What are your feelings on your being featured on KCRW and Nic Harcourt’s Morning Becomes Eclectic?
Its great that this guy (Harcourt) is playing our stuff on the other side of the country. Whenever I’ve learned about a station in Canada or the UK or really anywhere that is a serious hike from where we live and operate, its appreciated. Its assurance that we could soon enough pack up the trailer and play some shows in that area.
Would you sign to a label, given the opportunity?
Well, I have been given the opportunity, and I probably will be doing something label-related either late next year or in 2007. It is a difficult decision, though, and the only way I would ever consider working with a label is if they allow me lots of freedom, and if they aren’t greedy.
How does it feel to be compared to musicians like Ben Folds and Billy Joel?
All at once, it can feel flattering, challenging, and limiting. I am often told I sound like Ben Folds, Rufus Wainwright, Billy Joel, and Elton John. Most of the time, I appreciate such comments, but I always want to reply by saying “Thanks, my other songs are completely different” or something like that. I think sometimes people equate a boy and his piano with said artists because that’s all they’ve seen in rock/pop music for years. I don’t claim to be doing anything remarkably ground-breaking or conceptual, but I am trying my best to avoid writing songs that sound like that. I have a broader collection of songs, many on guitar as well, that individually might sound like Ben Folds, Elliott Smith, Paul McCartney (but not Wings!), or Rufus Wainwright. But collectively, I wouldn’t consider myself completely like any of those artists, but perhaps an amalgamation of all them. People find such comparisons helpful in deciding what music to buy, what concerts to attend, and what music to promote, so I can’t say that it’s compeltely moot or innaccurate. If anything, I’m challenged to write even more diverse music in light of these comparisons.
Was it difficult getting back into the groove with an eight-year gap between albums?
No … the groove is a very patient, forgiving kind of chap … he seems to always take a shine to us when we eventually show up.
In the track “Sylvia Plath,” you combine hip-hop and an early Jazz style — you seem to be fond of combinations like that. What brought that about?
I think jazz is one of the more interesting genres of the last century. I’m certainly no pioneer of combining it with hip hop, but it’s a combination that I still think has more room for exploration. In more recent works, I’ve been focusing on Brazillian jazz and jazz from other countries as primary influences. I’d like to eventually make an entirely jazz influenced album.
Act One, debut album of British prog-rockers, Beggar’s Opera, is a fun, timeless work in an early British post-psychedelic style. Most notable among the instrumentation is Alan Park’s fantastical keyboard and organ playing, at times breaking into classical pieces (similar to contemporaries Emerson, Lake & Palmer), from Grieg’s famous Peer Gynt suite (best known for its “In the Hall of the Mountain King,”) to Mozart’s “Rondo allo Turka,” suggesting that Park was, at the very least, well-trained.
The first time I heard Nashville’s Blue Merle, I could have sworn it was a side project of Coldplay’s Chris Martin based on the singer’s voice. Although the singer may sound alot like Martin, the music itself goes in several different directions with an occasional fiddle or violin thrown in.
What’s it like, being a growingly successful band from a small town? Do you think that your roots play a definite role in your musicianship?
Growing up in a small town, you don’t really have any distractions at all. I mean, what did we have? A bowling alley, a mall, and a hockey team… I was never into sports or after-school activites, so I would have a lot of time to work on my sequencers at home while going through highschool. Today, years later, there is still nothing to do up there, and although I stay mostly in NYC, I still like to do all my music upstate. There, we can just totally focus on just that and forget about everything else. It’s pure, like a good pop song. (more…)