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| | You guys are in the studio recording right now. Who’s producing the album?
We’re producing it ourselves in our own studio. We’ve been building the studio for the past year and a half. We did our last EP in it. Since then we’ve made a bunch of improvements. We’re completely doing it ourselves. It’s challenging. I’m mostly engineering it. I’m learning a lot.
How is that changing the recording process?
It means I don’t yell into the other room to the engineer “Hey, can we do it again?” I have to run back and forth between the engineering room and the recording space. There’s a lot more running around, but it’s a lot cheaper too.
Where are you in the recording process?
We’re probably about two-thirds of the way through this one. We still have about four more songs that we haven’t done anything on yet. About eight are pretty much close to done. We’re supposed to turn it into the label on October 15th. Before that it has to be mastered and get all that work done, so we really need to be done in about three weeks or less.
When are you hoping to have it released?
It’s going to be out in February.
Is there a tentative title?
No, we don’t have a title for it yet. (Laughs)
I guess it’s still pretty early?
Yeah. We had a working title for a long time but a lot of the songs changed so that means that the certain tone of the album has changed. So we’re just not sure yet. We haven’t quite gotten there. We have to pretty soon.
You said you’ve seen a shift in the tone. Could you talk about that a little bit?
The bulk of these songs were written a year and a half ago. We’ve done two albums where we’ve had half the songs when we went into the studio. And that was fine. Our very first album was songs that we’d been playing for a year and a half and we knew them very well. And when we did the next album, we really wanted to know the songs like that. We didn’t want to concoct them in the studio and not be able to play them later and sort of hate them. So that was our plan, to have a bunch of songs that we knew really well. I think we mostly succeeded, except for the fact that over the past year we learned we didn’t like some of those songs and a whole bunch of new ones got written. We’ve revamped that a little bit. But the main idea is to record stuff that we’ve already been playing for a year or so. It’s more a matter of new songs happening and just changing what we originally had conceived.
You guys are doing a show at Maxwell’s in Hoboken. Is that a one-stop show or is it going to be a tour?
We’re going on tour as a duo, Flora and myself. It’s been kind of hard to get the band on tour right now. Our drummer had a baby earlier this year and our bass player moved a little bit far away. So we’ve been revamping and doing a bunch of duo shows, like acoustic shows. We’re going on tour with Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion. It’s Arlo Guthrie’s daughter and her husband. They tour all over the place. We’re hooking up with them for a two-week tour.
Has it been easy revamping the songs?
There’s some we definitely won’t play because they don’t really work as a duo. But most of them are fine because most of them were written that way. Flora and I have actually been doing duo shows on and off for many years. To do a whole tour like that is pretty new but we certainly do one-off shows like that pretty regularly.
Speaking of Flora, do we get to hear more of her on this record?
She does as much singing as she wants. (Laughs) There are no restrictions on her. I think if you asked her she would probably say, I don’t want to put words in her mouth, but she would probably say that she likes the role that she’s in. She definitely has a couple of her own songs on this one. She gets to choose them and I’ll be like, “okay, I liked that one but you can have it.” (Laughs) No, it’s fine. So yeah, she’ll be doing a couple.
That’s great to hear.
She could do more, but she’s pretty good where she’s at. She’ll probably do her own album someday.
Oh yeah?
I’m hoping, yes.
Is that something you would ever do?
Yeah, I mean I have a couple of solo albums out from years before and I probably will. In fact, the bunch of songs we’re recording for this album were originally maybe going to be a solo album because it looked like, back in 2009, like the band might take a little break, but we didn’t.
What made you decide to make those songs Winterpills songs?
They just sounded like Winterpills songs. I mean, trying to do a solo record, it should be material that’s somehow really different than what the band does. I couldn’t really argue that these songs were different in terms of the tone or just the overall sound of it. I recorded demos and gave them to the band and they said it sounded like us. I think if I did some weird electronic project that the band would tell me to go do that on my own. So it’s not on the table for the moment. Maybe down the road.
Going back to the tour, is that going to be just an east coast tour?
It’s mostly northeast and into the south and a bit in the Midwest. We’ll see how it goes. It started off as two dates and turned into two weeks. We’re trying to get up into Canada with it, but we haven’t been able to make that happen. Maybe in the winter.
Well I know one person that would love for you to play Toronto (Lueda).
(Laughs) Yeah, I’d love to play Toronto. We haven’t played there yet. We played Montreal a while ago, but there’s no place like Toronto.
Are there any plans for after this tour or is that looking too far ahead?
We’re booking stuff for the release in February. I think between this tour and that time we’re going to be dealing with getting promotional stuff ready and then we’ll do a tour after that. I guess we’re probably going to go to South By Southwest this year. We took two years off of that because it’s such a waste of time. But it is a lot of fun. It’s a big expense to go eat a lot of tacos and drink a lot of beer. (Laughs) But coming from the winter it’s a welcome change for sure. Have you been down to South By Southwest?
No, I haven’t.
It’s really fun, maybe this year.
I’d love to. Take me with you. I’ll sell your merch.
(Laughs) Yeah, you can sell our merch and chronicle the journey. You can liveblog it. “It’s hot. I can’t believe they’re listening to Bob Seger.” Nah, we don’t listen to Bob Seger.
So then what do you guys listen to?
It’s a funny thing, because everyone brings so much music. It used to be, ten years ago, there would be piles of CDs. Now everyone just brings their iPod. I think we mostly share tastes. We find that driving in complete silence is very nice too. (Laughs) We get oversaturated with music. But we listen to everything. I wish I could name something, but I’m afraid I just can’t. It’s all over the map. If you name something I could say yes or no.
Bob Seger?
Not me. Dennis. Dennis loves Bob Seger. No, he doesn’t. Actually I don’t know. I’ve never actually asked him if he likes Bob Seger.
Well thank you, it’s certainly been a pleasure talking with you.
It’s very nice to talk to you too!
I’ll see you guys in November in Maxwell’s!
Yay! It’ll be fun!
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11:52 AM on 01/10/12 | I'm glad I built myself an igloo I was just re-reading this interview after listening to the newest record. One of my favorite interviews! | | |
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