Matt Reynolds, a student at Belmont and a contributor to InsideVandy, chats with Tyler Sargent and Alec Ounsworth, two members of the indie rock band Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Catching up at the Cannery Ballroom, Tyler and Alec open up about their first musical experiences, how they feel to be without a label and what the future holds for the band.
Vanderbilt Hustler: Describe the first time you started getting into music.
Tyler Sargent: I started playing guitar when I was 13 or 14...
Alec Ounsworth: --months!
TS: (Laughs) I used to listen to my older brother playing his guitar along with Led Zeppelin. I don't really remember the first band I got into - I'm sure they made a great impression though.
AO: My parents made me play classical piano when I was six. I didn't understand at the time why I couldn't learn to play the Beach Boys and the Beatles, but I eventually got into classical music.
VH: Tell me a little bit about your songwriting process behind the self-titled album and compare it to the newest release?
TS: On this past album we worked more on the songs in the studio. Before our first release, we had the songs figured out before we even went in to record. This last album was much more of a studio album I think. We recorded in upstate New York, outside of Buffalo, with Dave Friddman. He plays bass in the band Mercury Rev and has worked with a ton of artists, including The Flaming Lips, Mogwai, and Weezer.
AO: Our songs really reflect life experiences or sometimes just whatever too - which is I guess to say writing about life experiences. The songs are in a variety of forms often before I bring it to the band, and collectively we put our spin on it. I love songwriting and creating music. Getting out on the road can be exhausting and it can become mundane - it's hard to stay on your toes all the time.
VH: When you look at what you're doing with music and compare it to the industry as a whole, how do you think it compares?
TS: There are people who just write music just for money. There have always been people in the entertainment business who are only in it for the money. But there are also a lot of people that have written good songs just to write good songs - and sometimes they happen to make a lot of money.
AO: In my opinion, no musician should pay attention to the music industry. Maybe the best move as a musician is to keep a distance from the industry. We're lucky enough to be listened to on a relatively wide level, and we've never really tried to impress people with our music - and that's kind of how I've always imagined it to be.
VH: What are some of the pros and cons you've encountered because you are not signed to a label?
AO: It's all pros as far as I'm concerned.
TS: Yeah, I don't know what we're really missing out on.
AO: As far as I'm concerned, with what we'd have to encounter with record labels, it wouldn't be worth it. The way I see a lot of record labels working - they are of the mind that they should seize every opportunity to make sure the band is constantly well established and to always focus on "push-push."
You always hear all this shit about pushing. But the best push is the one that people give themselves, that's the thing about the Internet. If people want to listen to us, than they can and they can find out about us.
With the record labels, there's too much of this "seize the opportunity" or seize perhaps the wrong opportunity and there's not much thought given to the fact of - morally and philosophically, what are the implications of this. The musician's responsibility is to create an album and get it distributed to people who might want to listen to it. Beyond that, the marketing aspect of it - people need to chill out on that level a little bit. The minute you stop taking chances you start to lose.
VH: Were you ever surprised or taken back by the manner in which your popularity rose so quickly?
TS: When we first toured we were brought on with this band, the National, and right before that this whole big Internet thing started to happen. We played some shows where people who look for "the hot thing" all came to see us. After a lot of shows, these kids would leave after we played and wouldn't stay for the National, the band that brought us on tour with them. The whole tour was strange. It was a bit odd to going from playing NY twice a month, then touring and getting a lot of blank looks.
VH: What does the rest of 2007 have in store for you guys and in the next couple years?
TS: We're touring in July and September and I'm not really sure what happens after that.
AO : The idea of touring is to present what you've been working for. It doesn't seem likely that we'll get into the studio again in the next year or so, but it's nice knowing that if we wanted to we could without any label interference.
