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Astroblast:
On Their Way
by Brenda Kahn |
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On their newest release "This Will Help You On Your Way,"
Austin-based "noise-Pop" band Astroblast has a groovy mix
of the last four decades of Pop. Cutting their teeth on this sophomore
release (out on Planting Seeds Records), the Astro-members
are steadily gaining ground in Texas and beyond. I spoke with singer/keyboardist
Jenn about ELO, Flash Gordon, My Bloody Valentine, and of
course, Birmingham, AL.
WOMANROCK:
I was reading through your bio and press. One of the things that
struck me is you are compared to really diverse bands… and certain
bands keep coming up over and over again.
JENN:
I'm sure you noticed we get My Bloody Valentine all the time. On
every single person that writes about us. I wonder if some of these
writers just look at what other people say and think "Oh yeah, My
Bloody Valentine" and just pop it in because it's crazy how many
people say that band above any other band.
WOMANROCK:
They're pretty obscure.
JENN:
Yeah, a lot of the writers seemed a little more mainstream, so I
didn't even really know that they thought about that band.
WOMANROCK:
How do you see your band's musical influences?
JENN:
Basically for the last couple years we've been listening to a lot
of older music, 60's/70's stuff. And the really, really big thing
I listen to - and if anyone thought we were anything like that I
would just die - is Paul McCartney and Wings and ELO, but I do listen
to a lot of that. We do, as a band, listen to a lot of older music.
With ELO the vocals are so melodic, there are so many harmonies
going on. Everybody's singing along with all the instrumentation…
Beach Boys, I just eat that stuff up.
WOMANROCK:
Do you find it making it's way into your music?
JENN:
With vocal melodies, trying to get more harmonies going, but I wonder
how much things you listen to actually influence the way the music
comes out. We also listen to a lot of more modern stuff that we
collectively vibe off of, like the Pixies, which I know comes up
every now and then in reviews, The Breeders, Belly, Supergrass or
stuff like that.
WOMANROCK:
What did you learn putting out your first CD? Did you say, "This
time around we're going to do this differently… we're going to do
it this way?"
JENN:
We did [the first CD] The Scientist at a studio here
in town with some really great friends of ours. It was really great,
but we knew that we wanted to work on our own. We wanted to experience
the whole thing with just us there together. Bob, our guitar player
is an audio engineer and he was working at a studio, and so for
this new album we were able to do it completely on our own. We went
in every night from 8 o'clock until 3 in the morning. It makes it
hard to decide when to stop, because you're never satisfied, but
we did a lot of things that maybe we wouldn't have done creatively
with other people there.
WOMANROCK:
And you also must have done it very cheaply, because you didn't
pay for studio time. What do you think the album cost all together?
JENN:
We paid for tape and we did pay for mastering, but that was really
cheap. Probably a couple hundred dollars.
WOMANROCK:
That's amazing!
JENN:
Yeah, it was. We were trying to build our own studio and we had
it going. We have a 16-track, one-inch and tape machine. We got
started working on the album and the tape machine broke so we're
just now getting ready to start recording some new things on our
own. It's a great feeling not having to rely on anyone and not having
that financial burden.
WOMANROCK:
Then you did a deal with Planting Seeds?
JENN:
Planting Seeds had contacted us a year-and-a-half before inquiring
about our first album. We sent it over to them, and they never really
said anything back so we didn't think anything of it. When we were
finishing up [this album], we E-mailed them and said "Hey, we're
finishing up our new album," and they said "Send it over. We'll
have a look at it." We didn't hear anything back from them and were
trying to get the money together to have it pressed. Right before
we were about to do that… probably like 6 weeks or more later they
E-mailed saying they wanted to put a record out. It was great, the
best thing ever. It just kind of happened, we signed a small deal
with them and they paid to press it.
WOMANROCK:
How does your deal with them work?
JENN:
Actually, I have no idea if this is common at all. They're really
great. They're an independent label out of Virginia. They have maybe
10 bands and they're just really into putting out records. They
don't own any of it. All the copyright, all of it… the music's ours.
They were really upfront, "We don't want to make enemies. We just
want to put your record out." They paid to press the record and
they gave us a certain number of copies instead of dealing with
sales and having certain amounts of money sent over.
WOMANROCK:
Is Planting Seeds helping to promote the CD as well?
JENN:
They were doing some advertising in some music magazines, which
is really cool, because I'm sure that's so expensive, and we never
would have done anything like that. And they try to help us with
touring when they can. As far as booking goes it's a pretty small
operation.
WOMANROCK:
So you're booking tours yourself? What's the farthest that you've
gone from Austin?
JENN:
Toronto. We went to Toronto for NXNE in 2000. We had played around
Texas and we're here in Austin so we've played Easton and Dallas,
Antonio, stuff like that.
WOMANROCK:
Have you gotten in the van and just gone on the road or have you
just played specific shows in other cities?
JENN:
We went this last December up to DC and back. We played I think
10 or 11 shows. I really love touring. It's just so much fun, I
think. Some people probably like it more than others. I think I
like it the most out of the whole group, I don't know why.
WOMANROCK:
What were some of the towns you liked the best? Cities you drove
into and thought, "Wow, this is such a cool place. I had no idea
it was like this."
JENN:
Oh, a big one is Birmingham, Alabama. You would never guess. It
was so great.
WOMANROCK:
Did you play there?
JENN:
Actually, we didn't play there. We had played in Atlanta and we
were playing with this band from Birmingham. We met them at the
show and we didn't have a place to stay and they were driving back
to Birmingham so they asked us to come back with them and so we
stayed with them. We hung out in Birmingham for a day. I didn't
really know what Alabama was like. It was really beautiful and really
nice and really laid back. It's not backwoods at all.
WOMANROCK:
Are you doing all the business for the band?
JENN:
This tour I kind of picked up the pace and decided I'd do a little
more, but we do pretty good even distribution. Our drummer has his
own screen-printing shop going. He takes care of all of our merchandise,
all of our Web stuff. So he kind of takes care of that and me and
Bob do a lot of the booking and kind of hooking up with other bands.
WOMANROCK:
So that works out pretty good. You've got an audio engineer, a guy
with professional graphics skills…
JENN:
Yeah, it's pretty cool. We're pretty self-sufficient. We've got
it pretty good.
WOMANROCK:
Have you been using the Internet to promote your music? Do you think
it helps you to sell records? What's your feeling about MP3 files
and the Internet and all that stuff?
JENN:
Yeah, we got started through MP3.com, probably 2 yrs ago. In my
mind you kind of throw stuff out there, and it just ends up everywhere.
And as far as the issues of people not getting paid for free music,
where we are, we're just glad for anybody to hear it. I just love
it when people find out about your music and they E-mail you from
all over the place. It makes things easier; for touring, meeting
bands through the Internet, just hooking shows up, and radio stations.
Right now we did a pretty good college radio push a month or two
ago so we're getting E-mails about that. It's really cool just to
know and be in contact with people because they like your stuff
and they'd be happy to help you with anything they can. I think
it's fantastic, I can't imagine if it didn't exist. I can't imagine
what it would be like.
WOMANROCK:
I love the name of your new album This Will Help You On Your
Way. Where did you get that title?
JENN:
It's from Flash Gordon, we were just thinking about album titles
and one of the days in-between recording we were watching that movie
because we're really dorky. We're into sci-fi, I mean. I was into
ELO so that probably tells you something. There's a scene in the
movie where Ming wants to kill Flash - he's gonna gas him - and
the assistant guy is gonna put this gas on him so he'll fall asleep
before they kill him. When he puts this thing over his face, he
says 'This will help you on your way'. It's really kind of a dark
idea. But I like it for a lot of different reasons. The record is
kind of therapeutic in a way.
WOMANROCK:
Are you the main writer of the songs?
JENN:
No, absolutely not, Chris our bassist, and Bob our guitar player
are our main songwriters, and they are fantastic. They're both really
different, they have different approaches. But they'll come up with
different main ideas but we work pretty well collectively on making
it a finished song. I help with vocal melodies sometimes, but Chris,
he is just fantastic with vocals and melodies. He's just really
great. I'm so lucky that I'm there.
WOMANROCK:
It sounds like you get a lot of inspiration from the band itself.
JENN:
We're all extremely close as a band, we were friends before we had
this band and I'm married to Bob our guitar player.
WOMANROCK:
Do you enjoy being in a relationship and being in the band?
JENN:
It's great and it's horrible, like you'd expect, it's not the easiest
thing but it has it's moments. There's great things about it.
WOMANROCK:
What are some of the good things?
JENN:
I guess that we have this thing that we share beyond our relationship.
If you have a relationship with somebody and that's your big thing,
but then you have your other things. Everything that we have and
we do is connected. It's really special to me, so of course, touring
is really cool.
WOMANROCK:
What's the bad side?
JENN:
It's just complicated, you know. Emotions and opinions. We're almost
always opposite. Where we have a fight at practice or something
or at the studio and then we have to go home together. You try not
to bring your feelings into it, but it's just difficult. So it's
great and it's hard. We have a much stronger connection then if
we didn't do this together. Our bassist Chris he's like our best
friend, been our best friend forever. He lives next door to us.
WOMANROCK:
So you're all really close.
JENN:
We're just together all the time. Jacob too, our drummer. It's just
like brothers. We're so close. We do argue, but it's just very family-like.
Whenever we're not doing band stuff we're still hanging out together
which a lot of people find really weird. A lot of bands in this
town and people make jokes about how we're always out together and
any time you see us we're all out together. We just can't get enough
of each other, it's really strange.
WOMANROCK:
That sounds kind of awesome.
JENN:
People say if I'm not writing the songs, how does it really apply
to me. I think because we just know each other so intimately I know
exactly how he's feeling and I can take it on myself and apply it
to something that relates more to me. For me, it's just this amazing
kind of unit. I just can't imagine what I'd be doing if I didn't
have that. |
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_________________________________
For more information on Astroblast, check out:
http://www.astroblast.com/ |
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_________________________________
Brenda Kahn
is a New York recording artist and the editor of WOMANROCK.com.
Past notes from the Editor.
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