So I have to tell you, I’m excited to see you guys at Webster Hall on the 24th!
Great! We’re excited too. We played there supporting our last record, Bows and Arrows.
I saw you guys at the Filter party here in New York, and I was surprised to see all the instrument switching.
Yeah, Walt and Pete switched places last year. We had them try to play the new songs in their old post, and it was just brutal, so when we play the old songs, they gotta’ go back.
Can we expect to see you on drums next?
No, no, they won’t let me play drums.
A Hundred Miles Off is new frontier in that respect, yes? We just started doing that on this record. We’ve all been playing pretty much the same instruments since we were 13 or 14. I think that after the last record Walt sat down at the organ and Pete picked up the bass and they couldn’t face it anymore, they just couldn’t do it! It’s still the same guys though, so it’s not that big of a life changing experience.
It has been kind of a life together, right? It’s been the same guys for you since at least 2000…
We went to high school together. Walt’s my cousin, so I’ve known him my whole life and we’ll all been in bands together since we were 13, 14 years old.
A Hundred Miles Off is an exceptional album. Does anything stand out this time around?
It was a lot, lot harder to write it, and then a lot easier to record than Bows and Arrows. It just took us a really long time to write something that we liked. It took 8 months to come up with a single song. Once we got one song down then the others started coming quickly. When we got into the studio, it had been so long that we were all really excited to be in the studio and doing songs that we wanted to do.
We went to Inter Ear studios in DC and recorded with this great guy Don Zientera, who really made everything go quickly and painlessly, which we’re really not used to because it’s always been such an ordeal. Things are always breaking and we’re engineering everything ourselves, which can be a slow, slow, painful process. Then with Don, we’re all of a sudden done and waiting for the big battle, but nothing happens, no battle, we’re just done.
You guys produced and engineered a lot of your own stuff.
Yeah, we’ve done everything.
So working with an outside guy was kind of a new experience?
Yeah, we had started on something like that before but here we were on his turf, when we usually work in our studio, and it was just a big help doing all the little details… it made things smooth.
I also read that you guys are working on a novel together?
Yeah, we have this novel in the works, but right now it’s only like 30 pages long. We right it in the van when touring and when we’re really, really bored. We haven’t worked on it in a while because it’s something we do on tour. It’s kinda’ weird to bring it home and work on it, so with this tour, I think we’ll get a lot of work done.
What’s it like writing music and now a manuscript with these guys?
It’s different (laughing), you just try to make it as funny as you can. We’re just trying to make the novel really, really funny.
What’s it about, what goes on?
Well, there’s no plot thus far. It’s kind of like a vague idea about a guy named John who is on a road trip, so we can incorporate a lot of our touring experience and put stuff in from that perspective to sort of stick it together as a novel.
Have you guys thought about doing an album to tie in with the manuscript or anything?
I don’t know yet. Once it get’s together, I think we’ll do a lot with it.
There’s a “complaints” section on your site, whose idea was that?
I think that’s my idea actually. We we’re doing the website and you always have the music section and then the concert section and we were like, “what the hell else is there?”
Has anyone complained?
Yeah, we’ve gotten complaints, but it’s mostly people just trying to be funny.
Is it true the next album is already in the can? Yeah, it is! We did a cover of Harry Nelson’s, Pussy Cat record. And we did it at our own studio right before it shut down. We got a bunch of friends, a bunch of musicians from other bands, to come up and slammed it out over a two week period and then had a big party and had people do a lot of back up vocals. It’s done and it’s coming out in November.
Great, what can we expect from that album? It’s very, very different. It’s fun because it’s so different. There are a lot of party songs. They are mostly covers songs. We do Subterranean Homesick Blues and a lot of fun songs. There are kazoos and things. I’m really excited about it.
What can we expect from The Walkmen and following albums?
Well, we’re working on it right now, today. We’d like to try and re-open a studio of some sorts. I think we may have just finished our first song, between the time you called me and I called you back.
Nice.
We’ve been working on it for the last couple months and I think we just finished it!
That’s fantastic!
Yeah, and if we can get that done I’d really like to put out records a lot faster then we have in the past. That’s the goal now. If we can do it and we’re happy with it, I think everyone would be thrilled. |