By Jed
When I planned an interview with the Lonely Wild, I expected a quiet chat with Andrew Carroll, the band's frontman and primary songwriter. I hoped to elucidate some of the lyrical ambiguities on the band's upcoming release Dead End, learn what makes a Los Angeles band go "country" in a local scene hostile to twang, and maybe even hear the backstory behind their awesome mashup cover of Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus" and Pink Floyd's "Money." I was particularly excited to meet him after having so enjoyed their December set at RFSL's residency at Labrie's, an event at which I recall repeatedly chattering to the boss [strictly speaking, that's the chief -ed.] "these guys are really good..."
But this was not to be a one-on-one. Andrew brought along the entire band: former You Me and Iowa bandmate Ryan Ross (keys, bass, trumpet, vocals), Andrew Schneider (guitar), Jennifer Talesfore (singer/keyboardist) and Edward Cerecedes (drums) for a very lively coffee gathering in Silver Lake. The interview (in two parts, Part Two will be posted tomorrow afternoon) captures the personal dynamic of the band. They have only been playing together as the Lonely Wild for less than a year and a half, but they interact like old friends (and in fact, some of them actually are).
Although the Lonely Wild have already received consistently positive attention from the blog people (even from as far away as Israel), their story had not yet been fully told --until now! The Lonely Wild discusses their near attempt to cover Sting's "Desert Rose," the revival of double sided laser discs, whether they plan to fill the space left by Ryan Adams, and what it means to put the "alt" in "Alt-Country."
Radio Free Silver Lake presents the Lonely Wild's record release show this Thursday, February 24 at the Bootleg Theatre. I strenuously recommend checking out the show. I really do.
Formed a Band. We Formed a Band
"I always think it's wise to surround myself with people that are more talented than myself"
Radio Free Silver Lake: What inspired you to form the band, and secondly, would it be correct to say that you [Andrew Carroll] formed this band?
Andrew Carroll: Yeah, I think so. I was in a band for about six years called You Me And Iowa, and Ryan [Ross] was a part of that band for the majority of its life as well, and when it kind of disintegrated, we all toyed with playing music together in various different forms, and then after a few months it kind of fell apart, and I was at the point where I had written a whole bunch of songs, and I was writing songs, and I wanted Ryan to be a part of it, and he was liking the stuff I was doing. So we started playing together, and helped shape songs. And then I knew Andrew [Schneider] [who also plays in the band Escalator Hill] from college -- we played in the guitar program together [with Martha Masters ].
RFSL: And where did you go to college?
Carroll: We went to LMU, actually! [in response to Jed's KXLU t-shirt -ed.]
RFSL: What year?
Carroll: '05.
RFSL: Were you involved in the radio station at all?
Carroll: No.
Andrew Schneider: I was on the AM station!
All: [laugh]
Schneider: I did one show on the AM station...um...yeah...I don't think I'm cut out for radio. I got bored with it.
Carroll: [Anyway], he had moved to New York for a few years and had come back to L.A. recently and we had talked about jamming together and what not, and he came by with Ryan and [me] and we jammed on some songs for a little bit and...he's a phenomenal guitar player...and I always think it's wise to surround myself with people that are more talented than myself. It works.
Ryan Ross: And [Schneider] has good hair...but this is a bad hair day for him.
Carroll: I kind of wanted this time around the music I was making to be very vocal oriented, to be focused on melody and harmony. And I knew Jen [Talesfore] from mutual friends, and Ryan knew Jen very well from high school [in the] Los Gatos/Santa Cruz area. I had heard Jen's recording...My wife Michelle actually clicked on it one day and was like "This is that girl Jen we know", and we heard her voice [while she was playing under the name Junebug]. [And we said] "Holy shit! She's really good! And it's kind of unassuming too, when she speaks...I don't know...[Jen's] singing voice is different. So I liked it immediately, but that was even years prior to when we even played together. So when it came time to form a new band, and I knew Ryan and [she] had a history together, [I said] "yeah, we should bring Jen on board." And she came in a couple times, she was like "okay, when do we practice next?"
Jennifer Talesfore: [Laughs]
Ryan: I guess we were just amazed that [Jen] kept saying, "yeah, I'll come back."
Jennifer: "Are you sure, Jen?"
Carroll: And then we played for a while without a drummer and we were kind of looking around for a while, and we did a couple of auditions with a few drummers and then we actually found Edward [Cerecedes] on Craigslist. He came in immediately...We had a show just booked under my name, like a solo thing. I had been emailing with Edward and he was like "I can come in for this practice, and I can play the show with you, if you want." And I was like "uh, alright, let's see how it goes!" [chuckles]
RFSL: So he played the show without having heard the songs?
Carroll: I had sent him a couple demos. He dug it and he [said] "Yeah, I wanna come in and practice/audition with you guys."
Edward Cerecedes: I think we practiced like twice. But I had been playing the local scene with a couple of other bands, one named Garland, out of Bedrock. And it was kind of funny because we were actually rehearsing all the time in Bedrock, so unbeknownst we were actually kind of crossing paths daily but, didn't even know it.
RFSL: And what was [Garland's] sound like?
Edward: Pretty much folky rock, stuff like that.
Carroll: Are they still around?
Edward: No, they disassembled at the end of the year.
RFSL: And Jennifer, how would you characterize Junebug?
Jennifer: Ukulele, cutesy. [laughs]
Carroll: (As the name would suggest...)
RFSL: How many other people were in the band?
Jennifer: Just me, and my boyfriend at the time was playing with me.
RFSL: Does it still exist?
Jennifer: The myspace page still exists, but...
Ryan: Myspace pages never die.
RFSL: Why the name The Lonely Wild?
Carroll: You know, I honestly don't know. It came down to...we had been tossing around names for a month and we had a show coming up and we were like "we just need to pick something!" And at the last minute, I showed up, and names had been floating around in my head, and I brought it up kind of offhandedly, and we had been talking about all sorts of names that we had dismissed, and immediately they were like "that's cool!"
Jennifer: It was the day where we were like "we have to decide on something this day."
Ryan: We were almost set on a different name, but we were not really sold on it.
RFSL: What was the other name?
Ryan: No Ghost. But there was another band that had it, and they had a myspace page, but they weren't using it. We weren't really thrilled on the name either. We were like "okay, I guess it could work."
Schneider: The deciding factor was that we were all kind of okay with The Lonely Wild and there was no website, the gmail was open, and we were like "let's do it and run with it" and it ended up being...I really like it now!
Ryan: It's amazing how these days the Google-ability of a name is just key...and we liked it!
Schneider: I like it too.
Ryan: It inspires the music.
Schneider: It does remind me a lot of the scene in Airheads when they are like "how can you be the Lone Rangers if there's three of you?" [see here at 3:15 -ed.]
Carroll: It's pretty lonely, alright! It's the wild, not us that are lonely.
RFSL: Have you [Jennifer and Carroll] always known how to harmonize? And if not, how did you learn how to do that?
Carroll: I've had very little formal training with singing. I took private lessons for like a semester in college. But before that, I had been singing in bands since 7th grade or so...Not very well. Never with a female singer. And never really harmonizing. You Me and Iowa did harmony but I don't know how polished it was. I did study music, and I had what's called "aural skills" that...you learn how to hear a note. Also, growing up, driving in the car, I would always not only sing along but harmonize with whoever was singing. It was something I just did.
Jennifer: It was kind of the same for me, almost. I find it more fun for me to sing the harmonies than the actual melody of it. I just love singing harmony.
RFSL: Do you have any songs with [Jennifer] singing lead alone?
Carroll: "The Bluff". We just recorded it actually. It hasn't been released yet. And then we also just worked on a cover song "Highwayman." Jen takes the lead there. She's the highwayman.
Jennifer: I'm the highwayman.
Convincing Listeners to Buy-in on Their Music
"I think we've sold all of Andrew's books"
RFSL: How did you go about financing the EP?
All: [laughter]
Carroll: "How much money you guys got?"
Ryan: We used money...we all have day jobs.
Schneider: We took all the money we made from previous shows, any money we made from gigs...I think it's all in Andrew [Carroll]'s sock drawer. We used all that money, and I think we paid a significant amount of money out of pocket. We tallied up all the expenses and I think Ryan paid for it all on his credit card and we wrote checks for it! We almost covered recording costs from shows...money from shows...And we recorded with Dave Newton, who is awesome, and he's very kind of old school and punk rock in his approach. He doesn't make you sign any contracts or do any producer credits or anything like that. What you see is what you get and he's really affordable. He's out of Burbank and I definitely recommend him for anybody looking to make a record.
Ryan: We really just tried to just go and not spend a lot of money on it, which is hard when you're making vinyl. We tried to make it as good as we could on our own, for as cheap as possible, and still make a good product. And I think we accomplished that. We've been fortunate enough that enough people so far have heard of us and have bought records so far, before it's even been released. We're making good progress in paying for the whole darn thing.
RFSL: On the topic of buying records, I really like all the options you have on the website for buying things, between the live concerts, the cover song, and books, how is all that going?
Carroll: The books are going really well. We started with three initially, and then we bumped it up to five. I think we're at like eight or nine.
Schneider: I think we've sold all of Andrew [Carroll]'s books.
RFSL: These are books on your shelf?
Schneider: That were on his shelf...
Carroll: It was kind of a joke idea and I didn't think anyone would do it and then immediately, the first day, three or four sold, and we were like "what the hell is going on?"
RFSL: So it could be anything?
Schneider: Yeah, it's anything. We're planning on tailoring them towards the people, if we know them.
Carroll: And I think the first half are coming out of my library, and the second half are coming from Andrew Schneider's library.
RFSL: Are you going to be giving up books that you like?
Carroll: Well that's the...yeah. It's kind of hard to part with...We got past like five books I was like "shit...I don't want to get rid of any more books..." I have a whole bunch of crap that I could probably get rid of but I wanted to make...
RFSL:...a good impression?
Carroll: Yeah, and I wanted to make it special for each person too. A lot of them are friends, and friends of friends, family and what not too, so you got to make it special and tailored to each individual.
RFSL: Have you done any cover songs yet? That is, besides "Personal Jesus"?
Carroll: We just recorded "The Highwayman".
RFSL: No, I mean, has anyone requested...
Carroll: Oh! Somebody flirted with the idea of "Desert Rose"...by Sting.
All: [laughter]
Carroll: But he didn't ante up the dough in the end, so it didn't happen! Which is kind of a relief, actually. [Sings:] I dream of rain, raaiiiiin....
Schneider: Like how do we do this?
Ryan: You got to make it cool.
Schneider: It was a friend of ours, and he contacted us in the beginning of February, said "I need it by Valentine's Day, can you do it?" It was for his girlfriend. We were like "yeah, we can do it," but we came a couple of days before and he hadn't paid for it yet.
Carroll: And we were like "okay man, are you going to do this?" And he was like "well, I guess it's kind of a weird present idea. I don't think I'm going to do it anymore."
Schneider: I don't think he had been with the girl very long.
Carroll: She doesn't like that song anyway.
Ryan: We were relieved, actually, that we didn't have to do that on such short notice. But it's still open, so we'll see. Maybe someone will ask us how our Slayer catalogue is.
RFSL: How is it?
Carroll: Spotty.
Scheider: I play a lot actually. I used to be a heavy metal guitar player, back in high school. So I could rock some Slayer...
Ryan: I think that would be a lot of fun to take a Slayer song and turn it into more of our style.
Schneider: Yeah. That would be fun.
RFSL: Slow it down?
Ryan: Yeah, slow it down. Bring it out a little bit.
Schneider: Retune it back to E?
RFSL: Would you carve "The Lonely Wild" into your arm?
Schneider: Probably not.
Ryan: But no one has taken us up on that, so we'll see.
Schneider: There are books still available.
All: [laugh]
Carroll: One. One is available. That is all we can do.
"if people ask you what kind of music you play and you mention 'country', there's an immediate cringe, a gut reaction from people because they think of Top 40 country"
RFSL: And how would you characterize the difference between You Me and Iowa and The Lonely Wild? Soundwise...or...everywise?
Carroll: The songwriting process for You Me and Iowa was very "jam" oriented. So everything was based on interlocking parts, and we would take these jams and shape the songs out of them. We'd start with a drum beat, and then we'd all play around that. And then vocals would be...I don't want to say an afterthought, but it was usually the last part that was put on top of this work of music. It turned out to be really up beat, pop, prog rock. And I find that this time around, the Lonely Wild is much more traditional, songwriter driven, where lyrics and vocals are usually the inception of the song and the music kind of forms around that. A lot of times in rehearsals, we work on the singing first, so we get all the harmonies down, and then we orchestrate the song around that. This time around, I wanted to do songs that you can play on one guitar, and it would still exist as a song, while in the previous band, if you didn't have all five musicians there it wouldn't work.
Ryan: And you and I, we'd get so detailed with all the interlocking guitar parts, and all the interlocking drum parts.
Schneider: Which were actually really incredible but...
Ryan: It was fun...it was very much a band where, if you're a musician, you have a lot of fun figuring out all sorts of crazy little riffs. But then I feel like, then the vocals were sort of put on afterwards. The music wasn't written because of a lyrical idea. The music was written because we had fun writing it, and we shaped it into songs.
RFSL: Would you characterize your sound as "country", and if not, how would you characterize it?
Carroll: We talked abou that a lot when we were first starting, because people would say "country"...but if people ask you what kind of music you play and you mention "country", there's an immediate cringe, a gut reaction from people because they think of Top 40 country.
RFSL: Unless you add the word "Alt".
Carroll: [Laughs] And then people are like "what is that?"
Ryan: I was watching the Grammys the other day...
RFSL: What a sell out! Corporate rocker over here!
All: [laughter]
Ryan: And it was interesting because all the bands that were labeled "country" [made me think] I really don't like any of this stuff! I don't see that as a genre that I really want to be associated with, but there's definitely the influences there of older country. Like what country was like, I don't know how many years ago.
Carroll: When you listen to folk music, or even great 60s rock 'n' roll, like Neil Young and stuff, it's very kind of "country" influenced, and I think we pull from that definitely.
RFSL: How did you move into that from not being country?
Carroll: I think it was just the music I started listening to, that started turning me on. I've really been turned off -- maybe I'm just getting old -- but electronic music doesn't speak to me at all.
RFSL: Did it used to?
Carroll: Yeah. I mean, I went through my raver phase in high school with electronica, but slowly, it just feels like there is no soul there. And when you start listening to older music, specially older American music, it all comes from the same influences of folk music and country, and country pulls from old Irish folk music, and it all has that vibe that is somewhat universal in all folk tunes.
Ryan: I feel like we always had a bit of a tendency towards that. I mean, we had this old You Me and Iowa song that was called "The Good, The Bad and the Beautiful" which was kind of a nod to old Western Ennio Morricon...
Carroll: Morricone.
Ryan: Morricone movies.
RFSL: I held off from mentioning that word for fear of mispronouncing it.
Ryan: But we always had that. It was a little tongue in cheek, but we always discussed doing a Western song as You, Me and Iowa. We all kind of liked that, and we even started working on some songs, a long time ago. Remember that? About westerny type songs. We were thinking of doing a concept album and it never materialized, because we'd always end up coming up with fun poppy music that we'd want to work on more immediately. But I think there was that point when we were talking about fun stuff to do, and we thought, hey finally we'll do it. When you watch those old Sergio Leone westerns that Morricone did all the scores for...that music was so epic and awesome. I love the sound of it. Morricone is just really brilliant, even his knowledge of westerns and stuff. He has a huge wealth of material, and film scores and what not.
Schneider: Some cheesier than others.
Ryan: He's got that Italian dramatic edge to him. That's definitey an inspiration as well.
RFSL: I saw on twitter that you are recording a second record before the first record has even come out. Is it in the same direction as the first EP, or are you moving further in another direction?
Carroll: Well, the songs that we have recorded thus far were all written around the same as the EP, so I guess they are kind of the same. This group of songs that we have recorded are a little more spacy, or atmospheric?
Ryan: The softer side.
Schneider: There's some good ole rock 'n' roll in there. Some slow, kind of, drinkin' tunes.
Ryan: Some of our favorite songs actually.
Carroll: At the live show, you'll hear a lot of the stuff that we've been recording. And since then, there's been some more that we've recorded. The goal is to record a bunch and hopefully by this fall we'll have a good record.
Schneider: That's what I enjoy, because they write great melodies, and then I get to put my own personal style on it.
Ryan: It's cool to see.
Schneider: Yeah, it's fun.
Ryan: Schneider definitely has fun with it live too.
Carroll: The record is one thing, he does it a little more by the book there.
Schneider: I come from a bit more of a jam background where for a while, most of the music I was playing for a while was improvised. Sometimes I'll try to get a laugh out of these guys on stage by throwing in a little lick here and there. I don't do it in rehearsal, but when I get on stage that's my time to let everything I've got out. All my little frustrations and all my little pent up energy in my fingers. just let it go, man!
Ryan: A lot of times I don't see it because you are on the opposite side of the stage. Every once in a while, I see what's going on.
Schneider: I very much enjoy taking chances and taking risks. Where I won't tell these guys before I do things. [laughs]
RFSL: Ever try that and have it not work out?
Schneider: Yeah, yeah! Not in this band, but throughout the musical career, I've had people tell me that that's what they like about my...I just do a lot of solo stuff. It doesn't always work, but when it works, it's awesome! I'm not afraid to fall on my face, and just throw it all out there and see what sticks.
Carroll: You've also got a wealth of information in your head -- classic rock knowledge. We met in classical guitar school. I minored, but he majored. He studied privately with Dominic Frasca in New York [between 2005 and 2006...see here for an example of Frasca's work] and he can do Van Halen solos -- he just has a knowledge of the fret board, owns the guitar -- that gives you the liberty to go off and be like "oh, I'll try this tonight!" Whereas, I write songs and everything, but when it comes to improvisation, I'm a little more terrified on stage. I kind of stick with what I know. Make it work.
RFSL: Do you have any improvisation background?
Carroll: Just playing in rock bands for a long time, jam based bands. But I usually keep it pretty safe. I know the depths I can go. I stay in the shallow end of the swimming pool.
RFSL: You studied classical guitar at LMU?
Carroll: Yeah, at LMU.
RFSL: What did you major in?
Carroll: English.
RFSL: Schneider?
Schneider: I majored in guitar.
RFSL: That's a major?
Schneider: Yeah, guitar performance.
Ryan: "That's a major???"
RFSL: I thought maybe you majored in Music or something like that.
Schneider: I think the official title is Bachelor in Music and Guitar Performance.
Tomorrow we return with Part 2 of the interview with the Lonely Wild.
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