Interviews

Posts in Indie Rock

Ben Fox, Dinosaur Bones

At the end of my interview with Ben Fox, the singer/guitarist and songwriter for the Toronto-based Dinosaur Bone s, he was noticeably relieved that I did not make any reference to paleontology. And I think I promised him that I wouldn’t even discuss dinosaurs or prehistorical times in this introduction. But Ben, I have to go back on that promise, because after listening to our interview, I must say that a dinosaur analogy is perfect here. So bear with me.

When we call people or companies “dinosaurs,” it’s not a compliment. What we mean is that they are behind the times, old-fashioned, stale. And therein lies the irony with Dinosaur Bones the band, because Ben Fox’s creative process is anything but stale. In fact, as you’ll read, what’s unique about his songwriting is that he turns the whole thing on its head. While most songwriters begin their creative process with chord progressions, with Fox that part always comes last.

Dine Alone Records, Indie, Indie RockBen OpipariDecember 22, 2010ben fox, birthright, dine alone, dinosaur bones, ice hotels, toronto Comment

Matt Pryor, The Get Up Kids

The Get Up Kids formed in 1995 in Kansas and were a major player in the second wave of emo. They enjoyed considerable success, both in worldwide touring and record sales, before disbanding in 2005. Relatively speaking, back then life was pretty uncomplicated for singer and guitarist Matt Pryor. Sure, he was busy touring the world and writing music. But at least he didn’t have kids.

The Get Up Kids have reunited for a new tour and record. And now, Pryor is the married father of three kids ages eight and under. His family informs—in a good way—everything he does now as a songwriter. He is a devoted family man. He takes the kids to school in the morning and writes when they are gone. He puts them to bed and writes when they are asleep. His band schedule revolves around his wife's graduate school schedule. He’s even written two children’s records. As the father of three kids ages seven and under, I can appreciate Pryor's life. But as Pryor told me, people ask him, “Well why can’t you just find time to write?” To which he responds, "Unless you have kids, you just don’t understand.”

Alternative, Indie Rock, Indie, Vagrant Records, InfluencersBen OpipariDecember 7, 2010emo, family, get up kids, kansas, matt pryor, the get up kids, there are rules, vagrant records Comments

Scott Hutchison, Frightened Rabbit

The literary history of the British Isles is filled with writers for whom the water played a major role. There's Virginia Woolf, William Butler Yeats, Dylan Thomas, James Joyce, and Shakespeare, among many others. This is hardly surprising, of course, given that they lived on an island and were surrounded by water.

So it made sense that Scott Hutchison, singer and songwriter for the Scottish band Frightened Rabbit, took to the seaside to write their latest album, The Winter of Mixed Drinks on FatCat Records. Hutchison wrote the songs only about 100 meters from the water. Unsurprisingly, the water had a powerful effect not just on his inspiration, but on the finished product itself: he noticed, upon listening to the album, that many of the songs had a cadence and rhythm that matched the crashing of the waves onto the beach.

Hutchison's success as a songwriter also depends, as you'll read, on his ability to make songwriting a routine, something that many songwriters are loathe to do. He sets aside time to write instead of waiting until he feels like doing it. Hutchison finds that this method of enforced discipline yields the best songs. It's a habit that began in college, when he was studying art and illustration; Hutchison was often done with projects in the late afternoon, while his friends toiled well into the night.

Fat Cat Records, Indie, Indie Rock, Indie FolkBen OpipariNovember 22, 2010fat cat, fatcat, frightened rabbit, frightened rabbits, scott hutchinson, scott hutchison, the winter of mixed drinks Comment

Corin Tucker, Sleater Kinney

What is it with the connection between manual labor and songwriting? Corin Tucker becomes the third interviewee (Grace Potter and Lissie being the others) to tell me that working around the house inspires her to write, be it housework or yardwork. Tucker offers an explanation: the time when brain and hands are moving is "meditative time" that stimulates creativity.

We know Corin Tucker as the singer and guitarist for Sleater-Kinney. In October she released a solo album entitled 1,000 Years (KillRockStars) that she called "a middle aged mom record." In her late thirties, Tucker is a mother of two with a full-time job outside the record industry. And the routine of her writing process reflects that: her day job has given her a healthy respect for deadlines when it comes to writing, even though she often can't work on meeting those deadlines until after she puts the kids to bed.

Influencers, Kill Rock Stars Records, Sub Pop Records, Indie, Indie Rock, PunkBen OpipariNovember 16, 20101000 years, corin tucker, kill rock stars, killrockstars, sleater kinney Comment

Dave Davison, Maps & Atlases

Dave Davison doesn't really understand the label “math rock” that some people have given his band Maps and Atlases. Math rock the music, like mathematics the subject, after all, requires “coldness and calculation,” according to Davison. But the four members of Maps and Atlases met at Columbia College in Chicago—an art school. Davison majored in cultural studies, Erin Elders and Chris Hainey were film majors, and Shiraz Dada majored in sound engineering. As a band, they’ve been called math rock because of their complex rhythmic structures and unconventional time signatures. But with their debut release Perch Patchwork (Barsuk Records), they've written what critics have called a more accessible sound. Regardless, Maps & Atlases plays some wonderfully unique and creative music. But that's what you get when four guys from art school start a band.

Alternative, Indie, Indie Rock, Math Rock, Sargent House Records, Barsuk Records, Fat Cat RecordsBen OpipariNovember 15, 2010barsuk, dave davison, maps & atlases, maps and atlases, perch patchworkComment

Rocky Votolato

It might not be a stretch to say that writing saved the life of singer/songwriter Rocky Votolato. After the release of his previous album The Brag & Cuss, Votolato suffered bouts of depression and anxiety so severe that he barely left his apartment for a year. To overcome this, he did two things: he read and he wrote.

What struck me most, as I talked to Votolato backstage before his show at the Black Cat in DC two weeks ago, was how writing, for him, was an act of survival. While he wrote his latest album True Devotion (Barsuk Records) to appeal to his fans, of course, he found that he needed the album even more than they did. Writing became an act of therapy for Votolato, who told me, "I used to see suicide as a viable option for existential suffering. I used to think it was a fine choice, a justified choice." Votolato no longer feels that way, but those were dark times, made bright by the power of the written word.

Alt Country, Folk, Indie, Indie Rock, Indie Folk, Barsuk RecordsBen OpipariNovember 8, 2010barsuk, interview, makers, rocky votolato, true devotion, waxwing Comment

Patrick Stickles, Titus Andronicus

There were only a few times during my talk with Patrick Stickles, singer and songwriter for Titus Andronicus, that our conversation felt like an interview. Instead, it really felt more lit an upper-level lit seminar. This is what we talked about: Camus, Faulkner, reader response literary theory, and whether a text has any inherent meaning. The depth of our conversation reflects not just Stickles' concern with the songwriting process but the anxiety of being a writer and his concern with whether the audience (and by audience, I mean the people hearing or reading his words) understands his authorial intent. It takes Stickles months to finish a song, and indication of the care he takes to craft that message. The result is an album like The Monitor, a concept album loosely based on the Civil War and civil war: it's about both the historical event and Stickles' existential angst.

Indie, Indie Rock, Punk, XL Records, Merge RecordsBen OpipariOctober 21, 2010amy andronicus, amy klein, patrick stickles, the airing of grievances, the monitor, titus andronicus, xl recordingsComment

Wes Miles, Ra Ra Riot

Remember all those physics majors in college who spent their time holed up in labs? If they are anything like Wes Miles, the songwriter for Ra Ra Riot, they might very well be writing songs as well as working with spectrometers. That's not to say that Miles (a physics major and 2006 graduate of Syracuse University) was writing music when he should have been working with mass and magnets; instead, it's pretty clear that being a physics major has made Miles a better songwriter. This is not the first time a songwriter has told me that, as you'll read, and it's something that I find fascinating. It's easy to see the link between, say, writing lyrics and reading literature, but I'm intrigued by the link between music and mathematics.

So read my interview with Wes Miles of Ra Ra Riot. You'll learn more about how being a physics major helps him as a songwriter, how many of his lyrics start as pure gibberish, and why he likes Wuthering Heights.

Indie, Indie Rock, Arts + Crafts Records, Barsuk RecordsBen OpipariOctober 13, 2010boy, physics, ra ra riot, syracuse, the orchard, too dramatic, wes milesComment

Hutch Harris, The Thermals

One of the things I always ask writers to do here is describe their ideal writing environment, where they would be the most productive. Most mention someplace scenic, whether it’s the water, the woods, or high above a landscape looking down. Whatever it is, it’s a place of beauty.

Then there’s Hutch Harris of The Thermals, the anti-hero of the picturesque writing environment. Whatever is in front of him, it’s probably too much. He doesn’t want the sea, the trees, a gazebo, or a bay window. He wants nothing. Just white walls. Anything else is a distraction. That’s why I told him that if he ever does time, he could write The Great American Novel. Or if he ever becomes a monk, that would also work.

Indie, Indie Rock, Kill Rock Stars Records, Punk, Saddle Creek Records, Sub Pop RecordsBen OpipariSeptember 22, 2010hutch harris, kill rock stars, killrockstars, personal life, the thermals, thermalsComment

Orenda Fink, Azure Ray

If you are an Azure Ray fan, you can thank a psychic. Not just any psychic, but a single online psychic back in the internet's infancy of the mid 1990s. We don't know this person's name--we know it's a man, at least--but he told Orenda Fink to start writing songs as a method of catharsis to deal with some issues in her life. This was during a time when she was writing what she calls "sugary pop," so it was quite a shock for someone to suggest this sea change in her songwriting themes. But she listened to him, and you are reading this now. And if he really is a psychic, he'll know about this interview and read it too.

The newly reformed Azure Ray, consisting of Fink and Maria Taylor, drops Drawing Down the Moon on Saddle Creek Records this month.

Indie, Indie Rock, Dream Pop, Saddle Creek RecordsBen OpipariSeptember 8, 2010azure ray, maria taylor, orenda fink, saddle creek, saddle creek records, saddlecreek, the faint, todd finkComment

Bethany Cosentino, Best Coast (2010)

Sure, Best Coast is bikini beach lo-fi pop, and Bethany Cosentino says that she doesn't think too much about her lyrics. But she is a huge fan of David Foster Wallace, arguably one of the most influential and creative writers of the past twenty years, and that gives her instant street cred in the literary world.

Best Coast is one of the hottest indie bands of the summer, and their album Crazy For You dropped at the end of July. You can read any one of the endless interviews with Cosentino on the internet, but this may be the only one without a mention of her cat. I chatted with Cosentino for a few minutes this week about California, creative non-fiction writing, David Foster Wallace, and how the weather affects her creative process.

Alternative, Indie, Indie Pop, Indie Rock, Mexican Summer RecordsBen OpipariAugust 18, 2010best coast, besty coasty, bethany cosentino, bikini beach, bobb bruno, boyfriend, california, converse, crazy for you, mexican summer, snacksComment

Steve Bays, Hot Hot Heat

Steve Bays, the singer and songwriter for Hot Hot Heat, grew up on the water, and he lives only feet from it now in Vancouver. But don’t expect him to take his guitar down to the water’s edge on a whim and start strumming, like some free-spirited songwriter with his toes in the sand and the wind in his hair (even though Bays and I did discover that we both share a love of the great guitar strummin’ songwriter Jim Croce). Like most professional writers, Bays needs structure to his writing process, and in that aspect he is unique among the songwriters I have talked to, who rely more on the inspiration of their muse. In fact, if you didn’t know better, you might think Bays dutifully goes to his office every day to write.

Alternative, Sub Pop Records, Post Punk, Indie, Indie RockBen OpipariAugust 5, 201021@12, bandages, dangerbird, dangerbird records, future breeds, hot hot heat, steve bays, tugboat placeComment

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