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Interview: The Black Lips

March 30, 2013 By Leave a Comment

 

Black Lips played a two night stint at the Casbah in San Diego

Black Lips played a two night stint at the Casbah in San Diego

By Kayleen Fulton

It’s 7 PM on March 24 and Black Lips have just finished their soundcheck for their second night at the Casbah in San Diego. Everyone’s a little groggy from a long evening the night before (minus Cole Alexander, whose ever-present enthusiasm is hard to match), but the band is gearing up for another night flush with a shit-ton of ruckus, as is usual with this raucous flower punk band.

 

Kayleen Fulton: So you got kicked out from your last stint here at the Hard Rock on your birthday last year?

Jared Swilley: Yeah. It was weird because they didn’t really kick us out. Like, they shut down the show, but we were staying in the hotel and they still let us stay in the rooms. They even sent a cake up to my room afterwards.

 

KF: Do you often get kicked out of venues?

JS: A few times, but it’s not a regular thing that happens. It’s definitely happened before.

Cole Alexander: It’s not totally surprising, sometimes, but it’s every once in a while.

JS: It used to happen a lot when we were first starting out cause we were underage. A lot of shows got shut down because of that. We’d be on tour and we’d get there and they wouldn’t let us play. But that’s not for anything we did – it was just for existing.

CA: Sometimes for the mayhem, like, we were in Portland and everyone started throwing bottles at us. Glass broke over my head. We had to fight people off. Sometimes it’s not a hateful thing, it’s just out of love. Just going HAM.

JS: Actually, we’ve played the Hard Rock Hotel twice, once in Las Vegas and once in San Diego and both of those shows got shut down. The one in Vegas got shut down after one song.

CA: My amp broke at the one in Las Vegas and I mooned the crowd because I didn’t know what to do and the giant security guard was like, “You can stop now” and he was just so big we were actually like, “Okay”.

JS: Well, he didn’t really do anything, he just pulled his pants down and played the song with his pants down.

CA: Some girl in LA pulled her pants down and had spelled Black Lips on her butt – she got the take down by security.

JS: (Laughs) Security got her well-acquainted with the pavement.

CA: I was always raised not to hit a woman, but the rules are all out the window sometimes with that security – they feel threatened.

 

KF: Are you planning on releasing anything soon?

JS: We have a 7” coming out in a few days. That’s just one song – split with our friends from Omaha, called Icky Blossoms. That’s not even one of our songs – it’s just a cover of a Waylon Jennings/Willie Nelson song. But we’re working on a new album now.

 

KF: Any idea what you’ll be titling it?

JS: No clue. We don’t even have names for the songs. But we’ve been playing a lot of new songs. It’ll hopefully be out in 2013.

 

KF: Will you be taking it in any new directions?

CA: I’m sure we will, we always experiment and dabble with new things.

 

KF: Do you guys have any intimate songs that maybe haven’t fit on any records that you’ve wanted to put out?

CA: Sappy songs?

 

KF: Sure.

CA: I have one song for the new record that I could do but I was kind of embarrassed because it’s too sappy. I’ll guess we’ll try it but if it doesn’t fit… (shrugs). We’ve had some tongue in cheek sappy songs before.

 

KF: Would you consider anything you have right now ‘sappy’?

CA: Dirty hands might be a little intentionally sappy.

JS: There are a few. Sometimes. I like sappy songs. I listen to a lot of doo-wop and 50s kind of stuff.

 

KF: It’s great that you guys are playing the Casbah twice in a row. Why do that?

CA: It’s good because I feel like we’re growing. We haven’t had an album out in two years, so we’re worried that people forgot about us.

 

KF: You guys are fairly hard to forget – your shows can get pretty rowdy.

JS: We like to give people good memories, scars… but not painful scars.

CA: We’d rather be bad than forgettable.

 

KF: What’s the craziest stunt you guys have pulled on stage?

JS: Uh, probably something that I can’t remember… Me and Cole got in a fight one time. We used to not make a lot of money and so we had to be ‘budget’ about things and we bought this guitar from Ian but we split it ’cause neither one of us could afford the whole thing and we were playing this show in Italy and he was playing out of tune or playing the song wrong… we were just sucking… so I went and, I don’t even remember why I did it, I did it without thinking, like b**** slapped him.

CA: And defensively, with the guitar, I swung it at him.

JS: He smashed my face with it.

CA: It had a little point thing and it cut him open. And everyone starting freaking out. And then I felt really bad, so I smashed the guitar, but that made me feel even worse ’cause we had split it. Everybody started wrestling for the guitar pieces… we never saw that guitar again.

 

Despite the Lips’ raucous attitude on stage, Swilley encourages fans to stay safe in the crowd – good advice for a crowd that apparently can’t be handled by the Hard Rock in any state.

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Interview: Diarrhea Planet

November 7, 2012 By Leave a Comment


By Kayleen Fulton

On January 28, 1969, a little known band on their first American tour played a Boston venue and shook the crowd. When Led Zeppelin tried to walk off stage that night, the crowd was in such a frenzy that they came back and ended up playing for four hours straight, until they had run out of songs, and played every cover that they could. Just two weeks before that, Led Zeppelin had played in San Diego, a ticket that sold for a whopping $5.

There are few bands who can induce that raw animalistic frenzy in a crowd, when everyone dances and screams for more, but when you know that feeling, you become addicted to it. San Diego is a prime venue for a search for this frenzy and if you know where to look, every once in a while you’ll find a band that can’t help but trap the crowd in their sound waves.

Diarrhea Planet played with Jeff the Brotherhood at the Casbah and stole the crowd. Jeff the Brotherhood played well and the crowd danced, but if crowd involvement was an indicator of that night, it’s safe to say that Diarrhea Planet lubricated the crowd for them.

A six-piece rock-and-roll band from Nashville, Tennessee, with a three history, their sound and delightfully offensive name has been spreading underground quickly. On their first West Coast tour, after a flat tire on their way over, they barely made it to the Casbah in time but shook the venue when they did. They stayed after the show, while the crowd calmed down from that animalistic frenzy, and I talked to guitarist Evan Bird for a bit.

 

Kayleen Fulton: What’s the origin of the name? …guessing you had trouble spelling your own band name for a while?

Evan Bird: When the band started, it wasn’t really supposed to be taken very seriously. Jordan and Evan Donohue (no longer in the band) wanted a name that would make them laugh, but that would also be stupid as well as offensive. So far as I know, all of us have had a hiccup with the spelling.

 

KF: How are you liking your first west coast tour?!

EB: We have been loving this tour! Every city we’ve been to – particularly in California- has been a blast and the crowds have been receptive. We’ve all been fans of Jeff The Brotherhood since before we signed to Infinity Cat or knew them personally, so being able to do this with them has truly been a privilege.

 

KF: I’m sorry you blew out a tire on the way to San Diego, it’s a bummer to miss exploring this city. Any plans to be back anytime soon?

EB: We can’t wait to return to San Diego! We decided immediately after our set in San Diego that we have come back as soon as we can and we have build a few extra day’s to explore and hang out. The city itself is beautiful and the people we met were so kind and generous to us that it set the bar pretty high for the rest of our California shows.

 

KF: How do you describe your music? I don’t know if power-pop-punk-rock covers it.

EB: We all still struggle to describe our sound, but we’ve been saying things like “Ramones with a team of Eddie Van Halens” or “arena punk” or even simply “steroids.” Power-pop-punk-rock is pretty good though. I like that.

 

KF: What song are you most proud of so far?

EB: I can’t speak for the band, but I am most proud of Mutt Feast. I really love how the recording turned out, and I love playing it live. I think that song covers all the bases dynamically and has a few spots where the guitars can really lock horns.

 

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Interview: honeyhoney

May 6, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Suzanne and Ben of honeyhoney

USD Radio caught up with Suzanne Santo and Ben Jaffe of honeyhoney following their set opening for James Morrison at Humprehy’s by the Bay on May 5, 2012.

By: Drew Howard & Sarah Pacitti

Two weeks ago we caught a portion of honeyhoney’s set on the sun-soaked grounds of the Empire Polo Club at Coachella Weekend Two. In the blistering heat of a packed Mojave tent, the band brought its unique take on roots music to the inebriated masses. Last night, on Saturday, May 5th, we saw the band open for James Morrison at the markedly upscale Humphrey’s By the Bay to a throng of oldsters who politely sipped top shelf cocktails in neatly organized rows of white folding chairs as they tapped their toes to the music.

The juxtaposition between the two performances could hardly be more apparent, but perhaps that what makes honeyhoney so intriguing. Their tunes pervade through a patchwork of genres, paired with skillfully crafted lyrics and a caliber of expert instrumentation that is seldom witnessed. Playing analog music in a digital era, these qualities convincingly make honeyhoney appealing to the restless masses in Indio and the subdued patrons at Humphrey’s alike.

The duo, Suzanne Santo and Ben Jaffe, backed by a live band played a number of songs off each of their two full length albums. After the set, USD Radio had a chance to catch up with Suzanne and Ben who were in the midst of a crisis trying to get their ailing tour van back in to action so they could return to LA and continue on to their next show in Boulder.

—

USD Radio: I had a chance to catch a bit of your set at Coachella (weekend 2). What was it like performing at the festival? Had you ever been as an attendee?

Suzanne: I actually had been before in 2010 as a worker. I was selling barbecue in the VIP section for Baby Blues Barbeque which is where I worked in LA for a number of years. I went to see the Avett Brothers because I love them so much.

Ben: It was incredible to play Coachella. The stage setup was crazy, it was unlike anything we had ever done before. Some of these James Morrison stages have been roughly that size, but getting used to the sound is like (guttural noise) and it’s kind of difficult to feel out of touch with what you’re playing. But also the energy from the crowds at these shows is so powerful. I remember when we hit the first big drop in our set, you could just feel the energy from the crowd like a big wave that washed over you. It’s an amazing feeling but also a bit overwhelming.

USD Radio: So, I’m a bit confused because the contrast between Coachella, and Humphreys where you played tonight was huge. Do you guys usually play in upscale venues such as this one or is it always something a little different?

Suzanne:  You know, I wanna say yes. Since we play all different types of music we’re in weird positions all of the time. We opened up for Matisyahu once at a music festival. We were on the reggae stage! With all reggae artists and us. No one ever really knows what to do with us. We’ve opened up for Gavin Degraw and Lifehouse, Christina Perri….I don’t think we’ve really found our niche yet.

USD Radio: I noticed you have a couple other festivals on the horizon including Sasquatch and Newport Folk Festival. What’s the dynamic like playing festivals versus regular gigs?

Ben: Well, from the technical perspective it’s totally different because you just get booted on the stage and booted off. You can’t really settle in—not that we’ve really been able to on the support shows either because you have such limited time, so it’s a challenge in that sense because you have to have your shit together to an extent where you’ll sound good either way. So that’s a challenge, but the environment is so amazing because you have all of these bands that we love and look up to and dream of playing with.

Suzanne: It’s like going to a playground for indie rockers and also very successful musicians.

Ben: It’s like when else are we going to get to play at the same place as Tenacious D. Which is something we’ve talked about for six years and it is something that would never happen if we weren’t playing a festival like this.

USD Radio: Suzanne, I understand you started out in LA as an actress, was the goal to always breakthrough as a musician or did your intentions shift from acting to music when you met Ben.

Suzanne: Well, I actually started out in New York City. I started out as a model when I was 16 and I worked and went to school. And then I started acting, and then I fell in love for the first time. My first love was a little bit older than me, and he wanted to move to LA so I was like ME TOO. And then we broke up our first week there, and I was devastated. I got really sick for like three months…I could always sing and I taught myself to play guitar years before. I also played violin and I just started playing songs and writing out of sheer despair (laughs). My roommate was a booker for local clubs and I just started playing, and things just started to snow ball. I met Ben a few weeks later, but it was really suprising to me that I became a professional singer.

USD Radio: So do you still act?

Suzanne: I do actually. I haven’t “worked” in a long time but I have a great agent and I still go out for certain projects, but I do friends’ projects and things like that. It is something I love to do and I’d love to go back when the time is appropriate.

USD Radio: Speaking of acting, your music videos are very theatrical. Did you guys come up with the new “Angel of Death” video concept? How did that come together?

Ben: For the “Angel of Death” video we did come up with the whole concept. It was the first time we had a chance to steer the whole project from the beginning and we really did the Hollywood run around. We wrote it and got our friend Brian Scott to direct it, we produced it, we cast it, Suzanne got the food, so it was really this whole idea that we took from concept to completion and we’re really proud of how it came out—Which is kind of rare for us to be honest, because it’s been what five six years? And we have one other video that we’re stoked on and Kiefer Sutherland kind of did it for us. So this was a great kind of chance for us to make something we could be really proud of.

USD Radio:  You guys were killing a lot of people off in that new video. Do you know all of those people? Who were they?

Ben: (laughs)

Suzanne: We do know them! We are fortunate to participate in this production called Largo, which, I don’t want to say it’s high brow…

Ben: It’s like a Cadillac style venue, it’s a big community. One thing that’s a big draw is that it’s this big community that comes together to play music.

Suzanne: But they don’t let just anybody play there so when we were first accepted into the club we were like “holy shit!.” But we started off in this “Thrilling Adventure Hour” which is this comedy kind of 20’s radio style performance. That all of these amazing actors and comedians do like once a month. It’s like one of their passion projects, and we’ve been brought in to sing a couple of times and we just made friends with these people. And it was so cool to have them all come through. And we were like, “Okay, well, we’re shooting in Compton, in warehouse, and we can’t pay you….but we’ll have snacks.”

USD Radio: Your influences seem pretty diverse. Some of your tracks, especially from your first album, are very jazzy, while others, especially from your second album, are much more folksy. Do you set out looking to make a track sound a specific way or does it just come out sounding a certain way based on the songwriting process?

Ben: I think it’s a natural progression of us trying to gain more focus. It was a lot of songs I had written originally for this solo project of mine. Before I met Suzanne I didn’t listen to much folk or “roots music” or country at all. She introduced me to that kind of stuff. And I think as we worked together more and more we were achieving some sort of focus which I hope will continue on the next record, and I think that’s one of our greatest assets and greatest hindrances at times—we kind of buckshot you know what I mean? I like the direction we took with Billy Jack, leaning a little more heavily  on the…I don’t even know what to call it…

Suzanne:  Or our live sound—First Rodeo (the band’s first album) has so much production on it with the Jazz progressions.

Ben: I think that’s also a result of the situation we were in. The label we were on put us in this ridiculous $2 million studio that the label owned. And they brought in all of these heavy dudes …so it sounds like a $2 million album and the second one we did in a garage. But there was almost the same amount of production, we had a horn section and stuff, but it just doesn’t sound so expensive.

USD Radio: Speaking of your latest album, who or what is Billy Jack?

Suzanne: It was an idea we came up with as a homage to our friend Jim Turner, who was actually the angel of death in our music video. He was an actor/comedian that Ben  lived with in LA for a while in his family home, he rented out a room. It’s kind of this crazy house with a bunch of artist/comedians, like this commune…

So Jim had this song that he’d sing called “Billy Jack” based on this movie called Billy Jack, that was this cult classic shot for like, I don’t know ten grand in the seventies and it totally flopped at the box office, but then it became this like ten million dollar cult film. And we thought that was really cool because it didn’t do very well at first but it was really successful in the end.

USD Radio: What’s next for honeyhoney? Another album, headlining tour?

Suzanne: Definitely another album, and maybe a headlining tour. We played a headlining tour last year. We actually came to San Diego—we played the Soda Bar. It was a horrible end to our tour. The night before we played the Troubadour in LA and we sold it out and people were getting turned away at the door. We had press and KCRW there and all this crazy shit. And the next day I remember showing up at the Soda Bar, hung over, exhausted,, slightly sick and being like “What?!”

Ben: It looked like someone had vomited on the pool table.

Suzanne: The power went out twice during our set. And we ended up playing acoustically for part of it. But we ended up having this amazing time as a band, and after the show we sat around  and talked about how much fun we had. It was very private, there was like 40 people there. We just talked about how much fun we had the last month and then drove back to LA. Humility is bliss.

Ben: And that’s kind of where we’re at. We have these amazing moments as a band and then SMACK, these kicks in the balls. And that’s fine, I don’t see that changing at any point.

—

Check out honeyhoney’s latest album, Billy Jack, or catch the band on tour. They’ll return to San Diego on July 26th, 2012, opening for Sheryl Crow at Humphrey’s by the Bay.

Billy Jack - honeyhoney

Filed Under: Interviews, USD Radio

Interview: Paul Hoffman of Greensky Bluegrass

April 24, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Greensky Bluegrass returns to San Diego on April 28

By Mackenzie Gilchrist

Greensky Bluegrass is still touring like crazy all across the United States and they are coming back to San Diego! This fabulous group of bluegrass musicians will be playing at Winstons in OB on Saturday, April 28, and USD Radio is giving out 2 FREE tickets! USD Radio contributor Mackenzie Gilchrist spoke with singer/songwriter/mandolin extraordinaire Paul Hoffman about why the band has returned to San Diego, his contribution to the group and some of the exciting festival performances they have coming up.

 

Mackenzie Gilchrist: You guys were just here in November, but you’re back so soon and we are thrilled! Is there anything in particular that keeps you coming back to San Diego?

Paul Hoffman: We just like San Diego. You know, it’s warm you can swim in the ocean.  And of course there is Winstons. It is the first place we played at in San Diego. We have played a couple other venues too, but Winstons is always just a really fun place to play. It’s in a cool town too, OB.

 

MG: So it sounds like Winstons is your favorite venue to play in San Diego?

PH: Yea, we’ve had a couple shows there that were definitely some of the more memorable shows I’ve played. It is a fun room and has good energy. We also have friends that live around there so it is cool to see them.

 

MG: The last time you were in town you had just recently released the new album Handguns. After these last couple months on tour how would you say the fans are reacting to the new stuff?

PH: It’s been good. The fans have been getting to know the tunes. With some of the ones we are playing more often we have definitely noticed that reaction to them has gotten greater. People are actually signing along with us.  I think all of that just shows that people are listening to the record and enjoying it which is always really flattering.

 

MG: You are one of the primary song writers for the group and I just have to ask you about one song in particular. “Just to Lie” off the album Five Interstates is one of my favorites. My friend and I always kind of giggle about the lyrics when we listen to it, wondering where it came from. Can you comment at all on your inspiration?

PH: (laughs) Well, I wrote it with Anders, our Dobro player, but I wrote the lyrics. We were kind of just joking about the whole situation, so I guess that song was born out of a joke. But in the end it becomes kind of poignant. I never wanted it to be…well.  It’s about what you think it’s about. I didn’t want it to be shallow though, I wanted to preserve that little romance.

 

MG: I know there are many, but do you have a favorite song that you’ve written?

PH: It kind of varies. I like certain things for different reasons. Right now, “Handguns” is my favorite lyrically. It still really hits the whole image and message, and is really powerful to me when I sing it. Something you learn as young songwriter is that it is hard to commit to words and to continue with that. It becomes difficult to not want to change it and just accept the lyrics and I’m really happy with my choices with that song.

 

 

MG: You used to play the guitar – what made you switch to the mandolin?

PH: It was on a whim actually. I just wanted to spend some money. (laughs) To burn a little dough, so I bought a cheap little mandolin and it worked out pretty well. I met these other guys and started playing with them and the more I got into it the more I realized I was never going to be a great guitar player. I had more potential with mandolin because it just fits my style. (laughs) It is definitely a smaller pond to swim in because there are so many great guitar players out there. I still play guitar but my skills are just better on the mandolin. I mean I’ve been playing the guitar since I was twelve so you wouldn’t think it would be like that, but I guess so.

 

MG: You guys have quite a few festivals lined up for the summer—High Sierra, Summer Camp, 80/35 and many more. Are there any in particular that you’re really looking forward to?

PH: I’m definitely looking forward to going back to Telluride [for the Telluride Bluegrass Festival]. It is kind of like a family reunion of sorts for us. We’ve played it several times. This will be our 4th or 5th time… or something like that. But yea, that one is great and has kind of a home vibe.

 

MG: I know you’re also playing Stagecoach which is coming up soon. This is definitely a different kind of festival than Telluride and all the others you have lined up. How does it compare for you?

PH: Well I think the best way to put it is that it is just different. They have a bluegrass tent so there are two days of bluegrass within that. Something I love about our band is that we have the ability to cross over to different environments. The wide range of our catalog can apply to so many different things. It’s nice to be able to go different places and work off of different reactions. We actually played there two years ago and so did Kid Rock who is a huge country star. He is a Michigander just like us and he split early and so we went onto his trailer and we drank all of his Bud Light Lime. (laughs) Definitely our favorite Stagecoach story.

MG: Oh yea, Anders told me that story too, but he didn’t mention it was Bud Light Lime.

PH: Oh yea. He was drinking the BLL.

 

MG: I know it’s kind of a cliché question to ask but everyone’s answers are always so different so I do it anyway. Do you have a favorite part about being a musician or being up on stage?

PH: Um, I think it’s the exchange of energy from fans to us. It’s really an unexplainable and priceless thing. I am reminded so often of how great my job is and how lucky I am. But there are lots of little things that you don’t think about too. For example we have a fan that has become a friend from Colorado.  She became a fan in Pittsburg and moved and now one of her best friends in Colorado is someone she met at our show. She always thanks us for introducing them.  It is little powers like that that we have to bring people together. I feel like people work hard in their jobs all week to take time off on the weekends and do something fun like see some music and I’m just so happy that I get to provide that for them.

 

Don’t forget to check out the show on Saturday 4/28 at Winstons in OB and go to USD Student Radio Facebook page for your chance to win free tickets! 

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Interview: ArtOfficial

April 12, 2012 By Leave a Comment

ArtOfficial comes to San Diego on April 14

By Matt Hose

From their hometown of Miami, hip-hop/jazz-fusion band ArtOfficial is booking it cross-country for a west coast tour, ending at the 710 Beach Club in San Diego on April 14.  USD Radio Contributor Matt Hose spoke with Newsense, one of the bands two MC’s, about their new album, the west coast, and their unique live sound.

 

Matt Hose: Your new album, Vitamins & Minerals, was released last November.  How has fan reception of the new album been so far?
ArtOfficial: Great, man. Our record label just released the album in Japan.  And it’s doing pretty good over here in the States. People sing the songs with us and a lot of people from all over the place hit us up on Facebook.  I can’t complain honestly.

 

MH: Have you gotten a lot of exposure outside of your hometown of Miami?
AO: That’s what we’re working on now.  We’ve pretty much made a name for ourselves in Miami, and we’re trying to push that up to northern Florida, the west coast, and the northeast.  We just did New Orleans last week.  It was a party the whole time, and they liked the music a lot.  We’re just trying to explore outside Miami, and the process is a lot of fun.

 

MH: The song “Don’t Hold Your Breath” off the new album is a break from the upbeat lyrics and instruments that many of your other songs have.  It has a darker feel to it.  What inspired that song for you guys?
AO: That song has been in the making for a long time.  The whole thing was that we didn’t have drums for it. We tried a couple loops, we tried some live drums, and then we just decided that it would sound better without any drums.  Throughout the years we’ve kind of been molding that song, and it stuck out from all the other songs because of that no-drums feel.  We put a live string section on it.  Those guys were amazing, and they pretty much made that song stand out ten times more than any other song on the album in my opinion.

 

MH: You guys incorporated a bunch of new and different sounds on the new album, such as the marching band drum line on “AO Cadence,” and the funky flute on “Rooftop.”  What new style/influence do you think that you would like to try out next?
AO: Lately we’ve been getting this really bluesy sound.  Like this real twang-y southern sound.  And we like it so we’re just going to flesh out some more songs and see what happens.  At the same time, we also do songs where we jump in the studio and start a song from scratch.  With no production value whatsoever, those songs tend to stick out. That’s how we did “Migraine,” that’s how we did “Rumor Says.” So there’s always gonna be different sounding songs.  We just want every album to sound more evolved than the last album.

 

MH: What are your blues influences right now?
AO: We listen to a lot of Black Keys on the road.  We’ve been following them for a while now.  Pretty much all of us listen to Led Zeppelin.  But more so than blues, a lot of the rhythm sections listens to a lot of jazz, a lot of soul. We’ve been listening to this new album that this artist called Robert Glasper put out.  It’s very inspiring, very motivational.  It’s really good Jazz and hip-hop.

 

MH: With so many hip-hop artists transitioning into using only computer-generated instruments, do you guys ever feel any temptation to start computerizing some of your sounds?
AO: We already do. We’ve got some really cool vocal samples that we’ve been messing with. So we’ve been trying to transition into doing both at the same time, playing live music with the sample in the background at the shows.  But our whole idea is that we don’t want to lose our live sound. We jam a lot at our shows.  It helps to set us apart from other bands, even other live bands, because we’ll go into a funk jam with no structure in it and two or three solos.  Then the next song will be a hip-hop song with a lot of structure.

 

MH: This is only you guys’ second time playing on the west coast.  How do you feel the reception has been in California as compared with Miami and the Gulf Coast?
AO: It’s a little bit more welcoming [in California] than in Miami.  In Miami, we had a strong buzz going fast but it still took us about a year to really get people to notice us and follow us.  But we’ll go to San Francisco and everyone receives us with open arms, and they keep in touch with our Facebook.  When they see us, they’ve never seen anything like it before.  Here in Miami they’re like, “Oh, it’s ArtOfficial, we can see them whenever we want.”  In San Fran they’re like, “They’re here once a year, let’s tell our friends and let’s go out and have a good time.”  Same thing with San Diego.  It’s just such a cool little town and the whole vibe is different.  The people are a lot more welcoming and they’re just chill.

 

MH: Do you guys have any beach time scheduled out here?
AO: Yeah, man, we love San Diego.  And when we’re not playing shows out there, we’re hiking or we’re at the beach or a bar.  The beaches there are beautiful and it would be a sin to not get some beach time.

 

MH: ArtOfficial released the 2010 mixtape The Payback for free.  Do you think there is a future for more free albums for the fans?
AO: Pretty sure, man. When the first Payback came out a couple of us were talking about doing a Payback Vol. 2. It kinda got put on hold for Vitamins & Minerals, and right now we’re working on a whole bunch of new music, so that’s kind of priority.  But once that’s taken care of and we cut a new album, we’ll get bored real fast. We’ve been trading ideas. We were looking at some Led Zeppelin and some Bob Marley.

 

MH: Having two emcees in a rap band, is there ever any competition between you and MC Logics for a verse?
AO: Not really, not in the sense of “Oh I hope I get this verse and he doesn’t.”  But there’s always friendly competition, and I think that that’s what makes us better. He [MC Logics] writes a little more than me and he writes a little faster too, so when I know he’s writing to a beat we got yesterday, it makes me want to start writing too.  But it’s all friendly competition; it’s all for the sake of getting better.

 

MH: ArtOfficial had one show abroad in Barcelona in 2010.  How are the vibes different in Spain from the States?
AO: It’s like 1997 in Spain right now when it comes to hip-hop.  We went to Barcelona and there were kids with skateboards just rapping on the street, like I used to in high school.  They’re really into battling each other and free styling, and they really admire the hip-hop groups more so than solo projects.  You can just feel it when you’re walking around: kids love rap, they love going to shows.  And I remember when hip-hop was like that [in the States], it was mostly guys.  You didn’t really see many girls at shows.  Like I wouldn’t take my girlfriend to a Mobb Deep show.  In Spain there were a bunch of girls.  Young girls, old girls, and they just love the hip-hop.  It’s a completely different vibe from here.

 

MH: Are you guys thinking of doing any more shows abroad?
AO: In my opinion, I think we should play South America.  Chile has a huge hip-hop scene.  Same with Brazil And Colombia.  I think they would really like our vibe and our style and our set.

 

MH: Thanks again for taking time out to sit with us.
AO: For sure, man.  April 14.  We’re gonna be there.

Filed Under: Interviews, Upcoming Shows, USD Radio Tagged With: , , , , ,

Interview: Paul Kowert of the Punch Brothers

March 8, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Photo by Danny Clinch

The Punch Brothers come to the El Rey Theatre this Saturday.

 

By Sarah Jorgensen

In preparation for the Punch Brothers’ show at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles this Saturday, USD Radio Editor Sarah Jorgensen spoke with bassist Paul Kowert about the bluegrass-tinged folk band’s newest album, Who’s Feeling Young Now?, the band’s live experience, and Radiohead. You can still get tickets for the show here.

Sarah Jorgensen: Your new album Who’s Feeling Young Now? just dropped a few weeks ago. What has it been like to bring this new music on the road?
Paul Kowert: At this moment we’ve played twelve shows since the album dropped.  We’re energized by the experience of translating our record sound to our live show, and we have more power now than ever before, which the songs really call for.  We’re playing our best shows yet, and the audience response has been overwhelmingly good.

 

SJ: I’m personally a big fan of your cover of Radiohead’s “Kid A” on the new album. What inspired this choice?
PK: We’ve been playing “Kid A” on and off since June 2009.  Playing covers is one of our strengths, and Radiohead is a favorite group of ours.  Capturing the energy of our live show was a goal in making Who’s Feeling Young Now?, so we recorded an array of material such as you would hear at our shows.  The two covers are also the only instrumentals, which gives balance to the album as a whole.

 

SJ: There are far fewer instrumental tracks on Who’s Feeling Young Now? than on some of your past work. What has led you to pursue more lyrically-based songs on this album?
PK: The fact that the two instrumentals on the album are covers shows where our creative output has been.  Songs are just what’s coming out of this ensemble.  We all have other outlets for playing instrumentals.

 

SJ: You’re playing some pretty major festivals this summer – Bonnaroo, the Telluride Bluegrass Festival and the Newport Folk Festival to name a few. What is different for you about playing in a festival atmosphere as opposed to a smaller venue?
PK: The chance to reach many people who have never heard us before is stimulating.  It’s more fun than a showcase, because we’re meeting new listeners directly.  Hearing something new and great live is an incredible feeling, and hopefully many people can experience that at some of those festivals.  The Telluride audience is largely familiar with us, and playing at that festival is more like going to a family reunion.  But in the best possible way.

 

SJ: The El Rey Theatre show is near the middle of your tour. Which shows have been your favorites so far, and which are you looking forward to down the line?
PK: We had a massive audience of some 1,600 people in Boone, NC.  Montreal was exciting because it was the first time we ever played there, and it was our first headline show in Canada.  We sold it out and the audience gave us a lot of energy. And I’m looking forward to playing my best for some of my favorite musicians in Nashville.

 

SJ: What can fans expect from your live experience?
PK: Our record on caffeine.

Filed Under: Artist Preview, Interviews, Upcoming Shows, USD Radio Tagged With: , , , ,

Interview: Pacific Dub

February 28, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Pacific Dub is finishing up their most recent tour

By Juan Barragan

Recently, USD Radio’s Juan Barragan spoke with Colton Place, Bryce Klemer, and Ryan Naglich, three of the members of Pacific Dub. Pacific Dub, or PDub, is a Reggae-Rock band hailing from the surf capital of the United States, Huntington Beach, California, and they talked about their current tour and upcoming album.

Juan Barragan: You guys have headlined a bunch of shows around the country, what was the experience overall? Was it what you guys expected?

PDub: Yea Absolutely! It was a blast! We think it was way better than we expected actually. We had a lot of fans in every state; it was an overwhelming experience to be able to go places that we have never even been before and still be able to have friends and people there that enjoyed our music. That was probably the biggest gain of the whole tour; just knowing that we have a lot of fans in different places.

Ryan Naglich: One of my highest points is just playing a show in a state that we have never been in, and having fans sing our lyrics. That got to me on stage, I thought it was great.

Juan Barragan: Where did you see that happen?

PDub: We saw that happen in St. Louis, Missouri, Chicago; there wasn’t one show where there wasn’t a group of people singing. For our second nationwide tour it was very positive, it was a blessing. It was a positive increase in our fan base. Tomorrows Bad Seeds was very hospitable on the whole tour. We played some shows with Passafire and those guys were amazing as well. The whole thing was just positive!

 

Juan Barragan: For this tour, is there anything you guys would have done differently?
Bryce Klemer: I wish we had a better guitar case. (Laughs)
Ryan Naglich: That’s definitely going to change.
Colton Place: As far as we are concerned, our whole motto goes, “Progress, not perfection.” That’s what we strive for. We’ve been progressing as much as we like to do, so I don’t think we’d do anything differently.

Juan Barragan: Awesome! So while you guys are driving city to city, you guys spend countless hours on the road. What do you guys do with that time?
PDub: When the people are sleeping, **** (Explicit) gets weird. (Laughs)
Ryan Naglich: I know I like to read books and expand the mind a little bit.
PDub: We all like to read and play air drums, and video games. We’ll do anything that you can think of to keep our minds occupied so that we don’t go insane, because it gets weird after a couple of days in the van.

Juan Barragan: Of course, it’s a lot of miles to drive.
Bryce Klemer: We did a 20 hour drive the other day.

Juan Barragan: That’s brutal! All right, so imagine you can fill up any venue in the country. Which one would you pick?
PDub: (In unison) Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado. It is an outdoor amphitheatre and it holds 15-20 thousand people. It’s like a canyon almost. You talk to most bands, and that’s the most cliché answer they will give, because once they play there they tell you it’s their favorite venue.

Juan Barragan: How many times have you guys played there?
PDub: Never! We’ve never played there. That is like a dream venue for us.

Juan Barragan: You guys have toured with bands like The Dirty Heads and Iration; if you guys could pick any other band to tour with, which band would it be?
PDub: Incubus, 311, or the Red Hot Chili Peppers; those three.
Bryce Klemer: Or Sublime… with Rome.
Ryan Naglich: I’m going to say one more: No Doubt!
PDub: No Doubt would be so sick! I think those five bands would be awesome to tour with. There are so many more though, we couldn’t name them all. You’d have to give us like an hour. Also, (Laughs) Britney Spears, J Beebs… awful!

Juan Barragan: You guys have an album that is expected to come out in the summer. Should fans expect a shift in musical direction or are you guys sticking with the successful Reggae-Rock combination?
PDub: I think we are progressing as a band. As song writers, we are just more into progressing as music writers. It’s a funny thing because you never plan to change your sound as a band. The more you mature, the more you travel, the more influences you gain on the road.
Ryan Naglich: I think all fans that listen to our music when the record comes out are going to like it. It’s going to be a progression. It’s going to be something that a lot of people have not heard before, and that’ll be a good thing.
Colton Place: We are trying to stay as true as we can to the Reggae-Rock roots. This genre is very tight-knit and has a very close group of people. We are always going to be Pacific Dub; we are always going to be PDub and whether we have more rock, this or that, we are going to progress the way we progress and we just hope the fans enjoy every bit of it, because we are having a blast playing the music for them.

Juan Barragan: So far the crowd has enjoyed it! With this new album coming out, obviously the goal of any band is to sell albums. How do you guys feel about the whole music piracy thing?
Colton Chase: (Laughs) Dude, I download music still. As long as people are listening to our music, this is not the 90’s. We are not going to get signed to a label and sell a million records tomorrow. We are going to have to put in our work no matter what, so all we want is a positive increase in our fan base and have more people join us at shows; we like anything that gets our music out. If they download it off of iTunes then great. We have an amazing following with fans that do nothing but download everything off of iTunes. They’ll go buy the CD in person and they’ll still download it off of iTunes. If you’re going to download it, then all we’ll say is thanks for listening to our music. That’s how we feel.

Juan Barragan: Awesome! Now for the final question, it’s a bit of a random one… what’s the most awkward show you’ve played?
Bryce Klemer: We were playing the O.C. Tavern…
Ryan Naglich: No, I have to honestly say that the most awkward show I’ve played is… (Hesitates) I can’t say it, no offense… Solvang, CA, (Laughs) that one restaurant in Solvang, California.
PDub: To give a background, Solvang, California is where our singer, Colton, is from. It’s a little Dutch town. No, it’s more of like a Danish town, 30 minutes north of Santa Barbara. It was a lot of older people, 50 and above. There weren’t a lot of people. It was just people eating dinner and enjoying wine in a nice restaurant. Then we come in with our reggae and rock and we were stoked about it.

Juan Barragan: Were they ready for it?
PDub: (Laughs) No! They were ready for smooth jazz. Towards the end they started enjoying the instruments. I think it definitely had to do with some of the wine that they were drinking. But they definitely enjoyed the performance at the end. It was a cool show but it was kind of awkward because everyone was kind of predominantly in the age range of between 30 and 40.

Juan Barragan: (Laughs) That’s great! Thank you guys very much for doing this interview tonight! Good luck with your two last shows of this tour. I can’t wait to hear the new album when it drops in the summer. 

Filed Under: Interviews, USD Radio Tagged With: , ,

Interview: Purling Hiss

February 17, 2012 By 2 Comments

Purling Hiss's most recent album, Lounge Lizards

By Shaida Omid and Kayleen Fulton

The Belly Up was sold out before Dr. Dog had even arrived to San Diego. By the time I got there, the crowd was beginning to gravitate toward the stage in anticipation. The band’s new album Be The Void came out that very day and most of the crowd hadn’t heard their new songs yet.


Similar to Delta Spirit, Dr. Dog plays indie alternative rock, so the opening act, Purling Hiss, was something quite unexpected for most of the crowd. Mike Polizze came on and revved up the crowd by jamming harder tunes than most Dr. Dog fans were anticipating that night. The resolutely different genre of music that opened for Dr. Dog presented a precarious duo of Philadelphians, but it was very well-received by the crowd. Mike Polizze was generous enough to offer USDRadio an inside look at the lives that make up this lo-fi, psychedelic, garage rock.
Dr. Dog’s Eric “Teach” Slick, drummer, also joined in for a bit!

Mike Polizze: Purling Hiss’s guitar and vocals
Kiel Everett: Purling Hiss’s Bassist
Mike Sneeringer: Purling Hiss’s Guitarist

Eric “Teach” Slick: Dr. Dog’s drummer

 

Shaida Omid & Kayleen Fulton: How long have you guys been together?
Mike Polizze: A year and a half or so, almost two years.

SO&KF: What were you guys doing before?
MP: I have a band called Birds of Maya that I’ve been in for eight years, but we don’t tour. We’ve put out records on Holy Mountain.

SO&KF: Same kind of music?
MP: Sort of. It branches off. Mike’s been touring for 12 years.
Mike Sneeringer: I’ve been in a bunch of other different bands.

SO&KF: Are you currently in another band?
MS: Technically, I guess I’m in four. But this is, by a huge margin, my main band. Drummers get around. Sometimes it’s hard to find drummers that are willing to tour and can play different styles. I guess I’ve just fallen into knowing a bunch of people who needed drummers and so it’s worked to my advantage in a lot of ways because I’ve been able to continuously tour for a really long time.

SO&KF: How did you guys get together?
MP: It’s really cool that we were all friends first before we started the band. Basically how it started is that because I was in Birds of Maya for so long and they couldn’t tour – the main guy in that band has a wife and kids and a full-time job; music is his hobby. So, in my free time, I did my own thing and ended up just recording stuff and putting it out on small labels and Kurt Vile was the first guy to ask me, ‘Wanna go on tour with me? I’m gonna have a tour.” So Mike and Kiel were my friends and we had time to get a band together and rehearse and get ready for it and take the show on the road. So it’s kind of weird, it’s backwards. Most bands start, play songs, get your friends together, jam in the basement. But I made recordings and put out actual albums on small labels that got a little bit of attention and Kurt Vile, being a friend of mine, invited me on tour, and I got the band together, had time to rehearse and then we’ve been together ever since. And now we’re an exclusive unit, sort of.

SO&KF: So you knew Kurt Vile before?
MP: Yeah, we’re all buddies. KV & the Violators would play shows with Birds of Maya, my other band.

(Eric “Teach” Slick enters)

SO&KF: What cities have you been playing previous to Solana Beach?
MP: Cleveland, Columbus, Lawrence, Kansas.
MS: We didn’t get to play Boulder because it got cancelled cause of the snow.
MP: Yeah, so that got cancelled. It was a great night because we all went to a small town called Julesverg in the northern tip of Colorado and we all got to hang out with these guys and it was a good bonding, sort of, experience.
MS: middle of nowhere town, we, like, took over this dinky motel bar. the locals had no idea what to make of us. Like there were 12 or 15 of us. I guess it was 13 of us total. Rolled in there, into this bar that had had 3 people who all knew each other’s names. It was fun, though.

MP: So then we played Salt Lake City, then Phoenix. Then tomorrow, we’re off because Dr. Dog is playing Conan. Then Santa Ana, L.A. and all up the coast. It’ll be really awesome. Which is good because we’ve had some rough drives up here, we’re driving and Dr. Dog is on a tour bus.

SO&KF: What’s been your favorite city?

MP: Tonight was pretty fun.

MS: Tonight was definitely my favorite show.

SO&KF: Have you gotten to enjoy your stops much?

MS: We actually have a rare day off tomorrow. Like he was saying about the drives, this tour especially, it’s been literally: play, pack up, watch a bit of Dr. Dog and then we’re usually on the road to drive and in some cases, even a couple hours a night towards the next city, get a hotel, wake up, and drive the rest of the way. Even the nights that we’ve stayed in the city, we haven’t gone out. We haven’t even really hung out in the club. We usually, afterwards, we’ve been kinda like ‘okay we have to go get to bed, because tomorrow’s gonna be another long day.’ So tomorrow’s our first day off. Our first intentional day off, I guess. And then Santa Ana’s only an hour and fifteen minutes away. The next couple of days we have a ton of time.
MP: We went to Europe for two weeks and saw nothing.
Kiel Everett: I saw the tip of the Eiffel Tower from the highway.
MP: No! You weren’t there! My friend lives in Paris and we went to that cathedral, it was some cathedral.

MS: (jokingly) Kiel walked around with his eyes closed the whole time.
MP: I tried to get him to come, we kinda parted ways. I have a friend who lives in Paris and he took us to whatever cathedral and we could see the whole city. That was awesome.

SO&KF: So what are you going to see in San Diego?
MS: What did that guy just tell us? Some park, I wrote it down.
SO&KF: Balboa park?
MS: Yeah, that’s it.

SO&KF: (to Mike P.) Is the guitar the first instrument you started playing?

MP: Uh, no, piano was the first. I was young. I started taking lessons when I was 8, but I remember walking up to a piano and playing the beginning part to “Old Time Rock n Roll” by Bob Seger by ear. That’s my earliest memory of playing something by ear and then my parents put me in front of a piano and I played guitar after that, when I was 13. I took like two years of lessons, but I got bored of it. My uncle had an old Sears little practice amp from the 70s and a Kent electric guitar, a student model, I ended up breaking that somehow. And then I got an acoustic guitar, and then an electric. I love playing bass, drums… but the end goal was serving the song. Not being all for one instrument, but using each as a component to create this one, interweaving thing. I got into all the instruments that would make up a rock band. They’re all equally important to me is what I’m getting at. The guitar just ended up being my primary instrument.
MS: When I was in elementary school, in fifth grade, and the high school jazz band came to put on a performance for the elementary kids. You know, I was gonna be a cheerleader, but then I put down my pom-poms and picked up the drumsticks. The drummer of the jazz band was really good, did a solo, and I was like ‘That’s awesome, I wanna play drums.’ I convinced my parents get to me a snare drums, then convinced them to get me one more piece, one more piece, and I was in school band for a little bit then I got kicked out for disciplinary reasons and that’s when I started my first rock n roll band. I had a bad mouth when I was a child and I was shout or say things at inopportune moments… right when the music went quiet. They sent me to home ec. after that. Then I started a band with friends at shows… and that’s how I got started. THere’s a lot to learn when you start actually playing with other people in front of people.
KE: I started playing guitar when I was 15. THe first band that I was in, i played bass. I’m not a bass player. It’s kinda come full circle. I’m a very sloppy guitar/bass player… but it seems to work. I didn’t even own a bass when we started playing as Purling Hiss. Orginally I was supposed to play guitar, but the Kurt Vile tour was looming over us and we didn’t have a bass player.

SO&KF: (to “Teach”) Hey congratulations on your album coming out today.
TS: Yeah, it’s exciting, we’re number 2 on the alternative charts. But Lana Del Ray is number one. We’ve got to usurp her somehow…

SO&KF: Did you study music?
TS: I studied with a lot of different people, but I learned most of things about music from my family. My grandfather was a jazz musician. He played a lot of Billie Holliday, buddy rich, ella fitzgerald. I just learned a lot from him. My dad was a guitar collector, so I grew up around like 20 guitars in the house. There was constantly music happening in the house. I guess I kind of learned by listening and having my dad be like “Rock n Roll! You gotta save the kids!”
MS: I’m actually going to convince him on this tour to give me probably what is the closest thing i’ve had to drum lessons in a while. ‘Cause there are technique things that I never, ever learned.
SO&KF: How did you guys start touring together?
TS: I saw Purling Hiss play at Johnny Brenda’s, a really awesome venue in Philadelphia. They were headlining.

SO&KF: Do you generally choose who you’ll tour with?
TS: Not always. It really depends on what the tour is. So whenever we have a new album out, we have a tour to support it and we can pick whoever we want. As we tour more and more, we’re looking for interesting bills, so sometimes our booking agent will be like ‘Hey, you should take Deer Tick or Here We Go Magic.’ We’re constantly getting suggested these bands. Sometimes it’s beyong our control. But in a situation like this, I saw Purling Hiss play and I was like “Man, it was be so awesome if we could get them to go on tour with us, and all I did was ask our manager and he was like yeah, that’s an awesome idea. and everybody in the band was really psyched about it. It’s the only idea that I’ve ever had that was unanimously agreed on. I was like “Hey! Let’s have a tour where we have ice cream for three meals a day.” Everyone was like “Ehhhh, Eric shut up.”

SO&KF: How often do you tour?
TS: We never stop. We are always on tour. We tour 150-170 days per year. But there are bands who do more than that, which is crazy. In Phish’s heyday, they were playing like 250 shows a year. The band Wye Oak just did 300 dates a year.
MS: Here We Go Magic plays a lot too. Literally, none of them have apartments. They live on tour. When they’re off tour, they have to get hotels or stay with friends for the week.

SO&KF: Were you guys avoiding drinking tonight to be fresh for Conan tomorrow?
TS: Oh, that’s a good question. I mean, I know Tobi drinks whiskey for his throat; it helps him sing. He bruised his trachea four years ago in a boating accident. It’s kind of amazing that he can sing. He almost completely destroyed his trachea. He was on a canoe with his wife and he was sitting under him and they hit a rock – he couldn’t sing for four months.

SO&KF: Have you found yourself being recognized on the street yet?
TS: I got recognized somewhere really funny recently, I’m trying to remember where it was. I don’t often get recognized on tour, but it’s been happening more and more in Philadelphia, in weird places like the bank or a sub shop.

SO&KF: How are the dynamics of the band working out since some members are newer than others?
TS: It’s really diplomatic with Dr Dog. We’re all great friends so when we’re working on something together, somebody has an idea, it always gets a shot. So if I’m like “hey, I want to have a screeching hyena on this track… or I want a real hyena and I’m gonna tickle it.” They’ll be like Sure, let’s get the budget, get a hyena. All kidding aside, that is how it works. If anybody has an idea, it get a shot. That’s really the best part about being in the band. We work as a creative unit. Scott or Tobi will write a song, but once it’s in the hands of the band, anything can happen.

Keep your eyes and ears open for some new recordings from Purling Hiss coming up in the next few months, and make sure to catch Dr. Dog’s performance on the Conan show if you haven’t already.  Cheers!

Filed Under: Interviews, USD Radio Tagged With: , , ,

Interview: Lazerbeak of Doomtree

February 3, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Doomtree plays at Casbah on February 3

 

By Tom Roth

Recently, USD Radio’s Tom Roth spoke with Lazerbeak, DJ for seven-piece Minneapolis rap collective, Doomtree to discuss the group’s current super-tour and new album, No Kings.

Catch Doomtree on Friday, February 3 at San Diego’s Casbah. Tickets available here.

Tom Roth: At first glance, Doomtree can seem a bit dizzying. It’s not every day that a seven-some rap collective enjoys the same success as Doomtree. Did that group dynamic come about on purpose or was it more of a happy accident?
Lazerbeak: It was a little bit of both. We all kind of met up and joined forces a little but after high school and at that point, we are all kind of figuring everything out. The whole “strength in numbers” philosophy kicked in where if one rapper finagled his way into a show he could maybe pull along another one and they could share the 15-20 minute slot… things like that. We could pool resources, we could do jobs. I remember having a ledger and a little cash box and we made $40 from a show, I could go to Best Buy and buy CR-Rs so we could press up some CD’s to sell. It started there. We all knew that we were individual artists but it just made sense and seemed easier to forge a path together. As that continued and got bigger, slowly, it seemed like it never made any sense to stop. We’re fortunate. Now we’re here and we’re enjoying a little bit of success and working real hard and so we can enjoy that together. It’s pretty gratifying.

TR: How is the Doomtree of 2012 different from the Doomtree from back in the day? How’s the material different?
LB: [Laughs] the structure has changed. We’re all nearing 30 now – some of us have hit 30  – and so that’s a lot different than when we were 19-years-old…. Also, we’ve learned a lot. We’ve gotten the opportunity to do a lot of things and we’ve learned from all those things. We’ve tried to implement new ways of making us successful. A lot of that has brought some structure. Dessa and I end up doing a lot of the business stuff . Sims is really good at the merchandise stuff. Everyone has their own little role that they contribute to make this thing run as smoothly as it possibly can. Through experience and all that stuff we’ve been able to fine-tune it to work for us. I certainly wouldn’t recommend it for anyone else but for us, it works.

TR: With so many people contributing to Doomtree, who are the top three influences for the group?
LB: Ooh, ok, three outside artists? Oh man…we all have such different tastes… let me poll the room here [poses questions to the crew]. I’d say maybe Outkast. It’s very rare that all seven of us will agree that we like th same artist but I think Outkast is one of the few that we can always agree on. Outkast for sure. Steely Dan? I think we all like Steely Dan. I don’t know if that’s an influence or not but we all agree on Steely Dan, Outkast, and Kurt Vonnegut, the author. We all ended up reading a fair share of his books when we were younger. I know I did.

TR: Looking at the tour schedule for No Kings, the first thing to notice is that there are 40+ shows on just about as many stops. Got any tactics for keeping your sanity?
LB: [Laughs] I don’t know if we’ve figured that out quite yet. We’re really happy to be out on the west coast. We love it out here and we’ve been fortunate enough to do some shows here. This is some of our biggest markets in the country. For some reason, the west coast has always been really good to us. Starting the tour out and routing it that way, the drives are kind of a grind and we’ve packed it in so that even if we have a day off, its usually a driving day and we do an in-store that night. I think we’re feeling the fatigue a little bit up front since we’re on four or five hours of sleep per night, through the past week. But the longest drives are behind us. I think that’ll help. Honestly, the difference between waking up at 7 and getting in a van, and waking up at 9 and getting in a van is astronomical. We can sleep in a little. We’re trying to take it easy. We’ve been on enough of these now that we know you can’t go hard every night. Just trying to pace ourselves. Even though we’ve all done a lot of tours, this is probably one of the larger ones. Its almost like a three month tour with a week off in the middle. So far no one has gotten super sick. We’re all drinking our Emergen-C’s in the morning and hoping that we make it through. We’re looking forward to the shorter drives. I think tomorrow we have a three hour drive, which is awesome.

TR: With that many shows, are you working in room for improvisation or are all the shows going to be pretty much the same in terms of their format?
LB: Honestly, for the first half of the tour it’ll be changing because it takes us a while to really get into the “perfect set” for that tour. With all the different material that we have, it’s not just the crew songs. Obviously, the set is heavily focused on No Kings but we have probably 30-some releases on Doomtree (Records) and we can play any of those songs so it’s a challenge to pick which ones and to see how the crowd will react to them. It takes some time. Once we get it locked in, we usually don’t stray too far from it because of how long it took us to get it to feel right. It’ll generally be around the same but we’re talking about close to two hours of music with all seven of us on stage every night. It’s a lot. You definitely get the overview of the whole last ten years.

TR: Two weeks ago, you were in Kansas. Now, you’re in Southern California. Have you been surprised by the fan response so far?
LB: I have. Every time you go out, you hope that it’s better than the last and that gives you an indicator that you’re doing something right; that things are growing. We were really hopeful putting this crew record out – really, the first all crew record that we wrote together from start to finish – that that would be reflected in the attendance. And it has. It has, man. I’ve been floored by people’s responses to the new material, how many people are singing along every night, selling out a couple of shows already, and doing an encore every night. It’s things that, when you start out, you don’t really think about or ever even expect. You just work hard. I always think of the tour right after you release the record as the reward for all the hard work you put into making it and promoting it and now, you get to see the positive effects of it. We’re all thrilled to get on stage every night and the response from the people who’ve been coming out has been really uplifting for us.

TR: While No Kings is Doomtree’s fourth release, it’s also your second studio album, a notable feat considering all contributing members are balancing solo/collaborations recordings and performances. With all that going on, what was the recording process like for the album?
LB: It was cool. It was different than I’ve ever done it before. We went to Sims’ wife’s family cabin because we knew there was no way – even though most of us live in the same city, our lives are so scattered – there’s no way you get all seven of us in a room even for two hours at a time anymore. We kind  of had to carve out this five day period where everyone said “Yep. We’re free. We’ll go up there. We’ll turn our phones off and we’ll just do work”. We’d gotten together with the producers before and stacked a lot of beats so we had a stockpile of music up there. I went up there with the rappers and we just holed up and five days later, we had eleven of the twelve songs demoed. At that point, we had no clue what was gonna… we just had these songs. We didn’t if they were really good yet or not. We knew they were different. They felt really weird to us at the time. Over the next couple months, we got to fine tune them, add stuff, and when it all was said and done, I looked back and was like “Wow… 90% of this happened in  those five days and we didn’t  really have any idea what we were getting into”. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to duplicate that process again… I’d heard stories of that working for other people but I figured there was no way in hell we’d ever get there. Somehow, we pulled it off with this one. I’m really happy about that because from the business side, I had set the release date before we had any songs because we knew we had to release an album in the fourth quarter so it was a very scary task to be like “Well, we gotta come up with something. I hope it rules”. We lucked out. I don’t think I’ll ever do that again, but we lucked out.

It speaks to how good these guys have gotten at working with one another because, like I said, that first crew record – the self-titled album – was compiled over a five year period. Those songs were written mostly by one person who then brought another person on board late or stuff like that. It just showed through all the touring and stuff we’ve been through that the rappers are at a place with each other where they can feed off each other so quickly. I was really impressed to see that.

TR: “Bangarang” makes mention of “rappers/beats/raps” that sound the same. Is that in any way related to the album’s title?
LB: Mike came up with that chorus and then those guys kind of filled in their verses. We didn’t set out like “We’re gonna call the record No Kings, we’re gonna write about this stuff”. It was interesting. We didn’t name the album until a couple of months later… it was interesting that everyone was on the same path of “all equals” and doing it together and all this kind of stuff. I feel like that chorus does sum up a lot of that stuff… we don’t want to be negative about this stuff at all but we want to say “we’re here to level the playing field and we want everyone to come with us”. It’s just kind of a statement that everyone can do this stuff. And everyone should. We shouldn’t have to worry about a hierarchy or anything.

TR: Whose idea was the iTunes flashmob?
LB: That was Dessa’s idea. She’s the creative one when it comes to brainstorming “how do we promote on these really small budgets? How do we become effective and get our name out there?” For us, those first-week sales are kind of our opportunity to get out there and compete a little bit. If we can mobilize our fan base within that first week to really support it, we have an opportunity to show up on those charts with the big guys…. We had seen a couple people get up on those charts and we knew that they [the charts] regenerate every 12 hours or 24 hours but if you can get a burst of sales, you have a shot sometimes,(if there isn’t a huge release out) of getting up there. So we gave it a shot. We sent a letter to our mailing list and we put it out there on our social networks and we said “Hey, if you were thinking about buying the album today, would you please consider buying it at this time from iTunes to see if we can’t do this together”. And sure enough, we cracked the top 10 hip-hop. We got the #9 for a day. Which is awesome.

Honestly, looking into more and more and understanding what these sales mean, it doesn’t mean that we sold 50,000 records or anything like that but for one 12-hour period, we were hanging. And this is the end of November, this is fourth quarter, this is when all the big rap albums come out like Drake and Yelawolf and all these guys and to see our album cover next to theirs even overnight. To wake up and it was still there was pretty awesome…. Huge shout goes to our fans. Everyone says “Oh, our fans are the best” but we’ve always tried to be as transparent as possible when it comes to this stuff, from the business to the music. I think that really worked to our benefit. We put it out there and told them what we were trying to do and they backed it. Pretty awesome.

Filed Under: Interviews, Upcoming Shows, USD Radio Tagged With: , , ,

Interview: Rachel Platten

January 12, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Rachel Platten comes to San Diego's House of Blues on Jan. 13

By Tom Roth

USD Radio’s Tom Roth spoke with Boston pop artist Rachel Platten prior to her Jan. 13 show at San Diego’s House of Blues. From Homer’s Iliad to 100,000 screaming Caribbean fans, Platten shared her influences and even spilled the beans on why her friends make fun of her.

Tom Roth: Your music tends to be very upbeat. How do some of the more brooding artists you list as inspirations (like The Roots or Lauryn Hill) influence your music?
Rachel Platten: It’s funny because this record has a lot of the really uplifting, funny side of the stuff that I’ve been writing and that happens when I co-wrote. I’m kind of a joiner, I always have been. I love being a part of things. I love being a part of a community so going into a co-writing session is so fun and I’m instantly in this mood of “I love doing this and I wanna write something positive and happy”. When I write by myself, the stuff is… not dark, but maybe a little bit more… thoughtful and serious. That’s maybe where the artists that I listen to – like Lauryn Hill and the Roots – come in but I dunno if either of those artists are that dark. They’re talking about some serious subject matter but they’re not doing it in a brooding, miserable way. I think both of them address stuff that is painful but in a way that you can listen to it and feel like “OK, there’s hope”. And there’s a good beat [laughs] and there’s a melodic line….

TR: Another band you’ve said is influential is The Pixies. Is there a Boston connection going on there?
RP: No, because I didn’t learn about them when I was in Boston. Although now that I know that, I’m slowly getting more into them. But I didn’t find out about them until I moved to New York which is strange because I was 20 and my producer at the time, this guy Mark Turrigiano, who’s a big Pixies fan, introduced me to them along with some other artists that I love like Elliot Smith and Nada Surf and a lot of indie rock that I hadn’t been listening to but before we went in to make some songs together, he was like “Alright, girl. You need to completely absorb yourself in these artists”. And the Pixies were one of them that I fell in love with. So no, no Boston connection from the start but now that I know it, yeah. Huge fan.

TR: The title of you album (Be Here) implies a philosophy of living in the moment which fits with your words that in life “there will be pain, but there is always joy in it”. What events in your life and career led you to this mindset?
RP: I think maybe the search for, or the quest of following my dream led me to that. It has not been easy – there have been a lot of ups and downs. It’s funny because when you have success and stuff on the radio, people are like “Oh my God, it’s overnight and you’re the new artist!” but I’ve been working for a really long time and really hard and there’s definitely been a lot of “no’s” and a lot of people who didn’t believe in me. I think it was figuring out how to overcome that and not let the darker side of my mind (which we all have) win… telling it to be quiet. I know that if I stay positive and do the work – not only the work in songwriting, but the work in maintaining my happiness like yoga and meditating and all that stuff that my friends make fun of me for – that stuff keeps you on the light side of life, I think. I think the search for following my dreams has prompted the theme of wanting to stay in the moment and staying present because all we really have is right now. We can ruminate and get depressed about stuff that happened in the past but that doesn’t really exist. This is all we really have.

TR: The sounds of “You Don’t Have to Go” belie the – shall I say – sultry subject matter. Was this track written on a whim or was it more thought-out?
RP: [laughs] It was kind of a whim. I think how I wrote it was my ex-boyfriend and I, actually, he played the drums. We went to this rehearsal studio in New York and he was playing this groove but the groove you hear is changed a little bit. I started beatboxing on it… the original groove he had was this sexy, dirty… [beatboxes]. You can’t really write that, obviously [laughs]. It was just this soulful beat and I think that inspired it. It was like “Oh man, this beat is so hot” and I started playing those chords over it and it just came to life in that studio pretty quickly. It wasn’t like “Oh man, I gotta write a song about a girl having a one night stand. I gotta figure out how to do this”. So no, it was kind of on the spot. And the subject matter was funny. I kind of surprised myself with it. I hadn’t ever really written anything like that before.

TR: Commercially, “1,000 Ships” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r61LFkzKzQQ) has become your most successful song so far. Were the lyrics influenced by Homer’s Iliad? Is that an important story for you?
RP: I wouldn’t say its important any more than any other Greek mythology. I don’t really subscribe or follow Greek mythology much but I love to investigate it when I’m writing and I love to investigate scenes and stories. I like to even look in the encyclopedia for random ideas and things that I might not have known or thought of. I had reread The Iliad but kind of a shortened version several months before I went to Sweden just because I was fascinated with the story and Helen of Troy. I loved the idea that her beauty had all this power over men and I thought it was fascinating that we have that echoed in modern movies and TV shows and it’s so funny how much it comes from these old stories and how much of it replicates it. I read it and I think it crept into my consciousness. I haven’t really told this story before, but I did not think of Helen of Troy when I wrote that line, “I have sailed a thousand ships to you”. It wasn’t until afterwards that I was like “oh man, that’s what I was talking about!” It wasn’t conscious. I wrote those words at 3:00 in the morning in my hotel room in Sweden in a half-daze. I needed to have the words by the next day because I had one day to record the vocals before I left Sweden. They just kind of came out. I know people say this, but it really did just happen with that song. I don’t feel like I wrote it, I feel like I caught it, in a way. I feel like I put out this net and was able to catch it. It came so quickly and so easily.

TR: Critics say you seem comfortable on stage. Has that always been the case?
RP: Yeah, I think it always has been. I love it. I love performing and I’ve always loved performing…. I did musicals when I was younger and did plays when I was younger and I’ve always loved it. I felt this energy from the audience. I just feel electrified when I’m on stage. I think being on stage has always been the easiest part. It’s kind of like what I go back to when the other stuff gets hard and when I was having a hard time when I first started following this dream, that was always the thing – being on stage – that was the thing that restored my faith and my belief in myself. It was like “Wait a second, I can do this! This is all that it’s about. It’s about performing tonight and being in the moment onstage”. So yeah, that’s always been something I’ve been blessed to have come easily. It’s the other stuff that was harder that I had to work at.

TR: You note your performance in Trinidad at the Soca Monarch Final as a big performance in your career. Can you tell us a little more about that day?
RP: I had been singing backup with this soca band and they asked me to join them like a week before the Soca Monarch Finals so we didn’t really rehearse. I learned the songs maybe a week before, at the most and practiced them a couple times so I was so nervous. We got to the stadium – like an outdoor park with a hundred thousand people. It was incredible. Trinidad and Carnival is something that would take hours to try to explain. It’s nothing like what we have in America for concerts. It’s like this wild, crazy, thing that’s packed with emotion because Carnival is not only about the music, it’s about the culture and the music represents the culture. I don’t know how to explain it, really. Basically, there’s all this energy there that may not be in a normal performance… that day was amazing. I got backstage and there was just this crazy, crazy mesh of people running around in crazy costumes because they’re all wearing Carnival costumes. Getting onstage was amazing. I got out there and couldn’t even see anyone. I could see like the first 20 rows and behind that was that was just a sea of people, and sparklers, and flags flying, and I just felt this light jolt up my system that was like “this is EXACTLY what I’m supposed to be doing” and I’ve been trying to chase those 100,000 people ever since.

TR: Your upcoming tour kicks off on Jan. 13 at the House of Blues in San Diego. What can you tell us about this tour?
RP: I am beyond stoked to be opening for Andy Grammar. I’ve been a fan of his for a while, we did two shows in Ohio and he’s such a talented performer. This is our first time (for a lot of us) on a bus. We’re all gonna be on a bus together so that’ll be amazing. The San Diego show is the first stop on the tour so we’ll all be fresh, and clean, and showered. I’ll be playing with my drummer. We have a couple of new songs and we’re really excited to debut those. One of them is gonna be the song that I just wrote, the theme song for an ABC Family show called “Work of Art” and we’re gonna be playing that one live, so I’m excited to see how that goes over.

 

FACEBOOK: http://www.facebook.com/rachelplattenmusic
WEBSITE: http://www.rachelplatten.com/
TICKETS TO SHOW: http://www.livenation.com/event/0A004769FA944455?brand=hob

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