ACL Artist Interview: The Walkmen's Hamilton Leithauser

This is your second go-round playing the Austin City Limits Festival, the first having been in 2005. Do you have any memories of playing that year that stick out?

Most definitely. That was the year we were stuck in the evacuation traffic from Beaumont. We woke up in our hotel and there was no one even working there. The gas stations were all abandoned and the pumps were shut off. We drove for like 20 minutes and hit a small road with standstill traffic. We arrived in Austin 27 hours later. I spent most of the evening trying to sleep on the roof of the van. On the radio they were saying some guy was "brandishing a shotgun" on our road which was pretty creepy. At 5 pm all the mosquitos came out and so the only shelter was in the van. But there was so little gas we couldn't turn it on, much less the air conditioner. So the choices were to stay outside and literally breath mosquitos in and out of your nose, or slow-roast yourself in the van with 9 dudes. It was the worst thing that's ever happened to our band.

Thanks. My friend Quentin who wrote "Another One Goes By" told me he was trying to sound like us when he wrote it. I love that song. I don't know how we choose songs... just stuff we like and we think maybe we can add something to. At our first show ever we covered "This Train is Bound for Glory" by Woody Guthrie, and "Waterloo Sunset" by the Kinks. I think they might have sucked.

Is John's Journey [a novel The Walkmen are—or were—writing collectively] still something the band is working on? Do you think it'll wind up being published at some point?

It's been a while. We shouldn't have told anyone about it, because that really slowed everything up. I think we'll take it back up in about 10 years.

After the success of You & Me, are you doing anything different in your preparations for the next Walkmen album?

We're doing it a lot like we did You & Me actually. 3 guys live in Philly now so there's a lot of driving up and down the New Jersey turnpike. We're starting to really get some stuff together. We recorded 13 songs in August in like 5 days.

How are you planning to spend your time at ACL, are there any bands you're hoping to catch while you're here?

I'm going to hit the hard bar pretty early and see if I can make some friends.