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Interview: Shearwater (pt. 2)
Interview: Shearwater (pt. 2)
- Genre : More Music
- Type: News
- Author : Super Admin
- Date : Fri, 24 Oct 2008
When you were recording with the strings and the winds, what were those sessions like? Were they fragmented or were you recording a lot full and live?
We did the strings all at once, we did the winds at once, and we did the harp separately. Those are always really magical moments. It's all been written down on a page or mocked up on a MIDI thing, and you just have to trust that it's going to sound good. You get them in there and they start playing along with the track and it suddenly comes to life in front of you. The other night at the New York showcase, when they were actually playing live with us, we were practicing a couple hours before the show and I kept screwing up because I kept listening to them, like "Wow, listen to that, that's amazing! That sounds great!"
"Oh, yeah, I'm on stage, too!"
[Laughs] Yeah, exactly. I felt like I'd been dropped into some kind of rock and roll fantasy. But doing it on the record, it was really great to hear it blooming out of the speakers. The great thing about working with orchestral musicians is that they take listening to one another and working together as a precondition for making music. It takes most bands a long time to learn that—if they ever do. Even if they don't like each other, string players cooperate in a way that reminds me of bees or ants or something. They solve problems really fast and make these little chicken scratches into something magical.
I look forward to the Hollywood Bowl show out here some day with the L.A. Philharmonic.
Oh, me, too. [Laughs] We definitely have jumped the shark at that point.
Shearwater with special guest John Williams.
[Laughs] I thought his music for the new Indiana Jones was pretty good. It was definitely the best thing about the movie—it kept heroically trying to save it.
I didn't see it.
Oh, it's dreadful. I mean, it's absolutely awful. No, no. You can never go back. My friend Jordan, who's been playing with us, says that inspiration only goes one way—and I think that's really true. You have it with bands, too. You can't recapture something that you did and make more of it. You can play that stuff again. It seems like there's a lot of these older bands getting back together and they play the old stuff and people always are like "Wow, that sounds great, they sound just like they used to!" And then they play the new stuff and they're like "What's wrong with them?" I think that's blaming people for being subject to time and aging—it's really unfair. You can't go back and be who you were.
Bob Dylan said not too long ago that he didn't have it in him anymore to write one of those old classics, and that he didn't fully understand what "it" had been in the first place.
Yeah, I think they were asking him about "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)," and he said he didn't remember how he did that. You know, we rely on artists to kind of cheat death for us sometimes, and we get kind of disappointed when they don't. But it's the art that cheats death, not the artist.
You've been opening shows by singing a cappella, which I thought was a bold choice when I saw you guys as headlining, but then you did the same thing as an opener. Is that nervewracking? Can you still get thrown by a tough crowd?
Well, thank god we've had Emo's here in Austin to cut our teeth on. No matter who you are, there are always people yelling in the back of the room at Emo's. You kinda get used to it after a while. [Laughs] But the set we were playing at the Troubadour [opening for Clinic]—I kind of designed it to try to bring people in and intrigue them, to go through the whole range of the things we do. I find that opening with that actually makes people shut up and pay attention more than any loud song you could throw at them. Everybody kind of stops and looks at you like "What is he doing?" Then follow that with some faster songs, and we play the
We did the strings all at once, we did the winds at once, and we did the harp separately. Those are always really magical moments. It's all been written down on a page or mocked up on a MIDI thing, and you just have to trust that it's going to sound good. You get them in there and they start playing along with the track and it suddenly comes to life in front of you. The other night at the New York showcase, when they were actually playing live with us, we were practicing a couple hours before the show and I kept screwing up because I kept listening to them, like "Wow, listen to that, that's amazing! That sounds great!"
"Oh, yeah, I'm on stage, too!"
[Laughs] Yeah, exactly. I felt like I'd been dropped into some kind of rock and roll fantasy. But doing it on the record, it was really great to hear it blooming out of the speakers. The great thing about working with orchestral musicians is that they take listening to one another and working together as a precondition for making music. It takes most bands a long time to learn that—if they ever do. Even if they don't like each other, string players cooperate in a way that reminds me of bees or ants or something. They solve problems really fast and make these little chicken scratches into something magical.
I look forward to the Hollywood Bowl show out here some day with the L.A. Philharmonic.
Oh, me, too. [Laughs] We definitely have jumped the shark at that point.
Shearwater with special guest John Williams.
[Laughs] I thought his music for the new Indiana Jones was pretty good. It was definitely the best thing about the movie—it kept heroically trying to save it.
I didn't see it.
Oh, it's dreadful. I mean, it's absolutely awful. No, no. You can never go back. My friend Jordan, who's been playing with us, says that inspiration only goes one way—and I think that's really true. You have it with bands, too. You can't recapture something that you did and make more of it. You can play that stuff again. It seems like there's a lot of these older bands getting back together and they play the old stuff and people always are like "Wow, that sounds great, they sound just like they used to!" And then they play the new stuff and they're like "What's wrong with them?" I think that's blaming people for being subject to time and aging—it's really unfair. You can't go back and be who you were.
Bob Dylan said not too long ago that he didn't have it in him anymore to write one of those old classics, and that he didn't fully understand what "it" had been in the first place.
Yeah, I think they were asking him about "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)," and he said he didn't remember how he did that. You know, we rely on artists to kind of cheat death for us sometimes, and we get kind of disappointed when they don't. But it's the art that cheats death, not the artist.
You've been opening shows by singing a cappella, which I thought was a bold choice when I saw you guys as headlining, but then you did the same thing as an opener. Is that nervewracking? Can you still get thrown by a tough crowd?
Well, thank god we've had Emo's here in Austin to cut our teeth on. No matter who you are, there are always people yelling in the back of the room at Emo's. You kinda get used to it after a while. [Laughs] But the set we were playing at the Troubadour [opening for Clinic]—I kind of designed it to try to bring people in and intrigue them, to go through the whole range of the things we do. I find that opening with that actually makes people shut up and pay attention more than any loud song you could throw at them. Everybody kind of stops and looks at you like "What is he doing?" Then follow that with some faster songs, and we play the
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