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![Toby Cordova and Ian Blesse
Strange Vine
3/31/12
For the record, please state your name and position in the band.
Toby: I’m Toby, and my position is guitar player and one of the singers.
Ian: My name is Ian Blesse, and I play the drums, the Fender Rhodes and I sing.
You guys just got back from SXSW, how was it?
T: A little scary I guess. We had nothing but car trouble on the way out
I: Yeah we broke down probably 5 different times and we even got a rental and then the rental broke down on us so it was a rough trip out there but the shows were awesome. SXSW was really cool. Really crazy like always, but a lot of fun.
Which do you prefer performing at more, an intimate show or a festival?
T: I guess it kind of depends on each show because the festivals ones are like really cool and everything but uh, such a bad aftertaste - but the intimate ones are pretty cool so…
I: There’s something really cool about being really close to people, and being all in one space and in the same room and then you know it’s also equally as fun to play huge out door venue with tons of people running around everywhere.
T: My favorite though is like when we’re playing like a 500 person venue and theres maybe 15 people in the crowd.
I: ( to Toby) Is that your personal fave?
T: That’s my favorite!
Have you guys started working on another record?
I: We’re actually about to take some time to work on new material and start recording. We don’t know where we’re going to record or which songs exactly but we’re pretty close to getting back into studio mode and working on another album. I don’t even know if it’s going to be a full length or not but we’re gonna start slowing down with shows and focus on recording pretty soon.
How was your experience recording Ghosts?
T: For me it was pretty awesome because that was my first time in a real studio and we recorded with Nino Moschella. He went to our same high school, but he has a great studio called Bird and Egg in Richmond which is in the Bay Area and it was like an amazing experience, for me.
I: Yeah, just being in the studio with a really good friend- something just cool and comfortable about that and not having to tip-toe around someone. Just being really familiar with the person you’re working with goes a long way when you’re in there trying to record stuff. It feels good.
I’ve noticed you guys are an unsigned band, is that by choice or are you waiting for the right one to come along?
I: We uh-
T: We have to fight them off with sticks!
I: We definitely have had people offering different deals and whatnot but I think if something comes along that makes sense for us and the people are looking at us for the right reasons, I think we’re definitely open to it. We haven’t sent in any music to anybody or anything, we never really sought that out at this point we’re kind of more focused on live shows and writing, but it’s not something that we would avoid. We just haven’t looked for it.
To Ian: How many instruments do you play during your live set?
I: Well I play the drums, and then the Fender Rhodes, but we run that through bass amps so it’s kind of like I’m playing bass lines basically on the fender rhodes, and I sing and play the guitar sometimes too, and the maraca.
How many can you play simultaneously?
I: Most of the time when we’re playing I play drums, the rhodes, and I’m singing either backups or lead vocal but it seems like people, when I play guitar and play drums at the same time, people kind of notice that I’m playing drums with one hand… I’ll be playing the whole night with mostly drums with one hand and my other hand on the rhodes and then when I go to play guitar with one hand and play drums with the other it’s like people notice for the first time that I’m actually playing drums with one hand for some reason.
T: No they think you’re a one-handed drummer.
I:We’ve had friends in the crowd before, and they overheard “Oh that poor drummer only has one arm” cuz sometimes it looks like my other arm is just sitting off to the side but I’m usually playing the piano with it.
T:Uh, I just wanted to say, he is really talented and he plays a lot of instruments and stuff, but you didn’t ask me how many beers I can drink at one time. I think I got him on that
Like, more than two?
T: No that’s about it. I’m a lightweight.
Who are your musical influences?
T: We’re both into old folky-bluesy stuff. Kind of all over the map, the both of us.
I: We have a real broad, kind of eclectic - I don’t know we don’t ever really focus on one style of music, but we listen to a lot of older blues and folk music like [Toby] said. Old gospel music, that a lot of our friend don’t really listen to but we listen to new bands. Mostly the bands we play with are the ones we’re probably influenced by because we get to see a lot of really cool live shows and play with some of our favorite bands actually which is pretty rad. Off the top of my head, The Growlers, The Fling, and We Barbarians, The Black Keys, Delta Spirit, and Dr. Dog. We have a lot of different influences.
Anything else you both would like to add?
T: I’m gonna have a little girl in about three weeks. That’s pretty amazing. We had our childbirth classes today.
I: (To Toby) What did you learn today?
T: Oh you don’t wanna know…
I: You learn any breathing stuff?
T: Yeah, a lot of breathing stuff. We have to do one thats like, five seconds in through your nose and then seven seconds out through your mouth. That’s for when you have a big contractions.
I: This interview got weird really quick.
I interviewed these guys about three weeks ago, so a big congrats to Toby and his family and I wish them all the best.
I enjoyed interviewing these guys a lot. It was the first time I’ve ever interviewed a band in their car, and it was quite an experience. They were also really kind, and after the interview they gave me one of their shirts that I’ve already worn a few times because the design is amazing. Unfortunately, I couldn’t stay for their show at Cafe Du Nord after the interview, but I look forward to seeing them in the summer.
Hope you enjoyed!
-Jalapeño](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m2ztdi9XN71r4v3llo1_400.jpg)
Toby Cordova and Ian Blesse
Strange Vine3/31/12For the record, please state your name and position in the band.Toby: I’m Toby, and my position is guitar player and one of the singers.Ian: My name is Ian Blesse, and I play the drums, the Fender Rhodes and I sing.You guys just got back from SXSW, how was it?T: A little scary I guess. We had nothing but car trouble on the way outI: Yeah we broke down probably 5 different times and we even got a rental and then the rental broke down on us so it was a rough trip out there but the shows were awesome. SXSW was really cool. Really crazy like always, but a lot of fun.Which do you prefer performing at more, an intimate show or a festival?T: I guess it kind of depends on each show because the festivals ones are like really cool and everything but uh, such a bad aftertaste - but the intimate ones are pretty cool so…I: There’s something really cool about being really close to people, and being all in one space and in the same room and then you know it’s also equally as fun to play huge out door venue with tons of people running around everywhere.T: My favorite though is like when we’re playing like a 500 person venue and theres maybe 15 people in the crowd.I: ( to Toby) Is that your personal fave?T: That’s my favorite!Have you guys started working on another record?I: We’re actually about to take some time to work on new material and start recording. We don’t know where we’re going to record or which songs exactly but we’re pretty close to getting back into studio mode and working on another album. I don’t even know if it’s going to be a full length or not but we’re gonna start slowing down with shows and focus on recording pretty soon.How was your experience recording Ghosts?T: For me it was pretty awesome because that was my first time in a real studio and we recorded with Nino Moschella. He went to our same high school, but he has a great studio called Bird and Egg in Richmond which is in the Bay Area and it was like an amazing experience, for me.I: Yeah, just being in the studio with a really good friend- something just cool and comfortable about that and not having to tip-toe around someone. Just being really familiar with the person you’re working with goes a long way when you’re in there trying to record stuff. It feels good.I’ve noticed you guys are an unsigned band, is that by choice or are you waiting for the right one to come along?I: We uh-T: We have to fight them off with sticks!I: We definitely have had people offering different deals and whatnot but I think if something comes along that makes sense for us and the people are looking at us for the right reasons, I think we’re definitely open to it. We haven’t sent in any music to anybody or anything, we never really sought that out at this point we’re kind of more focused on live shows and writing, but it’s not something that we would avoid. We just haven’t looked for it.To Ian: How many instruments do you play during your live set?I: Well I play the drums, and then the Fender Rhodes, but we run that through bass amps so it’s kind of like I’m playing bass lines basically on the fender rhodes, and I sing and play the guitar sometimes too, and the maraca.How many can you play simultaneously?I: Most of the time when we’re playing I play drums, the rhodes, and I’m singing either backups or lead vocal but it seems like people, when I play guitar and play drums at the same time, people kind of notice that I’m playing drums with one hand… I’ll be playing the whole night with mostly drums with one hand and my other hand on the rhodes and then when I go to play guitar with one hand and play drums with the other it’s like people notice for the first time that I’m actually playing drums with one hand for some reason.T: No they think you’re a one-handed drummer.I:We’ve had friends in the crowd before, and they overheard “Oh that poor drummer only has one arm” cuz sometimes it looks like my other arm is just sitting off to the side but I’m usually playing the piano with it.T:Uh, I just wanted to say, he is really talented and he plays a lot of instruments and stuff, but you didn’t ask me how many beers I can drink at one time. I think I got him on thatLike, more than two?T: No that’s about it. I’m a lightweight.Who are your musical influences?T: We’re both into old folky-bluesy stuff. Kind of all over the map, the both of us.I: We have a real broad, kind of eclectic - I don’t know we don’t ever really focus on one style of music, but we listen to a lot of older blues and folk music like [Toby] said. Old gospel music, that a lot of our friend don’t really listen to but we listen to new bands. Mostly the bands we play with are the ones we’re probably influenced by because we get to see a lot of really cool live shows and play with some of our favorite bands actually which is pretty rad. Off the top of my head, The Growlers, The Fling, and We Barbarians, The Black Keys, Delta Spirit, and Dr. Dog. We have a lot of different influences.Anything else you both would like to add?T: I’m gonna have a little girl in about three weeks. That’s pretty amazing. We had our childbirth classes today.I: (To Toby) What did you learn today?T: Oh you don’t wanna know…I: You learn any breathing stuff?T: Yeah, a lot of breathing stuff. We have to do one thats like, five seconds in through your nose and then seven seconds out through your mouth. That’s for when you have a big contractions.I: This interview got weird really quick.I interviewed these guys about three weeks ago, so a big congrats to Toby and his family and I wish them all the best.I enjoyed interviewing these guys a lot. It was the first time I’ve ever interviewed a band in their car, and it was quite an experience. They were also really kind, and after the interview they gave me one of their shirts that I’ve already worn a few times because the design is amazing. Unfortunately, I couldn’t stay for their show at Cafe Du Nord after the interview, but I look forward to seeing them in the summer.Hope you enjoyed!
-Jalapeño
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Keith Goodwin
Good Old War
3/24/12You were just at SXSW. How was it?
It was awesome. You know, you get to see a lot of the bands that we’re friends with, a lot of bands that we like listening to, and see their show. It’s just awesome. There’s a lot of great music there.
Who was your favorite band there?
Probably Maps and Atlases.
How did the audience respond to your new songs?
I think they liked them, I mean they were singing them so I feel like that’s a good sign. -It feels good, you know?
In general, do you know how your fans responded to your recent release, Come Back As Rain?
I think pretty well. I can really only go by the internet, maybe people showing up and singing along, but i haven’t really seen many negative remarks about the album. It’s all been pretty positive.
Do you have a favorite song off of your latest album, “Come Back As Rain”?
I really love “Amazing Eyes”. I also love “Not Quite Happiness” a few kind of mellow ones on the record. They really hit me in a big spot. I think “Better Weather” is really cool - I like ‘em all really.
What influences G.O.W’s music?
Well we’re influenced by a lot of things, like good and bad things, life in general, you know? We write about how we feel, so there may be something bad going on in our lives and we feel like expressing ourselves in the situation. Then there’s also really good things that happen and we write a song about that, and it’s pretty sweet! And for musical influences it’s really all over the place because we listen to all different kinds of music. Again, it’s like we’re influenced by the good and the bad and if we hear something we don’t like then I’m never going to do anything like that, you know? Same with things that we do like. If it’s something that we love then we’ll try to do something like that and put our flavor to it. We’re really influenced by anything. I think maybe lyrical content seems to be a lot about missing home, missing out on things when we’re not home because we’re on the road all the time. So there’s that longing to be home, and there’s things that change at home when we go away for months at a time. I think that probably influenced a lot of the songs.
What has influenced you personally to play music?
I used to watch my dad and his friends play, and I thought it was the coolest thing. I guess because I used to watch them, I was able to kind of sing along, sing notes and everything. when my friends in middle school started playing music, I was like “I need to learn how to play guitar. I need to learn how to play with them.” So that’s what I did and maybe the fact that I was making songs and singing them at a young age and the girls were lovin’ it and I was like “This is awesome! I’m gonna keep doin’ it.” So that was some of the influence, and also just good music I was listening to.
What were you listening to?
At the time, when I started; Nirvana, Metallica, Blink 182 - It was really all over the place because, you know, I was listening to the stuff my parents listened to; Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel, The Beatles.
If you were to play a different genre of music, what would it be?
Well I like making beats on programs on the computer. So I guess like R&B. Hip-Hop would be sweet. So yeah stuff like that. I just like pop music in general, any kind of pop that I’m down to make.
Is there something that your fans don’t know about the band?
I think everybody pretty much knows everything. I’m not gonna be able to give you any dirt. There really isn’t much dirt anyway. In this band we try to keep it real chill because we’ve all been in other bands that have kind of fallen apart. So in this band we’re just like ”Alright, let’s just agree on what music we want to play. Treat other with respect. Give each other the space that we need. And just try to enjoy it” - because we are gone a lot of the year and we are together 24 hours a day so in order to make it so that there isn’t that much drama we just kind of keep it chill, have a good time, have fun, and not go too crazy. It’s not like that crazy “sex, drugs, and rock & roll” type thing. It’s just real relaxed.
Bands falling apart, are you referring to Days Away?
Yeah. I try to learn from my mistakes.
Was that all “sex drugs and rock & roll”?
Yeah pretty much. You gotta live and you gotta learn.
Which band, that you’ve shared the stage with, has been the worst?
Well in this band there hasn’t been any bad bands that we’ve toured with. There have been, in the past in our old band, there have been bands that weren’t friendly. We played with the band Live. They we’re like big in the 90’s. They just weren’t very friendly. I like friendly bands, I don’t like bands that act like their better than everyone else.
What is something you would like your fans to know about “Come Back As Rain”?
I think the cool thing about this album is that we really took our time with it. We had a lot of songs and we picked our favorites collectively, and we’d sit around a table and we’d talk about the lyrics and revise certain things together so everyone was happy. We played the songs a bunch of times so that, you know, when we were playing it things changed like different fills or effects like saying something differently, and we can change it then instead of changing it later after touring for a little while. So we really got it all prepared beforehand compared to the other two, I think. We would just come up with songs and then slam down in the studio and they would evolve as we play them more and more so we tried to get that on the record and I think that kind of comes through for me at least. We’re just trying to write things that mean something to us, and hopefully mean something to other people.
I haven’t been able to stop listening to Come Back As Rain for two weeks after I interviewed Keith, It’s a great album and its available for sale everywhere now. If you want to check it out before you buy it however, the entire album is available for streaming on Good Old War’s website. Hope you enjoy!
-Jalapeño
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Be Kind & Love Yourself
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![Joey Ryan & Kenneth Pattengale
The Milk Carton Kids
1/17/12
Where are you both from?
Joey: We’re from Los Angeles, California, born and raised. That’s where we met.
Did you guys go to school together?
Joey: No, we didn’t meet until we became adults and moved backed to LA and were sort of pursuing a musical career as solo artists. Played a lot of the same places around there and happened upon each other.
Where’d you move from?
Joey: I guess maybe Kenneth was always in or near LA. I went to UC Berkeley up here in the Bay Area and moved back after college.
Kenneth: (to Joey) You sound very old with your cold voice.
Joey: Thank you. Distinguished?
Kenneth: Nope. A little wimpy.
Joey: Just sick. I’ll try to young it up.
What or who has influenced you both to play music?
Joey: I think there’s some sort of weird, deep seeded psychological compulsion to do it. I definitely, personally, wouldn’t do it if I didn’t feel that compulsion. Like it was something that I had to do and there was nothing else that would make me happy cause it’s definitely not the easiest thing other than just the pleasure and fulfillment you get out of the creativity of it. I don’t know what causes that, whatever it is I’d like to know and get rid of it.
Kenneth: I’m with Joe, but I think Joe is alluding the question a little bit. But you know the normal stuff… no not really I got obsessed with big band jazz for a little while, a lot of Tom Waits, a lot of just singular song writers. The Joe Henry’s, John Prines’s, and Lucinda Williams’ of the world. The Brendan Hines was a big influence, who happens to be opening for us, and continues to be one.
Have you both always played the guitar?
Joey: No as a little kid I played piano for a couple years and growing up I played the clarinet, and picked up the guitar not until the end or middle of my college years. Kenneth was a classical cellist all growing up and then picked up about 18 other instruments along the way somehow.
Kenneth: That’s true. Joey was a dork who walked around with the clarinet during high school so then he decided to pick up the guitar and just look like a dork without the clarinet.
Joey: Yeah clarinet doesn’t have the same effect on people as the guitar does.
Do you write a lot of your songs while on the road?
Kenneth: (about Joey) He’s writing a song right now on the phone as we speak… - no hardly ever. We very recently started to spend some time in-between sound check and shows sort of just taking note of different musical ideas that come up, but largely when you’re touring the time is so strict just as far as the time-table of the evening that it’s often hard to find very much time at all to really focus and do anything. Instead, all the writing for this last album came during a hiatus where we were preparing to record the tracks that would become our first album. We had a lot of time and instead of rehearsing a lot of the songs that already existed we spent the majority of it writing the nine new songs that then appeared on the second album/the first studio album.
Oh, well it’s just that there are a lot of place names mentioned in your songs.
Joey: Well [Kenneth] described it pretty well a couple days ago. I remember someone asked saying “why so many place names in the songs?” -I think one of the most poignant things that [Kenneth] said about it was it sort of provides a backdrop and some physical imagery and a place in which the characters in the song can take shape and kind of form their story and go through whatever trials and emotions they’re gonna go through, and it provides a real nice backdrop for the characters lives. Also, each of the places that we’ve mentioned in songs are so loaded with connotation in terms of what each of those places stands for.
Kenneth: I of course said it much more eloquently than that, but it was a good idea.
Joey: That was my best paraphrase.
Kenneth: Thanks Joe.
What is each of your favorite song off Prologue?
Kenneth: Uhh boy… all of them.
Joey: They all sound so great.
Kenneth: They sound terrible… No uh, if you had a gun to my head, which is actually one of my fantasies while l’m listening to my own music because it’s so conflicted an idea. …That’s a joke. Uhm, maybe “Stealing Romance” I think. For me, the music and the lyrics were maybe one of the more ambitious undertakings musically, of late, and I thought that we knocked it out of the park so I was real pleased with that one.
Joey: Yeah that’s a good one.
Kenneth: Joe likes that one too.
Joey: No one’s ever asked that. I’ve never considered it, but I guess one thing that I do like about the record is that it plays nicely as a full album and one of the things we’ve been doing is giving it away for a free download on our website. That’s a decision we made early on to just give all of our music away for free, and one of the things that accomplishes, which i think is really valuable is that, of the 70,000 people that have downloaded it, all those people have the entire album. Which is so much more preferable to us than all those people having selected 3 or 4 songs to download from somewhere, and not really having the full picture of what it was that we endeavored to create with the album. And they also get the liner notes and the artwork and everything that we spent a lot of time putting together in order to present a complete artistic package. By giving it away the way that we’re doing, we’re making sure that everyone gets the whole thing, which is not so common anymore.
Were either of you trained vocally?
Kenneth: No quite the opposite. We were detrained vocally. No I’m kidding.
Joey: Both of us are self-taught. Both on guitar and vocals.
Kenneth: But last night there was a vocal coach over for dinner at my house who’d seen a show a few days before and marveled at some of the acrobatics that I achieved with my voice.
Joey: (to Kenneth) Is that true?
Kenneth: Well, Yes it is true, but I realized I said that very pompously. I wasn’t proud of that, I was excited to hear someone professionally muse about that and ask me if I could never not do it. I think it was like a business question for him. He was sort of probably banking that I couldn’t do it all the time, but uh, I can.
What were you doing?
Kenneth: There’s a part in a song that I sing very high and it goes from like a full body voice to a falsetto, but it’s meant to be one continuous melody and that I guess stuck out in his mind at the show and wondered if i was able to pull that off every show. I can. “Rock & Roll ‘er” the first line.
Joey: Yeah, that is impressive.
Kenneth: Thanks Joe
Joey: I’d say you land that trick a good 60-70% of the time.
Kenneth: Well, I told the vocal coach it was 100% so you better keep my secret.
Joey: No, I’m sure you do achieve the effect every time
What bands/artists are you into right now?
Kenneth: The Brendan Hines, mostly.
Joey: My favorite new discovery, sort of, we made on the road, I guess it was her sophomore album that came out last year was Sarah Jarosz. She’s this, I guess, bluegrass phenom type of girl. She’s a banjo player, but mostly a mandolin picker with the most beautiful voice as clear as a bell, and both of us, especially I, fell in love with her record over the course of last years touring. Another record, in the beginning of the year, by a guy called Trevor Manear is one that we really enjoyed on the road this year.
Kenneth: Yeah we liked those two. Honestly, I don’t listen to a lot of music; truthfully.
Joey: Me neither
Kenneth: But those two are great. We’ve taken a lot of people on the road with us this year, and opened for a lot of people that I’m a fan of. Over the Rhine being one of them, the golden Gaby Moreno, our buddy Buddy from LA, he’s pretty terrific, and The Brendan Hines.
Have you guys started working on your next album?
Kenneth: Well we have. We are going to record a new album in April, I believe. Try to have it out by August, maybe September.
Joey: That’s the first time we’ve ever officially said that. You can say you heard it here first.
* YOU READ IT HERE FIRST*
Kenneth: Yeah, but that could always change. We’ve just begun working on the songs. You know, if I were hit by a car or something next week that would probably change a little bit. So we’re doing that, September - August or September is the date. We have a few festivals to play around then, and Joey and I particularly like touring during the summer and the fall, and late spring in the US so we’re gonna be doing a lot of that too. Yeah it’s been 6 months since the album; it’s time to do another one.
What is something a lot of people don’t know about the both of you?
Joey: I don’t know if this is something that not a lot of people know, maybe they can infer it from how we interact with each other on the stage, but -
Kenneth: We’re not friends at all…
Joey: Well, actually I was gonna say something kind of similar to that.
Kenneth: Whaa, we’re best friends!
Joey: I know, well it ends up being the opposite of that.
Kenneth: What are you trying to say?
Joey: I’m trying to say that Kenneth and I, I think, have one of the most productive ways of antagonizing each other that two people have ever had. There’s a way that we sort of get at each other which usually yields this incredible result whether it’s creatively or if it’s to do with a business decision or even just an abstract conversation. It’s not all the time but sometimes - I guess we’re close enough and good enough friends that we allow ourselves to really go at each other in a lot of aspects of life and don’t really hold back from each other and I think you only do get that when you get so close to somebody and you feel comfortable doing that but the unique thing about it, I think, is that it could be destructive but for us it’s productive. so I guess what I’m trying to say is what not a lot of people know is that when we’re riding in the car together for 40 thousand miles we’re mostly just yelling at each other.
Kenneth: You’re an idiot. That’s an idiotic answer.
Joey: Do you disagree?
Kenneth: No, that’s spot on. That’s true. You’re right, for once.
I cannot praise these two guys enough. I’ve never laughed so hard during an interview, and I still laugh even after hearing the recording quite a few times. After the interview I got to stay for the show, and I enjoyed it very much. They really know how to please a crowd, and I definitely recommend going if given the chance. To download their album for free go to their website: www.themilkcartonkids.com
Hope you enjoyed!
-Jalapeño](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lyftsp8WdZ1r4v3llo1_500.jpg)
Joey Ryan & Kenneth Pattengale
The Milk Carton Kids
1/17/12Where are you both from?
Joey: We’re from Los Angeles, California, born and raised. That’s where we met.
Did you guys go to school together?
Joey: No, we didn’t meet until we became adults and moved backed to LA and were sort of pursuing a musical career as solo artists. Played a lot of the same places around there and happened upon each other.
Where’d you move from?
Joey: I guess maybe Kenneth was always in or near LA. I went to UC Berkeley up here in the Bay Area and moved back after college.
Kenneth: (to Joey) You sound very old with your cold voice.
Joey: Thank you. Distinguished?
Kenneth: Nope. A little wimpy.
Joey: Just sick. I’ll try to young it up.
What or who has influenced you both to play music?
Joey: I think there’s some sort of weird, deep seeded psychological compulsion to do it. I definitely, personally, wouldn’t do it if I didn’t feel that compulsion. Like it was something that I had to do and there was nothing else that would make me happy cause it’s definitely not the easiest thing other than just the pleasure and fulfillment you get out of the creativity of it. I don’t know what causes that, whatever it is I’d like to know and get rid of it.
Kenneth: I’m with Joe, but I think Joe is alluding the question a little bit. But you know the normal stuff… no not really I got obsessed with big band jazz for a little while, a lot of Tom Waits, a lot of just singular song writers. The Joe Henry’s, John Prines’s, and Lucinda Williams’ of the world. The Brendan Hines was a big influence, who happens to be opening for us, and continues to be one.
Have you both always played the guitar?
Joey: No as a little kid I played piano for a couple years and growing up I played the clarinet, and picked up the guitar not until the end or middle of my college years. Kenneth was a classical cellist all growing up and then picked up about 18 other instruments along the way somehow.
Kenneth: That’s true. Joey was a dork who walked around with the clarinet during high school so then he decided to pick up the guitar and just look like a dork without the clarinet.
Joey: Yeah clarinet doesn’t have the same effect on people as the guitar does.
Do you write a lot of your songs while on the road?
Kenneth: (about Joey) He’s writing a song right now on the phone as we speak… - no hardly ever. We very recently started to spend some time in-between sound check and shows sort of just taking note of different musical ideas that come up, but largely when you’re touring the time is so strict just as far as the time-table of the evening that it’s often hard to find very much time at all to really focus and do anything. Instead, all the writing for this last album came during a hiatus where we were preparing to record the tracks that would become our first album. We had a lot of time and instead of rehearsing a lot of the songs that already existed we spent the majority of it writing the nine new songs that then appeared on the second album/the first studio album.
Oh, well it’s just that there are a lot of place names mentioned in your songs.
Joey: Well [Kenneth] described it pretty well a couple days ago. I remember someone asked saying “why so many place names in the songs?” -I think one of the most poignant things that [Kenneth] said about it was it sort of provides a backdrop and some physical imagery and a place in which the characters in the song can take shape and kind of form their story and go through whatever trials and emotions they’re gonna go through, and it provides a real nice backdrop for the characters lives. Also, each of the places that we’ve mentioned in songs are so loaded with connotation in terms of what each of those places stands for.
Kenneth: I of course said it much more eloquently than that, but it was a good idea.
Joey: That was my best paraphrase.
Kenneth: Thanks Joe.
What is each of your favorite song off Prologue?
Kenneth: Uhh boy… all of them.
Joey: They all sound so great.
Kenneth: They sound terrible… No uh, if you had a gun to my head, which is actually one of my fantasies while l’m listening to my own music because it’s so conflicted an idea. …That’s a joke. Uhm, maybe “Stealing Romance” I think. For me, the music and the lyrics were maybe one of the more ambitious undertakings musically, of late, and I thought that we knocked it out of the park so I was real pleased with that one.
Joey: Yeah that’s a good one.
Kenneth: Joe likes that one too.
Joey: No one’s ever asked that. I’ve never considered it, but I guess one thing that I do like about the record is that it plays nicely as a full album and one of the things we’ve been doing is giving it away for a free download on our website. That’s a decision we made early on to just give all of our music away for free, and one of the things that accomplishes, which i think is really valuable is that, of the 70,000 people that have downloaded it, all those people have the entire album. Which is so much more preferable to us than all those people having selected 3 or 4 songs to download from somewhere, and not really having the full picture of what it was that we endeavored to create with the album. And they also get the liner notes and the artwork and everything that we spent a lot of time putting together in order to present a complete artistic package. By giving it away the way that we’re doing, we’re making sure that everyone gets the whole thing, which is not so common anymore.
Were either of you trained vocally?
Kenneth: No quite the opposite. We were detrained vocally. No I’m kidding.
Joey: Both of us are self-taught. Both on guitar and vocals.
Kenneth: But last night there was a vocal coach over for dinner at my house who’d seen a show a few days before and marveled at some of the acrobatics that I achieved with my voice.
Joey: (to Kenneth) Is that true?
Kenneth: Well, Yes it is true, but I realized I said that very pompously. I wasn’t proud of that, I was excited to hear someone professionally muse about that and ask me if I could never not do it. I think it was like a business question for him. He was sort of probably banking that I couldn’t do it all the time, but uh, I can.
What were you doing?
Kenneth: There’s a part in a song that I sing very high and it goes from like a full body voice to a falsetto, but it’s meant to be one continuous melody and that I guess stuck out in his mind at the show and wondered if i was able to pull that off every show. I can. “Rock & Roll ‘er” the first line.
Joey: Yeah, that is impressive.
Kenneth: Thanks Joe
Joey: I’d say you land that trick a good 60-70% of the time.
Kenneth: Well, I told the vocal coach it was 100% so you better keep my secret.
Joey: No, I’m sure you do achieve the effect every time
What bands/artists are you into right now?
Kenneth: The Brendan Hines, mostly.
Joey: My favorite new discovery, sort of, we made on the road, I guess it was her sophomore album that came out last year was Sarah Jarosz. She’s this, I guess, bluegrass phenom type of girl. She’s a banjo player, but mostly a mandolin picker with the most beautiful voice as clear as a bell, and both of us, especially I, fell in love with her record over the course of last years touring. Another record, in the beginning of the year, by a guy called Trevor Manear is one that we really enjoyed on the road this year.
Kenneth: Yeah we liked those two. Honestly, I don’t listen to a lot of music; truthfully.
Joey: Me neither
Kenneth: But those two are great. We’ve taken a lot of people on the road with us this year, and opened for a lot of people that I’m a fan of. Over the Rhine being one of them, the golden Gaby Moreno, our buddy Buddy from LA, he’s pretty terrific, and The Brendan Hines.
Have you guys started working on your next album?
Kenneth: Well we have. We are going to record a new album in April, I believe. Try to have it out by August, maybe September.
Joey: That’s the first time we’ve ever officially said that. You can say you heard it here first.
* YOU READ IT HERE FIRST*
Kenneth: Yeah, but that could always change. We’ve just begun working on the songs. You know, if I were hit by a car or something next week that would probably change a little bit. So we’re doing that, September - August or September is the date. We have a few festivals to play around then, and Joey and I particularly like touring during the summer and the fall, and late spring in the US so we’re gonna be doing a lot of that too. Yeah it’s been 6 months since the album; it’s time to do another one.
What is something a lot of people don’t know about the both of you?
Joey: I don’t know if this is something that not a lot of people know, maybe they can infer it from how we interact with each other on the stage, but -
Kenneth: We’re not friends at all…
Joey: Well, actually I was gonna say something kind of similar to that.
Kenneth: Whaa, we’re best friends!
Joey: I know, well it ends up being the opposite of that.
Kenneth: What are you trying to say?
Joey: I’m trying to say that Kenneth and I, I think, have one of the most productive ways of antagonizing each other that two people have ever had. There’s a way that we sort of get at each other which usually yields this incredible result whether it’s creatively or if it’s to do with a business decision or even just an abstract conversation. It’s not all the time but sometimes - I guess we’re close enough and good enough friends that we allow ourselves to really go at each other in a lot of aspects of life and don’t really hold back from each other and I think you only do get that when you get so close to somebody and you feel comfortable doing that but the unique thing about it, I think, is that it could be destructive but for us it’s productive. so I guess what I’m trying to say is what not a lot of people know is that when we’re riding in the car together for 40 thousand miles we’re mostly just yelling at each other.
Kenneth: You’re an idiot. That’s an idiotic answer.
Joey: Do you disagree?
Kenneth: No, that’s spot on. That’s true. You’re right, for once.
I cannot praise these two guys enough. I’ve never laughed so hard during an interview, and I still laugh even after hearing the recording quite a few times. After the interview I got to stay for the show, and I enjoyed it very much. They really know how to please a crowd, and I definitely recommend going if given the chance. To download their album for free go to their website: www.themilkcartonkids.com
Hope you enjoyed!
-Jalapeño
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ANTHONY GREEN - “Only Love (feat. Nate Ruess of fun.)”
from Beautiful Things available Tuesday, January 17th
Pre-order now on iTunes: http://pfr.ec/AvefSi - Link Personal blog
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Yeahhhh
Ever had that time in your life when you wished you went to the venue much later because the opening band sucks? …yeah I’m having it right now…
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RYAN SOLLEE
THE BUILDERS AND THE BUTCHERS
12/11/11Why are there two percussionists playing on one standard drum kit instead of one?
You can get a lot more interesting drum patterns if you have four hands as opposed to a foot and two hands. And it just sounds more interesting and it just makes for a different approach to songs. We like being a rock band essentially, but with that weird percussion mix it makes it really cool.
Where are you guys mostly from?
Most of the band is from Alaska, we’ve had a lot of members change, but right now four out of five member are from Alaska. I knew almost everybody before I moved to Portland from Alaska and they all moved with different bands and we formed this band a little later on. The other bands were kind of winding down so this band kind of took hold.
Why did you move to Portland, Oregon?
We all moved to Portland kind of for music, but with different bands. You can’t really do music seriously in Alaska and you can’t tour so we decided to just be in Portland and give it a shot.
I first saw you guys play two years ago at The Fillmore with Portugal. The Man. It was an amazing show, but how was that experience for you?
It was great. That tour was great. We played awesome places and The Fillmore was a total dream to play there and we can check it off the list of things to do as a band.
What is your take on your new album, Dead Reckoning?
I think it’s different. The first record we did was completely unplugged instruments, and there wasn’t any electricity it was just folk instrument. The next record was mostly that again and just better produced, and this (Dead Reckoning) actually has a lot of electric instruments on it so it’s a little bit more like a rock record. That’d be kind of the biggest difference, and also we did it pretty much live in the studio to kind of get the energy of us playing together. So it’s not quite as hi-fi as the second record, but a little bit more honest as to how we play the songs. It was straight. We just recorded it, and it felt like too simple almost. It was really weird, but it was great.
Do you have a favorite track off the record?
There’s this song called “ Out of the Mountain” that’s like a soft song kind of toward the end of the album. That’s my favorite arrangement that we’ve ever done.
What were your inspirations for this album?
Well I wrote a lot of it after being on the road a bunch, so I’m sure those experiences, but also anything can inspire a song, and it’s so random. It’s like any book, movie, or just a phrase or whatever. It’s weird like there’s no one thing that I can personally do that I’m gonna go write a song today. They just come and I have to write ‘em. It’s not like a conscious thing so I’m not sure if there was any thing that inspired it, but I was reading a lot of books about stories of survival and when people get to the end of their thing and they’re like “uhh I’m gonna die” and they survive, and that’s super interesting. Like “what is that moment like?”
If you could tour or collaborate with anyone, who would it be?
Tom Waits. He’s kind of like God when it comes to songwriting.
What are your plans after the tour?
Well we’re making a record this winter so we have a ton of songs that we’re just gonna hammer out and record in May, I think.
What’s something that a lot of people don’t know about you?
I used to be a fish biologist before I started this band. That’s my professional career. I studied Salmon and all of those things. I worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service doing stream surveys and different things. So looking for Salmon in streams and stream restoration.
Discussing Politics
I follow the band on twitter and the last post I saw was a picture of Occupy Anchorage. What is your stance on the occupy movement?
I think it’s awesome. I think that people get hung up about what they’re saying, doing or like “Oh do they have a message?” but the fact that they’re just doing it is awesome and that’s what people are kind of failing to see. That people are actually taking time out of their day to go protest or whatever is really really cool. And that it’s spreading is cool. It’s a bummer that it seems like there is a lot of discouragement by arrests and people getting maced or pepper sprayed. It’s a shame that that’s happening. I agree with 95% of what they’re saying. I went to the first day of the big protest in Portland, it was great, and a lot of people had a lot of really good things to say.
Were there a lot of people?
Yeah, like 10,000 people.
Why do you think the occupy movement is important?
Because there’s obviously huge problems with what’s happening with the country. I mean, there’s always been problems, and that’s fine, but these problems are really really -just starting with the way the medical system is done and insurance and the way the banking is done- Every avenue where there’s like rich and poor there’s a widening disparity and the times where America is great is when the middle class is the most powerful, and right now you are getting squeezed if you are a middle class person. You’re becoming a more and more poor person. And if you look at like good societies over the course of history, it’s always the flourishing middle class. People have what they want and they have everything they need, or at least they have everything they need. At least they have those basic necessities and they don’t have to think “oh should I get groceries or should I go to the hospital?” That’s why I think it’s important.
I think that regardless of if it works or not, at least more people’s eyes are opened. That’s the important thing.
Hope you enjoyed! And I would also like to add a huge congratulations to Ryan! His wife is expecting to give birth to their first child in April. All the best to him and his family!
-Jalapeño
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Debut video of Portugal. The Man playing “Senseless” acoustically.
-Jalapeño
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Donate Here
Invisible Children is trying to raise 2 million dollars for the Protection Project that sets up radio signals in Uganda that will help save the people from the LRA. All I ask is at least $1 donation. None of the money goes to me, just to the people that are in need of help in Uganda. You can learn more at: invisiblechildren.com/freetimmy
Thank you
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Listen
The Black Keys posted 5 songs from El Camino on their website. They’re definitely worth a listen!
-Jalapeño
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February 12th! The one thing I’m looking forward to the most right now.
-Jalapeño
RE-BLOG THIS POST & I’ll follow your tumblr…
Tickets to the tour are ONLY available with the “Beautiful Things” album pre-order. To get your album & tickets CLICK HERE.
BEAUTIFUL THINGS TOUR
Anthony Green w/ special guests The Dear Hunter
1/13/12 Toad’s Place New Haven, CT - TICKETS
1/14/12 The Recher Theatre Towson, MD - TICKETS
1/15/12 The Loft Poughkeepsie, NY - TICKETS
1/18/12 Paradise Rock Club Boston, MA - TICKETS
1/19/12 Bowery Ballroom New York, NY - TICKETS
1/20/12 Union Transfer Philadelphia, PA - TICKETS
1/21/12 The Kingdom Richmond, VA - TICKETS
1/22/12 Cat’s Cradle Carrboro, NC - TICKETS
1/24/12 Exit/In Nashville, TN - TICKETS
1/25/12 The Loft Atlanta, GA - TICKETS
1/27/12 State Theatre St Petersburg, FL - TICKETS
1/28/12 Culture Room Fort Lauderdale, FL - TICKETS
1/29/12 The Social Orlando, FL - TICKETS
1/31/12 Warehouse Live Houston, TX - TICKETS
2/1/12 Korova San Antonio, TX - TICKETS
2/2/12 Mohawk Austin, TX - TICKETS
2/3/12 Trees Dallas, TX - TICKETS
2/4/12 Tricky Falls El Paso, TX - TICKETS
2/6/12 Clubhouse Music Venue Tempe, AZ - TICKETS
2/8/12 The Epicentre San Diego, CA - TICKETS
2/9/12 El Rey Theatre Chico, CA - TICKETS
2/11/12 The Glass House Pomona, CA - TICKETS
2/12/12 Slims San Francisco, CA - TICKETS
2/14/12 Hawthorne Theater Portland, OR - TICKETS
2/15/12 Neumos Seattle, WA - TICKETS
2/17/12 The Complex Salt Lake City, UT - TICKETS
2/18/12 Bluebird Theater Denver, CO - TICKETS
MORE DATES
**6/20/12 Mr. Small’s Theatre Pittsburgh, PA - TICKETS
**6/21/12 The Emerson Theatre Indianapolis, IN - TICKETS
**6/22/12 The Bottom Lounge Chicago, IL - TICKETS
**6/23/12 Station 4 St. Paul, MN - TICKETS
**6/26/12 Magic Stick Detroit, MI - TICKETS
**6/27/12 Grog Shop Cleveland Heights, OH - TICKETS
**6/28/12 Club at Water St. Music Hall Rochester, NY - TICKETS
**6/29/12 The Met Cafe Pawtucket, RI - TICKETS
**6/30/12 Hangar 84 Vineland, NJ - TICKETS -
Link
Support your local artist!
San Jose native, Tyler Boyd, released his debut solo album yesterday, and it’s pretty damn good! He’s a great indie/rock artist. I definitely wouldn’t mention him on here if I thought otherwise. Definitely check out his album “This room is filled with noise.” and take advantage of the $6 steal for 17 beautiful songs! Also you can “like” his Facebook page at: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Tyler-Boyd-Artist-Page/172786802736055
-Jalapeño
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[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Tone and CC
Little Hurricane
11/9/11Tone and CC from Little Hurricane were on the air this past Wednesday, and they were amazing enough to come into the recording studio right after to do a little interview with me and also a very raw acoustic recording of one of their songs “Trouble Ahead.”
At your show in Santa Cruz last Thursday you mentioned that one of your songs, “Give ‘em Hell“”, is about your brother-
CC: Yes it is. “Give ‘em Hell” was written for my little brother Joe who has been struggling for more than 8 years with a heroin addiction. So we wrote this song sort of at a time when he was sober to try to give him an anthem or a motto to turn to in times when he was battling his drug addiction. So “Give ’em Hell” was kind of like “put up the fight of your life because you’re losing you’re life.” So yeah, most or all of the lyrics are pertaining to that, of coming to a place of suffering watching someone give their life away and wanting them to fight for it. So yeah that song is for my brother Joe.
Tone: It also works for anyone that could draw anything from the song.
I know that this month you guys are playing in LA on Mondays and in SF on Tuesdays. What made you guys decide to loop California multiple times?
CC: I think it was a matter of figuring out what markets we are lacking in. You know, we need more fans, and it’s a lot of work to go back every week and make that drive, but it’s really about spreading the word so people can tell their friends and kind of build upon that.
What made you choose the order of your songs on the album? Because I noticed one song is basically about an obsessive girl on your tail, and the song after is very lovey dovey. Very contrasting.
Tone: Well, it’d be cool if the album was like one continuous story, but every song was about such different things and different times. Some of them are fictional, and some of them are true. So I guess the order was mainly just mixing it up. So it’s not about all the heavy songs in the beginning. I think the first song (Trouble Ahead) we liked because it was foreshadowing, then some songs just flowed better.
Who are your favorite band to listen to right now?
Tone: We listen to a lot of Pandora on the road like Delta Spirit radio.
CC: Yeah Delta Spirit is great. The Bell Brigade out of LA is great. We just saw a band we played with in LA, Maxim Ludwig, they were awesome so we’ve got him in the rotation now in the car. A lot of it right now is sort of just bands we hear that we play with that we really like and meet on the road. We just don’t have the time to go out there and be read music blogs and stuff like that to find new music. But then we always like the older Otis Redding or The Beatles are always great,
Tone: Yeah we meet so many other bands so it’s cool to check out bands we meet and listen their music.
What inspired you guys to play very stripped down blues/rock?
Tone: Well we were both in Jazz band in High School, so Jazz influenced Blues era kind of music because it has always been fun for me. Once you learn all the chords, the structures and the modes of it that it becomes easy and it’s a cool way to tell a story, I think, with blues.
We like to mix a little rock into it because people like the energy, and blues can be a little depressing if it’s just blues. I found that blues is cool because once you express the downfalls of life like in a blues song than it makes you feel better. So like people hear other peoples problems, and feel better themselves.
Are your songs based off of either or both of your personal relationships?
CC: (to Tone) “Lies” for you.
Tone: Yeah some past relationships, some future relationships. Haunted Heart is just a fictional song about a love story that one person is dead. Like he song lyrics are like “I’ll be watching over you even after your dead.
CC: Uhm “Sweet Pea” is about my grandparents. My grandfather’s nickname for my grandmother was Sweet Pea and we wrote the song right after she passed away. There’s also a TV show we saw that also had a similar theme of losing the one you one, but a lot of the lyrics in “Sweet Pea” like “for sixty-two years, I love you my dear, they were married for sixty-two years. I want you back my sweet pea” that was what my grandfather said as they were burying my grandmother and he had a big banner that said “Sweet Pea” on it.
For “Crocodile Tears” which is the one that says “you’re crazy” we wrote that song for a movie that hasn’t been released yet.
Tone: With Coolio in it.
Are you two an item?
Tone: No we’ve become really great friends because of the music.
CC: It’s just a lot easier to keep it that way because then you don’t become the crazy girlfriend and the crazy band mate. So I can just be one.
What is something your fans wouldn‘t know about you guys?
CC: This is my first band. I used to cook. I went to Culinary school and cooked for 8 years before I decided to do music.
Tone: Christina Aguilera said I smelled good at one point. And Gwen Stefani kissed me. Half cheek-half lips.
CC: He actually wrote that to me via Craigslist when I didn’t respond to his first response. So that was included in the second email.
How did you guys meet?
CC: I had posted an ad on Craigslist. I decided it was time to try being in a band. At the time I had just bought some electric drums so I could practice in my apartment so I made a little video and I posted an ad looking for a guy who can played guitar and sing and could sing to perform a duo with and I got a lot of responses. Most of them were very creepy, as Craigslist goes I think. So then I didn’t respond to anyone because I was kind of overwhelmed with it and then Tone wrote, and then he wrote again including all that lovely information but he also wrote in the second email that he was in Jazz band and he played in school growing up and I knew that if you played in Jazz band then you kind of have to read music and know what you’re doing and so I wrote to him back and it ended up that we lived on the same street in San Diego right down the street from each other.
Tone: Yeah I was trying out drummers because for a while I was working with other musicians and not performing or writing songs of my own and I really wanted to get back into that so I started trying out different drummers. Nothing really came out to me thinking this was gonna be a cool new project because I didn’t know what kind of style to play or what the sound was gonna be. Like was it gonna be soft like Death Cab (For Cutie) or rock like Manchester (Orchestera), but when I saw CC’s ad, she was wailing on this electronic drumset which I’m not really keen on electronic drum kits but she seemed like she had skills.
Fun Fact!
Their amps and speakers were built into vintage luggage, and also an old cabinet that is shown on their album cover. (I’m stealing that brilliant idea)
During this November Little Hurricane plays at Hotel Utah Saloon (21+) in San Francisco every Wednesday night and the Bootleg Theater in Los Angeles every Monday night. I very highly recommend going to see a show. They are amazing live and they always give it all they got when they perform. They’re also the nicest people that enjoy talking to their fans after their shows. If you see a show then I assure you you won’t regret it.
-Jalapeño
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February 12th is going to be INSANE!
Anthony Green has announced his new album “Beautiful Things”, tour and all! AG and The Dear Hunter? That’s crazy amazing. I already posted two songs from “Beautiful Things” that I recorded during the personal interview. I know the sound it terrible but the songs are amazing! Check them out, pre-order the album, and buy some tickets. You won’t be sorry!
-Jalapeño
