Rogue Wave: Evan Farrell
Discography:
Out of the Shadow CD 2004 |
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Rogue Wave picked a hell of a time to visit Minnesota. These San Franciscans drove into town in the middle of a good old-fashioned February blizzard. But weather be damned, fresh off an interview and performance with MPR and just prior to a show at Minneapolis’ Triple Rock, [relatively new] bassist Evan Farrell was willing to belly up to the bar and spend some quality time with 30.
Is this a great story or what? Guy gets laid off, records an album, starts a band, and next thing you know he’s touring with the Shins and is signed to Sub Pop records. Well, that’s the way things are for Zach Rogue and his Bay Area-band Rogue Wave, one of the leading acts in the new onslaught of pop perfection. Recently 30 caught up with bassist Evan Farrell to hear about their tour and plans for their next album.
30: You’ve got great timing, coming to Minnesota now…
Evan Farrell: Yeah, since we got here there have been a couple more inches already. When we got to town, we went and played on the public radio station – really nice studio. Man, it was awesome.
30: It’s brand new.
Farell: No, I don’t know if it’s new, because the sound guy said he’s been there for 20 years.
30: They were a college station before. They just switched to public radio and switched formats.
Farell: The studio is great. They had just played another band that’s playing here right when we got to the studio. It was really good. And the engineer, he brought his kids and they were all excited that we were there. We were signing all this…they printed out covers of the record and we signed ‘em all up for the kids. It was great.
30: You were here in June, right?
Farell: Well, I’m the new guy in the band, and I’m on bass. But I think they were here in June with the Shins at the 7th Street [Entry]. And then they were here [Triple Rock] with A.C. Newman in August.
30: I wanted to talk to you about what it’s like with Zach [Rogue, frontman] basically having done the whole album and you coming in to a band in that situation?
Farell: I’m good friends with the drummer, Pat [Spurgeon]. I actually lived with him. He called me, and I had heard them. I saw them play, like, one time. Maybe I saw them twice. He asked me to join for a few months. They had booked a tour for November and December. And I said, yeah, I’ll come and do it – without even hearing the record. I had never heard the record. And then I got the record and I loved it. I was psyched.
30: So you’ve been playing live since October?
Farell: I came out on Halloween. We played our first show and it was with Death Cab For Cutie. It was an odd thing to join a band and there’s 1,000 kids in the audience. But the transition has been good. One of the first things that we did was, we re-vamped a couple of songs on the record for iTunes, for an iTunes EP that’s out this month. They wanted something exclusive, so we re-recorded some songs and we did one cover. It was cool because, even though the stuff was done, it still left room for re-vamping.
30: Did you record that in more of a live setting in the studio?
Farell: It was kind of live in the studio, with the vocals overdubbed and a couple of instrumental overdubs, but we were basically all playing, and then we added harmonies and such for isolation purposes. But it was pretty much live.
30: I imagine that with the band touring for six months straight, it wasn’t too tough to track.
Farell: Yeah, we tracked it pretty well. We had practiced a lot. I was still learning the stuff, but they sent me the record and I learned all the songs off of it. And then they gave me a CD-R of some of their newer stuff. A lot of this past – well, this past month, we’ve been touring – but two months up to that has been pre-production for this record that we were going to record in late March and the beginning of May. We’ll hopefully have a release date in September for our new record.
30: What was the cover on the EP?
Farell: It was “Seconds,” off of the War album.
30: Now you’ve got, what, two weeks and then you’re off to Europe for some shows?
Farell: We’ll be in Europe in roughly 10 days.
30: I’m assuming that neither those guys nor them with you have played over there yet…is the album doing well in Europe?
Farell: I think so. There are a couple of Sub Pop affiliates – their names escape me right now. But I think we have to sell a lot of their merchandise over there. But Sub Pop is Sub Pop, you know? They’re going to do well. A lot of their stuff is going to do well regardless.
30: How has that been, the Sub Pop experience?
Farell: I’ve met those folks, I think, once. I’ve met all the people who deal with us, and they’re all really sweet. They’re all really cool. I got to meet the president of Sub Pop, or…I’m not really sure who he is, but in San Diego, he was actually helping us load our gear. These are real, kind of down-to-earth people. They’re very cool.
30: Talk about the next record.
Farell: We’ve got a bunch of songs, and once we get to the studio, I think we’ll figure out what ones will actually go on there. And I think Zach has some ideas, too, that we’re just playing, mixing the new stuff into our set. When we come to a town where we know there’s a lot of interest in the old record, we try to play some new songs, some new stuff, get it in circulation.
30: Were a lot of these songs written on the road? Obviously you’re fine-tuning them now.
Farell: Some of them, they’ve been playing for a while. Some of them are pretty new. Zach writes all the songs – some of them were written on the Shins tour, I think. He came back from the Shins tour and did a kind of acoustic demo of a bunch of them that we’ve worked on. But I think a bunch of those may just be on hold for the next record. He’s got a LOT of songs. A backlog.
30: How has it been playing Zach’s songs, coming up with arrangements and parts?
Farell: We’re pretty collaborative in the practice space, you know? We all really say what we think and we sort of move with the thoughts and ideas…you know, he’s got a vision for a lot of the songs coming in, but when somebody else has an idea, we try it. It’s pretty open.
30: What’s the feel of the new album? The first album was really grounded in the classics of pop and rock. Is the second a departure?
Farell: There is a little bit of a departure. I think we all are leaning…and able…we all like weird sounds, you know, and stuff like that. You can have that pop core to your song, but try and make it…I wouldn’t say “out,” but I would say…I think we’re going to have a lot of fun with overdubs over the basic tracks. I think we’ll record a lot of stuff just by itself and then we’ll all kind of climb on top of it. We’re all excited to do it. We’ve all got a bunch of weird instruments that we could put, potentially, in, and just make it sound cool. Make it sound psychedelic.
30: It seems like everybody is a bit of a multi-instrumentalist in the band.
Farell: Yeah, I play bass and I play guitar on about six songs. And then Gram and Pat play a little bit of everything that is represented. And I’m sure I will eventually, too. I can play keys and drums, but for now, you know, those guys have their niche.
30: Do you know who you’re going to be working with as a producer yet?
Farell: We’re going to work with Bill Racine again, the same producer. It’s going to be done at a place called Supernatural Sound. We looked into doing it in Bloomington, Indiana. Pat and I both have roots there. But it was just too far. We shopped for good deals on a couple different studios but to go out there for a while, it didn’t work out.
30: Can you talk about being the new person in a band that’s been playing live already, coming in and replacing somebody?
Farell: My main thought is, most of the time, people just say, “Where’s the girl?” But it’s been good, man. It’s the first tour I’ve been on where I’ve eaten well. I’d played in a band called Japonize Elephants for about eight years. We did a lot of touring, and a lot of spending our own money. You know, work a lot before you go on tour and then really not make much on the road, really just filling your tank. I think we’re a little bit past that now where we might actually see a little bit of change at the end of the tour. We’re not filling huge venues yet or anything like that. But this is the first headlining tour that this band has had, that I know of. The live perspective, as somebody who has toured a lot, this is a really good tour.
30: Has there been a good reaction to the album since the re-release on Sub Pop?
Farell: Yeah – I think it’s already sold like 12,000 copies, which is a lot. I mean, a band I’ve been in was represented by Secretly Canadian records. First press was 1,000. Then they say, all right, if you can sell that then we’ll press more. The second record didn’t do as well because we didn’t tour, and… [shrugs]. But Sub Pop is Sub Pop. They’re a machine, for sure. You know, they’ve been around for so long. They do a good business and they’re cool with their bands. Of course, that’s what Secretly Canadian was like, too. They’re smaller potatoes, but there’s something about signing a band, we’re behind you, we love you that’s cool. It’s cool.
30: On the upcoming European trip, are you going with anybody, or making the trip by yourselves?
Farell: I believe we’re headlining. Don’t quote me, but I believe we may open for the band Jimmy Eat World in Germany. I think that went through. But otherwise I think we’re headlining. I’m completely in the dark on a lot of this, though.
30: We’ll wrap it up now, but we do have our one traditional question: what were you listening to when you were 17 years old?
Farell: Wes Montgomery…Bill Evans. I went to school for jazz at Indiana University. (I was there for guitar, actually.) And I saw the Grateful Dead about 30 times when I was in high school, so I was pretty devoted to those guys. And then I was also into A Tribe Called Quest. That was kind of it when I was hanging with my friends. It was Midnight Marauders, and then Pharcyde was all right, too. That was what I could get everyone else to listen to. But myself, that’s when I got into Monk, Montgomery, Miles.
30: What pushed you that way, into jazz?
Farell: It might have been hip-hop. I don’t know. I really got into hip-hop that was…I loved improvised music, you know? Maybe the Grateful Dead. I don’t know. None of that sounds like jazz. But I got really into the really cool, smooth kind of hip-hop. Like Digable Planets…that era. Like ’93, all that laid back stuff after the gangsta thing chilled out. I don’t know, I was into it.
-30-
Photo courtesy of Sub Pop, credit: Andrew Paynter
Visit Rogue Wave’s webpage: www.roguewavemusic.com
Read our review of Out of the Shadow
interview on 2005/02/21 by Luther Hermanson |
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