Missed out on last week’s ‘A Change of Tune’? Don’t know what to expect in the weeks to come? Here’s your Tu(n)esday Wrap-Up.
Interview:
If you don’t know who False Pterodactyl is, forget about running: fly your ears over to last week’s band chat with the little-known but much-loved Morgantown alt-rockers. You can hear our interview with them here.
‘A Change of Tune’ Jan. 30 Playlist / Downloads:
Stream the Spotify show playlist below and find downloads for most of the songs from our public library friends at Freegal.
Jefferson Airplane vs. Fatboy Slim- Somebody to Praise
Chairlift- Moth to the Flame
Bayonne- Spectrolite
Lava Bangs- Ouch!
Widowspeak- All Yours
Half Moon Run- Narrow Margins
False Pterodactyl- Little Me
Foals- Birch Tree
San Diego- Hinds
Your Friend- Heathering
DIIV- Bent (Roi’s Song)
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart- Laid
Sunflower Bean- Easier Said
Overcoats- Smaller Than My Mother
Frankie Cosmos- Young
Jesca Hoop- John, I’m Only Dancing (David Bowie cover)
The Week to Come:
– West Virginia Public Broadcasting is in the middle of its 20th annual Chocolate Challenge fundraiser! If you’re a fan of #WVmusic discovery (not to mention #WVmade chocolate), support ‘A Change of Tune’ by becoming a member of West Virginia Public Broadcasting. Did we mention you can acquire tickets to February 14’s sold-out Mountain Stage (featuring Wilco, Brooke Waggoner, Joan Shelley and more) by calling 1-800-723-4687? Because you can.
-We’re hard at work on our Valentine’s Day and Oscar movie music shows. Have any music rec’s? Send them our way! You can reach the show @achangeoftune on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
-We’re proud to announce that ‘A Change of Tune’ will present our #WVmusic friends The Sea The Sea and Qiet’s double album release show in Charleston on Saturday, February 27. Find out more (and purchase your tickets) here.
It’s hard “making it” in the music biz, especially if you’re a great band out of Morgantown, West Virginia.
After seven self-releases and minor media coverage, False Pterodactyl’s John “Jake” Jacob and Josh Ratliff have come to the realization that they may never break into mainstream music, but at least they’re making the eclectic music that they want to make.
We sat down with the alt rock duo to talk about their new release Lo, what it means to be a “DIY band” and the West Virginia music that should be on your radar.
Jake: I was living in Braxton County and was having these weekend jams in my dad’s garage. And my little sister was like, “My friend Josh plays drums.” So I told her, “Well, have him to come up and play.” And we jammed, and it was really fun, and it sounded pretty cool. And he lived up here at the time, so I was like, “Well, I’m going to move to Morgantown and start a band.” Because we’ve known each other since we were little kids. We were on the same little league team back in the 90s [laughs].
Josh: Yeah, I was a horrible baseball player. Music was a little… I’m not saying I’m not terrible [at playing music], but it’s not as bad as baseball.
On calling themselves a Morgantown band:
Josh: Well, I came to school here [in Morgantown], so I graduated in 2011 from WVU. I’ve just been kicking it around up here ever since. We’re both originally from the Flatwoods area: we grew up there, it’s where the band started jamming… So we’re kind of back and forth [between Morgantown and Flatwoods]. We’re very proud of our West Virginia heritage.
Jake: Yeah, we’re a Morgantown band. We can’t say we’re from Flatwoods because no one knows where Flatwoods is.
On the Braxton County music scene:
Josh: There’s bluegrass that goes down. As far as rock or anything like that, there’s not much of that going on.
Jake: Some friends of mine, they have a [Braxton County] band called Electric Green Machine. It’s like a sludge metal band. They’re actually guys I used to jam with, too. Their drummer was the drummer of my first band in high school.
On False Pterodactyl’s name:
Josh: Obviously we like Jurassic Park [laughs].
Jake: It was weird. After we started the band, we started writing songs. It took a month or two to pick out a name, and it got to the point that it just became frustrating. So we were having a really random conversation in my dad’s driveway one evening with friends, and got stuck on this idea of a guy wearing a pterodactyl costume.
Josh: I think we were originally going to be John Brown Pterodactyl..
Jake: But the guy who we were going to name it after was wild and was worried he might…
Josh: Yeah, it wasn’t the historical John Brown [laughs].
Jake: But we settled on False Pterodactyl because it’s really easy to Google, which you have to have that nowadays if you want someone to find you. It was just weird, and what’s nice about it is that it doesn’t really imply a certain kind of music, so we can keep changing and doing different kinds of music and not worry too much if it fits the image of the band or whatever. I don’t really think we have an image, and if we did, it keeps changing.
Josh: If anything, we work a little bit at not intentionally projecting a certain image of the band. It seems contrived, and we worry about that. We don’t want to seem contrived.
Credit Courtesy of False Pterodactyl
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False Pterodactyl’s rock’n duo Josh Ratliff and John “Jake” Jacob.
On their evolving sound:
Josh: When we first started, we had that two-piece bluesy rock thing going, so I got real into these two-piece bands like Flat Duo Jets and The White Stripes. But I’ve never really been hardcore into any particular kind of music. [For example,] I like Nicki Minaj! She just does some cool things vocally; it’s interesting, and I cannot get bored listening to it
Jake: For a lot of our songs, I think the lyrics are definitely hip hop-influenced, which I think is cool as far as trying to stay away from being contrived, staying away from being just a punk band or a two-piece blues rock band.
Josh: Which really works against you because… I wouldn’t say people want to pigeonhole you, but they definitely want a sound bite that can describe you.
Jake: I feel if someone takes the time to listen to us, they can do it on a song-by-song basis. Because we don’t just have one song where everyone’s like, “Aw, we love that one song.” Everyone has a different song that they like. And I like that because it just means that…
Josh: We don’t have to play that one song over and over [laughs].
On their newest release Lo:
Jake: I tried to make this one a little more psychedelic, just because that’s what I’ve been into lately. I got really into Six Organs of Admittance and that really lo-fi sound… I just wanted to make it different, not super accessible.
Josh: I was in a car accident on November 1 [in 2015] and broke my legs, so that kind of put this album on hold. It kind of forced us to do some non-traditional things with the percussion too. I don’t think there’s any traditional drum set kick snare, cymbals, that sort of thing on the songs. We just tried to mix it up. We used chimes, we used hand claps, we hit weights with a stick…
Jake: All the stuff we had laying around in our practice spot. Just trying to not do things we’d done before.
Josh: As we were working on it, we had this feeling that this is going to be something that people are either really into or they’re really not into. It’s going to elicit some response from people, whether positive or negative.
<a data-cke-saved-href=”http://falsepterodactyl.bandcamp.com/album/lo” href=”http://falsepterodactyl.bandcamp.com/album/lo”>LO by False Pterodactyl</a>
On international response to their music:
Jake: We have a fan in Vancouver. We’ve sent some CD’s to Australia.
Josh: We’re on all these random Russian torrent sites, so we have people that’ll download our stuff from Russia or Eastern Europe [laughing]. It’s wild. It’s not a ton of them, but they’re out there.
On being a DIY band:
Josh: It’s nice having complete creative control over everything and book where we want to tour. [But] that is difficult to do on your own because you got to get used to being told no. It’s tough… because you feel like it’s a part of you that’s being put out there.
On “making it” as a WV band:
Jake: I feel like if we were a country band and doing good, it would fall together. Because that’s what people listen to around here.
On being a dynamic duo:
Josh: [Jake’s] the James Taylor, and I’m the John Bonham. Except I don’t want to say that, that’s very…
Missed out on last week’s ‘A Change of Tune’? Don’t know what to expect in the week to come? Consider this your Tu(n)esday Wrap-Up.
Interview:
We kicked off our 2016 band chat series with the wry-witted Eric Earley, better known for his role as songwriter and lead vocalist for the Portland alt-rock band Blitzen Trapper. We chatted about the band’s passionate fanbase, their affinity for the cult classic Twin Peaks and how Bowie fits into their musical story.
Speaking of Bowie, Blitzen Trapper returned to NPR’s Mountain Stage in Morgantown this past Sunday, and they performed a cover of Bowie’s “Heroes” alongside Wild Child, Ruby Amanfu, The Birds of Chicago and The Suitcase Junket. The full show won’t be broadcast on NPR stations until March, but you can hear the Bowie tribute below via Mountain Stage’s Soundcloud.
‘A Change of Tune’ Jan. 16 Playlist / Downloads:
Speaking of Bowie (again), we played a couple space oddity-tastic tunes on this past Saturday’s show! Stream the Spotify show playlist below and find downloads for most of the songs from our Kanawha County Public Library friends at Freegal.
-While we were up in Morgantown with Mountain Stage, we had the pleasure of sitting down with local band False Pterodactyl to chat about their psychedelic new release and what it means to “make it” in West Virginia. Keep an eye on our page and our socials for the complete chat when it goes live this Friday.
-Did you hear about this Sunday’s Mountain Stage in Charleston featuring Robert Earl Keen, The Old 97’s Rhett Miller, The Westies and our Boston pop-rock friends Guster? It’s a sold-out show, but ‘A Change of Tune’ has saved a pair of tickets for ya! Make sure to follow @achangeoftune on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to find out when our Guster ticket giveaway goes live.
