Interviews

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

John O'Regan (Diamond Rings)

Sure, when you first see the face of John O'Regan, aka Diamond Rings, you might notice all that colorful makeup across his face. And you might notice the shiny lips as well. And you might call him "glam" and not pay attention to much else.

But I think you'd be missing the point.

Because, you see, this is about a lot more than a guy wearing makeup. It's about theatre, and while Diamond Rings is, in his words, "fastidious" in his songwriting process, he also likes to engage his audience in the visual aspect of his craft. After all, he's been an illustrator for longer than he's been a songwriter. It's a creative outlet that, as you'll read, informs his songwriting process. For one, the way he approaches the subject of a painting resembles the way he approaches the topic of a song. But what's interesting is that he has no idea what a song is going to be about until he picks up a guitar and starts playing. He's not one to approach songwriting with a ready-made idea.

Electronic, Electro Indie, Indie, Indie Pop, Synth PopBen OpipariDecember 2, 2010diamond rings, durbervilles, john oregan, something else, special affectionsComment

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 patchwork Comment

Matt Cherry, Maserati

In November 2009, Maserati drummer Jerry Fuchs died in a terrible accident. The band was in the middle of recording their new release, Pyramid of the Sun, when it happened. They released the album this week, and on it they pay tribute to Fuchs. Maserati are an instrumental band, so as band member Matt Cherry explains, during the recording process they constantly asked themselves what Fuchs would have done to a song, and they let that idea take precedence.

Temp. Residence Records, RockBen OpipariNovember 12, 2010jerry fuchs, maserati, matt cherry, pyramid of the sunComment

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

Lissie

Are you in the market for a great songwriter who doubles as a fantastic cleaning lady? If you need someone who can clean your cabinets and pen a mean chorus, look no further than Lissie. You see, Lissie likes organization. She needs things to be clean and orderly in the space around her. For example, she likes to put things in pouches. Then she puts those pouches inside other pouches.

The irony in all of this obsession with order is that her writing process is anything but organized. Lissie is all about the stream of consciousness process, where she just lets everything flow out in one giant mess that she organizes later. For thirty minutes, she'll just write, with little regard for how it looks or what's coming out. For someone who insists on the proper placement of the salt and pepper shaker at the dinner table, this can be surprising.

Country, Country Folk, Folk, Folk Rock, Fat Possum Records, Singer/SongwriterBen OpipariNovember 2, 2010catching a tiger, fat possum, interview, lissieComment

Alain Johannes

In Macbeth, Shakespeare writes, "Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak/Whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break." Faced with loss, we must give voice to our feelings so that we can begin some semblance of recovery. For Alain Johannes, there was no other option. In 2008, Natasha Shneider, his partner in every sense of the word--in romance, in friendship, and in music--died of cancer at the age of 42. They had been together for 25 years.

Out of this grief came Jonannes' solo release Spark (Rekords Rekords). On display are all of the emotions Johannes felt after Shneider's death, from grief to anger to celebration. The album was completed in only four days; in his words, Johannnes was "pregnant" with the inspiration and ideas for it. It just had to be made, because the lyrics were ready to burst forth. He made Spark much for his own benefit: to heal, and to pay tribute to Shneider. But while the inspiration part of the process was easy, it came from a very raw state. As Dante wrote, "No greater grief than to remember joy when misery is at hand."

Influencers, Rock, Hard Rock, AlternativeBen OpipariOctober 27, 2010alain johannes, cigar box, eleven, natasha shneider, qotsa, queens of the stone age, spark, tcv, them crooked vultures Comments

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

Grace Potter, Grace Potter & the Nocturnals

Ah, the topics of inspirations for songwriters: love, heartbreak, the wind, the trees, the water, the conversations around them . . . and, in Grace Potter's case, the Plan B contraceptive pill.

Sure, the frontwoman of Grace Potter and the Nocturnals gets inspired by the usually bevy of songwriting topics, but she gets inspired everywhere—even, as you’ll read, by a Plan B birth pill commercial that she saw while in her hotel room. Of course, the theme has universality—the “doings and undoings” in life—but Potter’s ability to be inspired anywhere is a part of her songwriting talent. Perhaps it started in her high school English class, where she found great value in the brainstorming technique called freewriting, those bursts of five minute stream-of-consciousness writing sessions where you never stop writing. Even if you can’t think of a topic, you write, “I can’t think of a topic.” High school, as you’ll find out, was also a place where Potter staged a mini-revolt against the computer as a symbol of technology. She preferred to compose on a typewriter, so she typed a manifesto of sorts to the students and taped it up around the school, advocating something to the effect of “kill the computer.”

Pop, RockBen OpipariSeptember 26, 2010grace potter, grace potter and the nocturnals, nocturnals, songwriting, vermontComment

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