Hallelujah the Hills. Photo: Jessie Rogers

On May 22^nd, Hallelujah the Hills took the stage Downstairs at the Middle East in front of a rowdy crowd… at 12:30 in the morning.  Though the five bands on the bill that night were collectively responsible for filling the floor of the basement venue, the fact that the fans of You Can Be A Wesley, the Bon Savants, Cymbals Eat Guitars and Magic Magic all stuck around to see the set of the reputable headlining act speaks volumes about the appeal of Hallelujah the Hills and the nature of their city’s independent music scene in which they’ve maintained a popular status over the course of the past year.  Jessie, Gab and I were all present for that fantastic night of music, and we knew that we were witnessing something special when we saw five bands, four of them local, fit together seamlessly on a bill that had had every Boston indie music nut falling all over themselves in anticipation.

After that crazy night in May, Jessie and I had the distinct pleasure of meeting up with Ryan, Brian and Joe of Hallelujah the Hills for a comfortable chat on a spot of well-manicured grass belonging to Harvard, and the following is the conversation that ensued.  Hallelujah the Hills will be releasing their second album, Colonial Drones, on September 22^nd and will be playing select shows in the Greater Boston Area through the fall, so be sure to give them a listen and keep a heads-up to their goings-on by checking back here every once in awhile as we’re addicted to their sound and will most definitely be keeping tabs on them.

-Hilary Hughes

OPENING ACT:  THE TEAPARTY 10

What’s your favorite breakfast cereal?

Joe: Instant oatmeal with honey.  No, no, fuck that – my new favorite cereal is whatever’s in the pantry, but with orange juice instead of milk.

That sounds like an accident.

J: No!  It’s really good!  It’s all freshness and crunch.

Ryan: I like Life cereal.

Brian: I’ve been kind of lame and on the oatmeal kick for a while.

Who would you rather punch in the face: Long Duk Dong from “Sixteen Candles” or Mouth from “The Goonies”?

R: Mouth is hilarious.  I just want to hug him.

J: I want to be friends with them both!

B: I’m just not a violent person!  I can’t imagine punching someone!

If you were a kitchen appliance, what would you be?

R: BLENDER.  Hallelujah the Hills would be a blender.

You go to bed, wake up the next morning, go to brush your teeth… and you realize that you’ve morphed into one of Jim Henson’s Muppets overnight.  Which Muppet are you?

J: DOCTOR TEETH.

R: I’d be Waldorf, the old heckler.  I’d be the guy with the jowls.

B: I’ve always liked Fozzie.  He’s chill.

After a raucous night out, you wake up at some point the next day and you realize that in your fit of crazy you got inked.  What tattoo did you wake up with?

B: A handlebar mustache on my finger so I can do THIS. (Brian then holds up his index finger underneath nose to simulate mustache.)

R: I had an uncle who had hinges tattooed on his inner arm so he looked part machine.  I’d do that.

J: I think I’d get LIVE EVIL on my knuckles for Miles Davis’ live 70s fusion album.

Would you rather be a rodeo clown or a sumo wrestler?

J: Rodeo clown.

R: Rodeo clown.

B: Rodeo clown.  Don’t they get the shit kicked out of them, though?

J: Yeah, but you also get to have a ton of fun.

R: I think it fits.  I have a theory that all rock n’ roll is embarrassing: When we go into a show, whether we’re seeing or playing it, we kind of make this agreement with ourselves that “THIS IS SO RIDICULOUS! But this is so wonderful!” So, I think rodeo clown fits for us.

J: Yeah, I think the ceremony behind the sumo match and the pedestal you’re put on in sumo culture, it’s great and I’m happy for them.  But I think I’d be very uncomfortable.

If you had to be a kind of cheese, which cheese would you be?

R: I’d like to defer to Erik, our guitar player, for this one.  He works at Formaggio Kitchen in Cambridge.  He’s a professional.

If you were a style of facial hair, what style facial hair would you be?

J: Forgetful scruff.  Accidental beard.  I had a dream where I had a dream where I was old enough to have hair growing out of my ears.  It’s an aspiration.

R: A little bit of nasal hair.

B: I’d do the Amish style heavy beard with no mustache.

What’s your quintessential “I’M GONNA DANCE AROUND MY APARTMENT IN MY UNDERWEAR AND LOVE LIFE!” song?

R: “Hair of the Dog” by Nazareth.

J: “Pants off” by Evergreen.

B: Some ska song I’m sure from the Slackers, or something.  I think that’s probably my pick.

What’s your favorite word?

B: ASSHAT!

R: Preemptive.

J: I think my favorite word would be whatever word Elio DeLuca’s using the most.  I like Elio DeLuca’s jive.  Wait, Jive! That’s my favorite word.

Hallelujah the Hills. Photo: Jessie Rogers

THE MAIN EVENT: THE HALLELUJAH THE HILLS TEAPARTY BOSTON INTERVIEW

Give us the mini-bio for Hallelujah the Hills.  How did you guys come to make music together?

R: Well, I got started in recording music in a weird way.  The Stairs were a community outreach program.  No one really knew that we existed in Boston, for several years, until the summer we announced we were packing up and playing a few final shows.  A week later Eric and I drafted musician friends into something new called Hallelujah The Hills.  We rehearsed late 2005 and really started playing shows in 2006.  We just finished our second full-length album.  It’s called Colonial Drones and is out in September.  Then…more music!

So, where’d the name come from?

R: The name is from a movie called “Hallelujah the Hills”.  It came out in 1963, and I saw it while I was at film school at BU.  I liked the movie; the name kind of stuck with me.  It was on a list when we were creating the band.  It sounded good, so we just picked it.

Can you take us through the creative process for Hallelujah the Hills?

R: I write songs on an acoustic guitar or piano.  Get the words in place, chords, the vocal melody.  Record a demo.  Send it to the band.  Then we all work on it together and create an arrangement.  Everyone brings something to the table.  It’s fun.

Influences:  Can we talk about which bands or artists you’re listening to?  What band T-shirts do you have hanging in your closets?

B: I don’t have any more band t-shirts; this is actually one of my few remaining Neptune shirts.

R: I think another beautiful thing is that I think we’re sort of impervious to ever sounding like something else.  I don’t think you could ever say, “Well, that’s this.”

R: Eric’s bringing jazz, Joe’s bringing Iggy Pop and Rocky Erickson, so I think we cover a lot of ground.

J: Our favorite records that’d be like, “That’s the record that made me want to play music!” would all be in different sections of the record store.

What are some of those favorite records?

J: I CAN’T TELL YOU.

(Ryan and Brian crack up.)

J: I don’t know.  Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation.

If your house was burning and you could only save three records, which records would you save?

J: I have a 7” of this band from Northern Kentucky called Evergreen.  I remember I thought it was so cool because my older sister was friends with the guys in the band.  I was like, “Wow, this blows my fucking mind!  This sounds like how music should always sounds like!”  I listened to that record a couple of times a week until I was 15.  If you ever find a 7” inch by Evergreen, “Queen Song” and “Pants Off” are – I could act it out in an interpretive dance and probably paint a picture of it.  I would save that record, that Evergreen 7”, three times: I’d bring it out and then go back to the wreckage to double check to make sure I didn’t leave it behind.

We haven’t really talked about the Hallelujah the Hills songs that you guys love playing live or the songs you feel especially connected to.  What’re your favorites that are by you?

R: Starting out we felt a real obligation to play the song that says the band name, because it is sort of a, “We’re here! This is our song!” kind of thing.

J: “We exist!  We really exist!”

R: “We do! And I don’t have to say the band name after this song because I just sang it!”  In the last year, I think we’ve avoided that song-

B: We did, we did a little bit, yeah-

R: -Because I think it’s the one we played the most.  Now, when we come back to it like we did the other night, it’s fun to play.

J: Yeah, it’s in a new light.

B: There’s a bit of that that happens, that songs you play a fair amount. “What can we do to change it up a little bit?”

R: Playing live is a big part of making the record.

B: Yeah.  There are songs on the new album that we haven’t really played live, so the next step is to figure out how to play them. I think that when I first started recording with other bands, I got this idea in my head that you shouldn’t record something that you can’t play.

J: Yeah, I used to think that too!

B: That all the instruments and notes that are played live need to be the same on the record and vice versa-

R: And in a sense, we make an effort because that’s why we have a sampler –

B: Right.  One of the things I really love about this band and playing live is just how much energy there is that just happens as part of a live show:  There’s the energy the band is giving, and there’s the energy from the audience, and there’s just the visual component of it that’s lacking or not there on a recording.  On a recording, that energy needs to come from somewhere else, with other layers, whether it’s other instruments or harmonies.  You just can’t play your instrument twice.  A bigger sound happens because you’re playing live.

R: There’s the spooky path of trying to figure out which songs people like to hear of ours live.  Once in a blue moon someone will shout a title, but we don’t get a ton of feedback in that category.  All you have to judge that is the applause, so we end up playing the songs we like anyway!

B: I don’t know.  There are songs that I’ve been skeptical of that I’ve eventually come around to.  It changes I think, what songs you have an affection for.

J: To add to what Brian was saying about what fun you can have in a studio versus what kind of fun you can have live, I used to have the same feeling.  You should be able to record on a shitty jam box and make it great.  Recording, you have so much fun with cooking up these things and these whole little worlds.  Some of my favorite songs I hear myself as a human being the least in, you know?  The whole of it sounds like this whole universe.  Live, it’s like, six people bangin’ away at their instruments and that’s what’s awesome about that, but recording I think is this kind of other thing that exists outside of it.

R: There’s also that old idea of, well, if you can’t play it one person alone on a guitar, then it’s not really a song, or it’s not really a good song.  I go back and forth on believing that; I’m not sure if it’s true.

J: Yeah.  I don’t think that’s true.

B: A lot of Ryan’s songs do pass that test.

R: I thought of an example, that Radiohead song “Kid A”?  That’s not a song!  But I saw last year that John Mayer had covered it acoustically.

We’ve been talking to a lot of bands from here and it’s come across that there’s not an expectation for Boston bands to express loyalty to our city, but that there’s definitely an interesting connection between bands here and Boston that you don’t see in other cities with thriving music scenes.

J: As far as bands we’re friends with and enjoy and like, yeah, enjoy their music and stuff, you know, I feel like people here are a little more – I don’t know, maybe this is a little idealistic, but they’re a little more natural, a little more down to earth, you know?  I’m sure there are bands here that aren’t like this, but we’re not really friends with bands who are going to like… you know, a band may be like, “We’re gonna make it!  We’re gonna go to New York City, and we’re gonna look the look, and we’re gonna go to all this kind of band’s shows” – not because they’re excited and making friends, but to “make it” with big stars in their eyes.  I don’t feel like Boston’s that kind of town.

B: I like how a lot of the music I listen to and a lot of the shows I go see here are local shows with local bands.  I don’t really go out to see bigger national bands as a personal preference.  There are a lot of great bands here, and a show can just be good local bands and it’ll fill up, and there are a lot of great venues for it.  It doesn’t necessarily have to be some ringer national band to really make a show, and the way shows are put together, too, some band wants to play a show somewhere so they talk to other bands and to clubs and a bill just emerges.  Chances are, the headlining band put it together, like when we had our CD release, we were like, “Oh, hey, let’s ask these bands we like [to play] and hopefully they’ll say yes, and if we don’t here are these other bands we like!” Then, it ends up being a cohesive bill.  In other cities I’m sure the same thing happens as it does in Boston, but when we’ve played other cities, we’ve seen that it’s less cohesive and that there’s less camaraderie amongst the bands.  You show up, you play your set, people come to see you and they go their way, whereas in Boston it feels more like a whole night and there’s more of a reason to see the whole thing.

R: It’s a real treat to be able see a band you really like twelve times in one year for no more than $5 each time.  It’s an exciting thing.

B: Because I think that there are great local bands that can put shows on, it makes it great for bands from out of town to come in and have a good show.  It’s like the first time they play in Boston they’re playing on a pretty strong local bill so they get some exposure.  I feel like that’s one of the best ways to try to get a foothold in new cities: Find out who are the popular local bands, who makes sense to play with, what kind of bill can you put together that you fit onto that way.  It seems to work to build camaraderie.

What about the crowd in Boston?  Being from here, it’s probably inherently different for you, but we’ve heard that Boston is a lot more laid back and kind of – not laid back in the sense of “blah”, but laid back in the sense of there’s not so much people for the scene, people are here to enjoy music.

B: Yeah.  I think there’s a really good core of people who are just music fans.  I feel like the lines between musicians and fans of music are so nebulous and porous here.  We go to each other’s shows.  Even people who aren’t in bands, most of their friends are in bands, so it’s just this community of friends and people who sort of support each other in different ways.

R: I can’t be certain, I don’t know if that’s special to Boston.

B: I’m just talking about what I like and what I consistently see here.  There’s a lot of great stuff that happens here. We only get one night in another city to see shows when we’re touring, maybe it’s a great show, maybe it’s not, who knows if it’s any sort of representation of what things are actually like in that city.  It’s hard to compare cities that way because we only really know Boston.

R: If we were live music anthropologists- (laughs)

B: I don’t know.  I think it’s easier to focus on what’s great about how things happen here because there’s a lot of great stuff.

Are there any other bands that you’ve seen or really enjoy watching that exemplify what we’re talking about?

J: Yeah!

B: Yeah, all of our friends – Hoag Kepman, Keys and Streets of Fear, we’re just mentioning bands that all of us are in at this point, but I mean, Bon Savants, Neptune-

R: The sadly defunct Night Rally.

J: The sadly defunct Tunnel of Love.

R: You know what Boston does have that we can be sure of?  The CD release show is the band’s final show. (Laughs) That’s a legitimate curse that’s been happening in Boston for the last five years, where the band holds it together to get that CD out, and then they’re like, “Well, you can buy it!  But this is the last show.”

B: Yup, Harris; Clickers was like that…

Do you have any favorite venues in Boston?  Do you love them for different reasons, in that you love playing one but you love seeing shows at another?

R: We’re lucky: There’s a lot to pick and choose from, and whether it’s your first show or you’re starting to do well there’s a lot of choices.  In my experience, the booking agents are just like, they’re using their power for the people.

B: I get the sense of the way Ryan talks about this process in that a band and a promoter or a booking agent at a club will work together to put a bill together.  The Downstairs show, not the past one with the Fiery Furnaces, the one with Magic Magic, I think that’s such a great example of a band putting the night together with a bill of bands that just worked together really well, and everyone had a whole lot of fun.  It’s one of those situations where there wasn’t one band that everyone had come to see: Everybody was there to see all the bands and a ton of people stayed through the whole night until 1:30 when we finished up, and it was just really great to see.

R: One of the guys from Magic Magic said afterwards that he was just blown away, that there were five bands on the bill and he didn’t meet one asshole.  You know, when we booked that show, I said to Kevin at the Middle East, “I have no idea if we have any business booking Downstairs at the Middle East on a Friday night, but hey, wanna have fun?”

B: It was probably one of the most rewarding shows I’ve ever been a part of.  We had a good time as a band playing, but just being a part of that whole show was pretty amazing.

There’s a new album coming out, but besides that, what else do you have to look forward to in the coming months?  What are you most looking forward to regarding future projects and the indefinite future for Hallelujah the Hills?

R: Right now it’s all about sitting on this album we’ve made.

B: The album comes out September 22^nd and then we’ll be touring after that.

That’ll bring you to Christmas pretty much, right?

B: Yeah!  Right now it’s sort of hard to see into 2010 and think of what we might be doing.  I hope we’re touring a lot and getting to do all sorts of amazing things together, but right now, we’re focused on what’s next immediately.

R: Corey at our label has said it a few times: “You can’t re-release an album.”  He wants to get it right, and he really believes in us.  It’s a humbling thing because he’s such a great guy and he’s put out so many great records.  He wants as many people as possible to hear our album, and we want to be proud of it.  Someday, if we could play music and make that our living that would be amazing.  I think that many bands would say that.  You just gotta keep it one step at a time and keep it fun and it’s all rewarding.

Hallelujah the Hills. Photo: Jessie Rogers