Touring, touring and more touring: That’s what Southern-bred trio The Whigs has been up to for the past year or so, and they’ve been playing packed stadiums and crowded holes-in-the-wall alike abroad and across the country.  Though their sound on record (especially on 2008’s Mission Control) is one that feels right at home in a dimly lit, gritty, made-for-garage-rock kind of spot, The Whigs are indisputably a live band that drum up a contagious, electrified energy that inspires even the most heavy-footed of concert goers to move their feet and bob their heads.   With warm praise from former tour mates and friends  Kings of Leon and the most celebrated producers in the country scrambling to work with them, The Whigs are ending 2009 on a high note.   Parker Gispert, Julian Dorio and Tim Deaux, though thrilled to be working their distorted magic in the confines of a studio in Nashville, are ecstatic to be hitting the road again: The perks of a live show, of kicking the volume up a notch on an electric guitar and feeling the reverb of feedback, are what got The Whigs going in the first place.   Their tour kickoff in Boston on Wednesday will be a special night as they’re sharing the bill with The Features, The Dead Trees and Mean Creek, all bands who make music they love and all bands they’ve come to embrace as friends from sharing stages with them over the past couple of years.

While driving home from CMJ Sunday night, I had the chance to catch up with Tim Deaux, bass player of The Whigs, about what The Whigs are currently working on in the studio, who they’re listening to out of Boston and how, exactly, he wound up crashing in Drug Rug’s apartment.  The Whigs are headlining tomorrow night Downstairs at the Middle East, and given that the bill is stacked with local heavyweights and notable national acts alike, you’ll want to get there early.  Don’t have a ticket yet?  Get going on that and fast, as these bands will bring a huge draw and it’s set to be one of the most memorable lineups this fall.

-Hilary Hughes

THE MAIN EVENT: THE WHIGS TPB INTERVIEW

Give us a little history, Tim: How did the Whigs come to be and make music together?

Julian and Parker, my band mates, grew up and went to high school together back in Atlanta and they’ve known each other much longer than they’ve known me (laughs). They started playing music around their freshman year at the University of Georgia, and that was sort of the beginning of the band. I didn’t join in until a little later on after I finished college when I moved to Athens and started jamming with these guys.  Now, I’ve been with the band for a couple of years and the band’s been around for technically about five years from them starting to get going during college, but that’s not a very good story! (Laughs)

Take me through the creative process behind the music of The Whigs. Who writes the lyrics? Are the arrangements taken on by one member of the band, or is the creative process of The Whigs completely collaborative?

Parker is the guitar player and singer and primary lyricist in the band, and Julian is the drummer.  I play bass primarily and I play a little of guitar and keyboard.  As far as songwriting goes, we take it how it comes: Any way an idea surfaces, whether it’s us jamming together at the rehearsal space or it’s something one of us comes up with on our own and we bring it to the band, Parker will bring in tunes that have a verse and a melody and then we’ll flesh it out together.  Sometimes he has the full thing, or sometimes Julian has a drum beat he’s excited about and then he’ll bring it to me or I’ll have a bass line or a chord progression I think is cool and I’ll show the guys.  There’s no specific recipe for our songwriting.  If we get an inspired thought, we take it and roll with it and see how far it goes.  We’re on the road so often touring that we don’t have a lot of downtime, so we may be at a sound check before a show and Julian and I may be messing around in the parking lot, and he’ll be like, “That’s cool! Keeping doing that!” And then we’ll start singing and sometimes songs happen like that.  We were lucky this past summer to actually be able to go home and have a dedicated songwriting stretch where we could dedicate ourselves to coming up with new material for the record that we’ll be putting out early next year.

Are there any songs in the Whigs catalog that you feel especially connected to?

I can probably speak for the three of us when I say that the new material is probably what we’re most excited to play, but a lot of that has to do with the freshness of the songs and the brand new excitement that comes along with the new songs.  With the older material, I wouldn’t say that I get sick of old songs but some songs that didn’t used to be your favorites suddenly become your favorite.  I think it has to do with being on the road so much.  Songs evolve from playing them night after night, and over time and they become these songs that were much different than they were at the point in which they were written.  Some songs turn into something more exciting during a live show.  One of the oldest songs we play is called “Need You” and it was actually written way, way back when Parker and Julian started playing together and it actually may have been the first tune Parker wrote, so we’ve played it forever, but that song recently in our shows has been a lot more fun.  I think we’ve been improvising more and letting random things occur, and that’s been rejuvenating for our songs I think.

What are the differences between your live show and The Whigs in the studio?  Describe your live show and what we can expect Wednesday night at the Middle East.

The band really exists as a performing band.  We’ve been lucky and had the privilege to make records and get in the studio and mess around and document the songs on a record. When you start a band when you’re a kid, you don’t think about an amazing record: You think about turning your guitar up and bangin’ away and playing tunes in front of people.  That’s what’s exciting about being in a band, and that’s what we’ve always enjoyed is getting onstage and playing music and playing it loud and having fun.  I think even what we’ve done on record maintains that same spirit, and the live performance has always been a part of The Whigs.  I would say Mission Control showcases that and showcases the band performance, as far as being a real meat-and-potatoes rock record.  It’s real loud and very in your face.  The first record, Give ‘Em All A Big Fat Lip, is a little more complex and there’s a lot more color and some added textures and layers.  The new album I feel like is a combination of the two:  It feels like our approach to this new record was to have this live vibe and the main parts of the tunes were all tracked live and we’re playing together, and then we went in there later and added a few tonal elements here and there.  In a way, I would say that the new record is a mix of what we did with Mission Control as well as what happened with Give ‘Em All A Big Fat Lip. As far as our live show goes, it’s going to be interesting because we haven’t actually rehearsed or played because we’ve been in the studio so much lately!  We haven’t actually gone onstage and played these songs outside the studio in awhile, so Wednesday might be a little bit of a sloppy rock show (laughs).  We’re trying to play as much of the new stuff as we can get away with, and we’ll definitely play a bunch of the old stuff, too.

When it comes to your touring adventures, do you have any crazy stories from The Whigs’ tour bus for us?

This last year for us has been probably one of the most exciting years of our lives: The summer before this last summer, we got to go to Europe and Japan.  It was a really huge thing for us to be able to play overseas. This whole past year, we’ve been able to do some touring with some bigger bands that have allowed us to play some huge, amazing arenas.  We got to play Red Rocks and go all over the country and play for thousands and thousands of people, and along the way on that tour, somehow or another we ended up rubbing elbows with a few movie stars and models and that was kind of a trip.  All that’s fun and gravy! As far as specifics go, I’ll leave that up to y’all’s imagination as things may seem more interesting than what actually occurred (laughs).  The last year’s been a lot of fun.

I understand that you’ve played Boston many times before.  What venues do you enjoy playing in the city?

We’ve been in Boston a handful of times and if my memory’s served me correctly, we’ve played TT the Bear’s awhile back and we’ve played the Paradise Rock Club quite a few times and we really enjoyed ourselves.  We played there with the Drive-by Truckers a few years ago.  We came back through and played our own show there just a few months ago, and we got to do two nights with Kings of Leon at the Orpheum about six months ago, and that was great.  It’s going to be an extra special exciting night on Wednesday because it’s not only the first night of our tour; it’ll be sort of a reunion.  We’ll get to see our friends, The Dead Trees, who actually grew up in Boston and we’re excited to see them.  We’re excited to see the guys in Mean Creek, and we’re good buddies with them, too.  The Features are friends of ours from Nashville.  We’re also bringing up a few friends from Georgia, and our tour manager and sound engineer, Matt, lives in North Hampton, and we haven’t seen him in quite a few months so we’re really excited to see him and it’s going to be his birthday, so I think we’re gonna have a good ol’ fashioned party Wednesday night!  It’s going to be a really good time.

You mentioned Mean Creek and the Dead Trees.  Are there any other Boston bands that you’re currently following?

Drug Rug is a personal favorite of mine!  I just got a copy of their new record.  They’re friends of friends, and the last time I was up in the area, I was at a wedding in the cape about a month ago and I found myself in Boston with nowhere to stay.  I called my friend Carter who actually has a band called Tulsa, and he was like, “Hey man, come stay with me!” And his apartment was actually Drug Rug’s apartment.  Drug Rug was still on tour at this point, so basically I crashed on Sarah’s bed (laughs).  It was a nice warm place to stay.  I’ve only seen them perform once, but I really, really love their records.  Doomstar is another Boston band that are friends of friends, too, and I got a copy of their EP and it’s amazing.  Tulsa for sure, too, I like them a lot and it’s the project of a friend of mine.  Carter’s an amazing writer.

What about your Boston fans?  How does Boston measure up to other cities you’ve played on tour with The Whigs?

Boston’s always fun!  There’s something about Boston – it’s a big city, and when you go to big cities you deal with big city things which cam be good or bad. A few of the more “cool” cities – You go to New York, and you can play a sold out show, and you’re up onstage and you’re looking out at the crowd and everybody looks like they’d rather be at the dentist than where they are.  When we play Boston or Chicago, the crowd is much more with ya and ready to get down and ready to have a good time and not worried about looking cool of what Pitchfork is gonna say about who’s there and wearing what and all that bullshit, basically.  Boston, we can count on the city as being one where people are ready to party, and that’s what we want: Party party party party!

What’s next for The Whigs?  Take me through what you guys have planned for the next couple of months.

This tour starts Wednesday and we’ll go basically up until Thanksgiving, and then we’ll take a short break to eat some turkey and do some laundry. After turkey, we’ll get back on the road again I think November 28^th up until about Christmas time, or Kwanzaa/Hanukkah time.  Then, we’ll go home, reground, and our album that we’re wrapping up now ought to be prepped for at least the beginning of the year, so hopefully come January or February of 2010 we’ll be touring again in support of the release of the new record.  I don’t think we have any real plans set in stone at all at this point, but basically we’ll be home for the holidays and then we’ll be back on the road again at the beginning of the year and probably tour until we just can’t do it anymore.  It’s what we do.  When this record comes out, we’ll be on the road forever. (Laughs)

Do you have any closing thoughts for your Boston fans before we sign off?

Is it gonna be really cold when we get there?  We’ve been very spoiled.  We’ve been home in Georgia soaking up the sunshine and sweating and wearing less clothes than normal.  I’m really not looking forward to the cold winter, but I’m looking forward to playing Boston!  Go Red Sox? I think it’s too late for that…

The first time we saw Ad Frank in action was onstage at Boston Band Crush’s One Night Band this past summer: Frank, along with various varsity members of Boston indie rock, played one of our favorite sets of the night as a member of Awesome Chariot.  The band, visibly amused and enjoying themselves as the kick-off act for the evening’s festivities, seemed to be a surprisingly positive experience for Frank as this Boston-based performer is a self-described one-man show.  This Ad Frank, the one who’s goofing around and screaming “WE ARE AWESOME CHARIOT”, is a far cry from the Ad Frank that Boston’s come to know as a heartbroken guy with good voice and a sad guitar.  When comparing old material of his to his forthcoming release, Your Secrets Are Mine Now, Ad Frank is borderline-giddy when talking about how this album is a departure from previous work: “I sort of had this local persona going, being the guy with the perpetually broken heart that’s always getting stopped on.  It was kind of like a joke.  We even had Ad Frank with a big broken heart on them.  This record is all about what a son of a bitch I am.”

This Saturday, October 24, Ad Frank and the Fast Easy Women will be celebrating their new album with a CD release bash at Great Scott.  Ad will be sharing new material from Your Secrets Are Mine Now, so Ad Frank fans will get the chance to listen to the new stuff before the album is readily available on November 3.  Read on to get the good’s on what goes into Ad’s songwriting, what brought him to the conclusion that a saxophone wasn’t a very punk rock instrument and what’s next for Ad Frank and the Fast Easy Women.

-Hilary Hughes

OPENING ACT: AD FRANK AND THE TEAPARTY TEN

What’s your favorite breakfast cereal?

Cracklin’ Oat Bran, but I almost never eat breakfast.  I usually just grab handfuls of it like it was pretzels or something.  I like Grape Nut ice cream, does that count?

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

Okay, definitely not Long Duk Dong and I’ve never seen The Goonies. Who would punch Long Duk Dong?!

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

I’d like to be one of those mixers, but I’d like to be a big, pastel one.

You go to bed, wake up, walk into the bathroom to brush your teeth, and you look in the mirror and you realize that you’ve turned into one of Jim Henson’s Muppets overnight.  Which Muppet are you?

I took the Facebook Muppet quiz and it told me I was Gonzo, so… I don’t know.   I’ve always liked Floyd, the bass player, but I’m more of a Gonzo.

Say you have a crazy night, you black out, and you wake up feeling like crap the next morning and you realize… you got a tattoo.  What’d you get inked?

That’s easy.  I would get black racing stripes tattooed all the way up both sides of my body.

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

I wouldn’t mind behind manhandled by a large Asian man, so I’ll go with sumo wrestler.

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

You’re making me feel bad because I can’t grow any.  I’m going to go with stubble.  It matches my capability.

If you were a type of cheese, which cheese would you be?

The Stinking Bishop.  I don’t really know what kind of cheese it is exactly, but it’s really pungent.  The sell it at the Wine & Cheese Cask.

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

“Cuts You Up” by Peter Murphy.

What’s your favorite word?

I don’t know if I’d say it’s a word, but I like how “Speen Street” sounds.  It’s a street in Natick.

THE MAIN EVENT: THE AD FRANK TPB INTERVIEW

Hi, Ad!  Tell us a little bit about yourself.

I grew up in Melrose, and I’ve been in Somerville for the last ten years.  I was in a band called Perma Cross for most of my adult life until I quit.  I quit with the intent of retiring, but didn’t and couldn’t.

Now you’re doing your own thing, right?

I have my own band, Ad Frank and the Fast Easy Women.  I play guitar in a band called Life Style, and that’s pretty much it right now.

How did you start playing music?  Are you one of those people who were born with a guitar in hand?

I’ve always made up songs, and I’ve always made up words to interesting tunes since I was like, four.  I can’t really blame it on punk rock because I think I wanted to … the lure of the Sex Pistols sort of proved that anybody can do it and I think it’s true.  That was probably around seventh grade when I started thinking about it.  I was playing saxophone but for the most part it wasn’t a very punk rock instrument, so I picked up a guitar then.

Who would you credit as creative influences for you?

Let’s see… I feel strange strange saying these two in the same breath, but it’s true: The Ramones and David Bowie.  I remember that the song “Switch” by Suzie and the Banshees came on the radio and I had an epiphany while listening to it, like, “YES! I must be in a band!” I don’t know what I liked about the song, but I think I was just overripe for an epiphany at the time.  I should listen to that song again; I haven’t heard it in about ten years.

Who are you listening to right now?  If we were to steal your iPod and check out your “Recently Added” playlist, what tracks would we find?

I’m so out of it.  I’ve been listening to Scott Matthews’ record a lot, but I think it’s a couple of years ago.  I like the Great Lake Swimmers, too.

In terms of your creative process, can you take me through it?

Usually, what happens is somebody doesn’t return my phone call and then I get really mad and then I start thinking about all the things I would say to this person if they were to call me back and then that’s the song.

That’s amazing.  What about the compositional portion of your songwriting?  Do you collaborate with anyone?

I’m not very good at writing with other people.  I almost said no to One Night Band because I don’t really know how to write… usually, I bring the song to the band and the chords, words and melody are done, but for the most part everybody writes their own part.  I might have like, a guitar noodle or a keyboard part that I’ll sort of make it known that it’s not optional, but for the most part everybody writes their own part, which is probably good.  It’s good that I’ll often bring a song in without telling the band about how I hear the song going in my head so they can pick what they will out of it.  The arrangements and the production of the songs performed by Ad Frank and the Fast Easy Women are collaborative; the songwriting is not collaborative.  There are certainly bands where certain bands contribute less than the people in my band do and they get writing credit.

Are there any songs in your catalog that you feel particularly connected to, or any songs by Ad Frank and the Fast Easy Women that stand out as favorites?

It’s called “U-Hauls and Ryders”, and it was written right around the time when I decided I was not going to retire.  I was pretty much going crazy: I had lost my apartment, and my job, and my band, and my engagement fell through, all within six weeks of each other, so I was squatting in this apartment in Brighton and that was, the song was sort of my process of being like, “What the hell just happened to me?”  The good thing about a song is that you get to sing it over and over and over again until you finally figure out what it’s about.  Hopefully it’s not just good for me.  If someone’s in a similar situation, maybe I get to articulate something for them.

It sounds like a cathartic process for you, what went into writing that song.

The stuff I write and the songs I like are usually all written because they have to be, not because somebody set aside three hours on a Sunday and said, “Oh, what am I going to write about now?”  The songs I really like are ones that sound like they had to pull their car over and grab a pen and paper and write it down so that they wouldn’t forget it.

When it comes to songs you love to play live, what are some songs that you make sure to include in your set list for every performance of Ad Frank and the Fast Easy Women?

Solo, I like to play “U-Hauls and Ryders”.  There’s one called “Open Up The Patio Pretty Girls Are Back In Style” that I won’t let the band play during the wintertime, I only play it in spring and summer because it’s a spring and summer song.  We usually like to close with a big, bombastic, arena rock-style song called “Timing is Everything”.

In terms of touring and your experiences outside of Boston, what cities have been really responsive to your music?  As the frontman of a Boston band and a Boston-based musician, do you tend to stick close to home or do you play elsewhere, too?

Ad Frank and the Fast Easy Women is mostly a Boston-based operation.  It gets less glamorous when you’re spending ten hours a day and sleeping on couches [while touring] as you get older, but I do a little bit of it.  I have a gig in Chicago coming up and one in D.C.  It’s really, really random.  We had one of our best shows ever in Detroit, and I have no idea why…

What are you working on right now with Ad Frank and the Fast Easy Women?

We’re kind of like the Spinal Tap of keyboard players; I think I’ve gone through fifteen of them!  I guess I’m difficult.  Our last one left a little under two years ago and that was right around the time we started getting to work on this record. For the most part, though, we’ve been playing shows and working on the record that’s about to be released.  The CD release show will be our first show with a full band in almost two years.

How is this upcoming album a departure from previous material you’ve released before?

Lyrically it’s a departure: I sort of had this local persona going, being the guy with the perpetually broken heart that’s always getting stopped on.  It was kind of like a joke.  We even had Ad Frank with a big broken heart on them.  This record is all about what a son of a bitch I am.  This is actually the first record where the band and I have played out all the songs live before they come out on the record, so they won’t be new to people who have been coming to see us.  We really took our time with this record and it took us four years to do.

Let’s talk about Boston venues for a second.  Are there any Boston venues that you love to play or any that stand out as great places to go to shows at?

I love to see shows at the Lizard Lounge.  I don’t play there often just because we’d have to turn it way, way down, but every time I go there I always have a great time.  TT the Bear’s Place feels like home and I love playing there.  I love the Cantab Lounge and the vibe it’s got.  You know that Frank Sinatra album, No One Cares, and he’s sitting at a bar or a café alone at a table with a drink, and behind him are all these happy couples and he’s just sitting there?  The Cantab always reminds me of that.

What about the Abbey Lounge?  I feel like that old venue has come up in conversation a lot recently, especially because a hot new restaurant [Trina’s Starlite Lounge] was recently put in it’s place.

I don’t have any stories from playing there myself, but…  (Laughs) There was this whole graffiti thread on the bathroom wall making fun of this poor guy, and I was reading it, and I was thinking, “Oh, this dude must be a real prick!” And then I got to the bottom of the thread and it was me! (Laughs)  It’s nice to know that someone was thinking of me I guess.

What Boston bands are you following right now, or that you’d love to bill with?

Trying to book this CD release party I realized how out of it I am.  In my band, I have Sarah RabDAU of Sarah RabDAU and the Self-Employed Assassins, and Chris Mascara from the band Mascara, and Sean Connelly from the band Francine, and those are three bands that I also like.  I like this new band, Mystery Roar, a lot.  Everyone in that band is so good!

How do you feel about your Boston fan base?  Let’s talk about your relationship with your fans here and the crowd you see at your shows.

I’m trying to figure out who’s still there because we haven’t played!  I think some of our fans might have been in college or might have had babies and moved to the suburbs, so we’re nervous about the CD release to see if anybody shows up at all.  We have great radio in Boston.  College radio is fantastic, and I feel like there’s more of an opportunity to get heard here than there is in other cities.  As much as people and bands complain about FNX and the former WBCN, the idea of a commercial radio station having a local music show doesn’t happen in most cities, and we have that here and there’s definitely more right going on then wrong in that regard.  I haven’t felt this in while because it’s been awhile since I’ve been on the verge of anything, but there is a tendency to – there’s a lot of backlash when a band starts to do well.  I don’t even know if it’s still active anymore, but the Noise Board would be a forum where people would tear me apart every couple of months.

Have you thought about moving on to other cities?

I have a lot of friends in LA who keep telling me to go there and it’s tempting.  I need something a little more than just picking up and starting all over again.  If I got a publishing deal and would be doing some co-writing with some people I would go, but there’s definitely a lot more opportunity and a lot more … you can go to a party and odds are somebody there is going to be the music director for a TV studio or something, or the guy who picks out the songs for a movie.  On the other hand, all of the people at the party are also musicians and actors so there’s more … I feel like if I need to be connected to the industry I can be by just hopping on the Fung Wah and heading down to New York, but LA seems – well this is sort of deteriorating too, but the idea that you have to be in your early or mid-20s and you have to be a different kind of rock band, in LA they get that you don’t have to be those things to be a songwriter.  They have a better understanding of the fact that people who write the songs aren’t necessarily fronting rock bands and there isn’t that much of an age ceiling.  I think that the age ceiling is crumbling along with the rest of the record industry.  Nobody’s getting signed to a major label and having a hit record, so the thirty-year-olds, twenty-year-olds, forty-year-olds… we’re all going no where together.

What’s next for Ad Frank and the Fast Easy Women?  What do we have to look forward to from you and the band in the next couple of months?

I definitely want to get out to some other cities, hopefully with the band, but they’ve got their own things going on.  One of them has a four-year-old at home, so… that’s the advantage of being “[Your Name] and the [Something-Somethings]” because your name still has some kind of weight.  The album is going everywhere and it’ll be streaming.  I just want to see who likes it.  If I turn out to have a huge pocket of fans in Akron, Ohio, I’ll head out there and go say hi to ‘em.  I was having a huge span of writer’s block after we finished the record.  It was like a year before I finished recording it and before I wrote anything.  I always figured that I would just retire and move on to something else, like writing fiction or painting, but I just finished another thing this week that I’m really excited about so I guess I’m committed to another record in the future.

Scandinavia, on the whole, has given us some revolutionary [Vikings!], aesthetically pleasing [Minimalism! Ikea!], and whimsical [The Little Mermaid! Abba?] icons in popular culture.  Naturally, a Danish band like The Raveonettes is going to be pleasing to our palate:  Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo are on a mission to get beautiful people on the dance floor, and hey, we’ve got nothing but pleasant things to say about Scandinavian pop (especially since that Lykke Li album dropped last year.)  Their latest album, In And Out Of Control, hit stores in the US on October 6, and this record is a gritty, distorted followup to their 2007 release, Lust Lust Lust.

I caught Sune on the phone for a minute or two to chat him up about tonight’s show, what songs he’s stoked to include on the set list and what The Raveonettes are up to through the end of the year.  The Raveonettes hit the stage tonight at 9:15 on the dot, so go early and check out openers The Black Angels in order to properly warm up your moves.  Read up on Sune and Sharin, get on your dancing shoes, and get to the ‘Dise tonight for a piece of this lovely electro-jam action.

-Hilary Hughes

THE MAIN EVENT: THE RAVEONETTES TPB INTERVIEW

What’s the back-story on The Raveonettes?  How did you guys come to make music together?

S: Oh, that’s a very boring story! (Laughs)  Like any other band, we just met.  I did some songs, Sharin liked them, and we just started the band.  There’s no fairy tale story, unfortunately.

How is the new album different from previous material by The Raveonettes?

S: Well, it sounds different.  The production is very different and we made the album differently in that we recorded it and a studio and worked with a producer, and we haven’t really tried that before.  We had just recorded our songs at home before.

Take me through your creative process: How does the songwriting go for Raveonettes?  Is it collaborative, or does someone head up the majority of the lyrics and music?

I write everything.

Are there any songs by The Raveonettes that you feel particularly connected to or that you really enjoy playing live?

I really love all of them.  That was the whole idea with our music when we started: We wanted to make music that we’d never get tired of playing.  I love all of it.

You’ve played in Boston before.  Let’s talk about your experience here for a bit.  Do you have any favorite Boston venues?

We’ve only played the Paradise Rock Club, and we’ve always had great shows there!  We’re really looking forward to the show tonight, and we’ll definitely be playing selections from the new album.  We’ll be playing “Gone Forever”, “Suicide” and “Break Up Girls” for sure.

So, what’s next for The Raveonettes?  What does your schedule look like for the next few months?

We’ll just be touring for a very long time.  We’re booked up through Christimas, and we’re planning for some shows in January as well.

[The Avett Brothers: Scott Avett and Seth Avett at the House of Blues, Boston.  October 18, 2009]

It may be snowing in October, but the wet, murky gloom of an early uninvited winter was decimated last night once The Avett Brothers took the stage for their nearly sold-out show at Boston’s House of Blues.  Simultaneously cheerful and wrought with resigned melancholy, the music of The Avett Brothers is a rejuvenated take on banjo-pickin’ Americana indicative of Seth and Scott Avett’s North Carolina roots.   While the sing-a-long crowd pleasers off 2007’s Emotionalism (“Will You Return”,”Go To Sleep”) are of a stomp-your-feet-spill-your beer variety, the lyrical prowess of Avett songwriting is especially showcased in their earlier love songs (“The Ballad of Love and Hate”, “If It’s the Beaches”) which can effortlessly hush a crowd within a measure or two.  Their latest release, I And Love And You, is a musical progression capitalizing on Emotionalism’s upbeat riffs as much as it is a continuation of their explorations in ballad writing.  Selections off the new album made up the bulk of the set list, and while Scott and Seth Avett took turns beating the modest drum kit into submission on pop-infused numbers like “It Goes On and On”, the stirring renditions of  “Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise” and “January Wedding” delivered what fans were looking for:  Soaring melodies that last long after the last refrain, resounding twangs and steady bass lines that have come to define The Avett Brothers’ sound.

Since 2001, Seth, Scott, bassist Bob Crawford and cellist Joe Kwon have been sharing their earnest, intimate and at times rowdy onstage show with listeners from coast to coast.  The momentum they’ve been building since sharing bills with the likes of Dave Matthews Band and Wilco has catapulted them from small club act to packed-theatre status: The Avett Brothers have recently graced the cover of Paste Magazine, they wowed the crowd at this year’s Newport Folk Festival, and a sea of people was floored last night at the House of Blues after the quartet played for nearly an hour and a half straight.  If I And Love And You is any indication of the Avett’s progress, now is the time to pick up their albums and catch up on required listening before this band explodes.

After this tour, Seth, Scott, Bob and Joe will be taking some much deserved time off in order to spend time with their families.  They’ll resurface in Asheville, North Carolina for a sold-out show at the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium on New Year’s Eve, and they have plans to demo more music before hitting the road again next spring.  A couple of days before picking up his bass onstage at the House of Blues, Bob Crawford took some time out of his hectic touring schedule to speak with me about which songs off I And Love And You are especially near and dear to him.  While voicing his exciting over the House of Blues show, Bob  made sure to note that it’s the enthusiasm and unrelenting support of their Boston fans that’s kept the Avett Brothers coming up north for years.  Read on for an exclusive inside the songwriting of The Avett Brothers, their life-changing plans for the future and why Boston is a city they look forward to hitting on tour each and every time.

-Hilary Hughes

[The Avett Brothers: Joe Kwon and Bob Crawford at the House of Blues, Boston. October 18, 2009]

THE MAIN EVENT: THE AVETT BROTHERS TPB INTERVIEW

How does I And Love And You compare with Emotionalism, Four Thieves Gone… and other previously recorded material that you’ve done with The Avett Brothers so far?

I think every album we’ve done since 2001 has been a natural progression.  As we get better at playing our instruments, as we get better at writing songs, there’s a natural maturing that I think occurs.  I And Love And You is probably the most mature album we’ve made yet.  We’re at a point where we have a bit of knowledge about our instruments and how to put songs together, and we’ve been working on branching out to other instruments to create new textures in the music. I don’t think I And Love And You is a great departure from Emotionalism, but I think it’s a natural next step.

What are some of these new instruments that you’re incorporating into your repertoire, and which ones can we expect to see in an Avett Brothers live show?

With the shows, we have piano, a drum kit, electric guitars and electric bass.  Of course, we have our traditional instruments for us, which are an upright bass, a banjo, an acoustic guitar, a high hat and a kick drum, and there’s a trumpet here and there.  Live, that’s pretty much what you’re gonna get.  While we were recording I And Love And You, it was kind of like, if we came to a song that needed a tuba, we’d find someone to play tuba: We were no longer hemmed in to what was immediately available.

Are there any songs on I And Love And You that you feel especially connected to?

I really love “Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise”, and I love “Ill with Want.”  I think that Seth and Scott, with their lyrics and songwriting, have just touched on a new level.  The craft of writing takes time, and they’ve certainly put a lot of time into their craft.  I think that the topics and the ideas behind these songs on I And Love And You really rang true to me.  I think that we all have our desires, whatever they may be, whatever that thought that keeps anybody up at night, I think a lot of it comes down to worry and that worry comes from desire and ultimately comes to want and it’s a human condition that we all experience on some level at different times in our lives.  I think that the fact that Seth and Scott touched on it so perfectly, for me, it just connects me to “Ill with Want” in a great way.  “Head Full of Doubt…” for me, it’s great for us as a band because it’s always exciting to cut new ground in a song, musically.  Tempo-wise, chord progressions, instrumentation… I think “Head Full of Doubt” is one of those departures for us and I think it’s something that we’ll build on in the future and do more songs like it, though not just like it.  The less confined we are to what we know, to acoustic guitar, banjo and upright bass, we know that dynamic and we know it very well, so to branch out and touch other dynamics in music is very exciting.  It’s important for us to obtain that because we want it to always be fresh and new for us as well as for the people who listen to us and come see us.

[The Avett Brothers: Bob Crawford, Scott Avett, and Seth Avett at the House of Blues, Boston.  October 18, 2009]

Are there any other songs in the catalog of The Avett Brothers that you look forward to playing every night or that stick out to you, Seth and Scott as favorites?

We have some new songs that aren’t on an album yet.  There’s one called “Down with the Shine”, and that’s a great love of mine.  I love that song.  It’s one of those… I mean, those boys [Seth and Scott Avett] amaze me, just as they’ve amazed so many other people.  They amaze me often, and I’m no different in my appreciation of the lyrical content that they seem to give and work hard to develop.

When it comes to the creative process behind the music of The Avett Brothers, can you take me through it?

It’s always different: Sometimes, there’ll be just the skeleton of the song which Seth or Scott will bring chords or ideas to the table and everyone will fill in the meat.  Nowadays, it seems more piecemeal; it seems that more recently Scott will have a verse and a couple of chords and we’ll work on that for a bit, and then Seth will be like, “You know, I have something that might fit with that…” and he’ll add in his part, and then maybe we’ll need an instrumental part and I’ll contribute that.  More and more, it becomes a collective, and even with the lyric writing.

[The Avett Brothers: Bob Crawford and Scott Avett at the House of Blues, Boston. October 18, 2009]

I had the privilege of seeing you play at the Newport Folk Festival this year, and I know that WERS is thrilled to be presenting your concert at the House of Blues.  How has your experience been playing in New England, specifically Boston, and what’s the relationship like between The Avett Brothers and their fan base here?

I think the further north you get the more rowdy it gets! (Laughs) There’s some real fervor, and people get real loud in the best possible way.  It’s exciting to play up here.  The folks up north are strong, tough-skinned people.  I think the weather does it to you.  (Laughs)  Our fans in Boston have always put us up on their shoulders and brought us along and they’ve always been so hospitable.  Even at shows in New England that were smaller, a crowd of twenty or thirty people could sound like two hundred and fifty.  It’s always been a treat to be up here.  It’s beautiful in Boston.  The Newport Folk Festival was one of the greatest days of my life, and it was just such an honor to be on that stage.  We love making our way north.  WERS has been really good to us and we really appreciate them getting behind us on this.  We’re so excited to play the brand new House of Blues, too.  It’s really easy to badmouth a chain of anything, but I’ll tell you, for a musician, the House of Blues is great.  The rooms are great, the sound systems are great, the crew is great, and it’s a real pleasure to play any House of Blues venue.

What’s next for The Avett Brothers?  What do we have to look forward to from you, Joe, Seth and Scott in the coming months?

We’ve already demoed a bunch of songs and we’re writing like crazy!  We’re about to get four months off, and I’ve got a daughter that’s about to be born in a couple of weeks, so it’s going to be good to have that time off.  We need that time in order to be able to do this, to get solid down time to recharge ourselves and give our families the part of us they deserve.  We don’t have plans to stop anytime soon, so we’re going to take our break over the winter and we’ll get back at it at the end of February.  We’re going to do some rehearsals over our time off and develop this new material, maybe record some new demos, and we’re going to keep on doing what we’ve been doing since 2001.  There’s no real break in the action, just a little time off.

[The Avett Brothers: Joe Kwon and Bob Crawford at the House of Blues, Boston. October 18, 2009]

At the tail end of their summer tour, Matt Singer and Great Elk stopped by Club Passim’s Campfire festival a little over a month ago and wowed us with their hilarious lyrics, earnest guitar playing and gypsy-infused folk rock.  Their intimate set onstage at Club Passim seemed a fitting closer to their summer, as Paul and Pat played songs of their own and Matt joined later to share selections from his EP, The Drought, and earlier work off of his critically acclaimed full-length release, All These Heathens.After touring the country and playing to rowdy house parties and subdued listening rooms alike, it ’s no surprise that Matt Singer, Paul Basile and Patrick Hay are all happy to be back in a New York state of mind after their adventures on the road: Though enthusiastic, constantly cracking jokes and effortlessly charming throughout our conversation, it was clear to us that these guys were tired and were looking forward to getting back to home base in order to start working on new projects.

As Great Elk continues to write and record material for their forthcoming release, Matt Singer will be hosting a live recording session at the Galuminum Foil Studio in Brooklyn tonight, October 17, at 7:30pm. All who’ll be in the general vicinity of the land of cheesecake and general hipsterdom are welcome to attend, and we encourage that you do: Matt’s donating 10% of the proceeds of the new album are going to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation in memory of Singer’s good friend, Nikki Garcia, who recently passed away after suffering from the disease.  The opportunity to catch a passionate artist on the rise at work in the studio is not a common one, so if you’re in Brooklyn tonight, take some time to stop by Galuminum Foil in Williamsburg to hear some great music and contribute to a great cause.

-Hilary Hughes

OPENING ACT: MATT SINGER, GREAT ELK AND THE TEAPARTY TEN

What’s your favorite breakfast cereal?

PH: Grapenuts.

PB: Homemade granola.

M: Cheerios, plain. No milk.

Who would you rather punch in the face: Long Duk Dong from Sixteen Candles, or we have Mouth from The Goonies.

PB: I’d rather punch Sean Astin, is that an option for me?

You want to punch Mikey?

PB: I want to punch Mikey. (Laughs)

PH: I don’t know either of those characters so…

M: Probably Long Duk Dong.

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

M: I think I’d be a spatula.  Actually, I want to be an egg slicer.

PB: I think I would want to be an electric can opener.  They’re so… so overlooked now. I feel like I could do a lot to bring the electric can opener back.

PH: (Sighs) I don’t know.  I’d be, like, an old-style mixer.

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

PB: Grover.  I love Grover.  That’s easy.

M: What’s the Grover of Fraggle?  Gobo! I think that’s his name, right?

PH: I want to be Guy Smiley.

You go out, you get high on life, aka you get plastered in some capacity – pick your poison, I don’t care – you black out and you wake up the next morning, at some point, and you realize you were tattooed in the hours in which you cannot remember. What did you get tattooed?

PH: I know the only possible answer for this question for me is the 1835 Texas Flag.  I have a friend who lives in Texas.  He’s an interesting guy, and one night he was in a similar state as that you described.  He did that and has since convinced two other people to do that.

M: I’m kind of thinking, like my own face-

On your back? Like Steve-O?

M: Yeah, probably. Or maybe on my ass. We got mooned in Toronto, by some school kids. I feel like having your face on your ass would like … You’d really be like the best mooner ever. I really do. I mean, I’m not that kind of guy, but …

M: Like have it sticking a tongue at you, making a face at you.

PB: This would be a pain to execute, but I’d like a bowl of spaghetti and meatballs on my butt.  Definitely my butt.  Or maybe a dumpling, which is also hard to execute.  I just love food

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

PB: I don’t like clowns. I’ve got to be a wrestler.

PH: Yeah, I figure I’d be a sumo wrester, just because it’s safer that way.

M: I’d be a rodeo clown.  I could never gain enough weight to be a sumo wrestler.

If you were a particular style of facial hair – note that you don’t have to be rocking said style of facial hair – what would you be?

PB: A pencil thin mustache.

PH: Give me a break! (Laughs)

M: I would go with a super, like Rip van Winkle thing if I could grow it.

PB: That’s such a good answer.

M: I win.

PH: I don’t have a name for it, but I have a very hairy friend and when he grows a full beard, it’s like all the way up under his eyes like it’s holding him.  And he has a big nasty beard too, his whole cheeks are covered, and his eyebrows and sideburns get connected. And it’s just like this big hair … thing.

If you were a particular kind of cheese, what kind of cheese would you be?

PH: Aged Gouda.

PB: Gorgonzola?

M: Buffalo mozzarella.

Okay, everyone has got a Risky Business-style, dance-around-in-your-underpants song. Think Tom Cruise. “Old Time Rock and Roll”, whatever. What is that song for you?

M: I’d probably go “Chonkyfire” by Outkast.

PH: I’m going to go for Wolf Parade, “Shine the Light”. That’s just like my…

PB: “I Turn My Camera On” that Spoon song. It’s a very good song to listen to very loud and jump around to.

What’s your favorite word?

M: I love words… Whatever I say is not going to be satisfying to me.  Actually, I’m going to go with “biscuit.”

PB: I really like the word “facetious.” It’s the only word in the whole language – the whole English language to use all five vowels, and in alphabetical order.

PH: I’m so hungry. I’m going to say food.

THE MAIN EVENT: THE MATT SINGER & GREAT ELK TPB INTERVIEW

Let’s start with the basics. Can we get names where you guys are from for the record?

Paul: I’m Paul Basile. I live in Brooklyn.

Patrick: I’m Patrick Hay. I’m from Virginia Beach, Virginia, and I live in Brooklyn.

Matt: What was the question? Matt Singer -

- And where you’re from.

M: Montclair, New Jersey, originally. This is originally, right? Not where we live?

Right. Well, you all live in Brooklyn now, so that’s good.

PB: I’m originally from Long Island. I don’t like to admit that usually.

Well, you haven’t said anything with the Lon-Gisland accent -

PB: Yeah, thank God.

– so that’s a plus. How did you guys all come to make music together? How did today’s show come to be?

PB: Patrick and I met outside a club in New York three years ago through mutual friends. We had another band together for a while. We both have similar musical tastes.

PH: I went to school with her, our friend in common, at the New England Conservatory here in Boston and she kinda knew Paul from this singer/songwriter scene.   It was kind of her idea that we might have some musical chemistry.

PB: She said, “Paul, Patrick, you both wear plaid and you both like Wilco! You should make music”. (laughs)

And then how do you, Matt, factor into this equation?

M: Well, I met Paul through the open mike scene in Brooklyn. We actually originally met temping together at the same company, and just randomly – like, we never worked together, but we saw each other and he knew that I had been songwriting at time. I think Paul started songwriting a little later.  We became friends, and we live like, you know, 8 blocks away from each other and I met Patrick through him too and Patrick’s played in my band a bunch too, so…

In terms of creative influences, who would you credit for kind of helping to cultivate your creativity and sound?

PB: Umm, that’s always a hard question for me – you know -

Well, your band essentially formed out of a love of Wilco, right?

PB: Yeah, and I mean, you know, a lot of country rock and like Neil Young, Bob Dylan, and earlier stuff. Certainly a lot of older American folk music, but then I listen to a lot of indie rock and stuff now. I think that influences what I’m doing too.

What about you, Matt and Pat?

M: Want me to go next?

PH: Go ahead.

M: I guess I would say Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, Jonathan Richmond.  And Kimya Dawson, definitely.

PH: As a guitar player, I’m influenced by Clarence White of The Birds a lot. He’s kind of a bridge between straight up country playing and more-produced-sounding rock stuff.  I guess probably hear some Django Reinhardt when I play with Matt, that kind of gypsy-jazz kind of stuff. So, that’s it. I’m into the same stuff as Paul too; we’re birds of a feather.

In terms of your own music and stuff that you feel particularly connected to, are there songs that stick out? Songs that you really enjoy sharing with people live, or ones that you’re really happy about, that you’re currently working on now that you consider to be favorites?

M: Yeah, I think that “The Poet” is probably one that is closest to my heart.. It’s the closest thing to a title track with the last record I put out.  That’s a big one. I think “Stacy J” too, the one that I played earlier today, but for different reasons.  I had so much fun writing “Stacy J”, and I’d pick “The Poet” because it captures a very real emotional moment and the words grew from a powerful experience.  The experience also happened to be a sucky one, but I can reflect on the sucky experience and say, “Hey, I got a song out of it”. (Laughs)

PB: For me, it’s usually the newest Great Elk songs that are the ones that I’m most excited about, feel like I’m connected to so much more intimately.  So, the first few songs we played today are too new just as songs. I just always feel closer to the newest songs and feel like I’m presenting the most emotional or connecting performance with the audience…. But also, on this tour, I’ve really enjoyed playing some older songs that we don’t usually play much anymore, like “Falls”.

PH: Yeah, I guess I would probably differ from Paul a little bit. He’s really like the writer of the group, and my role is more like arranging the stuff and then filling it out. So, for me, I feel more comfortable with the stuff we’ve been playing longer and I’ve had more time to stretch out in a lot of different ways. Like “Falls”, and stuff like “Walk Down Your Own [Road]”. That’s one of my favorite songs and I can definitely slide on that, and I always feel like I am connecting with people when I play slide. I get to try out a bunch of different texturings and stuff.

Can you guys to talk me through the creative processes that are behind both the songs of Matt Singer and the songs of Great Elk?

PB: The three of us together haven’t collaborated that much, except Matt plays on the side and things like that, and I’ve done that for Matt a few times here and there -

M: I won’t allow him to sing.

Sorry?

M: I won’t allow him to sing with me. (Laughs)

PB: (Laughs) I guess we have written stuff together.  When it comes to songwriting for me, it can be really different from one song to the next,. Sometimes I’ll have a progression, and sometimes Pat will have a progression; I’ll have a melody, and we’ll build a song on that. Other times, I have a story I want to tell or a few couplets that I think need to be part of the song. (Laughs)  Typically, I’ll come to Patrick with an element of a song. We sit together and build it into a something for a whole band.

M: For my songs, I think typically I’ll be walking down the street, I’ll be in the process of doing something, eating a meal, and hear something that someone says and it will stand out to me. And I’ll just kind of hold on to a phrase and sort of just toy with it.  Melodies kind of just grow in my brain. I’ll typically will be walking down the street, writing a song. Most of my creative process doesn’t happen like in a studio.

How has touring affected your writing? And how has touring kind of affected the way you play, especially this time around?

M: I mean I would say it’s affected the way I play; I don’t know about the writing.  In terms of my performance, I just feel like a lot more comfortable on stage.  It becomes like a regular thing to just walk on stage, it feels like walking into a kitchen, or going to the bathroom. That’s a metaphor.

P: And correct, this is what your performance sounds like.  (Laughs)

How has your experience on tour been this time around?  You mentioned that you were in New York, and then Philly – you’re based in New York anyways so – now you’re in Boston, you’re going home. How have the past couple of weeks gone for you? Do you have any crazy stories for us from the tour bus?

PB: Crazy stories….

We love crazy stories.

PB: The tour itself has been really great. I think it’s exceeded my expectations, in terms of how much fun the shows have been and how we’ve actually made some money. It’s been a great combination of like house concerts and little things like this, and playing with other bands that are just local to an area and just walking into a venue in the (inaudible) playing a show.

M: I think the experience has been like totally varied.  The first show that we played outside of New York was in Philadelphia.  All the guys living there were moving out, and it was a house show. It was like kind of this raucous affair with people face painting. It was just like, kind of nuts. And then like other days, we’re at like a very clean-cut lounge. Like in Toronto, we played in a really beautiful restaurant, with great food, and like … that kind of thing.

No face painting in this other restaurant?

M: No face paint.  A funny experience was a little detour where we spent three days in Rhinebeck, New York where we stayed at the Omega Institute, which is this wellness compound, and we basically like tented out and we were very granola-y and ate a lot of tofu and it was…

Very crunchy?

M: Very crunchy.

PH: Pro is getting a lot of varied experiences like he was talking about. For me, I guess what I think about more is just the act of me like getting up every day and driving. I’m the driver and these guys are navigating where – Matt’s got his iPhone and Paul’s got his Blackberry, and they’ve had kind of an ongoing duel for who can get directions faster and like … who’s 3G comes up quicker, you know. (Laughs)

PH: You have to factor in some you know some speeding tickets, hospital visits, whatever. You’re going out for two weeks, it’s just part of the overhead, you know, of the running of the machine that is our tour.

PB: It’s very dramatic-

Wait, was there a hospital situation?

PH: I think Paul put a Band-Aid on his thumb at one point…

PB: It was really sore.

Occupational hazard, I guess?

PB: The worst is when you’re playing and you get the cuticle – you know what I mean- if you’re playing steel string and it’s just like – during the down stroke – it’s like … It’s gross.  We’ve had some tummy aches, some McDonalds induced tummy aches.

When it comes to stuff you’re working on now, how is it a departure from material you’ve previously released?

PB: This is certainly going to be the first legitimate recording process that I’ve been a part of. That CD that I have here, I mean, it’s just me … in Alaska, playing songs. This is a full band. But I wouldn’t say it’s a departure, it’s just us trying to capture what we’ve been doing for the last couple years. This is really just going to be the point to that it’s evolved right now.

M: I’ve made two records, and with this next one I’m thinking about it in a context that is different from the record.  Like, I want to do stuff that incorporates visual art, maybe film, puppetry… you know, storytelling, like all sorts of stuff.  I’d love to send it the other direction.

PH: I guess this thing that we’re doing now – doing this EP, and doing a tour, and really hunkering down and going for it – is kind of a departure for me because I’ve always been kind of a guitarist for hire, like a jack-of-all-trades kind of thing. It’s what I’ve been trying to do, play with a lot people, and just try to do a lot of stuff. And I guess over the past year, I’ve made the conscious decision to switch into just being in one band and really going for quality in one thing, rather than quantity. So, that’s kind of a new thing for me.  So, this is a new thing, just really getting into the down and dirty of just one, one set of songs, one… and making it the best we can and just focusing on that.

With your connection to Boston, how was it coming up as a musician and studying music here? I feel like it’s a really unique hotbed of creativity, with New England Conservatory and Berklee and a bunch of other places.

PH: Yeah, definitely.  Well, I kind of just went to music school by default. I didn’t really think about it, I just did it. I was good at music when I was in high school and I just decided to try out for some music schools and I got in to the best one I could have possibly gotten into and I just went for it.  I was just kind of here and studying a lot of different things, and trying a lot of different things, and kind of blissfully unaware that when I got out, the world might be difficult or that I might have to decide what I’m going to do.  I just tried a lot of things and met a lot of people.  It was really valuable time to have like four years where you don’t have to worry about making the rent so much or worry about your career direction. So, that’s what Boston was for me, a time to explore. And then I got to New York, and, you know, had to make some choices about what I was going to do with myself and … yeah.

In terms of Boston as a destination on tour as compared to other cities, how has that been for you guys? How is Boston different as a place to play? And how is your audience different, in comparison with that in other cities?

M: There’s some solid active listening happening in Boston. But also, the crowd is a lot more relaxed, or, you know, a lot less rowdy than I feel like it could potentially be. It’s nice; it’s kind of strange to be like every single eye on you, not background music or anybody.

PB: We’re used to mosh pits and it’s really distracting.  (Laughs)

M: I played the Campfire like, probably four times, and I played as like the Monday night feature, or Tuesday night feature at their open mic, so…

Awesome, and how is that? Can you kind of talk about your experience performing in Boston, and how that’s been for you? Maybe in comparison with New York?

M: Sure!  I’ve played here and Lizard Lounge and All Asia, and all those places were super fun. I wouldn’t know how to say anything that would distinguish between the New York crowd and the Boston crowd, except the people in New York just know me better. But I would say that all three places that I’ve played have been awesome, just awesome venues. I like all three of them.  I loved the Lizard Lounge because it was super dark and pretty looking. There was a sort of warm amber glow in the room, so it was just a very nice place to sit and the sound was really good.

PH: I would also say about Boston, it’s different from New York.  I feel like there is a really more of a scene for acoustic music here, and folk music here. When I was in school, it seemed like the bluegrass and folk scenes were really strong, and also, they kind of cross-pollinated with Klezmer scene and – there’s a Middle Eastern music scene – there was a house band at the Middle East when I was in college.  And it seems like a lot people from these different scenes knew each other and the one thing that a lot of these musics had in common was just being purely acoustic. So when I come to Boston, I feel like there’s a potential for that, that the audience might have been exposed to the more acoustic, or folk, kind of scene, whereas in New York it’s maybe a little more varied.

Are there any artists, or acts, or bands from Boston that you’re currently following?

PB: I like Buffalo Tom, and The Lemonheads, too.

PH: Oh! Apollo Sunshine, too.

M: My first campfire festival, I shared the stage, in the round, with Chris O’Brien. I’m pretty he’s from Boston; I’m pretty sure he’s centered here.  He’s a really nice guy, and he makes great songs. And then – I don’t know- she’s all over the place, I’m not sure Boston is her home – but I also shared a stage once with Natalia Zuckerman, who’s an awesome guitarist and beautiful voice, pretty songstress.

Great! What are you guys currently listening to? Like, if we were to pick up your iPod and take it and listen to your “Recently Added” playlist, what would we find?

All: Frightened Rabbit.

PB: Yeah, it’s been playing in the car for the last week. We listen to Frightened Rabbit a lot.

PH: Tallest Man on Earth?

PB: Tallest Man on Earth. Bov Iver. I let Bon Iver into my life in the last year or so.

PH: Handsome Furs is a band I’m really into – that’s the guy, Dan Boeckner, of Wolf Parade – that’s just his own project. It’s like – it’s kind of like technorock. What else? What else have I been listening to?

PB: The Walkmen.

So, I guess, what’s next? You’re about to head home to New York.  What’s up next on the horizon for Matt Singer and Great Elk?

M: Detox.

Really?

M: Detox from fast food. Detox from booze.  Detox from cigarettes… Lie down.

PB: Yeah, there’s going to be a lot of laying around.

M: Rest.

M: My next recording is going to be a live album. I’m going to record it in a beautiful studio in Brooklyn. I’m going to pack an audience in there and have live experience on October 17^th.

Now, Paul and Patrick, you’ve mentioned that you have a CD that you’re finishing up recording. What can we expect from Great Elk?

PB: With the tour and the preparation for it, it’s been like four or five weeks since we’ve done any recording.  So, yeah that’ll be it. More recording. Rehearsing. More recording. That’s our next couple months.

With venues closing and becoming more restrictive in their hometowns outside of Massachusetts, Rish, Adam, Jesse, and Matt all found themselves drawn to the feeling of community that the Boston music scene provides.  In the few years that this four-piece has been together, they have gained some serious momentum, receiving praise for their dynamic live sets fueled by the crunchy guitar attack of Rish Green and Adam Ritchie.  Now defined as a Boston band, The Lights Out have embraced all that Boston music has to offer, playing the WBCN (R.I.P.) Rumble, a Ryan’s Smashing Life Showcase, and even Gillette Stadium before the Pats’ season opener.  The members of the band are also firm believers in the Boston music community, frequenting The Rock and Roll Social and seen across the city checking out sets by their fellow Boston bands.

After a loaded summer playing festivals in New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, we met up with The Lights Out who were back home for the release show of their new album, Color Machine, at TT the Bear’s.  Super excited the about their record, The Lights Out played through Color Machine in its entirety as their set for the night.  The crowd was just as pumped– rocking out and dancing around to the punchy, energetic hooks of the new tracks.  Before the show, we had a chance to talk with the whole band, who shared stories about how fun it is to play in Boston (but also what they’d change if they were in charge), running from the police, and some really, really, ridiculous tattoos.

-Kevin Junker

Hey friends!

TLO: Hey!

Let’s get down to business.  What are your names, where are you from, and what do you play in The Lights Out?

Jesse: My name’s Jesse James and I’m from Brookhaven in Long Island, New York. I’m the drummer.

Adam: Adam Ritchie from Freehold, New Jersey, (the home of Bruce Springsteen!), and I play lead guitar.

Rish: Rishava Green, from Lincoln City, Oregon.  I play rhythm guitar, sometimes lead guitar, and I’m the lead singer.

Matt: Matt King. I’m from Vermont, and I play bass.

So, Matt,  you’re the closest one we got who’s actually from the area? What brought you guys to Boston?

M: I came with a band.  Basically, the music scene got legislated out of existence in Burlington and they closed all the clubs to 18+ shows and that just sucked, so I pulled up stakes and moved down here in 2001.

J: Similar thing for me, actually: I played with a band in Syracuse throughout and then after college, and all the original venues in that town started to close one by one until you had to play three or four hours worth of covers to even play in front of an audience. Eventually, my band broke up and I decided to move to Boston.

A: I just moved here for work and took a couple years off from music which were the most boring, unexciting, depressed years of my life.  I got back into it once I had established myself professionally and felt like I could go do something and join the circus.

Well the circus is happy to have you.  How about you, Rish?  How’d you come to be making music in Boston?

R: Well, Lincoln City, Oregon kind of stinks and not much is going on so I originally came out here to go to college. I wound up at Berklee and I just liked the city and stayed.

Can you guys take me through your creative process? Does somebody head up the majority of the writing or the compositional quotient of your songs, or is the creative process behind the music of The Lights Out completely collaborative?

R: It’s essentially a complete collaboration as far as the music goes, and then it’s sort of a partial collaboration as far as tweaking melodies. I usually do most of the melody making although somebody will come in with a snatch of a melody or “Oh, I like that melody but what if you did it this way?” I hear that a lot.  There’s a lot of pushing and pulling in the best possible way.

J: We’re all very open to creative input from each other.

M: I think one of the most important parts about being in a band and not fighting is that you have to completely separate yourself and your ego from the process and that’s a really hard thing for a musician. Basically everyone wants to be a rock star, to get their just dues and be that guy, so for us we really have to check [egos] at the door of the practice space.  It can be tough, too, because you can come up with a part that you think is awesome and nobody else will like it, and you just gotta be like, “Okay, well, that’s that, then.” You can’t take it personally and you just have to roll with the punches.

R: I think oddly enough ego kinda comes into play for me in that it’s more like “Okay, well they don’t like that, that’s all right, I can roll with whatever. You don’t like that? Alright, how about this?”  I think we definitely work hard to establish a setting where, you know, it gets a little uncomfortable sometimes but it’s never like… nobody throws beer cans at each other.

J: There’s never any immature fighting going on.

R: Everybody wants to be heard.  We do have egos and that’s why people get into the arts anyway, because of their egos. So it’s this tension between having enough ego to make the music good, and have the balls to make it in the first place, and then be able to set that aside and say, “Well… alright.”  It’s going to be better and ultimately it’s going to serve everyone’s ego better if we’re on a thing where the music is coming together really strongly. Once that happens, the switch flips and all the little fights and little arguments that happen during the process kind of fall away and it’s like, “Alright, this is awesome!”

M: What it comes down to is it’s all about what the song needs.  The song is the ultimate songwriter in a sense because whatever that thing shapes up to be, that’s what you’re playing to and that’s what you’re writing the parts for and you have to make sure that whatever you’re doing serves the song first and foremost. I think that’s something we’ve got a good handle on, recognizing what the song is asking for and how it’s supposed to sound, just trying to do our best and make that as best we can.

Any there any songs in The Lights Out catalog that you feel especially connected to, or any tunes that stick out as favorites? I know it’s kind of like asking you to choose between children somewhat, but…

R: The latest one. It’s always the latest one!  The last one you wrote is always the best one.

Anything you’re really excited to share with us tonight for your big CD release?

M: Our CD!

The entire thing?

M: We are going to be performing our CD for the only time from start to finish. This is going to be the only time we’ll ever do this and that’s what we’re sharing tonight and that’s why we’re here.

A: I’m really looking forward to playing “Gottagetouttahere.” We’re shooting a video for it. We actually shot part of the video at our last show here.

J: -Which is why I can’t cut my hair any shorter and I really want to… I’m like stuck in this middle ground like waiting to grow it out for the next photo shoot.

How has The Lights Out differed from other projects that you guys have been involved with before? You’ve all mentioned that you were in bands before.  How does The Lights Out differ compared with other stuff you’ve been involved with in the past?

J: Ive definitely been in other projects where I didn’t trust the other members to be a spokesman for me in the sense that there were a lot of egos in those bands and it was just always this constant fighting, and that’s just something I’m so happy to not have in this band. That was the first thing I noticed and it’s lasted for three years already and I don’t think its going anywhere.

A: It’s the first band I’ve ever been in where I didn’t have to do all the work. There are four people in this band that work hard both on the music and everything that goes around the music.

R: I’d second what Jesse said. Part of the work that Adam’s talking about is the work of cultivating this culture and it doesn’t just happen by accident. There’s an intention on everybody’s part to make it a place so you can walk into the room and basically know that you’re going to feel better three hours later instead of like “Goddamn it, that guy was an asshole! Fuck!” You know, there’s been plenty of moments like that in everybody’s past bands and we’ve been in enough bands where maybe you get to the spot where you’re like “Ah, enough of that, let’s just get on with it. We really want to just write so let’s do it.”

M: I like the lack of fighting.  I like the lack of the asshole lead singer… (Laughs)

J: We do debate. We do debate but we don’t fight.

A: I really like how we’re fighting about not fighting right now…

J: They’re lively debates though!

Better to be lively than boring!

M: Nobody ever gets shouted down though, no one ever gets told “NO!”

A: No one’s ever walked out of the room in anger, and we’ve been doing this since 2005.

How is this Color Machine a departure from previous material released by The Lights Out?

R: It’s a stew of everybody’s thing. Everybody brings something to this band in that they’re influenced by someone that probably turns everybody else off like… I don’t want to name names of bands, but I’ll like a certain band, and everyone else will be like, “Aw, are you kidding?”

A: Steve Miller, right?

R: Steve Miller! Alright, naming names…

J: We’re definitely willing to respect different aspects of each band that any other person likes. I think even if you completely hate the band that the other person likes, that you have a little bit of respect about something about that band and you understand that that’s why the person likes them.

And you think that’s kind of encapsulated in Color Machine?

R: Well, it’s encapsulated in everything we do.  I think that a lot of bands and artists in general feel that volatility is the secret to good creative process and that’s very tiresome and tiring, it wears me out.  I think that our sync and harmony and flow is actually what’s allowing us to work so strongly together and that’s what comes through in the music rather than like the fighting.  Volatility can yield great stuff but it’s no fun to be around that kind of thing.

M: If you’re going to spend as much time making music as we do it has to be fun. You have to be ok with it, you can’t have that kind of tension for that long… it’s a really refreshing thing.

In terms of influences, we kind of touched on that recently but can you give me the laundry list of people that you really look up to or people who have really helped cultivate your creativity?

R: I always have to say Kiss. Kiss was the first band I ever got into and Kiss led me into Zeppelin and Bowie.

A: I really like Alex Lifeson from Rush, Marc Ford from the Black Crowes, and Jeff Beck.

J: I grew up with a lot of soul and Motown and stuff, and I got into rock a little later in life.  I like Chad Smith from the Chili Peppers; he’s still one of my favorite drummers.  As far as music goes, I tend to like a lot of female lead singers.  I listen to my collection and I’m like “Man, I never played in a band with a female lead singer,” but I love Morcheeba and The Cardigans and Fiona Apple.

Morcheeba?! Definitely haven’t heard that name in awhile…

J: I really miss them.  I wish they’d put out stuff still… Anyways, I like your female voice, Rish.

R: Thank you! I work hard on that. (Laughs)

M: I was always the alterna-kid. The Pixies were big for me early on, Jane’s Addiction, Fugazi, bands like that.  Then I spent some time as a hippie and I was listening to a lot of jam bands for maybe four or five years… came to my senses… and basically I’m the guy who only buys new music.  It’d be hard to buy something for me that came out even a year ago.

J: You’re pretty up on what’s happening.

R: Matt probably is the guy that helps keep our sound current. I think that the guitar attack of Adam and I is probably what makes it sort of heavy rock.  We’re about crunchy guitars, we were saying the other day, more so than fuzzy like Flaming Lips-y guitar stuff. We lay the base of a song down but then Matt comes in with ideas on how to move chords around  Jesse’s really good with melodies and whatnot, and somehow it always works out.

In terms of touring, let’s talk about that for a second, do you guys have any crazy stories for me from the tour bus of The Lights Out, basically?

J: We got pulled over a few times….

M: We can talk our way out of a lot of things. (Laughs)

R: There’s no trashing hotel rooms and misbehavior or anything.

J: Not yet!

So you’re not budding Tommy Lees?

M: Nah… We’ve driven on a few lawns… we’ve had to ditch the car a few times…

With the equipment in it??

A: No, just running from the police… being some places, doing something that we shouldn’t be doing…

Want to elaborate a little bit or…

A: [laughs] No, that’s all everybody needs to know.

We’ve talked about what brought you guys here, can we talk about your Boston fanbase?  Your CD release is a big event in Boston’s indie rock community and I’ve seen eight gazillion people tweeting about how they love the new album and are stoked to see the show tonight.

M: I hope they all come!

J: I thought that the tipping point for the Boston music scene was the WBCN Rumble last year. The Rumble coincided with Twitter really coming into its own, and soon as that happened, it was like the scene just felt really connected and everyone was able to comment on what was happening at every show and just keep abreast of what was going on throughout the whole entire event.

R: This is a bumper crop this year, the rumble was awesome. Especially like, my favorite part was the preliminary rounds, there was 24 bands and everyone was like “We could do it, we could take it!” and everybody basically could have taken it, pretty much.

M: Everyone in all the bands went to as many shows as possible so you see all these people every night for a week and you just kind of start talking, you get to know them that way, rather than just running into them at a show whenever you’re playing together, you see them consistently so you became more friendly, more familiar.

A: The Rumble has been going on for a long time, and there’s this great event called the Rock and Roll Social that we go to every month, every month on the second Tuesday at The Model Cafe.  It’s where we met and formed as a band.

Who are some of the Boston bands that you’re following right now? We’ve talked about this big community where everybody’s bear-hugging at shows all the time, but if you had to give me some names of people who you think are doing some really innovate stuff that you’re really excited about, who would you list?

J: Three of my favorites are ones we’re playing with tonight: Township, Gravehaven, who has now changed their name to Roman Traffic, and Reverse. I also really like MEandJOANCOLLINS.

R: The Luxury, of course. And I’m really liking Gene Dante and the Future Starlets. We played together at Middle East upstairs, we played in P-Town together, we were in the Rumble together… we play with Gene a lot.

J: Great Bandini! I like them a lot, too. I haven’t seen them in a while.

R: And The Motion Sick.

M: There’s Aloud…

R: Aloud, Future Everybody– we played with them at the Middle East last time, they were really good.

When it comes to your favorite venues, it seems like we’ve been about talking this corner a lot…

R: I like playing Middle East Up, I like that room a lot.

J: Yeah that’s my favorite. TT’s is close, Great Scott, very close.

A: Church has been very good to us.

R: We’re playing there for Halloween.

If there was one thing you could change about the Boston music scene what would it be?

M: Probably the two-week rule.

Two-week rule? What’s the two-week rule?

M: Well, you can’t play more than once every two weeks. Now it’s starting to be three weeks.

A: I would say make the drinking age 18 and keep the T open past 2am, or at least UNTIL 2am.

I feel like that sucks for headliners so bad…

M: You’ll notice we’re playing third tonight.  That’s why.

We’ve seen really big acts play the 12:30 slot at the Middle East a lot, and literally the venue will be half-empty three songs into their set.  Some people have to get back to Allston and JP, you know?

R: It’s either that or walk home.

So, what’s next for The Lights Out?  What do we have to look forward to hearing from you guys in the next few months?

A: We’re going to be playing a lot of professional industry conference showcases, so were heading to Delaware next week to play Dewey Beach, then we’re heading to NYC to play M.E.A.N.Y. Fest, then we’re putting together a run of shows down the East Coast for the fall.

Crossing the Williamsburg Bridge is an action required of those looking to observe Pitchfork favorites and college radio standard-makers in their natural habitat of Brooklyn.  Here in Boston, walking over the Longfellow or Mass Ave bridges will land you smack in the heart of Boston’s indie rock headquarters at the intersection of Brookline Street and Mass Ave, where the Middle East and TT the Bear’s Place reside. Though Cambridge puts up a pretty good fight as Boston’s answer to hipster mecca, you can’t deny that the acts coming out of Brooklyn at the moment are defining popular music trends in their own right.  There’s something in the water in Williamsburg, Green Point and Park Slope that’s got guitarists and synth bands burning up the charts and lighting the feet of ironically dancing hipsters on fire, and a slew of these bands (The Antlers, Cymbals Eat Guitars, Matt & Kim) have been passing through Boston on the regular to kick off national tours or to close them before heading back to the borough.  One of our favorite shows from bands of this ilk to hit the Middle East in recent memory was headlined by Brooklynites The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, and these guys [and girl with the most adorable set of bangs I've ever seen] had us feeling some good heart pains of our own.  Since exploding on the scene back in February with their self-titled full-length debut, The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart have been dominating small venues and sprawling festivals alike while performing tracks off their new EP, Higher Than The Stars.  Given their ability to get huge crowds of even the too-coolest of indie rock enthusiasts grooving, we find the EP’s title to be especially fitting seeing as the popularity of The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart is absolutely soaring.

Before packing Downstairs at the Middle East about a month ago, The Pains of Being Pure At Heart’s lead singer, Kip Berman, took some time out from his crazy schedule on the road to answer a few questions for us. Here, Kip gives us the dirt on where Brooklyn’s latest buzz band’s been and what The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart are looking forward to regarding their upcoming European tour and their plans for the coming months. Check out The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart this coming weekend at Kia’s Soul Collective, which is a free showcase bringing the splendiforous sounds of White Rabbits, Here We Go Magic and our buddies, Cymbals Eat Guitars, together along with some sick DJ sets all day at Artists for Humanity in Fort Point on October 18.  And yes, to get there, you’re gonna have to cross another bridge at Fort Point Channel for the festivities.  Indie rock and bridges, man.  Someone should look into that connection, for serious.

-Hilary Hughes

OPENING ACT: THE PAINS OF BEING PURE AT HEART AND THE TEAPARTY TEN

What’s your favorite breakfast cereal?

Kip: Corn Flakes

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

Kip: I like Long Duk Dong… considering all the cultural weirdness he contends with in the film, he holds up pretty well, and even seems to have a good time and get some lovin’.

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

Kip: Coffee maker.

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

Kip: Gonzo is the one with the large nose, right?

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?

Kip: I’ve never been so crazy as to get a tattoo.

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

Kip: I think Sumo Wrestler involves a lot of buffets, so I’d go that route.

If you were a particular kind of cheese, what kind of cheese would you be?

Kip: String.

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

Kip: I don’t really like facial hair…

What’s your quintessential “I’M GONNA DANCE AROUND MY APARTMENT IN MY UNDERWEAR AND LOVE LIFE!” song? [Note: This question is entirely inspired by Tom Cruise’s performance in “Risky Business.”]

Kip: I think for Patrick and Kurt’s benefit (my roommates) this song should not be found anywhere on my iTunes or record collection. Or if it is, it ought to be a really short song, like “Velocity Girl” by Primal Scream…

What’s your favorite word?

Kip: Epic!

THE MAIN EVENT: THE PAINS OF BEING PURE AT HEART TPB INTERVIEW

Can we get the back-story on The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart?  How did you all meet, and how did the band come about?

Kip: We were all friends first, and spent a lot of time hanging out, going to shows and nerding out about music. Playing music just sort of emerged kind of accidentally, when I wrote a couple songs and wanted to play at Peggy’s birthday party with our friends The Manhattan Love Suicides and Titus Andronicus.

How long have you all been playing music, independently, and then how long have the members of The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart been playing music together?

Kip: I got a guitar when I was 13, so i guess that’s been most of my life. I’ve been in lots of bands that were fun, but never played a show outside of the zip code where I lived. This was just one of those things where I thought, “Ok, maybe a few friends will like it and we’ll have fun.” And we’ve definitely had fun, but as far as people besides the 12 indie-pop fans we know liking it, what’s happened has been way beyond our expectations.

Who are your musical influences?  Who inspires you, musically?

Kip: To us, influence is more than just the bands we like. It’s everything we ever experienced, and while that sounds sort of abstract and vague, it’s pretty true. Something about hanging out with your 2 friends in high school and talking about anarchy at all night diner’s, or tagging along with the goth kids in the park or just having nothing to do at all made us who are today. All those things, plus all the bands that meant everything– Sonic Youth, Belle and Sebastian, Nirvana and lots of pop punk and 90s Emo– those are the experiences and ideas that shape us as people and as a band.

Let’s talk creative process: How would you put the story behind the lyrics and composition of the music of The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart into words?  Does someone write the majority of the lyrics/the music/etc, or is more collaborative?

Kip: I write the words and the basic structure of the songs, but the reason it sounds a lot better than my demos is due to everyone lending their own ideas to their own parts. I can barely play any instruments, so it’s pretty crucial that everyone contributes as best they can. If we were mad scientists, i’d bring the skeleton, and then it would be up for Peggy, Kurt and Alex to provide the flesh, the brains, the electric shock and all that sort of thing.

How does playing live affect your music?  Do you find that songs you play with The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart evolve show to show, or do you try to retain the same feel of the record in a live setting?

Kip: We’re not really a prog rock improv band– i think our songs are a bit rawer and not so pristine live. But we try our best to play them the right way.

Are there any songs in the Pains Of Being Pure At Heart catalog that you feel particularly connected to, or look forward to playing each night?

Kip: The songs are about our lives, so we’re pretty connected to all of them, for better or worse. There’s not a lot of emotional separation between what we write and who we are. Live, I really like playing the faster songs, like Come Saturday, Young Adult Friction and Everything With You the best. But I never really get tired of any of the songs, and each night we play they feel fresh and exciting.

You released your first full-length album last February.  How was this self-titled debut a departure from previously released material of yours, and how is the music you’re working on now a departure from that?

Kip: Most importantly, the album featured live drumming– that was a big deal. When we started, we just had a drum machine, and if you listen to our first self-titled EP, you’ll realize that whoever programmed the drums (me) only knew about 2 drum beats. So being able to have Kurt in the band really improved things a lot, and lent a more dynamic feel to the songs.  We haven’t started on our secnd album yet– we won’t have a chance to do that until our touring is complete this winter. Our first album was more of a collection of our early singles and EP tracks, so in a way, what we work on next will be our first actual album. Maybe we’ll self-title it too… Red House Painters and Tindersticks had multiple self-titled albums, and I love both of those bands.

Where were some of your favorite cities to play on tour?  What are some of your favorite moments from your time on the road this year and this tour, especially?  Got any crazy stories from the Pains Of Being Pure At Heart tour bus?

Kip: We have a tour van that is decidedly not rocknroll. sometimes Alex and Peggy play boggle, or do crossword puzzles. Kurt, Christoph and I have recently acquired Nintendo DS’s, and like to play Mario Kart.  As for favorite cities, we’ve had really cool experiences in so many places, it’s hard to say one place has been exceptionally better than any other. Toronto, Glasgow, Portland, Boston, London, Chicago, Manchester, Los Angeles, Atlanta– and of course, most of all, New York have all been incredibly memorable places to play. I’m so excited to be getting to do a full US tour this September and seeing so many places that we’ve yet to go to and return to a lot of places we’ve had a great time in previously.

Of all the venues you’ve played across the country, what are your favorites and why?  Do you have any favorite venues in Boston?

Kip: I spent a summer in Cambridge when I was 19, and I went to a LOT of shows at The Middle East and TT the Bears. I saw so many great shows there, while learning so much about Indiepop from a friend of mine at WMBR at MIT. I heard bands like Rocketship, My Favorite, OMD, The Clientele and Saint Etienne for the first time that summer– plus, i got this sweet Belle and Sebastian Tigermilk poster that I still have. That was an awesome summer!

Are you listening to any bands out of Boston, currently?  If so, who, and what do you like about their sound?

Kip: One of our favorite bands ever is Pants Yell! They are completely awesome, literate indiepop that tries desparately to remain obscure. They live in Cambridge, and we’ve played a bunch of shows with them in the past. I’m excited that their next record is coming out on Slumberland, so we’re officially labelmates.

What’s next for The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart after this tour?  When will you be heading into the studio next, and what do you have planned for 103?

Kip: We have an EP coming out this September called Higher Than the Stars. It features four new songs, including 103. We have a lot of touring to do in the US and in Europe, so we’ll be pretty much consistently on the road until things wind down in December. After that we’ll be working on the songs for the next album and hopefully get to start recording that sometime in the Spring.

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 Beatings have been around the block for sure: Since forming over ten years ago, Eldridge, Erin, Tony, Dennis and most recently acquired member Greg have been bouncing ideas off each other, getting songs down on tape and playing their music from the East Coast to the West Coast and back again.  Though based in Boston and undeniably a Boston Band, the members of The Beatings definitely raise an eyebrow when it comes to discussing their relationship with the city they call home.  The Beatings express nothing but warmly-worded gratitude for their loyal Boston fanbase who have been coming out to shows over the course of the past decade, but there’s a tinge of resentment in the voice of Beatings frontman Eldridge Rodriguez’s when asked about his feelings on the Boston band moniker.  What it comes down to is this: The Beatings, as a fiercely talented fivesome, have been making music for years, and given that Boston is a city saturated with talent and lacking in the number of venues, it’s a little surprising that The Beatings have remained a best-kept secret of sorts.  As a band who’s paid their dues playing bars and clubs and grimy stages all over Boston, New York, and other cities of note that they’ve hit touring the country a whopping eight times, it’s interesting that avid indie rock fans in Boston seem surprised when The Beatings reveal that, hey, maybe they’ve received a warmer welcome elsewhere and that other cities have appeared to be more receptive of their rock.  Regardless of whether or not Bostonians are flocking to Allston and Cambridge to hear The Beatings live for the first time or they’re back for another great show, their roots are here, and this familial relationship with the city has it’s ups and downs as any kinship with a loved one would.

We caught The Beatings outside in the pouring rain just before the Late Season Kids CD release party at Great Scott a while back, and luckily the guys (and girl!) were cool with moving the interview inside over cheap beers before the opener’s sound check.  The Beatings will be headlining Upstairs at the Middle East on October Read on for a look back on how The Beatings started, their thoughts on their Boston roots and what exactly happened that night in Tennessee when they played next to an exploding bridge.

-Hilary Hughes

OPENING ACT: THE BEATINGS AND THE TEAPARTY TEN

What’s your favorite breakfast cereal?

Erin: Kashi! Go Lean!

Greg: I don’t eat breakfast…

Tony: No.  I don’t touch cereal.

Eldridge: I haven’t touched cereal since grade school, I think.

E: Am I the only one who eats breakfast?!

T: I have coffee and then maybe lunch.

Dennis: I’ll eat a banana…

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

T: Long Duk Dong knows how to party!  I’m punching Mouth.

ER: Mouth got me through some tough times.

E: I’d punch Mouth.  They were making fun of Long Duk Dong because he’s Asian!  He’s the underdog!  I’m not gonna punch the underdog.

D: I’d punch Mouth, yeah.

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

E: An oven, ‘cause it’s HOT! (Laughs)

D: I’d be one of those grippy things that helps open jars.

T: Probably one of those cranking mixers.

ER: … Like an eggbeater?

T: Yeah.

G: I’d be a George Forman Grill because I’d be in everyone’s house.

D: Yeah, you’re kind of the George Foreman Grill of Boston musicians…

ER: I’m the spatula.

You go to bed, wake up, walk into the bathroom to brush your teeth, and you look in the mirror and you realize that you’ve turned into one of Jim Henson’s Muppets overnight.  Which Muppet are you?

E: Janice!

ER: Doctor Teeth!

T: One of the dudes in the balcony, either Statler or Waldorf.

D: Me too. I’d be the old guy in the balcony that he’s not.

G: I’d be the airplane bomber guy with the big bags under his eyes because I don’t really sleep.

ER: I’d be the Swedish Chef.  He wasn’t fluent in Swedish or English, he was fluent in Swedinglish.

Say you have a crazy night, you black out, and you wake up feeling like crap the next morning and you realize… you got a tattoo.  What’d you get inked?

G: For me, it’d be a big anchor on my chest because, I, uh, already have a big anchor tattooed on my chest….

E: This is so cliché for a librarian, but I’d get an owl on my arm or something.

ER: It has to be the owl from Clash of the Titans.  I would get all my body parts labeled.  Nose, eye, forearm…

D: I’d get a black “B” tattooed on my left hand so that I could get into shows for free.

G: Why don’t you just get a big fluorescent band around your wrist?

ER: I’d get like, a puma or something.  Or something with glitter.

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

ER: RODEO CLOWN.  That’s respect.

D: I’d have trouble inverting my penis, so I’m going to go with rodeo clown.

G: I agree.  I’d definitely be a rodeo clown.  I can’t put on the weight.

T: And the wardrobe is a hundred times more manly!  I could look at myself in the mirror after work if I was a rodeo clown.

E: Yeeeeah rodeo clown.

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

G: I’d get the Fisherman, which is when your sideburns grow into your mustache.

ER: If I could grow facial hair, which I can’t, because it comes out all Teen-Wolfy, I’d get a nice pencil-thin mustache.

T: I’d get a full-on Civil War general-style beard.  And I’d gain fifty pounds just to match the beard, too, and I’d walk around with a uniform too.

D: I’d go with a unibrow.  I’d like to know what that feels like.  I want to know those people’s pain.  I would understand them better once I learned how to walk the streets like that.

E: I’d be a dirt ‘stache.

If you were a type of cheese, which cheese would you be?

E: Fake, soy cheese.

G: Yup, soy cheese.

T: Blue cheese.

D: I feel like a Romano I think.  Aged Romano.

ER: I’d be Parmesan shaky cheese.  Like, Kraft shaky cheese.

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

ER: “Moon River.”  You gotta listen to the beats they AREN’T playing.

That’s an interesting choice.

ER: It’s a solemn dance.

D: It’d be just the intro to “Money Or Nothing”.  As soon as they start singing, I turn it off.

T: “Maneater”, Hall and Oates.

G: “Big Country” by Big Country.

E: Foreigner’s “Cold As Ice”.

What’s your favorite word?

G: I say “Dang!” a lot.

T: Pantalones.

D: I like “panty” because of the polarizing effect it has on women.

ER: I like “bagina”, with a B, and “turd-burger” a lot.

E: Meep. I like “meep.”  It’s a term of endearment.

THE MAIN EVENT: THE BEATINGS TPB INTERVIEW

Hey guys!  We’re here tonight to celebrate the release of Late Season Kids, your latest album. This is a nice little party we’re about to have.

Eldridge Rodriguez: It is.

Erin: Yeah!

Before we start talking about the album, can we get the back-story on The Beatings? How did you all come to make music together, and where you come from?

ER: Tony and I grew up with each other, outside of New York, right on the Jersey border and outside Manhattan. We’ve known each other since we were in the fifth grade.  I left for school, and I met Dennis while I was studying at UMass Amherst. Dennis and I moved to Boston together, and that’s where we met Erin.  Tony then came up to live in Boston for a while, and then Tony moved back down to New York. Once everyone was up here we started playing together.  In the last two months or so, we added Greg to start playing with us as well.

Let’s talk influences for The Beatings. What artists and musicians do you draw inspiration from?  Who’s helped you cultivate your creativity as players and songwriters?

G: It’s pretty varied I guess. For me, personally, it’s the 80s alternative explosion kind of stuff. College rock mostly, stuff like R.E.M.  I’m really into The Pixies.

E: We’re all writing in the band. We’re collaborating, so you’re getting influences from all of this. And I think it’s very varied. Sonic Youth would be my main influence. The Pixies, too.

Tony: We’re kind of hard rock; we’re kind of metal; Folk. Between all of us, there’s a lot of stuff that somebody will love and bring to the band. And when they play it to the rest of us, they’ll be like, “I love this band”. And everybody else doesn’t get it. But when it comes to the band, it all seems to work.

E: Yeah!

ER: I’m trying to avoid the word “synergy”, but The Beatings has a good one of those.

We’ll thesaurus that.  As musicians, I’m assuming you didn’t just pick up a guitar yesterday and have never played in a band before. How is The Beatings different from other projects you’ve worked on before, and what do you really enjoy about this collaboration?

ER: It’s hard to say because we’ve been playing for a really long time together, for about ten years, now.

T: With the exception of some high school acts I played with, I’ve really only ever played with Eldridge.

E: Yeah, me too.

T: And Eldridge and I played together in high school, so… I don’t know how to play with anyone else. (Laughs)

E: Yeah, I me too. (Laughs)

ER: It’s kind of like when you’re getting picked for kickball teams, and you guys are the last four people to get picked. And you’re like, “Fuck it, we’ll start our own game!” That’s kind of the way it turned out. We just started playing with each other, and realized that we could tolerate each other and work with each other, and we just haven’t stopped.   We’re all really good , too. It’s not like we’re just acquaintances who play together. We’re in each other’s lives even when we’re not in a band.  We were at each other’s weddings. I mean, it’s been such a long relationship. It’s always felt like its been there, so I don’t know where it comes from, or where it developed. It’s just been there as far as I can remember.

When it comes to the collaborative nature of The Beatings, you mentioned that you’re all writers. Can you take me through your creative process?

T: Generally, somebody will write a song or an idea for a song or a skeleton of a song, and present it to everybody else. From there, it will usually take a life of its own. I have an enormous amount of confidence that if I have good idea about a song, I can bring it in and it will come out a very good song after it’s over with. I’ll have a skeleton of an idea and between all of us, we can make it into something worth listening to. Repeatedly.

D: I don’t really write songs, but what I feel like I add is just arranging things. You know what I mean?

G: But what about those vignette songs?

D: Those aren’t really songs-

ER: they’re vignettes!

D: Yeah, but everybody brings something in and whether it’s the kernel of the song, or ideas for other people’s songs.  It’s really collaborative like that.

ER: We share songwriting credit on all the records, and I feel like that’s totally the way it is.

And lyrically, is it that way, too? I know that sometimes when people talk about writing, it’s very different discussing lyrics as opposed to talking about the compositional aspect of it.

ER: It depends. For the most part, the person that brought the song in writes the lyrics, but there are several songs where I’ve needed lines and such and I come in and I’m like, “Hey! Guys!”

E: “Scorched Earth Policy” was your song that you brought in and were like, “What are we going to do with this?” So then I started writing lyrics, and Eldridge wrote lyrics, and it evolved.

ER: Someone certainly takes the brunt of the responsibility, lyric-wise, but it’s still a shared responsibility.  If someone writes a really horrible line, we’re comfortable enough with each other to go, like, “Hey, that really is kind of sucky, and it would embarrass me to play that on stage”.

That’s a really good point to be at in collaboration, I feel.   That’s great system of bounce ideas off of.

ER: Yeah!  I know it sounds cliché, but it really feels like a family.  We’re in each other’s lives on a daily basis. Even with Tony in New York, we talk every single day. Not necessarily about band stuff, just checking up, seeing how everything is going. “Did you read this comic book? Did you see that show? Did you do this?” So, it just feels like family. With family, you have spats, and then you realize that you’re kind of dug in. You can’t really get out of it, so you make up and you move on.  (Laughs)

You’ve mentioned that you guys have been working together for ages and that you’ve all got a hand in the songwriting.  Are there any songs from The Beatings’ catalog that stick out as favorites to you, or that you really enjoy playing live, or any songs that you’re especially excited to play for us tonight?

ER: I’m always excited to play “Heavy Metal”, because it’s a really spastic song and I really get a kick out of it.

G: The crowd seems to like it too, and a lot of times most people will come up on stage and sing.

ER: I like all of them. I really do. I don’t think we would have made them if we didn’t like them. We’ve always talked about that. The only reason you play in a band is to make songs you want to hear, like, “I wish there was more of this type of thing out there!” and then we write a song like that.

E: I like “Shark Attacks On The Rise”, but we haven’t been playing that for the last couple shows so I think we should play that. I’m going to lobby for that at our next show.

T: I get very excited to play the new stuff, just because it’s fun to see what’s going to happen and how the audience is going to respond to it. It seems like we just all write this stuff in our little vacuum, and when we take it out on stage it’s interesting to present it to new people and see what the response is going to be. We always get very excited about our new songs. We’re all like, “This is an awesome song!”  We’re modest that way!  We’re pretty in love with ourselves, but it’s nice to see other people fall in love with us, too. (Laughs)

ER: I feel like that especially on tour, when you’re playing in places you don’t know, and you get to see how they react to that stuff. It’s just exciting.

E: It’s really nice when there’s not that many people there, and you’re sitting at the merch table feeling kind of defeated, and someone comes up and is like, “I’ve seen you every time you’ve come. I have all your albums”. It’s that one person who saves the day. It’s just what you need when you’re touring.

D: I really like a lot of the early stuff, in terms of just fun stuff to play.  I also get excited about even us just writing stuff on stage sometimes, or adding new flairs or fills or whatever.

Do you guys have any crazy stories from The Beatings’ tour bus, so to speak? Any adventures on the road?  Tell us about your time on tour together.

ER: Well, we just came back a week and a half ago from tour.  We got some stories, but they’re definitely not Motley Crue style. Maybe Motley Crue, like, now.

Yeah, Tommy Lee’s pretty ridiculous, still…

ER: A lot of weird shit has happened in ten years.

E: The craziest thing was in Tennessee, though.

ER: Bridges blowing up…

Wait, what? Hopefully you weren’t driving over said bridge-

ER: No, but we were in the middle of playing, and all of a sudden everyone left-

T: And Knoxville is a place we usually do pretty well in and there’s a good crowd, but all of a sudden there was nobody left in the room. We look up at the end of a song, and it’s like, “Wow. We really cleared the room.” But the sound guy came up to us and told us that everyone left to watch the bridge blow up. He invited us to go watch with him, and was like, “Just come back whenever the bridge is blown up and everybody will be back here, I’m sure!” Sure enough, everybody was. We heard a giant boom, and then everybody came back in.   Generally, though, I can really only speak for myself, but – especially when we’re touring – I feel like I leave so much on the stage that there’s not much left over for partying afterwards. And if there is something left over, I almost feel like I haven’t done something right while playing.  If you have that much energy at the end of a show, there’s something you need to do on stage.

G: I concur. We tell some really funny jokes to each other while we’re watching TV afterwards. (Laughs)

So, let’s talk about what you’re listening to now. If I were to steal the iPods of The Beatings, what would I find in the Recently Added playlist?

ER: Hands and Knees, who are playing tonight. Label-mates. My wife and I have really gotten really into Mariachi music, so there’s a lot of that playing in the house.

E: I just started listening today to this band called St. Helena. They’re also from Boston. I had never heard them before, but I got the CD recently, and it was like, “Oh! This is really good.”

G: I’ve actually been listening to a lot of Spaghetti Western soundtracks lately. I’ve been all about that, I don’t really know why.

T: I just bought The Dark Side of the Moon.

Have you watched it with The Wizard of Oz yet?

T: No.

G: It works!

T: I know! I’m just listening to it for right now.

D: One band I’ve recently gotten into is Band of Horses. I’ve gotten pretty heavy into them over the last couple of months. And M. Ward.  I discovered Post-War a couple of months ago. That’s been on pretty heavy rotation ever since.

Now, in Boston, you guys have a pretty heavy following here…

ER: I don’t think we’ve ever felt comfortable in Boston.

Really?

ER: I think we’ve always felt like we were on the outside looking in. We’ve always done better in other cities. New York has always been really good to us.  Other places have always really supported us. It’s great, but then we come home, and we feel like we’re fighting for scraps in our hometown.  But I think that’s all going to change after this release so… (laughs)

E: It’s that and it’s the fact that there’s so much more media now then there was ten years ago, with blogs and networking… So I just think we’re getting more press lately. But also, just in general, I feel like more people are interested in The Beatings in Boston now.

ER: I mean, the crowd and the scene has always been supportive. It’s weird when you walk down the street in New York – on  a random night that we’re not playing- people will be like, “Hey, you’re The Beatings!”-

T: That’s even happened in South Carolina.  Weird.

ER: And then you come back and people up here are like, “Never heard of you. Are you guys new?” ‘No, we’ve been around like ten years.’ “Well, do you guys play out?” ‘Yeah, fairly regularly; you’re on our email list, dude’.

I mean, would you call Boston your hometown, in the sense that this-

All: Yeah!

Well, it’s really interesting that you’re received better in other cities. Why do you think that is?

E: Well, there are so many bands here. It’s a small city, and there are tons of bands here for a city of this size.

ER: I don’t think the situation is unique to us. There are plenty of bands from here that I know that I think are absolutely brilliant. And do really well outside the city.

Who are some of those bands?

ER: Black Helicopter only a couple of years ago finally started getting props in the city and those guys have been around longer than us. It’s a weird thing. You don’t know what people are going to respond to. You don’t know what the local press and media are going to respond to. It’s all a crapshoot!

T: I think our relationship with Boston is pretty much what they said: There’s just a lot of bands here. And it’s so small… I don’t think it’s any sort of giant cosmic conspiracy or anything like that.

ER: See that’s where you and I differ. (laughs) I think it’s absolutely a conspiracy.

T: Just look at the odds, the numbers…

Well, what keeps The Beatings here? What makes you stay in Boston?

D: Well, I think, musically, every thing everyone has said so far is pretty much true, but I also think one of the neat parts about it is coming home from a tour and seeing a lot of familiar faces up there. And we’ve had those as well. I feel like we do have a small and devoted following and for me, that’s worth a lot more than stuff like getting sold spaces.  It’s just seeing people that know us and appreciate us.  We’ve had that in Boston, so it always feels like home.

ER: I don’t mean to besmirch Boston, don’t get me wrong! I’m not besmirching- I’m smirching Boston. I think Boston’s a great city. But I do harbor a resentment towards…

G: The giant cosmic conspiracy.

ER: The giant cosmic conspiracy.

ER: When it comes down to it, I love Boston.  That’s the reason why I stay here, is because I absolutely love Boston.

E: Yeah!

G: And he bought a house!

ER: Yup.  We bought a house in Lower Allston last June.  I love Boston.  I absolutely love it.  Maybe you always feel a little bit stronger towards something you care about, I don’t know.  I kind of feel like it’s the parent who doesn’t pay enough attention to you and then when you’re older you’re like, “WHY DON’T YOU LOVE ME?!”

G: Eldridge is like, “LOOK AT ME! HEY! ME! LOOK AT ME!”

ER: “I’m screaming!  I’m yelling!  I’m playing guitar, what do you want?!”  I don’t know, maybe I’m being overly harsh.  Tomorrow, I may be like, “Boston has the most supportive scene on the planet!”  And to an extent, I believe that: I think that Boston has some of the most supportive radio stations on the planet.  The college radio stations are the more supportive I’ve seen of bands on tour.

E: We have completely changed our minds about Boston based on what we were saying earlier…

We’ve talked about Boston’s general lack of venues, but what are your favorite Boston venues to play when you’re back in town?  You’re having your CD release party at Great Scott tonight.  Is there a reason for that?

E: Yeah!  They’re AWESOME!

ER: We’ve also had a relationship with Carl for forever.  It’s a great room.

G: The sound at Great Scott is the best.

ER: We like the shows they put together here.  I also like the Middle East and I love TT the Bear’s Place.

G: Generally, if a club likes us we like them! (Laughs)

T: We’ve had great shows at PA’s Lounge, too.

ER: The few clubs that are still here are very supportive of the local scene, and I think it’s great.  It feels like a scene, you know?  When we tour and we talk to people, they’ll say that there isn’t a scene, that there aren’t radio stations who will play their music and that there aren’t bands who bill with each other on a regular basis.  Boston has that.

I think it’s interesting to talk about the New York to Boston relationship and to talk about the differences versus pros and cons between the two cities.

ER: A lot of it has to do with the universities here and that a lot of kids split for New York once they graduate, but the scene in New York is weird, too.  Boston is a smaller city so you have to deal with the hand you have here and you have to deal with the clubs here as this city doesn’t move at the same pace as New York.  I like neither city more than the other.

When it comes to other Boston bands that you enjoy, if you could bill the perfect Boston band show, what Boston bands playing in town right now are acts you’d love to do a show with?

ER: Ernie and the Automatics.

T: I like that Hallelujah the Hills band.

G: Ketman’s good!

ER: There aren’t many bills we’ve played that I haven’t liked.  Ian Adams I like.  There are bands I like and then there are bands I care about.  I feel like we pair with more noisy bands in general.

How is Late Season Kids a departure from previous material by The Beatings?

T: I don’t know if it’s a departure.  One of the things I always loved about REM is that every REM album was, like, just a little different to keep it exciting, but it was identifiably REM.  Every single one of our records is the same way.  There’s no way I could love the last Beatings record more than this one, and then the next one comes along and I think it’s the best one after that.  It just feel like our music is always growing and we’re always learning from it.  I think we’re always just trying to impress each other I guess, or something.

E: We’re playing better and getting tighter!

D: I think this one is different, too, in that there are a few songs that we hadn’t really played in front of people before recording them.  A couple of the songs had been stage tested, but three quarters of the albums were written in the studio or in the practice space and had never been played onstage in front of a bunch of people.  When you play songs in front of an audience you can work with it more to find out what sounds best, so with this album, there was a lot more work that went into making the song sound the best it could sound in the studio.  We figured it out on the studio as opposed to on the road, and I feel like that’s part of the different feel on this album.   I think Tony is right, though, in that this album definitely feels like one of our children

So, what’s next for The Beatings?  What do we have to look forward to hearing from you guys in the not-so-distant future?

ER: Shows!  We’ve talked about building a studio so that we wouldn’t have to be paying for studio time.  We also run our own label, which keeps everyone busy.  I don’t feel like this is a big explosion for us, this new album.  I feel like it’s another step in this progressing movement that we’ve started ten years ago.  I’m sure there’ll be touring next year; there’s always touring to be done.  There’s always label stuff to be done.  There’s always stuff we have to do for our music.  We’ll probably start writing the new album fairly soon.  It’s just more of the same, in that we’re gonna keep on hashin’ it out!

Rarely at TeaParty Boston do we have the opportunity to document a band’s formation and its subsequent first shows, but that’s exactly the case with The Future Everybody.  After watching them deliver a set drippin’ with pop sugar and nerd rock sweat Upstairs at the Middle East back in August, one thing became very clear: This Boston band is excited to just hit the stage, crank the volume and get people moving.  Made up of the likes of musicians who’ve earned their keep as local indie rock mainstays, this project, initially headed up by former Scamper members Nate Rogers and Mike Mirabella, is a group of people who look forward to experimenting with music that wouldn’t necessarily work for the bands they’ve previously been in or the other acts they’re currently affiliated with.

A month or so passed before we were able to catch up with Nate, Matt, Mike, Morgan and the lovely Veronica before their set at Boston Band Crush’s Rock Lecture Series, What’s Your Major? They were dressed to the nines for the evening as the event had a collegiate feel to it, so it was an added bonus that Nate was rocking a nutty professor-type ensemble, Matt had a tartan plaid vest that you’d probably see on a pimply, trombone-wielding seventh grader in jazz band, and Veronica was rocking the Catholic school girl wardrobe like nobody’s business. It was an especially festive evening, as it was also Morgan’s birthday, and we put forth our onslaught of Boston music/breakfast cereal-infused questions while indulging in a cake bearing a puppy face made out of frosting that the band had gotten for their lead guitarist.  Read on for a proper, uncensored and guffaw-inducing look at a new Boston band with some respectable local roots.

-Hilary Hughes

OPENING ACT: THE FUTURE EVERYBODY AND THE TEAPARTY TEN

What’s your favorite breakfast cereal?

Morgan: Cookie Crisp!  There was this independent film about a store that sold collectible cereals and it came out a few years ago.  It was awesome.  Weirdos would come in and be like, “Do you have the 1967 ___?”

Nate: I once decorated an entire apartment with cereal box fronts.  There was a cereal in the mid-90s called Spiderman Cereal, and it was essentially frosted Rice Chex with marshmallows.  This was the most brilliant cereal in the entire world, and it disappeared promptly thereafter.

Matt: I’m a big fan of Flutie Flakes and I actually have a box of Flutie Flakes in my apartment because they re-released ‘em! He’s in a generic uniform.  I was waiting for which uniform he would wear, and he wore a GENERIC ONE.  I was upset by that.

Mike: I’ll go with a bacon, egg and cheese croissant.  I don’t eat cereal, but I eat that almost every day.

Veronica: Blueberry pancake cereal.  That’s what they need.  If they made a blueberry pancake cereal, that would be my favorite.

Matt: Why don’t you just get Boo Berry, then?

Nate: Ugh, of all the monster cereals, you know which one everyone always forgets?  Yummy Mummy.

Matt: WAIT A SECOND.

Morgan: HEY NOW.

Nate: Okay so I guess everyone else forgets about it except for my band.

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

MM: Long Duk Dong.

MG: Yeah, Long Duk Dong.

M: What?!  You can’t go with Dong, he’s awesome!  I love that dude.  I’ll go with the Goonie.

N: No, you can’t punch the Dong-er.

V: I’m a lover, not a fighter.

N: I’m gonna go with Matthew McConaughey from “Contact.”

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

V: Eggbeater!

MG: My friend was telling me about this meat grinder she has that she uses to grind up her cat food.  The patent is from like, 1857, and she says the meat grinder smells like really old, bad metal.  I’m going with the metal smelly 1857 meat grinder.

MM: I’d go with coffee maker.

N: I want to be one of those big lemon slicers with six razorblades.

M: I’m a waffle iron, I guess.

N: We would make a HELL of a kitchen, guys.

You go to bed, wake up, walk into the bathroom to brush your teeth, and you look in the mirror and you realize that you’ve turned into one of Jim Henson’s Muppets overnight.  Which Muppet are you?

N: Burt.  Obviously.

MG: I’m going with Super Grover.

V: I’m gonna say Rolf!  He’s my favorite!

MM: I’m going with the Swedish Chef.

M: I’m sad to say it, but the first Muppet that popped into my mind was Scooter…

Say you have a crazy night, you black out, and you wake up feeling like crap the next morning and you realize… you got a tattoo.  What’d you get inked?

V: ROLF.

MM: Whatever.  When we were in New Orleans we were walking past a tattoo parlor, and I wanted to get something to commemorate the trip but I couldn’t think of anything, so we joked around that I should get the following text: “Mike Mirabella was in New Orleans on this date in…” and it’d be a whole sleeve.

MG: They can’t tattoo you if you’re intoxicated. COME ON.

Okay, Matt, stop trying to sabotage my interview.

MG: It’s not like you’re going to write this out anyway.

Oh, really?

MG: Well, you can tell Jessie that I didn’t see a lot of Matthew Girard quotes in the last interview I did!

WHOA.  Hold the phone.  Are you seriously calling out Jessie’s transcribing skills?

MG: You know what?  I bet that Jessie is trained in the martial arts and that she knows how to use them, but that is a risk I am willing to take.

M: Well, I’d get a tattoo of Burt on my ass?  I guess?

N: I would have to go with Matthew McConaughey from “Contact”, all over my WHOLE BODY.  And then I’d have to punch MYSELF in the face.

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

V: Rodeo clown.

N: Rodeo clown.

MG: Sumo wrestler!

M: Sumo wrestler.

MM: Rodeo clown.

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

MG: An imperial mustache!

M: Fu Manchu!

V: A reverse flavor-saver.

N: A standard pedophile mustache.

MM: Handlebar mustache!

If you were a type of cheese, which cheese would you be?

MG: I’d be a cheddar so sharp you’d cut your tongue on it.

V: No one can top that.

N: Velveeta.

MM: Provolone.

M: Mozzarella!

V: Actually, I’d be Manchego.

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

N: The Beach Boys’ “Kokomo.”

M: “Let’s Get Physical”, Olivia Newton John.

V: Anything by The Future Everybody!

MM: “Against All Odds.”

What’s your favorite word?

N: Douche-canoe.

MG:  Yeah?  Well mine’s douche-kayak.

V: Sisigy.

M: Idiots.  Plural.

MM: Douchebaggery.

THE MAIN EVENT: THE FUTURE EVERYBODY TPB INTERVIEW

Hey guys!  Let’s get some names, ages and hometowns for the record.

N: I’m Nate, and I’m 32 years old!  I live in Somerville now but I’m originally from upstate New York.

M: I’m Morgan, and today’s my birthday!

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!

M: – But a man’s gotta have some secrets so I’m not telling you how old I am.  I’m originally from Pennsylvania, though.

V: I’m Veronica.  I’m 30.

MG: I’m Matthew Girard and my age is also an undisclosed secret.  I’m originally from Maine.

MM: I’m Mike, I’m from Revere and I’m 30.

Okay.  So no Reveeee-yah jokes for you, then.

MM: I’ve heard ‘em all before, it’s okay.

So, how did you all come to make music together?  You’re a Boston band, but you guys are from all over the place!

N: I always intended to move to Boston with a former bandmate after living in California and playing solo there for a while.  I came out here and was in Scamper, and both Mike and Brendan Boogie were in that band with me too.  When that band dissolved, that’s when I came together with these guys to form The Future Everybody.

How does the creative process go for The Future Everybody? Do you head up the majority of the songwriting, Nate, or is it more of a collaborative project?

MG: This band started, originally, with Nate and Mike working on songs that didn’t necessarily work for Scamper.  We all kind of joined in piece-meal, and we’ve been working on the songs that were originally presented.  It’s been a lot of, “Well, what parts do we put in here?”  After that, we started working on some new material and it’s a fairly collaborative process where we all approach practice with ideas of our own.  Right now, most of the song’s are Nate’s, but we’re all looking to bring riffs and pieces of ideas into the mix.  We’ve been really successful working together in the practice space.

M: Nate comes in with a puzzle, and then we pick it up, and then we smash it, and then we rearrange the pieces.

N: It’s true.  They like to smash my songs.

The Future Everybody sounds like a pretty destructive creative group, then.

V: And there’s dancing!

MM: Yeah.  A lot of parts require dancing, especially during practice.

So, what’s the signature dance move of The Future Everybody, then?

N: I’d say it’s Morgan’s stutter step.  I’m going to be introducing a running man this evening.

MM: I’m going to be introducing a very over-exaggerated snare drum hit.

MG: There’s a lot of guitar swinging, actually.

N: Yes.  Watch your head.

V: I don’t do much, because I’m hiding behind a keyboard.

You can totally headbang, though….

V: Oh, yeah!  There’s definitely some headbanging going on.  I need to grow my hair out a little bit for that, though-

N: And THIS is where the interview turns into talking about Veronica’s hair once again.

V: Yeah.  It happens a lot.  There was a 27-email Gmail thread about it once.

MM: The ones about shows, where we’re gonna play, if we’re gonna record, those emails elicit maybe one or two responses. The outfits and haircuts threads seem to stretch for MILES.

Of the songs that you guys have played for us so far or that you’re currently writing, do you have any favorites?  What songs of The Future Everybody stand out?

MG: I’m a big fan with “Running With The Devil” and “Sweet Home Alabama.”

MM: We’re actually only playing “Freebird” tonight and we are going to extend it so that it’s twenty minutes long.

N: I’m actually a big fan of the Kelly Clarkson tribute nights we’ve done.  Why are you laughing?

(Edit: Hil wasn’t laughing.  She was giving Nate the eyebrow of judgment.)

N: Ultimately, we love all the songs that we’re playing, so we don’t really pick favorites, you know?

MM: It’s still in the early stages of the band and everything is still new and exciting, so there are definitely a couple of songs that have come together, and there are some that are easier to play or a lot more fun because we have them down, but I think that the songs are all equally great.

N: It’s a set full of hit singles. (Laughs)

MG: We’re going straight to the top. Like a BULLET.

MM: Yeah, I’d say our favorite song is always the new song.

N: In terms collaboration, we have been working on this new song, and it’s the first time that we’ve really brought it in kind of fresh and opened it up to everybody’s interpretation.  I’m super excited about the way it’s going.  I was in Scamper for all my life, now it’s a whole new group of people, and it’s exciting.

MG: You should have seen him when he was a little baby playing in Scamper.  Back then, the guitar was kind of big, but he could still do the jumps with the diaper and everything!

M: Don’t forget about the time he shocked himself when he drooled on his guitar…

N: Thanks guys.  Moving forward, I do think that the songs will be more exciting once we all have a hand in it.  I don’t have any intention to be the dictator front man, or anything.

Now, Nate and Mike, you guys were in Scamper.  Matt, you play in eight gajillion different Boston bands on any given weeknight.  How does The Future Everybody compare, on artistic and personal levels, to other projects you’ve been a part of?

MM: I feel like Nate and I have a formula and we know what we want to do, but everybody adds something to the music and that’s the most exciting part of The Future Everybody.  Not only has every idea been a good idea, but it’s changed the production of the song and it wouldn’t necessarily have changed had it just been the two of us.

N: The Future Everybody is definitely full of fresh perspective.  Things definitely got a little stale with Scamper.  I’m not gonna talk trash about that band, but we kind of ran out of ideas, you know?  It’s nice to break out of that mold and write stuff that fits outside of that mold, and that’s what this band is about for me.

Let’s talk about Boston.   Who are some of your favorite Boston bands or acts on the Boston music scene that you make sure to see live when you can?

N: Kelly Clarkson. (Laughs) All of my absolute favorite bands in Boston broke up, to be perfectly frank!

MM: We’re trying to rediscover the Boston music scene.  I like The Motion Sick; I like the Brendan Boogie Band…

It sounds like you’re listing bands that you’re billing with for this BBCU event.

MM: I really do love them though!  And I like The Lights Out a lot.

V: Yeah, they’re great guys.

M: I like Pretty Nice there’s this frantic kind of Of Montreal meets Punk thing I’ve seen a couple of times.  They’re awesome and they blow my mind consistently.

V: I love MEandJOANCOLLINS. They’re great, too.

M: Hallelujah the Hills!

MM: Aloud, gotta love Aloud.

N: Yeah, Scamper had a great history with Aloud.  I honestly don’t know if Baker is still a band-

They are, actually!  Conan, Andy and Steve are now together as The Frosty Pines.

N: We absolutely adore them.  We love those kids.  Steven Lord’s last name is very appropriate as he is a god.

We’ve talked about your favorite Boston bands, but what about your favorite Boston venues?  Where do you love playing in Boston and where do you like to see shows here?

N: The Middle East is home for me, both Upstairs and Downstairs.  Great memories in both rooms.

MG: I like Church, The Middle East and TT’s, even if the sound can be weird at TT’s occasionally.

MM: I absolutely love playing The Lizard Lounge.  Every time we played there, I just loved that intimate feel.  It’s a great spot to play.

V: I like The Middle East!  Church is also probably one of my favorite venues in Boston.

N: You know what?  The list of favorite Boston venues is shorter than it used to be.  Shout out to the Abbey Lounge!

MM: Yeah, there’s some sort of diner going in it’s place now…

In terms of your fans in Boston, how has it been for you so far?

N: We’ve played one show, and it’s hard to tell: You draw a great crowd because everybody’s curious.  We had a great show and we’ll find out in an hour how we do at the second show, and we’ll go from there!  I mean, hopefully people like it, but who knows.

If we were to steal your iPods right now and look up your “Recently Added” or “Recently Played” lists, what bands and artists would we find?  What songs can’t the members of The Future Everybody get out of their heads?

MG: For better or worse you’d see a lot of Guns N’ Roses because I’m playing a Guns N’ Roses tribute show with Morgan.

M: Yup.  I was just complaining that I had “Nitrate” stuck in my FREAKIN’ head for like, eight days.

MG: Also, Joy Division for me.

M: I like Sondre Lerche a lot and Bon Iver, too.  I’ve been listening to a lot of Beirut lately as well.

N: Kelly Clarkson, absolutely.  I’m drawing a blank.  I don’t even know what I’m listening to right now.  I’m listening to The Beatles.  I’m ALWAYS listening to The Beatles.

MM: I recently discovered a band called The Morning Benders.  I followed iTunes Genius, of all things, and I clicked every song and I just think they’re amazing.  I downloaded the whole album immediately.

So, what’s next for The Future Everybody?

N: We’re beginning to start turning the wheels about recording, probably in the new year and after the holidays are over.  We absolutely want to record the record in Boston.  We’ll see where the road takes us.