Although Gist has been around with varying lineups for almost twenty years, the current lineup of singer/guitarist Nayan Bhula, bassist Finley Martin and drummer Fred Burton have only been together for the past five. In that short time they've released two albums, Art is Now Human and Diesel City, the latter of which established them as an act whose sound could be simultaneously tied to the district and reflect their diverse backgrounds and influences, which include everything from Fugazi to Robert Johnson.

After having taken two and a half years to produce and release Diesel City, they chose the shorter and faster route for their upcoming yet-untitled 2008 release. After two recording sessions earlier this year, they've finished their follow-up, a nine track LP that eliminates their excess and cleans up their songs while still remaining true to their gritty rock 'n' roll roots for their most well-rounded release to date.

After opening for Travis Morrison's CD release party for All Y'all, Gist embarked on a two and a half month hiatus, during which Martin got married and they finished mastering the upcoming release. They will return to their notoriously high-energy live shows again in mid-November.

Photo by capitolcityrock

Visit Gist online at: gistmusic.net or myspace.com/gist

See them next: November 20th at the Black Cat with Julie Ocean

Buy their album at: Online on their myspace page or on iTunes

How did you guys meet each other?

Finley: I met Fred at the Washington Times which was my first job when I moved down here. Very interesting place to work.

Nayan: I went to school with Fred, high school, in like, ’89? A long time ago. We’ve been playing music since high school. We started this band pretty early in college but we had school half the time, he was three hours north of DC, I was three hours south of DC and after that we had different people in the band, leaving and coming and going. This unit’s like the tightest and I think it shows in the records we’ve put out and the way that things are coming together lately.

You just went on a short tour recently for DC Voting Rights. Do you guys all live in the District?

Nayan<: I don’t. I have the rehearsal house, I guess so the house is in VA. But these guys live in DC.

How did you get involved in the tour?

Nayan: By chance on MySpace I saw a thing from Analog Jetpack, we had played a show with them, and Rob (from Analog Jetpack) was kind of interested in doing this idea on DC Voting Rights and was kinda really adamant about it and we thought we were into the cause. We do a lot of benefits.

Finley: We didn’t think it was actually going to happen. We were like, hey if it goes, let’s do it, we’re on board. But I think they started planning it two or three months before the tour which for touring is like, no time at all..

Nayan: All DC bill in different towns. But he got it together I mean, it was pretty cool and it was a lot of fun.

How would you say your upcoming record progresses from Diesel City?

Finley: Faster and shorter songs.

Nayan: All the songs... I would work on it for awhile bring it to rehearsal and then each section just got really under the microscope.

Finley: Some of the songs had been milling around for years and years.

Nayan: Like there’s a song on this one called “Anonymous” which we cut from the last record, but a totally different version. The lyrics are a little bit the same, but mostly switched and the riff is completely different, too. But it’s kind of a cleaner sounding record. I think we’re learning to use the studio better and stuff like that. I think it’s a little bit of a step back here and there but not really – there’s a couple more slower tracks, I guess.

What do you mean by “a step back”?

Nayan: It’s cleaner, I think. More guitars than usual. It’s more like rock.

Finley: But we also did some of the really slow stuff – just like – time signatures are different.

Nayan: It’s a little different one for us. It’s kind of nice though, I can see like when you go to a big rock show, it’s good to see the big rock and it’s good to have a little bit of a flavor and I think it really helps in my performances, too. I think it’s been reflective of these last shows and we feel more better and the crowd seems to be into it because they need a rest from all the rock n roll sometimes and it can really help the band kinda take a breath in, too. But it’s funny, we just kinda recorded nine songs and we’re just like, "You know what? People don’t have the patience to listen to a 55 or 50 minute record anymore."

Finley: Or nine minute songs. We always tend to do at least one for the album. This time I think the longest one is five minute songs.

I read that there was a fire at the studio. How did that affect the recording?
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Finley: It was in a different location, actually. It affected the air conditioning. I mean luckily, there was a fire next door in an abandoned building that mysteriously started next door. There was something maybe coming up between the town council and the owner of the building the next day so, something was up.

Nayan: But it was kind of weird because we wanted to get out of the city and record in a bigger place. And then Finley and Fred went to go check it out. A friend of ours in a band called LeJeune – they put a record out and they recorded and said "Yeah it’s really great." We’d always recorded at Inner Ear with the same guy and it’s kind of a more linear room and we just wanted a bigger room so it was perfect until the fire.

Finley: Luckily the place that they got in the meantime was right across the street and above. It was like the top floor of a warehouse with no air conditioning.

Nayan: They did a really great job of getting all their stuff across the street. And it sounded great. It was fine. I got to sing in a room, not a little closet like I usually do. It was a big room with like a window with sun coming in from the sunlights and stuff. It was really a different atmosphere so we had a good time. The April session was fine but August, it was a sauna in there. So it was difficult, but overall I think we were all excited about the results.

I also read that the Virginia Tech shootings happened on the first day of recording. Do you think that affected anything that happened thereafter?

Finley: We were in Montreal during 9/11 and then had to play New York CBGB the day after. We’ve been through stuff like this before and it’s always shocking.

Nayan: The guy that told us when we were up there recording, the way he said it, I wasn’t really happy about it. He was joking about it, ya know, doesn’t sound very funny. It’s such a serious thing, he was just trying to give it a little of, "let’s blow it out of craziness proportions." It was a weird thing to record then because it was just so insane. All the people on the news were like, "How can you prevent damage" and that’s just something you can never do. It’s just some crazy dude and it’s just impossible. I’m a really an anti-gun person and there’s a line I wrote in the song called “Time is Running Out” that I was thinking was a good line, but we didn’t get to record it at that time we were trying to record it. We couldn’t get the timing of it right actually, but that was line that I felt was appropriate at the time, “This is the sound of all the guns falling apart, This is the sound of all the broken hearts.” So I felt the bad resonance at the time and I really wanted to record it at that time but we didn’t get a chance to.

Do you have venues that you really love playing here?

Nayan: Yeah Diesel City CD release show was upstairs at the Black Cat and the sound was great. Velvet Lounge, I mean, I guess it’s much maligned in the local DC scene but it’s got great sound and you can get crazy there. Every time we play there the people are just wasted. It’s a real rock n roll venue, there’s no posturing. You just get loaded and you rock. It’s got a great sound because it’s all walled in, it’s a real small place and Rob has just done a miraculous job with that place sound-wise. A lot of these punk shows, I mean, I like to sing on key and weird things like that but I used to lose my voice at those shows because I’m just yelling, but at Iota, I get great sound, The Velvet, the Cat has improved their backstage sound a lot.

Any final thoughts/words of wisdom?

Finley: Go on out to local shows. There’s a lot of good music in DC. To me it seems like there’s almost a resurgence of like a good interesting music coming out of DC again. I think there’s always a lot of interesting things going on. And it seems now more than ever that’s true.