2011-01-11 - Creative Loafing

A Q&A with of Montreal visionary frontman Kevin Barnes; the Athens psyche pop group plays The Ritz Ybor on Saturday (with videos)

Posted by Leilani Polk on Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 12:57 PM

Kevin Barnes [pictured below] is the high priest of intellectually stimulating, cleverly cheeky pop culture-infused lyricism, an idiosyncratic self-trained musical genius who serves as the visionary frontman of Athens, Ga. electro-lush glam rock and psyche pop outfit, of Montreal. The band released a Top-10-of-the-year worthy LP in 2010, False Priest, which found them fully exploring their funkadelic and R&B tendencies along with pumping up the richness of their sound with help from producer Jon Brion (Kanye West, Fiona Apple).

I had the pleasure of chatting with Barnes several weeks back while he was taking a break before gearing up for the next leg of the band’s False Priest tour. Check out our lengthy conversation below along with various videos for songs off the new album.

Leilani: So how are you doing? You enjoying some time off? Or is there really any such thing as time off for Kevin Barnes?

KB: Yeah, I’ve been getting some recording done. It’s been good. I feel lazy if I don’t do anything, just sitting around seems like a waste of time.

How have the False Priest tour dates been so far? I know you played some international dates ...

Yeah, it was great, it was definitely one of the most successful tours we’ve ever done, on every level. We also recently went to Mexico and we went to Brazil, before that we went to Europe. We’ve kind of been all over the place.

Were these your first dates in Mexico and Brazil? What’s it like playing down there?

It was our first date in Brazil, but we'd played one other show in Mexico. The first time we went down there, actually, it was sort of under dubious circumstances because we were playing this festival — it was a massive festival [Corona Music Fest] — but we were playing a smaller stage. And the festival was actually in a soccer stadium that was, if it’s not the biggest, then definitely one of the top five largest soccer stadiums in the world. Just massive. But we weren’t there, we were in the parking lot, one of the side stages in the parking lot of the giant soccer stadium.

Most of the kids were there to see NOFX. So they didn’t want to see us at all, you know? And they were really insane and it was crazy weather, pouring down rain, and these kids were really into the whole punk rock thing and the role-playing of “Oh, we’re so punk rock, we hate everything,” so they were spitting at us and throwing shit at us. It didn’t bother me because it was so surreal and so cinematic in a way, you know? It was definitely an extraordinary experience.

We went back a couple weeks ago and played a proper show in a venue, and we were the headliners. And that was great. We got to really connect with people who were on our side. So that was nice.

Do you find that your overseas fans respond differently to your music, or are there certain songs they respond to more enthusiastically?

I think we’ve been sort of spoiled because our U.S. fans are really amazing, it’s not like we're coming from this uptight place and then going to these other places where people are less uptight.

But sometimes we feel like, in a weird way, we are an American band that seems to make sense more to Americans than we do to people in other countries. But one thing that does seem true is when you go to other countries, people don’t have to know the material to get into it, they’re naturally inclined to dance and they want to dance and celebrate and have fun. When they see a band, as long as the band is giving them something that they can work with, they will be very supportive and vocal about it.

I guess if you put on a good show people will like it regardless of what you’re doing as long as the music is good and the entertainment matches the quality of music…

It’s kind of cool to go places where maybe you haven’t been before, and maybe your records aren’t really available or widely available, and you have to really sort of get by on the talent, or the presentation, or whatever it is you’re putting forward. You really have to have your shit together in order to put something across that’s positive for people.

Sometimes it’s easy, if the fans are there to see you and they know the material. You can’t really lose unless you’re just completely wasted and can’t even function or can’t stand up or whatever (laughs). As long as you can, like, do your thing, then people are going to like it and it’s fine. But it’s kind of an interesting challenge to go places where you don’t really know if they know you, and they don’t really have the context to understand you, but they can still get into it.

Let’s talk a little about False Priest. I know you’ve said in interviews that it was pretty much complete when you brought it to producer Jon Brion. What motivated you to work with him?

I had only worked in my home studio and I’ve only worked in bedroom studios my whole life, so I’ve never really been to a real classic studio and worked with anyone who had a track record like Jon’s. So it was really me wanting to go and see how real records are made, rather than what I considered my little bedroom project. And I was really intrigued by going to Ocean Way, where Frank Sinatra used to record, and all sorts of other crazy people over the years, and then working with Jon, who’s a genius, a total icon. I knew I’d learn a lot and I did. So it was great.

[Video below for "Famine Affair" off False Priest]

What ultimately convinced you to incorporate more live instrumentation on this album?

The live drums was sort a of a semi-new thing – the last couple years have been more drum programming and loops. I’ve kept a lot of the drum programming, then also integrated live drumming onto the tracks as well. But the main thing is instead of using the software versions of synthesizers, using the actual synthesizers.

Jon has an incredible collection of vintage synthesizers, vibraphones and the most incredible collection of musical instruments you could ever imagine. We had so much at our disposal. He’d listen to something I made just using my computer software, piecing it together myself like that, and he’d go, “Oh, you want to use a Mellotron sound, or that Chamberlin sound? I have an actual Chamberlin. We can just plug it in and replace it with that.”

We did that a lot, replacing software versions with their actual physical instrument. And then the big thing, too, was mixing, ’cause I’d always just mix it myself, but Jon has an engineer that he works with and he pretty much mixed the whole thing. I was there with him and made some suggestions, but he was the one moving the faders and turning the knobs. That was cool, too. To have someone else I respected mixing it, after it was all said and done, was really great for me. I kinda just looked at it as an education …

It seems like you go through a different stage of creativity with each album. How did your creative process work and evolve into what became False Priest?

A big thing for we was meeting the Wondaland Arts Society, which is the art collective that Janelle Monáe is part of. I met them in Atlanta after a Skeletal Lamping show and we started hanging out. One of the guy’s in the collective, Chuck Lightning, he and I became really good friends and he turned me on to a bunch of different things I hadn’t really explored very much, like the whole P-funk scene and a lot of science fiction writing and things like that. I owe a lot of that inspiration, that spark, to Chuck and meeting those guys. It was great because they were working on the Arch Android, Janelle’s record, at the same time and we would kind of email each other, works in progress. Getting their feedback and support was very important to me.

I know she’s on the album, specifically one of the songs I wanted to talk to you about, “Enemy Gene” – how did that song come about?

The creative process has always been a bit of mystery to me, it’s sort of this unconscious evolution. I just sort of sit down at piano or guitar or whatever it is, and it sort of happens in this organic way, and I just sort of let it happen, and whatever it is, if I’m laying down the music first, I’ll listen to it a bunch of times and figure out what I want to sing about here. I have a journal that I keep all my lyrical ideas in, so I’ll go through the journal and see if I find something that seems to fit or that has some sort of glow to it, like, oh, that’s the direction I should be going in. You know? And then I sort of piece it together. All of this really happens very organically and very mysteriously.

But getting Janelle to sing on it … once I discovered what an incredible vocalist she was and how versatile she was, I got to a point where I wanted her just to sing on every track – basically I wanted make a Janelle Monáe record. But you know, I couldn’t be too greedy.

We actually wrote that song “Our Riotous Defects” as a duet. It was sort of like a he-said she-said – she took the second verse, and we had a whole separate verse that she sang that was more from the female perspective. But it kind of became too campy, so we shelved it. It might be available via iTunes [it is on the Deluxe Version of False Priest]. That was the original idea. But after we shelved that, we ended up getting her to sing on “Enemy Gene.”

[Kevin Barnes performing "Enemy Gene" solo acoustic on piano below.]

You’ve been known to take autobiographical experiences and incorporate them into your songs. How much would you say what you’re writing these days is inspired by things that have happened to you as opposed to things you’ve made up or things that have inspired things you’ve made up?

It’s definitely something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. I think, maybe about 50 percent, it’s sort of split. A lot of the stuff, maybe it didn’t actually happen, but I don’t really differentiate that much between what physically happens or what just happens in my mind. In a way, it like, if it happens in my mind then it’s just as real as if it happens in real life.

Also, I think about music and I think about the things I sort of identify with and writers I identify and the writers a lot of other people identify with, are the ones that speak, for the most part, from personal experience, and it just feels more real and more emotive and in a way, more fulfilling to hear stuff like that because it has a universal appeal to it. Someone like John Lennon, for example, and the Plastic Ono Band, it’s one of the best examples of that, just completely raw and coming straight from his heart, straight from his soul. That’s something you can’t really do on every record, necessarily, but those are magical moments in music, and we’re lucky to have a few. It’s something I’d like to do more and I think I’m getting in a state of mind where I can do it a little bit more. Because you do have to put yourself in this vulnerable position and really not think about the outside world – at least for me, anyway, it would definitely throw me off. If I think about someone writing about it, commenting on, hearing it, even, then it takes me about of that space that you need to be in where you’re just unconsciously doing this thing, stripping it directly from your psyche and not conscious of it. Otherwise, you might just become too self-conscious to even do it. I think you have to be unconscious in that in that way – you’re speaking to god, or whatever, you’re speaking to something that isn’t necessarily human…

I know you guys have another outrageous stage production put together for this tour. What is different on this tour from your last big album tour as far as what’s happening on stage?

When we were putting the False Priest show together, my brother [multi-media artist David Barnes] and I were talking about our vision. The Skeletal Lamping show was basically just a collection of all these theatrical moments and they weren’t really connected at all – we’d have this Old West barroom brawl break out during one song, a creepy religious figure molesting little kids or something in another, and then we’d have this guy getting harassed by John McCain dolls, then hanging himself, and then getting covered in blood in some Aztec ceremony. Randoms ideas that we created and threw together.

So for False Priest, we thought it’d be cool if it was more thematic and everything had a narrative to it, that maybe wasn’t completely linear, but the parts connected together, so felt more like a contrived piece of work. And we actually tried that for the first couple shows, but it became almost a bit Spinal Tap (laughs). It wasn’t the way we envisioned it in our heads, it just came off in this awkward, sort of pretentious silly way. So then we just said, fuck it, and abandoned it and we were like, we’ve got all these components, we’ve got all these costumes and all these props, and everything, so what are we going to do?

So we tried to make it more playful and fun. I think we always just naturally gravitate towards that anyway, and any time we try to be too ambitious in creating some sweeping epic in our mind, it never really comes across. It’s always better if we have fun and do things spontaneously. And when you’re doing something night after night after night, even if it’s a complicated thing where you have lots of roles to play, it can still become mundane. To have that freedom, where you don’t have to follow any script, is very important.

It’s kind of funny, too, though, with the theatrics, because you realize that one certain theatric works really well with this specific song, but if you tried to do it on another song, it’d be awkward and just wouldn’t work. So a lot of times the theatrics actually sort of determine what the setlist is going to be.

So what’s next? I know you guys have an EP with some more material from False Priest on the way …

Yeah, that’s going to come out in April. It’s called The Controller Sphere. I’m really excited about it. It’s only five songs but there’s some different material, it’s sort of new territory for us, a bit noisier, a bit artsier. Just kind of bizarre stuff. But that’s done. And like you said, I’m not gonna take a break, so I’ve been working on more new material, working on some new projects, and I’m sort of in a transitional stage right now trying to figure out what I want to do next. I’ve made so many records by now, I’m trying to figure out if I should do should do something different, involve different people, to figure out different things I want to do, but still writing and exploring…

[Video for "Coquet Coquette" from False Priest below.]

2011-05-05 - Modern Mystery

Interview: of Montreal vs. Yip Deceiver

Interviewer: Bella Questions: Melissa Nastasi / Bella Photos: Cienna Willis

Last weekend at Webster Hall we had the chance of sitting down with members of an old favorite and a new favorite. Davey Pierce and Nick Dobbratz from of Montreal and Yip Deceiver. The guys gave us a whole new insight on what it takes to put on an oM show, and just what exactly a Yip Deceiver is. Give it a read. It’s a good one!

So how has the tour been treating you so far?
Davey: It’s been really good actually.
Nick: Yeah, it’s been lots of fun.

Davey, you worked on some props for the False Priest tour. Was that something new? Do you plan on doing it in the future?
Davey: I probably will do it in the future. It’s kind of something that fell into my lap. We needed somebody to make these props and I like doing stuff like that. I kind of just took it over.

Everything is different since you joined during Hissing Fauna, how do you keep up with all of the change?
Davey: It’s pretty easy actually. I mean because it’s kind of a natural progression you just sit back and watch it happen basically. You get so caught up in playing the shows and everything and you don’t even realize that everything’s changing so much.

Recently you can tell that the actual band members have been a lot more involved in the theatrics than usual. Is that something you guys plan on doing? Or is that something you enjoy doing?
Davey: I love it personally. I mean like it adds this whole kind of sense that it’s not just two different things going on on stage. Which in the past it has been. It’s been a bunch of people set up playing music while something else is going on in front of them. Whereas now it’s more like the performance lines and the music lines have blurred so much that it’s actually just one big thing.
Nick: I feel like it was a concious decision on this tour ahead of time to do exactly what Davey’s saying. As opposed to having two different things. I enjoy it, I like it. It’s changing every night right now.

When it comes to theatrics is it just David Barnes right now or do you all have a say in it?
Davey: He takes ideas from everybody. It is like Dobby (Nick) was saying. It’s a big evolving kind of thing. If you have an idea you can be like “Hey, what if we did this?”. If it works, it works. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. And David’s very open to suggestions like if I walk up to him an I go “I really hated this one thing” He’ll be like “Okay, let’s see if we can make it better” It is his thing but he’s definately open to critism which is given.
Nick: And he likes to work with people’s personalities too. Whatever someones comfortable with.

You recently went on tour as Yip Deciever with Sugar & Gold. How was that tour?
Davey: It was great, it was really fucking fun.
Nick: Yeah.

Where did the name Yip Deceiver come from?
Davey: It’s actually, um, it was Clayton. We were actually drunk at a bar at like noon and we were trying to come up with a name for it. And we started making anagrams of my name. Yip Deceiver is what we came up with but we left an ‘A’ out and put an extra ‘I’. It’s a failed anagram of Davey Pierce basically.

How did you two come to working together on this project?
Nick: I joined of Montreal almost a year ago and during the time on the first tour I already heard Davey’s stuff. We kinda just started talking and we shared a lot of the same interests and influences. It inspired each other to keep working on stuff so it just happened.

Speaking of influences, you can tell that Yip Deceiver is very different from Inkwell. What influences do you have in this project that are different from Inkwell?
Davey: It’s pretty much all over. I’ve been listening to a lot of old 80′s and 90′s R&B, actually Dobby’s kind of the one that got me back into it. It does kind of come through in a way. The sounds that they use speak to me so much to me. The Inkwell stuff was kind of worn out of necessity. It was like we own guitars and a drum set and so that’s what we had to work with. And it was also like blatant punk rock, all the crap I used to listen to when I was 12. Getting the rest of that out of there so I can move on.

Yip Deceiver gained a lot of attention, which was mainly positive, for the Coquet Coquette remix. How did to feel to that feedback and that attention?
Davey: I mean obviously I was cool with it but I found just as much negative attention as positive attention. As you will with any remix. “This sucks compared to the orginial” Well it’s like thank you I guess, it’s not suppose to be the fucking orginial. But whatever, it was fun to do. I love the song. It was basically just me in my apartment with a bottle of wine and a drumset. I’d do it again, well, I probably will do it again. But I also did a remix of Sugar & Gold’s “It’s All Over You.” It’s on their new EP, it’s fantastic. Not the remix, but the EP.
Nick: The remix is fantastic. Which actually now that I think about it is one of the moments where we realized that we should be working together. It was kind of something that I written and Davey reproduced it; and it kind of the first thing we worked on together.
Davey: Actually the first thing we worked on we never actually finished. We’ve just been working on it for like a year now.

Davey, you had prior expierience playing two sets in a row with Jamey’s project, James Husband- and then again with Yip Deceiver, who had opened up for of Montreal for a few shows. Do you find playing sets in a row exhausting?
Davey: In some ways. It can be really physically exhausting but at the same time it’s like this is what we do. It’s kind of like we’ve been training our entire lives to do this. It’s so rewarding that it doesn’t really matter how exhausted you are because you can have such a great time doing both things. Especially if they’re so different. Playing with James Husband and playing with of Montreal are two totally different animals. I was on two totally different insturments and it was always fun.
Nick: For me it has a time limit. It got to a certain point on the last tour where I felt like I couldn’t do it anymore. But for the most part it’s not like you have a slightly different role so you make due.

What do you find most rewarding about it?
Davey: For me it’s just like, it is the thing we’ve been working towards. To be on stage with all these people that are my best friends. There are all these kinds of personal jokes that you don’t want to say during the set. I look over at Dobby and fucking crack up. There’s one thing that he does that makes me laugh or it’s Clayton or Thayer or Dottie. It’s rewarding because every night I get to do the thing that I’ve always wanted to do.
Nick: That’s true, I forget that sometimes.
Davey: It is actually really easy to forget that sometimes. Like when you wake up and you’re just like “I just wanna get a job and wear a tie”

You have those moments?
Davey: Every once in a while. The grass is always greener sometimes. Where it’s just like I wouldn’t mind being home. We haven’t really been home for more than two weeks in the past seven months now?
Nick: Yeah.
Davey: So I wouldn’t mind being home for a year but at the same time if I’m home for more than week I get really tired of being home.

What’s in the future for Yip Deceiver?
Davey: We’re working on a full length right now actually. Hopefully it’ll come out October-ish?
Nick: That’s what we’re shooting for, yeah.
Davey: We’re doing a video for a song called Get Strict starting in May. There’s gonna be all sorts of nice little surprise guest stars. It’ll be a big dance video.

Dance video? Will you guys be dancing?
Davey: There will probably be a little bit of us dancing in it, yeah.
Nick: There will be a lot of other people dancing in it too.
Davey: Mostly other people dancing in it.

New York has always been a great crowd for you guys. But, truthfully, what is your favorite city to play in?
Davey: Surprisingly, Mobile Alabama has very recently taken that spot. Just blew everyone outside of the water. They’re insane down there, they’re amazing. The crowds are so into it. They’re having so much, they’re just so nice. It’s incredible actually.

False Priest did great on both the CMJ and Billboard charts. How did it feel as a band to do that great?
Davey: It felt really good. Where were we when we got the CMJ thing? Was that Stockholm?
Nick: Yeah, I think so.
Davey: I’m pretty sure it was Stockholm. It was like “We’re number one on the CMJ charts!” And it was kind of this weird feeling. It was like, well we’re not even really home and no one knows what CMJ is over where. But it feels really cool to know that you’re doing something that people really want to hear. I guess that’s kind of the ultimate goal, is to have an audience that’ll listen to your insane ramblings for the most part.

One last question, is it blackmail domination or black male domination?
Davey: Blackmail.
Nick: What do you want it to be?
Davey: Yeah, that’s a good point too.
Davey: There are teams now. It is a very polarizing issue.
Nick: Blackmail or black male?
Davey: Yeah.
Nick: -chuckles-
Davey: I’m on Team Blackmail. But at the same time he(Nick) has a point, it’s whatever you want it to be. It doesn’t really matter too much.

2010-10-09 - NME

http://nyconversation.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Of-Montreal.pdf

2010-11-18 - Eater.com

Of Montreal Talks Southern Gourmet and Tacos in Mexico

Thursday, November 18, 2010, by Jessica Amason

Of Montreal. Top - Jerrod Porter, Dottie Alexander, Davey Pierce, Matt Wheeler, Dan Korn, Pual Nunn, Nick Gould, Kevin Barnes. Bottom - Clayton Rychlik, Nicholas Dobbratz, Nikki Martin, Thayer Sarrano, Michael Wheeler, Brian Poole. [Photo: Patrick Heagney]

Of Montreal's sound is shaped by an ever-changing cast of characters and love for the whimsical community of Athens, GA. When frontman Kevin Barnes moved to Athens in the late 90s, the band morphed from a pop solo project to a sort of psychedelic collective, with dramatic stage shows, and elaborate costumes. Flash-forward to today and the band is a regular on MTV and Late Night, has performed on SNL, and even had their song used in an Outback Steakhouse commercial! I caught up with one of the group's core members and keyboard player, Dottie Alexander, to talk hometown eats and mystery meat.

Having lived in Athens, GA for over a decade - have you cultivated a Southern food bias? Any Southern dishes you feel pretty strongly about?
Definitely. Athens has really cultivated the "Southern Gourmet" aesthetic over the last decade, and I find myself missing that kind of food when I'm away. Shrimp and grits and collards are two of my favorites.

What are your favorite restaurants in Athens and what are your regular dishes there?
I'm a big fan of The National, which has a revolving seasonal menu, and the Diner Burgers at The Globe are amazing!

You recently got married. I heard the celebration was a blast with a killer after party to boot. Can you tell us a little bit about the grub at the big event?
We wanted the entire event to be a celebration of Athens, as well as the two of us, so we went local on everything. White Tiger catered with amazing yummy barbecue. We did our rehearsal dinner at Big City Bread, and they really pulled out all the stops!

Of Montreal is notorious for its bigger-than-life stage shows and massive entourage. How do you handle dining requirements with such a big group?
We have a few vegetarians, and some... "choosy" folks, but the rest of us are pretty adventurous. We just had an amazing trip to Mexico where we tried everything from upscale seafood to street tacos.

Do you usually eat together or does everyone fend for themselves?
It really depends. We like to have a few "family dinners" while we're on the road, but everyone's schedules (the crew and the band) are different, so we usually split into smaller groups.

Any special requirements you have on tour yourself?
I avoid fast food, but other than that, I'm pretty open. I like to try regional things when I can.

What has been your best food-experience on tour?
Well, like I said, we just got back from Mexico, where there wasn't a bad meal to be found. Japan was pretty amazing too. We had a meal in Osaka that consisted of a bunch of chopped up mystery ingredients (Maybe octopus? Maybe duck?) which were grilled in a barfy-looking blob on a hibachi in front of us. We were each given tiny spatulas to shovel the goo into our mouths. Turns out, it's delish!

Do you guys ever treat yourselves to high-end dining?
Sometimes. I like to try and get away with my husband when I can, and we'll Yelp a fancy place from time to time. There are a string of amazing Italian places on Thompson Street in Soho in New York City that we love. Sushi is also a favorite for everyone.

How do you guys feel about fast food? Any favorite chains?
We avoid fast food like the plague. This does not apply to certain members of our crew, some of whom have found McDonald's on the four corners of the globe. Personally, I will go for street food (kebabs, tacos, etc) over fast food every time. If we are somewhere remote with no other options, we'll stomach Subway as a last resort.

What is your favorite city in the US to tour in because of the food?
It has to be New York, right? The "slow food" trend is everywhere in the City now. A new favorite of mine is a place called The Farm on Adderley in Brooklyn. Craft is also amazing.

What is the one food item you can't live without when you're on tour - your rider staples?
Fresh veggies and cookies.

You guys play a lot of festivals, which ones in the US have the best food?
Coachella wins. Hands down. Filet mignon and crab legs.

And now for your top picks in the US!
Best burger: The Farm on Adderley, NYC
Best taco/burrito: La Super Rica, Santa Barbara, CA
Best barbecue: Anywhere in Georgia
Best diner: Brunswick Diner, Brunswick, ME
Best coffee/tea shop: Anywhere in Seattle
Best bakery/sweets shop: Sees Chocolates, San Francisco, CA
Best pizza: (and best sandwich!) Amato's, Portland, ME

2010-02-18 - The Vanderbilt Hustler

1 Versus: Music Q&A with of Montreal's James Huggins: "Nashville has always been a wild place for us" By Alex Daly Published Feb. 18, 2010. 921 views

of Montreal

Versus Magazine: How are you? You look tired …
James Huggins: Good, I woke up this afternoon and immediately was whisked away to play this Grimey’s in-store thing.

VM: And how did that go?
JH: It went really well, considering that I hadn’t even had half a cup of coffee let alone breakfast. And [one of our instruments] broke within the first five minutes, so we had to improvise ... but it’s a really cool little venue.

VM: How is the tour going so far?
JH: It’s almost over, actually. Tonight is the last night, and it’s disappointing, really, because I want to keep going. It’s been so short — it’s only been like, ten shows, and it kind of came out of nowhere. We had planned to take the whole winter off and then suddenly these dates popped up in January and we just kind of threw it together. It’s been short but it’s been really fun and super exhausting.

VM: Where were you guys before Nashville?
JH: This is honestly one of those embarrassing moments where I can’t remember.

VM: It’s probably a huge blur by now …
JH: I am totally ashamed to say that I can’t remember.

VM: Were there any gigs that come to mind as favorites so far?
JH: New York was incredible. We played the Hi-Line Ballroom. I hadn’t been there before and it’s relatively new.

VM: How is it doing two projects now [of Montreal and solo opening act James Husband]?
JH: It’s not something that I’m not comfortable with, because I’ve done it before. It’s just different this time because it’s the first real push of my new band, so I’ve had a lot of responsibility there. In addition to that, what used to be a sort of easy job for me has now been redefined, so I’m doing ten times the physical effort during the of Montreal shows, and it’s been physically exhausting me. I used to play the drums in the band for most of the songs for six of seven years, but for the last five years I’ve also been playing guitar, bass, keyboards, trumpet and only touching the drum set for like, four songs out of the set.
And on this thing I turn all of the last four albums which [consists of] electronic, dance-pop, very much drum-machine oriented music into straight up rock tunes. So the only things we have on stage are two guitarists, the bassist and a drum kit, so I’m playing for 90 minutes. And this makes me sound like some kind of light eight, but I’m just not used to doing that ... I have an hour of cerebral, emotional performance, and then I have to switch off my brain and just bash the drums for an hour and a half, so the physical end of it is what’s really killing me. But every night we’ve done it, and I’m still kicking, so we’ll do it again tonight.

VM: What inspired you to do the solo act?
JH: Well it’s not really a new thing; it’s just newly officially billed. I’ve been doing it for, like, over ten years. I guess things are starting to finally slow down for of Montreal, because in the last few years we haven’t had more than a couple weeks off at a time in a year. We did something like 267 shows in 2007 and roughly the same in 2008, so I just haven’t had time.

But now [I] have time. I went to a couple of different studios, I was living overseas in Sweden, and I had time and I had access to a studio and [went for] it. It was just kind of long overdue, so the time came and I decided to just stick it out there.

VM: Listening to your music, it’s a very dynamic sound and ranges so much from the first song to the last. And it doesn’t sound anything like of Montreal. What inspired you?
JH: Well, it had very little to do with of Montreal. It’s more [about] the timetable and the places where the songs were recorded, because this is very much a collection of scattered recording from all over the place and from different times. So if they sound all over the place, it’s because one might have been recorded in my bedroom in 2002 and another might have been recorded in a proper studio in Stockholm in 2008. It depends on who I might have had with me to record with, or what I had written earlier in the year.

The whole point of it is that it’s not just meant to be an album. Many people have the misconception that it’s a new album and that I just went in with ten hot songs and I recorded them all in a week, but it’s much more like a collection of snapshots, like a scrapbook — like, “Here’s me at summer camp with my parents in 1983,” and “Here’s me at my college graduation” … it’s like that, but with songs.

VM: I was reading about that, about how you crafted this as just a huge collection of snapshots from different moments. And this style really brings diversity to the album.
JH: I’m all about diversity.

VM: Have you guys ever played here in Nashville before?
JH: Oh yeah, many many times.

VM: What do you think of the city?
JH: We love Nashville! Nashville has always been a wild place for us. People love to meet us up here and we tend to get whisked away. We have done probably six or seven other shows with [this promoter] both in two other small venues and twice in this venue. And I have performed once solo at the Ryman, but that was during tour when they just let me stand up there and play. It’s like a dream to play there. Nashville has a million other venues, but they don’t all cater to the kind of show we do. We have gone to very small rooms, as well, and played in Nashville at least 15 times over the last 11 years.

VM: I have personally never seen you perform before, so what are your shows like? What are they like for you?
JH: Well that’s the trouble with people who see us for the first time and people who saw us once even three, five or seven years ago, or even people who saw us once only three, five or seven months ago. We try to do a completely different show every time. And that doesn’t just mean in terms of a set list, I mean in terms of members in the band, different people on our performance crew, different video projects, different stage lighting … and for the past several years we have building our own stages to put on top of the venue’s stage.

And we have been getting bigger and bigger, and now we have these video projection things, because we have these groups of, well, I wouldn’t call them actors, I definitely don’t like to call them performance artists and I certainly wouldn’t call them dancers … but they kind of do something resembling all three. And for the last couple of years, [the show] has gotten really elaborate — we have 19 people on the road and only six in the band. We have tried to blow it out as big as we can get it for the bigger venues and festivals, but now we are doing these smaller shows and doing, like I said, rock ‘n’ roll versions of the grandeur of the past several years.

So in some ways I hope that someone like yourself wouldn’t feel gypped, because there is this legend looming out there that we are always going to put on this outrageous stage show. And we still are, to some degree, but I think it’s more interesting for us to focus on the music and do it in a different way. So if you look at the last four or five albums, what we do tonight will not sonically represent the album very well, but the songs are presented in a very live way.

We haven’t heard any complaints, but in the past it’s always been about totally recreating the record exactly. And we’d have two different computers, two different electronic brains that would control sound effects and drum patterns, and loops that go to our ears, so we’d all be playing along with the grid — it was all very robotic and complex, and it was all about blowing out as much sound and as much of the album as possible. But tonight it’s a much more minimalist approach [than] that.

It’s not some new thing we’re doing, but we decided that since we’re doing a small tour in the winter we might as well do it in a way that’s fun for us. So we’re going to try to play like we’re a live band again.

VM: Is it a collaborative thing, this creative side to the performances? Is it even the band that takes care of that or is there a side team?
JH: It’s all-inclusive — everyone in the band and on the crew has equal say and tends to get equal ideas rejected and accepted. It’s sort of compartmentalized, in a way. I mean, David Barnes, Kevin’s brother, who has always been kind of the sixth member of the band, doesn’t play any instruments, but he’s an artist and does all the artwork (well, most of the artwork — Kevin’s wife started doing some of the late stuff). But all of the imagery and artwork and videos that feature things that have to do with our band are done by David. He also kind of directs the performance bits and is responsible for most of the costumes and one-act plays that take place, so he pretty much gets free reign when it comes to that department.

But as far as the set and stage design, I have had a lot to do with that, and also our sound engineer and video engineer have hand-built everything together. Everything we use is hand-made, and those guys are the carpenters/electrical-engineers. And input for the video screens comes from Nick and also Dottie, the keyboard player’s fiance. We’ve been planning a big wedding party for them in the spring.

And then you’ve got everyone from our tour manager, who is onstage in costume every night, to various road managers and workers who are in costume doing their thing each night. But it’s like I said — I don’t think we have ever done the same show twice.

VM: Do you have any background in art or design? Or did you just figure this all out as the years went by?
JH: I grew up in a very musical but also very church-oriented, Southern Baptist family in Georgia, and my father is the musical director [of our church]. So not only did he make sing in the church choir and all that crap, but he would always put on the Christmas pageant and the school play etc. and my mom would always design the props, make backdrops and make costumes by hand and stuff. I had this very home-spun, “Waiting for Guffman”-style, tiny town theater experience, and I have always been acting in little plays. So I pretty much started out doing that stuff before we had any money.

In fact, five or six years ago, I had borrowed these huge slide projection screens from my uncle (I had used them for these church productions in the ‘80s). I set up three screens with old-school clips and slides of carousels and projected the whole slideshow behind the band. And then we started to get some money and decided to buy a bunch of new, high-tech electronics, so I turned things over to Nick. I was running this crap while playing drums in the middle of the show … Now, I have less of a hands-on approach and more just suggestions.

VM: You definitely have to come back and play at the Ryman with this theatrical aspect!
JH: We could do at least the most visually stunning show there, but certainly not the best musically, since every legend in the world has played there. Unless The Flaming Lips have played there — they are our one big competitor. It seems like everything we do, they end up doing bigger. But we’re close on their heels, and we’re doing it in a similar spirit but a different way.

VM: What do you foresee happening in the future with both James Husband? Do you see yourself continuing with your solo project?
JH: Absolutely. It’s not like it’s some kind of whim. It’s just a long overdue beginning of something that will be the focus of my attention from this point on. And that’s not to say that I’m going to stop playing with of Montreal — in fact, I think for the rest of this year [I’m] continuing to do both. I think we are going to do another leg or two this way.

But this whole temporary diversion of being a straight up rock band is not going to last very long. I think the plan for the next record, which is not going to come out until the end of the summer, is to totally revamp the whole thing, bring in additional musicians, and expand the band so the musicians are able to more closely recreate the record but without all the previous sampling technology that we were using. The idea is to have about ten or twelve [musicians] and multiple percussionists so we can do complex rhythms, because it’s just impossible for me to do as one man, especially since I’m not using any drum pads or anything. We want to bring in a couple of extra string players and horn players and make it more of a big-band sound, really a ’70s kind of band that would have that sort of instrumentation. But that all depends on us finding all of the right people — we are going to start auditioning people, talking to all of our friends in various bands and seeing their availability.

If we can pull it off it would be something of like a super group and much more focused on the music. I’m sure there will still be some sort of elaborate stage production, but the idea is to sort of scrap everything we have been doing for the last year and a half and create some new characters. We also want to get rid of the more colorful things and instead create some darker settings and lighting.

VM: Do you opt for the same kind of stage shows for James Husband?
JH: No, with that, it’s just about the music. I mean we already have all the [of Montreal stuff] set up there, so we sometimes will throw some of that on for the colors, but I think most of that would just distract you. The point of the James Husband project is for me to feel comfortable singing the songs. We tried doing it like a big rock band to make it more exciting, but the truth of the matter is, you listen to the album and it’s all pretty mellow — it’s all just about my singing. And I can’t sing very loudly or very well when a lot is going on, so I tried to make it a very soft band. I have a cellist and a clarinet player and I play mostly acoustic guitar … so it’s very, very much the opposite of a [loud rock show].

VM: You mentioned that tonight is your last show on this tour. Any idea when you’ll start up again?
JH: Well, I’m doing another run by myself, which is obviously not as easy because everything falls to my own resources. I don’t have the tour bus, I don’t have the crew of ten people … which is why it’s so nice to tour with of Montreal because, sure, I’m a member of the band, and it’s all my equipment and my money in a way (at least a fifth of it), but at the same time I’m looking at it like I’m a new artist and I got an opportunity to play with a band like of Montreal. So you remove the obvious conflict of interest, and it makes things a whole lot easier [to look at].

But, that being said, the five or six of us will jump in a van and do a small club tour in March, and then of Montreal will [start touring again] in June, so I’m doing both worlds for the next few months. Then we have Dottie’s wedding, which we are all taking a month off for, and then ... who knows. Maybe we’ll play some festivals, or something.

2010-06-?? - Evolved Weirdness

original article.

Athens, Georgia-based weirdos Of Montreal have a lot going on. Their tenth studio album, False Priest, is set to drop September 13.
Of Montreal kicked off their last tour when they played for a full house at the Howlin’ Wolf this past May. After sauntering on stage, jorts-clad frontman Kevin Barnes began by asking the obvious question, Are you ready to party? To call the show, complete with a psychedelic video show and a finale wherein thousands of feathers shot like champagne over the crowd, a party is the understatement of the year. What happened was more like induced euphoria; the live show was an experience capable of transporting the audience to another world entirely.

InvadeNOLA contacted Bassist Davey Pierce to talk about that wild show in New Orleans, combating stage fright, and how indie rockers find their crazy outfits.

What’s it like playing the first show on a new tour, and how is that different from any other show?
Well, it’s a lot more nerve racking, especially this one. We have a drummer that’s filling in with us, and we never actually practiced with Kevin, so this show in particular, it was kind of a crap shoot. We didn’t know what was going to happen, what was going to work, what wasn’t going to work. It’s a good experience though, that first show. You work out a lot of the kinks, which sounds like a bad thing, but no one really notices what goes wrong, if things do.

How did you feel about your last show in New Orleans?
I felt really good about that show actually. We were all kind of pleasantly surprised, because, like I said, we had never actually rehearsed with this whole band before that. Dottie, Bryan and Clayton and I would run through songs with no guitar and no vocals, basically. We were all really nervous. When it came time, it actually worked out really, really well. It was a really fun show. The crowd seemed super into it. We love the Howlin’ Wolf, it’s such a great place.

With elements of theater, big time performance, and colorful costumes, Of Montreal is a great fit for New Orleans. Is this just coincidence, or are you inspired by our city?
I think it’s probably more of a coincidence. There are elements of weird everywhere that we go that we pick up on. Obviously, New Orleans has a lot of really cool Voodoo culture. It has this really cool element to it – you can’t help but take something out of it. For the most part, we try to bring a little bit from everywhere we’ve been, finding things on the road that we can use in the show. We actually found a good amount in New Orleans; a lot of its retired, but the last couple tours we had a couple Big Bird figurines we found, a plastic owl, all sorts of weird, strange stuff that we had on stage. We definitely enjoy it, but it’s more of a coincidence that we actually fit in really, really well there. People seem a lot more open.

Do you have any type of pre-show ritual?
Not really. You know, just sit around and have beers, smoke cigarettes – well, for a couple of us, – just kinda chill. We do one thing that that we call ‘bringing it in’ where everyone puts their hands in the center of a circle and you say something, usually something really absurd and stupid. It’s pretty much the closest thing to a ritual we have before a show.

So you don’t wear the same underwear for every show then?
[Laughs.] No, that would be gross. It would get sweaty. We wear a lot of the same costumes, just because we can’t really bring tons of stuff on the road with us. But we try to wash them as much as possible. [Laughs again.] Definitively not gonna be wearing the same socks for twelve days in a row or anything, you know?

Speaking of clothes, how do you come up with all of the awesome stuff you wear on stage?
Well it’s kind of a mishmash. Kevin has had some stuff made by designers. He has a designer friend in New York named Rebecca Turbow that did a lot of costumes for him. Most of us just kind of find stuff that we think is really cool. When all is said and done, you throw it on, put it together, and it’s like, “Wow, that’s really, really weird.” It works somehow. We spend a lot of time in thrift stores and secondhand shops. There’s namely one in Athens called Agora. It’s run by a wonderful lady. She’ll see something come in, and she’ll pull it for us. We go in there, and she’s got boxes for us. She’ll say, “I saw these and I thought they’d be perfect for you.” You pick through, and some are really awesome; some really aren’t right for me. I just look around, it’s whatever strikes your fancy at the time. I’ve been really going through a uniform kind of thing, you know, all black or all white, with a little bit of gold or something, because I get tired of all my own costumes. I haven’t really found anything cool and weird lately, so it’s kinda like, “I’ll just go monochromatic and see what happens.”

What’s usually running through your head when you’re performing?
Generally I’m just thinking “Oh please don’t fuck up.” [Laughs.] Over and over and over again. You know, I pay attention to the drummer mostly, and make sure that I’m locked in with him. Kevin and Bryan and Dottie – I just take cues from everybody. We do these shows all the time, we play the songs over and over and over again, and it’s really hard to keep them fresh and interesting for us. Once you play a song like 200 times, it becomes a little mundane. Nowadays, I find that Kevin and I, if we do make a mistake, turn around and start laughing at the other person. Things like that do kind of break it up, so you don’t become robotic. We definitely feed off the audience. If it’s a bad show, and the audience isn’t really into it, or no one is paying attention – which, nowadays doesn’t happen that much – if that happens, it’s really hard to put your all into it. But you kind of force yourself to do it. I’m a big proponent of just giving it your all for every single show.

Do your set lists vary from show to show? Or are they set in stone?
Well it depends on what kind of tour we are doing. For our last tour, we did pretty much the same set list the whole time, because we had this whole production that went along to it. It was very structured. There were seven performers that had their cues that they know, and everything had to be done right on time, otherwise the whole thing would fall apart. On tours more like this one, we can vary it a lot more, because the production is more based on what we’re doing, not so much what we’re doing based on the production. When we don’t have like a huge thing that we’re doing, it’s a lot easier to vary it, so on smaller tours, if you see us more than once, you probably have a better chance of seeing songs that you didn’t hear the night before.

How long does it take before you find your stride, and a tour begins to really take shape?
They pretty much start to take shape the first time we do it. You’ll get a basic idea at the first show, and then it constantly evolves, evolves and evolves. By the end of a tour, it will probably be something completely different than what we started with. At the end of the day, I’m always completely pleasantly surprised by what we wind up doing. It’s just this totally weird, evolving thing. It’s nice to be able to go up there and just wonder what’s going to happen. I feel like I can relate a lot more to the audience watching the show in that way, because you have as much of a clue as what’s going to happen as I do, most of the time.


Of Montreal will launch a ten-month tour, starting with two shows in DC, on September 13 and 14. Soul sister Janelle Monáe is featured on two tracks on False Priest and will be joining Of Montreal’s fall tour roster.

2010-02-18 - Inside Vandy

Versus: Music
Q&A with of Montreal's James Huggins: "Nashville has always been a wild place for us"
By Alex Daly
Published Feb. 18, 2010.


Versus Magazine: How are you? You look tired …
James Huggins: Good, I woke up this afternoon and immediately was whisked away to play this Grimey’s in-store thing.

VM: And how did that go?
JH: It went really well, considering that I hadn’t even had half a cup of coffee let alone breakfast. And [one of our instruments] broke within the first five minutes, so we had to improvise ... but it’s a really cool little venue.

VM: How is the tour going so far?
JH: It’s almost over, actually. Tonight is the last night, and it’s disappointing, really, because I want to keep going. It’s been so short — it’s only been like, ten shows, and it kind of came out of nowhere. We had planned to take the whole winter off and then suddenly these dates popped up in January and we just kind of threw it together. It’s been short but it’s been really fun and super exhausting.

VM: Where were you guys before Nashville?
JH: This is honestly one of those embarrassing moments where I can’t remember.

VM: It’s probably a huge blur by now …
JH: I am totally ashamed to say that I can’t remember.

VM: Were there any gigs that come to mind as favorites so far?
JH: New York was incredible. We played the Hi-Line Ballroom. I hadn’t been there before and it’s relatively new.

VM: How is it doing two projects now [of Montreal and solo opening act James Husband]?
JH: It’s not something that I’m not comfortable with, because I’ve done it before. It’s just different this time because it’s the first real push of my new band, so I’ve had a lot of responsibility there. In addition to that, what used to be a sort of easy job for me has now been redefined, so I’m doing ten times the physical effort during the of Montreal shows, and it’s been physically exhausting me. I used to play the drums in the band for most of the songs for six of seven years, but for the last five years I’ve also been playing guitar, bass, keyboards, trumpet and only touching the drum set for like, four songs out of the set.

And on this thing I turn all of the last four albums which [consists of] electronic, dance-pop, very much drum-machine oriented music into straight up rock tunes. So the only things we have on stage are two guitarists, the bassist and a drum kit, so I’m playing for 90 minutes.

And this makes me sound like some kind of light eight, but I’m just not used to doing that ... I have an hour of cerebral, emotional performance, and then I have to switch off my brain and just bash the drums for an hour and a half, so the physical end of it is what’s really killing me. But every night we’ve done it, and I’m still kicking, so we’ll do it again tonight.

VM: What inspired you to do the solo act?
JH: Well it’s not really a new thing; it’s just newly officially billed. I’ve been doing it for, like, over ten years. I guess things are starting to finally slow down for of Montreal, because in the last few years we haven’t had more than a couple weeks off at a time in a year. We did something like 267 shows in 2007 and roughly the same in 2008, so I just haven’t had time.

But now [I] have time. I went to a couple of different studios, I was living overseas in Sweden, and I had time and I had access to a studio and [went for] it. It was just kind of long overdue, so the time came and I decided to just stick it out there.

VM: Listening to your music, it’s a very dynamic sound and ranges so much from the first song to the last. And it doesn’t sound anything like of Montreal. What inspired you?
JH: Well, it had very little to do with of Montreal. It’s more [about] the timetable and the places where the songs were recorded, because this is very much a collection of scattered recording from all over the place and from different times. So if they sound all over the place, it’s because one might have been recorded in my bedroom in 2002 and another might have been recorded in a proper studio in Stockholm in 2008. It depends on who I might have had with me to record with, or what I had written earlier in the year.

The whole point of it is that it’s not just meant to be an album. Many people have the misconception that it’s a new album and that I just went in with ten hot songs and I recorded them all in a week, but it’s much more like a collection of snapshots, like a scrapbook — like, “Here’s me at summer camp with my parents in 1983,” and “Here’s me at my college graduation” … it’s like that, but with songs.

VM: I was reading about that, about how you crafted this as just a huge collection of snapshots from different moments. And this style really brings diversity to the album.
JH: I’m all about diversity.

VM: Have you guys ever played here in Nashville before?
JH: Oh yeah, many many times.

VM: What do you think of the city?
JH: We love Nashville! Nashville has always been a wild place for us. People love to meet us up here and we tend to get whisked away. We have done probably six or seven other shows with [this promoter] both in two other small venues and twice in this venue. And I have performed once solo at the Ryman, but that was during tour when they just let me stand up there and play. It’s like a dream to play there. Nashville has a million other venues, but they don’t all cater to the kind of show we do. We have gone to very small rooms, as well, and played in Nashville at least 15 times over the last 11 years.

VM: I have personally never seen you perform before, so what are your shows like? What are they like for you?
JH: Well that’s the trouble with people who see us for the first time and people who saw us once even three, five or seven years ago, or even people who saw us once only three, five or seven months ago. We try to do a completely different show every time. And that doesn’t just mean in terms of a set list, I mean in terms of members in the band, different people on our performance crew, different video projects, different stage lighting … and for the past several years we have building our own stages to put on top of the venue’s stage.

And we have been getting bigger and bigger, and now we have these video projection things, because we have these groups of, well, I wouldn’t call them actors, I definitely don’t like to call them performance artists and I certainly wouldn’t call them dancers … but they kind of do something resembling all three. And for the last couple of years, [the show] has gotten really elaborate — we have 19 people on the road and only six in the band. We have tried to blow it out as big as we can get it for the bigger venues and festivals, but now we are doing these smaller shows and doing, like I said, rock ‘n’ roll versions of the grandeur of the past several years.

So in some ways I hope that someone like yourself wouldn’t feel gypped, because there is this legend looming out there that we are always going to put on this outrageous stage show. And we still are, to some degree, but I think it’s more interesting for us to focus on the music and do it in a different way. So if you look at the last four or five albums, what we do tonight will not sonically represent the album very well, but the songs are presented in a very live way.

We haven’t heard any complaints, but in the past it’s always been about totally recreating the record exactly. And we’d have two different computers, two different electronic brains that would control sound effects and drum patterns, and loops that go to our ears, so we’d all be playing along with the grid — it was all very robotic and complex, and it was all about blowing out as much sound and as much of the album as possible. But tonight it’s a much more minimalist approach [than] that.

It’s not some new thing we’re doing, but we decided that since we’re doing a small tour in the winter we might as well do it in a way that’s fun for us. So we’re going to try to play like we’re a live band again.

VM: Is it a collaborative thing, this creative side to the performances? Is it even the band that takes care of that or is there a side team?
JH: It’s all-inclusive — everyone in the band and on the crew has equal say and tends to get equal ideas rejected and accepted. It’s sort of compartmentalized, in a way. I mean, David Barnes, Kevin’s brother, who has always been kind of the sixth member of the band, doesn’t play any instruments, but he’s an artist and does all the artwork (well, most of the artwork — Kevin’s wife started doing some of the late stuff). But all of the imagery and artwork and videos that feature things that have to do with our band are done by David. He also kind of directs the performance bits and is responsible for most of the costumes and one-act plays that take place, so he pretty much gets free reign when it comes to that department.

But as far as the set and stage design, I have had a lot to do with that, and also our sound engineer and video engineer have hand-built everything together. Everything we use is hand-made, and those guys are the carpenters/electrical-engineers. And input for the video screens comes from Nick and also Dottie, the keyboard player’s fiance. We’ve been planning a big wedding party for them in the spring.

And then you’ve got everyone from our tour manager, who is onstage in costume every night, to various road managers and workers who are in costume doing their thing each night. But it’s like I said — I don’t think we have ever done the same show twice.

VM: Do you have any background in art or design? Or did you just figure this all out as the years went by?
JH: I grew up in a very musical but also very church-oriented, Southern Baptist family in Georgia, and my father is the musical director [of our church]. So not only did he make sing in the church choir and all that crap, but he would always put on the Christmas pageant and the school play etc. and my mom would always design the props, make backdrops and make costumes by hand and stuff. I had this very home-spun, “Waiting for Guffman”-style, tiny town theater experience, and I have always been acting in little plays. So I pretty much started out doing that stuff before we had any money.

In fact, five or six years ago, I had borrowed these huge slide projection screens from my uncle (I had used them for these church productions in the ‘80s). I set up three screens with old-school clips and slides of carousels and projected the whole slideshow behind the band. And then we started to get some money and decided to buy a bunch of new, high-tech electronics, so I turned things over to Nick. I was running this crap while playing drums in the middle of the show … Now, I have less of a hands-on approach and more just suggestions.

VM: You definitely have to come back and play at the Ryman with this theatrical aspect!
JH: We could do at least the most visually stunning show there, but certainly not the best musically, since every legend in the world has played there. Unless The Flaming Lips have played there — they are our one big competitor. It seems like everything we do, they end up doing bigger. But we’re close on their heels, and we’re doing it in a similar spirit but a different way.

VM: What do you foresee happening in the future with both James Husband? Do you see yourself continuing with your solo project?
JH: Absolutely. It’s not like it’s some kind of whim. It’s just a long overdue beginning of something that will be the focus of my attention from this point on. And that’s not to say that I’m going to stop playing with of Montreal — in fact, I think for the rest of this year [I’m] continuing to do both. I think we are going to do another leg or two this way.

But this whole temporary diversion of being a straight up rock band is not going to last very long. I think the plan for the next record, which is not going to come out until the end of the summer, is to totally revamp the whole thing, bring in additional musicians, and expand the band so the musicians are able to more closely recreate the record but without all the previous sampling technology that we were using. The idea is to have about ten or twelve [musicians] and multiple percussionists so we can do complex rhythms, because it’s just impossible for me to do as one man, especially since I’m not using any drum pads or anything. We want to bring in a couple of extra string players and horn players and make it more of a big-band sound, really a ’70s kind of band that would have that sort of instrumentation. But that all depends on us finding all of the right people — we are going to start auditioning people, talking to all of our friends in various bands and seeing their availability.

If we can pull it off it would be something of like a super group and much more focused on the music. I’m sure there will still be some sort of elaborate stage production, but the idea is to sort of scrap everything we have been doing for the last year and a half and create some new characters. We also want to get rid of the more colorful things and instead create some darker settings and lighting.

VM: Do you opt for the same kind of stage shows for James Husband?
JH: No, with that, it’s just about the music. I mean we already have all the [of Montreal stuff] set up there, so we sometimes will throw some of that on for the colors, but I think most of that would just distract you. The point of the James Husband project is for me to feel comfortable singing the songs. We tried doing it like a big rock band to make it more exciting, but the truth of the matter is, you listen to the album and it’s all pretty mellow — it’s all just about my singing. And I can’t sing very loudly or very well when a lot is going on, so I tried to make it a very soft band. I have a cellist and a clarinet player and I play mostly acoustic guitar … so it’s very, very much the opposite of a [loud rock show].

VM: You mentioned that tonight is your last show on this tour. Any idea when you’ll start up again?
JH: Well, I’m doing another run by myself, which is obviously not as easy because everything falls to my own resources. I don’t have the tour bus, I don’t have the crew of ten people … which is why it’s so nice to tour with of Montreal because, sure, I’m a member of the band, and it’s all my equipment and my money in a way (at least a fifth of it), but at the same time I’m looking at it like I’m a new artist and I got an opportunity to play with a band like of Montreal. So you remove the obvious conflict of interest, and it makes things a whole lot easier [to look at].

But, that being said, the five or six of us will jump in a van and do a small club tour in March, and then of Montreal will [start touring again] in June, so I’m doing both worlds for the next few months. Then we have Dottie’s wedding, which we are all taking a month off for, and then ... who knows. Maybe we’ll play some festivals, or something.

2006-04-16 - MySpace Blog

Sunday, April 16, 2006

vacation and some newsies Hello hello, one and all!! Not much to blog about these days, as we are all on vacation at the moment. Everyone's scattered off to the four corners (well, three actually) of the globe to enjoy some much needed R&R. (I'm in Cali, Kev's in Oslo, Jamey's in Stockholm, BP's in Berlin, and Matt and Dan are holding down the fort in Athens). However, there's no rest for our wicked wicked booking agent who's been busy making plans for our summer. The big news is LOLLAPALOOZA! As a child of the 90's, this is about the weirdest thing I can think of doing this August. The lineup is really cool, and although I don't harbor any illusions of hanging out with Kanye (I'm sure they'll require that indie bands keep a 50 foot radius away from any actual "stars") it should be quite interesting to share a bill with the rich and fabulous. We'll be doing a short tour around the festival as well--dates are posted below. Also, we're playing at the wedding of Derek Pressnal and Jamie Williams, our dear friends of Tilly and the Wall fame. They got engaged onstage at the last show of our tour together, so we're really happy to get to take part in their special day. (That sounded like a greeting card, I know, but something about those kids brings out the sweetheart in me.) So, there's a blog. Hope you're all doing well--sometimes it's a difficult adjustment settling into "normal" life after a big-ass tour, and your messages and comments really brighten my days, so keep em coming!! With much love and blogginess, Dottie

2007-01-22 - MySpace Blog

Monday, January 22, 2007

new orleans knows how to party (and wear cologne) i woke up at 4p.m. in new orleans after a long night /day of weird dreams. nothing new. i tried to find out what channel was going to show the NFL championship games until i realized that today is saturday. i wandered into the venue and was happy to see that the stage was a decent size and that we were going to be able to do the full production tonight. i was also psyched that the green room was nice and that we had our own bathroom. a touch of class. i went on a hunt for a coffee house and of course the only one around was a starbucks. to my chagrin they closed at 3 so i looked for some food instead. on the recommendation of this bartender at a hotel bar i went to a cajun restaurant around the corner. on the way i discovered this really cool architectural object and took a bunch of photos of it for my film project. i sat down in the restaurant and quickly became self conscious. i hate that feeling. i wished i had "the wind up bird chronicles" with me or, at the very least, my mobile phone. reproaching myself, i overcame that pathetic little feeling and just sat there and analyzed last night's dreams. i have this recurring dream about being in a house possessed by an evil invisible force. probably an extension of the effects of my catholic upbringing. so many of my weird superstitions can be blamed on that. hawk and a hacksaw's performance was rad as usual. it's amazing to hear sounds like that. so different from what you expect to hear at a rock venue. so inspiring. our show was a lot of fun. the highlights for me were the debut of the three headed tiger bull and the first live performance of "the past is a grotesque animal". the low point was when a group of misguided creeps chanted "steak,steak, steak" after we played "wraith pinned to the mist". it just proves,no matter how much you want to add something positive to the world, there will always be people who try to bring you down. not to say our selling of a song to a corporate steak house was something positive, but sometimes you have to suck a little dick to get by. that's just a hard fact of life. but really, of all the evil organizations out there, it's hard to imagine the thought process behind heckling of Montreal. oh well. still working out the kinks in the visuals but some progress was made from last night in memphis. i should mention that, in memphis, all of these super cute kids from little rock made the drive to see us and they brought us a bunch of hats, in response to my song "little rock". made me feel like a jerk for writing the song but they were good natured about it. after the new orleans show, the venue quickly transformed into a dance club catering to the worst of the CK1 set. i felt like an alien so i went and hid in the bus. after awhile i got bored and peeked my head out to discover these three indie kids hanging around so i began talking to them. they were very cool so we decided to go run around bourbon street together. i'm not the biggest fan of that scene but it's kind of cool to check it out every once and a while. lots of crazy drunk retards from the suburbs and sleazy characters. we did run into a bunch of kids that we're at the show and our entourage grew in number. we crashed this hotel party we heard about only to discover no party at all, just a couple sleeping on a fold out bed. we took the parade to a bar called one eyed jacks and had a gin and tonic. nothing too exciting. michael called and said we had to go back to the bus so the evening ended without climax. when our new friends dropped us back off at the bus, one of them confronted me about my song "gronlandic edit". being a christian, he was offended by the song's apparent dismissal of all religion as a haven for the delusional and pathetic. it made me realize the strange and unpredictable nature of belief. it's so bizarre how an idea can seem so real for one person and impossible for another. i have nothing against religions as long as they don't foster negativity and division. i told him as much and he seemed satisfied. so i jumped bak on the horse and we drove for twelve hours to san antonio through an intense rain shower.

2008-11-00 - Used Wings

Bryan's interview with Electric Boogaloo - some podcaster out of Toronto - hear what Beeps has to say about Skeletal Lamping, the live shows, laser shows and more stuff I haven't been paying enough attention to, apparently...

Another BP interview unearthed! This time from Philadelphia's Used Wigs website. It is actually a very enjoyable podcast, but if you want to go straight to the (beeps) point, it's 24 minutes in... Here, BP talks about what it's like to live in Athens, offers some insight about the A Pollinaire Rave comedy tour, and discusses why Philadelphia's is one of his favorite cities (and a whole lot more!).

2008-11-04 - The Line Of Best Fit

TLOBF Interview :: Of Montreal

Posted on 04 November 2008 by John Brainlove

(L-R: Dottie Alexander, Bryan Poole, Jamey Huggins, Davey Pierce, Kevin Barnes)

John Brainlove met Kevin Barnes after a packed out Of Montreal Rough Trade instore to talk about life on the road, inspiration, the differences between dreams and reality, and the fantastical world Of Montreal…

John Brainlove: So, I was googling Airwaves and I got really excited to see you were playing, but it turned out to be a lineup from last year… how was that?
Kevin Barnes: It was great. It’s always a bit scary when you’re playing a festival, and there’s like so many bands and you never get time to set up your stuff, and you get thrown out onstage and it’s chaos, and inevitably something sets on fire or breaks… in this instance my amp was making a horrible sound, so I kinda freaked out for the first four or five songs, then I kinda got into it and it was fun, and then the next thing I know I’m being pulled offstage…

JB: Have you been to Iceland before?

KB: No, that was a first…

JB: Do you find when touring that you get a chance to see places? Or is it just like, hotel, bus, plane, show…

KB: Every once in a while you do, yeah, if you get in early enough and the promoters are enthusiastic, a lot of times we’ll be playing smaller stages in like Italy or Spain and the promoters feel like they have to fill this role of a cultural liaison and show you a good time, and that’s always great. But if you get into a place sometimes, you’re just left on your own and wander around a little bit and find stuff out…

JB: Which I guess is never that nice, just a few alleyways and cafés around a venue…

KB: Yeah totally. To be honest, this is my first really really good experience of London. I’ve never had a bad experience, but I’ve never had a trip where I went to a whole bunch of different parts of the city and really got a good sense. It’s always been in more run down parts of London, whereas this area is like super-hip and young, and where we’re staying is kinda ritzy. I really like that the city has so much diversity, and I hadn’t seen the good side of London before. And I was like “shit man, London’s awesome”.

JB: Yeah, in some parts it’s like a different world, you go around in the day and all you see are decorators and nannies…

KB: … and no artists live there, sure. What’s this area like?

JB: Well I guess we’re right in Shoreditch and Old Street, the first time I came here it was mostly just factories and closed up shops, but it’s really buzzing now, the artists landed here like regeneration locusts and then got priced out…

KB: Yeah, it’s like that in New York, and I guess everywhere. We were in Barcelona and we were like, we wanna move here, and they were like “no, don’t do it! You’ll raise the rent” and all the reporters will come…

JB: So tonight you’re playing in Rough Trade in happening Brick Lane… I think the last time I saw you was ATP playing the Hissing Fauna show. That’s obviously a very personal album. You’ve said that this one is a step away from the autobiographical approach, more fictionalized or written around characters…

KB: No, I didn’t mean to say it like that. I don’t want to propagate the idea that was writing from the point of view of a persona… I hope I didn’t…

JB: (laughs) Maybe I missed some sarcasm or something…

KB: I better go back and read it! There was this character I created called Georgie Fruit, and now I wish I never did, because people are like, “is that a Kevin Barnes song, or a Georgie Fruit song?”… and really there’s no difference. They’re all Kevin Barnes songs, and I don’t like that idea of people seeing a division. I think people would see that as less genuine, but it seems like it’s not based in reality, like you’re writing from the point of view of a fictional character. That’s too much like a defense mechanism. I want all my songs to be like, really coming from the heart and maybe if they’re not about something that’s physically happened, like a physical experience that I’ve had, I don’t really make a division between the physical and the dream state or the emotional state. I don’t really make the division. If you fantasize about something that’s just as real as if you really did it.

JB: I was interested in your ideas about identity, the idea of identity as a malleable construction, does that relate back to that fluid idea of characters and points of view… about your own self being a construction that you consciously work on changing or building. And in that sense having a character is presenting a front…

KB: I don’t really think of it as a front… I don’t think you can ever contradict yourself, even if you contradict what you said yesterday… it’s just as real as it was yesterday. I don’t think you have a really fixed identity. When people say “you’re being phony” I don’t agree with that because you can only be yourself. It’s impossible to be phony. Whoever you feel you are at that moment… it’s real. And whoever you want to be… I don’t believe there’s one true identity that’s the fixed you. It’s obviously fluid, and it’s effected by your mood, your experiences, your dreams, what you ate… it’s constantly changing. Nobody should believe that they only have one fixed persona or character or identity or whatever that’s the real them.

JB: Do you think that’s a scary thought, to have no sense of permanence? Everything as transitory..?

KB: I find it very liberating. You don’t have to worry about being consistent. You just feel what you feel and act how you want to act, without having to worry “is this appropriate for who I am? Is this outfit appropriate for who I am?” … it’s more fun to have that malleable aspect to your character and be free to do whatever. And it’s all real.

JB: Did you make a conscious decision about the change of musical direction? Skeletal Lamping seems like quite a deliberate swerve…

KB: I think I really wanted to make something that was constantly shifting, constantly changing, with no rules and no limitations, no structure really… it still has structure. Some songs have do have repeating parts, but repetition seems to me like laziness. A lot of people always repeat things…

JB: Do you think that’s in contrast to Hissing Fauna, which had quite tight cycles repeating for a long time?

KB: Well, this time I was in the mindset that it’s laziness to write a part, then do it again. It’s a very common thing in pop music to verse / chorus / repeat. It’s more creative that way.

JB: Yeah it’s at the very heart of pop music… if you hear a song again and again and it has repeating parts, you just end up liking on some level through exposure…

KB: Yeah, that’s something that’s very powerful about pop music, and I think in a way I’m depriving them of that relationship with the songs. On this record it’s hard to tell where one song ends and another begins, I wanted to make it flow, and it’s kind of random where I placed the track markers. Tonight when we played, the stop and start parts are random without the context of the album…

JB: After Hissing Fauna, which was so intensely and nakedly personal, Skeletal Lamping does seem more stylized or cryptic, even though it’s just as lyrically dense…

KB: I think it’s just as autobiographical. I mean, Hissing Fauna was like pain. And pain is the great equalizer. Everyone can appreciate pain, confusion, anxiety… these things are universal and easily relatable. But when you talk about more abstract things… Skeletal Lamping is definitely more abstract. I don’t think it’s less emotional or less autobiographical. Maybe it’s a bit less accessible, but it’s all about sexuality, gender roles, the politics of sexuality… the complexity of society and finding your way through it… navigating through it… getting through your childhood, your teenage years, your twenties, and then finding yourself in this place where you’re like… “what the fuck happened? what’s going on?”. But I do think it’s still a very introspective record, and where something is introspective it has to be autobiographical. It’s deeply rooted in my experience, my fantasy world, my dream world… it’s everything.

2009-06-01 - Nylon

2009-04-21 - Muso's Guide

Of Montreal: on-stage battles and solo projects

By Rebecca Schiller • May 21st, 2009 •

Of Montreal

We had the chance to chat and dine with a red skinny-jean-clad Jamey Huggins from Of Montreal before the band played the first of two sold-out shows at Boston’s Paradise Rock Club. Read on to find out about on-stage battles, the bustle of being on tour, and Jamey’s new solo side project as James Husband.

Muso’s Guide: So the tour’s been going well so far?

Jamey Huggins: Um, yea, all the shows have been sold out; audiences have been enthusiastic, if not maybe a bit misbehaved. We’ve had a few ejections.

MG: What happened?

JH: You know just, them jumping on stage and getting drunk and stage diving. A couple of our people got hurt [laughs] because of our own antics on stage, fighting. Not really fighting, but choreographed fights, a couple of bumps on the head, you know. I’ve got some wretched calluses.

MG: How did that happen?

JH: Drums.

MG: So how is it being back in Boston? I saw of Montreal perform at the Orpheum earlier this year.

JH: Yea, I really liked that place.

MG: Will the show be a lot different being at a smaller venue tonight?

JH: Well that’s just it—it’s a lot smaller.

MG: So will you be able to have all your crazy scenes on stage? Is it harder to pull off?

JH: Yeah, sometimes it works better because it’s so compact. Um, it might look a little bit more effective because it’s such a smaller stage, and it’s easier to transform a smaller stage so that it looks like a different room. But yea, everything’s up there, whether or not it’s gonna function [laughs]. But a lot of stuff broke in New York and we haven’t had a chance to replace them; technical things, all kinds of things. Instruments, amps, videos, boxes, light bulbs. We haven’t had a chance because we’re playing every day and traveling every night. We’re crossing our fingers that we don’t have a technical issue tonight.

MG: Do you think you’ll get to do any sightseeing while you’re here?

JH: I mean, it’s already after six, the doors are in less than an hour, we’ll be on stage in two and a half to three hours, and during that time I just want to get this delicious Thai food down and maybe have a little time to prepare, clean up a little bit. That’s the thing— you almost never get to sightsee. We were in New York for three days I didn’t do anything that wasn’t related to the band.

MG: So I hear you’re working on a solo album now?

JH: Well I’m done with it. It’s set for end of the summer, late August.

MG: Do you know what it’s called yet?

JH: No, I’m still working on the title. I have to come up with all the artwork and stuff in the next maybe two weeks.

MG: And you’re going by James Husband for that?

JH: Yeah.

MG: How did you come up with that name?

JH: Uh, it’s not really that creative, because it’s just a really slight a variation of my real name—a syllable. I think there was this guy who was a manager for a ‘60s group, um, they were called The Pretty Things. And I was reading in their liner notes about these things involving their manager and his name was something like David Husband, and I had never heard of that as a last name but I guess it really is like a common British last name. Um, but I just liked the sound of it [laughs]. I don’t know. Something to give it a little bit of, uh, a shift of focus from reality.

MG: How is the sound of the solo stuff different from Of Montreal?

JH: I’m not trying to go somewhere different with it, because a lot of the stuff was recorded and written before Satanic even came out, and a lot of the stuff is six years old or more. Uh, and it’s definitely not danceable. I mean, I guess you could dance to it, some of it. But there’s no real electronic element to it. It’s much more rooted in like ‘60s/’70s kind of production and instrumentation. If anything, it’s a little bit more like, uh, R&B influenced, but less Motown. More like Memphis-style. And then some of it’s almost country-ish, but I can’t help that ‘cause I’m from Georgia. But I don’t know. There’s a lot of different styles in there. It’s definitely more of a headphone record, not like a Saturday night kind of record. It’s more for the car than dance floor.

MG: So did anyone else from the band work on the album with you?

JH: Dottie plays the saxophone and sings a little bit. Bryan played some ripping electric guitar solos, I guess on only really one song. But that’s the thing about doing what I do, is I can play everything, so I do. I mean, to me, that’s part of the fun—playing all of it, so I do that until I run into something I can’t handle, like a cello or a horn or something. I do play trumpet, but not nearly as good as the guy that I got on the record. And I have this cellist who did some really great stuff. So yeah, other than that it’s a one-man band. But I intend to change that because we’re gonna make it a live touring thing. Most of Of Montreal will be involved with that. I mean I’ve done shows with all these guys. In fact I’ve even done like whole opening tours with of Montreal. But, you know I’ve never fully realized it. It’s kind of like a project that the rest of the band was enthusiastic about. And finally, I guess, Kevin was the real driving force, and kind of convinced me to go and work with Polyvinyl, on the initial release. So I guess I have him to credit for kind of lighting a fire under my ass. When it does come out, we’re gonna try and do a whole tour, treat it like the real thing.

--

A continued conversation (first part here) with Jamey Huggins of the glamtastic American band, Of Montreal: this week read about the band’s almost overnight success in Europe, opening for Franz Ferdinand, and life on the Of Montreal tour bus.

MG: of Montreal just played over in Europe—how was the response different over there?

JH: Uh, well, it’s a weird thing, you know? Like, in England it’s such a hard thing to get an audience. And then suddenly, the last time we were there, or the time before this last time, we were really struggling for some press. And we played a show for like 200 people> or something, did a couple of interviews, and then the last time we were there, we sold out this like 1,500 theatre and had to turn away like 300 people who were trying to get in. It was like overnight we were suddenly like legitimate in London after we’d been playing there for years at these really small clubs. And then like, the Franz Ferdinand concert, we opened for them and did that.

MG: How did that show go?

JH: It was kind of a nightmare, actually. Nothing to do with them, you know, they’re absolutely great. They were really kind and everything, the band, but we had to go on in this really small space. And for of Montreal to do an opening set for anyone, it’s kind of tricky. So we played like six or seven songs, and we had a major technical meltdown where our in-ear monitoring died, so no one could hear what they were singing, we couldn’t hear each other. We fixed it after a couple of songs. But still, it was great. And then we went to France and had a fantastic show in Paris. For some reason Paris loves the new of Montreal stuff. We sold more copies of Hissing Fauna and Skeletal Lamping in France than all of the rest of Europe combined.

MG: Why do you think that is?

JH: Well, I don’t know, the French like electro. And those records are very much, like, beat-driven. Um, but also I think we have a really great press team there. We just happened to get lucky with some really great, super enthusiastic, super influential people. And I guess, they told us this one story about this really popular TV host who has, like, several million viewers, and does this show, and apparently she made some little statement where she held up Hissing Fauna on her show and said “This is the best record of the year, and if everyone watching the show doesn’t go out and buy this tomorrow I’m gonna stab my hand with this…” She had like a knife, and was holding up the record with this knife, and was stressing how emphatic she was that France needed to listen to this strange American band.

MG: I guess it worked, then.

JH: Well, I’m sure that’s part of it. But it’s weird, cause in France, they play us on like regular radio, you know? More of like the Clear Channel rock station or something. So it’s like weirdly somehow more legitimate or something. They don’t have the sense that we’re like an indie band.

MG: So will there be more crazy costumes tonight? Any family members making cameos again?

JH: Yeah, you know, it’s always a revolving cast, depending on who can do it. I mean, if we had our way, we’d have them all every night. People have been kind of trading off, taking legs of the tour. So like we had Nina [Barnes, Kevin’s wife] in New York, and we even had Alabee [Kevin’s daughter] on stage.

MG: What did Alabee do?

JH: She danced, and sort of rode on her mother like a horse. Um, but we have David Barnes and his little troupe of, uh, performers. So I think there’s about five of them tonight. It’s kind of been shifting from night to night. He’s gotten really good at writing sort of little scenes. They’re kind of like one-act plays and provide something like a music video. I see it as they’re like mini videos for each song. Some of it’s like pre-planned, some of it’s live stuff. But in addition to that, uh, he’s taken to writing out like actual characters that reoccur and stuff. So, the last tour, it was a lot more, kind of like, theatrics, dancing around, and choreographed fights, stuff like that. But this time around he has like names for the characters and actual like acting teams and stuff. He’s been writing them on the bus and trying them on stage. Last night, they tried something I’d never seen before, where they had like a Christmas morning. So they had all these performers dressed up like little kids in pajamas and such, and they were all opening presents, but then inside one of the presents they rigged up a smoke machine. So like, three out of the four kids open their presents and there are gas masks, and they’re all excited about their gas masks, and they put them on, and the last kid opens his present and it just shoots out gas. Strange things like that. And tonight they won’t let us use it. Apparently this stupid Great White thing [a deadly nightclub fire caused by pyrotechnics at a concert in 2003], all smoke machines are illegal in every venue in this state. Which is ridiculous, because there’s no fire involved. So there will be no smoke tonight.

MG: Think there will be an extra crazy crowd tonight, being 4/20?

JH: I don’t even know what that is. I mean I know that people smoke pot at 4:20 in the afternoon or something. I don’t know, I hadn’t given it any thought.

MG: So what’s it like on the tour bus?

JH: It’s just like any other environment. Just certain times of the day it might be really wild, and everybody is hanging out. Just sort of doing what you do. And other times it’s like a tomb and all you can hear is some snoring.

MG: What are your thoughts on Kevin stripping at shows?

JH: Well that’s only happened once, and it was like three years ago. I think he’s outgrown his exhibitionist phase a little bit. And he’s actually been dressing a lot more masculinely. But he’s still wearing like a pink woman’s Indian kind of garb. But I think he’s grown into another phase.

MG: Who does your makeup before the show?

JH: Everybody does their own. I’ve gone away from it a little bit, from the sort of glammier stuff. Now it’s more like stage makeup.

--

And now for the final piece in our interview with Jamey Huggins of American band, of Montreal: we discuss the new of Montreal album, Kevin’s gin-induced inner comedian, and the misconceptions that the band’s creativity stems from drugs.

MG: So is there a new of Montreal album in the works yet?

JH:There’s definitely a new one. It’s probably about six or seven songs right now.

MG: Any idea what it’s called yet?

JH: Well Kevin gave all the albums their titles since Hissing Fauna. This one’s called Controller Sphere. All the album titles are in that one song ['Faberge Falls For Shuggie']. Uh, Skeletal Lamping, Controller Sphere, a couple more, I forget. We’re playing two of them, two brand new ones that are going to be on that record: tonight, one of them, and the other tomorrow night.

MG: What are they called?

JH: Well Kevin’s still working on the title, but it’s temporarily called “Cokehead Cokehead.” But, it’s not at all inspired by the drug. The original lyrics are kind of based around the word coquette, and then, we were joking around at this radio performance, and I think I misheard it and said, “It sounds like you’re saying cokehead.” And he thought that was hilarious so now he’s been calling it like ‘Cokehead’.

MG: What’s your favorite song off of Skeletal Lamping?

JH: Um, I think it’s probably ‘Nubile Miscreants’. I really, really love playing it live. It’s definitely my favorite song to perform. And also I think the lyrics are really good. At first I was kind of upset by it. I couldn’t understand who [Kevin] was singing about. But then I finally realized that if anyone should know better, I should know that when he sings about ketamine-addicted teenagers and, you know, college dorms, that he just makes that shit up. There’s nobody. All those lyrics about Rachel, crystal meth, and uh, I think it’s a stroke of genius cause like a lot of our fans think it’s reality. For me, it’s just really clever story-telling. And the rhymes are really good. It’s just not his typical song. A little bit more literal, not just fancy word play. There’s an actual little story there. And that’s kind of what he used to do, in the pre-electro days. A lot of character-based stories with like names and little sub plots and stuff. Plus, it’s got a nice groove to it. A lot of the songs are so, uh, what’s a complimentary way to say this? Uh, I don’t know, it’s kind of like awkwardly arranged. The whole point of it is it’s supposed to be jarring and unexpected. But that one to me is a little breath of like, a couple of minutes of the record that it’s really like groovy. And it doesn’t have a whole lot of like erratic kinda things happening in it. I don’t know, for some reason I just really like it.

MG: Are there any of Montreal pre-show rituals?

JH:Yea, but nothing like really surprising. I mean, Kevin and I like to bathe. Not, not each other [laughs]. But a ritual of getting as clean as possible before we get really dirty. You know, we all sit around and put a little makeup on and stuff and everyone has their, like, beverage ritual: certain things they will or won’t drink before the show.

MG: What are they?

JH:Well I’ll start with the dont’s [laughs]. Dottie and I are not allowed to drink whiskey or red wine before the show but Kevin and Bryan are heavily encouraged to do so.

MG: Why is that?

JH:Well, everyone’s had their own ups and downs with alcohol, and, uh, for some reason if Dottie and I drink anything brown, like whiskey or red wine, we tend to get really aggressive with each other and fight. And so we have banned it from ourselves. It wasn’t like a band decision. We just said that we weren’t allowed to do that any more cause we were fighting with each other right before we’d go on stage. But Kevin, if he drinks whiskey, becomes like a standup comedian, and if you’re lucky enough to catch him on a rare night, or if for some reason, every one in a while he’ll do a shot of gin, which is a terrible thing to shoot, but sometimes there’s nothing to mix it with. But if Kevin drinks maybe two shots of gin, or like a really strong gin and tonic, then he’ll talk to the audience more and put on these little characters. He can be really fun if you just get the right amount, the right concoction [laughs].

It’s the same way with Bryan, you know. He’s hilarious. But he’s become kind of more distant with the crowd. It used to be that he’d talk just as much as we played, you know. Five or six years ago, there would be enough banter in a single show to release a half-hour of spoken word. And a lot of times he’ll just go into poetry or something. Uh, but, you know, there’s also something to be said about being professional. And maybe we shouldn’t be drunk, and maybe we should actually play stuff, play the songs [laughs]. But you know, every once in a while it comes out that way. But maybe for 4/20, who knows? Maybe Kevin Barnes will be stoned off his ass [laughs].

Uh, that’s a frustrating thing we were talking about last night, this sort of presumption that we all use drugs. But besides beer, a little bit of gin, and some kombucha? And some, you know, Ibuprofen, it couldn’t be farther from the truth. People have a really hard time accepting that creativity can come from imagination. And it’s really amazing how widespread that attitude is among people who are fans of music and art, but they, themselves, can only imagine that it’s created by having some kind of mind-altering chemical in your brain or whatever. But I guess if you’ve never written a song or made a painting, then it must seem to you or that type of person, maybe it does seem like they could only imagine coming up with an idea only if they were in a totally different mindset. But if you’re a songwriter, you can be more sober and normal to come up with something really entertaining. And that’s the whole thing. A lot of the songs that we do are so unconventional and so weirdly lyrical and strange arrangements and stuff, but that’s because we want to make something different. It’s like a conscious choice to make something that hasn’t been done before, to make it really interesting and colorful and unexpected as possible. And that can be done, you know, on coffee and um a good night’s sleep, you know? Or at 4 in the morning, whatever. But there’s definitely no speed involved, or like ecstasy or anything, or for God’s sake acid. Which is what we always get accused of; described as like “such and such…on acid.” I don’t know, that’s a frustrating thing, because Kevin, especially, has never done anything like that. But, um, I understand a lot of our fans do. And there’s a lot of college students who come to of Montreal shows as if it were a rave or something and all take X and coke and come in off their tiny faces, high as a kite. And then I wonder if they can even remember the show.

MG: That’s all for now—I’ll let you get back to eating your dinner. Thanks, Jamey!