Interview: Alison Sudol (A Fine Frenzy)

I recently had the opportunity to interview the lovely Alison Sudol, the talented signer/songwriter/pianist behind A Fine Frenzy. After we exchanged some greetings, we got down to the nitty gritty about her new album, touring, and future plans which you can read below. Enjoy!
---------------------------------------

Chewing Gum: Let’s talk about the new record first – Bomb in a Birdcage. In listening to your first album, One Cell in the Sea, and the new record – a lot has changed. Everything from the title to the cover to the music is very different – can you explain what you were hoping to accomplish with the new album?

Alison Sudol: Yeah, it’s super different. If anyone thought of themselves two years before and then added in traveling the world and having their lives changed and meeting so many new people, seeing so many musicians on the road, experiencing so much growth, moving away from home and being on the road – it’s not even a changing really, it’s just growing. And that’s how I feel about this album – all the things that came between the making of One Cell and the making of Bomb in a Birdcage just brought me to a different place -a really exciting place - and I knew what I wanted to do and what I wanted to be different and what I wanted to stay the same and that I wanted to have fun and I wanted the album to be lighter and more positive.

CG: Were there certain songs that led into the album and helped you establish what you wanted to do with the new record?

AS: Yeah, definitely “What I Wouldn’t Do.” Even though it wasn’t the first song chronologically, it was the first song that made me go, “Ok, I’m gonna make an album now, this is where we’re starting from.” And then I was heading towards making a pretty mellow folk record – very sweet, very spare, very folky – and then I wrote “Stood Up” and I thought, “What do I do with this?” But I also really wanted to be running around the stage and interacting with the audience. I’ve seen some great live shows and it’s so powerful to watch some of these singers and I thought, “I want to do that too,” and that shaped the arc of the album. It went from being really quiet to really loud and then we filled in the gaps in between.

CG: Do you have a favorite song from the album to perform?

AS: It changes every night because every audience is different and every time we play is different. Thankfully, otherwise playing the same songs every night would be torture, but every night it’s new and I get new things out of each tune. So it would be hard to say, one night it’s definitely a certain song and the next night that one was okay but I like THIS one better.

CG: How did you decide on the title for the album, Bomb in a Birdcage has a very different feeling than the more melancholy One Cell in the Sea.

AS: It’s a line from “What I Wouldn’t Do” – “With my heart ticking like a bomb in a birdcage I left before someone got hurt.” And that’s how I felt throughout making the whole album, this sort of weird fragile state that I was in just coming off of the road and not really knowing how to just “be” on a regular basis because I was all of a sudden home for a few months after I had been gone for so long and it was weird to interact. But at the same time, there was something uncompromising and explosive happening where I just felt like taking life by the horns and I’d never really felt like that before.

CG: How has touring been? You’ve been all over the world, which is obviously exciting. Do you like touring or is it just a necessity? What do you enjoy and what’s tough about it?

AS: I love touring; I’ve had some of the best moments of my life on tour. I’ve also had some of the worst. It’s like this incredible journey that you get to go on and you get to see amazing things. I mean, I can’t think of many people that get to go to as many cities as touring musicians get to go to. You don’t just go to the obvious tourist ones, you go everywhere and you see so many gems and meet so many interesting people. And to see a roomful of people so far away from home but so connected to each other and to you through music, it’s WOW, you know?

There’s also the flipside. I have a really strange diet where I don’t eat meat, so I eat fish and tofu, etc for health reasons and because I’m a big animal lover. And there are times when I’m in the middle of nowhere and I’m thinking “I’m just gonna eat a bun with some lettuce on it and some fries or something.” Or it’s lonely and I miss my family, my dog, my friends and if something upsetting happens on the road and I don’t want to talk to the band about it – that’s hard. And it’s tough being a girl amidst a bunch of guys all the time. But the cons don’t nearly outweigh the pros – you get to make music all over the world!

CG: Do you have a favorite spot that you’ve been to?

AS: There are a few places. There’s a pop festival in Baden-Baden, Germany and we played this enormous venue there and it was marvelous – one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. And there’s a venue called the Kaufleuten in Zurich that’s also just spectacular and the audiences out there are really amazing. And then there’s a venue we played outside of Chicago with Rufus Wainright that’s amazing. So those are some of the spots but there are so many; pretty much every city has a spot whether it’s the venue or some other little gem.

CG: You’ve loved music for a long time and it’s obviously a passion for you, but when did you decided to pursue it as a career?

AS: Well I had sort of decided when I was 15 that I wanted to be a singer, but I think I didn’t really full decide to be a musician until I was 19 and I had started to play piano which I hadn’t done before. I wrote “Almost Lover” and a couple other songs that were on One Cell and then I felt like I could do it – actually do the whole thing. And it still took me a few years to figure out how to achieve the kind of music I wanted to make and it was all a process, but I committed at 19.

CG: Was there a moment when you knew that you had figured out how to do what you want, to really make it?

AS: Well, through the whole first album I thought, “Whoa, what’s going on” and then making the second one was when I was like, “All of this happened and it’s great and now you can choose what you want to do with your career and where you want to take it because you can go in a lot of different ways.” It wasn’t like a ‘knock you over the head’ moment, it was kinda subtle.

CG: Do you have anything in the future that you’re hoping to do? Or are you just taking opportunities as they come and making the most of it?

AS: It’s making the most of opportunities. I wrote a book last year and I’m looking forward to editing and releasing that. The rest of it is an adventure – but I want to make as much music as I possibly can; I think that will drive everything. And also to put on the best show that we can and enjoy the process!

Interview: Michael Reisenauer of Pale Young Gentlemen

Michael Reisenauer is the singer/songwriter/guitarist/pianist for orchestral indie group Pale Young Gentlemen who released a great album near the end of last year entitled Black Forest (tra la la). I had the opportunity to talk to Mike this past week and got some insight on the band, the record, and his influences as an artist.


Me: How about an introduction or history of the band, I understand that you are the co-founder of the band along with your brother Matt and friend Brett Randall, but now you’ve got seven people, at least at the recording of your last album. How did that evolve into such a big project?

MR: It was pretty natural, actually. The three of us were playing around, Matt, Brett, and I, just like a piano, drums, and Brett was playing guitar at the time. Then we started getting some shows, and we saw an add for somebody that was looking for a band that really liked Andrew Bird and so we picked her up, though she has since left the band. Then we got cello, then we got a bass player and we were a five piece, and, you know, the more we played the more people were interested in playing with us, and the more we were willing to collaborate with everybody.


Me: You recently released your second album, which was great, in October of last year called Black Forest. Can you tell me a little bit more about the making of the album, what influenced the music, and what you learned in the process?

MR: Okay, it was kind of my first crack at really trying to compose an album of songs that lived together, that interacted with each other. Our first album…we lucked out in a lot of ways, I don’t know exactly how, but we just kinda recorded some songs that we had been playing live. The big difference I guess is that I was trying really to capture a feeling that I’ve had in my early 20s, this kind of misplaced feeling and trying to find some kind of home for it...We wrote a bunch of songs that Matt and Brett and I demoed in the basement studio. I’ve got a software program for writing string parts, and we added drums and guitars and vocals to it and it sounded really cheesy, but then a month later we went into the studio and tried to track everything as quickly as possible, and that’s about it.


Me: As the primary songwriter and singer, you’re responsible for a lot of the creative energy that goes into making the music, but for your past album, at least, there were six other people in the band…What process do you go through in writing a song?

MR: Well, it kinda depends on who it is and what the part is. I would print off sheet music and give it to the string players the first few times, but some of these songs went through really major, dramatic changes because we would rehearse it and play and see how the parts fit together and go “that doesn’t work.” So we go back and next week I’d have new parts, some of them had been totally changed, and others just tweaked a little bit. We’d add drums and bass to it, record our rehearsals, then play them back and see again what was working and what wasn’t working.


Me: I noticed as I was listening to Black Forest, and and then going back and listening to some of your debut album, that Black Forest is much more ornate and diverse; there are more instruments, more complex arrangements, etc. Was that purposeful? Did you approach the music in a different manner or did it just naturally evolve to be that way?

MR: No, from the beginning I knew what the title of the record was, and I had written “Our History” and “She’s All Mine, I Think.” Those kinda set the tone for the record, I think, musically, how important strings were gonna be in the record and how I wanted it to sound almost like a fairy tale or something like that. So after those two songs we had kind of an idea of what was going to happen, and then I just tried to write songs that would fit together in that context.


Me: You mentioned a couple months of touring last year. Are you planning on being on the road much soon? And do you enjoy that experience or is it pretty exhausting?

MR: We’re planning on getting out soon, but not for quite that amount of time...All of my vacations when I was a kid were road trips because we didn’t have money to fly anywhere. We would drive out to Colorado or Wyoming or wherever. So something about being out on the road feels very natural and peaceful to me. In time, it gets exhausting. We were out for two months and did a lot of dates; we had very few nights off, so it kinda wears down on ya, but at the same time you get better at doing it. I don’t know, it doesn’t really compare to anything. It seems almost like you’re a traveling salesmen or something, but instead of selling encyclopedias you have songs, you know? You stay in a different motel every night, but they could all be the same motel, it’s a weird thing.


Me: I recently heard your cover of the MIA song “Paper Planes,” and really enjoyed it. Where did that come from? I saw it on a CokeMachineGlow podcast, but how did that start?

MR: Matt and I have always talked about wanting to do cover songs, but we never really rehearsed them...One song we always wanted to cover was “Straight to Hell” by The Clash. I was working in a coffee shop this summer and I heard MIA’s song and I thought at first it was gonna be the damn Clash song, but it ended up being Paper Planes and I thought that was interesting. Then when we were on tour we got an email about CokeMachineGlow wanting us to cover a top-40 type hit from the past year and I thought that made about as much sense as anything else. So we went out and covered it. (Hear the song)


Me: I have one more question for you. I have a brother who is close in age to me and we actually roomed together in college for a while...How is spending time on tour and in the studio with your brother, Matt?

MR: It’s the only thing that keeps me from going out of my mind, I think. Matt and I are less than a year and a half apart in age and something happened when we were in our late teens when our parents divorced and somehow our relationship got really close after that. We lived together and when I don’t see him I pretty much call him on the phone almost every day even if I don’t have a reason; we’re really close. It’s kind of funny; there is an idea that it’s kind of ironic, our relationship as siblings, because a lot of siblings can’t get together, or if they do get together they kind of hate each other on some level, but we’re just not that way.

Interview Alert: Ra Ra Riot

Captain Melody has recently posted another great interview of which I am very jealous. The band is Ra Ra Riot, a white-hot indie rock group that released their debut album this year entitled The Rhumb Line. They've been on Conan already, so you know they're kind of a big deal... Check out the in-depth interview over at Captain Melody, and read his review here.

Also, my review can be found here.

Interview Alert: Delta Spirit

The Captain has an excellent and exclusive interview with Kelly Winrish of Delta Spirit over at Captain Melody. Delta Spirit just recently re-released their fine debut album Ode To Sunshine and I have to admit I'm a little jealous of The Captain's ability to snag this interview.

For fans of retro-rockers like Dr. Dog and Cold War Kids, Ode To Sunshine is very much required listening. Check out my review here.


Delta Spirit's MySpace (and homepage)