| Help us out and click all three buttons below. | |
| This Session | |
| Violitionist Sessions | |
| Follow @violitionist | |
Session Date: May 29, 2011
Posting Date: July 25, 2011
Artist Hometown: Denton, TX
Links: Bandcamp, Facebook
Recorded by: Michael Briggs
3 QUESTIONS
ONE: Could you give us a history lesson about the band?
Miles Carrington: I’ll forage into this one. We’ve been playing now for three years. We started when I was a freshman and Clint was a sophomore, here at Good Ol’ UNT. We’re just doing a lot of instrumental, “psychedelphia” stuff. We kind of all agreed that we wanted to get into weirder shit…that was back with our first drummer Anthony…
Ed Warga: What band is he playing in now?
Miles: Final Club. He’s doing big things. Then, we picked up Ed and we’ve been taking things…not in a new direction, but sort of a new direction.
Ed: That’s the day I joined the band, and we worked out our set of songs that we’re playing now.
Brent Frishman: Where did the name come from?
Miles: Oh, The River Mouth, that was Anthony’s idea.
Clint Rowan: Yeah, our old drummer came up with that. We were having trouble coming up with a name, and that’s what hit us.
Miles: We were going to be ‘Kolonial’ at one point, and that—
Clint: With a ‘K!’
Miles: Yeah, Kolonial with a ‘K,’ not even just ‘Colonial.’ It had to have the ‘K’ on it. I’m glad that we didn’t do that…
BF: What are some of your musical influences? You mentioned psychedelic…
Clint: I’m definitely heavy into the 70’s psychedelic, more of the art-rock, like Pink Floyd; and then newer bands like Dead Meadow, some of the dronier stuff is the stuff that gets me.
Miles: I come from a big background of funk and flamenco, the two F’s. I don’t know if that’s really helped me in any way forage into this stuff, but every since I met Clint, we’ve just been playing in weird time signatures, and just trying to play less while playing more. But I started in Flamenco, back in the day.
Ed: I want to give a shout-out to Iron Butterfly and Philip Glass.
Ed Warga: What band is he playing in now?
Miles: Final Club. He’s doing big things. Then, we picked up Ed and we’ve been taking things…not in a new direction, but sort of a new direction.
Ed: That’s the day I joined the band, and we worked out our set of songs that we’re playing now.
Brent Frishman: Where did the name come from?
Miles: Oh, The River Mouth, that was Anthony’s idea.
Clint Rowan: Yeah, our old drummer came up with that. We were having trouble coming up with a name, and that’s what hit us.
Miles: We were going to be ‘Kolonial’ at one point, and that—
Clint: With a ‘K!’
Miles: Yeah, Kolonial with a ‘K,’ not even just ‘Colonial.’ It had to have the ‘K’ on it. I’m glad that we didn’t do that…
BF: What are some of your musical influences? You mentioned psychedelic…
Clint: I’m definitely heavy into the 70’s psychedelic, more of the art-rock, like Pink Floyd; and then newer bands like Dead Meadow, some of the dronier stuff is the stuff that gets me.
Miles: I come from a big background of funk and flamenco, the two F’s. I don’t know if that’s really helped me in any way forage into this stuff, but every since I met Clint, we’ve just been playing in weird time signatures, and just trying to play less while playing more. But I started in Flamenco, back in the day.
Ed: I want to give a shout-out to Iron Butterfly and Philip Glass.
TWO: You have incorporated lighting effects, projections, and other visual elements into your performances. How important is the visual aspect of the live show to the music?
Clint: I feel like it adds a lot, as a spectator.
Ed: It’s part of the spectacle…the performance is a spectacle…
Miles: You’re putting on a show, and like I said, the River Mouth is 90% mood and atmosphere and 10% everything else.
Ed: If we could do pyrotechnics, we would, but I don’t think it would work…
BF: I don’t know if that would work at J&J’s…
Ed: At Rubber Gloves, maybe!
Clint: If we burned down J&J’s, we’d have to rebuild the basement, and make it more sound…
BF: You’ve played a variety of venues in town, including house shows and DIY spaces and more traditional bars and clubs. Which style of venue do you prefer?
Ed: Being able to hear the bass is a big thing for me. One time, we played J&J’s and we set up…you’ve got to play to the space, so if you’re playing at J&J’s you’ve got to put the amps behind the drums, because there are no monitors.
Miles: My only comment on that is that I love house shows, and I’m surprised and saddened that Denton went through a hot point of that a couple years ago and now there’s no… it doesn’t seem like house shows really go on anymore…
BF: I think it’ll come back. They can only run so long before they get shut down, and someone else will open up a new house…
Miles: If I had to, I think I would just play house shows every single time, or the DIY stuff — J&J’s is a sweet venue.
Ed: I really like Rubber Gloves. It’s one of my favorite places to play.
Clint: I want to give a shout out to Hailey’s, because I can hear things so well there. J.C., the guy that does sound up there, he knows what he’s doing.
Ed: It’s part of the spectacle…the performance is a spectacle…
Miles: You’re putting on a show, and like I said, the River Mouth is 90% mood and atmosphere and 10% everything else.
Ed: If we could do pyrotechnics, we would, but I don’t think it would work…
BF: I don’t know if that would work at J&J’s…
Ed: At Rubber Gloves, maybe!
Clint: If we burned down J&J’s, we’d have to rebuild the basement, and make it more sound…
BF: You’ve played a variety of venues in town, including house shows and DIY spaces and more traditional bars and clubs. Which style of venue do you prefer?
Ed: Being able to hear the bass is a big thing for me. One time, we played J&J’s and we set up…you’ve got to play to the space, so if you’re playing at J&J’s you’ve got to put the amps behind the drums, because there are no monitors.
Miles: My only comment on that is that I love house shows, and I’m surprised and saddened that Denton went through a hot point of that a couple years ago and now there’s no… it doesn’t seem like house shows really go on anymore…
BF: I think it’ll come back. They can only run so long before they get shut down, and someone else will open up a new house…
Miles: If I had to, I think I would just play house shows every single time, or the DIY stuff — J&J’s is a sweet venue.
Ed: I really like Rubber Gloves. It’s one of my favorite places to play.
Clint: I want to give a shout out to Hailey’s, because I can hear things so well there. J.C., the guy that does sound up there, he knows what he’s doing.
THREE: You’re releasing a new record in July. What was that recording experience like?
Clint: You mean working under this guy? [motions at Miles]
Miles: It was a long time coming, really difficult. We failed the first two times pretty badly, and this is the third attempt at doing it at home. All DIY…
Ed: We’re going to get it mastered in Minnesota…
Miles: True, we are going to get it mastered by Cole from Daughters of the Sun, but other than that everything is done in house, and it’s the worst – the most stressful thing ever, but now that it’s so close to being done, it really feels good.
Clint: Our past attempts…we learned from them, but we were still trying to progress in our music. It wasn’t really quite there yet. Now, I feel like we’re at the point where we can release something and actually be proud of it.
Miles: It was a long time coming, really difficult. We failed the first two times pretty badly, and this is the third attempt at doing it at home. All DIY…
Ed: We’re going to get it mastered in Minnesota…
Miles: True, we are going to get it mastered by Cole from Daughters of the Sun, but other than that everything is done in house, and it’s the worst – the most stressful thing ever, but now that it’s so close to being done, it really feels good.
Clint: Our past attempts…we learned from them, but we were still trying to progress in our music. It wasn’t really quite there yet. Now, I feel like we’re at the point where we can release something and actually be proud of it.