Birdmonster Interview

This past Sunday, Gigbot sent me on a mission to catch up with Birdmonster. Before the interview, we discussed the importance of Rocky IV in the series and whether the montage where Rocky is cruising his Lambo reminiscing of old times with Apollo running on a beach could be the best damn montage known to man. Their new album, From the Mountain to the Sea ,was recently released by Fader Label.

Birdmonster-Born to be Your Man [mp3]

Julio-Your new album has a distinct twangy sound compared to your last couple albums . How do you feel your sound has changed from previous efforts?

Peter-I would say we definitely like to focus, this time around, on making sure the very basics of the song came through and not feel like we needed to go to far with it. So a less is more approach, you know, we’ve always played acoustic instruments. So we let that shine a little bit more.

Julio-Did the last couple of albums include any banjo or mandolin?

Peter-A little bit of banjo. This is the first record with mandolin. Justin picked up on the mandolin for us this year and has been doing a great job.

Julio-Why did you choose the mandolin?

Justin-I always liked the way it sounded and I could pick up the strings. Just kind of wanted to add something. That was when I had money and it was back in a time when I had $300 and I decided to buy a mandolin and that was pretty much the decision.

Julio-Is there any favorite mandolin type albums that you like?

Justin-I can’t think of any.

Julio-Any, off the top of your head?

Birdmonster-Losing My Religion (all sing in unison)

Peter-Yeah, that whole riff.

Justin-I like Bluegrass but don’t really seek it out. We were doing more acoustic stuff and playing more around the house and it always added a nice texture , just something different. I picked it up and went with it.

Julio-How was recording Tom Schick?

Birdmonster-Shitty! (sarcasm)

Peter-It was great! He had done a lot of work with songwriters. And the benefit of that is that he never loses the song in the production. So we batched the songs
and we basically made a list of people that we thought would be good to work with and he was at the top of that list.

Julio-I read that you chose to record in San Francisco. Was there any reason behind that?

Peter-A couple of things really. We’re a San Francisco band and sometimes it’s good to get out of your element. The last album we recorded was in Los Angeles. We thought, let’s just do a record at home. There’s a lot of history to that studio (Hyde Street Studios). Creedence Clearwater Revival, Shaq.

Julio-Shaq-Diesel?

Justin-In fact, I think it was Shaq-Fu.

Peter-I think there was a record and a video-game.

Julio-I think there was a movie too…

Birdmonster-KAZAAM!

Julio-Oh yeah, and Blue Chips too.

Justin-Penny Hardaway was in that too.

David-But if I can throw an addendum to that answer. We did some of the writing in the Pacific Northwest. We did some of the writing outside of the city. Peter did tons of writing in the city by himself. We had some space outside of the studio to do an actual writing process.

Julio-Who’s usually involved in the writing process?

David-Peter usually 85-90% of the time gets the ball rolling. Writes most of the basic structures and lyrics.

Zach-The music is usually hashed out together.

Peter-What’s great about is, we start out with a skeleton. That’s why I love playing music with these guys. We surprise each other.

Julio-I remember reading about you guys in Rockinsider.Com (JAX).

Justin-Nice

Julio-She would go bananas over you guys. How do you feel the blogging community has contributed to your success?

Peter-We released our EP, and RELEASED is a strong word. A couple of blogs enjoyed Resurrection Song and All the Holes in the Wall.

David-The best thing about it was that it put us on a level where we could spend more time on this. We all had jobs outside the band. At the time let’s really work on this. We can spend some time on this and really get better at

Julio-Are you guys doing this full time?

Peter-We all have to temp when we’re home and all that crap. It’s definitely a hilarious broke scraping by scenario. What was nice this time around, but I feel this was the first body of work where we got to write the record while that was our number one priority. Where, even if we had to pick up some money here and there, we could focus on the writing process.

Julio-You guys aren’t out there trying to donate plasma?

David-Never that! Practically, we wanted to mirror the US GOVT with insane debt and wrack up some credit card debt.

Peter-Definitely racked up some of those.

Julio-You guys are working with FADERLABEL, how is that working out?

Peter-It’s working out great.

Zack-They’re putting out their second record with us, so it’s the beginning of the trial.

Julio-How do you like working with them? Any differences from the other two efforts?

Peter-It’s nice to have a team involved. There’s this idea that DIY is cool and labels are evil. What’s nice about that is that it free’s us up a little bit to focus on
music. When you think about it we got to choose the producer we wanted to work with and a really cool stereo. These are things that three or four years ago would have been next to impossible to be done, but we would have stressed out. It gives us more freedom to be artistic and let that be your priority, which I think some people forget that when they pick up a band and labels….

Julio-The whole reason why your in it?

Peter-The whole reason why we’re making music is we’re inspired do that and we want to create. Create music and art. Doing it yourself you have run a real tight business, which takes a lot out of you so , it’s nice to not have to worry about that.

Julio-Gas money etc.

Birdmonster-No, we still have to worry about that.

Zack-It’s not financial support.

Justin-It’s an organization, mental energy support. Instead of worrying about promoting the next show, you can just relax and watch a movie and stuff.

Julio-Your city just got two new festivals (Outside Lands and Treasure Island) and your presence was noticeably missed. I know Peter was in Canada, but any other reason why you guys weren’t involved.

Birdmonster-They never asked.

David-We didn’t have a booking agent for a real long time until very very recently. We took sixteen months to write this record. It was definitely getting things started off again and not having an agent . So hopefully we can play it next year.

Peter-We needed some time off to focus on the record and not worry about touring.

Julio-When are you ending your tour?

Peter-Ending in November and doing some more in the Spring.

Zack-We’re on our own till the 4th of October, but we’ll be meeting up with the Rumble Strips.

Julio-I haven’t listened to them, what are they like?

David-They’re always being compared to the Kinks.