Photo: Matt Rosadini

On Camden’s Myspace page, you’ll find one quote by jazz regular Brandford Marsalis that reads like this:

“Many years later, a lot of younger musicians were hanging around with Elvin Jones, and they were talking about, ‘Man, you know, you guys had an intensity when you were playing with Coltrane. I mean, what was it like? How do you play with that kind of intensity?’ And Elvin Jones looks at them and says, ‘You gotta be willing to die with the motherfucker.’ They started laughing like kids do, waiting for the punch line, and then they realized he was serious. How many people do you know that are willing to die—period? Die with anybody! And when you listen to those records, that’s exactly what they sound like. I mean that they would die for each other.”

When you hear Camden play with one another, this seminal connection rings true in every note they play. Taking production styling of artists such as Caribou and Passion Pit, and incorporating song forms that could be translated into the likes of Modest Mouse, and even the Smashing Pumpkins, the result is a heavy hearted, yet relentlessly optimistic release entitled Vale EP. Off the stage, the group interacts with one another with such serious fun, that it’s easy to see why the group would find that quote a fitting description.

Camden is playing at Great Scott on July 13^th at 9 PM.

–Matt Rohr

Photo: Matt Rosadini

Hey guys, thanks for joining me. So tell me about the group, and what instruments you play.

JS: Well, we should mention that our 5^th, Chris Dwyer, is not here. He’s in Flagstaff, AZ right now playing and recording some folk stuff. I think he’s out stalking Joanna Newsom, he’s seriously obsessed with her [everyone laughs]. But my name is Jason Sibilia and I play guitar and I sing backup, but I also do a lot of the sequencing and production.

J: I’m Jim and I play bass and sing.

JB: I’m Jason Bergman and I play drums

T: And I’m Tim and I play guitars.

JS: Yeah, it started as a school project for me, and I was always friends with Jason and Jim, and I had taken a few classes with Tim at Northeastern. Jason was always over and Jim has an incredible voice, so I just kind of asked them if they wanted to make music together. At the time I was writing instrumental stuff, so I asked them to join me– and Jim could add vocals.

J: That was October of 2008, and Timmy and Chris joined around 2009. I used to be in a band with Chris called Giraffe. We had one show.

Do you guys have any releases as a full group?

J: We just dropped our first EP as a full band, but Jason [Sibilia] had this release called Other Weather that was just him, and it was like this psychedelic instrumental stuff, and that was the first Camden release.

JS: We did the full band release pretty much by ourselves. I have a makeshift studio in my room. The EP came out very recently, on May 27^th actually. I’ve got an MPC and use that to sequence everything.  All of our songs came from Jim and I sitting down in our rooms working everything out on acoustic guitars.

J: You know how it is in a city, rehearsal spaces are few and far between and they charge so much to use the space. Camden was definitely born in a bedroom.  Just a lot of file passing, back and forth, and seeing how things stick.

What’s some of your favorite moments from playing shows together as a full band?

JB: We’ve only been a full band since December, before that, it was just Jason [Sibilia] and Jim playing together. But we’ve been playing very consistently since our first show in January at the Middle East Upstairs.

J: We played this little record store/café in Ithaca, NY.

JB: A friend of mine from home plays in this band called Caution Children and they invited us out there to play, and it was great. The place was packed and they loved us and Caution Children both. We had our record release show not too long ago, and we had them come out to Boston for that, and it was nice to give them the same experience here that they gave us in Ithaca. The Ithaca show was really reaffirming for us, since it was our second or third show together as a band, and we didn’t know anybody at all in Ithaca except for the band, and it was refreshing to see the response from people and see how excited they got.  And we’re also going to be playing at Enormous Room in September with some DJ’s.

T: We’ll also be playing a show at Great Scott on July 13^th, that’ll be our first upcoming show!

JS: I was wondering when somebody was gonna bring that up! [laughs] Yeah, the Ithaca show was great, but we’ve had some less than great moments…

[all laugh]

J: You gotta let me take this one…

Photo: Matt Rosadini

Oh yeah? Tell me about that.

J: We had been offered to play a show, the day of the show, because two bands had dropped out and they really needed to fill some space. We played with this band called Personal Finance at a bar in Cambridge. It was a really rainy spring night, and we got there very early and we were just kind of wierded out from the start. I don’t know if you’ve ever been there, but it is not a place for bands, they usually only have DJs. The stage is the size of a coffee table. The sound guy told me to plug my bass directly into the subwoofer.

JS: (laughs) Yeah, and we were promised free drinks

T: What? I paid for my drinks all night, and I made sure to let them know I was in the band!  [all laugh]

J: An $80 tab later, it was time for us to go on stage.

JB: Yeah, I don’t think we’re ever allowed back.

J: [laughs] Yeah, we said and did some things on the stage, also stopped playing some songs in the middle of them…

Well, by the sound of the place, it seems like it had less to do with drinking and more to do with the fact the venue didn’t have their shit together.

J: Yeah, I mean we got really drunk, but only because it was really lame. There were, like, set up tables and people eating meals all throughout our set.

T: Trust me, we let everyone know how lame it was. I mean, the game was still on the TV…

JS: I mean in hindsight, it was kind of badass. Jim, being the lead singer, started calling people out in the crowd, shouting things at the bartender. At one point he started calling a guy in the front a hippie and telling him to cut his long hair. He came to the afterparty and we saw him there, but he was a really chill guy, having long hair and all.

JB: At one point I just remember thinking, ‘Man, something’s missing’, and then looking over at Tim, and seeing him leaning against a wall with his guitar still on, just staring off.

JS: It was definitely an important lesson, as a young band, we try to take everything we can get, but now we understand the importance of self-preservation. Since then, we’ve only played great shows, at least to us. We got that out of our system for sure; we’ll never do a day-of show like that again.

J: Yeah, the show was free, and there weren’t a lot of people there, so it didn’t really hurt us either, it was just one of those things we couldn’t believe was even happening at the moment.

In the midst of setting up the merch table, preparing for his own set, and making sure opener Cecil Otter was ready to take the stage, Sage was in somewhat of a frenzy when I first arrived at Harpers Ferry. But even in the whirlwind of preparations, his excitement for the night’s upcoming performances – both his and those of his friends who’d take the stage before him – was apparent. Not until he was seated on a couch for our interview did he seemed to calm, thoughtfully reflecting on his past work and talking, albeit guardedly, about his upcoming project. Even then, several times he stopped mid-sentence to check in on the other artists, only to resume a minute later without missing a beat. All in a day’s work for an indie rap legend/record label president.

–Tim Burdick

I’m really excited about this show. I would make the trip out to Allston to see any one of these guys, so it’s great that all of you are here tonight.

Yeah. I flew out Cecil Otter. I flew out Sleep and DJ Zone. They’re hardly ever on the East Coast, so that alone makes this a special show for me. It’s just having a Strange family gathering which only happens a few times a year. The last time we did was at SXSW in Austin. That was amazing, so I’m hoping for similar results tonight. The crowd is already filling in. I was getting nervous; I start to question myself and what kind of following I have in New England. I’m much bigger on the West Coast and in the Midwest. Then I come play my home venues and it’s a fledging crowd. I put on an extra push for this show. My own set is very long tonight, so the openers have to go on early. Cecil is going first tonight and he just flew into Providence like two hours ago. We had to pick him up at the airport and drive here. I’m glad there’s a crowd down there. In fact, I need to start making sure everything is all set up down there; he goes on in 20 minutes. I’m starting to get nervous.

Well, obviously you have this show tonight, but it seems like it has been pretty quiet for you recently. I guess quiet is a relative term, since you been involved with knowmore.org, and running a label, and you recently released a mixtape, but it’s been a couple of years since your last album.

Yeah, it’s been about three years since Human the Death Dance. Since then I have been working on a lot of stuff. Material that had no chance of making my new album turned into the mixtape [Sick of Wasting…]. We figured we would release the mixtape for free – give people an option to pay if they want. Really it was just to hold people over and show people that things are still active and that I haven’t quit. (laughs) I’d love to talk about the project I’ve been working on, but I’m going to hold off on that. It’s just been so long in the making that I don’t want to start talking about it. If I had started talking about it back when I first started on it, people would be bugging me right now. But, something’s happening. It’s been a huge undertaking, and early next year it will see the light of day. I’m not going to say more because I don’t want to jinx it.

We can leave it at that. You briefly mentioned Human the Death Dance, can you talk about that some more?

In retrospect, it wasn’t the time to release an album like that. It felt like a scrapbook when I listened to it, which I intentionally did. I was going for a mixtape feel on it, and I don’t think that’s how it came across. There were a couple scattered songs on there that hint toward where I’ve moved on my newer material. Now that I’ve got a new album nearing completion, it’s funny to look back on that and realize what I took from that, and built upon, and then I just threw away the rest. I didn’t want to revisit a lot of the shit that is on that album. That album really is a retrospective; it really is a look back on everything I had done prior, recreating certain moods and feels and building upon them. This new one, I worked with someone who rejected certain things and set boundaries. That excited me, because it’s a whole new game plan for me. Every previous album has been pretty much me putting it together. I get beats from people, but then I produce the whole record. This time it was not like that.

It seems that most emcees pair up with a DJ or even a live band, but it’s always seemed like the people that made your beats have been more behind the scenes. I know Hope featured beats made just by Joey Beats, but besides that…

Yeah, it’s scattered, because I always just collect beats from people. I have a huge catalog of unused beats that I dip into from time to time. I just wait for the mood to strike, or I have lyrics that I think will fit a beat and I just build on it like that. Even Hope took a while to make because it took a while to get enough beats that I thought were good enough from the same person. And just like every other album, I developed that album in the studio and put together a lot of the pieces on my own. It’s one of my favorites, but it really felt like how I made every other record. There was a concept with that album obviously. It was a throwback album. It was a period piece. People keep asking if we’re going to do another, but I don’t want to do another one. I did that for the sake of making a throwback record. I don’t ever want to build a career on making throwback material. Some people make careers out of that -more power to them-  but I’m not Sha Na Na, and that’s that. There were other directions I had to go in. I was really happy to make the retrospective album, because that was an era that I grew up and am in love with. I got to pay homage, and give head nods to almost every group that influenced me, and let that be that.

And if you made a second one-

It would be really repetitive. (laughs) It’s riddled with references. Every track has at least fifteen references to various people. I guess the well was tapped after that. I can’t make another record like that. I never even considered it, even before I made that record. I knew I wanted to make that record, but it was never in my head to make another one like that.

You mentioned that you have this collection of beats, do you normally write to a beat, or do you choose from stuff you’ve already written, or is it a little bit of everything?

There’s no set way of doing it for me. I have a lot of writing that sits around – sometimes it gets used, sometimes it never gets used. Other times a piece of music will inspire a flow of words that turn into their own thing – it happens really quickly. Other times I slave over a song for weeks or months; I just keep chipping away at it. If the wording isn’t really impressing me, it just sits there and percolates until I feel like it’s been birthed somehow. That is how it happens. That’s why some albums take three years to make. There’s a lot to obsess over.

Do you think some of your obsession with wording comes from your background in the slam scene?

No. The reason that I say no is because I’ve been writing raps –like rhyme couplets, interesting rhyme schemes, using punch lines– the slam scene is irrelevant to me. The poetry scene that introduced me to slam did improve my writing because it put me in touch with a lot of writers that I think are amazing. They don’t really involve themselves with the slam scene. On the other hand, I was very hungry for attention and a microphone and to be in front of crowds. I just always had that in me. I was doing the battles because I just wanted to get my name out there. I was trying to build a career. I think slam back then had a little bit more credibility than it does now. It actually worked out for me; I scored a paying job. But my obsession with writing doesn’t stem from anything like that. I really think it’s an obsessive-compulsive disorder that I have.

It works out for you…

Yeah, except that I’m just haunted by word combinations and melodies. It won’t stop. It can be pretty fucking annoying. (laughs)

Can you talk for a second about the connection between Boston and Providence?

There was tension in the late 90s when I first started putting out records and had a radio show. The Boston scene was burgeoning; there were really good 12”s coming out of Boston. There was a lot of really good stuff. The same thing was happening in Providence, except we didn’t seem to have the resources or know-how to actually run a label or put out music properly. So, we would always come up to Boston and support the shows and do the battles in Boston. I won the Superbowl Battle in Boston. Ever since then, I haven’t been around enough. I went to New York and then started touring. I’ve been touring up until now, and now I’m running Strange Famous out of Rhode Island and almost everything that matters to me is on Strange Famous. I don’t follow too much else. I know that sounds selfish, but fuck it. I wish I had a better answer for you. I think you would need to ask a 19-year-old kid in Boston or Providence who raps about that. They could give you an accurate answer. My thumb is not on the pulse of anything like that. I’m just glad that people from Boston come to my shows. (laughs) The other thing is that the scene in Providence actually benefitted from Boston having a fucked up venue situation back when I was younger. Everybody came to Providence and skipped Boston because there was so much violence in Boston. Clubs were shutting down and others wouldn’t host hip-hop shows. Providence benefitted from that. Now, it’s the exact opposite. All the Providence clubs have closed down and everyone is coming to Boston.

With dual frontmen trading lines at top volume and a dueling pair of DJs, there is no risk of boredom at a Big Digits show. The recent addition of a projected video backdrop now lends a level of full-on audiovisual confusion to their live set. My fascination with each of the elements of their show made it a bit difficult to keep track of everything the members of Big Digits were doing on stage, but the potentially dangerous levels of sensory overload didn’t prevent the crowd from dancing along frantically–although no one was a match for the energetic moves of TD.

Before the show (but after getting chased out of Harpers Ferry by some overly enthusiastic sound checking), we joined Big Digits at a place down the street, in a booth meant for far less than six people. TD, Mac, Mark E. Moon, and Mikey spoke frankly about the benefits and burdens of making music that sticks them somewhere between the hip hop scene and the electronic scene (we’ll let you decide where an invite to play a show at a Hot Topic puts them in your own mental music library), and about some of the challenges of being participants in the Boston music scene in general. It wasn’t all so serious though; we also got the scoop on the time that Public Enemy lyrics saved Mac during a confrontation with a state trooper and the night that TD found out what his spirit animal was.

–Tim Burdick

We are here with Big Digits– introduce yourselves.

Mac (M): My name is Mac. I’m from West Newbury, MA.

Mark (MM): Mark E. Moon, from Long Island.

TD: TD. I’m from Seattle, WA.

Mikey (Mi): I’m Mikey, and I’m from Worcester, MA.

So, with you from Seattle, and you from Long Island, what brought you all to Boston?

TD: I’m sure they’re both long and somewhat boring stories that are not worth recounting. I wanted to live on the East Coast, but I didn’t want to live in New York. The story had some twists and turns, but brevity is the wit of the soul. My story would just be extremely boring to anyone-

MM: He moved here to be near Tanya Donnelly.

TD: That is not true. I didn’t even know who Tanya Donnelly was.

MM: So, who did you move here to be near?

TD: It was to be near Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I believe she has a summer home here.

How did you guys meet and how did you come to make music together?

TD: Well, years ago I lived in an apartment in Somerville with a young lady who was dating Mac. Mac would come around and we’d talk about music. Because- [To Mac] were you DJing at WMFO at the time?

M: Yeah.

TD: Actually, before that I had known Mark from comics. I used to work in a comic book store in Harvard Square. So, Mac and I would talk about music, and eventually he came to me and was like, “Hey man, I’m starting this project”. It was something very different from what it is now, and then Mac’s computer crashed and that went out the window. He came to me later, and was like, “I want to start this rap thing. Would you want to do that?” and I said yes. So, that’s the way we kind of started. We started out as pretty straight ahead rap stuff and then we both wanted to do a little bit more with it. So, we spent some time exploring different ideas and avenues. We knew Mark was an excellent DJ around town, and we asked him if he would want to live DJ for us, like regular rap groups have. Then, we had known Mikey from around town for years and we wanted to have more people involved. There were times when Mark couldn’t do stuff, so we were like, “Let’s have Mikey come on,” because we really like his DJing stuff and electronic music.

Can you guys take us through your writing process?

M: It starts when I just fool around with loops and come up with the basis for a song. I send it to TD, and if TD likes it, we’ll work on it together in a practice space. After we get something that we think is a song, we bring in Mark or Mikey and ask him what he can put on top of it. Until this past year -we’ve been together for over 6 years -  I’ve been doing all the production. It’s gets tiresome and frustrating, so I’ve been asking for help and Mark and Mikey have been doing some production for us: helping with the beats aspect. As far as lyrics go, TD and I tend to write things separately and mash them together. Or I write a verse first and he asks me what its generally about. Usually it’s something completely random; I try to stay away from personal life, politics, or anything like that. I like to pick the craziest things possible to rhyme together. It usually ends up being about rapping, or dancing, something like that. We tend to write the verses separately and the choruses together. By the time it gets to the stage everybody has added something to it, which is good because everyone has a very interesting perspective on music and dance music. It’s great to have those extra perspectives, rather than just the two of us.

How would you say that those perspectives differ?

TD: Well, because we’re all different ages, there’s a wide swath of musical interests amongst the four of us. Think of it as a Venn diagram. There are definitely some things right there in the middle for all four of us, but there are definitely big parts of the circles that do not match. Just because you’re not into a certain type of music, doesn’t mean that someone bringing an idea from that perspective isn’t going to be welcome. I think that is a big key to why this works. For example, Mark E. Moon is doing a series of remixes highlighting artists like Blues Traveler and Alanis Morissette. I, myself, would have never thought of that or been able to achieve it.

MM: In my defenses, I don’t particularly like those artists, so that’s part of the challenge. I’ll try to bring in samples of stuff that I don’t like, and make it something I like. I feel like hatred is just as strong an emotion as love.

TD: Whoa. Are you into Depeche Mode now? (laughs)

MM: I just mean it’s better to get a strong reaction either way. And I feel the same way about our show. People are either really into us, or hate us.

So, are there any songs in the Big Digits catalogue that really stand out to you as favorites?

TD: I’m always really excited to play “Making Progress” because it’s kind of a ballad about trying in the face of adversity. Boston is a great town in a lot of ways, but as a musician it can be very tough, especially in terms of longevity. It’s such a transitory population. Also, bands break up. It’s expensive to live here, and it’s tough to be in a band. “Making Progress” is just about diligence and change. Incremental change…. You’ll see when we play it.

M: I like that song a lot too. I think I sort of hit my creative production peak at that point. There’s a lot going on beat-wise and sound-wise in that song. Somehow, I just hit the jackpot. It doesn’t happen every song, but that song… I’m just really, really proud of it.

Mi: I really like “Longwood”. (murmurs of agreement) … it’s soft, but everything really comes together really well. Because I’m the youngest one, it doesn’t really… apply to me at all – it’s just a song … but I still love it.

M: That’s produced by somebody else. That’s not an in-house production. A friend of mine from Philly named Michael Robinson made that. And that’s the only track that none of us have had a hand in beat-wise at all. He sent us a track, it was perfect as is, and we just started writing from there.

We talked about the collaborative nature of your writing process and live performances… what about in the studio?

M: Well, we’ve never been in a studio. We record it with Mikey in his home studio, which is basically just a jerry-rigged bathroom-

Mi: Bathroom closet.

M: It’s a wonderful set up–

Mi: A little hot…

M: It was a little hot, yeah. But mostly we – and I know this term is floated around a lot, but we subscribe to it, even it is overused – but we literally do everything ourselves. Record, mix, master, all that stuff, without a studio, on laptops, in someone’s house, in someone’s bathroom closet. There’s no studio, there’s no fancy mixing board. We don’t have an office. We don’t have any press people working for us. We don’t have a manager. We book all our own shows. We book all our own tours. It’s incredibly draining to do everything ourselves. TD and I are the core of it, so we’re always doing something. So, yeah it doesn’t really change. I’d say the one difference is that when you’re on stage you can feed off the energy of the audience. If it’s a good show, it brings our lyrical performance to the next level. When you’re in a booth or in a practice space, it’s a little more difficult to get yourself psyched up, to get that same energy that a live performance brings out. But I think we get pretty darn close.

The term DIY is tossed around a lot in the Boston indie scene. Is the hip hop scene similar in that respect?

TD: Well, we don’t generally play a lot of hip hop shows. And that’s something I don’t like about this town, that there is a big schism between independent hip hop music and independent rock music. There’s basically independent hip hop music and independent every other kind of music. It stinks because I spent a lot of time on the West Coast – I was in Seattle – and there’s a really great integration of the hip hop scene there with the rest of the music in the town. I’m not exactly sure why it hasn’t happened here, but there just isn’t a ton of integration.

M: During the shows we try to bend… We both love hip hop and we both have hip hop backgrounds. It’s not our choice to not play those shows. What I don’t like about hip hop shows is that, for some reason, they’re more expensive for people to attend and it doesn’t really make sense to me. We play a lot of basements and parties and art galleries.  We try and just play our weird hip hop everywhere and charge as little money as possible, because we want people to see it. A typical Boston hip hop show has about seven acts on it and it costs like $40-

Mi: And they each play 15 minutes.

M: Right. So, it’s just not appealing to us.

MM: We’d love to play those shows, if it was part of a structure that we dug. I just don’t think it’s going to happen. We have played a few, and some of them have gone well. It just sucks. Hip hop shows all cost like $25. And I’m not paying $25 to see… anybody.

M: Yeah, and the rap shows are not at better venues really. There’s ones that are at the Middle East Downstairs that are $25, $30.

MM: Harpers has a lot of hip hop and the price for a hip hop show is double whatever they’re charging for any other show.

You mentioned you were playing in galleries and houses. What’s the weirdest place you ever played?

TD: It would have to be on a bus.

A parked one, or?

TD: A parked one, yes. There used to be – it’s now long gone – but there used to be, in the Bay Area, this bus. It was originally a mobile home; it was then converted into a police headquarters, but then they ran out of funding for it. This guy bought it from them and turned into this venue that would like drive around and have shows in parking lots. Sometimes they’d be on the Berkeley border, and the Oakland PD would show up, and they’d just drive over to Berkeley, where the cops didn’t have jurisdiction anymore. We played there once out in the Bay Area, and once when it went on this national tour of the country – which led to its demise, unfortunately. That’s got to be the weirdest place.

M: We played an alternative prom in Olympia, Washington. We played a dotcom merger party. We’ve played on a roof of a hotel. Weddings.

MM: Many joyous occasions.

M: We’ve recently been asked to play in a mall. At a…

All: At a Hot Topic store.

Mi: In New Hampshire.

M: We kind of want to play it just because it will add to our crazy shows list. It will be a great story. We’ve played a shed in a kid’s backyard. We played an indoor skate park in Buffalo, NY. You ask to play anywhere, and we’ll pretty much do it.

TD: If it sounds interesting.

M: We played an arcade in Portland. That was a bad show.

TD: It was a make up show. We were on tour, and we had two shows scheduled in Portland, right before we were supposed to play. We were scrambling to find a place to have a show, and this guy was like, “Yeah, we’ll put you on here.” It was terrible. One person came to see us. We got paid in tokens.

Any crazy tales from the tour bus for you guys?

M: We almost got arrested coming back from opening for M.I.A. in Worcester. We were coming back on the MassPike and I was going the speed limit. I got pulled over by a state trooper for a broken taillight. There’s three of us and one of TD’s roommates. I drank that night, but I was definitely the one that drank the least of our crew. I wasn’t swerving or doing anything dangerous, but our car just smelled like alcohol. I was wearing an Oakland Raiders jacket, because I like NWA; it’s sort of an homage to them. The state trooper started picking on me. He was like, “What? Do you like the Raidahhhs?” I told him we were all Patriots fans, so he was like, “Why are you wearing a Raider’s jacket then?” I told him I was in a rap group and that some of my rap idols used to wear Raiders jackets, including Chuck D. And he’s like, “Oh yeah, Chuck D.” – this is a whiter-than-white, buzzcut, 35 year old, state trooper. He’s like, “Chuck D. Public Enemy. What’s your favorite Public Enemy song?” He was asking all these questions, and I was nervous because I wanted to make sure I answered in a way that he wanted, so he let me go.

TD: And try to think of a Public Enemy song that isn’t about killing the police.

M: It was really hard thing to do. Then he went back to his car for a while, and he came back and was like, “Alright, I only have one more question for you.” and then he told this really lame Public Enemy joke: What’s one question Flavor Flav can always answer? — What time is it? Then he told us to get on our way.

TD: I can say that we’ve had some harrowing experiences while on tour. Once, we drove 36 hours straight, from Chicago to Seattle. But the last time we were on tour, we were driving through Montana, and we couldn’t find a hotel to stay in. Everything was booked, so we had to keep going. When I get tired, I start to freak out a little bit when I’m driving at night. I swear to god a giant, white owl swooped directly in front of our car. I looked into the owl’s eyes. [Everyone else starts laughing]. I saw its animal spirit. I slammed on the brakes and it swooped away into the night.

M: And I saw none of this.

TD: You were asleep.

M: I had my head down, I wasn’t asleep. I think that’s a sign that an owl is his animal spirit.

TD: We eventually found a place to sleep and we had to ring a bell to wake up someone who was sleeping to let us in.

M: That night was straight out of a horror movie. Exits were 35 miles apart. Every exit would have a sign that said there was a hotel, and then we’d take the exit and turn onto a dirt road. Things didn’t feel right, so we would just get back on the highway. Somehow, we found the place we ended up staying at. It was a surprisingly decent place, with a very hospitable woman who ran the joint.

Do you have any favorite cities to play in besides Boston?

TD: Los Angeles.

M: The scene there right now is a lot of young kids, trying a lot of different things.

TD: Toronto, also.

M: We’ve had a lot of good experiences in Buffalo. There’s a vibrant scene in Buffalo that America doesn’t know about.

TD: Seattle. I still have some friends there that do music, and they help us out. It’s always a fun time when we go there.

So, getting back to Boston, what do you love about being a hip hop act in Boston, and what have been the biggest challenges you’ve faced as a group here?

TD: For what we do, the best part and the most challenging thing is that we’re kind of the only people doing what we do. It’s great because there are other people around the country that do similar things as we do, and when they come to town, it’s got to be us. The other edge of that sword is that people are like, “What are you weirdoes doing?”. Because we’re not hip hop enough to be really accepted by that scene, and we’re not electronic enough to be completely accepted by that scene. We’re in this weird middle place. It’s good because it makes us unique. Because if you’re the only person doing something -no matter how weird or fucked up it is- you’re probably on the right track. It is hard at times to find bills that we could be on and acts we could play with when we’re doing our own shows. It’s tough to find similar bands. And if you are a similar band and you’re reading this, send us an email.

How about favorite venues?

M: I have to go with the Middle East, Downstairs preferably. Upstairs is cool too. No disrespect to other venues, but I think that they have the best staff and the best sound engineers.

TD: I work at ZuZu, so we get a little bit of preferential treatment, I think. But we also always have consistently good performances there. I really like the shape of the room. It’s a nice narrow room; if people are not paying attention and getting drinks, you don’t even see it because it’s blocked off by that side wall. I used to be a punk rock aerobics instructor and we have our classes Saturday at noon in the Middle East Downstairs. It was gross.

Are there any Boston bands that you are following or you really enjoy?

M: Boston is sort of going through a Psych revolution right now. All the acts from the Whitehaus Collective.  Our very good friend Dan Shea organized the PsychFest at Church. It was a three day festival of all local bands. Boston has a lot of great music, and it goes through phases of what is in. We’re also friends with a lot of DJs around town.

So, what’s next for Big Digits?

TD: In my brain, we’re going to release an EP, then we’re going to release a remix EP, which will be remixes of the songs on the EP. I think t-shirts are in the works. There’s going to be a Mark E. Moon mixtape. Playing more shows. Doing our thing.

Mi: Gathering the legions.

Big Digits open for Dan Deacon at Mass Art’s Pozen Center on 11/8

The title pretty much says it all.   This weekend is long for a reason and it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Columbus totally screwed up trying to find India and wound up with us instead.  With Boston bands headlining shows in Cambridge, Allston and Somerville on Friday, Saturday and Sunday night, there’s no legitimate excuse for you to spend these chilly autumn evenings carving pumpkins and watching reruns of Friday the 13th on TMC even if it’s only a couple of weeks before Halloween.

Anyways: GET OUT OF YOUR APARTMENT. NOW. like, right this minute.  because as we post this, some shows are already underway or about to get going.  Tonight, we’ve got The Beatings at the Middle East (Upstairs) and Tim Gearan with his new residency at Atwood’s.  Tomorrow: It’s a deathmatch between Glam vs. Punk at the Middle East (Upstairs), and the stacked bill is a put ‘em up smack down between Boston glam gods MEandJOANCOLLINS, Gene Dante and the Future Starlets, The New Alibis and Acro-bats.  The Everyday Visuals will be back in town tomorrow as well and they’ll be in ARC (Allston Rock City) with our buddies Magic Magic at the Paradise, along with Mean Creak and The Great Bandini. Sunday: The Sea Monsters are playing Precint, as usual, so come out for some big horns and big hooks with Christian McNeill and his collection of the über talent we’ve come to know around these parts.  We’ve got interviews with pretty much all these people available for your perusal, so if you’re not at these gigs already, give our rundowns a look-through before you call Green Cab or hop on the 66.

-Hilary Hughes

Bridges Blowing Up and Giant Cosmic Conspiracies: Talking Boston with The Beatings

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“The Revolution Will Be Recorded On Your Mini Tape Recorder”: Indie in Boston and Beyond with The Everyday Visuals

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A Farewell to Toad: Tim Gearan on an Autumnal Change of Scene

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Ode to Cambridge: Waxing Poetic on MEandJOANCOLLINS’ Favorite Place

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“Fat” Food, Favorite Words… and That Girl Who Bought Too Much Wine In London: Meet Magic Magic.

The leaves are changing, the kids are back in town, and everyone’s trading in their iced coffee for the real thing as fall has hit full force in Boston.  For the last month of this short-lived summer, Gab, Jessie and I spent at least a night a week at the Lizard Lounge and it’s smaller, rowdier counterpart, Toad.  At Lizard, we sat with jaws dropped and eyes wide at the octave-leaping antics of Jesse Dee; we then had our minds blown by the concentrated intensity of The Mieka Canon as they delivered flawless sets and handed out free copies of their new EP, From The Mouth of Paris, every single week in August.

While both of these Boston bands and artists held court at the Lizard Lounge, the feet-stompin’, hootin’-and-hollerin’ and epic vocal prowess of Tim Gearan and John Powhida were occurring simulataneously as the two men led residencies of their own at Toad.  From both Powhida and Gearan, we saw retrospective displays and departures of sorts from the two established Boston-based musicians.  Gearan, whose Monday night slot at Toad will be vacant come October, is taking his 15+ year residency and moving it over to a Friday night show each week at Atwood’s Tavern in Inman Square.  Powhida, who spent his residency sharing the stage with numerous friends as well as former and present members of his band, John Powhida International Airport, is hitting the drawing board again after his rowdy Toad shows and his performances at various festivals and charitable events in the Greater Boston area this summer.  A good thing can’t go on forever, though, and as seasons change so do the schedules of Boston’s favorite venues and nightclubs.  The Toad residencies of John Powhida and Tim Gearan were merely forums for these two to showcase their unparalleled energy, prolific songwriting abilities and unmatched appreciation for their Boston fans, and there’s only more to look forward to from this singer/songwriter stalwarts as the days grow shorter in the coming chill.

- Hilary Hughes

“Call me, TeaParty Girls, the next time you wanna go SAKE BOMBING!”: Shoutouts and Other Whimsies from John Powhida

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A Farewell to Toad: Tim Gearan on an Autumnal Change of Scene

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The Powerful Pipes of a Boston Boy: Jesse Dee and his Local Lizard Lounge Residency

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“Cambridge Doesn’t F_ck Around”: Cutting Teeth with The Mieka Canon

If you follow fashion at all you’ve probably heard about the NYC Fashion Week kick-off turned GLOBAL EVENT that is Fashion’s Night Out. Vogue has joined forces with the City of New York and the CFDA to, essentially, get people to go out and spend some money. The rationale behind the spendapalooza is that, in NYC, fashion is the second-largest industry (behind finance) and the city is the headquarters of more than 800 fashion companies employing 175,000 people and generating $10 billion in total wages. So, as Vera Wang put it at a press conference last spring, “If people don’t shop, people lose their jobs.”

But, we live in Boston. Maybe our local economy doesn’t hinge on fashion but, dammit, we like it, okay? Cities all over the world are now participating, with fashion heavyweights making appearances in boutiques in Paris, block parties in Madrid, cocktail parties in London and megasales in Moscow. We’re talking entire districts popping bubbly and trying on shoes. Where is the love Boston?

After a week or so of intense googling, I found three separate events happening around town on Newbury St. tomorrow. Please let me know if you know of any more!

–Jessie Rogers

Soodee will  be offering complimentary drinks, sushi, and hors d’oeuvres from 6-11PM RSVP for a 15% discount on new fall merchandise to college students.

Luna Boston will have local designer Sam Mendoza on site with his latest dress designs as well as drinks, dim sum, and special deals from 6PM until the party dies down.

Check out Madewell between 6:30 and 8:30PM for 20% off all merchandise, free Denim Fit Sessions, free Madewell manicures (are those different from regular manicures?), and gift bags.

EDIT: Days after the fact, I stumbled upon fashionsnightoutboston.com via bostonfashionweek.com, though the site did not come up in any internet searches I did. Maybe next year Fashion’s Night Out will work on their publicity. Or at least their SEO.

We first heard of Annie and the Beekeepers from the list of local favorites given to us by Rhode Island-based experimental folk upstarts The Low Anthem during an interview and after their subsequent awe-inspiring Brattle Theater performance, we absolutely trusted their opinion when it came to quality musicianship. So, when Annie Lynch, Ken Woodward and Alexandra Spalding came through Boston in support of their latest EP, The Squid Hell Sessions, recorded locally in Jamaica Plain, we jumped at the chance to check them out.

We chatted with Annie and Ken in the tiny band room in the basement of a local acoustic hotspot that shall remain nameless (for legal reasons we don’t quite understand) about the trio’s genesis at Berklee, recording their latest release and their impending move to Brooklyn.

–Jessie Rogers

Annie and the Beekeepers, tells us about yourselves.

K: My name is Ken Woodward. I play bass. And sing. Sometimes stomp on the floor. I’m from Charlottesville, Virginia.

A: I’m Annie Lynch and I’m from Cape Cod. I sing play guitar and banjo and write songs. Alex is from northern California and she plays cello and viola.

So what’s the back-story on Annie and the Beekeepers?

A: Ken and I met first and I was kind of trying to learn how to play bluegrass music and just wanted to play with people. Ken was like, “I’ll play with you…but this is not bluegrass.” [laughs] One of the first times were played together was in Harvard Square. We were busking and we were really unsuccessful.

Busking?

A: Playing on the street for money…but we were sort of just, like, playing on the street for whoever would listen.

K: For experience.

A: And then we randomly played together for a bit and when I wanted to make and EP I asked Ken if he would play and he introduced me to Alex.

K: Because you were always talking about loving cello. Like, “I looooooove cello.”

A: It was great—wanting a cello and Ken knowing somebody. So then Alex came on and we did the EP and it went well. We didn’t end up releasing anything but we decided at that point to plan recording a full album at a studio in Rhode Island called Lakewest Studio. We just kept playing in preparation for that, started getting gigs and it just felt like there was constant momentum, which gave us enough motivation to keep plugging away. And the music felt really good.

K: We didn’t really plan to do the record, we just started getting gigs and one thing lead to another. It was really natural. It just kind of happened.

Where were this gigs that you were doing?

K: They were all over Boston.

A: We played at All Asia to start with and Revolution Rock Club—which was really funny because it was all these people in their business suits in the Financial District getting out of work and wanting to get dooown.

K: Some guy asked Alex if we covered any Red Hot Chili Peppers tunes. She was sitting with her cello. She didn’t even know what to say. She was like “Ah….no?”

So…have you covered any Red Hot Chili Peppers since?

[Laughs]

A: We’ve covered Aretha Franklin.

K: We’ve covered the Beatles. Gillian Welch.

A: Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings, they’re big inspirations to us. We covered a Tom Waits song, which is always risky business because he’s, you know, Tom Waits.

You’ve covered a lot of people…but can you take us through your own songwriting process?

A: I think what the final product ends up being is a total collaborative effort, but what happens is, typically, I’ll write the skeleton of the song—the lyrics and chord progression—and then I’ll bring it to Ken and Alex and they’ll help me smooth out the rough edges and then we gradually just put the meat on the bones with arrangements. As a group we just sit and play through the song. We just did this one song… we just sat in my apartment for five hours and played this one song and that was the ideal situation for us to be able to arrange a song. To sit there with an unlimited amount of time as a group and really create the emotion of the song. So that ends up being what the audience hears in the live show or the recording—just each person putting their heart and soul into the song. We make it satisfying for each individual as well as to the band as a whole.

What do you like about recording together? How was the experience recording your last album?

K: It’s so many different things because we recorded it at Squid Hell in Jamaica Plain and it was sort of a last minute thing that was kind of, you know, a friend who was kind of doing a project for school and at the same time we wanted to do a new EP and we just went out there with no expectations and just busted it out. It was such a great experience. There is a certain magic that happens when you’re recording and you really nail a song, you really find the spirit of the song…it’s just so hard to duplicated. It’s sometimes the best time for that song, ever.

A: It’s like, “Like A Dog” on that EP.  We seriously went into the studio and, like Ken said, we had no expectations. We just thought, “Oh maybe we can use some of this stuff and put out an EP.” But really like whatever happens, happens. We did one sing that we didn’t even end up putting on the EP and then we sat down to do “Like A Dog” which is the first track on the EP and one of our favorite songs. The tape we ended up using for the recording was the first take, totally live. Everything single thing that you hear is live. And then there’s other songs that we worked on for an entire day and couldn’t even use anything. There’s so many factors to what makes the recording amazing and it’s just kind of really magical that we were all in the perfect space to be putting ourselves into that moment.

K: Recording is really kind of dangerous when you think about it. It’s risky, and that’s what’s exciting about it.

A: Yeah. There’s something permanent about it.

K: That’s what gives it it’s juice. It’s like… this podcast we were doing today. I had this adrenaline rushing because there we were being videotaped and recorded and we were just…doing it.

A: Very vulnerable.

K: It’s different when you play live. You have…people feel you and that goes a long way. They see you and that goes a long way. And it’s not recorded and you can’t rewind, and that goes a long way too.  It’s just a lot more intense when you’re recording.

A: I think it can be kind of the same as a live show. If you’re there in the moment– It’s all about being there in the moment. Which is the beauty of what we’re doing. I think artists in general tend to be sensitive people, but I think we in particular are really sensitive people and when we sit down to play together, anything that’s going on in our lives, any minute fragment of energy that’s going on between Ken and I or Alex and I or Alex and Ken, it’s so feeds into that moment. So whether it’s recording or in a live setting it matters. That’s what makes the difference. I think that we’re more likely to take risks in a live show because it’s not permanent. It’s something in the moment and you’re feeding off of people in the audience which a whole other ballpark. It’s not just about the musicians and then engineers it’s about everybody in the audience and when you have a group of your friends in the audience singing your songs, you’re more likely to just rock out.

When you sit down and write a song, do you think about the live performance or the recording or how those things will be different?

A: I think that when I’m sitting down and writing a song I’m not thinking about anything except what I want to express and it’s really hard even to sit down and say, “I’m going to write this kind of song.” Which is hard because everyone is like “You need more up-tempo songs!” And I sit down and I think, “I don’t really feel up-tempo…” I think that the process of arranging the song as a group is where we determine how we want it to impact the people who are listening to it. This goes back to saying that it’s truly a collaborative effort. We all decide what we want the emotional path to be for the audience and for us.

How is Squid Hell Sessions a departure from previous stuff you guys have done?

K: It feels more mature to me.

A: Totally.

K: It feels like your voice has come much more into its own. It feels… I think we did less over-dubs on the EP.

A: Way less. It feels more live. More eclectic and what a live show feels like. In terms of the songs as a whole, the album has a lot of ebb and flow and variety…

K: It’s dynamic.

A: …Whereas the EP, I feel like the variety and ebb and flow is concentrated in each song. Each song is very intense and sort of like a high concentration of what we do as opposed to a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Like, “These are ourselves. We are emotional.” [Laughs]

Do you guys have any songs that you are particularly connected to?

A: I’d say off of the old album, “Sad Boy” is a song that we’ve constantly been evolving and we always like to play live… well, I always like to play live…

K: Yeah speak for yourself…

A: … And my favorite song of ours, and I think has a lot to do with the recording experience, is “Like A Dog.”

K: Definitely.

A: I don’t think I’d be able to say that we have that experience with anything. Also, we’re doing these songs where I’m playing banjo and Alex is playing viola and Ken is starting to sing more and those newer ones are starting to feel like the baby, you know?

K: The newest ones, the favorite ones.  And I really like “Again And Again.” Something about that one always kind of hits me. “The Wine Song” is always fun, always a crowd-pleaser.

So you’re going to be promoting this album for a bit…what’s next for you guys after that?

A: For the next two months we’re going to be touring, until the end of September. And then Ken’s going to be moving to New York from Boston and we’re going to spend some time re-rooting ourselves. We all started playing in Boston and now Alex and I live in New York and Ken’s moving to New York, we just want to find a sense of community there and further develop what we have going on in the northeast and create and write more as a trio because this is really the first time in our lives that we can really put a lot of energy into this as a band because we’ve all been students and lived in different cities for a year. We’re all really looking forward to just having that creative time. We also just had a transition because we played with another bandmate for two and a half years and he was a really important part of our band and our sound and we valued him so much and so now is sort of a time when we’re starting to find ourselves again. It’s a transitional time, but there is so much positivity surrounding that transition.

How does it feel differently playing in Boston than playing in New York?

K: Well it’s venue-specific. We have our favorite venues and the atmosphere makes a tremendous difference in terms of how I feel onstage which has an impact on how we sound. I feel more relaxed in Boston, this is where the band was formed. But at the same time we have a lot of friend who have moved to New York and they come out to all our shows. Honestly, though, it’s just more comfortable playing at home.

A: We want to start to dig into New York and find a similar comfort there but nothing compares to your own backyard. Boston’s been very good to us. We just started discovering the whole Cambridge scene, like the Lizard Lounge and Passim. I just discovered it a year ago right before I moved to New York so we’ve been really loving it here and the whole community surrounding this neighborhood. I think that we will feel something similar in New York but nothing will ever really compare to where you have your roots.

So you’ll be back?

A+K: Oh yeah.

What is it about the Boston crowd that makes it special?

A: There’s something a little rough around the edges about Boston. People are more apt to just roll out to your show in Boston in whatever they’ve been wearing all day and sit down to have a beer with their buddies and just hang out. There’s a little bit more of that homey sort of vibe. There is that sort of vibe in a lot of places in New York but it’s definitely… it’s NEW YORRRRRK [jazz hands]. You just get a little bit more of that…

K: Snazz Fest.

A: There’s a little bit more snazz in New York. You feel a little bit more like…”Alright, I’m in New York.” That’s the best way I can explain it.

What are some of your other favorite venues?

A: We really like doing sort of barn shows, house shows. We’ve been seeking out more places like that to play. We you really feel…it’s not just being in a bar, you’re being brought into a part of a community.

K: The places we like to play are the places where you can hear the silence in the music. That’s where it’s the most powerful.

A: When you’re playing in a house or barn, people who come out are often people around our parents’ age, younger people who have that appreciation for going out and just sitting and listening to a live show. That’s the best.When you play in a place that’s all different ages…people are giving you baked goods [laughs]…it gives you that sense of really being in a community as opposed to being…

K: At your job?

A: Yeah. I think that our goal as a band is to sort of penetrate into each community we come across.

So New York is the next frontier of that?

A: I think that’s begun but there’s still a lot of work to do. Mainly because it’s a huge diverse city and people are doing everything there… you can’t conquer New York City.

K: New York City conquers you, or you just sort of make do with it.

A: So we’ll see what ends up happening.

For the record, Gab and I are not softees.  Commercials featuring cute, three-legged puppies that need homes?  Gut-wrenching human interest stories with tragic endings?  The season finale of “Grey’s Anatomy”?  Yeah, we’re human, but I think I speak for the both of us when I say that we’re pretty tough cookies and that we aren’t prone to overtly emotional reactions when we’re really, really moved by something… that is, until we both welled up when Christopher Pappas of The Everyday Visuals sang his heart out during the finale of the band’s intimate acoustic set at TT the Bear’s Place a couple of weeks ago.  Accompanied only by the high-pitched reverberations of a half-full glass of water, on the rim of which drummer Joe Seider was drawing circles with his finger, Chris moved us to the point of big, wet, embarrassing tears with the simple beauty of “Her Breathing is Music.”  It was one of those rare moments in Boston when you realize you’re at the right place at the right time in this incredible city, and that moment, around 11:30pm on a Tuesday night, Gab, Jessie and I were just as enthralled as every other member of that hushed crowd at TT’s and we felt like we were a part of something much bigger than ourselves.

This is especially interesting to note, seeing that our conversation with Boston’s latest indie wonderband was chock full o’ dirty jokes and multiple instances of guffawing that lasted well over two minutes throughout the hour-long interview.  Chris, Joe, Eli and Kyle joined us at the Middle East for beers [well, waters, for them] and they were pretty candid about crazy things that have happened to them on the road this year, how their songwriting tends to flow and why exactly they love playing in The Everyday Visuals.  The Everyday Visuals will be playing the third annual 8/08 Show Upstairs at the Middle East on August 8th, along with The Shills, The New Collisions, The Motion Sick and Hymns, so clear your social calendar as this promises to be a night of local band love that’ll remind you why Boston is flourishing as an indie spot of musical greatness.  And hey, who knows?  Maybe Chris and Joe will break out the glass harmonica again and you’ll wind up as sappy and moved as Gab, Jessie and I were.

-Hilary Hughes

Photo: Gabrielle Petraglia

Can we get everybody’s name and where y’all are from on the record?

Christopher: Christopher, and I’m from New Hampshire.

Eli: Eli, and I’m from Wisconsin.

Joe: And I’m Joe, and I’m from New Hampshire, too!

Kyle: I’m Kyle, and I’m from New Hampshire.

In your own words, can you tell us your back-story?  How did you all meet and come to make music together?

C: Kyle, Joe and I formed the band up in New Hampshire, more or less. We made a record called Media Crush and it started to get some play and pick up some press in Boston, so we moved here and then we met Eli and he joined the band, and we made Things Will Look Up, and now we’ve released our third record under the name The Everyday Visuals, and it’s a self-titled record.  That’s kind of here we are, now: Started off in New Hampshire, came here, met him, we’ve gained and lost a couple of members, like bassists, mostly, along the way, but that’s the long and short of it.

What brought you to Boston from Wisconsin, Eli?

E: They wanted to follow me.  I was already here.  I’m that cool.  Oh, but school brought me here, I went to Emerson.

What parts of Boston were you living in when you first got here?

C: I was in Allston.

E: Slummahville

C: Hey, at least you were in Somerville…

So, you’ve been touring pretty extensively since the release of the album in March, huh?

C: Yeah, it’s definitely been a priority, well, it’s always a priority for us because we consider ourselves to be first and foremost a live band-

E: -in that we are living.  HUMAN BEINGS.

…That’s interesting.

C: Yeah.  So, you know, being an “alive” band, that is not deceased, we enjoy making records but we really enjoy playing and touring.  I actually don’t like recording, I prefer playing live, so that was a priority and we just booked ourselves across the country and stuff like that.  We had an agent, but we let him go and did the booking ourselves. We’re kind of a DIY band.

What were some of your favorite spots on tour?

C: Playing Chicago was amazing, that was our first time playing there.  All the shows had at least one element of them that was good, so we were really lucky this time around.

Any crazy stories from the tour bus, so to speak? Give us a story.

C: So, when we were in Chicago, driving, and it was 2am after the show.  We’re stopped at a light and going around this corner, and this dude was like, face down on the curb and totally passed out.  Actually, we didn’t even think the dude was passed out, we thought he was DEAD.

K: Well he wasn’t really.

C: ….It’s good that you ruined the punch line of the story.  That’s fine. (Jessie is giggling.  A lot.) So, he WASN’T dead, but we got out of the car and I’m like, “Hey! Hey! Hey, buddy!” He wakes up, and I’m like, “Are you okay?!” And he’s like, “No.  I swallowed a lot of pills and I snorted heroin.  I need an ambulance.” … And I’m like, “Okay.”  So, I’m talking to him, just trying to keep him conscious and awake, so I’m like, “Hey, what’s your name?” and he says “Bill.” And I say, “Hey, what do you do for a living?” I’m asking him questions, and he’s like, “WHY DO YOU WANNA KNOW SO MUCH ABOUT ME?!” and I’m like, “Dude, I’m just trying to keep you awake.”  When the ambulance got there, they were like, “Is he with you?” And we were like “Nope!  See ya!” And then we drove away.

J: We were just amazed that we were the only ones who stopped to help the guy out!  Plenty of people went by on bikes and in cars and stuff, so we slowed down, and we were like, damn, we gotta do something.

K: It wasn’t an area we’d expect to see someone passed out on drugs in, either.  Weird.

Let’s talk creative process.  Can you take us through the writing process of The Everyday Visuals?  Do you always have the live performance in mind when you’re writing?

C: Yeah.

E: No, I think there are two different things: There’s the album and then the performance.

C: I write the songs, basically, sometimes they’ll be all mapped out and I’ll ask Eli to play a guitar part, and Joe to play a drum beat, and I’ll have an idea and want to get it out.  Sometimes, I’ll have the words and the chords and stuff like that and we’ll try different things and work out different arrangements.  It’ll be in different stages of completion.  It’s usually somewhere on that spectrum.

What brings you guys together as a band?  What’s unique about The Everyday Visuals?  I assume you’ve played with other people before, so what do you really love about The Everyday Visuals?

C: Not much, to be honest with you. (Laughs) I think it’s that we all have very similar goals in life.  We all have the same sort of passion to make this band, you know, work.  We’re very committed to the music that we make.  We’re very committed to our vision.  When we want to do something, and when we have this idea of a project we want to make or a record we want to work on, we’re all very passionate about it because we’re all passionate people, which is a blessing as much as it’s a curse.  Even though we all share the same goal, we all have different opinions on how to get there.  It’s like everyone really wants to get to this party, but I’m like, “No!  We should take 93!” and somebody else is like, “No! Let’s take the back roads!”  We all have the same vision in mind, and it’s surprising how natural it comes for us.  After a show we’ll all be like, “Aw, that part was awesome in the set!” and everyone will be like “Yeah, that part WAS awesome!”  It would be horrible to play with a drummer who’d be like, “I wish we could do more drum solos in the set!”

J: Something different about our band is the fact that everyone sings.  I think that’s important.  I think it definitely gives you a new dimension as far as connecting with the music.  Even Kyle sings.  Even the sound guy sings.

Are there are songs in The Everyday Visuals’ catalogue that you feel particularly connected to?

C: It depends on what format we’re playing in.  Like, we’re playing acoustic now,  but we’ve played electric before.  I’d say if we were playing electric “Her Breathing Is Music” is always a favorite.

J: Yeah!  “Her Breathing Is Music” goes way back, you know.

C: “I Can’t Stop You”, acoustic, even-

J: Yeah, both versions of that one.

C: The new version of “Florence Foster Jenkins”…. I don’t know. All the songs.  I guess that’s another thing that I view as an asset in the band, we love this idea of a song.  It’s also why I don’t really like recording; I feel like a song on the record is only a version of a song or a snapshot.  A record, to me, is like if someone were to take a picture of you right there and that was like, “This is that.”  There’s no other angles to view, that’s what it looks like, that’s it.  When someone opens you up and looks at you, people just accept that definition of you.  When the music is live, I feel like the story is so much greater than just a snapshot.  The song is always evolving and we’re always doing different versions and we’re always working with the crowd’s energy.  That’s what always gets us off, I think.  That, and porn. (Laughs)

E: You’ll see that tonight, too.  Porn on stage.  (Laughs)

C: I always counteract my wax philosophical-type things with a dirty joke.

A lot of the bands we talk to say that they love EPs for that reason in that it allows a band to break free from the expectations that come along with making a record.

E: Yeah!  They’re more spontaneous and in the moment.

J: That’s what’s beautiful about playing live, because you’re always connected and if there’s some part you’re not digging you can always play it a different way.

C: That’s why I think we shine, too; We can walk into a venue and be like, “We can’t all fit on that stage, man! Alright, let’s break it down.”

Are there any venues in Boston that you really love playing? We find that in a lot of cases the venues that bands love playing here aren’t necessarily the same ones that they love to see shows at.

J: Yeah!

K: This question varies depending on what format we’re playing in.  I love to play certain venues acoustically, but not rock shows, necessarily.

Well, what venues do you love for acoustic shows, seeing as that’s what we’re gonna see you do tonight?

K: The Lizard Lounge!

J: Yeah, definitely.  I love the Middle East, Upstairs and Downstairs.  We did an acoustic set at the Paradise Rock Club too, and that was surprisingly awesome.

C: I hate seeing a show there, though.  That pole!

(Everyone laughs.  We all nod knowingly.  That pole does suck, though we think that the ‘Dise on the whole is pretty great.)

E: Everyone sees the pole and everyone knows what you’re talking about.

Yeah, somehow we always wind up standing behind it.

J: One of my favorite shows we ever played in Boston was in the old Paradise Lounge.  Everyone came in and the air conditioner broke, and it was  in August and packed and it was well over 90 degrees.

Do you find that your audience and your fans in Boston differ from those in other cities?  Is there a quality in the Boston crowd that sets it apart?

J: Yeah, especially between here and New York.  When you come out to a show here, you come out to a show: You watch the opener, and then you see the second band, and then you watch the headliner.  When you go to New York, it’s showcase style: People file in for the first band and file out, and then the next band’s crowd comes in, and they file out.  I just don’t dig that at all, and that’s where Boston is cool.

C: There’s more shows!  TT’s just doesn’t book five random bands together; the show makes sense.  There’s really no venue I don’t like playing.

Who are some Boston bands that you love to bill with, or would love to bill with?

C: They’re from Providence, but The Low Anthem.  They’re so nice.  They’re really awesome.  Mean Creek, too.

J: Yeah, and Session Americana.

So for the future, you guys are going on tour and promoting the album.  Are you planning for the next album, too?

C: I’m definitely the type of person where I’m always writing, so I’ve already got at least an EP worth of new material due to the fact that I’m constantly writing. The next album is never too far in advance.   We’re going to rerelease The Everyday Visuals on vinyl, stuff like that.  I think that’s going to happen around our shows we have planned for October.

E: I feel like there are too few people who have heard this record before we can fully move on from it.  At least to me, anyway.

Who would you credit as being really influential artists who have helped shaped your sound and cultivate you as musicians?

C: I feel like current artists that we listen to are completely different from our influences.  Nirvana, Sonic Youth, the Breeders, those were the bands that made me want to play music.  That whole grunge movement, that was it for me.

J: I’m there.

E: Yeah, Radiohead, too.  And the Beach Boys.

C: Pink Floyd, the Doobie Brothers, Crosby, Stills and Nash for me.  My father’s a musician and he played in this acoustic trio, so they were doing Crosby Stills Nash and a bunch of 60s and 70s acoustic music.  That was a huge influence on me, too.

J: And Michael Jackson!

E: Not just because he died last week.

(Too soon?)

J: My brother and I used to choreograph dances to his stuff.  We used to set up the lights and everything and just rock out.  I had a red jacket with the zippers on it.  It was pretty sweet.

So what are y’all listening to now?

J: I’ve definitely been rocking to St. Vincent.  We saw her at South by Southwest.

K: We were quite enamored with her music and performance.

C: South by Southwest is like an indie rock theme park.

K: It’s completely outrageous and beyond anything you can imagine.  It’s like Narnia.

C: I’m really digging Sun Kill Moon, and the Dirty Projectors, and Camera Obscura.  I really dug that Fleet Foxes record when it came out.  I saw them here at the Middle East Upstairs, and I snuck in because a friend of mine was opening for them, and they were just electrifying.

K: I think we’re all very into Pedro the Lion.

Do you guys have any last thoughts on Boston being a hotbed of creativity, being a Boston band and all?

E: Boston has definitely thickened our skin.

C: I find that there’s a very small sort of indie rock scene in Boston that is, you know, starting to bloom, but I feel like when we first came here it was Americana folk and garage power pop.  Those were the two big things, and I think in a way those are still the two big tracks for indie music in Boston.  I think if you threw a dart at a listing of shows on a dartboard and went to where the dart landed, chances are it’d be a power pop/garage sort.  The whole Cambridge scene, with Lizard Lounge and Club Passim, that scene is full of a bunch of great players, but now, especially with Passion Pit blowing up and stuff like that, the indie scene has kind of been revitalized in my humble opinion.  From what I’ve seen, I feel like the indie scene is just starting to make a name for itself here.

On a personal note, we feel like this brings people into the shows and the clubs and makes the community richer.  It would be cool to liven the scene up a bit.  If we need a band like Passion Pit to amp people up, than we guess it works.

C: On the Boston vs. New York thing, there’s definitely a Brooklyn scene now, but back when we were making Media Crush, we almost moved to Portland, Maine, because there was a great community there for music and there were a few bands getting some exposure there.  We decided to come to Boston, and it was the same thing back then, but now I hope that Boston’s a little more on the rise.  This revolution will be taped on your mini tape recorder.

When the staff ofTea Party Boston met to determine which subject to cover for our first Tea Party Tastes column, the Channel Café was a natural choice. At TBP, we strive to show you a side of Boston that is hidden in plain sight: a band you’ve been missing, say, or a designer who deserves your support. And the Channel Café is both literally and figuratively underground. Located in a sunny basement-level space at 300 Summer Street in Fort Point, it’s almost invisible, and retains a counter-culture aesthetic that feels more Berkeley, CA than Boston, MA. Here, WERS plays daily on the radio; the café’s tattooed staff are quick to recommend a fresh-baked chocolate chip cookie or to mix up a Vietnamese iced latte; and the café’s customers, who have all found their way to this place via word of mouth, include artists, architects, entrepreneurs and other wearers of the Diesel-jeans-and-graphic-tee uniform that has come to characterize the postmillennial office culture of the Fort Point community. Did we mention that they also have DJs spinning on Thursday and Friday nights? Because they do. And it’s awesome.

Like the musicians we cover on other parts of the site, Channel Café owner Ana Crowley is a trendsetter: she opened her beautiful space in Fort Point well before Barbara Lynch staked her claim here with Sportello and Drink. She’s a gifted artist, and maintains a gallery here at the café. And she shares a strong sense of community, underscored by recent menu changes she’s made to feature produce from one local farm in a program she’s calling an “RSA.”

Some readers may be aware of CSA (community-supported agriculture) programs in the Boston area, which allow customers to invest in a farm at the start of the growing season, then receive the bounty throughout the year. You front a farm $500 in February, say, helping the farmer to purchase seed and cover costs, then you’ll get asparagus in May, strawberries in June and green beans in July – and generally, more beets than you will know what to do with at all times. (Dwight Schrute’s Scranton outfit ain’t got nothin’ on Massachusetts’ organic farms.)

It’s a compelling business model that takes some of the guesswork out of finding local and sustainable food for regular consumers, and helps farmers immensely by providing them with capital and allowing them to focus on growing their food, not hustling to sell it at farmer’s markets 100 miles away. But it’s also tough for customers to come up with the green in the dead of winter, and to figure out what to do with all the actual greens once they start showing up in bushels.

Ana Crowleys’ RSA (restaurant-supported agriculture) concept helps to solve this dilemma: as a restaurateur, Crowley can offer more capital than the typical Boston resident, and she and her chef, Brian van Etten, know what to do with their food once they get it. Her partner in this endeavor is Enterprise Farm, a certified organic farm in Massachusetts’ Connecticut River Valley.

The Channel café’s newly-redesigned lunch menu and brand-new dinner menu showcase the ingredients they receive from this farm, with daily specials created around what’s seasonal. The café will also serve as a drop-off point for the farm’s regular CSA customers—a boon for the condo-dwellers moving into now-trendy Fort Point, as the neighborhood still lacks a local grocery store.

However, even without this commendable commitment to local agriculture and community, we’d still be taking our summertime lunch breaks at the Channel due to dishes like their yellow and red beet salad, fish tacos and perennially beloved veggie burger, a baked casserole-like wonder served in a pita that is unlike any other in town. In fact, we love it so much, we snagged the recipe (see below) – which happens to be a great way to use up those extra zucchinis and leeks from your CSA.

–Ryan Weaver

We felt bad making the busy kitchen staff come out for a photo, so we improvised. Photo: Jessie Rogers

Channel Café Veggie Burger

Ingredients [serves 8]

1 cup carrot, diced

1 cup celery, diced

1 leek, diced

1 medium zucchini, diced

1 summer squash, diced

3 garlic cloves, minced

2 cups chick peas, roughly mashed

4 cups chick pea flour (available in specialty food stores)

2 teaspoons adobo powder (you can buy this ready-made, or make your own by roasting salt, peppercorns, and cumin seeds and grinding them together)

2 teaspoons salt

2 teaspoons pepper

¼ cup vegetable oil

1 tablespoon cumin

2 tsp dried oregano

1 tablespoon yellow curry

1 small bunch fresh cilantro, chopped

Instructions

2. Season water with 2 teaspoons of salt and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until vegetables are just al dente, about 7-8 minutes.
Add chick peas, adobo, pepper, cumin, oregano & curry, stir and let seasonings dissolve, about 2 minutes.

3. Add chick pea flour, 1 cup at a time, whisking constantly. Slowly add in oil. Continue whisking frequently.

4. Reduce heat to low, add cilantro and cook for 10 minutes, folding mixture every few minues.

5. Using a rubber spatula, transfer mixture to a parchment paper-lined ½ sheet pan, spreading to a uniform thickness, about 1 inch thick.

6. When cooled, using a sharp knife, portion the mixture into desired shapes.

7. To finish, heat a skillet or sauté pan over medium heat, coat with vegetable oil, and brown burger patties on both sides.

8. Serve with desired condiments – the Channel recommends serving it with lettuce, tomato, onion and a creamy raita (yogurt) sauce on a warm flatbread (think falafel vs. traditional burger).

Ya’ll ready for some food porn?

An appetizer sampler: we got a mediterranean platter / roasted beets hybrid.

Well hello there large, out-of-focus cookie…

Crostini– TOP: sliced portobello steak, arugula, gorgonzola drizzle, port wine reduction. MIDDLE: hand pulled pork, pickled red onion, romaine, spicy dijon. BOTTOM: garlic shrimp, roasted tomato, basil pesto.

Sun-dried tomato, spinach and mozzarella stuffed chicken breast.

The Tofu Mojo (grilled tofu steak, spicy Puerto Rican tomato sauce, caramelized onions, sauteed spinach, sweet potato fries.)

Ribs.

Cheesecake with berries.

There is something so infectious about the music of White Rabbits. Their songs seem to creep into the crevices of the brain and fester. Ever since their 2007 release, Fort Nightly, waited with bated breath for their next album. 2009’s, It’s Frightening, delivers an evolved White Rabbits. The album provides a complex simplicity with a dark sophistication that would make any indie rock lover’s heart thump with pure bliss, and hey, it’s hard to have a bad album when Spoon’s Britt Daniel is producing it.

Needless to say, I had high expectations for the NYC transplant band’s live set at Middle East Downstairs on June 4^th. White Rabbits served up their signature cyclical drumming, soulful piano pounding, and well-crafted vocals. While their high energy was contagious, there was very little band/audience interaction and this halted the showing-through of any personality. Regardless, this six-piece band was born to play together, and I can’t wait until they come through Boston again.

TeaParty was lucky enough to speak with one of the drummers of White Rabbits, Matt Clark, about the band’s backstory, creative process and future.

–Gabrielle Petraglia

Photo: Gabrielle Petraglia

In your own words, what’s the back-story on White Rabbits?  How did you all meet, and how long have you been playing music together?

We met through associations from Colombia, Missouri. The intricacies are too vast for me to go into here, but I will say we have known each other for a very long time. We have been playing together as White Rabbits for about 6 years.

Who are your musical influences?

Really too many to list; I’m sure that sounds cliché, but it’s the truth. I think we tend to go for “spirit” as opposed to trying to sound like someone else. For example we looked to The Clash among others for a feeling they portray more than the actual sounds or composition of their music.

If we were to swap iPods right now, what bands/artists would we find on your “Favorites” or “Recently Added” playlists?

I really like The Horrors’ new album, Primary Colours.

How would you put your creative process into words?  Does one member of the band write the majority of the lyrics and compositions, or is songwriting more of a collaborative process for White Rabbits?

The songwriting process really runs the gamut for us: One person may bring an idea to the group, or it might be something we all came up with together. But in the end it never sounds like the original idea that was presented.

Do you have any pre-show rituals?

Nope. Maybe have a drink or two.

Photo: Gabrielle Petraglia

What’s your favorite song to perform live?  Are there any songs in the White Rabbits catalogue that you feel particularly connected to or that you prefer to play more than other songs?

I enjoy them all. And we all are part of the song writing, so I feel that everybody has a connection to the songs. If we lost any connection to a song, we don’t play it.

What are your favorite cities to hit on tour, and what are your favorite venues in those cities?

Every city we’ve been to has treated us pretty well. It was really surprising and great to travel across the country and see people come to your shows. I’ll never get over that. But if I were to pick a venue it would be the Bottletree in Birmingham, Alabama. It’s a great room with the nicest people running it. They also have an old Airstream camper as the green room.

Where did you play your first “big” gig in Boston?

We’ve only played the Middle East, so this one coming up hopefully will be the biggest!

What’s your favorite Boston venue to play at?

The Middle East.

Do you have a favorite venue in Boston for watching live acts?  If so, what sets it apart from other venues in town?

Middle East! They have pretty good food also, if I can remember correctly. I like venues that have food, as long as the food and music aren’t in the same room.

Have you had the chance to check out any Boston bands?  Who are some of your favorite local bands, and why?

I’m sure I have. I tend not to look at where a band is from, but I’ll keep an eye out.

What are some of your favorite memories from the tour to date?  Do you have any crazy tales from the tour bus, so to speak?

What happens on tour stays on tour. Or at least until I can remember something. It really becomes a blur after a couple years.

You recently released It’s Frightening. Do you have another album in the works?

Not yet. But we are always working on songs individually.

What’s in store for White Rabbits a month from now?  Six months from now?  A year from now?

Tour.  Tour.  Tour.

Photo: Gabrielle Petraglia