 |
| [Margot and the Nuclear So and So's w/ Jookabox & Burnt Ones] [Tuesday, 9 p.m.] [Waiting Room, Omaha] [$10] |
Margot and the Nuclear So and So's aren't the same band they were four years ago.
Membership has slimmed from a jamboree to six. They're no longer based out of Indianapolis, Ind., but now Chicago. And they've started a personal record label, Mariel Recording Company, set up by band songwriter and ringleader Richard Edwards along with guitarist Erik Kang.
The band released their Chicago-influenced "Buzzard" in September with their label after working with Epic for their 2008 sophomore dual-release "Animal!" and "Not Animal." Big-label pains aside, Margot looks forward to releasing an EP in January.
Margot will be in Omaha on Tuesday for a 9 p.m. show at the Waiting Room.
I was able to talk with Edwards while out on tour about the new album.
How many musicians do you have traveling with you on tour right now?
We have six in our band with a couple other friends doing some various stuff, but yeah, six people that are playing in the band on the road right now.
Were those people enlisted for the album "Buzzard"?
Most of them, yeah. All of them played some time on the record at least. The drummer didn't.
How does the making of "Buzzard" compare to previous albums?
We played a lot more live in the studio, so it was a lot more fun in that way. Before, with as many people as we had and the kind of arrangements, it was a lot of building things in the studio from scratch, not necessarily a lot of live tracking. So that was a nice change. That's probably the most significant difference.
Would you say there was anything to overcome in the production of the album or with this album in general?
Probably a lot of stuff, yeah. Financially, there's always stuff to overcome. You always have little moments recording any record where stuff stops going well or you feel you're not quite getting what you want.
It happens every time you make a record. There's times where it goes really smoothly, and there's times where you get hung up, and it's just finding a way to get yourself out of it, I guess.
Where did the writing and recording take place?
Both in Chicago. I wrote the songs in Chicago during breaks from tours and stuff like that. And yeah, we recorded in Chicago as well.
But the band is based out of Indianapolis?
We were, we're not so much anymore. Most of us live in Chicago. So if we're based anywhere, it'd probably be Chicago now.
What would you say most inspired or provoked the new album?
Probably a lot of things combined. Living in Chicago was a big part of it. Just getting to know different people, getting exposed to different things. Going to a video store called Odd Obsession a lot, them handling pretty weird documentaries and stuff like that.
So I was watching a lot of that stuff while I was writing the songs. I'd say Chicago in general, really, probably had a big effect on the writing and the recording of it.
Was there material that didn't make the album?
Oh yeah. A whole bunch.
What do you do with that, do you save it and come back to it?
I don't think we've ever really come back to anything that hasn't made a record so far. It generally just kind of just exists and not much happens with it.
This time around we're actually releasing a little acoustic EP of songs in January that were recorded live on a two-track machine. And so there'll be some songs on that that were kind of possibilities for this record but didn't end up getting pursued. But usually that stuff kind of falls away, it sits somewhere and you forget about it. I generally write new songs for upcoming albums.
Do you know how many tracks you're planning for on the new EP, what songs you're using?
I think it's six or seven songs. There's three that are from "Buzzard." And those are, I think, "Will You Love Me Forever," "Freak Flight Speed," and maybe "My Baby (Cares for the Animals)." And then there's three other songs that I don't remember all the titles actually, but there are three other songs that were at one time pretty strong contenders for doing on "Buzzard" and didn't get done for one reason or another.
It's a pretty small EP thing, but I think it's an interesting way to hear a lot of those songs, in a way that they're basically written, and we record a lot of stuff that way first, I go in and record kind of record live demos on a tape machine and we bring those to the band and we generally decide what we're going to do based on those. So this is kind of just a little glimpse of that, the way that a lot of the stuff starts.
Why did you release the new album with Mariel Recording Company after releasing "Animal!" (and) "Not Animal" with Epic?
It's just kind of a drag to be on a major label, and I think this time around the idea was we just wanted to do a bit more of it ourselves. So we had a lot more freedom to kind of do how we want to do it, and we can do other projects like EPs and things like that a little quicker than we were able to do at Epic.
There just didn't seem to be much reason to stay with Epic because I don't think any of us really thought that they were gonna make us huge, not necessarily that that's what we even wanted. And that's what those labels are set up to do, they're not set up to sell 30, 40 thousand records, they're set up to sell a million, maybe a little less than that nowadays. There's not much point in being on there unless you feel that you're making music that's gonna appeal to millions of people.
And that label, it's your guys' own label?
Yeah, yeah.
So what went into the making of that?
That label name and stuff, it existed till probably since I was in high school. It was a little bit of a basement label type thing, like most kids had when they're younger, especially back in the age of CDs and stuff like that. And so we kinda just resurrected the name, and everything else from it became a lot more kind of professional than it was when I was putting out tapes in high school.
So we just kind of got that name going and then we got with a distributor and a publicist and couple people that kind of hired on as staff for, uh, I don't know, it took like half a year to work on this thing.
And so once we got those people in place. Erik (Kang) and I pretty much spent the summer trying to set the thing up, the same as we would if we were working for any other label, like making all the calls and trying to make sure we hit all the deadlines. So it was very official and work-intensive. It's hard to describe what all the work is when you're in the middle of trying to set up a record and trying to make sure it has the same kind of like visibility or attention as it would if it were on Sony or Merge or anybody else. But it was really fun, it was a lot of work. It remains a lot of work.
Are you planning to pick up artists or anything with the label?
Right now, there's not any plans like that. It would be fun to put out friends' records, but I don't think we would do it unless it was something that we could really do a good job on. The only people I could see us doing would be friends, and it's always kind of dicey to get in the business with your friends, unless something comes up that you know you could really do a good job on and you know has a chance of working.
It would be fun, but I think right now we're pretty busy focused on getting Margot records made and that's been a pretty full-time job for us for the last year or so.
Is there ever pressure felt in being the one songwriter for the band?
Yeah, I mean, to some degree. There's always pressure if you've gone through a month where you feel like you're not writing or you're not writing stuff that you like. But for the most part, by the time we're ready to make records I generally feel like I've got songs that I feel pretty good about. I'm sure at some point in my life it will become very stressful if I feel like the well's run dry. But I enjoy writing songs and I enjoy the "song" part of the band being a singular vision. So I'm more grateful that I can do that, that I play with people who understand that. I play with people who kind of appreciate and accept that I'm the one that writes the songs, and I kind of want to retain that sort of privilege.
So are you the person who has last say in what stays on a track and what goes on a track?
I would say, yeah, probably, if it really comes down to it, for sure. But it very rarely comes down to real veto-type argument where I have to put a foot down. We're generally on pretty close to the same page when we're working on stuff.
I think we collaborate pretty well. I think we can probably count on one hand the amount of times that there's ever been anything that really got to where anyone had to put their foot down about how something was going.
Do you ever find yourself reflecting on your older music?
Not very often. I think right before this one came out, I listened to some of the old stuff again. And it's been a long time; the only thing I can really remember is that I remember still really liking "Animal!" and not expecting to really like it and really not being able to listen to the first one.
There's stuff that I would do differently about "Animal!" but essentially, it's the record that I still really like, and it's to my taste. The first record's really not to my taste. So I have a hard time going back to that first one, but the last ones I think are alright.
What kind of material are you guys playing on tour?
It's a pretty big mix. I'd say it's pretty equal from all the records. It seems like we do half of "Buzzard," maybe a little more every night. We do quite a few songs from that first record and from those "Animal!" "Not Animal" records. So I'd say it's pretty all-encompassing, on these tours at least it has been.
No comments:
Post a Comment