Saturday, March 24, 2012
Friday, January 13, 2012
Monday, October 17, 2011
Bomb The Music Industry!
Photo Credit: Holly Morrison
You got to experience the Long Island ska scene. In what ways did that scene influence the music you make today?
Jeff: There was a show every weekend and a really great community around it. I wasn’t Mr. Cool Guy or anything in high school, but I had a great group of friends that I could play music with or I could go watch my friends play music. I had something fun to do every weekend with a bunch of people who were really nice and all had the same ideals, which was just treat each other good. We play shows now and people get really pushy and stuff like that sometimes, and it’s strange because in Long Island that didn’t happen at shows I went to as a kid. And I went to probably 200 shows. That influenced us in the way that we would like our shows to be a place where people who were not cool people could just go and everything is okay. You can not be the nerd or the weirdo for a second and be with a bunch of people who are also like you.
BTMI! has put out a lot of records, and people are bound to have their opinion about your music. Did the opinions of others affect the way you approached writing Vacation?
J: Yeah, a little. I think the fact that everybody doesn’t like us or that a lot of people just hate us makes me want to make a better record. It makes me want to try and do something that I think, “Alright, maybe we can make something that these people will like.” A lot of my singing on this record, I don’t know if it’s any better, but I tried really hard to sing a lot better. I tried different stuff this time around and I’m gonna keep doing that. I’m gonna try to make something interesting and make something better than the last thing we’ve done. So I think it affects it like that. We’ve never been the band that everybody likes. We’ve always been the band that the handful of people that like us really like us and the people that hate us really hate us. I guess it’s always about trying to write something that maybe the people that hate us that aren’t racist, homophobic assholes can get into.
BTMI! is a highly influential band. How does it feel to know you impact so many people through your music?
J: It’s weird. I usually just get freaked out by it because I don’t know what to ever say. As dorky as this is gonna sound, I express a lot of stuff through writing music, so when people come up to me and they’re like, “Hey man, I feel this way about this, too,” I don’t know what to say. Cool! That was really hard for me to say even once, I don’t know how to have this conversation. There was a kid in Oklahoma City who asked me point blank if I’ve ever tried to kill myself. It’s just like, dude, I don’t know you. I don’t talk to my fiancé, my parents, or my friends about that shit. I guess when you have really personal songs that will happen. So the next record we write is just gonna be all about animals. It’s gonna be great, it’s gonna be an animal record. Then people will be like, “Oh yeah man, I really like sea otters!” And I’ll be like “I really like sea otters too, we can talk about this. I’m plenty comfortable talking about sea otters with you.”
Do you think Vacation is completely different from other BTMI! records?
J: I think it’s more hopeful than the last few records. I think that the dark stuff on Vacation is really, really dark. The stuff that’s negative is stuff that I’ve been trying to think of a way to exorcise from my head for the past 10 years. A lot of that stuff hasn’t been in songs and are things that I needed to get out. At the same time, I think it’s being looked at from a different lens then, say, Goodbye Cool World or Scrambles. Both of those records are kind of like, “Ahhh, fuuuck, ahhh,” and this one is kind of like, “Okay, that happened. That shit’s crazy, it sucks, but okay let’s deal with it.” I think it’s more positive because of that. It’s very upbeat for a BTMI! record, but I don’t think any of our records are gonna be upbeat lyrically compared to anybody else’s records.
What’s your writing process like?
J: A lot of it is just kind of humming stuff. I used to just write shit down on my hand, then run home, try and play it on guitar, then record a quick demo. Like staff music on my hands and write out notes, and I still do that while I’m driving, which is insane. Now that I have a phone I can sing into when I come up with something—I just do that. And usually it’s at inopportune times, like “Hurricane Waves” for example, I wrote that while I was at the beach. I was actually really sick at the beach and hanging out with people doubled over on a blanket, and was just like, “I gotta go walk over there for a second guys,” (starts humming melody for “Hurricane Waves”). And they’re just like, “What are you doing?” That’s how a lot of stuff has been written, things just pop into my head. Sometimes I’ll write something down in my phone, or in a book, or on my hand, or something that’s sitting around in the van, and I’ll try to remember it. Like the song “Everybody That Loves You” (starts humming the song), I was on the beach again. A lot of these records were written on different beaches into a small phone. I was in California and that just came to me—I ran over to the side, sang it into my phone, and wrote down the words. Then it’s arranging it until it’s a wall of noise.
Is it weird that BTMI! seems to be a band that’s all about having a good time and making good music, yet people think your lyrics are rather dark and depressing?
J: I think all the bands I always liked have kind of dark lyrics, but they’re kind of upbeat. I think it’s good. I like playing those songs, because when we play and get that out it feels good. I think that people who come to shows who are feeling those things, when they’re singing along, they’re getting something out. And that’s cool, that’s really awesome. Like Against Me!, their record Searching For A Former Clarity, that record is dark and it’s awesome! Ted Leo is kind of like that, too, and bands like Future of the Left and They Might Be Giants. There’s a lot of bands that sing dark shit, but it just makes you feel good to sing along.
What’s your favorite song to play live?
J: My favorite songs to play live, we’re not very good at. I really like playing “Everybody That Loves You.” I think that ended up being my favorite song on the record, which is weird because it’s buried towards the end. I really like playing that one, but I can’t play the guitar part very well, so that’s that. I really like playing “Felt Just Like Vacation,” because there’s a lot more dynamic to it when we play it live, and we have a really fun build that we play at the end now. I like that, we’ve never really done anything like that before. I like that we kind of jam, which I can’t imagine anyone else likes because who wants to see a band jamming? Nobody but the band! So those are my two favorite songs to play live, the two songs that can’t be enjoyable for anybody.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Explosions in the Sky
This is my Explosions in the Sky cover story
Explosions in the Sky. Yes, their music is as earth-shattering as their name sounds. This Texas based instrumental rock band is here to blow your expectations out of this world. EITS is formed by guitarist Mark Smith, guitarist Munaf Rayani, guitarist/bassist Michael James, and drummer Chris Hrasky. Their trademark to fame is the Friday Night Lights film soundtrack, but with a new hard-hitting album out, these guys are proving there is more to offer. I had a chance to converse with drummer Chris Hrasky about the struggles of music writing, their new album leaking early, and the unique venues on their current tour.
How did you guys start playing together and what were your expectations at the start?
Chris: I moved to Austin from Illinois in January of ‘99 and met these three guys that are fans of similar music and movies. We had a very similar sense of humor and a way of looking at the world. It was immediately very striking that we had this very close connection so quickly. We started playing music really out of boredom. In terms of expectations, it was like maybe we’ll do a couple shows in Austin at some point. That was really it. We never really had some sort of ambitious plan or vision that 12 years later this would be our career and we’d be touring the world.
After over a decade together, what’s the most challenging part of keeping the band together?
Chris: We’re very slow at writing music and most of the stuff we write we just end up throwing away because we don't like it. That’s the biggest challenge—keeping ourselves interested in what we’re doing and putting out stuff that we think is worth putting out. That’s always been a challenge for us to push ourselves to do something that all four of us feel strongly about. We’ve never just put a record out because it’s like “Oh, it’s about time we should have new record.” Unless it’s something we love, I think the four of us would just rather stop playing music together as opposed to us putting out something we’re not all proud of.
EITS gets many genre labels from American instrumental to post rock to indie rock. How would you describe your sound?
Chris: One of the guys came up with a funny term called expeditionary rock. Where it’s like music going on this journey. The song is this little adventure with peaks, and valleys, and dynamics. I guess we consider ourselves a rock band. Only in the sense that it’s mostly the traditional rock setup; it’s four guys with guitars and drums. The music obviously doesn't sound like typical rock music, but that’s kind of what we all grew up on. We all grew up listening to punk bands and before that metal bands, so we kind of came from that high school rock band mentality. Why it turned into what it is now, I have no idea. [laughs]
The new album Take Care, Take Care, Take Care, came out April 26. How does it differ from past albums?
Chris: The songs were just written and recorded in a very different way. All of the other records were recorded live, basically the four of us in a room playing. This record is way more dense and layered and it’s not as much of just a live recording, it’s much more of a studio record. That was very different for us, we’ve never done anything like that before. And we’re working on ways to implicate that live because there are songs with three drum sets going at once, and eight different guitar track samples, and all this stuff. So we’ve kind of been messing around with how to pull it off live. To us it feels different, the music feels a little more mysterious and less melodramatic than what we’ve been known for. There’s maybe a little more subtly as opposed to the sort of in your face emotion that has dominated the first four records.
How do you guys feel about the album leaking early?
Chris: It sucks. You know bands hate that, it’s awful. It’s weird because we’ll check our Facebook page or email and there will be messages from people like “Hey man, downloaded your record last night. Great Job!” It’s very different for us because we’re older now (in our thirties) and our experience growing up listening to music is very different from what it is now. I think younger people now, that’s just how they listen to music. They get an illegal download, and it’s not really that it’s illegal that bothers us. It just seems that more and more it doesn’t even occur to people that the band is actually not cool with you just downloading their album. And not just because we’re not getting paid for it. The way we grew up listening to music was like “Oh man, the new Dinosaur Jr. record comes out on this day!” Then we go get it and all hang out at someone’s house and listen to it. And now it’s like that whole thing is ruined, it’s just like “Oh, it’s out already even though the record doesn’t come out for another month.” It ruins the anticipation and the specialness of it. It’s just a generational thing. Music is consumed so differently now.
I noticed vocals on the track “Trembling Hands.” Are you planning on experimenting more with vocals now?
Chris: I don’t know, maybe. I don’t foresee us ever having lyrics or anything like that. We just sort of look at our voices as just another instrument that we can use and if it works on a song then we’ll try it. It’s not like we gotta have vocals now because we’ve done it once so we have to do it again. We don’t feel that way. It’ll probably be a while before we start working on new music and it’ll either be more vocals or none at all. We’ll see.
Your last album All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone was released in 2007. Was it hard to get back into the process of writing an album?
Chris: Yeah, definitely. I mean we toured for two years after that record and toured basically all of 2009. We just tried to write stuff in-between, but we went through a lot of times where we would just not come up with anything good. I mean months where we would try to write stuff and none of us liked it. It’s always kind of hard for us and it’s never been easy. Maybe the first couple of records were because we were a little less critical of ourselves and there weren’t any expectations either. It just takes us a while and times when you’re not able to come up with stuff, it’s discouraging. You start worrying like “Oh god, is this it? Are we done? We had a good run, we put out some good records, but let’s stop now.” But then usually something will happen where we’ll come up with a song that we love and then the dam kind of opens and things come pretty quickly. I expect the same thing will happen when we try to write another record, it’ll be really difficult at first and then hopefully some spark will happen. There is just no guarantee. You just try to think of stuff out of thin air and most of the time it’s not very good. You have to fight through that despair, and the nice thing about a band is that you don’t feel like you’re alone in the struggle. It’s not like we’re fighting in a war, we’re just playing music. It’s not really that big of a struggle, but it’s nice to have a team working together on it.
What’s your favorite song off of Take Care, Take Care, Take Care?
Chris: I would say the first song “Last Known Surrounding” is my favorite song on the record just because everything worked out how we had hoped with that song. I think we all find that to be our favorite song. To me, the textures of it are really interesting. It sounds like us, but there are just certain parts where there’s like thirty different things going on at the same time. It’s not so much like there’s Mark’s guitar part or there’s Mike’s guitar part, it’s more of this wall of sound that we really wanted to get for that song and it worked really well.
What’s the best part about touring?
Chris: Just the shows, just playing shows is still exciting for us. It’s still a surprise, like “God, there’s a lot of people here, this is crazy. We can’t believe people are actually responding to us.” It’s exciting to get that feedback and to see that people are into and excited about the stuff we work on. It’s always very nice, and definitely not something we will ever take for granted.
EITS has a show scheduled at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles. How exciting or creepy is it to be playing at a cemetery?
Chris: It’s kind of creepy. When it was first proposed to us, we were kind of like, “What does that entail, like we’re not gonna be playing on people’s graves or something are we?!” Then we found out more about the cemetery and how they have shows. I think it’ll be pretty cool and interesting, we don’t really know what to expect of it. It’s certainly more interesting than just playing in the normal theater or club. We definitely like playing places that are a little strange, not just normal rock venues. It’s just a little bit more interesting and inspiring to play weird places like that.
EITS tour starts tomorrow with a show at Radio City Music Hall. How are you feeling about playing such a prestigious venue?
Chris: It’s a little overwhelming. I think we’re almost looking forward to it being over with. It’s kind of intimidating and very strange to be doing it. I mean we’re excited and it’ll hopefully be a beautiful night, but we definitely feel a little pressure. It’ll be a relief when it’s done. Although we’re completely honored to be doing it and it’s kind of a dream come true. Even though we’ve been doing this for so long, we still get fairly nervous at shows and particularly a show like this. I’m sure we’ll all be terrified.
How did you guys start playing together and what were your expectations at the start?
Chris: I moved to Austin from Illinois in January of ‘99 and met these three guys that are fans of similar music and movies. We had a very similar sense of humor and a way of looking at the world. It was immediately very striking that we had this very close connection so quickly. We started playing music really out of boredom. In terms of expectations, it was like maybe we’ll do a couple shows in Austin at some point. That was really it. We never really had some sort of ambitious plan or vision that 12 years later this would be our career and we’d be touring the world.
After over a decade together, what’s the most challenging part of keeping the band together?
Chris: We’re very slow at writing music and most of the stuff we write we just end up throwing away because we don't like it. That’s the biggest challenge—keeping ourselves interested in what we’re doing and putting out stuff that we think is worth putting out. That’s always been a challenge for us to push ourselves to do something that all four of us feel strongly about. We’ve never just put a record out because it’s like “Oh, it’s about time we should have new record.” Unless it’s something we love, I think the four of us would just rather stop playing music together as opposed to us putting out something we’re not all proud of.
EITS gets many genre labels from American instrumental to post rock to indie rock. How would you describe your sound?
Chris: One of the guys came up with a funny term called expeditionary rock. Where it’s like music going on this journey. The song is this little adventure with peaks, and valleys, and dynamics. I guess we consider ourselves a rock band. Only in the sense that it’s mostly the traditional rock setup; it’s four guys with guitars and drums. The music obviously doesn't sound like typical rock music, but that’s kind of what we all grew up on. We all grew up listening to punk bands and before that metal bands, so we kind of came from that high school rock band mentality. Why it turned into what it is now, I have no idea. [laughs]
The new album Take Care, Take Care, Take Care, came out April 26. How does it differ from past albums?
Chris: The songs were just written and recorded in a very different way. All of the other records were recorded live, basically the four of us in a room playing. This record is way more dense and layered and it’s not as much of just a live recording, it’s much more of a studio record. That was very different for us, we’ve never done anything like that before. And we’re working on ways to implicate that live because there are songs with three drum sets going at once, and eight different guitar track samples, and all this stuff. So we’ve kind of been messing around with how to pull it off live. To us it feels different, the music feels a little more mysterious and less melodramatic than what we’ve been known for. There’s maybe a little more subtly as opposed to the sort of in your face emotion that has dominated the first four records.
How do you guys feel about the album leaking early?
Chris: It sucks. You know bands hate that, it’s awful. It’s weird because we’ll check our Facebook page or email and there will be messages from people like “Hey man, downloaded your record last night. Great Job!” It’s very different for us because we’re older now (in our thirties) and our experience growing up listening to music is very different from what it is now. I think younger people now, that’s just how they listen to music. They get an illegal download, and it’s not really that it’s illegal that bothers us. It just seems that more and more it doesn’t even occur to people that the band is actually not cool with you just downloading their album. And not just because we’re not getting paid for it. The way we grew up listening to music was like “Oh man, the new Dinosaur Jr. record comes out on this day!” Then we go get it and all hang out at someone’s house and listen to it. And now it’s like that whole thing is ruined, it’s just like “Oh, it’s out already even though the record doesn’t come out for another month.” It ruins the anticipation and the specialness of it. It’s just a generational thing. Music is consumed so differently now.
I noticed vocals on the track “Trembling Hands.” Are you planning on experimenting more with vocals now?
Chris: I don’t know, maybe. I don’t foresee us ever having lyrics or anything like that. We just sort of look at our voices as just another instrument that we can use and if it works on a song then we’ll try it. It’s not like we gotta have vocals now because we’ve done it once so we have to do it again. We don’t feel that way. It’ll probably be a while before we start working on new music and it’ll either be more vocals or none at all. We’ll see.
Your last album All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone was released in 2007. Was it hard to get back into the process of writing an album?
Chris: Yeah, definitely. I mean we toured for two years after that record and toured basically all of 2009. We just tried to write stuff in-between, but we went through a lot of times where we would just not come up with anything good. I mean months where we would try to write stuff and none of us liked it. It’s always kind of hard for us and it’s never been easy. Maybe the first couple of records were because we were a little less critical of ourselves and there weren’t any expectations either. It just takes us a while and times when you’re not able to come up with stuff, it’s discouraging. You start worrying like “Oh god, is this it? Are we done? We had a good run, we put out some good records, but let’s stop now.” But then usually something will happen where we’ll come up with a song that we love and then the dam kind of opens and things come pretty quickly. I expect the same thing will happen when we try to write another record, it’ll be really difficult at first and then hopefully some spark will happen. There is just no guarantee. You just try to think of stuff out of thin air and most of the time it’s not very good. You have to fight through that despair, and the nice thing about a band is that you don’t feel like you’re alone in the struggle. It’s not like we’re fighting in a war, we’re just playing music. It’s not really that big of a struggle, but it’s nice to have a team working together on it.
What’s your favorite song off of Take Care, Take Care, Take Care?
Chris: I would say the first song “Last Known Surrounding” is my favorite song on the record just because everything worked out how we had hoped with that song. I think we all find that to be our favorite song. To me, the textures of it are really interesting. It sounds like us, but there are just certain parts where there’s like thirty different things going on at the same time. It’s not so much like there’s Mark’s guitar part or there’s Mike’s guitar part, it’s more of this wall of sound that we really wanted to get for that song and it worked really well.
What’s the best part about touring?
Chris: Just the shows, just playing shows is still exciting for us. It’s still a surprise, like “God, there’s a lot of people here, this is crazy. We can’t believe people are actually responding to us.” It’s exciting to get that feedback and to see that people are into and excited about the stuff we work on. It’s always very nice, and definitely not something we will ever take for granted.
EITS has a show scheduled at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles. How exciting or creepy is it to be playing at a cemetery?
Chris: It’s kind of creepy. When it was first proposed to us, we were kind of like, “What does that entail, like we’re not gonna be playing on people’s graves or something are we?!” Then we found out more about the cemetery and how they have shows. I think it’ll be pretty cool and interesting, we don’t really know what to expect of it. It’s certainly more interesting than just playing in the normal theater or club. We definitely like playing places that are a little strange, not just normal rock venues. It’s just a little bit more interesting and inspiring to play weird places like that.
EITS tour starts tomorrow with a show at Radio City Music Hall. How are you feeling about playing such a prestigious venue?
Chris: It’s a little overwhelming. I think we’re almost looking forward to it being over with. It’s kind of intimidating and very strange to be doing it. I mean we’re excited and it’ll hopefully be a beautiful night, but we definitely feel a little pressure. It’ll be a relief when it’s done. Although we’re completely honored to be doing it and it’s kind of a dream come true. Even though we’ve been doing this for so long, we still get fairly nervous at shows and particularly a show like this. I’m sure we’ll all be terrified.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)