Mean Creek performing at Boston Music Awards

It’s been a bit of a whirlwind year for local indie upstarts Mean Creek.  Coming off an honorable mention from WBRU for Best Local Band of 2008, they hit the studio to record their album, played a stacked bill at SXSW, opened for “flower-punk” quartet Black Lips, released their album to critical acclaim and still somehow managed to have their act together enough for the Phoenix to call them Boston’s Best-Dressed Band. Not bad, but it was their musical prowess and not just their stylish duds that won them a Boston Music Award for Best New Act.

We caught up with bassist Erik between gigs on the road with The Whigs and The Features to talk about what’s next.

–Jessie Rogers

Hey Guys! Who is Mean Creek? Who plays what?

Mean Creek is Chris Keene (vox, guitar), Aurore Ounjian (vox, guitar, harmonica), Mikey Holland (drums, percussion) and Erik Wormwood (Bass).

What is the back-story of Mean Creek? How did the band form?

We formed a couple of years ago after Chris and Aurore decided to forge a new path in the music world.  They had previously been performing as folk duo.  The band had a revolving rhythm section for a little while, Mikey and I joined after we left Tulsa last year.

Describe your songwriting process. Is it a collaborative effort or is there someone that takes the lead in the songwriting?

The songwriting process is very collaborative, however Chris generally writes the initial words and guitar part.  The band will then work together to arrange the song, write new parts, and complete the sonofabitch.  The songs in Sky were written this way.  Some took a long time (3-4 weeks) to complete and others came together really quickly.

Who do you credit as your musical influences? Do you have any non-musical influences?

Our musical influences vary pretty significantly across the four of us. Chris and Aurore draw from folk influences in a lot of their vocal harmonies and lyrical content.  I have always thought that the band has found some common ground in early alternative music like REM and the Pixies.  The band is pretty varied in all other aspects, and our iPods and record collections are pretty diverse.

Mikey has some pretty strong country music leanings: Flying Burrito Brothers, Tom Petty and/or the Heartbreakers, and anything with Mitch Mitchell. Chris is into Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and Nirvana, the Replacements. Aurore jams to the Pixies, Neil Young, REM, BD. I like all that stuff too, but I also tend to lean towards heavier music like Young Widows, Jesus Lizard, Black Sabbath, Mastodon and such.

Chris and I also talked a lot about non-musical influences for this record while we were writing it.  Alan Moore’s examinations of information expansion in his new documentary as well as his graphic novels came up a lot.  The reverend Bill Hicks is pretty amazing.  I think this record contains a lot of macro-type questions/meditations about larger concepts as well as how these relate to more micro-type personal relationships.

What are you listening to right now? Are there any new artists that you’re really excited about?

As for new artists, here is a list we recently made of our favorite
2009 records -

Daniel Johnston – Is and Always Was
Bat for Lashes – Two Suns
Built to Spill – There is No Enemy
Cass McCombs – Catacombs
Elvis Perkins In Dearland- s/t
Nirvana – Live at Reading
Cotton Jones – Paranoid Cocoon
Mastodon – Crack the Skye
Russian Circles – Geneva
Headlights – Wildlife

On this tour, we have been sincerely enjoying Nada Surf, Tom Petty, the Whigs, Cass McCombs, Phoenix, Hank Williams.  Our label mates the Twin Tigers just finished an amazing record that we are stoked about as well.

You’re on the road with The Whigs and The Features! How has the road been treating you? Do you have any crazy tour stories?

The Whigs and the Features are both tremendous as people and extremely talented musicians.  One thing I think is that this tour is great for us to learn from these bands.  There are a lot of parts of touring that are kind of stressful and putting on a good show every night is not always easy.  These guys are total pros and have been great teachers for us.  Playing out in Boston is great, but we felt like we were getting kind of too comfortable there and we are now at the point where stretching ourselves out to new places is great.  Generally, we play to folks who have most certainly not heard of us on this tour, and if there are people who came to see us, they are in the vast minority. Luckily, most of the Whigs’ fans are really awesome and open-minded people and I think they have helped us out a lot.

As for crazy tour stories, a lot of those are hard to tell.  We will link you to a video when we upload it.  We’re mostly well-behaved.

What are your favorite songs to play live?

I think that our new song “The Comedian” is a favorite for everyone to play.  Unfortunately, al ot of folks who come up to our merch table after the show usually ask about that song, and we have not recorded it yet.  Boo hoo.  Anyhow, we also like to play the title track to Sky as well as “Face of the Earth.”  We have not left those three songs out of a set in months.

What are your favorite cities to tour through?

Athens, GA is kind of becoming a bit of a home away from home for us. There are some amazingly talented people and some great friends there. The Whigs live there, as well as our friends in Dead Confederate and our label mates twin tigers.  Portland, Maine has been super friendly to us, and that is great because it is where I grew up.

What has your past experience been like playing in Boston?

We love playing in Boston and I think we are all very proud to be a Boston band.  There are so many awesome bands in our city that I think we get kind of spoiled.  It is funny, because a lot of bands will tell me that they have trouble in Boston, and I can see that.  The ’scene’ is kind of small and it can be difficult to get noticed there.  Despite the fact that there are all the colleges there, these kids do not seem to have a huge impact on the crowd attendance at shows in my opinion, the people who support the scene most fervently are the musicians and people like [TeaParty].

Are you currently following any Boston artists? If so, who?

We love soooo many bands from Boston.  I love Magic Magic and Doomstar.  Chris is way into You Can Be A Wesley.  We all love Drug Rug.

You won a BMA! What’s it like being Boston’s Best New Act?

It was great!  We felt very happy to be recognized.  We felt like we worked very hard this year to grow as a band and record an album we were really happy about.  I think that it would be fair to say that it was kind of like having a 2nd full time job that we don’t get paid for, so attending a party to get recognized was pretty cool.

What can fans expect from Mean Creek in the upcoming months?

More shows, more tours. We are all very excited to work on new songs as well.  I would love to start thinking about a new album soon.  I love Sky, but I think we have a great album ahead of us.  The new songs are kind of different and a little more raw and savage, but they still maintain the Mean Creek propensity for the epic.

Mean Creek play the Mideast Upstairs on Friday 12/18