Ahead of their December tour of Australia and the forthcoming release of their new EP, Broken Dreams Club, Pedestrian spoke to Chet “JR” White of San Fran duo Girls about living life in the spotlight, the downsides of touring and how the blogosphere became a homogeneous wasteland.
What have you been up to today? I actually flew down to LA and I got in about three hours ago with my friend Aaron Brown who also directed all our videos. Basically we shot a video at Christopher and I’s house about a week ago and they were supposed to have it done by the 1st and they have been lagging. So I had to fly down to LA and crack the whip and make sure it’s getting done and also to help, my co-editor did it as well, it was sort of a collaborative video.
What’s the premise? We used to just let things happen but this time we messed around with a narrative based on the lyrics. It’s based on a girl who is basically walking at weird moments around a house and Chris is sort of a ghost singing the song to her. It’s weird, we always tried to avoid doing narrative videos because it’s really easy to make them suck. So we tried to do one with a beautiful high definition camera that a friend got a hold of and it looks really great. I’m just a little worried about it. I’ve really liked our videos in the past and this one we tried to do something different, and we’re never afraid of trying to do something different, I’m just a little scared and worried.
The last time we spoke you talked about a hardcore version of the “Lust For Life” music video and it kind of went ballistic online. Does that hardcore version still exist somewhere on someone’s hard drive? Yeah we have always talked about putting it out but as we got busy, we’re touring so much, it always seemed like the good ideas go to the back burner. One of the ideas was to actually release everyone’s single takes because everyone had their own full scene in the take, you know? Different people all did about 3 minutes of lip syncing and performance. So we wanted to do something where we released some of the better ones in their full form without editing. And we also wanted to do one of those takes with the two guys, but we didn’t do it because when we let Matador and everybody else release the ‘not safe for work’ version it came off like we were trying to be sensational and that wasn’t really the intention. And so if we did another one it would be like “woah, they did another one’. Maybe one day we will throw it up on Youtube but we have no intention to at the moment.
And is that scrutiny hard for a relatively big band in 2010? Like, are you constantly weary of how you’ll be perceived? I remember when we talked last year you mentioned that the band’s relationship with drugs got blown way out of proportion. Is that a hard adjustment, to be constantly considering how people will take things? Well we are in control of our media output, we were just being smart asses you know? And that was a result of that. What we didn’t know obviously when we did it was how much of a big deal was going to be made out of it. And I think that if we would have known we might not have done it but maybe not, that was just a phase we were in. We were feeling goofy and the whole situation was weird, you know? There’s a thing that’s happening now with new music, where it’s fucking funneled by these blogs, they’re all the same, all the blogs are fucking the same. If one of them likes you they all like you, I am convinced that all of them are run by one person anyway. If you go blog search our new song “Heartbreaker” hardly any of them even express an opinion about the song. It’s just all the same fucking shit. It’s just a little bit frustrating. Like, people that run blogs – and no offence if you do – but they should inject some fucking personality into what they do like… I don’t know, Lester Bangs. All these people who have produced good music journalism, there is such a great outlet for it but you never see it anymore. With our new song I went online and everybody had the same exact thing to say. I got really confused. I thought ‘does our record label run these blogs?’. It’s basically all pop up ads. Two or three out of the ten I read had expressed any sort of opinion about the music at all.
But sorry to deviate too much. At the time we were two guys that made a record, and it was all our time at that time and with all the work we were doing then we were getting high a lot because we were working really late hours and that was the reality of it. And that thrusted us in a weird position where we had people calling us wanting to interview us before we even had a record out, and we didn’t even have a fucking band. It was so silly. So we were just taking part in the ridiculousness that was happening and that was openly doing drugs during interviews.
Is it still that way? Can you become accustom to that level of attention? On a rare day I walk down the street and someone recognizes me, but we don’t have those sheltered lives where people are stalking us all the time or anything. I don’t know, Chris has to deal with it more than I do. His whole personal life is thrown out through the media and he deals with it pretty well and he survived a pretty fucked up childhood where a lot of those people killed themselves. So this is nothing, he has no problem dealing with this, but it’s still not easy for him. He doesn’t feel a lot of pressure regarding writing. He is my friend but I think you can really lead yourself down a path of self obsession where you’re thinking about yourself all the time. It’s the classic rock and roll story. I don’t like myself enough to want to read about myself, maybe I am a little protective and I’m also not the front man, so it’s not hard for me, no. If you read a lot of Chris’ interviews, he has gotten to the point where he is answering questions like a machine, he does do a lot more interviews than what I do though. But it is such a shame because nobody cares, none of these writers even bother asking any interesting questions. Most of the time it is just the same questions over and over again, and it’s such a bummer if you are a band with all this press and if you ever read it, it feels like your band is so stupid because you’re constantly giving boring interviews and it’s really hard because nobody wants anything else from you because its all just about just answering those questions. It is such a ripe time for music and there is so much music available and the way it is presented and handed out to people through blogs and occasionally in magazines, it is done so un-creatively. Sorry, we just got really burnt out on everything and all that stuff so I don’t think we’re really going to tour this EP at all because of it, you know?. It’s like you have to sell the album before it is even released, it all seems very backwards to me. People should hear the album first then want to buy it, not the other way around.
What was the main reason for releasing the EP now? Main reason was we were just getting bored. We were touring so much we didn’t have a chance to make new music. We didn’t even really rehearse a lot of these songs before we went and recorded them. I mean two of them we played ‘Heartbreaker’ and ‘Substance’ and a few of them we had tried but we were not happy about how they were coming out live and stopped playing them. We were just bored, Chris and I have been playing these songs for two years and I was getting sick of it. I was going on stage and staring at the ground all the time and there was a couple of shows where I was just leaning against my amp and playing. It was just very uninspiring playing these songs that we have been playing with for so long. We just needed a creative push, we were just getting burnt, and it was just a good tester for us to see where we were going and that’s why we did it.
You’ve talked about how homogeneous the whole process is…like interviews and coverage and even playing all these shows. Did the process of recording the EP revitalize you like you thought it would? Yeah it did in a way. We’re trying to shape our world a little bit more, you know? Exercise more control. We’ve been trying to build this studio for a while and putting new gear in and I know how to record and our manager is coming forward with us to do that. We have a really good relationship with them and the people at our label so they trusted us. As much as we talk about drugs and all that bullshit, Chris and I are both pretty together smart dudes. If there is any two people that could, at the time, take drugs responsibly we did it. We are going into the studio with the intention that the tour will have some proper breaks in between, be a little more smart about how we tour and try and be recording constantly. So when we make a record it’s not about going to the studio for months. There’s always recording in progress. So for me it would be really cool to release singles, just constantly releasing little singles up on the internet, free and maybe limited pressings as well and then at the end of the year pile those and turn around and put out an album with all that stuff and maybe some extra stuff. So there are a lot of ideas as to how we would like band to work. I mean, we’ve befriended a bunch of local engineers who can also help us out when we need it, that’s what we’re trying to do. So all of this heavy touring has hopefully made us smarter.
When we last spoke you talked about how you taught Chris about the recording process, what have you guys learnt since about the writing and recording? Chris writes everything I arrange and I make a lot of suggestions and he usually listens to them about adding parts or extending parts. Adding a verse of changing the intro, whatever. Luckily he trusts me a lot with it and we have a pretty great relationship in that way. What we have learnt… I can’t really answer that about writing but we have gained a lot more confidence with this EP. We hired horn and pedal steel players specifically and these are professional musicians who can nail these parts on one or two takes. Which is crazy for us. When we do a bass track it takes a few hours but thy just nailed it. I guess I have never felt like I was a professional musician, it isn’t a comfortable role for me, but I can communicate with those people and get what I want from them and they’re professionals. And getting the confidence to say “write a horn part that sounds like this” or to stand up there with a real musician in the studio and play with them, that’s something that we took away from this EP. And just trusting your instincts. We had someone mix the first record and with the second record I didn’t have my hands on the board the whole time although I was there for every minute of it. It is trusting myself more and realizing that I am a good engineer and to stand up for myself and not take the back seat. It annoys me, I’m angry about it. So for the next record we are going to be in a lot more control of what we are doing and take out those factors that dilute what Girls is and what Chris and I are trying to create. No one else has a say in what we are going to do and how our music is going to sound. We’re not going to let the engineer or mixing guy tell us that something sounds better a certain way and then regret it.
So what is next for Girls then? We are going to jump back into the studio! I found this beautiful private studio in downtown San Francisco. It’s run by this guy that collects and has been collecting recording gear for years, it is the most insane collection I have ever seen in my life. He calls it the best in the State and I would agree with him, just an unreal amount of equipment. So we are going to be tracking there with all this old amazing gear and then take it to this new studio space we put together and sort of work on it ourselves. So we are trying to schedule that right now and find the right engineer at the moment that is willing to join the band and sleep on our couch if he has too. I’m trying to find someone that is young and that is looking for a break but that can work fast and knows their stuff…so if you know anyone?
I’ll make a note of it when I post the interview (Laughs) Thanks man.
Girl tour Australia in December. Tickets and dates below, proudly supported by yours truly…
Wednesday 8th December – Manning Bar, Sydney – Buy tickets here
Thursday 9th December – The Zoo, Brisbane – Buy tickets here
Friday 10th December – The Corner, Melbourne – Buy tickets here
