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Who Needs A Label: Æ Chats With Alec Ounsworth of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
AE: Where are you calling from? AO: Where am I calling from? Well I'm in Pennsylvania. AE: How do you work on an album when you live in Philadelphia and the other band members live in Brooklyn? AO: Well, I try to get as much of it kind of ready for everybody before we go into the studio, and then everybody sort of considers it at the studio, the material that I brought, you know? I don't know. So maybe it's strange? I don't know what bands do generally. But, yeah, that's the way I work. So I do a lot of work here in Pennsylvania, basically. AE: You performed at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival last summer and you have a lot of festival dates abroad for the current tour. How does performing at a festival differ from, I guess, a concert where you're headlining? AO: I guess here people are familiar with the band that's onstage at the time. I mean, there's often a bunch of people who don't really know you, you know, they kind of float in from other places. Yeah, I don't know. The show doesn't necessarily deviate. You know, [you're] outside a lot more often [laughs]. AE: Have you performed in Athens or Atlanta before? AO: Atlanta yes, Athens no, not that I can remember anyways. We performed at a place in Atlanta called the Variety Playhouse, I think? AE: Yeah. AO: You know that? AE: Mmm-hmm. AO: And another place, a smaller place, a while ago, I think on our first tour, whose name I can't remember. I remember that being particularly, a very, you know, welcoming crowd, I think. AE: The first one or the one at Variety Playhouse? AO: The first one - well actually both. The first in particular and it might have just been because it was such an interesting concept, going on tour at the time. I remember somebody gave me an Atlanta Braves wristband after the show, which I reluctantly accepted because I'm a Philadelphia Phillies fan, you know, I can't really - AE: - Yeah. AO: [laughs] AE: You get a lot of press for not having a record label, for getting sales by word-of-mouth, and for personally mailing copies of your debut album. What kind of outside help do you have now? AO: You know, I don't know. I mean we have somebody doing distribution for us, and that happened about the time that we went on our first tour, and that was utterly by virtue of the fact that we couldn't keep running to the post office ourselves while we're on tour. And we could, and that might make an interesting little tour, it would sort of stretch things out [laughs]. I would have to get a fleet of, you know, fans or something to carry boxes and stuff. AE: Under what circumstances, if any, would you sign to a record label? AO: It depends on how many push-ups they could do, the president in particular. When I was in college, you know that Bruce Springsteen song, on, I think its off "Born in the USA" actually... that song, "Down, we're going down, down, down, down, I'm going down." Do you know that song? AE: Mmm-hmm. AO: My friend and I used to have a push-up competition, and the winner would get a six-pack of beer, and neither of us ever won. I think that would be particularly impressive if somebody could do actually do push-ups to that song, and whoever could actually make it through the whole thing, we'd probably sign to that. AE: The new album was produced by David Fridmann, who also produced [The] Soft Bulletin by the Flaming Lips and The Woods by Sleater-Kinney. How did you decide to bring him in? AO: How did we decide to work with him? Sorry. AE: Yeah, was there an album he produced that had a sound you were looking for, I guess? AO: Well it wasn't particularly a sound. What I discovered and what I think I understood intuitively to a certain degree before going in was how Dave in fact works with the musicians. It's not necessarily the sound, but producing gave them a certain focus, I think. And that's true for a lot of the Flaming Lips stuff and, you know, the stuff that he's done with Low, he's done stuff with Luna, with Mercury Rev, [another artist], and you know, bunch of bands, bunch of albums. You know, they're really good. Obviously, he gets the band out of the bands that he works with, and it's not just the mythical Fridmann sound that we're talking about because I've talked to him about this. The style that everybody has determined for him is almost like a reflection of his own personality but that goes to not only the sound of the albums sonically, you know, absolutely, it's not that. You can hear also the way that he works with the musicians that he works with, you know what I mean? Just as much as any sort of technology that he might have in the studio. AE: So what did he bring to your record? AO: You know, we played a lot of the music for him before we recorded it. And, you know, he made certain suggestions which were pretty constructive, I thought. And sometimes there was a little back and forth of course, as there always must be if people care about how it comes off.... AE: I read in an article in Paste that you listen to a Discman, not an mp3 player, to listen to music. Is this to immerse yourself in albums rather than songs? AO: Yeah, I don't really like the mp3 player. Somebody gave me one a little while ago, and I tried it out, but it didn't last very long. Yeah, I don't know, I like listening to CDs. I don't like the quality of an mp3, for one thing. For another, I think scrolling through like a series of musicians and a series of albums just, to me, sort of devalues it somehow. AE: Is there an album that you listened to as a child that made you want to record music? AO: Probably, yeah. Pet Sounds, you know. Of course, it has the perfect children songs [laughs]. Not anything in particular, no. You know, I listened to a lot of music. I started first studying classical piano, and I think my approach to that has always been quite abstract, even when I was a kid. I appreciated it by distancing myself from it... Not really anything in particular, but I do remember being fond of the Beach Boys. AE: How important is the track order in the albums because I can't imagine "Clap Your Hands," which introduces the first album, in any other place, and the same for [the song] "Some Loud Thunder." AO: Oh yeah, no, I agree. It's very important. I mean it had taken me a second to determine how everything is going to flow on the album, but I think once it's finalized it makes a lot of sense. I agree, I think that those first two songs as far as starting an album off probably couldn't necessarily fit anywhere else on the album. And that goes for any every song, I think, on the album. I don't think any one could be swapped out for another. Yeah, it's just very important [laughs]. AE: You mention John Berryman in "Mama, Won't You Keep Them Castles in the Air and Burning," and the song also includes what is almost a direct quotation from Robert Frost's "Mending Wall." Are there any writers that influence your songwriting? AO: Oh, you know, I mean, those two, for one. Yeah, sure, I mean the same way as I wouldn't ever point to any musicians as directly influential, I wouldn't point to any writers as directly influential. I mean, I'm familiar with many. They form you as a person and then you create by virtue of what you've experienced. And it leaks in one way or another because some people are greatly affected by what it's actually done. AE: Are the songs you write autobiographical or does the voice come from another persona? AO: No, no, no. I think they have to be autobiographical. I think even if you're writing from somebody else's perspective it has to be autobiographical. I remember trying to write short stories in the second person. Er, no, you know, from someone else's perspective often when I was in college. The second person is more directly autobiographical, I think. But, one way or another, even if you're writing about somebody it's almost more you that comes up. This might be a little obscure, but I was thinking this another day when I was in a museum. I have a friend who's an artist who was taking classes at Penn State Academy of Fine Arts, who was telling me about these still lifes that he was making, and he told me that they were so real that you could almost grab the apple directly out of the painting. As much as I appreciated the technique that is involved there, I feel like, remember... Paul Cezanne's still lifes, or, you know, Van Gogh. To me, that's like writing from someone else's perspective in a way, this is where I'm going with it. I can see more of Cezanne, and that's not what is being actually portrayed, but it's actually the character individually doing a portrayal. AE: So do you think with your songs that you have a definite message in mind or do you see the listener as a co-creator of meaning? AO: I see the listener as a co-creator, certainly. I mean, that's the way it has to be. AE: I read in two articles that when you're at home, you write for eight or nine hours a day. Are you mostly editing the same material or do you have an incredible volume of songs that aren't on the albums? AO: I used to write songs in completion every day. I mean in completion as I thought it was completion.... You know, most of the songs that are on the first or second albums are older than the band. You know I have a lot of songs, but lately I have been starting to [rework songs] in such a way that it's almost tough to tell where it begins. Yeah, I do have quite a few songs that I don't know if I like anymore [laughs]. AE: Can you give us an idea of how many songs you have that aren't on the albums? AO: Aw, jeez. I don't know. I'd have to go back and look. I'd say, you know, a couple hundred maybe. I don't know, I mean a lot of them I think of now as maybe... I just describe them as exercises, and I'm starting to get into things that are, to me, a little bit more involved. AE: Is there a new Clap Your Hands Say Yeah or solo project in the works? AO: Yeah, I've been trying to work on a children's album for a bit, and that's been what I've been working on lately. As far as a Clap album in the works, I really haven't thought much about it, but we'll see [laughs]. Relevant URLs: Bonnaroo: http://bonnaroo.com/ The Soft Bulletin: http://www.amazon.com/Soft-Bulletin-Flaming-Lips/dp/B00000JC6C/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-9113035-0152001?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1176049347&sr=8-1 The Woods: http://www.amazon.com/Woods-Sleater-Kinney/dp/B0008FPIOU/ref=sr_1_1/002-9113035-0152001?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1176049393&sr=1-1 Luna: http://www.fuzzywuzzy.com/ Comments [post a comment]Comments are closed |
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Thursday, February 09, 2012
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