(Saturday 10:00am)
POP
Musee Mecanique
Paste: How's the tour going so far?
Micah Rabwin: It's going pretty well. I mean, we're about halfway through and now, we're on tour with Laura Gibson. It's really nice since we're all pals from Portland and she's putting up with us well, five guys and one girl. It's been a lot of fun... We've definitely been enjoying ourselves. When we were in Washington, we ended up staying at a friends' family lake house and got to hang out on the lake and jump in the lake in the morning.
Sean Ogilvie: We're all about taking advantage of where we are. And trying to see what we can everywhere we go. Like today, we're going to go hit the mall probably, in D.C. Rabwin: The Washington Mall. Not the shopping mall.
Paste: Your publicist mentioned that you guys are working on some new songs.
Rabwin: Yeah, we're definitely starting to. I mean, we've been on tour nearly consistently since the album came out and just had a couple of weeks off here and there, but we haven't had too much time to really get down to the new stuff, so we've been working on bits and pieces. And once we get home, we'll have some good time to get going on the new record. I'm really excited about that, for sure.
Ogilvie: We can't wait to get back to Portland. Micah and I have been on the road now for the last six months, basically, staying with both bands on and off. We've only been home like, what, a few weeks?
Rabwin: Since January 15, I think we've had a total of 25 days at home.
Paste: Has the homesickness kicked in, would you say, or is it pretty much an easy ride?
Ogilvie: I miss our home, our neighborhood and all our friends.
Rabwin: We started planting a garden when we were at home, too, so we've kind of been worrying about that. I actually had a dream about the garden last night.
Ogilvie: [Laughing] Being eaten by slugs? But yeah, we've started our own little shire.
Paste: With the new material you guys have been working on, are you aiming for more of a different vibe, anything distinctive from Hold This Ghost?
Ogilvie: Probably just an extension, just kind of carrying that to the next level. We'll see. The way that Micah and I work is definitely get it all together and see where we want to go with it. But we haven't really gotten it all together yet, so we don't really know... Whenever we sit down and have time on the road to pick up a guitar or a keyboard and just start writing, it feels so good, and then you know, five seconds later you're pulled out the door, just stopped. It can be frustrating. So we'll be really happy when we can just get back into our home studio and sit and have a drink of coffee and not have to be whisked away to the next town.
Paste: I was listening to the songs off your last album and—you know the kind of thing you do when you're listening to new music and you're just immediately picturing a music video that would totally go along with it so well? I just kept picturing the carousel that Neutral Milk Hotel was trying to save, kind of this little carnival, heavenly-like scene, foggy…
Rabwin: Yeah, I've always really loved music that was visual in that way, in that it really evokes some sort of image in your head and I guess that's partly what we strive to write and how we arrange things. It's interesting you mention the carnival, though, because right down the street from our house is one of the oldest continuously running carnivals in the country, called Oaks Amusement Park. It's got the old carousels… and Ferris wheels and all that stuff. And it's right on the river, and there's a train track that goes right next to it and an old roller skating rink with a huge, huge Wurlitzer organ with drums and all that sort of thing, like a band in a box kind of thing.
Ogilvie: And it's right down the street from our house, and when you're there in the fall and there's nobody there, or in the winter, it seems similar to that image that you're speaking about. I think a lot of what inspires us is that neighborhood though, that amusement park… It's a very quiet neighborhood but it's teeming with lights, and it's a natural, kind of rural, pastoral setting, an idyllic little town. There's still horse rings from the gutters, not every house looks the same, but they're all part of the same commune and everybody's really friendly. It seems like it's a place in your imagination, sometimes.
Paste: Do you think if you had formed in California rather than the Portland area that the music would be significantly different?
Ogilvie: Yeah, I think it would be very different, but not because it's California so much as it's just a different place. When we came to Portland, it was new and inspiring.
Rabwin: It's also about the community that is in Portland and the music community, and the people that we ended up meeting once we moved there and are still good friends with, a lot of them who played on our records, kind of just the support of that city.
Ogilvie: Yeah, I'm very glad that we weren't in California. It wouldn't have turned out the same, that's for sure. It's a distinctly Portland album for us, and even more for me, it's more specific to our district where we lived because there's different pockets within Portland, and it's not a downtown Portland record, not a northeast Portland record. It's a distinctly southeast Portland record. To me. There's a lot going on in that town… People are very giving of their time there just to make good music or make good art they believe in. It's not the same in a lot of California places where people are doing it to succeed in a financial sort of way or fame sort of way.
Rabwin: Not to say anything bad about California.
Paste: You guys are named after a cute little museum in California. Have they ever expressed interest in collaborating with you?
Rabwin: It would be pretty cool. We did contact Dan Zelinsky, the owner/proprietor, just to kind of get his blessing for using the name and he was really, really gracious and actually, I think, somewhat flattered to have us use it. I haven't really reached the topic of collaboration, but that would be awesome. Actually, we were thinking, we'd really love to do a show in there at some point—a show for the museum in the museum, which would be really fun.
Paste: I almost think that your band name alone serves as a promotional tool for the museum.
Rabwin: Cool. That's good, I mean, that's sort of been one of our hopes since we chose the name, was that people would discover it through us. We love the place, and it's a really special place to us. Because the Zelinksy family… they're really giving with it, and I think it's important to support those kind of places that are really still just out there.
Ogilvie: And seeking to preserve something special.
