My friend Ben Wiley had the opportunity to talk to one of the year's finest new indie pop bands, Julia Brown, on their recent tour. Read the interview below, which concludes with a surprise appearance by Coma Cinema's Mat Cothran.
INTERVIEWER: What tour date is this and how long have you
been out?
Sam: This about two weeks now.
John: This is the fourth night of
the tour. It’s not officially the first day out on tour because we played
Baltimore the first night of the tour. Then we went back
Sam: A home show first, yeah.
INTERVIEWER: Where do you guys play in Baltimore?
Sam: We
played at Club K. Which was ok. It’s the best thing there since Bell Foundry
shut down.
John: Tonight
probably.
Sam:
Tonight and last night probably. Tonight was maybe the most fun to play because
we got to be goofier. Shea, where we played Brooklyn last night, it’s like a
venue and a studio and they record everything they do and archive it so we couldn’t
mess around. It sounds phenomenal.
John: We
don’t really do sound checks and have our stuffed mic’ed because of the places
we play it doesn’t make sense.
Alec: We played on a stage.
John: We actually played on a
stage, which was cool.
Alec: It was definitely a less
professional show tonight.
John: I think the three Brooklyn
shows and the show here tonight are my favorite shows we’ve played as a band.
Sam: I can tell you all about that.
John: Before Julia Brown I played
bass in a bunch of bands including the Night Crawlers. I actually just started
playing drums for this band because they needed a drummer. I was in school.
INTERVIEWER: How do you think your sound has translated
live?
Sam: When we were recording ‘to be
close to you’ there were only really two or three songs we did all together. We
started recording it before the band was formed, before we knew who was in it.
I was recording songs. There were a couple songs we were like “we need a
drummer for these” and that’s when John joined but then you were in Mexico. Yeah,
You got really lit in Mexico for a while and I specifically remember you
talking about sea lions for a while.
John: Every night in Mexico, that’s
when I bought my first pair of drumsticks, I was vacationing with my family in
Mexico for a week. I looked up how to say drumsticks in Spanish and went to a
music store and sat there and played drums on a couch and got hella lit and
talked to Sam all night. Yeah, it was pretty cool.
Sam: ‘Library’ and ‘falling in love’
are the opening two tracks, the only tracks we did as a full band on that so
were thinking naturally that was going to be how it was going to go live. So
when we were working on ‘to be close to you’ and ‘I will do this for the rest
of my life’, they have drums, we were trying to not just
replicate but to do a more unique version of them. The new one we’ve been
playing is probably going to be very similar to how it is. It depends on the
song but we can’t have a lot of super-no-drums-downtempo stuff and really get away with it.
INTERVIEWER: What’s it like playing with Mat Cothran all the
time?
Alec: It’s a lot of fun
John: Uhh its fucking awesome. I love seeing Mat every
night.
Sam: He’s a character. He’s another
that writes very downtempo. I like when he does Her Vore….and there he is now.
Mat: You guys talking about me?
John: Do you want to be part of our
interview?
Mat: Oh no.
Sam: Who is Blue Suicide?
Caroline: How do you play an F
chord?
Mat: I’m like the guru of the
mountain but only idiots climb up.
John: Is
Blue Suicide dead? Did the dog kill himself and is that why he’s sad?
Mat:
Someone asked that one once.
