The Awkward Off Vs. Howlies

Atlanta band HOWLIES stopped by the WSBF studio in CLEMSON, SC for a live performance and interview.

I was goofing off in the radio lounge when they informed me that I’d be doing the interview for the show. Luckily, I’d been a fan of their latest album, so I could make an attempt to disguise how ill prepared I was. Not only did the guys put on a great show, they kept me laughing throughout the whole interview. We even liked them enough to take them to Super Taco, the best restaurant in the history of ever. Howlies came back to WSBF for our spring concert, wowing everyone.

Now that I think about it, it’s amazing the FCC didn’t explode when we did this interview.

Special thanks to Justin Pino for sound production and cohosting and to Claire Lacy for cohosting.

Full Transcript (Audio):

Nichole Bennett: Hey this is Nichole Bennett, and I am here with Howlies, who you just heard three tracks from. If you guys could take just a second to introduce yourselves, that would be awesome. Are we set up?

Aaron Wood: Our bass player just walked down the hall, so we’ll speak for him.

Justin Brooke: I’m Justin, and I play guitar.

AW: My name is Aaron, and I play drums for the band called Howlies.

Brandon Morrison: I’m Brandon, and I play guitar. We’re the band called Howlies.

AW: Buh buh!

BM: And Matt, who’s down the corner plays bass.

NB: Are you guys sharing earphones? I guess so. I guess the first question is what actually a Howlie is.

JB: It’s Hawaiin slang for tourist.

NB: I was wondering if it was a creepy monster or not. Did you know that?

Justin Pino (doing sound): Howlies? No I didn’t know that!

Claire Lacy (cohosting): Tourists anywhere or just Hawaii?

JP: I remember reading that on your Myspace page.
JB: I think literally it means someone who has no soul.

BM: Which is appropriate because we sold our souls to rock and roll.

NB: Ah well, if you are going to sell it… How did you guys decide on that name?

JB: The devil told us to use it when we signed our contract with him.

JP: Considering how much influence you guys have from the devil, you don’t sound like you are from hell.

JB: He said, “This name will sell.”

NB: Especially without a “the.” It’s really difficult to be like I’m here with…Howlies! You guys were Paste’s band of the week last week. How do you guys feel about that?

JB: This week.

NB: This week! This week has not gone by fast enough.

JB: It was good. We also had that happen on Spin.

JP: That’s right.

NB: Yeah, I was just checking that out.

JB: It made my mom proud.

AW: I told my younger brother, and he was like “What’s Paste magazine.”

CL: That’s awesome.

JP: Have you guys already gone over band history? How did you guys form as a band? How did Howlies happen?

JB: We were out in the backyard, and there were some dogs barking. So we started barking too. We had had a few adult beverages. That’s where it started.

JP: Hey everybody, let’s start howling. We sound good howling, we could be a band.

NB: Makes sense. Logical next step.

AW: We actually strung up microphones in the back yard to record the symphony of howling between us and the dogs. We tricked it out with some reverb, and not more than a week later my hard drive crashed.

NB: Like a cracked-out twilight bark. You know, like in 101 Dalmations?

JP: Throwin’ out the Disney references.

JB: What is this you speak of? I’ve only seen 102 Dalmations.

JP: That is like the remake times two.

NB: You guys do have no soul! I guess if we are talking about your influences, other than dogs…what would you say influences you as a band?

AW: My libido.

JB: The moon. Was the moon mentioned?

NB: The pull?

AW: Tidal.

NB: Howlies, here in Clemson with a tidal influence…also sexual.

JB: Also I would say other music has influenced us. Other music that came before our music.

JP: Wait, I wasn’t aware that music happened before Howlies.

AW: Can you wrap your mind around the fact that music existed before us?

JP: It’s that whole chicken and egg thing.

JB: It was called “music” not “the music.”

JP: I bought a box of eggs the other day only it was empty…

NB: Does this have anything to do with what we are saying?

JP: Yeah, the whole Howlies and the egg thing.

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

AW: Two more penises. That’s an obvious answer.

NB: I don’t know why I didn’t think of that.

BM: Can you say that?

NB: Yeah, sure.

AW: Brandon, in addition to playing guitar for our band, also freelances for the FCC. Hey, I have a serious question for you guys and it relates to my last answer. Have you seen the movie Edward penis-hands?

JP: Oh man, Claire just said that.

AW: I wouldn’t even need drumsticks anymore. Justin brings up a good point.

NB: There is the FCC! Someone go get that door. That was just one answer. There’s at least three of you guys in there.

JB: I would replace my arms with two Matt Forsees, life-size. The top of the head would be right where my shoulder is. There would be another one on the other side.

Matt Forsee: Does that mean my face would be in your armpit?

JB: No, you would face outward.

AW: Just think, if you face did face Justin’s armpit, you could apply his deodorant with your mouth.

MF: Then you would have to realize that the things I’d replace my arms with would be redwood trees. So there would be four redwood trees sticking out of Justin.

JB: We would need a bigger van, for sure. I think what everyone is wondering now is Brandon, what would you replace your arms with? And we turn to you.

BM: I would go with bowling balls.

JP: You know what? I heard that that is really cool. I heard it’s not fun not having fingers or elbows or extremities other than bowling balls. But I hear it’s pretty tight.

MF: You could go to the bowling alley and clean your arms.

NB: What weight? I know I use the pink ones that are like six pounds.

BM: I like the twelve.

NB: You can have different things on each hand. You guys didn’t know this?

AW: In that case, I’m going with one penis and one vagina.

NB: We are strictly speaking about anatomy.

AW: I am going to quote a popular song in Atlanta now. You just do you and Imma do me.

JP: This is getting rated R.

NB: This is the best interview ever! What is the most embarrassing CD in your collection? Go.

BM: Nordic Law. It’s like Sweet Home Scandanavia.

JB: I have Kenny G live.

NB: Ugh, I think I just threw up in my mouth.

JP: You know, it’s really not that bad.

NB: No, I’m a saxophone player. No self-respecting saxophone player likes Kenny G.

JP: But he can play forever though.

AW: Kenny G and Sting should get together and have a tantric sex fest.

NB: Oh, I think I threw up again.

CL: No more throw-up questions. Let’s do something legit.

NB: Legit…like, what’s your spirit animal?

JB: Mine is a domestic house cat.

MF: Mine’s a giant scorpion.

NB: Okay, so this band now has problems getting along.

BM: I think mine would be a brown recluse.

AW: My spirit animal is Kenny G.

JP: That just happened. I think you just created a black hole on Earth. Everyone is inside out now.

AW: Actually, new band name. The Kenny G-units.

NB: So how is the Atlanta scene?

AW: The Atlanta scene is amazing right now. There are a lot of great bands there and a lot of local venues where bands can get their start. The last two or three years it’s been getting a lot of attention, and we are happy to be a part of that. That is the most literal answer I’ve given.

NB: If you were in a haunted house, what would you scream?

BM: Who here is a seventeen year old with a fake ID? Where do the high school girls hang out around here?

NB: This haunted house is really scary.

AW: I would throw a live chicken at someone and yell “Bird Flu!”

NB: What song is stuck in your head right now?

BM: I’m a little teapot.

AW: The song that is stuck in my head is “I Only Have Eyes for You” by The Flamingos. I have a bad habit of singing whatever pops into my head in mixed company. I did it on an elevator recently and got really weird looks. This one girl did start singing along.

NB: My life as a musical. By Howlies.

JB: Cherish by Kool and the Gang is stuck in my head.

AW: Can you give us a few lines?

[All of the  Howlies break into song]

MF: Now that’s stuck in my head.

JB: You’re welcome.

MF: I always have the chicken dance in my head. It’s a curse.

AW: The thing about the chicken dance is the bridge.

[singing]

NB: I know it. I went to public school.

AW: The song that is stuck in my head is from Team America, and I’ll omit the swear words.

[more singing]

NB: You guys are headed to Chattanooga next, right?

JP: Where are you guys playing in Chattanooga for our Tennessee listeners?

JB: We are playing in J.J.’s Brohemia. We are playing with Those Darlins from Nashville, TN.

NB: You guys just came from Asheville as we mentioned earlier. How long has this tour been going on?

JB: Since Saturday.

NB: Brand new. That’s why you guys are so fresh.

MF: And nobody’s sick yet.

JP: Where did this tour start?

MF: Greenville, North Carolina. That is one of our most favorite places to play.

NB: So I guess as of Saturday…the best and the worst moments of this tour?

JB: They were both the same moment for me. The best and the worst. I basically had to grab this guy by the neck and slam him down on Aaron’s drumset in the middle of a song. It was awesome, but I was kind of feeling bad about it because I’m a pacifist and I don’t usually do stuff like that.

AW: He was pretty inebriated. It wasn’t like he was fighting back at all. He just went down with it.

NB: And now were are going to play some music from bands that Howlies like and then get back to the live set. Whoa! The CD players are sleeping.

JP: Those lazy CD players!

MF: Question: can we interview you guys? How is college going?

JP: Two thumbs down.

[conversation degrades into lottery talk and Chuck Norris jokes]

The Awkward Off Vs. Her Space Holiday

On the air and on the phone at WSBF-FM in CLEMSON, SC I chatted with Marc Bianchi, frontman for HER SPACE HOLIDAY.

We discussed his roots in the hardcore/emo scene and his dabbling with short films. Marc was kind enough to tell us about how Her Space Holiday has changed over the years, especially with regard to this latest album. If he was any animal, he’d be a lemur, and he proved to WSBF just how much of a sweetheart he really is.

Full Transcript: (Audio)

Nichole Bennett: We have a very special guest, Marc, of Her Space Holiday. How are you doing today?

Marc Bianchi: Good, how are you Nichole?

NB: Good, good it got on. I had some doubts. We were just enjoying some tracks off your latest album. Is there anything you want to tell us about it?

MB: No, just that it was really fun to make and probably my favorite record so far.

NB: I think I’m going to have to agree. I got into your work with Past Presents the Future, and I like this one even better. Is there a story behind the title XOXO Panda and the New Kid Revival. I know you had some side projects under those names.

MB: Yeah originally when I was recording these songs it was under the pretense that it wasn’t going to come out as a record. I was just getting a little tired of making electronic music and having themes in songs that were all in the same vein and kind of dark. I was thinking of taking a break, and a friend of mine asked me if I ever made songs about things that made me happy and were a little more lighthearted and stepped away from the electronic music. I said no, so I started making these songs and sending them to her. She called me Panda for some reason, so everytime I would send her a letter or something it would be signed XOXO Panda. Initially when the Japanese record label I work with, And, heard it they wanted to release it. I wasn’t sure if it should be a Her Space Holiday record or something else, so I just called that as the project title. So how it worked in Japan was the band was XOXO Panda and the album was The New Kid Revival. When the labels over here wanted to release it, we decided that we were just going to have it as the new Her Space Holiday record and just kind of combine the names together.

NB: Is this a direction you are thinking of taking for the future? Less electronic and more…happy?

MB: I’m not sure because everytime I make a record I say to myself that this is the last record I’m going to make. Just by doing it for so long—Her Space Holiday has been going on for 14 years. There’s moments when you feel revitalized and other moments when you feel stagnant. Since writing so many songs through the years, I don’t know what else I have to say. I am going to take a break for a while, but when I come back to it I’m sure it’s going to be a combining of this newer style or returning to the basic acoustic music combined with some of the electronic. This was a pendulum swing in exactly the opposite direction.

NB: You’ve been involved in music in a lot of different areas. You started off in the hardcore/emo scene, didn’t you?

MB: Yes, yes. I guess when I was 19 I started playing in hardcore bands. I’m 35 now, so I’m not a young man. I’ve been touring and recording music for a really long time. I’ve switched through the areas, done different types of music. It’s still fun. It still has the same fun to it.

NB: I’m trying to introduce our listeners to some of your work. How would you describe it to someone who has never heard them before? What would you want them to get out of it, is a better question.

MB: Musically, I’m not sure what I would want them to get out of it, but on a philosophical level—and especially with this record being The New Kid Revival—the whole theme out of that is just getting back to the basics and creating just for the sake of creating. Obviously if you listen to the music I make, I’m very limited by what I can do singing or writing. Not to put myself down, but I think the message is that if you want to make music it doesn’t matter what your skill set is. Or art or writing or whatever. If you love to do it, just do it. Hopefully that was the main thing they would get from listening to the record—just do whatever you want. It doesn’t matter what your skill set is.

NB: Yeah I feel like that is one of the good things that came out of this internet age is that people feel like anybody can make art.

MB: Yeah, I’ve watched the industry change, even in the past five years. It doesn’t matter where you are, as long as you have an internet connection, you can have a thriving outlet for people to hear your music. You don’t need a label. People say there is an oversaturation of things out there because of that, but I think that’s not a bad thing.

NB: Speaking of art, this past week I’ve been enjoying some of your shorts. How did you get into filmmaking?

MB: Filmmaking, that is a very generous term. When I originally started recording this record it was going to be a soundtrack for one of the short films I was making. I used to compartmentalize things. Like, if you are writing you need to be in the mindset of writing, and if you are making movies you need to be in that place in your head. But then I got to realize that without the pretense of releasing these songs, that when you do anything creative it seems like it comes from the same place. So someone who does one medium can easily do something else, even if they are not as skilled at it as their primary thing. I don’t have a video camera. I have this old Canon that has thirty seconds of video on it. It was that and some cheap movie editing program that was thirty dollars from Best Buy. I don’t know how I got into it. I think it had to do with lack of sleep and too much time on my hands.

NB: They’re enjoyable.

MB: Slightly embarrassing, but whatever. That’s a chance you have to take.

NB: Yeah, I guess you put yourself out there, but you put yourself out there anytime you make any sort of art and share it with anybody.

MB: That’s another thing with the internet age. Any kind of blogging that people do or anything that is in a public forum. You are going to put yourself out there. People are going to enjoy it, but mainly people are going to bash it. You have to understand that.

NB: Back to the music—are you going to be touring to support this album?

MB: Yes, definitely. In February, I’m going to Australia for about three weeks. The U.S. tour—I have some dates from my booking agent. They haven’t all been confirmed, but we are looking at all of May to be when the U.S. tour happens.

NB: Cool, hopefully you’ll come to the southeast.

MB: We are going to try. We haven’t toured in the U.S. in four and a half years, so we are going to go to as many places as we can.

NB: That would be great. So how do you actually translate from studio to performance?

MB: It’s different with this record, and I like it. Because I played all live instruments, and they aren’t samples or sequences or any electronic editing, it can all be recreated with real people. It’s different with each tour because I don’t have a solid band. I have different friends go. In the past when we would go, we would have a laptop that sequenced. I would play guitar, and my friend Kenneth would play bass. A drummer, Kaitlyn, would play with us. It was just trying to keep up with the record. Because this is more organic, it’s easier to have it be its own thing live. We’ll have six or eight people playing. There are a lot of fingersnaps and tambourines on the record, so we at least have to have four tambourine players.

NB: A tambourine section—that will be impressive. How do you go about your recording process, your songwriting process? I guess it’s not always the same.

MB: With this one it’s different. In the past I would have all of the instrumental arrangements and then put vocals in. This one is more traditional where it is starting with a piano and singing or a guitar and singing and building it off that. Laying those two tracks down and building off that. So it’s a lot more traditional this time.

NB: Yeah I think that comes out in the album. If this is the first album that people are hearing, they are definitely getting something different than some of the older stuff.

MB: Yeah, it’s been interesting as far as some people’s reactions. Some people like the change. Some people hate it. The funniest thing that I’ve seen in reviews is that people complain that I seem like I’m happy now, which is really funny to me.

NB: Yeah! That used to be your thing!

MB: Yeah, I was such a sad, sad man. I don’t really feel any differently than when I made those records. It’s just that I kind of was tapping into a smaller bit of what I was feeling. I mean, we all have sides—optimistic sides and sides that are really bummed out. This one incorporates a lot more by just teetering on the light side of things.

NB: Even on some of the older stuff and the new stuff as well, the song may sound happy but the lyrics can be really sad.

MB: Yeah, this album is still pretty heavy lyrically, and there’s a lot of sad things going on. The music is so drastically different. Especially in some of the reviews people come across it like it’s a very light, pop record. But there’s a lot of death and pain in the record still, it’s just set to toy pianos.

NB: And you meet people like that. They have these things, but they are still a toy piano of a person. I have one more question, and it’s kind of my signature question. If you could be any animal what animal would you be?

MB: I’d probably be a lemur.

NB: A lemur. That’s a pretty good choice…why?

MB: I have no idea. It’s just what popped in my head. I just saw myself as a lemur. I don’t know what lemurs are known for, so I’m going to have to look up lemurs to see if I just had a psychological insight that I didn’t know of.

NB: Thank you so much. We are enjoying the new album, and we hope to see you in May.

The Awkward Off Vs. The King Left

On WSBF-FM in CLEMSON, SC, Corey Oliver from THE KING LEFT called us for a phone interview.

Corey is the singer and a guitarist of The King Left, a band out of New York. They just released an EP called New York Nothing. Join our phone conversation as we touch on the songwriting process, their two EPs, and what it sounds like when God sneezes.

We even talked about the band Howlies, who show up later at WSBF for an in-studio and as headliners for our spring concert.

Special thanks to Ben Lippert of WSBF for letting me take over some of his show for this interview.

Note: the interview starts at the end (last quarter of the file).

Full Transcript: (Audio)

Nichole Bennett: I am here with Corey from The King Left, a band out of New York. Hey Corey.

Corey Oliver: Hey how are you?

NB: Good. You guys are on tour right now. How is that going?

CO: So far, so good. We got a GPS on Black Friday. It’s been working wonders. We haven’t gotten lost yet, which is pretty amazing for us. We usually get lost leaving the house.

NB: Yeah, I was up in New York for the first time in October, and I definitely got lost. Are you guys originally from New York?

CO: No, I’m from Atlanta originally. I went to school in Ithaca, where I met Graham and Ian. I met Mark through them because he grew up in the same town with them. We just decided…why not, and here we are three years later driving to Pittsburgh.

NB: So where does the band name come from?

CO: I don’t actually have a good story for that, and I keep meaning to come up with one because where it came from is really boring. Whenever someone says come up with a band name, I go crazy because I like to think up cool band names. It’s hard to do. I just had too many words in my head, and I was listening to The Beatles. The words just sort of fell together. It struck me because it was a “The” name without being “The Somethings.” It’s a sentence too, which is cool. Then, I ran it by people who were usually harsh with the band names I would come up with, and they were all pretty enthusiastic about it. So we kept it, and I need to come up with a better story than that.

NB: So you guys have been together three years?

CO: Yeah, a little over three years actually. I don’t know the exact date. I don’t know if you count our first meeting or the first time we played together or the first time we had practice. We actually played together before we had practice. We did a recording of a song, and that was how we really came together. We recorded a song for a friend having never played together before, and it worked out really well. We decided to be a band, and we actually started months later when school was over.

NB: What made you guys decide to come together? Just similar interest?

CO: It was just sort of out of convenience. Mark played guitar, and I played guitar, and I played guitar. We all wrote funny songs together at 2 AM after a couple of beers. When my friend asked us to record a song we had, one of our more serious songs, we said “Sure, no problem.” We needed a drummer, and Graham happened to be in the music school. He played drums, and he got us time in the music school to record it. It wasn’t like we sought each other out. We just sort of fell together, boy-band like.

NB: You definitely have your own niche and genre. What would you say are your influences?

CO: We all like Radiohead, and we all like The Beatles.

NB: That’s a good solid foundation.

CO: I don’t know. We are inspired by a lot of different stuff. After those core influences, we branch out drastically in the music that we pull our inspiration from. The way we write songs—we all bring our own thing.  Ween, Beck, Elliot Smith. The good stuff, basically.

NB: A lot of the people here in Clemson, SC are hearing you for the first time on WSBF. How would you describe your music to someone who has never heard it before?

CO: God sneezed. Raucous and messy.  We get a lot of people saying that we sound like different stuff, which doesn’t mean anything to me. We’ve gotten Modest Mouse and The Dismemberment Plan before.  I guess some of our songs are dancey and some are ballady. We’re trying to play as many types of music while sounding like one entity, for better or for worse. Sometimes it doesn’t work that well.

NB: Yeah, I find you guys hard to categorize, which is why I asked those things.

CO: That’s why I liked that term in the early nineties “alternative rock” because it was this blanket term. You sort of knew what to expect by not knowing what to expect. So I guess we’re alternative rock.

NB: So you guys are on tour heading to Pittsburgh. You are on tour with Howlies, right?

CO: They’re great. I love those guys. They’re from Atlanta too, which sort of piqued my interest in the first place. I sought them out and really fell in love with the song “Aluminum Baseball Bat.” If you haven’t heard it, find it and watch the video. It’s amazing. I mentioned them to Graham and Ian, and they said they’d already heard of the. So I was like, I’m late to the party here. When they came through New York, we all made a point to go see them, and I thought these guys are really on to something. Super fun. Very high energy. Great show. I put them at the top of the list of bands that I wanted to see if they’d go on the road with us. Things worked out, and here we are! I can’t wait.

NB: What has been your favorite show so far?

CO: We just started Thursday, so that’s our favorite so far. Hopefully, we’ll top it each night. But I wouldn’t hold your breath. Mercury Lounge was really great. We had a lot of fun playing with the Howlies and a couple of other bands from New York who were there to kick off. It was a great show, but we’re looking to have a lot more fun on the road here.

NB: Yeah I got to see The Mercury Lounge for the first time. I got to see Rival Schools up there. I know you guys have worked with them.

CO: Yeah Sammy and Ian. They did our first two EPs, produced and engineered them. I can’t say enough about those guys they are really great. I am so psyched that Rival Schools are back together.

NB: Yeah they are fantastic live.

CO: Yeah they seemed to be having a lot of fun. It was great to see them up there playing together again.

NB: So how did you guys start working with Ian Love and Sammy Seagler?

CO: Yeah that was happenstance too. Sam Seagler and his band Nightmare View, right before the reunion of Rival Schools, had ties to Ithaca. One of the guys knew Graham, and they were playing a show in Ithaca and asked us to play with them, and we did. Sam was drumming with them at the time, and saw us and saw some potential. He asked if he could possibly work with us recording. We were like, okay why not? It ended up turning into two EPs, and we’re really really happy with it.

NB: You mentioned earlier that all of you guys bring something to the table when you are making music. Tell me a little bit about the process of bringing it all together.

CO: Whoever has a lick or a structure or something they want to build on, they bring it to the table, and we’ll start jamming on it for a little and see if anything comes. If it doesn’t, we might discard it. If we like it a lot, say its mine or its Marks, then we’ll be stubborn and keep it by bringing it out and reworking it. Sometimes I’ll write a song that will just be me and a melody and everybody else adds their stuff to it. You go in with the idea of how something will sound. But you go away with something completely different. It’s become the band’s sound, which is cool. In my head, all of my stuff sounds like Radiohead songs, but we usually don’t pull that off

NB: Yeah, you guys definitely make it your own sound. You have such a conglomerate sound, that I was actually suspicious that everybody was involved.

CO: Yeah there is definitely a songwriter aspect to it, but we’re all songwriters. We’re more songwriters than we are talented musicians. We just come together as songwriters to try to make the best possible song. We don’t have many ten-minute jams, which would just be atrocious. We just approach it as how do we make this song as good as possible, what do we want it to sound like, and everybody puts their stuff in. Hopefully it’s good, and hopefully people can connect with it.

NB: We have two solid EPs out. What is next for you guys?

CO: We have five songs recorded now that we are trying to turn into a full length, if we can, early next year. We did it with a producer that we just found fantastic. We are hoping to garner some interest with these, and get the funds to make a full length and go on tour for that. That’s what we aim for. If we get that, then we’re doing something right. If not, there’s always Taco Bell.

NB: If you guys make it down to the south, WSBF-FM Clemson hosts concerts. We are that in between stop for Asheville and Athens.

CO: Yeah, I’m dying to go to the south. My brother lives in Atlanta. He’d love to see us play. I have a lot of friends in North Carolina too that would love to see us play. It would be nice to get down there and play. We’ve been both sheltered and blessed with our little New York City niche, and we’re trying to break out of that right now.

NB: Almost through with the questions. But I have this one really weird question that I always ask bands: if you were an animal, what would you be?

CO: I would be  tiger, hands-down. Graham what would you be?

Graham Rothenberg (from inside van): Frog!

CO: Frog, that is weird. Ian! Animal!

Ian Bullett (from inside van): Bear or Wolf!

CO: A bear/wolf hybrid.

NB: Yeah, I had someone pick space alien last Wednesday.

CO: I guess that falls under animal.

NB: There’s not that many rules to that questions, so I’ll let it slide.

CO: Yeah that would be an animal. It’s not mineral or vegetable. Unless they were eggplant people.

NB: Thanks so much.

The Awkward Off Vs. Davey Pierce (Of Montreal)

While working at WSBF-FM in CLEMSON, SC, I was able to do a phone interview with Davey Pierce, bassist for OF MONTREAL.

For my first interview ever, I was live on-air with the bassist of one of my all-time faves. Say what you will about Of Montreal being over-hyped–they put on an art piece of a show.While Kevin Barnes has taken over most of the songwriting, members of the band still play an enormous role in creating their theatrical stage presence. Join me as we talk to Davey about their crazy stage setup, and the surprising secret behind their ideas…alcohol and volleyball.

Note: the interview starts about a quarter-way through the file.

Full Transcript: (Audio)

Nichole Bennett: We are here with Davey Pierce, the bassist from Of Montreal. How are you Davey?

Davey Pierce: I’m doing pretty good. How are you?

NB: Great. I actually caught your show at the Tabernacle in Atlanta last Saturday.

DP: Oh, did you?

NB: I just wanted to say that it was fantastic.

DP: Oh thank you so much. Yeah, that was fun for us, having our friends Limouzine open up for us. We were sort of star-struck by them. They were pretty awesome.

NB: Yeah I really wanted a pair of pink pants like that.

DP: Spandex Man Dot Com.

NB: Noted. I’ve actually caught you guys on each of your tours and this seemed to be the craziest yet. I was wondering how much prep work goes into your stage show?

DP: A lot actually. We worked on the ideas for this tour for a good two months before…trying to get the logistics worked out. Like, you know…Kevin wants to hang himself…how do we do that? It’s still in the process of being perfected. Everytime we go back home we go back to our welder and say “Hey what we have here isn’t working…we need you to make it work a little better.” By the end of this tour, everything should be goin pretty smoothly.

NB: Awesome. Well, I guess that gets me to my next question. So, where do these ideas come from? The hanging himself was Kevin’s own?

DP: Yeah, the hanging himself was Kevin’s idea. It started with Kevin saying he wanted to do that, and everybody threw in ideas of other ways to off yourself. It’s gotten a little bit of negative stuff. Up until the Tabernacle show, we did a cover of Smells Like Teen Spirit. People were upset that we would do a suicide scene and then cover Nirvana for some reason. The ideas…We also play volleyball a lot, and there’s a lot of drinking involved. While we are doing it, we all just spout out random ideas. Eventually, half of them come into play.

NB: That makes a lot more sense now…that volleyball is involved.

DP: Oh, volleyball is always involved.

NB: How much do you guys vary the setlist from show to show?

DP: We can’t really vary it too much because of the way the show is set up. It’s weird for us. Normally we would play a different setlist every night. But this one has to be so structured to have all of the little sketches happen on time every time. We can’t vary it too much. We try to a little bit.

NB: What direction does it go from here? Crazier and crazier?

DP: Yeah hopefully. It’s constantly evolving everyday. We’ll say “you know, leading up to this part I want to do this other little thing.” It just kind of snowballs and snowballs. Now we have six performers, and it’s kind of crazy. Hopefully it will get bigger and bigger, but you never can tell.

NB: I’ve heard rumors of a live DVD. What can you tell me about that?

DP: We shot a show at The Avalon in Los Angeles last year at the end of the Hissing Fauna tour. We recorded the Atlanta show at The Tabernacle last weekend. Hopefully it will be a two-show double-disc DVD showing about it. Where we were and what we are now and what’s going to be in the future. I’ve seen the footage from the first one. I haven’t seen the second one yet. The first one looks incredible. Our video guy, the guy who does all our live stuff, is editing it now. I went through and mixed all of the audio. It’s gonna be pretty awesome.

NB: Oh cool. Well, thank you for joining us today. Listeners, once again this is Davey Pierce, the bassist from Of Montreal. Thank you so much for your time.

DP: No problem. Thank you