A Brief Q&A With the Walkmen
Last month, before the Walkmen embarked on their current tour, Austinist had a brief phone chat with frontman Hamilton Leithauser. Check 'em out at La Zona Rosa tonight, June 19th, where they'll be playing with Richard Swift and Talkdemonic.
UPDATE: We're also giving away two signed copies of the limited-edition screenprints created for tonight's show by Bryan Keplesky, aka Round Object.
Questions by Tom Thornton and Allen Y Chen
With the past two records recorded at Marcata (a studio that the Walkmen assembled themselves in Harlem), what prompted you guys to abandon it and record instead at Inner Ear studios in Virginia with Don Zientera?
We just sorta needed a change of scene; we'd been at Marcata for five years, and it was just ... I dunno, we really just needed a different room. It'll drive you crazy after a while. We produced [the album], but [Don] engineered everything and knew the ins and outs of the studio, which made everything go by really quickly. And painlessly. We kept all of the creative control, but Don was just such a real help.
And what's to become of your studio?
[Columbia University] is really expanding now [in Harlem]. They bought out basically the whole neighborhood up there. I guess, if you wanna invest, that's the place to do it. [Marcata] is gone, we've already abandoned it. It's gonna become "artist space" for Columbia students.
Back when you guys were recording the demo for A Hundred Miles Off, rumor has it you decided to stay away from the fancy toys and stick with your four track --
Actually, [laughs] it was the only thing we had, for starters. But it's also the only thing we've ever used, and every time we've ever tried to go into a computer -- I dunno, I just don't like the way it sounds. It's just so easy to make it sound good on a four track, cuz we've been doing it for like twenty years.
Bows and Arrows was very well received, and garnered the band some serious praise. Was there a huge amount of pressure to follow this up with something equally brilliant?
You wanna always try to do better than you did before, and we definitely put that pressure on ourselves so we wouldn't slip into something pretty bad. It took us two years, because we wrote stuff and we wrote stuff and we couldn't really write anything that we wanted to put our name on, to put out. So there was the pressure -- you don't want to disappoint people -- but at the same time you've just gotta do what you wanna do.
In those two years, you guys did a tremendous amount of touring, and even made a few appearances on TV shows and the late night circuit. At what point did A Hundred Miles Off finally start to coalesce?
July of last year, I think, was when the first song was written. Writing on the road is just impossible for us, because it takes so much out of you with traveling and stuff. We really got out of the mindset of writing songs. When we finally got back to doing it, it was this completely foreign thing. It took us eight months to figure out how to do it again!
Oh, man.
Yeah, it was a bummer.
Well, I guess you weren't entirely absent from writing on the road. Tell us about this collective novel that you guys put together, John's Journey.
Yeah! That's the one thing you can do on the road. That is a ... work in progress that we haven't worked on since the last time we were touring. But, hopefully this June, when we get back on the road, we'll really get some good work done.
In your opinion, how have you guys as a band evolved, or changed, in the past few years?
Well, in the last two years, we went from not being able to write a song to putting together a whole record that we're happy about [laughs]. At the end of touring on a record, you're just so sick of all your songs, and you don't have any prospects for new ones, so it feels like you're in limbo. Even though that's when all your success comes, for us it's like ... old news, and we just wanted to move on and get started on something else.
What's up with the mariachi horns on the new album?
[Laughs] That's a friend, Tom. That was just supposed to be a really fun sounding part, and that was the funniest thing we could think of to put on. I like the way it turned out.
Is new track "Louisiana" supposed to have a Dylan influence, or is that just accidental?
It definitely does, and it was definitely intentional.
Some people who've heard the album say that "This Job Is Killing Me" is the standout track, and my personal favorite so far is "All Hands and the Cook" --
That's definitely my favorite song, too. I'm glad to hear that!
How does a track like that get created?
This time, Walt (Walter Martin, bassist) helped me with a bunch of the lyrics. I do the melodies, and usually there are a couple of parts that two or three of us come up with together -- like a drum and guitar, or bass and drums. And then you try to get a whole bunch of these [disconnected pieces], put them together, and every once in a while it ... works.
Do you usually end up with too much material that you have to cut away parts from?
Actually, it's so hard to come up with anything that we usually end up trying to use every last scrap. [I mention how this reminds me of my college essays, and we share a laugh]
From everything we've read, your experience with selling "We've Been Had" to Saturn was pretty positive. Would you do this again?
If someone came to me with an offer, and it was good, hell yeah! We'd definitely do it again.
Rumor has it you've already recorded a cover of a covers album by Harry Nilsson, Pussy Cats. Was this an experimental project or something you're planning on releasing?
Yeah, we did, and it's done. It's going to come out in November. It'll be our next record, and we're really proud of it.
What has been your perception of Austin and/or SXSW during your visits here?
I've spent a lot of time there, and I've really gotten to know it well. When we leave it always feels like you've been there for three weeks; there's a lot of partying, and you end up feeling you know a whole lot of people there.
How was your Coachella experience? It seems to us that your music suits a dark theater rather than a sunny field.
We had a blast. It's fun playing out in the sun, especially because you get sick of playing in smoky rock clubs all the time
* Photo by cyancey on flickr
