Ritzy [to Matt]: The last time somebody made you a cookie…they weren’t too good, were they, baby? [Laughs.]
East Portland Blog Pam: These are fine. You will go on tonight, I can assure you.
Matt: [Laughs.]
East Portland Blog Peter: It’s been a rather busy year for you with the big highlights of the debut album at SXSW and the shows with the Foos and Social Distortion. Tell me about some of your highlights of the whole US Tour.
Ritzy: There are so many and we’ve been to so many beautiful places. I’ve met some great people and so many lovely audiences. I think the way it kicked off at the beginning of the year in the States — and obviously the album came out in March — SXSW was a memorable week for us. It was very happening and chaotic but great, you know. There was a real sense of us thriving on just turning up, throwing our gear on stage…there was a little bit of the unknown and a little bit of a danger. We got a great reception, played a lot of shows, and it was our first time ever in Austin and our first time doing SXSW. It’s a strange festival for some bands because they put too much on it. I think if you go there, and relax and enjoy the experience, you can play our heart out and not over analyse everything or think this is the last show.
EPB Peter: Sure, if you didn’t like your performance in one show, wait an hour and then go play again for another 40 or 45 minutes. It’s hectic, but it can be exciting for the band.
Ritzy: Yeah, it’s very spontaneous. We had some really good audiences and an amazing week, plus it was the week that The Big Roar came out. It was a really great week overall.
Rhydian: I really liked the Paul McCartney weekend we played with him at Millennium Stadium on our home tour. It was pretty special.
Ritzy and Matt: That wasn’t this year. [Laughter all around.]
Rhydian: Holy shit! That shows you what it’s like. There’s so much gigging that it ends up getting lost. But that was very special. Millennium Stadium holds probably 80,000, but it was quite an early show anyway, so there were maybe 20 or 30 thousand that we played to, but the physical space was so great.
Ritzy: We were really excited before going on. It was the very first time I actually walked on stage and kind of gulped a little bit. I’m normally not phased by it, but for a moment I thought, “I’m going to fucking lose it.” [Laughter all around]
Ritzy: You know, whoa…I’m just distracted by the sheer size of it, but once we started going, we didn’t want to get off stage. We wanted to do it again as soon as we got off.
EPB Peter: And what of the shows with the Foo Fighters? I know Matt was beyond mental about it.
Matt: [Laughing.] It was good fun. It was like a dream.
Ritzy: It was absolutely wonderful. It was just a great two weeks with great people. It terms of their approach and how they treat their bands, crews and entourage, there’s no pretension and no bullshit. It’s just fucking truthful and good. And the way they approach their live shows is still that order. The music is the main thing to them. It’s what they live for and that’s they love doing. They get up on stage and fucking give people a really good three-hour set.
Rhydian: Support shows like this one can be a bit weird, you know. I’m not saying we find it strange, but when you say, “Foo Fighters Tour,” some people might be a little ‘hmmm’ about that, because they really have certain expectations from support bands. Those are loyal fans and sometimes they can boo you, but we don’t give a fuck. For us, there’s respect for what the Foo Fighters and Social Distortion have done, but give us any stage and we’ll take it. We like the challenge of playing for audiences that haven’t heard us before. We really embrace it. These are some big spaces with big audiences, like Madison Square Garden.
EPB Peter: Matt posted up the picture of himself sitting inside the Garden before the show with his back to the camera but facing the seats. While it’s a great picture, it really sets the tone for the experience. It’s looks like it’s kind of humbling. Then again, Matt’s photos are always perfectly backlit and his hair is flying about.
Matt: That’s it. It’s all choreographed! [Laughs around.] It’s not real, I use mind control on the photographers…they’re always in the right place.
Matt: They’ve been doing it for 16 years.
Rhydian: And that’s kind of our approach, too.
EPB Pam: I can’t imagine you getting booed by those audiences.
Ritz: I fucking love to get booed. Those are probably the best shows we ever played. Yeah! [Laughs all around.]
EPB Peter: It might be one thing if you did something worthy of being booed — or laughed at. You know, maybe if you fell into a drum on Conan or something. What was going through your mind when you did that?
Rhydian: I don’t know, I really didn’t think too much about it. It’s something that comes up every show — doing something crazy. It was really spontaneous, and I think that’s what’s nice about it. It’s kind of a release when you’ve been performing. You don’t rehearse it and it’s not a gimmick. That’s why it’s funny when people write about Ritzy smashing a guitar or whatever — it isn’t contrived. We’re not really keen on gimmicks. We genuinely get wound up some nights and shit happens. You’ve seen us like this, but it would be boring if we repeated it just for the sake of repeating it.
EPB Peter: It really did look spontaneous. I mean, you were barely awake at the time. You recorded that performance at, what, 8 am?
Ritzy: Yeah. Just to emphasize how unplanned it all is, when I first turned around and saw him in the drum, I thought he’d had a very nasty accident. I was thinking, “Holy shit, he’s fallen into a drum or passed out.”
Rhydian: You didn’t act too caring, did you? You tried to put a guitar up my ass.
EPB Peter: At least you didn’t hit him with the gong.
Rhydian: She’s him me many a time. I’ve had a guitar in my face and ended up with a Harry Potter scar from Ritzy’s broken headstock that was like a fucking ‘V’ shape.
EPB Peter: [To Ritzy] You didn’t mean to…
Ritzy: [Echoing back] I didn’t mean to.
Rhydian: But BANG!
Ritzy: It’s definitely not one-sided. I’ve got plenty of scrapes and bruises. You dropped your headstock on my head just two nights ago.
EPB Peter: Well, your performances do require a certain amount of personal space even if you violate each other’s space in the process. The Cabaret Metro stage gave you plenty of room to roam, but extra space isn’t always a luxury you can count on.
Rhydian: The Metro is actually quite spacious, but then there was that stage in Salt Lake City…
Matt: We were basically in a shed. I think it was called the Shack, wasn’t it?
Rhydian: But you thrive off the energy there because people are right in your face. It feels kind of raw.
EPB Peter: Plus, as your stage show grows, your available space shrinks. You went from inflatable cats to farm animals and now the stage is a amalgam of found antique items representing themes from the Big Roar.
Ritzy: Yeah, we had a little play with the nautical them in Chicago. It’s nice to set a scene when we can.
EPB Pam: The telescope was massive. Where did you find that?
Ritzy: It was enormous! It looked much smaller in the picture and when it arrived…I said fucking hell, what is that thing?
Rhydian: There are some amazing prop company warehouses with vintage pieces. We’re always on the scout for that kind of shit.
EPB Peter: How was your recording effort in Portland, Maine? You’re fresh from that experience.
Rhydian: I wouldn’t say fresh, but…
[Huge laugh from the band.]
Ritzy: We’re not feeling very fresh, are we? I think all of us have simultaneously run out of clean clothes today. We’re far from fresh, but it’s alright.
Rhydian: Yeah, in a lot of ways, and in terms of getting peace and quiet as well. There has been a lot of moving around on the road, and we’re always getting ideas down no matter where we go, but it was nice to be able to just bring them together and start focusing on what all these ideas mean.
Ritzyy: I was very accidental the way it happened. We were actually meant to have a show in Portland and that was going to be one of the last shows on the tour. We had planned to stay there and begin consolidating all the ideas we’d had on the road. But then that show was cancelled. But we’d already found this cabin, so we decided OK, we’ll go there anyway. We just feel in love with the place. It was like we just felt an instant affinity to the area.
EPB Pam: Were you able to venture out into the local terrain in with lakes and large hills?
Ritzy: Well you know we were there for ten days and we were immersed, you know, and we recorded non-stop. We were really in the zone, but we did take a few trips out. Moose Pond was really nice.
Rhydian: That’s the shit we like. The area is a bit like North Wales.
Ritzy: No, it was all very simple and we don’t actually carry that much anyway.
Rhydian: We just record to computer. It’s quite basic, but it does the job.
EPB Peter: Is it too early to inquire about the details of the new album?
Rhydian: Not at all, it’s really starting to come together. I think people are going to be a little bit surprised by it. It’s still about songs and soul to us, but musically, it’s a little more varied than The Big Roar. It’s definitely not like an experimental or electronic second album. Certainly, there’s a lot more to the palette. We’ve always done our own production anyway, so we’re excited about not being stuck in the confines of just being a guitar band. The album dips into a lot of flavors, so there are Eastern sounds in there and a lot of other really heavy sounds. Ultimately the voice is still the same and it’ll be a positive album. It’s not all finished, but it has a feeling of being a call to arms.
Ritzy: It’s still a little frustrated, but triumphant in it’s sound.
Rhydian: It recognizes the dark in the moments, but it’s striving to be optimistic. That isn’t like ‘happy happy.’ There are moments where it’s a fight, which is how it’ll feel on stage as well. It’s frustrating but there’s a smile at the end of it.
EPB Peter: One of the many sonic dimensions of The Big Roar was the inclusion of all those bits and bobs of sound effects an found sounds, from the typewriter to what I’m guessing was microwave popcorn to the sounds of the wave of the big road coming in. Will the new album include any interesting production effects as well?
Rhydian: Those little nuances on the album really take you somewhere. Think back to listening to those great albums we all grew up with, and they captured an environment in those recordings.
Ritzy: Yeah, definitely capturing the environment. We want to capture where songs were written or the inspiration behind them. This new album is going to have that character to it, but maybe it’s going to be a little more direct.
Rhydian: We’re definitely interested in pinpointing where we’ve been and the experiences we’ve had in the songwriting process. I do think it adds an ambience to the storytelling and our sounds tend to be location oriented.
EPB Peter: On the subject of spontaneous songwriting, do you wake up with new melodies or lyrics preformed in your mind, or find yourself humming something that you just can’t get out of your head?
Ritzy and Rhydian: Definitely, all of the time.
Ritzy: [To Rhydian] You’re a bit more of a night owl, whereas I’m dreadful the minute I get into the bath, shower, or exercise. That’s when it hits for me.
Rhydian: Whenever you really just want to relax, that’s when you start thinking about it.
Ritzy: When I’ve been up for 20 straight hours, that’s when it all happens. I think, for fuck’s sake, I gotta get out of the bath and find a notepad, pen and a guitar. Now, I’ve actually got a whiteboard in the bath so I can sit there and write it down. I’m not getting out of the tub. [Laughs.]
EPB Peter: Or you just use the voice memo app on your phone.
Rhydian: That’s what I do. It’s really a convenient dictaphone. It’s essential to capture those moments because they are spontaneous and true. That’s a more special route of writing than forcing yourself to take time off to write. You gotta do it when the idea comes — it has to be captured then and there. Which is why it’s always annoying when you get an idea in the middle of the night. If you don’t capture it, it might be gone. And it could be a song that completely blows your mind.
Ritzy: There are lots of different ways for us. Sometimes you map the song from a production sense first. It depends on what the feeling is for the song, because sometimes it’s not a lyric or a riff that’s leading the track. It’s like it’s a particular sound of a hook or a vocal that’s in the song. To try to explain that, it has to go through the computer into production to start the vibe going on a particular song.
Rhydian: One thing we’ve definitely been doing recently is to have those ideas produced in different ways, but also we’re bringing a song back to its core and trying it out with just vocals and guitar. You want to makes sure that it works as a truthful and bold thing, because it’s always lyrically driven and if it works with your voice and one instrument, you can stand behind it as a song, regardless of the production value. It has to work at any level and you can’t fluff a load of sounds together to make it work.
EPB Peter: That, in essence, is exactly what I hear when you play acoustically. Your travelogue DVD from the Big Roar box set offered up such insights into to origins and development of so many of album’s songs.
Ritzy: I think the album is moving towards that.
EPB Peter: Now here’s a topic on which I know you’ll want to expound. From the very beginning we’ve read about all the comparisons and classification being made in connection to The Joy Formidable. On some level, it’s human nature to make comparisons and understand where a band falls in the sonic or songwriting spectrum. But, as we’ve all recognised, these comparisons and classifications, while they may be flattering, they’re subjective or simply irrelevant to the validity of your work. On the heals of that, it’s also common to confuse and mistake “influence” with “inspiration.” We’re all influenced by the 50 years of modern music; it’s impossible not to be.
Rhydian: That’s so true. If you tell people what influences you, they expect that’s what you sound like. You know, the whole thing about the songs, the stories, and the lyrics — that comes from Ritzy growing up listening to great storytellers like Springsteen, Dylan, Van Morrison and similar artists. You wouldn’t necessarily say we sound like that, but they’re part of our influence. The 90s sound kind of went over our heads. We really never listened to that material, like My Bloody Valentine and the like. They produced great albums, but we’ve only just now gone back to listen to them.
Ritzy: We listen to them more now because they’ve been recently cited, and we’ve thought maybe we should go check them out a little bit more. But a lot of bands we’ve been compared to certainly were not bands we were really listening to. For me, it’s always been about the soul and having something to say, and not being scared about being an artist that’s committed to swapping it up. You can just stand behind whatever style or genre or whatever, but it’s always about the song, it’s intention, and making people feel something about whatever you’re singing about. Whether that’s an emotive or aggressive sense or something melancholy, at least you can make people feel something and get a reaction from them. Maybe people fucking hate it, but I prefer that to falling into this grey middle ground of nothingness. I’ve never enjoyed music that falls into that area — I like to provoke a response. It’s kind of nice.
Rhydian: It’s not just aesthetics. We have loads of tastes in terms of what turns us on aesthetically or musically. But like we say, you gotta have that voice — it’s something you believe in that’s more that just words that sound nice. I don’t mean to take anything away from other artists, especially those who have explored music without the story or the narrative, but even for them, there has to be a larger meaning. For us, without the meaning, we’d just be three people just jamming, and that’d be so dull. As a songwriter and an artist, you have to stand behind what you’re doing 100 percent. There’s a lot of effort going into what we do — we don’t want to do it half-hearted.
Ritzy: There’s a lot of repetition in what we do, so if it doesn’t mean anything from the start, then you can imagine what it fucking feels like several years later, singing the same songs.
Rhydian: What I don’t get is why so many people obsess about the sound when the sound is so secondary to our music. We can do whatever we want to do musically and really mix it up, but there are some people who are so sure we’re a rock band or a pop band.
EPB Peter: Or shoegaze or whatever.
Rhydian: Yeah, or something like that. It doesn’t matter to us. I feel like there’s a lack of people saying something worthwhile in their music. I’m not looking up to many artists these days saying that they’re educating me. Where are the artists who like Dylan and all that?
EPB Peter: Speaking of what’s relevant today, what’s on your playlists right now?
Matt: The latest thing I’ve been listening to is the Bon Iver album. I’ve been listening to that a lot and just like if for some reason.
Rhydian: I’ve listened to a helluva lot of music this past week, but maybe over the past month it’s been PJ Harvey’s “Let England Shake,” a bit of Anna Calvi, and I’ve gone back to listen to some classical albums. I really like minimalism.
EPB Peter: I was wondering who in the band listened to classical.
Rhydian and Ritzy: We definitely all do.
EPB Peter: Modern classical?
Ritzy: It depends on what we come across. There’s so much to absorb, so I’d say I’m more likely to listen to older classical music.
Rhydian: The danger is that modern classical music can be lumped into a category that’s considered quite cold and soulless, but there are composers and artists producing modern classical music that’s quite soulful in my eyes. Again, for me, it’s all about conjuring up the heartstrings.
EPB Peter: Ritzy, what’s on your playlist?
Ritzy: So many things. I really like Trail of Dead, also known as You’ll Know Us By Our Trail Of Dead. Their newest album is really great. I like Fang Island — I just fucking go for it. Then there’s Manchester Orchestra, and then it’s back to the greats like Aretha Franklin, Buddy Holly…
Rhydian: Led Zeppelin again. I listened to Physical Graffiti again recently and said ‘holy shit!’ Every single song is fucking amazing. There aren’t many albums like that anymore.
EPB Peter: And then you all have to listen to yourselves, at least during the gigs.
Ritzy: [Laughing.] There’s always that constant want to tune the set. Every week, we look at the set and ask if we’re still excited about the way we’re doing things. Do we want to changes things or swap things up? We do move things around and we’ve got a good back catalogue from which to draw.
EPB Peter: Is there ever that moment of recognition that what you’re playing does really sound good, or that it triggers and emotion from you?
Rhydian: More so when we’re writing a song and it’s coming close to being completed. The way we write we have building blocks as we record, and as listen back on the computer, if what we hear stirs something inside us, we feel like, yeah, this is telling the story we want. It’s important to listen to it in that respect, but once its done, I don’t tend to go back to it that much. We do have to develop the live version, too.
Ritzy: You always reflect on it, on a song. It depends how you do an album. Since we’re producing it, we’re obviously very involved in all the production aspects, and at no point do we give that up. We’re always mixing. As soon as its finished, there’s that moment where we all go, “Right, now back away.” We’ll give it a few weeks and then we’ll listen to it. [Laughs from all.]
EPB Peter: This band has such a unique connection to its fans, whether it’s through the live shows or social media. Loads of bands attempt to make these connections, but yours has a genuine, true feel to it.
Rhydian: It would be nice to think so and we do try hard. It’s a community thing and it’s the music that brings people together. So, if I’m the fan, I want to feel educated by and involved with my musical idols. I want to feel involved and part of their world. Through our connections, especially outside the gigs, we can share that with them. It’s not an ego thing but it means a lot when someone hears you for the first time and tells you that you’ve added something to their experience. You can’t help but enjoy that.
Ritzy: A lot of that connection stems from the way the band started. Whatever our path would have been, it would have always had that connection to our fan base — to show the appreciate we have for our fans, and wanting to bring people together and awaken something in them. The root of this band continues to be our hands-on approach and that includes the communication with the fan base.
EPB Peter: Now you have people who follow you, sometimes to excess. Can we call them Formidable Fans?
Ritzy: [Laughing] They’re good people.
Rhydian: When someone is a genuine fan, they’re just good people — they’re just like us.
Ritzy: We haven’t actually counted them, but we know there are a lot of them all over the world. It’s funny, they know things even before we do, for example, like finding out that I didn’t even fucking know we were doing that show, but they did. It’s like I said, if we can awaken that connection in people, we appreciate that so much.
Our fans make things for us, travel all over to see us, buy everything and just support us. I cannot understate this fact that we would not be here doing this had people no bought our merch, our first album, our box sets, and t-shirts. At some point we would have found it difficult to exist without them. None of this was backed up by anybody, not our mums or dads or people in the background. It’s been our fans and us, and they’re a huge part of it all. They really wind us up. We came onstage in Cardiff and nobody had warned us that the first two rows were wearing homemade Ritzy masks, and it was fucking weird, you know? It was hard to play the first song and I’m thinking, “What have you guys done?” They’d gone to a lot of effort to do that, and it was really funny. [Laughs.] We definitely encourage them as well. We encourage that playful element and we go to shows with things like that as a promo. It’s all about being inclusive.
EPB Peter: So, what’s next? You have a short Christmas break, Matt gets to do some laundry, Father Christmas brings some new pedals, but then you pick up in early 2012 and do it all over again.
Ritzy: We’re going back to Portland, Maine after Christmas. I’m going to spend a month there, and then finish the record in February in London. And then, yeah, we’ll be back on the road in March. We’re actually back on the road at the end of February in the UK. We’re going to play some very tiny 100-capacity venues.
EPB Peter: The Clarks Original shows.
Ritzy: Yeah, we’re going to do those and then maybe if we’re in the mood, we might debut some new songs. Maybe not. We’ll see how we feel. [Laughs.] Then the US tour in March looks pretty full on. We’re going to a lot of key places again.
EPB Peter: But not SX.
Ritzy: I dunno about SX. I’m not sure, but I’m hopeful.
Rhydian: I hope so, I love Austin as well.
Matt: Yeah and I still haven’t seen the bats.
EPB Peter; The bats in the Austin area caves are pretty cool.
Ritzy and Rhydian: Caves? There are caves?
EPB Peter: Yeah.
Ritzy: We need to go back.
EPB Peter: One last question. When do you take the opportunity to pause and reflect on everything you’ve done and think about what’s next? Is there time to think while you’re on the road?
Ritzy: We definitely never analyse where we’re up to as a band. We don’t gauge things with too much pressure, you know. But we’re ambitious about the way we want to write — very ambitious creatively. We have that eternal hope that if we create something that’s meaningful or special, then that will be more than enough. It hasn’t failed us so far. But, yeah, definitely on the road is where we do the most thinking.
Rhydian: We’re very privileged, though, because this is something we’ve carved for ourselves. Our success wasn’t given to us on a plate. But it’s hard to get time to recollect. We are seeing different parts of the world and there are so many great memories to go back to. Musically, we’re moving forward, developing, and not staying in one place.
Ritzy: And every night, the real rock and roll is on stage, not what you do backstage. You’re going out to the fans that can’t wait to hear what’s next.
Rhydian: I like that quote.
EPB Peter: Thanks again for your meeting with us. It’s been a solid pleasure and I can’t wait for another great show tonight.
Ritzy: Than you, Peter and Pam.
Post-script
Next week starts the beginning of the new tour with the lucky souls who will get to see the Clarks Original shows in Manchester, Bristol and London. Then the band returns to the States in March for the first leg of the 2012 tour. I can’t stress what a great opportunity it continues to be to see this band up close, performing in smaller clubs. They’re even meeting with fans at sound checks at many of their US stops. Do it while you still can.
