This week, “A Change of Tune” host Joni Deutsch interviews Bahamas, the pseudonym for singer-songwriter Afie Jurvanen. Although Bahamas is far from being Bahamian (hint: Jurvanen hails from the non-Caribbean lands of Canada), his effortlessly beautiful folk will make you believe you’re surrounded by sun and sand. Check out the interview below to hear more about Bahamas’ new record, his Finnish-Canadian upbringing, and his views on identity and mainstream music. If you’re a fan of warm, laid-back folk in the same vein as Jack Johnson, this interview and music are recommended for you.
Bahamas just released “Bahamas is Afie” this past Augustand will continue touring this fall. Although Bahamas isn’t due to stop by West Virginia, you can check out his 2013 set in Charleston on Mountain Stage Radio Show and keep up with him on his websiteandFacebook. You can listen to Bahamas’ new music on Joni Deutsch’s “A Change of Tune” this Saturday at 10 PM EST on West Virginia Public Radio.
This week, “A Change of Tune” host Joni Deutsch interviews Petersburg-native Kenny Tompkins about New God, Tompkins’ Baltimore-based art pop band that includes his very own brother, Curt Tompkins. The interview veers into topics as diverse as New God’s music, the future of youth in West Virginia, and the confusion over the band’s name and a popular Kanye West song. If you’re a fan of music that invokes the breezy, lo-fi catchiness of The Beach Boys, this interview and band are recommended for you.
New God just released the lyric video for their song “Ocean Hum,” and the band will be back on tour this fall. For more band news, make sure to check out New God’s website and Facebook. You can listen to the band’s new music on Joni Deutsch’s “A Change of Tune” this Saturday at 10 PM EST on West Virginia Public Radio.
"We play folk music, but not in the sense that we play banjos. We just like talking about people and their stories." -Alex Hwang
This week, “A Change of Tune” host Joni Deutsch interviews Alex Hwang (vocals, acoustic guitar) of indie folk group Run River North about the band’s self-titled debut. The discussion also veers into the Korean-American band’s connections to Honda, their definition of folk music, and how the group was influenced by, of all things, rap and hip-hop music. If you’re a fan of indie folk music with a twist, this interview is recommended for you.
Joni: Did you guys feel like you were getting punk’d by Honda when they put you on Kimmel’s talk show?
Alex: We really had no idea. We were hoping we would get a Honda van out of it, but obviously they had something else in mind. It basically was an episode of Punk’d. But luckily, the people who punk’d us are really good friends of ours, and we meet-up with them once every other month to have burgers and barbeques. There’s no hard feelings after that, even though it did feel kind of mean at the time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4vKLKK0l8w
Joni: After that, did it feel like an obligation to keep using Honda vehicles? Is there a clause that says, “You must only use and talk about Honda vehicles?”
Alex: That’s the cool thing about the people that work at Honda. All of us drive Hondas naturally, and we did afterwards. If they ever need anything from us, we’ll try it out, but there’s no contractual thing. We’re not sponsored by them or anything. It’s like an organic relationship. I do like Honda, without them ever putting us on Kimmel. [Laughing] I think I got in trouble last time, though. There was this festival that Toyota was sponsoring, and I was just bragging about Honda and how they put us on Kimmel. Toyota was confused as to why we were on the bill and why we were talking about Honda.
J: Toyota was probably thinking, “You expect us to one-up Honda by putting the band on Conan?”
A: [Laughing] Yeah, that would be nice. We love Conan and watch him all the time.
J: Going into your new record, how’s the experience been releasing it?
A: We’re just excited to be able to go on tour and play the songs that are on the album. It’s just great to have an actual CD that’s pressed and not burn CD’s from Target that we have to put on the road. It’s good to have a product to sell that we’re really behind, and it just shows a great snapshot of what we were like last summer. The reactions have been great, people have been really liking our live show and buying our CD. For some people, it’s there first time coming out to a concert, so we’re really excited for people to experience live music in general and allowing our music to be their first to do that. Sometimes it’s the first CD they’ve bought in a while, too, so they’ll tell us, “I’ve only bought the Taylor Swift CD and yours!”
J: That’s really interesting. Do you think there’s a correlation between your music and Taylor Swift?
A: [Laughing] Ah, no. I think that was just that one fan. I just kind of remembered her making a big deal that I was in the same category as Taylor Swift. I didn’t know what to say, so I said, “Thank you. Have a nice day.”
J: Are you guys hearing a lot of comparisons to Fleet Foxes and other indie folk-rock bands?
A: Oh, totally! We did work with the producer who worked on a Fleet Foxes album. It’s a similarity that we don’t not like. I think it’s interesting that you have some acoustic guitars and everybody singing and a lot of similarities come up. But when you come to our live shows, there’s a lot happening. We’ve grown up a little bit more since the album was recorded, and it’s interesting to see people be surprised about what they read about, what they hear on the album, and then what they actually see live.
Credit Doualy Xaykaothao
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Run River North’s self-titled record
J: When you think of folk bands, like Mumford & Sons and Of Monsters and Men, you think of 30-year-old white men with beards, sometimes in flannel or with banjos and mandolins. But you describe your music as “gangster folk.”
A: [Laughing] For me, personally, I always wanted to be a rapper. It’s going to be a life-long dream that I might not ever fulfill, so I wanted to put it out there into the world. If somebody latched onto the genre of gangster folk, somebody should do it anyways. I like how our music and the songs that we write are about folks that we know and our own folks. In a quite literal sense, it’s “folk music.” As for the gangster part, I just like how everybody in the band can not only play their instruments really well, but they can hold a note, they can sing, and their voices are also a part of the whole make-up of the band. I think that’s really gangster for everybody to stand-up to the plate, not just hide behind their instruments, and be vulnerable enough to sing out loud. That’s the part that I really appreciate about gangster folk or the genre that I’m continually trying to press onto the world.
J: I can’t let that rap comment go. You’ll have to tell me a little more about that. Why did you want to be a rapper? Can you give us a verse or two?
A: [Laughing] No, I can’t give you a verse. But I can tell you we love listening to A Tribe Called Quest in the car on road trips. Kanye is a lot of fun to listen to. Personally, I just love free-style rap. There’s one that I was growing up with who’s still going around. He’s called Dumbfounded, but I think he goes by Parker now. He’s a Korean-American from Koreatown, and he’s kind of close to my age. Seeing him do his thing, speak his own opinion, and do what he wants to do in a genre that isn’t really dominated by any Asians, it was really inspiring to see that happening in that genre. I was really pulled to rap and hip-hop because of that. So having that background, I’m just inspired by people who can break stereotype and give their opinion on things and be heard. I think a lot of rappers have the potential of doing that well, if given the right platform. If you ever have a chance to check out Parker (Johnathan Park) and Awkwafina, they’re these Asian-American rappers who I personally find really interesting to listen to.
J: Besides the influence of parents and past generations, what else inspires your music?
A: You know, that’s interesting. Going on the road, people have been coming up to us telling us about their immigrant stories, their family lives, or what gets them through. It’s weird: when you’re an artist and, luckily for us get on TV, people then start gravitating to you and start sharing stories. I think the inspiration comes from fans and hearing these incredible stories that I wouldn’t have heard otherwise. I think it’s continually finding stories out there already, reacting to that, and repurposing and packaging that to put out there. I really enjoy just writing songs about folks and that I know of or hear. We play folk music, but not in the sense that we play banjos. We just like talking about people and their stories.
J: I assume the audiences you’re seeing are a mix of all kinds of people. Do you think your music is helping improve or diversify the indie folk scene?
A: I hope so. I’m not trying to be crusader to be a diversity person for indie folk, but when you come to our shows, there’s not only ethnic diversity but a generation diversity. Parents are bringing their kids. Sometimes there’s an old couple, looking like they’re in the 70’s, listening in the back and politely telling us they heard us on NPR. It’s great to see so many walks of life coming through. I think that speaks to the fact that we try to write stories about people, so the more people we write about, the more different people will show up. It’s really interesting to see such diversity in the crowd. [Laughing] They’re always wondering why we’re all Korean. We’re trying not to be racist, it’s just the five people I first shared our songs with.
J: I noticed that the band covers quite a few songs on YouTube. Do you have any favorites?
A: Oh yeah! We haven’t done a video for it, but on our first head-lining tour, we did “Mr. Brightside” by The Killers. It’s a totally different take on it. It came from the fact that I probably listened to the album a thousand times over and be [The Killers’ frontman] Brandon Flowers. We made it our own, and I think it’s a lot of fun. A lot of the covers actually come from one source. Our friend started a relationship and wanted us to play a song for a girl, and right now he’s married to that girl. At each step of their relationship, they’ve asked if we could cover a song. They’ve been the only ones that we’ve said yes to the request. Each one has been great, and it’s been an interesting way of covering songs. They’ve always picked good songs for us, actually, ones that we didn’t think were going to be great or we didn’t personally connect to, but we just wanted to help this couple out. So now, whenever they ask, we’ll say yes because they’ve been so good about picking songs.
J: That’s so cute! So you’re not doing the covers because you like doing covers, you’re doing them because you’ve been given a quirky relationship request.
A: It is! If you look at the video for the City and Colour song, every place we go to in that video is a spot that our friend Cory and Bev really like about L.A. So the whole video’s like a “Happy Valentine’s Day” gift to them that Cory wanted to give to her. That asked us to play a song for them for their wedding, but unfortunately we were on tour. It was one we wanted to cover to as well, so you’ll probably see another cover come out because Cory and Bev are in love. We’re excited to see where that keeps going.
J: Beyond the cover songs, I also saw your cutesy music videos on YouTube. Did you have a favorite?
A: They’re both so much fun. The first one, [“Fight to Keep”] with [Napoleon Dynamite’s] Diedrich Bader, he was such a great guy. We got to go to Big Bear and get murdered by him, and that’s something I’m never going to be able to do again. But the “Excuses” video was near and dear. The two guys who directed it are good friends of mine, and the guy who stars in it is also a friend. We had so much fun running around L.A. and shooting it in a day and a half. I think it was great because it didn’t require too much for the band. We could all just go to different places in L.A. and watch him make a freak of himself. When we do videos, we like to support people that are our lives, and everything in that video was made possible by friends. It’s always fun to incorporate friends in everything that we do and support small businesses in the art world.
J: And in “Fight to Keep,” I didn’t realize Bader played “Rex Kwon Do” in Napoleon Dynamite until I looked it up.
A: He doesn’t really do music videos, but he was fantastic, and the fact that we was willing to do that for us was mind-boggling. He was really down to earth, and not only does he have funny lines, but he’s a great guy. I think somebody from our label had worked with him on The Drew Carey Show, so she just reached out and he was super excited about it. He doesn’t really do music videos so, once again, it was a friend relationship that made this happen.
J: Do you have any dream collaborations with musicians?
A: I think working with some of the artists that Phil [Ek, Run River North music producer] has produced like Fleet Foxes would be good. But on a way more serious note, there’s a group on YouTube called Turquoise Jeep, and two of the members of that group are Yung Humma and Flynt Flossy. If we could collaborate with them, it would be a dream come true. They are our musical influences, and they make the band really happy when we drive for long, long hours into the night. Collaborating with them would be a dream come true. It’s rap, but you don’t know if they’re serious or not. It’s really good.
J: The band was originally called Monsters Calling Home. Now it’s Run River North. Is there a new name for the band on the horizon?
A: [Laughing] Hopefully not. I think the first step was because we didn’t want to hold onto anything too tightly, but I think it’s hard for fans to find us again and to change our Facebook and YouTube and all of these things. It’s really stressful, so we might just want to keep this name, but you never know. I love the way Arcade Fire have a different name for each album, and each album they personify that and think of themselves like, “This time we’re Neon Bible, that time we’re Reflektor.” They find different ways to get behind a name. I do love Run River North and how it exemplifies what our band is holistically. It’s all about our music being like a river and being bombastic but quiet at the same time, and there’s this fluidity to it that’s great to talk about. But who knows. We might meet Flynt Flossy in a year and he’ll come up with a better name for us.
Run River North will join fellow folk rockers Boy & Bear on their North American fall tour. You can follow Run River North on http://home.runrivernorth.com/. Listen to “Fight to Keep” on Joni Deutsch’s “A Change of Tune” this Saturday at 10 PM EST on West Virginia Public Radio.
["Break Line"] is like the history of West Virginia. -Anand Wilder
This week, “A Change of Tune” host Joni Deutsch interviews Yeasayer co-founder Anand Wilder about his indie Appalachian musical “Break Line.” The record features musicians from major indie/alt bands like Chairlift, MGMT, and Vampire Weekend, and the musical itself is inspired by West Virginia’s coal mining past. If you’re a fan of indie rock collaborations and classic rock operas, this interview is recommended for you.
Joni: I love how “Break Line” is an indie Appalachian romp of a musical. It’s not a stereotyped view of Appalachia. It’s a hip, cool, indie-alternative way of looking at mining culture.
Anand: Thanks! These songs were written in 2004, before Yeasayer was even a band, and a lot of them were performed by early Yeasayer. When I first played the show with Chris [Keating, Yeasayer’s frontman], we played three songs from the musical, and for the first few years of Yeasayer, we would play all these songs. Then when it didn’t make sense to sing about mining, once we started writing our own material, then we replaced it with Yeasayer stuff. We used to play these songs and they were people’s favorite songs. [Laughing] I have friends who still say, “Man, why did you take “Wedding Day” out of the line-up?”
J: I like Yeasayer’s music, but this just sounds so different.
A: I guess with Yeasayer, it’s all about forging ahead, being very new, using the newest piece of technology and samplers, and trying to be kind of relevant to contemporary music. And this was more of an homage to all of this classic rock that I grew up loving like Neil Young and David Bowie and that kind of stuff. It was all about trying to emulate that and not using any kind of crazy, new technology. It was trying to get that perfect sound as if it was a musical that was written in the 1970’s. It didn’t really make sense for me, as a band, to be retro in that way, because it’s already been done, but for some reason it made sense for a musical. It seems like if we’re going to do a musical, we might as well do it in the golden age of musical theater and rock opera.
J: To me, this sounds like an untapped resource. I’m not sure how many Appalachia rock musicals are out there. It’s taking a topic [like coal mining] and bringing it to the forefront in an interesting way.
A: It is like the history of West Virginia. Really, the musical’s historical facts were taken from West Virginian history, I just wanted to make it western Pennsylvania to kind of separate it from that. And the interracial romance, which I wanted it to be celebrated and legal in the musical and then everything falls apart from this labor conflict, and that would have been impossible in West Virginia because there were anti-miscegenation laws in West Virginia until 1967.
Joni: Let’s go back to the beginning to when you and Maxwell [Kardon, “Break Line” co-writer] came together and dreamed up this record.
A: We were old college friends, and we were in another band together with a guy named Evan [Voshnell], and we were trying to do the whole rock band thing in 2003, 2004. We were hitting walls with our sound and in Philadelphia, it was hard for us to get shows. Me and Max were talking about songs our dads would play us, and we struck upon this idea of telling this story about a fictional town. We were both history buffs, and the songs really just came so quickly in a way that I haven’t been able to write songs since. It was almost like channeling, where we would just come up with a riff or a line and the chords would just come very quickly. So I was really excited about this idea for the musical from the beginning, and I’ve had a lot of support from friends who thought it would be better than all the shoe-gazey post-rock that was happening then. And Max and Evan kind of disappeared, they went to Asia and Thailand to teach English, and I was left with my idealistic hopes of becoming a rock star.
J: Which turned out pretty well, I’d say.
A: [Laughing] Which turned out pretty great! I’m actually glad it happened. But I still felt kind of spurned by the guys like, “We had this great idea! C’mon, let’s run with this!” But Yeasayer started, and we played a lot of songs from the musical because they were all finished. Eventually I talked to my manager about getting this musical together, and now that Yeasayer has been touring so much, I finally found all these amazing singers. In our first year of touring, we were probably out for 300 days of that year, we met the guys from Man Man, who had been my idols living in Philadelphia. I asked “Pow Pow,” [Man Man’s] Chris Powell, to play drums, Ira [Wolf Tuton, Yeasayer’s bassist] was playing bass, Caroline Polachek from Chairlift got involved, and all these guys from the band Suckers to sing all these parts. Everyone had all these amazing voices, and I didn’t want to sing because I wanted everyone taking all the vocal duties to really make it a musical. Over the course of the last ten years, really starting in earnest in 2008, we slowly pieced together the musical and got the artwork together and now it just made sense to put it out in the lull of Yeasayer activity.
Cover art for “Break Line”
J: You brought upwards of 15 bands and artists to help with the musical. How did you approach them about helping with the record? Did you have to tempt them with food?
A: You know, I definitely did buy everyone lunch when they came in. [Laughing] But I think everyone knew that it was a small project that was weird and cool. There’s been so many articles written around 2008 about the Brooklyn community, but they were all kind of fake. None of us really performed together. Everyone was here with a suitcase and a dream to try to make it happen, so we thought, “Let’s make this real and turn this community into a project that everyone can work on!” And it lucked out. We found an awesome mixing engineer in Brit Myers, who had a great studio and could work for cheap since he was really into musical theater. He had just recorded the musical “Passing Strange,” which was pretty cool. Everyone was really game to get involved, but I don’t think I could do it again [Laughing]. I could get some of the guys to come again, but it was just a different time where people were free and ready to get creative.
J: So you’re not saying that you would commit to a sequel or prequel?
A: I think everything has been said about this particular town. But Max is a great friend of mine and an amazing song-writer, and we’ve been working on an upstate New York-based kind of musical. I think I might like it to be based in historical characters, so I’m thinking about maybe licensing the rights to a book. Try to make a certain book come to life. The musical, “Break Line,” is based on thinly-veiled characters who definitely have their historical figures that they represent. But I would like to do something where I can say, “Here it is: here is the town they are in, it’s a real town, here are the characters that existed, and here are their stories.”
A: Oh yeah! Well, I do want the next one to be much more water-based. That’s something I want to tackle because it’s something that we take for granted. We take for granted that water just comes out of the tap. Yeah, maybe. I need to apply for some grants from West Virginia or something.
J: You mention that you did some West Virginia research to find inspiration for the music.
A: West Virginia could just be called “coal” if we named our states around the industries they were based around. But yeah, I took a lot of stuff from there. There’s this great book called “Coal, Class, and Color” by Joe William Trotter Jr. about blacks in southern West Virginia in the World War I period. I think a lot of people misinterpret the musical as this staunchly pro-union tale, but it’s actually more of a nuanced thing. In musicals, it seems like you’re choosing one side or another, but I really wanted to use the musical to depict all these different sides and show strike breaking as not necessarily bad. I always loved the movie “Matewan” and that kind of “everybody working together” feeling, but I wanted to do something that was like, “Ok, maybe people worked together, but what was it really like if they hated on each other a lot?” It wasn’t always the big companies that were being racist, so I wanted to kind of explore that. When you’re singing pop songs, you can’t just sing from a real evil dude’s point of view. But in musicals, those are always my favorite songs.
J: Were there any musicals by Andrew Lloyd-Weber or others that you took inspiration from for “Break Line?”
A: We took a lot of inspiration from “Bugsy Malone” and Paul Williams. I guess “Little Shop of Horrors” was a big influence. And we were inspired by Neil Young and 70’s classic rock. We also love classics like “The Sound of Music,” “Oliver,” and “West Side Story.” Those were the ones were we thought, “If only we could be that good!” I know every lyric to every single song on “A Sound of Music,” it’s just hit-after-hit, and I’m not sure if that happens anymore with musicals.
J: You can’t expect it to be so immediately amazing that NBC puts it up on TV like “Sound of Music: Live!” or “Peter Pan: Live!” Maybe it’ll become an instant classic over time.
A: “An instant classic over time.” [Laughing] I like that. But it’s funny you mention Andrew Lloyd-Weber. “Jesus Christ Superstar” was a concept album with all these different singers. It was just an album that came out, and it was also our inspiration. Ok, you can have an album, and maybe one day it will become a musical and no one will remember it was a musical. It was like a demonstration record.
J: Let’s assume 10 years from now, someone off-Broadway, on-Broadway, somewhere in some dive in Louisiana decides to put on this musical. Do you have any stars or singers outside of the ones used in the record?
A: You know, someone asked me to do this. I think I listed all dead people. [Laughing] Sure, it would be great for Shelley Duvall to play some character. Harry Nilsson’s “Popeye” musical was a big inspiration because it wasn’t a cheesy, over-blown, contemporary musical theater kind of voice. It was more like speak-singing, so she was a big inspiration besides Dolly Parton and that kind of stuff. It would be so amazing if someone 10 years from now from West Virginia or Pennsylvania changed around some of the lyrics to make it make more sense. I would be so psyched.
J: I think this is a perfect merge of something people recognize and love, like Yeasayer’s name, and a cultural significance that people wouldn’t look into unless they had catchy music. Hopefully people will look into this, recognize 10 names in the cast, and look into its content.
A: That was my goal. I didn’t want it to be a solo album at all. I wanted it to be presented as a collective album. Even though I was the force pushing it through, getting all the actors together, I wanted it to be a group effort.
J: Did you have certain slots for the actors or was casting based on scheduling?
A: It was definitely on purpose. Like I wanted [Suckers’ frontman] Quinn Walker to be the main anti-hero. That was of the utmost importance to us, having the perfect voices. We had to change vocalists constantly because it just wasn’t working, and we had to adapt the story and change the lyrics so it made sense. It was really about finding the perfect voices. A lot of people surprised us. Aku [Orraca-Tetteh] from the band Dragons of Zynth, he plays Harvey in the musical and sings “Coal into Diamonds” and “Fathers and Brothers,” and his band is the most avant-garde, experimental band in New York, but he got in front of the mic and sung this sweet ballad. He was a total pro. But it was difficult to work with some people because I’m used to working with Chris and Ira from Yeasayer, and Chris can shred his vocals and is a great mimic. Other people have these wonderful styles, but I had to adjust the songs and coax them through it, so it was a real lesson in vocal production. Working with Ryan [Kattner] from Man Man, who has this really unique and awesome voice, it was difficult for him to hit the high notes, so we had to change some of the melodies around. We finally figured it out, which is great because I always imagined him as this cartoonish, evil boss in the mines.
J: I’m sure he appreciated that.
A: [Laughing] I think everybody was really happy. I had one person who didn’t want to be associated with it, so I had to change her name. That was weird. Her name is “Tanya Houndsley.” It’s crazy because her song “Hang Your Head High” was one of the most amazing vocal performances, but maybe she didn’t want that style associated anymore with her own solo career. You can figure out who it is. [Laughing] But other than that, everybody was really happy. I had a record release party and people came who couldn’t remember doing the record. [Laughing] Delicate Steve tweeted something like, “I played slide guitar when I was 24 and now my 29-self approves.”
J: Why didn’t you mention pepperoni rolls in the musical?
A: [Laughing] You know the reason we didn’t do it is because it’s western Pennsylvania, so it’s probably a Stromboli there. But you know, we were in the release/cast party and were like, “How do we not have any mentions of canaries in the musical?” It’s definitely incomplete, it needs revisions.
J: You could do a deluxe album and add in some songs… if you have the free time.
A: [Laughing] Yeah, right. Actually I’m getting a songbook made. A couple of songs were cut from the album, and one song we didn’t even attempt because too many voices were going on at once, but we had a demo though. So if someone wants to put on the musical, the songbook is there in full with the piano parts, the full story is there. It would be really awesome if some fan bought the songbook and posted a cover on YouTube.
J: I could dress up my sheepdog and have him mime the musical, if that helps.
A: Oh yeah! Various people have told me what the visual elements should be. It could be animals playing characters. That’s what’s so great about “Bugsy Malone.” It’s a little kid playing these historic figures. Or claymation would be great.
Anand Wilder is working on an upcoming release with Yeasayer. You can follow Yeasayer on http://blog.yeasayer.net/. To hear bits of the interview and songs that inspired “Break Line,” tune in to Joni Deutsch’s “A Change of Tune” this Saturday at 10 PM EST on West Virginia Public Radio.
Each week, “A Change of Tune” host Joni Deutsch chats with up-and-coming artists and gives Spotify-like music recommendations in a feature called “Recommended If You Like.” This week, Joni interviews London-based ethereal pop group Woman’s Hour’s Fiona Jane Burgess (vocals) about the songwriting process, 90’s musicians, and the band’s new record, Conversations. If you like the swoon-worthy melodies of Beach House, this band and interview are recommended for you.
Joni: It seems like it’s been a long, interesting music process for you all.
Fiona: Yeah, in some ways, it feels like it took us a very long time. In other ways, it feels like it’s all happened quite quickly. Time is quite strange in that sense. We were definitely lucky enough to release some of the singles through some of the smaller labels first of all, which was really nice for us because it allowed us to begin to connect with people and share our music before we released the album.
Joni: From what I read of you all, it sounds like you released some music a little while ago and after getting some hype for it, you decided to fall back and retool your sound and image. That seems like such a unique strategy, moving away from the hype rather than towards it.
Fiona: I think it was because we just released one single, and it wasn’t actually planned to be released as a single. We were approached by a small label in London, and we were completely flattered, but also we were quite overwhelmed, so we just said yes to everything without even thinking about. We weren’t involved in the artwork or the video, and it happened quickly and out of our own control in many ways. It wasn’t that we were kind of bullied into it. We were very much welcoming of that. But as soon as the single was released and out there, we certainly were able to look at it with fresh eyes. We all felt similarly that it was still a work in progress, and although people were talking about it and showing interest, we just weren’t ready to receive that kind of attention. We all felt that if this was going to happen, we wanted to be more in control and we wanted to make sure that what we were releasing was a really good reflection of who we were as musicians and the type of music we wanted to move forward with. We just didn’t feel that we were there yet because even since we first recorded the demos, all of the music we were making had changed so much and developed so much. So we all decided, for the foreseeable future, to remove ourselves from the Internet and have any kind of presence, so we stopped playing any live shows and begun to say no for the first time. It was completely liberating, and we actually felt a sense of freedom and self-confidence that we hadn’t had.
J: It sounds so empowering that you were able to pause and refresh rather than rushing through a process half-heartedly. And now you can show your ideas in their full form on social media.
F: I’m sure there will be moments where we’ll retreat again because it feels healthy to have a bit of distance from the craziness and kind of instantness of social media. Although it’s great, it can be quite unproductive if your focus is on the instant. Sometimes you need a bit of time to reflect without the pressure of always having to be present. But at the moment, we’re really enjoying being able to connect with people. It’s so exciting for people to have a way to communicate with us, and I think that’s one of the brilliant things about social media now because it does allow for a personal engagement with fans that I don’t think you would have had in the same way in previous generations. I feel really fortunate to be able to do that.
Woman’s Hour’s debut record, Conversations
J: How’s the last year been for you all with the new release and tour?
F: It’s been phenomenal and really, totally unexpected. We’ve been blown away by the opportunities that have been offered to us. If you had asked any of us a year ago where we thought we might be in a year’s time, we’re ambitious people but we’re quite realistic as well, and I think none of us would have thought it possible. Even just going to America and playing South by Southwest, I mean that was like a dream come true since it’s something all of us have always wanted to do. To actually be fortunate enough to go there and play that was mind-blowing. This time last year we were still working on our first record and even just finishing that and mapping the record. Then about three days later, we went on tour with Anna Calvi, then we went to America, and then we went on tour with Metronomy. We even just started working with a drummer, up until that point we had a drum machine, so it’s been a really nice development to work with a live drummer and develop our live show more, which I think has had a huge impact on all of us. It’s just been a constant kind of traveling, whether physical traveling or journeying in terms of being offered new opportunities, meeting amazing people, or just being able to play to new audiences, it’s been the biggest achievement.
J: I thought it made perfect sense for you all to tour with Metronomy. I would assume they would make for a great mentor and a great complement to your indie pop sound.
F: Yeah, and they are totally like mentors. They are just the nicest people. It was really incredible because you might think people of that status wouldn’t be, who have really earned their credibility as musicians, and they were just so welcoming and really made us feel like we deserved to be there and we were welcome. We definitely learned a lot from watching them night after night and their energy and passion and amazing atmosphere they created at their shows. It was really, really amazing to see.
J: So South by Southwest was your first stateside tour. How’d it feel having a new audience in the states?
F: American audiences are great. They are so much more vocal than European audiences, particularly UK audiences. I mean, I love playing in the UK, but you really have to work the audiences to get them to communicate. In America, the first thing I noticed was how friendly and welcoming the American audiences were. I don’t know how to describe it, but it was an energy that was there. People weren’t afraid to come up to us afterwards and talk to us and tell us they enjoyed the show, which was really new. People in the UK are really shy and very polite and don’t really come up to you, but it’s so nice for people to come up, say they enjoy it, and want to have a conversation with you. We really came away buzzing, and we’re really looking for coming back there as well.
J: Was there any kind of food or particular place in America that you enjoyed?
F: We experienced breakfast tacos in Austin, which was quite amazing. [Laughing] We had them every morning, I think. When we were in New York, we did fairly touristy things: we went to Central Park, we went along the High Line, we went to visit some art museums like the Whitney. Oh, and we went to Katz’s and got a pastrami sandwich, which was amazing. [Laughing] Everything tastes better when you’re on holiday, and it kind of felt like a holiday because it was like being in the movies or something. It was very fleeting as well, all a bit of a dream, so we’re looking forward to maybe spending a bit more time there and eating a few more different foods.
J: Listening to Conversations, I heard a lot of lyrics about seeing ghosts, slipping away, and letting go. The music’s lyrics are a bit dark but the music itself is soothing. Can you talk about the inspiration for the music?
F: In terms of the lyrics, me and my brother [William Burgess, Woman’s Hour’s guitarist] share writing the lyrics, but sometimes one of us will write all of the lyrics to a song and the other person might look over it. Often our notepads are a way for us to make sense of the world and make sense of events that may have happened or memories that we’ve had or situations that we’ve found ourselves in. We use writing as a way to reflect on those situations. A lot of people ask us about this reflective kind of way of writing, and I just think it’s not something we’ve ever thought about, but now that I’m able to have the habit of hindsight from it, I can see that probably the way we write is us trying to make sense of our own histories in some ways. I think that runs through the record. Also, I suppose that making the record, it was written over the course of two years, and I suppose within that time, we were all living in London, and from a practical perspective, it’s one of the most expensive cities to live in the world. We were all struggling to pay our rent and struggling to survive as a band and questioning whether or not we had made the right decisions. As a result, we had to make a lot of sacrifices in our personal lives and socially and in many perspectives. We were taking a huge risk as well, with a fear of failure and social and cultural success, especially in London since there is such a pressure to be successful. From a practical perspective, I feel like those factors and circumstances surrounding the record are really integral to the way it communicates. I suppose I prefer to not delve too much into the intricacies and very intimate stories or situations behind the songs because I prefer to leave listeners with an opportunity to make what they want of the songs and be able to engage with them in their own personal way. In my experience of having records that I fall in love with in a really intimate way, when I’m suddenly told that my reading of it is wrong and it doesn’t mean this and it should mean that, it can be really damaging as a listener and can take away from the enjoyment of making your own response to a record. I think that’s something I feel quite strongly about.
J: I respect that. Your music has a nice vagueness to it that allows anyone to paint a picture of what they want it to be.
F: I think that actually, subconsciously, there is definitely an element of ambiguity that runs throughout the whole record. It’s this thing that so many people, when they hear the songs, respond to in dramatically different ways. When we first put out “Our Love has No Rhythm” on the Internet, some of the responses were like, “This is the most beautiful love song,” and then another handful of people would say, “This is such a heartbreaking song and so sad.” It was really interesting for us to see how so many people can interpret the songs. I love that, and we love that songs can be so ambiguous and have so many different meanings. I think that’s important to allow those different interpretations to exist in the world and for neither of them to right or wrong.
J: In terms of interpretations, it seems like you’re getting a lot of comparisons to The XX and Beach House. What do you think about people interpreting your music to bands in a similar genre?
F: I really struggle to describe our music because I’ve never been very good at describing music in general because it’s such an intangible thing that you feel. Whenever people ask me what kind of music we are, I always just describe the instruments that we play as a way of giving them an idea of what kind of sounds those instruments create, but I always try to avoid comparing us to other bands because I feel like it’s not our job. None of us ever sat down at the beginning of this process and thought, “Right, so who do we want to sound like?” In fact, we made a conscious effort to not listen to so much music when making the record because there’s so much pressure to be aware of other contemporary musicians and making sure not to copy anybody and creating something new and authentic and original. We didn’t want to be persuaded by other contemporary music to do not do something or do something, so we deliberately retreated from that a little bit. I feel like people are always going to make comparisons because people like to compartmentalize, put them in a box, and make it easy for people on Spotify to choose a genre and then guide them to other similar-sounding music. That’s the world that we live in, there’s no stopping that, but I guess as an artist, I don’t see it as my role to describe our music. I leave that for other people.
J: Now that the record is out, are you listening to other contemporary musicians?
F: I can’t stop listening to The War on Drugs. Their new record [Lost in the Dream] blows my mind, and I think all of us in the band are obsessed with it. I’ve been listening to Nils Frahm, he’s absolutely phenomenal. It’s essentially piano music but electronic as well. He creates these incredibly dynamic, atmospheric sounds that are just mind-blowing. I would really recommend it.
J: You’re the first female musician I’ve talked to in a while. I’d love to hear your experiences as a young, female artist in the music industry.
F: It is a very male-dominated industry, and although time’s are changing and there are more women involved in all aspects of the industry, I would say that it’s like most industries in the world by still being dominated by men. Often, the woman is either the lead singer or she’s invisible. As a woman, you can’t help but feel self-conscious to some extent, and because you’re part of the minority, it feels like there’s more pressure. As a feminist, I think that it’s really important that more women are inspired to be involved in the music industry, and I think that the women who are working in different areas of the music industry are very inspiring people. In fact, we’ve made quite a conscious decision to have a female tour manager, female sound engineer, two female managers, and a female representative at the label. That decision was obviously due to their immense talent, but I think there’s something quite inspiring to be surrounded by so many passionate and talented women in an industry saturated by men. And I think it’s really important for women in the industry to talk about their experiences because often I feel like it’s not something that women feel is appreciated by the wider public. Artists like Grimes and the lead singer of Chvrches wrote articles last year that spoke out about being women in the industry and the abuses they received from a lot of male fans. I found it really, really sad and kind of horrifying to read, but I also found it really important that they were able to speak out and give their perspectives of what it’s like to be women in the industry. I have no idea if I’ll ever receive the kind of abuses they’ve received, but it’s important that our voices are heard. In future years, it’ll equal itself out a bit, but at the moment, I definitely feel aware of the fact that there aren’t many women.
J: Do you have anything you’d like to say about your band or music that people may not know about?
F: Yeah, I am very involved in the artwork and videos that we make. I’ve co-directed both of our music videos, and as a band, it’s really quite important for us to be involved in every aspect of what we do, and the visual aspect of our work is important to us. It’s been amazing to do that. So our videos, check them out! Hopefully you’ll enjoy them and be able to learn something about us as people. Since we are so involved with that side of our work, it’s hopefully a reflection of who we are in the style and the kind of way we’ve create the visual accompaniment to our music.
J: And the final question: if you could pick a boy band or pop singer from the 90’s, which one would you side with and why? I’ll be up-front and say I’m an ‘N SYNC fan.
F: I used to love ‘N SYNC! I used to listen to “Bye, Bye, Bye” on repeat as a teenager. Oh gosh, I don’t know though. I think I would go with Christina Aguilera because she’s slightly outrageous and dares to be a bit different. Watching her videos as a teenager and seeing this kind of feistiness at the time, I quite liked to see it in a female singer. Although I’d probably choose Blur as a 90’s boy band, actually. I was obsessed with Damon Albarn. My brother Will [Burgess] introduced me to them, and I fell head over heels in love. So Blur would probably be my dream band.
Woman’s Hour will soon embark on their fall tour. You can follow their musical adventures on www.womanshourband.co.uk/. To hear a selection from their new record, tune in to Joni Deutsch’s “A Change of Tune” this Saturday at 10 PM EST on West Virginia Public Radio.
Each week, “A Change of Tune” host Joni Deutsch will chat with up-and-coming artists and give Spotify-like music recommendations in a feature called “Recommended If You Like.” This week, Joni interviews Vancouver-based indie pop band Young Liars’ Jordan Raine (vocals, guitar) and Ty Badali (drums, percussion) about comic books, Madonna covers, and the band’s new record, Tidal Wave. If you’re a fan of Two Door Cinema Club, this band and interview are recommended for you.
Joni: As a bit of a comic book geek, I couldn’t wait to talk to you all about your band name. Is it true that you named yourselves after DC Comic’s Young Liars?
Jordan: That is true. Andrew [Beck, Young Liars’ bass player] actually read it and came up with the name. I actually haven’t read the comic book. I think it was before our first show, we were nameless and had been nameless for months. Coming up with a band name is hard, so when that one floated to the top, we thought, “Yeah! Young Liars! I can get with that,” without realizing forever that people would think it was because of the TV on the Radio album instead.
Joni: Looking at the comic book, there’s Nazi spiders in space and all kinds of crazy teenage shenanigans. It sounds like a crazy, interesting namesake.
Tyler: [Laughing] It’s supposed to be really good.
Jordan: Now you’re making me want to go read the comic so I could have more context for it.
Joni: Did the author of the comic book series ever acknowledge the band or reach out saying, “Hey, why did you steal my comic book?”
Tyler: [Laughing] No, but that would be cool.
Jordan: [Laughing] I don’t know if he even knows we exist. Maybe one day we’ll receive a cease and desist letter and we’ll have to move away.
J: What’s been the most exciting thing about releasing Tidal Wave and getting to tour?
J: For me, it’s been a long process to finish it and to finally have it out there for people to listen to. It’s been some kind of relief to be able to play these songs that we’ve been working on for so long. I guess my favorite part is that now we can go play these songs that we’ve been hiding for a year and a half out in public.
T: Yeah, that’s pretty much how I feel, too. I’m just glad it’s over. [Laughing] It was such a long process. And it’s nice being able to practice those songs in our rehearsals and have full songs to play. Having more than ten songs is kind of a new thing for us playing live, so we have something to choose from.
J: Do you guys have any favorites that you like to play live?
T: I think my favorite right now is “Lovely and Wild.” I really enjoy playing that song.
J: Yeah, me too. Either that one or “Blooming Hearts.” Those are both really, really good live.
J: We wanted to do something that was simple but wasn’t a narrative or just us sitting there playing like every music video from the 90’s where the band is just there in different movie camera angles. So we ended up working with a guy, Nathan Boey, out of Vancouver who thought we should do these tiny, little looping clips…
T: Like gifs.
J: Yeah, like these gif things that sort of tie together images and kind of relate to the lyrics and that are really kind of fun to look at. That’s what came out of it.
J: You’re totally right. It’s like 6-seconds of Vine-like storytelling that caters to our crazy bad attention spans.
J: It worked out, and I like it a lot actually. I like doing videos because so much of it is us giving a direction to the director, he takes it and carries it, and then we then get this cool representation that goes along with our music. It feels like we get this free, cool edition.
T: It makes you think about the song a lot differently.
Young Liars’ debut record, Tidal Wave.
J: Do you guys have any favorite cover songs that you’re doing on the road or maybe on your own time?
T: Covers have always been difficult for us. We’ve always shied away from playing them because we all want to choose one song to play and then we never perfect any of them. So we just play each once and then go back to playing our own songs.
J: I think the last one we did live was actually a Madonna song, and I don’t think we’ve recovered from it yet. “Hung Up,” I think?
T: Yeah, it scarred us for life. It was just quite a difficult song to cover, and we’re finally at a point now where all of our stage programming and live show are very tight. At that point, we were still trying to figure a lot things out.
J: Why Madonna though? Of all the artists, you chose Madonna and “Hung Up.” What made you think, “This is the one we should go cover.”
J: That’s a great question. I think it’s because we had so many ideas and that was the weird middle ground that we landed on.
T: Yeah, that was the one that everyone said yes to.
J: By the time we’re make it out there, we’ll have a proper cover that’s not Madonna that we can play for you guys.
J: Would you want to collaborate with Madonna then, or would you want to collaborate with a non-Madonna entity for the next record?
J: [Laughing] She wouldn’t be high on my list, no. There are others.
T: Little Dragon, maybe?
J: Aw man, that would be so fun. Hundred Waters would be so fun, too. It would be fun to get a female vocalist or female-fronted group and pairing the two together.
T: Grimes would be really cool since she’s from Vancouver.
J: How is the Vancouver music scene?
T: It’s good. There aren’t that many venues in the city, and I think there could be more. Pretty much everyone I know says the same thing. But there’s a lot of quality bands in the city. There’s just a lot of bands in general, and every jam space we go to is full. There’s a pretty good artist vibe out here.
J: Are there any up-and-coming artists from Vancouver that you want to give a shout-out to? Besides yourselves, of course.
J: Some of my favorite artists from Vancouver are The Belle Game, Aiden Knight, and We Are the City. There’s a lot of folks who I remember growing up with and seeing their early, early bands and going to their shows…
T: Like Supercasette and Oh No! Yoko and all those guys.
J: So it’s cool to see those bands mature and just release some really, really solid records.
J: Would you guys say that took more from Canada or outside countries/areas in terms of musical influences?
J: That’s an interesting question. I don’t think we necessarily fit into the Vancouver scene’s music genre. I think there’s a bit of more focus on folk and less on the electronic-kind of things that we’re interested in. So we all kind of grew up listening to a lot of electronic music and indie-type rock stuff, so we ended up looking through at a lot of UK bands and even some American bands.
J: When I was listening to Tidal Wave, I got the image of a Phoenix and Two Door Cinema Club music baby. Did either of those groups influence your music?
T: I don’t think so. I listened to a lot of Two Door Cinema Club when they first came out, and I’ve heard that comparison over and over and over about the band, but I seem to think it’s just Jordan’s voice maybe. I’ve had friends think it’s us on the radio when they hear a Two Door Cinema Club song, so maybe we do sound similar.
J: It’s not a bad comparison. The way Two Door Cinema Club tapped into an indie-electronica vibe was intriguing, and I like how you both are able to create infectious songs that are mix of highbeat and lowbeat.
T: Yeah, we really like The Cult and New Order, stuff like that. They’re songs aren’t all upbeat, but this album, for some reason, went strangely downbeat. A lot of the stuff ended up quite slow. We managed to get a lot of poppy stuff in there, and there’s quite a few driving songs. It’s a weird mix, this album.
J: With my saying Tidal Wave is an indie-electronica album, do you think that’s a fair description of your music?
J: I think it’s fair and good. We never come at it like a genre that we’re trying to get into, but I think that’s where we kind of ended up. Although I do like to watch what other people call it, and we’ve had some fantastic ones for this album. I think one was dream pop and another was psychedelic dance folk. These are wonderful mash-up genres that I don’t hear myself…
T: But we encourage it!
J: Do you guys have anything that you want to bring up about your record or your tour that people should know about you?
T: We’re going to be starting to tour. We’ve got a few dates for the summer, and we so we should be playing quite a few tours in the fall and spring. So if people want us to come play, we’d be happy to come.
J: And if they can let us know what their state food is, that would help.
Young_Liars_70814_wvpublic_segment_two.mp3
Joni talks with Young Liars about Canadian and American foods.
Young Liars just finished the summer tour for their debut album, Tidal Wave, and will soon hit the road again in September for a fall tour. You can follow their musical hijinks on http://youngliars.ca/. To get a sneak peak of their record, tune in to Joni Deutsch’s “A Change of Tune” this Saturday at 10 PM EST on West Virginia Public Radio.
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