On Tuesday night, college pop phenom Guster performed at the Charlottesville Performing Arts Center.We caught up with their drummer "Thundergod" before the show.
CD:You took almost four years off between "Lost and Gone Forever" and this album.What were you doing?
TG:Well, it wasn't four years off.
CD:Well, yeah.You were touring frantically, of course.
TG:Yeah, it was a lot of work, but that's a long span between albums. We toured for a long time behind "Lost and Gone Forever," and then when we sat down to write it was a whole new writing process for us.
CD:Why was that?
TG:We just didn't want to make the same album. We wanted to learn new instruments, we wanted to write songs out of more, kind of just musical jams as foundations. It took us a long time to write 16 songs or whatever it was, and then it took us forever to record, just because I think the more albums you make, the more of a perfectionist you become... and plus we were trying a whole lot of new things this time.
CD:Well, speaking of trying new things, you guys were founded on a really distinct sound:two guitars; vocal harmonies; and, of course, you going crazy in the background on the congas... but there's a lot of snare drum and a lot more bass on this album than there have been on albums in the past.
TG:Yeah. Well, those are two of the new elements we added to the mix, bass guitar and drum kit. And, you know, I personally was just tired of forcing percussion into places where percussion didn't necessarily belong.I think I did a good job of it on "Lost and Gone Forever," but I didn't want to do it again. It was just a choice we made, to have no rules whatsoever, and write songs and let the songs go wherever they wanted to go. You know, because we were recording "Lost and Gone Forever" with Steve Lillywhite, I would want to overdub a hi-hat on a song, and he'd be like, "No, you can't do that.It's not in your band."
CD:Although you could have played the hi-hats with your hands, right?Because you used to tape them up and whack away on stuff...
TG:Yeah, that's true. That would have been kosher.[laughs] There's also that side of it, which is that, you know, my hands are pretty bruised.
CD:Yeah.Do they take a beating on tours?
TG:They do. They still do... but you know, going back and forth between two kits helps a little bit.
CD:So what other strange, new, foreign, exciting instruments did you guys use on this one?
TG:Well, there's a lot of cool keyboards.We got into those, like analog samples on keyboards.There are strings, but we've had strings on other records... but this time we were writing string lines as melodies, as part of the writing, not just as a cool pattern overdubbed in the background. With the song "Two At A Time," that string part is all there is in one section.It's much better that way. There's banjo and Jew's harp and piano and horns and... that's about it.
CD:I feel like this is kind of a trite question, but were you at all worried about maybe alienating some of your fans who had grown used to your sound? Because it definitely has changed on this album...
TG:Oh yeah.It's not so much that we were worried as much as we were aware that we would be.It's like, you write "Red Oyster Cult," and everyone likes it in the band... and you're like "Alright. Well, we'll lose a bunch of people with this one.Great!" [laughs]It kind of just had to be done, for ourselves.
CD:Although actually, "Red Oyster Cult" seems to be very in line with things like "Airport Song" and "Barrel of a Gun."You have had some harder stuff in the past.
TG:Yeah, it's uptempo, and a lot of the new record is not.
CD:It strikes me as straight-up heavy at the beginning.
TG:Right. We sound like Kiss. "Love Gun" by Kiss.That's where we stole it from.
CD:So do you guys have a metal side that's itching to get out once in a while?
TG:Well, we have a classic rock side. Not so much a metal side, even though Ryan did listen to a lot of Whitesnake and Dokken... Warrant...
CD:Personally I don't think this makes much sense, but I've heard of people filing you under emo.I'm wondering how you feel about that...
TG:Well the only... [laughs] Our single, which is a bit of a departure for the record -- you know, it's too bad sometimes that the song that everyone hears first is not representative of the album -- but that song I guess some people have called emo only because "emo" has become part of people's vocabularies. You know, I remember when Weezer was called emo and Weezer was like, "Huh?"Or the "Godfathers of Emo" or whatever. I personally don't really know what emo means.
CD:Yeah, well we're not even going to get into that one...
TG:[laughs] Yeah.
CD:What's your take on file sharing and the RIAA lawsuits?
TG:Well, I don't think the record industry is going to roll over.I think that after these lawsuits, they're going to come up with viruses. They'll do whatever they have to to protect their business, while a band like Guster benefits from file sharing. We just end up with more fans and more exposure. We get a lot of comments like, "I can't believe you guys released those "meow mixes."Do you know about this?
CD:No, I don't.
TG:If you try to download our album on Kazaa, it's an instrumental version of the album with our monitor engineer Matt meowing over the whole thing. We think it's hilarious, but some kids are actually offended, like "Why would Guster do that, of all bands?" But you know what, you can go to our Web site and you can hear the whole album.If you want to sample it, you can do that. We just thought it was funny. As far as file sharing, there are a lot of people who somehow feel entitled to all music. If you're going to burn a CD or download it from a band that you like and you enjoy, you should go to a show or buy a t-shirt or somehow support the band, because otherwise the band's not going to be able to make a living.
CD:Are you the one who is so in love with his iPod?I can't remember.
TG:I'm the only guy without an iPod, but I'm going to get one. I can't live without one much longer.I have a lot of music, a lot of vinyl, at home... but that doesn't help me on the road.
CD:So are we going to see turntables on the next record?
TG:[laughs] No scratching. There will never be any scratching on a Guster record.
CD:Boxers or briefs?
TG:Boxers.
CD:Coke or Pepsi?
TG:Pepsi.
CD:Biggie or Tupac?
TG:Biggie.
CD:What's up with the 30 seconds of silence in the middle of "Keep It Together?"
TG:You know how elevators skip floor 13 sometimes? We just didn't want a track 13, and we also wanted to close the record with "I Hope Tomorrow Is Like Today" and then let this be a bonus kind of thing if you want it, because "Two of a Kind" didn't really fit in the sequence. "All The Way Up To Heaven" kind of didn't fit in the sequence in "Lost and Gone Forever," so we put it at the end.
CD:Which place has been the most fun to play?
TG:I always liked playing Atlanta.
CD:I really feel like you should call it Hotlanta.
TG:[laughs] Yeah, I call it Hotlanta. [laughs]Ryan calls it Hotlanta, but I don't ever use Hotlanta.I think it sounds kind of silly.We used to like playing Trax back in the day.Do you remember that place? We must have played it 12 times. The rug smells like vomit. Every time you'd walk in, you'd just smell the vomit on the rug. You'd be like, "[groan], not this again," but we'd always have a good show. I remember we played with the Samples, and their keyboard player Al was strung out on something and he'd sleep through the Samples set on the couch in the back. He kind of like, woke up, came to, and walked out on stage, and he came back to us and he's like, "Ohhh... THIS place!" [laughs] That's our memory of Trax -- "THIS place!"
CD:Last time you were here, the Gusburger... was it really that unpleasant?
TG:I really liked it.
CD:But you said it was coming back up...[pause] Oh, the coming back up wasn't a bad thing?
TG:[laughs] Well, I was just talking about the flavor.Going down.I expected not to like the egg, but I did like the egg. It added that certain... thing that only an egg can add to a burger.
CD:Well I think a lot of Charlottesville people maybe took that a little personally, because that definitely wasn't clear on the Web site.
TG:Oh, really? I didn't mean to offend anybody.
CD:Yeah, I read it a couple days ago.So speaking of alienating your fans...
TG:[laughs]No, actually we went over and got actual Gusburgers after. And I loved it, I thought it was great.
CD:What's your favorite animated Disney musical? Are there any numbers in particular that bring a tear to your eye?
TG:I did enjoy that trippy one with all the classical music.
CD:"Fantasia"?
TG:Yes, thank you.[laughs]
CD:It definitely seems like you're a lot more diligent about posting updates to the fans, whether you're in the studio or on the road, than most other bands I've seen. Does that ever get to be problematic?
TG:Well, I do like the weekly e-mailers and stuff. Sometimes that's a responsibility that I wish I didn't have, but it's much better for a band to be in touch with things. I think we're relatively in touch with things. I don't know, it's just a way to stay connected. I like getting the e-mails back from people who bitch about us not playing Minnesota or whatever it is. [Brian then pauses to feign irritation directed at a nearby rowdy crew member, yelling "WE'RE DOING AN INTERVIEW HERE!" The crew member yelps "Oh my god!" and quiets down.I think, "This man is indeed Thor incarnate."]
CD:Why did you guys actually decide to publish your road journal as a book? That's not a move that I've seen a lot of bands make.
TG:I don't know, I was pretty happy about it, just because, you know, it's my first book and stuff.
CD:Are you the one credited as the author?
TG:Oh yeah. I have an "about the author" page in it.
CD:Awesome.
TG:But you know, there were like 275 entries at that point, so somebody needed to weed out the bad ones and, you know, make it hard copy. It's a good book for the top of your [toilet].
CD:Yeah, actually... it's like a thin, long book, right? Is that what you had in mind?
TG:Yeah. It's on purpose.[laughs]
CD:You guys seem to have this really comedic aura, both in the dispatches to fans that you write and your stage presence -- you put on a pretty funny show a lot of the time -- but the material you write is really sharp and thought provoking.
TG:You mean lyrically? Yeah, they're not funny lyrics.
CD:Why is there such a discrepancy? Why don't you have this wacky side that comes out in your music?
TG:You mean like They Might Be Giants or Barenaked Ladies?
CD:Or even better, Weird Al Yankovic.
TG:[laughs]I think when we were in college we wrote a couple songs like that. We wrote a whole song about mayonnaise, and we wrote a whole song about Crayola crayons, and I think we got it out of our system. You know, Ryan is our main lyricist, and not only does he not like to write funny novelty songs, he doesn't like to write anything but negative lyrics. Depressing lyrics, and it's just because what inspires you to write and what motivates you to create are often negative things. I don't think he picks up a pen when he's in a good mood.That being said, "Keep It Together" is the most optimistic album we've ever made. It has a song, "I Hope Tomorrow Is Like Today," and a lyric like that wouldn't have appeared on any other record.
CD:Is Ryan playing bass on tour? I saw you guys on Leno or something, and he was playing bass for "Amsterdam."
TG:Yeah, Ryan plays bass on about six songs.He's turning into a good bass player. We're slowly learning how to be a rhythm section.[laughs]
CD:Well, you're not giving yourself enough credit... OK:Desert island. One album, one woman and one kind of beer.
TG:George Harrison, "All Things Must Pass."Now we need a woman? Beyoncé Knowles.[laughs] And a beer?Budweiser.
CD:Beyoncé and Bud?
TG:Yeah.[laughs]
CD:If you could be any musician other than yourself and still play with the other two guys, who do you think would make your sound the most interesting? Obviously you have something very unique going on here with the wacky-ass hybrid percussion sets, but...
TG:They should get Future Man from the Flecktones. He's the dude with the synth-axe guitar thing. [laughs]I always thought it was so funny that that guy calls himself "Future Man." [laughs]
CD:And you know, really what he's playing is his own homemade garage version of those keyboard guitar synths that people were prancing around with in the 80s.
TG:Right, Future Man's from the 80s. [laughs]We make fun of Future Man all the time, but I'm sure he's very talented.
CD:What were you doing the first time you heard yourself on the radio?What was that like?
TG:I was in the car. It was "Airport Song," in Boston, and I was just stressing out about how it sounded. It sounded really thin.
CD:There's that perfectionism again.
TG:[laughs] Exactly, it was like "Aww, this doesn't sound good on the radio at all!"
CD:Alright. Let's send it off on this note.What can we expect from the live show that'll surprise us?
TG:Alright... there will definitely be... there will be a... we are giving something to the crowd.
CD:You're not going to tell me what it is?
TG:There's a physical item we are giving to the crowd that we found on our bus. You're going to be at the show, you don't need to know now versus later.
CD:Alright, I'll let you keep me in suspense.
Check the road journal at www.guster.com to find out what it was.
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