Band on Album: Listening to Crimes with These United States

Was it just the three of you plus Rob?

Jesse: Robby and Justin. Duane produced it and this guy Rob Gordon sort of was there helping out, he's a guy from our record label. Justin is another guy from Lexington who plays in The Scourge of the Sea, which is another band with Robby. Robby and Justin have been in a few bands together now.

Tom: And then we stole Justin.

Jesse: Yeah, so we stole Justin. And then our friend from here, Josh Read, who's in a band called Revival in town here, he added some vocals and effects on it. But, other than that, it was just the five of us there playing.

Wanna turn it on?

Jesse: Turn it on!

Tom: Some rights reserved.

Jesse: It's a creative commons license.

The whole album?

Jesse: Yeah; I guess the idea is that you can't necessarily protect stuff anyway these days. So you say, I guess you can use this for certain purposes, just let us know and give credit where credit is due, and feed it back into the system. It seemed like the most logical thing to do.

So, this is the first song, it's called "West Won." This is the song we probably spent the most time on on the whole album. The most produced, fooled around with. Like all the sounds; we did a lot more layering with this one. The rest of them are more live. This one still sounds live, but it's the most worked with.

Were all the songs on this album new material, or had you recorded any of them before?

Jesse: We had played some of it a lot before, so it had been recorded in one form or another, but... well no, actually, this song was recorded before. It was a B-side of the first album. But I didn't like the version we came up with. I liked it, it just didn't fit the album. So it ended up on a 7" single in the UK. But I wanted to do something more like this, with all these guys, so we redid it basically. But I think this is the only song on this record we'd recorded before.

(Tom & Mark talking amongst themselves)

Jesse: You guys are agreeing with the song ordering here?

Tom: Yeah, I definitely like it.

Jesse: This was Kimberly's choice. It's smart, putting this one first.

Mark: A wise, wise man listens to the woman who provides his housing.

Jesse: An old proverb!

Mark: She's quite possibly heard these songs more than anyone.

Jesse: Yeah, actually, that's probably totally true. She listened to this probably a million more times than I did.

So how long were you down there recording?

Tom: 5 days, 6 days?

Jesse: 6 days.

Oh really? That's really quick.

Tom: Yeah. Some of the songs we'd never played before; we literally were tracking and cutting them on the floor, ya know, arranging them as we played through the songs. We'd play through the song once, track it, talk about what we could do better, and then... do it!

Did you like doing it that way?

Tom: It was... exciting. When it works, it's exciting. There were really only two or three songs that we struggled with.

Jesse: This was one of 'em (second song starts). It's called "Susie at the Seashore".

Tom: But by "struggled," it means we probably did four takes of it.

Jesse: Well, but we had a lot of discussion.

Tom: Yeah, but it was still relatively fast. It was one day.

That's unheard of. Were you all involved in the mixing?

Mark: Yeah. The recording all happened in that initial six day period. And then the mixing followed. It was still very compressed.

Jesse: Tom, do you have your laptop around? I just thought of something interesting I want to look up. I got an email today from this radio station in St. Louis, they're the first station to add this album to their rotation. They added 5 songs -- I don't think they added this one. Originally, this was the song we thought would be the one. Maybe we let the ending go on too long.

Tom: I know this entire bass part so well.

Jesse: Mark played the bass on the album, but Tom had to play it on tour for a while. Mark was off... marrying his 2nd Georgian bride or something. Have you seen the music video for this yet?

These United States on iLike - Get Sidebar

Tom: Jared did it, it is so rad. Have you seen the trailer yet?

You did a trailer for a music video?

(everyone laughs)

Jesse: Yeah, it's a 5-minute trailer for a music video. "Coming soon! In a world, where this trailer's over by the time you've seen the music video!"

Mark: Don LaFontaine actually died while he was doing the voiceover for that.

Jesse: This is one of the songs ("Get Yourself Home") the radio station chose. Again, Kimberly's input was the only thing she doesn't like is that this is gonna be that one song that's everybody's favorite. It's gonna be like "The Business".

Tom (to Mark): I basically just combined my guitar part with your bass part here.

Mark: Did you play bass the whole time?

Tom: No, we swapped off. This is my favorite Robby, right here.

Jesse: We'd be sitting around the mixing board going, is this OK? Is this too sloppy?

Mark: Robby's never gonna get any less sloppy. It's fun to record this way; to go in and say we're gonna track 2 songs every day. It'd be nice if you could do that without an end date. So if you hit a brick wall, you can say well that's OK, we hit a brick wall, we can come back to it. Here... you can't come back to it. We literally did 12 songs in 6 days.

Tom: We were actually gonna do more, we were trying to do 15. But it's still pretty amazing that we did 12 songs in 6 days. It also means as soon as you do a bad take, or as soon as you're not feeling something, the instinct isn't, "OK we'll come back to it." The instinct is, "let's all freak out right now. Let's all start worrying."

Did you play all the instruments at the same time?

Tom: I'd say 90 percent. Some scratch vocals.

Mark: The space was so large, we could all just spread out and run through each song as many times as it would take.

4th song, "Pleasure and Pain and Pride and Me" playing

So when do you guys leave for tour?

Jesse: Friday!

You guys just tour constantly. How much have you been on the road the last year?

Jesse: I don't know... 150 shows or something maybe? About 400 in the past 3 years.

Tom: That hasn't made us any better.

Do you have favorite cities to play?

Tom: Chicago is good.

Do you like a particular venue there?

Jesse & Tom in unison: The Hideout

Tom: Tucson is awesome. Paris & Glasgow are good.

Mark: Glastonbury's good -- it's a town for a week.

Jesse: This is "We Go Down to That Corner". I don't know about the vocals; this is one of those that I second guess now that I hear it. I sound a little... weird? Over the top? Saccharine?

Mark: Jimmy Hendrix never liked his own vocals, John Lennon never liked his own vocals.

Jesse: Yeah but those guys sucked!

Tom: Jesse, always one for modesty.

Jesse: This is one that we had in just a couple takes. It worked out pretty well.

Tom: Yeah, this is basically totally live.

Jesse: When we were recording this, this guy was in the studio named Steven Trask. He did a movie musical called Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and he does a lot of music soundtracks and stuff. And I remember we got done and we were all so excited with this one, we were all like, "we nailed it!" and we go down. There were a couple other people, there were like 10 of us listening to playback. And Steven, who normally likes our stuff a lot, was kind of like, "eh. Have you thought about changing the bassline?"

Mark: We had been so jazzed about it. Then he was like, "you're kinda playing it safe." And I think just the song we'd tracked before, someone said, "eh... it's a little busy." Steven "Wildly Successful" Trask told us to try it another way. Now, I'm not one to... ask for any notes, but...

Did you do a 2nd take?

Tom: Yeah. I think we did 2 or 3 takes of this, total. And we ended up using this one — the 2nd take. I think I fucked up something on the 3rd.

Did you take Steven's notes into account?

Mark: Oh, definitely.

Tom: The guy who was serving as executive producer took a particular liking to Mark as a bass player. So, they spent a lot of time.

Mark: We got to know each other really well over 4 strings.

This might be my favorite song on the record. (still listening to "We Go Down to That Corner")

Tom: I think "Six Fast Bullets" might be my favorite.

Mark: "Six Fast Bullets" and "Study the Moon". This is one that wasn't necessarily gonna be on the record, but Duane (the producer) was adamant, having seen the band play live, sometimes we end with this. We'd earmarked it for the 3rd record. And this was sort of the track for him that he really felt needed to be on there.

Jesse: He did a really good job with this. He did the best job with all the slower, moodier, more atmospheric songs.

Mark: That's his specialty.

"Honor Amongst Thieves" starts

Have you ever played with horns?

Jesse: Yeah we did, once in... where was that?

Tom: Athens

Jesse: Yeah yeah! We did a tour where we played with a different backing band in every different city. So we'd practice that afternoon and then, do the show that night.

How'd you find all the different bands?

Jesse: Using the magic of the internet, and friends. I'd say about half of them were people we already knew. We played in Athens, GA with this guy who'd played with Of Montreal and Olivia Tremor Control and Neutral Milk Hotel, he played a trombone. And then, Labor Day, we played in Boulder, at a party. And there was a trumpet.

This song is really sort of the feel we were going for for the whole album.

You mentioned that you already have plans for the third album.

Well, I have three more albums in my head, with all the songs written for them. So I have to decide which one we're gonna do next. I think it's gonna come down to the presidential election. I have one album that's really horrible and dark and moody and sinister. And then I have another album that's even more upbeat, poppy rock 'n' roll. It all depends on who wins the election.

Tom: We are called These United States.

Jesse: It's our job to reflect the mood of the country.

"Six Fast Bullets" starts

Tom: This was the first song we tracked on this record. And it was literally the first time we'd played it together. And this is like the second take. This was really the first time I thought this was gonna work. I mean, it was the first song. But we just banged through it once to get parts, and the second time, it just... sounded like this.

Jesse: You guys all like this one more than I do. The problem is, now that we've done it live a dozen, two dozen, three dozen times or whatever, it's better. We play it live now and it's more energetic; it's just more confident.

Tom: I like this take of it though. Also I have the awesome fuck up right there.

(Everybody else looks confused)

Jesse: Only Tom hears it.

(We listen to it again; still, nobody hears the mistake.)

Jesse: Only someone who obsessively listens to their own part could hear something like that.

Tom: I completely miss the strings!

What are your favorite songs on the album?

Tom: I like "Study the Moon", which we haven't listened to yet.

Jesse: Everybody likes "Study the Moon".

Tom: And, "We Go Down to That Corner" turned out really well.

Mark: Those two, and the last track ("When You're Traveling at the Speed of Light"). I can't think of that one without thinking about that Rolling Stones record where they set up in an old house and recorded.

Tom: Exile on Main Street. They rented a mansion, in the south of France. It wasn't really an "old house."

Mark: Excuse me, but that is an old house.

Tom: That's true. But it's not like... this house.

Mark: But, they set up in the basement, and just sat around a room and played live. The sonic quality it gave it was amazing.

Tom: Do you know who built that chateaus they played in? Nazis!

Jesse: Nazi chateaus, huh Tom? This story's getting more sophisticated by the moment.

Tom: The storm drains were in the shape of swastikas. Yeah, read up on Exile on Main Street.

Mark: That's like when Trent Reznor recorded Downward Spiral in the Manson Family's mansion. That's pretty dark.

Jesse: We need to pick somewhere cool to record our next album.

An old house.

Tom: We also need to be billionaires.

Jesse: How 'bout the moon!
Oh I forgot about this one, this is one of my favorites. "Heaven Can Wait".

Mark: This is one of my favorite tracks too. I have 4 favorites now. Can you have 4 favorites on a record? Josh really took it up a notch, this song.

Jesse: Yeah definitely.

How many songs did he sing on?

Mark: 8?

Tom: Yeah he sings on a lot.

Jesse: "West Won", "Susie at the Seashore", "Get Yourself Home", "Pleasure and Pain", "Down to that Corner", "Honor Amongst Thieves", "Heaven Can Wait"...

Tom: This is our sort of collective favorite song. ("Study the Moon" starts)

Mark: This song benefited from Jesse being quite ill when he sang this one.

Tom: My least favorite song to record though. I just had no ideas for it. Our executive producer Rob came up to me after and was like, "You usually have really good ideas, but, you don't know what to do on this song." I was like yeah, I don't know what to do on this song. He said, "you're usually pretty creative, but you just don't have any ideas on this one. I... just don't know what you should do on it." And then Duane was like, "Just think, like, what would Keith Richards do?"

Did that help?

Tom: Yeah! That's exactly what this is!

So why is this the collective favorite?

Jesse: I dunno, I think it's because, it's the one that Duane, the producer, captured best. It really has the feel of what we were all doing. Also I think it's because we all had very different visions of it. This was another one we didn't play at all together beforehand. This is way different than I ever would have expected it to turn out. Duane came up to each of us individually and asked, "what's the feel of this song?" And none of us knew what the others had said. And he was like yeah, you each have a totally different idea of how this song is supposed to sound, so I'm just gonna let you do all of that, together.

Mark: I thought it should be Velvet Underground-y.

Tom: That's what it is!

Mark: Yeah, it's all together Velvet Underground.

Tom: It also sounds like the Stones, which was my thing.

Jesse: I don't think so, I think it ended up sounding way more...

Tom: See, this is what happened when we were recording.

Jesse: I thought it would sound like those two things, but it doesn't to me. I dunno; it's kind of emotional, and weird, not radio friendly. I think the guitar that Justin added changed the feel of it. That kind of '80s... whatever it is.

That polished sound?

Mark: Yeah, it's way more polished than Velvet Underground.

Tom: The thing is also, we've never done a song like this. This song isn't like anything else we do. It's just different.

How'd your producer know to pull that trick on this song?

Jesse: None of us had any idea what to do with it.

Tom: He's way smarter than us.

Mark: He's a diplomat, he knows how to work. He does this 70 hours a week, so he's finely tuned.

How does that relationship work? How does he help you while you're recording?

Tom: I think a good producer is someone who takes in everyone's ideas, and strengths and weaknesses. It's nice to be able to trust someone, so when I'm like it should sound like the Stones, and Mark's like it should sound like the Velvet Underground, and Jesse thinks it should be this and Justin thinks it should be this, the producer can say, OK, you're all right. It's a sort of very subtle guiding hand that you don't realize until you hear it. It's a very subtle background thing that puts everything together.

Mark: It's also someone that keeps you on task. You know, when you're in the studio, and you have an instrument in your hands, you have a tendency to wander.

Tom: We'll talk everything to death, so it's nice to have someone say, OK, everybody shut up and play another take. Or, talk about it, figure it out, I'm gonna go have a cigarette and I'm gonna come back and we're gonna play.

Did you guys get a chance to get to know him before you started recording?

Tom: All of us knew him before we started.

Mark: I've known him for 10 years.

Tom: So all of us had this inherent trust going in. Which is really nice.

Mark: For this song ("Those Low Country Girls"), we did a half day demo session about 6 weeks beforehand, just to feel things out.

Jesse: And it didn't sound that good!

Tom: This was the song we recorded so the label could hear it, and the producers, and get an idea. This is also my favorite solo, with Justin and I. It's just fun.

Did you just play steel on the album, or guitar too...?

Tom: I played everything... I did pedal and lap steel, guitars, banjo...

Mark: This song, I think the first time I heard it was a day or two before we left for Kentucky. And then, we spent a couple hours tracking it. Some of these songs we literally spent less than half a day on.

Tom: This is the second take; we just set up and played.

Mark: Many times I think a song could benefit from a band sitting on it for 6 months or something, but I think there's something special and unique about the spontaneity of sitting down and playing a song for a couple hours and saying, alright, that's it. Recordings of songs are snapshots. There's a greater landscape. It can really change. We could play this song in a completely different range, in a different time signature, 6 months down the road. So it's kind of liberating. That's one of the things I enjoy most about this band, for me personally, is that...

Tom: Lack of rehearsal (laughs).

Mark: But there's a certain sense of liberation. Whether it's a revolving cast of characters, or arrangements. It's fun to do it that way, it keeps it interesting.

Tom: It also helps that this lineup of people inherently trusts each other so much. All of us have played so many shows together, be it in any configuration. I don't think you could do this with like a normal... everyone just is confident that it's gonna work. It's a very cool experience.

This was probably the most difficult song to record. ("When You're Traveling at the Speed of Light")

Jesse: It was another round of, I don't think anyone's hearing it the same way.

Tom: We did and Rob was basically like, no that sucks. We went back and took it apart. We tried it acoustic, we tried it just Jesse and Robby. We spent a whole night like, we'll never get it. Then the next morning, we got it.