The Trinity Sessions though. They used one mic, and we used two. We went direct to quarter-inch tape, so the mixing that was done was done live, pretty much just setting the levels. That brings about some interesting things. Some are good. Some are bad. If the vocals are a little quiet on one song, they are a little quiet. That’s it. On another song if it goes a little loud, it might peak out and get distorted.

DL: Yeah, it’s totally unusual, and you are constantly adjusting the volume, maybe. I mean, if you are just sitting down and listening to the record maybe. If you are in your car, you are constantly fiddling with the knob. Which is cool because you don’t normally hear records like that. Everything is so compressed now.

JS: Normalized.

LJ: Like the whole Metallica controversy with the new record. It was so loud and even, the mastering job. Our record is definitely old fashioned that way. We’re not luddites or anything. We love technology and hip-hop and all of these other things that use modern technology, but this record is just really pure in that regard. It’s cool to have musical mistakes on there. With a lot of modern music, it’s buffed to perfection. With indie rock too—don’t let indie rockers tell you they don’t autotune. They are autotuning everything. Everything is just spit-shine clean.

DL: That’s kind of what we did on Azar, so it was nice to have a record that was the complete opposite. Someone told us there was an opening.

LJ: Yeah, we were finished with Azar in eight months. In two months, we had to write songs and put it all together. So, there is an immediacy to the songs.

JS: Some of us, not any of us here, hate some of those songs and don’t want to play them. She’ll remain nameless, but she doesn’t want to play them.

LJ: But that’s Will’s favorite song on the record.

JS: One of my favorites too.

LJ: We put them together quickly, and that’s kind of scary to me. We had some meltdowns. We got drunk a lot…a lot of Scotch. It was a fun experience.

JS: It was pieced together a lot hastier than Azar. When we got in the studio, and Scott Solter asked us what color our album was, we didn’t know. And it turned out that was a valid question. With the Georgia Theatre stuff, we came up a lot different.

LJ: It’s a lot twangier. Well, not twangier but acoustic-ier. It’s the opposite.

NB: I would be interested to hear that.

LJ: So the next record, the fourth record: apocalyptic dance party record. This won’t happen, and this will be somewhere. And I’ll look like a total idiot.

NB: Headline of Pitchfork tomorrow!

LJ: Yeah I wish they would care that much about us.

NB: Remind me to tell you about Spoonfork.

LJ: I just want to embrace more rhythmic ideas. It’s pretty, but maybe it’s a little edgier. I want your guitars to sound like Boris on top for me to sound like Miami Bass. And then you’ve got piano…I don’t know. It might be awful, but you’ve only got one life, one go-around. You’ve got to take chances.

DL: It’s evolved from just my straight reggaeton.

LJ: No offense to reggaeton people, but god it’s so repetitive. Also we don’t know what we are doing. It’s all the same beat. We tried to listen to Pandora and come up with different beats, but it’s all the same beat!

NB: Before the show, we were all talking about the internet’s role in music. There’s a danger in a few ways. A band can get over-hyped, but at the same time it’s something for bands that never would have gotten any notice at all. So I was wondering what you guys thought about how the internet plays a role for Venice is Sinking? Has it helped you guys, hurt you guys?

JS: All of this stuff is available for download on the internet illegally.

LJ: If you search “Venice is Sinking Azar” on Google probably the fifth thing down is a rapidshare. It’s a pretty good bit rate too. It’s not even an up-convert.

DL: I think it’s kind of awesome because people have our music.

JS: Yeah it’s not necessarily a negative thing.

LJ: There’s really nothing we can do about it.

DL: It’s just been very different from our last record which came out in 2006. That stuff wasn’t quite as common.

LJ: Now it’s just everywhere. There’s good things too. You can hear it on Last.fm. We have it up on iLike. iLike’s cheesy or whatever. Lala—you can listen to the whole album without paying for it. You can check it out if you want to buy it. Blogs have been really good to us with interviews and things. Stereogum premiered our video, which was great. Pitchfork, fingers crossed, will hopefully review this one. They gave the last one a 7.0. That’s a pretty great rating. I think there’s a lot of opportunity. There’s a lot of press. There’s so much other noise too. I think that’s the dark side. We’ve had more opportunities to connect with fans than before through Myspace, Facebook, all these other things. At the same time, so does everybody else. I think there is a widening of the scope of what indie-dom is and the number of bands there are, but I don’t see a lot of heightening. In fact, you can look at sales figures, and you can see that from a sales perspective sales are tanking everywhere. But, certainly, there is a better communication between the fan and the band. And the fan and press, the band and press. It’s a wash. You might get in a couple of ‘zines before the blogs, but you wouldn’t get in Spin or Rolling Stone. You’re still not going to, but you have all of these other places you can get in. Maybe ultimately it’s a gain. I wish we were more successful, but I’m sure a lot of people do. You take advantage of these opportunities. Keeping track of it is a real pain—keeping track of all of the different webthings, Myspace events, Facebook events. You do a Facebook event, and 73 people confirm. You look out at the show, and 10 of them are there. What does that mean? There’s so much noise, and a lot of it doesn’t mean anything. At first I used our Twitter as totally promotional, but I just merged it with mine. So, I talk about my cat and stuff. It doesn’t matter. It’s just content out there.

NB: The internet has also helped you guys bring out some of your music videos, as we talked about earlier, with “Ryan’s Song” on Stereogum. You guys actually won an award for one off of the last album.

LJ: “Pulaski Heights.” We are lucky to know people who do video very inexpensively and are talented. All of the credit goes to them for that. We’re not actors.

JS: And living in an artist’s town has a lot to do with that.

LJ: There is a great visual arts community as well.

NB: And then before we had the Powerpoint.

LJ: Oh, I made that one myself. Nobody’s ever watched that. I laughed my way through it, but some people thought I was being sort of serious. Some people are like “that’s really terrible.” I know. We should give that one another promotional push. I’m gonna twitter-tweet that.

NB: They are kicking us out of the Earl because of Sunday midnight rules, so we will end on everyone’s favorite cereal.

LJ: I like a lot.

DL: I don’t know that I have one, but I was just in Sweden visiting our old keyboard player, and it was kind of astounding—their grocery stores—because everything in them was completely healthy. Like, the grocery store on the corner from my house—you couldn’t buy wheat bread there. It’s all just Sunbeam white. You go to a grocery store in Sweden, and it is all heavy and dark. There’s a whole aisle in this urban grocery store that is all muesli varieties. So, I guess I’m going to go with that.

JS: I’ve been big on Raisin Bran lately.

LJ: Classic.

JS: It’s got some sweetness to it. I’m moving up from the kids’ cereal.

LJ: I have a lot. I really like Cocoa Pebbles. I grew up not eating sweet cereal, so when I have them it’s really good. I like the healthier stuff. I gotta say Life cereal is pretty much the jam. Cinnamon Life is really good. Oh’s are good, but they cut my mouth open. I know that sounds really weird. Golden Grams are real good. Cinnamon Toast Crunch is good. I don’t think Apple Jacks is that good. It seems good at the time, and then half way through the box…

JS: Same with Fruit Loops.

LJ: The semi-healthy cereals are really good. Smart Start—I’m not gonna lie. I like Grape Nuts.

DL: Didn’t you put Grape Nuts in your percussion shaker thing?

LJ: Yeah I put Grape Nuts in my shaker, and my shaker blew open.

NB: I’m glad this is relating back to music.

LJ: It blew up. All the little beadies fell out, and I needed a replacement so I put Grape Nuts in it. It just sounds dead. It’s not a good shaker anymore.

The Awkward Off Vs. The Helio Sequence

Members of THE HELIO SEQUENCE chatted with me on the back porch of THE EARL in ATLANTA, GA before their show.

Even when my questions were about trading cars for dinosaurs, Benjamin and Brandon took me seriously. That’s no surprise, considering how carefully they consider their music–from songwriting to production. From their past jobs as instrument repo men to coming back from a lost voice, these guys have been nothing but sincere. Read on to learn about everything from their tips for success as an independent artist to their plans for making revenue from dinosaurs.

Thanks to the sweethearts at Sub Pop who were kind enough to blog about this interview.

Special thanks to Matt Crisler for taking photographs of the interview and for being my concert buddy.

Full Transcript: (Audio)

Nichole Bennett: Alright, I’m Nichole, and I am lucky enough to be here at the EARL in Atlanta with members of The Helio Sequence. Would you guys mind introducing yourselves?
Brandon Summers: I’m Brandon.
Benjamin Weikel: And I’m Benjamin.
NB: So, there’s a lot of information online about the story of you guys, and most people who are literate and have an internet connection can look that up. If they were to reenact your story, would they use marionette puppets or sock puppets?
BS: Finger puppets probably.
BW: I was thinking we might as well go all the way with marionettes. Or Jim Henson, you know?
NB: We’re going with muppets?
BW: Yeah, totally muppets, dark crystal, that would be cool.
BS: Lo-fi or big budget.
BW: I think we would get more realistic drumming action with like the Animal thing.
BS: Animal, yeah. Animal could play you.
NB: That’s a good one. So, we settled on muppets? And you guys used to work at a record store together?
BS: We did. It was actually a music store. It was more like a band instrument rental store with some guitars. So we were renting instruments to kids who were beginning band.
NB: Any stories from that? Any funny…or scary stories?
BS: Oh jeez, too many to remember. We used to practice there, which is sort of a story in and of itself.
BW: We actually recorded our first records there. I was a band instrument repo guy for a while.
NB: I didn’t know that existed!
BW: I became responsible for all of the accounts. And there had been people who basically had never paid for years, and I’d have to track them down.
BS: It got to be where you knew these people. It was like “Oh, that woman would come in and say she paid it off and would actually drop twenty five dollars on us.”
BW: Some people would be alright, but some people would be really weird. They’d bring their kid to the front door and be like “This is what happens!” Yelling at the kid because he can’t fifteen dollars a month for a clarinet.
NB: The drama of a music store!
BS: Like “He could have been the next Jon Bon Jovi, but you took that chance away from him”
BW: I have a pretty bitter taste from all that repo business. It’s not my kind of thing.
NB: Yeah, I played saxophone, so that was kind of expensive. But that’s another story.
BS: But you paid for it?
NB: Yeah…upfront. That was not very fun. So, again anybody who is literate and has an internet connection can learn about how you lost your voice and how you gained it back.
BS: Right.
NB: But I was curious about something most others had skimmed over and that is the Bob Dylan connection. You got to read a lot during that time, and his was the first book. And there are some of my favorite Bob Dylan covers on this album. And I read that you gained your voice back by playing a lot of Bob Dylan. Is that true, or am I just making this up?
BS: Yeah, in a way. That’s kind of a gloss over. You know how records come to you at a time when you really need them? I don’t know if that makes any sense. You just happen to hear a record at a certain point in your life, and it means a lot to you. For some reason when I lost my voice…it’s not like I didn’t know who Bob Dylan was before I lost my voice, but I happened to be at the record store, and I happened to come across a copy of The Times, They Are a Changin’ And I was like, I’ve never really listened to this record. I just bought it on a whim, and it really meant a lot to me, particularly the song “Boots of Spanish Leather.” That was the first song that I decided to learn. And then from there, I thought it was interesting to actually put the chords under my fingers and actually learn a song, so I should do more of that.
NB: I really like that. I think that one of the big things music does for people. It’s kind of a soundtrack, in a way. Yeah, I was actually going to ask you what your soundtrack album was from that time, and you just answered that for me.
BS: And other things come along. What else were we listening to during that time?
BW: I don’t know. That was such a long time ago.
BS: I remember listening to a lot of Dark Side of the Moon during that time. You can infer a lot from that, I’m sure.
NB: Oh yeah, I get that in the album.
BS: So we decided to put some extended guitar solos in, and then we cut them all out.
NB: Speaking of the latest record, there’s kind of an almost a paradox between a more polished sound, but you still have that “off the cuff” sound. I heard that “The Captive Mind,” you just recorded.
BS: Yeah, a lot of the vocal stuff was just first take. We would be working on something in the studio, and I would be able to take it home and work on the vocals.
BW: The demos.
BS: Yeah, the demo stuff, really rough. And bring it back and record the real version of it. And when I went to lay down the real track, something was missing from it. Something about the energy or the feeling of it or the meaning. And it was kind of “Well, what if we just redo some of the instruments around it. Lay down the drums again and the guitar and the bass, all kinds of stuff, and just use those vocal takes.” A lot of it ended up like that. A lot of it was first take stuff. It’s almost better that way.
NB: Yeah, you get a combination, almost a paradox between…it’s definitely very polished, like you tweaked it, but at the same time it’s very organic.
BS: That’s probably a lot of the mixing process. We spend a lot of time working it out. We record our own records and mix them.
NB: I think it’s neat when a band takes things from start to finish.
BS: I can’t imagine doing it any other way. It amazes me when a band is like, “Yeah, when we recorded the record we went in for about a week, and then we handed it off to a bunch of people and they finished it for us.” I don’t understand it.
NB: I imagine you would get handed back something totally different than you had actually put out. But you guys have control over that side of things.
BF: Maybe we’re just control freaks.
NB: This record is also more lyrically focused. And I say that, but at the same time, if you took the lyrics out, the songs would be able to stand by themselves. And it’s a little less cluttery. I hate the word cluttery because I do like the older stuff too because it is that way.
BW: Yeah, but when you compare them, that sums it up in a way. We approached the record thinking that way. Bob Dylan is a great example of somebody that makes songs that to us that are really really meaningful. And it’s not so much about the music as the lyrics or the story. And so we thought, we love music with orchestration and all of the crazy sounds, but let’s try to see if we can make more of a lyrical connection. So when we were doing all the orchestration, instead of just throwing it all together and being like “Here’s everything!”.
BS: And having to work the vocals in after that.
BW: It would be like “That’s kind of just getting in the way of it.” It’s really all about the vibe. It had a feeling from the beginning. Whenever we did something that felt like it was changing it too much or it was losing that feeling, we just cut it out. So then it ended up being…compared to the average band there are still more parts and more orchestrated, but for us, it was a little more sparse.
NB: Yeah, I think you can get that. I discovered you guys after you opened for Minus the Bear, and I immediately picked up Love and Distance there. And I never buy albums from opening bands.
Matt Crisler [taking photographs of interview]: Band snob!
NB: That is not what I meant at all. I meant I never buy an album from a band that I don’t even know, like right there, and I did. And I listened to it. And then the new one came out, and I was blown away by how different it was, but it was still you guys. But you guys put it much better than I could. Obviously, I’m very terrible with words.
BW: It’s a good thing you’re a writer.
NB: Yeah, it’s a good thing. I actually really wanted to ask you guys. You did something on this latest album that is sometimes scary for smaller bands, scary for indie bands. I think this was a lot more universal than most bands would go.
BW: Yeah, it’s totally out of fashion.
NB: It’s not very fashionable to appeal to a lot of people.
BW: I don’t know if it’s a question of appealing to a lot of people. I think it’s more a question of meaning.
BS: Well, I think it’s a question of just saying what you want to say. Like, when I’m writing lyrics, I’m thinking something to myself, and I’m just writing. I’m not thinking of something being universal or trying to get to a large amount of people. But I know what you’re saying, I think that a lot of lyrics, especially in the indie world come off as impressionistic. Like, a little image here, a little image here. Don’t do something that is too specific because then you’re going to have to take responsibility for having said that.
BW: Some people do it so well that they are creating a mood, and the only way to keep it that was is by not saying something, by having it be almost sort of more background. Almost commercial. And I don’t mean commercial in the sense of sellable, but commercial as literally in a sense of in the background. Like background when you’re driving, background when you’re hanging out in a bar. Nothing that is really going to get that close to you. Something that is going to be off. You can push it away, and it’s there and it sounds great, feels great, you know. But the moment somebody starts saying something that are personal, that means something, and I don’t think that’s the fad of music right now.
NB: It’s almost dangerous.
BS: Yeah I guess it could be. But more and more, the older I get, the music I am listening to, I’m actually listening to what people say. I’m listening to what is going on behind the sound of something or just “I like how that part sounds” or “That’s a catchy part.” That’s one level of music, and I don’t think you should discount that, especially if you’re making pop music, in essence. But if you’re able to make a song on that level, and then think to yourself “Well, what are they saying. What is that guy saying?” And it may be that I’m not getting anything from that. It doesn’t make any sense, or it’s all mixed up. That, to me, it actually brings the value of the song down.
BW: There are a lot of records, and I’m definitely not naming any names, but there are a lot of records on the surface that I’m really immediately excited about. But the more I listen to the music, I’m like “What is he saying?” It’s kind of killing it for me. The lyrics are either really horrible, or you can’t hear them. Everyone’s hiding behind the lo-fi.
BS: What you are saying is that if you’re saying something, you have to take responsibility for it. And you’re saying there’s something dangerous about it. And I’ve thought about it—that you somehow risk not being cool anymore by not agreeing with somebody. So it’s interesting that more and more, you get less of that .
NB: It’s very fashionable, I think, especially in a lot of hyped bands…We were just talking about the internet mentality earlier with Venice [is Sinking]. To not make sense, to be esoteric, and “Oh you guys, you just don’t get me.”
BW: It’s all very impressionistic.
NB: Impressionistic is a perfect way to put that. So if you were to describe your sound to a five-year-old, what would you say?
BS: I wouldn’t describe it, I would just put the CD on.
NB: I don’t talk to five-year-olds.
BS: No, I talk to five year olds very often. I have a nine month old. I’ll just put on music for her.
NB: So, no need for description…just put it on.
BW: I have a three year old nephew, and he came out to our show in Los Angeles, his first rock and roll show. The first time he’s seen me playing. My sister, his mom, she plays him the songs, and he knows that this is uncle Benjamin’s band. And we were playing the set. We stopped playing after the second song, and everything kind of died down for a second, and I just heard this “That’s Uncle Benjamin!”
BS: And mind you, this is in a three or four thousand person venue.
NB: Do you guys read press about yourselves?
BW: No.
BS: No, not anymore. I used to.
BW: It just bums me out.
NB: Yeah, it would be something that would just tear me apart.
BW: Yeah, it’s really depressing…
NB: I’m already self-critical enough. I don’t need any help.
BW: It would be dumb to say there is no point to music journalism, and I’m definitely not making a judgment of music writing. It’s more of just that I have an understanding that a journalist is a writer, and they have to do something interesting. If you write a bunch of reviews, that don’t say anything, then your job is boring. It’s a realization that somebody writing about music—you can’t take it personally because there’s always agendas just beyond the music. I don’t want to read it.
BS: And at the same time, you can’t truly get away from it. Someone’s actually going to come up to you and say “I read your review in Rolling Stone or blahblahblah.” And then you don’t have to read it.
NB: Since music journalism is so much more accessible with blogs and the internet, do you feel that it is affecting you guys in anyway, even though you aren’t reading it?
BS: I’m sure it helps just general awareness. And the way that people find out about music is all over the map these days. I’ve had people come up to me on this tour and tell me that they found out about us because we have one song on the Google phone. They came to us and asked us if they could include our song, for free, so it comes with the phone when people buy it. I’ve had people come up to me and say that they didn’t know who we were, and I heard you guys on my new phone. I love you guys. I went out and bought your records, and I’m a fan now. You can find music in so many ways. It’s just crazy.
NB: That’s another thing. When bands talk about commercials, they say that people heard their song on a commercial.
BS: I want to find someone who became a fan because of a ringtone.
BW: I think we did! There was a myspace comment once that they had downloaded “Don’t Look Away” ringtone.
BS: They probably meant to download The Chili Peppers.
BW: And then he went and looked at our myspace page.
NB: You guys have been around for quite a while. What advice would you give to a band that is just starting out.
BS: Keep going. I don’t know.
BW: Stop if you’re not good. We usually don’t take support bands on the road with us. So we get tons of local openers. Sometimes people are really excited, and they ask us “How do you hook up with Sub Pop” or “What do you do?” And I think some people want to try to skip steps. They just want to jump up ahead. And all that I can say is some people win the lottery, and some people don’t. Start thinking one step at a time. Book your small show, and get some friends there. Do one thing at a time. Don’t think about this big thing far off in the future. Enjoy making music
BS: And keep sight of that as you keep going because there are going to be people coming along saying “We want to sign you and throw all this money at you.” That kind of stuff happens. We had that happen to us especially early in our career.
BW: We said no.
BS: And we said no. For us, anyways, it was the right thing to do. Some bands can sign some gigantic contract and have a bunch of people throw money at them and get paid. But, I think you really run the risk of falling on your face.
NB: Definitely. Which fictional character is most like you guys?
BS: One character? Or is it a duo?
BW: The three muskateers.
NB: It can be one. You don’t have to pick a duo. You can pick separate ones.
BS: Probably Animal for Benjamin.
BW: Why? Why would that me be? I’m thinking the geeky guy in Real Genius.
BS: I’m trying to think of a fictional character.
NB: It can be cartoon.
BS: Yosemite Sam?
BW: What? How are you like Yosemite Sam?
BS: I don’t know. He’s fictional.
James Sewall [of Venice is Sinking]: Droopy’s good.
BS: I’m down with that.
NB: Okay, if you guys could break any world record, what would you break?
BW: Richest dude in the world.
NB: Richest dude in the world!
BS: Longest touring band in the world. We’ll be 90.
NB: Never stop touring. Do you guys prefer studio or stage?
BW: Both, in their own ways.
BS: Yeah, they are totally different worlds.
NB: As a duo, with a keyboardist/drummer, I’m sure it totally different both ways. And we talked earlier about how you go back in and tweak things.
BS: Yeah, it’s a totally different. A lot of bands come back from touring and record an album, but for us, I feel like the studio process is a lot slower, much more methodic kind of a process.
NB: And at the same time, your live sound is very similar to your studio so. So, whatever magic you guys are working…
BS: That’s what it is.
NB: And if you could turn in your tour van for a dinosaur, which one would you choose?
BS: What’s the fastest dinosaur?
NB: I’ve never seen a dinosaur race.
BS: Because that’s all you need out of a tour van—get to that next city.
BW: You’re thinking you want the dinosaur to be a vehicle?
BS: Well, if we didn’t have a tour van, we’d need something to get from show to show.
BW: I mean, I don’t think a dinosaur is going to work.
BS: We have to trade it in for a dinosaur, though.
BW: If we had a dinosaur, we could open a zoo…
BS: And then from the revenue of that, okay.
BW: We could totally buy a new van. I’m thinking we should go for a big one, like T. Rex.
BS: Okay.
BW: Well, maybe a brontosaurus, though. It doesn’t eat meat. It would be more indie. It would be more cool. A vegan dinosaur. And less likely to eat anyone.
NB: We would like to request a vegan dinosaur, please.
BS: Okay, I’m down with that.
BW: We would have to buy some land.
BS: We could get a loan from the bank.
NB: With the brontosaurus as collateral.
BW: But where would we put the dinosaur while we are waiting for the loan?
BS: This is really tricky.
NB: This question is a lot more complicated that I had originally thought it would be.
BW: Or transportation too. We’d probably have to hire a construction company for it.
Matt Crisler: You could walk it.
NB: Dinosaur rollerskates.
BW: I wonder if you could lease a brontosaurus. Like if we had a huge, a really heavy truck, that we could chain it to.
BS: Or a van…oh damn, we gave it up for the dinosaur.
NB: On that note, we’ll end on if you were any animal, what would you be?
BS: A panda.
BW: I don’t know. A brontosaurus.
NB: Thank you very much for being with me.

The Awkward Off Vs. The Thermals

Around a table at THE MASQUERADE in ATLANTA, GA members of THE THERMALS talked with me before their show.

Interviewing requires asking questions, which requires talking. Talking requires breathing, which is hard to do when you’re continually cracking up. Between discussing lethal doses of vitamin C and the world’s longest burritos, I had more laughs than professionally necessary with the three members of The Thermals. And their show rocks.

Did I mention that Hutch gets bonus points for incorporating a Futurama reference into an interview?

Full Transcript: (Audio)
Nichole Bennett: I’m Nichole. I’m here at The Masquerade in Atlanta, Georgia, and I’m lucky enough to be surrounded by members of the Thermals.
Hutch Harris: So lucky.
NB: So lucky! Would you guys mind introducing yourselves?
HH: I’m Kathy
Westin Glass: I’m Hutch.
Kathy Foster: I’m Westin.
NB: Thank you. Okay so, Hutch and Kathy have been together almost forever and a half, and then we’ve added Westin lately. So, if you had to write your band’s story would it be a pop-up book or a graphic novel?
HH: It’s pretty graphic.
WG: A pop-up graphic novel.
NB: A very graphic pop-up book.
HH: Definitely an adult pop-up book.
NB: With swords in each other’s sides and pull tabs?
HH: With a centerfold.
NB: A centerfold in this pop-up book?
HH: Yeah.
NB: Nice.
KF: Westin.
WG: Yeah, I would be the centerfold, let me tell you.
HH: This would be like the Burt Reynolds centerfold of the seventies:
WG: There would be quite a bit of “popping up” on that page.
KF: Har har har.
NB: (joking) I don’t get it.
WG: Drumsticks.
NB: They’ve already got me, and it’s the first question. This is terrible. Okay, let’s see we’ve got a new record, a new label, a new drummer. We’re not going to go into the new label because you can read about that anywhere on the internet.
HH: Nice.
KF: Thank you.
NB: I’m sure you guys just take turns telling the story.
KF: Yeah.
NB: But Westin just got added recently. What is it like being with these dudes?
WG: It’s totally amazing.
NB: He has to say that doesn’t he? If this was just a Westin interview, if we get him alone, would he say differently?
WG: They let me off the leash for an hour a day.
NB: Aw, do you have a curfew?
WG: They don’t always make me sleep in the kennel. Sometimes I get to stay in the bed.
NB: They feed you don’t they?
HH: Two square meals a day!
NB: Yeah, these guys are much better than how other people treat their drummers. I’m just saying…oh man I can’t speak words.
WG: They give me treats when I’m good.
HH: Me and Westin share a big bag of bachelor chow every morning.
NB: I really wish this was video because [Westin’s drink] is so pink. That’s all of the vitamin C coming out. 14,000 percent.
HH: Yeah looks like it’s coming out too.
NB: So, the new album—it’s not quite as political/religious as the old one, but it still borrows a lot musically and lyrically from The Body, The Blood, and The Machine.
HH: Yeah.
NB: And you’ve got some recurring images: you’ve got the sea coming in and sight/vision coming in a lot. Was this something you guys intended (with the theme), or was that something that just kind of happened?
HH: We just kind of fell into it. We try not to be too premeditated or whatever…not to plan too much and just to see what comes out. But I think in a lot of our songs, there’s vision and water and death in a lot of the older songs as well.
NB: So that was a theme, that just sort of came out of it. You weren’t like, we’re going to write about death!
HH: Well we knew we weren’t going to be as political and try not to sing about religion. We knew what we weren’t going to do.
NB: Yeah, I think that comes across in this new one.
NB: So, if you could break one world record, what would you break?
WG: Besides the ones we’ve already broken?
NB: Besides all of the many that you have.
HH: Probably the…javelin.
NB: Just having one? Or throwing one?
HH: Yeah, yeah biggest collection of javelins in the world. I have like, 730. If you plucked every hair from your head, one at a time, how long do you think it would take? How many hairs are on a head—does anyone know? A million?
WG: No way. Ten thousand? A hundred thousand?
HH: I’d like to beat the world record for plucking. World record plucker.
WG: How about most ripped abs? That would be a good one.
NB: That one has to have a picture with it in the Guinness book. Like, you get one of the really crappy pictures beside it.
WG: That would actually be a centerfold in Guinness book, as well.
NB: Yeah, you might get a whole page.
HH: We’re going to make the world’s longest burrito when we get home.
NB: Worthy record.
KF: La Bamba, The place where we grew up made the biggest burrito in the Guinness book.
HH: Yeah, it was just a big, stinky burrito overheating in the California sun. Well, once it’s been sitting out and it’s been handled by everyone…you know.
KF: A lot of people.
WG: How big around was it?
HH: It’s like a rectangle. They have all these tables lined up.
WG: Was it just like a long snake? Is it like a bean pipeline?
HH: What record is Kathy going to break?
NB: All of them, one by one.
KF: Well the first thing I thought of was sprinting because I used to run track in high school.
HH: Running fast.
NB: Okay, so we have a few new world records to break. Ah, do you guys prefer stage or studio? You do a lot of both.
KF: Stage.
NB: I saw you guys twice at South By. I think I may have seen your first show and your last show, but I’m not sure. You guys played eight times. Was that tiring and a half or what?
KF: It wasn’t too bad. It was really fun. We played mostly during the day.
HH: Yeah, it wasn’t too exhausting. And they’re short shows, so they’re easy. Like thirty minutes tops.
KF: Yeah, they’re usually about half an hour.
HH: It wasn’t too hard. But if we did any more, it would have been exhausting. Two a day, and we were usually done by six or seven at night.
NB: Yeah, it’s the bands that do three or five in a day that go around saying “I think we’re gonna die.”
NB: I think I caught the Terrorbird one.
HH: Yeah that was the first one.
NB: And then I caught Waterloo…the park.
HH/KF: That was really fun.
HH: It was like a festival…really big.
NB: Yeah, I love going out there because it’s like…ooh here is this band that I forgot I wanted to see. I was like a little kid.
HH: We saw Circle Jerks, and they were really good at that show. And Monotonix were really good.
NB: Oh my god.
HH: (Imitating Monotonix frontman Ami Shalev, complete with Israeli accent) “We get kicked out of every show we play”
HH: Yeah, like no shit because you won’t stop.
NB: I was talking to a friend of mine who books festivals in Florida, and he said they had to be really really careful when they book them because they do all sorts of illegal shit.
KF: Yeah they trash the place.
HH: Their mustaches are just huge…they’re like bigger than their heads.
NB: Everytime I see them, their mustaches have gotten bigger. I think it’s getting out of control.
HH: Yeah, they need a separate green room for their mustaches. Yeah, you like my accent?
NB: The Thermals do Monotonix here live at the Masqerade!
HH: (More Israeli accent) “Don’t be ridiculous, we’re the Monotonix!”
HH: They do the dance of joy…they do do the dance of joy.
NB: Yeah, I was in New York, and my friend and I were having a silly string war in the Music Hall of Williamsburg. And we were getting in trouble from the bouncer, and they were saying “You kids are going to pick that up right?” And then Monotonix start coming on and dumping trash, and I’m like “Nope! Not anymore! They just covered up our mess.”
NB: You guys seem to have a lot of fun on stage….and I got that a lot from you guys at South By. What are some of your favorite songs to perform or favorite places?
HH: I like playing all the new songs. By the time you’re playing a song for the first time on stage, you’ve already played it like a hundred times practicing and recording it. The newest songs are always the ones I’m most excited about.
NB: Yeah, I was really excited about hearing the new stuff. And you guys just got added to Pitchfork [Music Festival]. Are there any bands that you are really excited to see there while you’re at the festival?
HH: I hope I see Tortoise. I don’t know if we will, but I really want to see Tortoise because I’ve never seen them.
WG: Yeah, that would be really rad.
HH: Flaming Lips will be rad. They’re always good, Grizzly Bear. A lot of the bands, I’ve seen. Grizzly Bear, we saw at ATP. They were really good. Flaming Lips, we saw at Sasquatch, and they were really good.
WG: I want to be a furry for The Flaming Lips.
NB: Yeah, that’s a good goal. That’s noble.
KF: We’ll have to look at the lineup.
WG: I’m sick of only being a furry in the bedroom, you know.
NB: That’s also the centerfold of the novel.
NB: I read a lot of your reviews, and they call you “punk.” How have you guys felt with that label?
HH: I could do without it.
KF: Yeah, I don’t really think it’s so accurate. Maybe the first two records were more punk.
NB: Yeah, the first two records were more lo-fi.
KF: Kind of noisy.
NB: And we’re getting more polished.
HH: We’re indie rockers.
WG: What does that word even mean anymore?
NB: I really like the face that comes along with the word “indie rockers.”
HH: I mean, punk means you’re in prison, and you’re someone’s bitch. You’re a punk.
NB: Definition of punk, by The Thermals.
WG: Everyone knows that indie rock doesn’t really mean anything.
HH: What, what does indie rock mean? I mean, we are indie…and rockers.
KF: How about we just settle on “power pop”?
HH: I like power pop. I like alternative.
WG: Postpower pop
NB: Power pop makes you feel like a super hero. I like it.
HH: Yeah, totally.
WG: I like whatever is not alternative. The alternative to alternative.
NB: Alt-alt.
WG: Unalternative.
HH: Unalternative?
WG: First option…primary option.
HH: I like anti-punk too.
WG: Anti-punk, yeah. That’s a really good one. That’s even better than post.
HH: Yeah, anti is the new post. The cup runneth over of bad fake genres.
NB: Speaking of press, do you guys ever read your own reviews or read press about yourselves?
HH: Yes, I do. I write most of it.
NB: It’s like Wikipedia, you just edit it…put better pictures up.
HH: Yeah…iTunes, Wikipedia…”The Thermals are the best band in the world”!
NB: I saw that today for about five minutes, and then it got edited again.
NB: The internet is playing a weird role in music these days..we’re almost A.D.D. Something comes out, and you’ve got everybody and their mother writing on their blogs about this new record and then it kind of fizzles. Do you find that press helping you?
HH: Yeah, I don’t know.
KF: I feel like there’s a lot of people constantly reading stuff.
HH: But does it help? There’s a fine line between getting good press and then getting over hyped. Because that’s what makes people stop liking you. And that can make people not get into you if they’ve just heard about you too much, you know? People get turned off.
NB: That’s true. I never thought if it that way.
HH: If they feel like your band is over-hyped, that’s when the haters come out. But that’s cool too. The haters add to the hype.
NB: I think the more haters you have, the better.
HH: Yeah, that’s when you’ve arrived.
NB: When you start making enemies, you are a real superhero.
HH: Totally, you need a nemesis.
NB: You guys turned down a Hummer bit. I like to talk about bands that take a stand for their personal politics. I guess talk a little about that. Most people can read on the internet about how you turned down that bit.
HH: That’s a good way to put it because it is personal politics. It just comes down to what we want for this band, what we want people to think about us. It’s less of a stand and more of us just making a very personal choice about just not wanting to be associated with some things.
NB: Yeah, I got stuck behind a limo Hummer on my way here, and I was like “This is so perfect…I’m going to ask them about Hummers.” I’m glaring at this cherry-red Hummer.
NB: But I find it interesting when bands are more than just a musical unit, they actually take their brand and their personal name and use it for bad or for good. Like, if I turn down a Hummer ad, for some reason, then I’m not going to get that. But if you guys do, then you might get it written about.
KF: It’s funny because we turned it down, and someone did a story for the Associated Press like a year and a half later. And that’s when people were talking about it. No one was talking about it right when we did it. It was just that Sub Pop asked us, and we said “no.” And that was the end of it. We didn’t really talk about it.
NB: Yeah I found very little on it. I find that more interesting than reading a million album reviews.
KF: Yeah, and then a year and a half later this guy was doing a story on bands that had turned down Hummer because they had asked a lot of indie bands, a lot of underground bands. Then, that’s when people heard about it, and we actually got a lot of really positive feedback. People wrote us and told us they were going to buy our album even though they had never heard of us just because we had turned down Hummer.
NB: That’s cool! It works almost in a backwards way.
KF: Yeah, it was unexpected.
NB: If The Thermals had a mascot, what would it be?
HH: That little doll? There’s a girl in Chicago who made dolls of all of us, and she also made Mr. Beardsly. She makes this doll that has a little disguise.
KF: He’s like a gnome.
HH: It’s this weird little red, faceless guy. Mr. Beardsly would be it. He’s been in one of the videos. He’d be the mascot, I think.
KF: I think he’d be wearing a little floral thermal.
HH: Hmmm, he’s gay too.
NB: Alright, and we will end on everyone’s favorite dinosaur.
WG: Sexasaurus.
KF: Someone else asked me that question, and I said Dinosaur Jr.
HH: I think the genital-saurus.
NB: We’re all like four now, I love it.
HH: This is the Kathy look.
KF: This is my constant look on tour.
HH: I also like the Pterodactyl. I named my ex-girlfriend Tara-dactyl. Let me describe Kathy’s look to the tape recorder. She has her hand over her…she’s doing the “I have a headache” look.
NB: It’s like a centralized headache. Right between the eyes. That might be where her soul hurts. Sexasaurus?
WG: Well, we were just listening to R. Kelly in the van on the way here, and there’s the song “The Zoo” and he says “it’s like Jurassic Park, and I’m your sexasaurus.” He also says a lot of other great stuff in that song. I highly recommend it.
NB: I’ll look into it.
WG: *monkey noises*
NB: No dinosaur for Kathy?
KF: Dinosaur Jr.
NB: Perfect. Thank you guys so much for taking the time out of your day.

The Awkward Off Vs. Chairlift

At the 40 WATT CLUB in ATHENS, GA members of CHAIRLIFT jabbered with me behind stage.

Any interview that starts with a quote from Dr. Dre is destined for greatness. Although it’s hard for them to escape their iPod commercial fame, Chairlift is proving they have more to offer than the poppy sweetness of Bruises. Patrick, the rhythm behind the band, started the interview and soon we were joined by Caroline. Our talk took us from a desert island with a stereo to dinosaur debates, and although my questions were “too easy” for Patrick, both he and Caroline were great fun.

Anytime you guys are in Austin, I’ll scrounge up some harder questions for you.

Full Transcript: (Audio)
Patrick Wimberly: Before we start this, can I just read a quote from Dr. Dre?
Ethan Silverman (Tour Manager): She already started it.
PW: Can I use a quote from Dr. Dre?
Nichole Bennett: Let’s do it.
PW: In 1993, Dr. Dre said “Everybody has something they can do in the studio. I can take a fuckin’ three year old and make a hit record on him. God has blessed me with this gift.”
NB: So, I’m Nichole, and I’m here in Athens, Georgia at the 40 Watt Club with Patrick of Chairlift.
PW: Hi.
NB: We were just starting off with a Dr. Dre quote that we are all still recovering from. I guess to start us off, if you could kind of describe the story of Chairlift would it be a pop-up book or would it be a graphic novel?
PW: Oh definitely a pop-up book. That’s an easy question.
NB: Would it have pull tabs? Like interactive pop-up books?
PW: Yeah. There would be pictures of us dancing. There would be pictures of us meeting each other, with big smiles on our faces.
ES: I picture a pop-up mountain with a chairlift with the two of you sitting on it.
NB: With a little wheel to make it go around?
PW: This is Ethan, he takes care of us on the road.
NB: You guys have a pretty varied sound. For most people who have just heard the iPod commercial, they get this “Bruises” poppy sound. But you’ve really got more of a darker sound as well. How would you say it all ties together? Or how would you describe your sound to a five year old? Or maybe that three year old that Dr. Dre was hanging out with?
ES: Patrick is really good at talking to three year olds.
PW: First off, I’d like to say that I really like three year olds. “We’re in a band called Chairlift, and we play songs for dancing and for having fun. And for exploring your own mind.” We did play a show recently for a bunch of three year olds, and they got up on stage and danced. It was really cute.
NB: So, if you could take five albums on a desert island…
ES: On a deserted island?
NB: A desert…well, you can have your friends.
PW: Do I have a stereo there?
NB: Yeah, you’ve got a stereo.
PW: I would take Sexuality by Sebastian Tellier because I can’t stop listening to it. What else would I take?
ES: You would take a Rolling Stones record, but I don’t know which one.
PW: I would take a Led Zeppelin record. I would take III.
NB: Three of them?
PW: No, I would take the third one. That’s only two. I would take Abby Road. That’s kind of like a standard. I would take the new YACHT record. I don’t have it yet, and it comes out July.
NB: Hopefully you’re not deserted by then.
PW: Yeah, hopefully I’m not getting deserted on this island until after July, and the YACHT record comes out. And one more: I would make a new one and take it with me.
NB: Just take a blank disk with you.
PW: Yeah, I would record it on the island.
ES: Just bring a four-track.
PW: And I would call it All Alone.
NB: What is your favorite dinosaur?
PW: This is another easy question because I would take the…wait. If I could take any dinosaur to a desert island, it would be a brontosaurus.
ES: I would take the new YACHT record.
NB: My favorite dinosaur is the new YACHT record!
PW: Next question.
NB: So you guys are touring. What is the most annoying thing about touring? You guys just came from Austin, and you are zooming around.
PW: The most annoying thing about touring is…
ES: All these free drinks we get.
NB: Oh, how terrible!
PW: No, that’s not that annoying.
ES: It’s being in cool places but not spending much time in them.
PW: Yeah, that’s it. It’s not having enough time in areas that you want to spend time in.
NB: Do you ever read press or reviews about yourself?
PW: Never. Some other members of our band do, but I never do.
NB: If you could replace your arms with anything, what would you replace them with?
PW: Other arms.
NB: Other arms?
PW: Because I need my arms. They’re important to me because I’m a drummer. I would replace them with Al Green’s. He’s got nice arms.
ES: You should replace them with another drummer’s arms.
PW: Well, maybe if I had his arms, I could sing that well.
NB: Crunchy or smooth peanut butter?
PW: Crunchy because it has peanuts in it.
NB: What is one question you wish interviewers would ask?
PW: I wish they would ask…Are you going to ask this one in your next interview?
NB: Yeah, maybe. And you can answer it if you like. If it’s good, I’ll steal it.
PW: Probably not. I’m not that good of an interviewer. I would ask me on this desert island…
NB: With a brontosaurus running around.
PW: …I would ask “What would you name a brontosaurus if you had a brontosaurus on a desert island?”
NB: That’s a good one.
Caroline Polacheck: I’m just going to hump into this interview
NB: Sure.
PW: Caroline is here.
NB: Caroline just arrived.
CP: Is this for radio?
NB: This is for college radio.
CP: I should not have said hump. Hi guys, I’m Caroline. I’m in a band called Chairlift.
NB: Thank you for joining us. Well, we should probably catch her up on the important questions. Mainly, what is your favorite dinosaur?
CP: Definitely a pterodactyl.
NB: That’s a good one. Let’s see, I guess the only other good one is: If you could replace your arms with anything, what would it be?
PW: I take that back. It would be Stevie Wonder’s arms because he can do everything with his arms.
NB: This is true.
CP: So it can be other people’s arms?
PW: Anything counts. I would put one hairdryer on one of your arms.
CP: I would probably have a giant snake coming out of one arm…
PW: And a hairdryer.
CP: No. Wait, yeah how will I dry my hair? Well, the snake can be trained to hold a hairdryer. In its mouth. It would be really long. It would be way longer than an arm size. It would go from here to there. But it would learn to coil for transportation purposes. And then the other arm would be some kind of moving light show with speakers in it.
NB: I’d want to hang out with you. Party time, Caroline’s here. If Chairlift had a catch phrase, what would it be?
CP: We have so many. “My dude.” “It’s on.”
NB: What is the most embarrassing CD in your collection? Or are you not embarrassed by anything?
PW: I’m not embarrassed by anything. I have music that people say I should be embarrassed to have, but it’s not embarrassing.
CP: I have some CDs at my mom’s house that are pretty embarrassing.
NB: Do you guys prefer performing in bigger venues or smaller ones?
CP: I like playing in place with good sound and good lights because that affects the show more than size. Playing in an intimate place and the lighting is really moody and the sound is really spectacular and submersive. That makes for a good show.
NB: I asked him earlier: Do you read reviews about yourself?
CP: Yeah, probably more than I should. Less and less. I think it’s interesting. I don’t take it all to heart. It’s like throwing a ball back and forth. It’s interesting watching your reviews consistently change. Like if all of them are saying the same thing at one point in time and all of them are saying another thing at another point in time, then it’s like “Okay, that’s a legit point you made.”
NB: I was talking to Matt of Matt and Kim last night and he said “I want more haters.” The more haters you have, the more people are paying attention. It changes the way I thought about criticism.
CP: To me the most brutal thing isn’t press because you can take that with a grain of salt, but for me it’s live videos. It freaks me out to see myself play live.
NB: What can we expect to see from Chairlift in the future?
CP: Probably Aaron, Caroline, and Patrick. A lot of those people.
NB: Those three.
CP: Yeah sometimes instruments….sometimes clothes.
NB: I will let you guys go grab dinner, but I have one more question: If you were any animal, what would it be?
PW: A monkey. Easy question.
NB: He was ready. He needs harder questions next time.
PW: Next time you come back why don’t you challenge me a little bit, okay?
CP: I think I would be a killer whale. It seems like it would be fun to be a whale.
NB: That would be really fun.