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Session Date: May 21, 2011
Posting Date: September 05, 2011
Artist Hometown: Austin, TX
Links: MyEducationMusic.com, Facebook, Twitter
Recorded by: Michael Briggs
3 QUESTIONS
ONE: Can you tell us about My Education?
Brian Purington: I moved to Austin in ’99, with a group of people, to be in My Education, and over the years some people have come and gone, but, I don’t know…this group of people has been performing together for…I don’t know, how long now? Scott’s been in the band for how long?
Scott Telles: I joined in 2006, so, five years. Vince is the new guy.
Vince Durcan: Yeah, I’m the new dude. About a year old – almost a year old.
Brian: I think that the other guys joined in 2001 or 2000 or something…
Chris Hackstie: Yeah, 2000.
Scott: The name comes from the William Burroughs book of dreams.
Scott Telles: I joined in 2006, so, five years. Vince is the new guy.
Vince Durcan: Yeah, I’m the new dude. About a year old – almost a year old.
Brian: I think that the other guys joined in 2001 or 2000 or something…
Chris Hackstie: Yeah, 2000.
Scott: The name comes from the William Burroughs book of dreams.
TWO: What are some of your influences?
Scott Telles: We all have really varied musical taste and we all have huge record collections, and it’s a source of constant debate with us over, you know, what’s good and what’s not. It’s really hard to pigeon-hole us in terms of what we listen to, because our musical tastes are very wide-ranging, you know…I tried to play these guys some noise stuff, and they never really caught on to it very well…Chris listens to everything from Frank Zappa to Danielson to Queen and Van Halen…I mean, we like all the stuff that’s good.
THREE: You recently performed the “Sound Mass” piece at Austin Psych Fest. How did that come about?
Brian: The last tour that we did we performed in Salt Lake City with a band called Theta Naught, and they booked some studio time while we were there, and we just did a joint improv session with them, and I didn’t really think too much of it, but they sent us the tracks, and it was able to work into a pretty decent record. They came down for SXSW, and we did our showcase together. Since that was the latest release, we figured we should go ahead and promote it. After that, Psych Fest asked us to perform it there, so the Theta Naught guys flew back down to do that. I don’t know, it turned out pretty good.
Scott: Yeah, we were not expecting to get to play the main stage. We thought we would be on the second stage. At the last possible minute, Alex from The Black Angels said, “No, man, we’ll cut our set short! You guys need to be on the big stage!” There were thirteen of us, so it would have been very difficult to fit us on the small stage – I don’t think we would have all fit on that small stage.
James Alexander: We would not have fit on the small stage.
Chris: Maybe half.
Brian: We actually barely fit on the big stage.
Scott: I was crammed on the big stage, there were so many of us, but some of us would have had to play on the floor if we had been on the small stage.
Chris: Considering that there were two drummers mirroring each other – that’s the majority of the stage.
BF: What was it like playing in the Power Plant?
Scott: That was really cool. That building is totally like something out of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. I mean, it’s this Art Deco, 1920’s era power plant that’s just been gutted, but it still has the ambiance. You can just visualize scenes from Metropolis in that thing.
James: It was a little overly-reverberated in there, but minds were definitely blown.
Scott: Yeah! We got a lot of positive feedback and even though we were the last act of the festival on a Sunday night, we still got called back for an encore, which was remarkable, because we didn’t really know what to play.
James: It was like three o’clock in the morning.
Scott: It ended up that the encore was the longest thing that we did that night, so it must have worked out well. It was a really good set, everyone was really into it, very pulsing, very driving – minds were definitely blown. People loved it. It was great.
Scott: Yeah, we were not expecting to get to play the main stage. We thought we would be on the second stage. At the last possible minute, Alex from The Black Angels said, “No, man, we’ll cut our set short! You guys need to be on the big stage!” There were thirteen of us, so it would have been very difficult to fit us on the small stage – I don’t think we would have all fit on that small stage.
James Alexander: We would not have fit on the small stage.
Chris: Maybe half.
Brian: We actually barely fit on the big stage.
Scott: I was crammed on the big stage, there were so many of us, but some of us would have had to play on the floor if we had been on the small stage.
Chris: Considering that there were two drummers mirroring each other – that’s the majority of the stage.
BF: What was it like playing in the Power Plant?
Scott: That was really cool. That building is totally like something out of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. I mean, it’s this Art Deco, 1920’s era power plant that’s just been gutted, but it still has the ambiance. You can just visualize scenes from Metropolis in that thing.
James: It was a little overly-reverberated in there, but minds were definitely blown.
Scott: Yeah! We got a lot of positive feedback and even though we were the last act of the festival on a Sunday night, we still got called back for an encore, which was remarkable, because we didn’t really know what to play.
James: It was like three o’clock in the morning.
Scott: It ended up that the encore was the longest thing that we did that night, so it must have worked out well. It was a really good set, everyone was really into it, very pulsing, very driving – minds were definitely blown. People loved it. It was great.