Having failed to connect with Aaron Burrows, the keyboardist for Irving, at two different times, I decided to give it up for naught. Slower than a snail smeared in super glue, crawling through a puddle of honey, I began to put away my pen, my piece of paper, and my headphones, hoping for a miracle. As I turned the doorknob to exit the production studio, the phone on the wall rang. “Curious,” I thought.”Who could that be?” Having nothing to lose but hope, and perhaps some dignity should I be forced to become someone’s answering service, I decided to answer the call:
“Hello, this is KPSU.”
“Patrick?”
“Umm…yes.”
“Hey Patrick, this is Steven from Irving, how’s it going?”
I found out that Irving had recently been smacked down by a band-wide illness, but fortunately Steven found the strength (or maybe the Pepto-bismol) to sit down with me and answer a few questions while cruising down the road toward Des Moines, IA.
Irving has released two LPs and one EP to date, and the new album Death in the Garden, Blood on the Flowers is my favorite. But it brought up an interesting question for me: Do you record an album so you can play live, or do you play live so you can get enough money to record an album?
Actually, that’s a good question. We don’t make a record so we can go out there and perform it live. I feel like our records are kind of like our little art piece, and if we can’t do that stuff live then we’ll figure out a way to do it differently in a live realm. For instance, we use a lot of mechanical drumbeats and we distort them a lot and make them all funky, but when it comes to the live show it’s like “What’s more powerful? A drum machine, or watching our drummer go insane?” They are really different things. A record is a piece of art and a live show is a form of entertainment.
It’s interesting that you should mention art because I’ve heard that the band began by playing at an art show. You, Brian [Canning, guitarist] and Alex [Church, bassist], got together for an art show, but is that really where Irving began?
Yeah pretty much. A buddy of ours had heard us playing around and he’d heard some four-track recordings and he thought it would be really cool if we played at her art opening at the Onyx Cafe which was like half cafe and half art gallery. So yeah, we just got really drunk and played the five songs we knew and a Guided By Voices cover, and a lot of people showed up, including a guy that our old keyboard player used to work with, and he encouraged us to name the band, start practicing and book a couple of shows.
So how did you decide to name the band Irving?
It’s actually our old keyboard player’s [Shana Levy] grandfather’s name. We were trying to come up with a name because we thought we had to, and the topic got on grandfathers and I think Alex was wearing these old shoes that he used to wear, or some one was wearing a little grandpa sweater, and somebody goes “Hey we should be Irving” Uh-oh, we’ll have to try it for a week, but look at us, now we’ve been Irving for quite a few years.
A lot of critics characterize Irving as a collective, or a democracy. And when you guys speak and write songs there does seem to be that sort of a group dynamic. Is that true though? Is there really one particular leader?
See that’s the beauty and the bane of Irving. There’s no leader whatsoever, and we’ve been doing it for a while. I mean we all write songs, so when it comes down to that song, we’re our own little producers. I mean very rarely is there a situation where it’s like “This is my song, and that’s your song.” You know, we just work on it together, but the guy who sat on his bed with an acoustic guitar and wrote the song generally runs the show, but that’ll change from song to song. That’s why there are never any songwriting credits, and why for our publishing company we never separate it out, it’s all just…
Irving.
Exactly.
So that would explain the new album, Death in the Garden, Blood on the Flowers, and why it jumps around stylistically so much.
Yeah, I mean it’s actually more cohesive than the other ones that we’ve done, especially the EP. But that’s always going to be the case. We all love the White Album, I mean you should see all the folk songs and acoustics that we had to cut out of the new record.
You guys should put out a B-Sides and Rarities record.
Yeah we should. We should just put out another record right now [laughs]. It’d probably be just as good.
It’s interesting that you should mention folk though, because Good Morning Beautiful [Irving’s debut album] seemed very much inspired by The Zombies, The Beatles, even some Neutral Milk Hotel, but the new album has a lot of Television, The Cure, and a splash of Velvet Underground.
I mean here’s the weird thing. In the last record I was ?”
The EP or Good Morning Beautiful?
No, the…well here’s the thing. The EP was literally thrown together. Aaron had joined the band, and we decided that we wanted to record right off the bat, to have him record with us and go on tour and do a bunch of shows, and kind of see if this is our keyboard player or if he’s just filling in for a bit. We kind of wanted to push him into committing. And it came out great, but you see a bit of that Television Curey-thing in the EP, especially on “The Guns from Here”, and “White Hot”, and some of that new wavey feel on the last song which I had written in mind for Nikki Colk of KaitO to sing. And she did. She’s the one singing the verses, and I sing the choruses. When we toured with Good Morning Beautiful, we noticed that the mellower songs, the kind of Pavement slow songs, were hard to get up for every night. But when your playing for 23 people in fucking Jackson, Mississippi, they all just want to jump up and down or go sit on their porches. I mean here’s the thing about the mellow song they’re all real pretty, and you might have a glass of wine before, and “hey, thanks a lot for coming” and you go to bed and every thing’s fine. But when you’re in a rock and roll band, and you’re in your mid-20’s you want to go out and party and have a good time. It’s just harder play those slow songs because you really end up half-assing it. But if your playing just rock songs, you kind of fake yourself into getting into, where by the second song you actually are into it, and then the kids that payed money to see it are into it. I mean if we’re standing around, then they’re going to stand around, if we’re jumping around ?”
They’re going to jump around.
Yeah, it’s easier. And to tell you the truth they buy more CD’s, and they tell they’re friends and more people come out next time. It’s much more fun that way.
Is there a good way for Irving to have both the melancholy but still rock and roll like no other?
Yeah, sure. What we did was we took all the lyrical content and all the melancholy of the Zombies, which I am glad critics and interviewers like you have brought them up, because there is a whole aspect of Irving in which we might sound like we are all fun and games but the lyrics are kind of creepy or whatever, like that Zombies song that go[Singing] “Feels so good in your arms” but they’re talking about it in jail you know. Kind of like “Sleepy Inside”, there is a lot of woo-woos and wha-whas and ba-bas and whatever but it has creepier themes. Anyway, so we took that, and we wanted to play rock and roll, to make a rock and roll record, and capture how we were live ?” which was a rock and roll band and not so sunny California pop, but still that West Coast rock and roll. So out of that we started writing songs, and Brian had sort of caught fire early on and had written like 5 songs, and those were the first five we started working with. I had come up with some songs, and I happened along a chorus title and I think that’s where some of those tones came from, that kind of wiry guitar tone. And then Aaron, being a kick ass keyboard player, sort of made sure that a lot of the hooks were keyboard driven. Live, you’ll hear all these synthesizer chords that are very Cure-like and what have you, so you kind of put that all together and that’s what we are. We write the songs in a very 60’s, early 70’s fashion, but you know we siphon it through all the good music that we love, and all the things we want to hear from ourselves.
I think that’s a good explanation of Irving.
Yeah. And I mean, we don’t throw anything out either, we’re just doing what we do, and we like the way it sounds. So…wait I take that back, we actually threw out one song that turned out to be a blatant rip off of something else. [Laughs] I mean, I can’t believe we actually got through three-quarters of the process and then someone’s like: “Doesn’t this sound a lot like…” And then we just grabbed one of the CD’s, and our mouths just dropped. Oh my God, how did we…we actually ripped off a song. We decided against that one, but we might put it out as a B-side or something after we finish it because it’s actually really cool. Maybe we’ll donate it to some sort of charity, or a compilation or something.
You guys were on a compilation a little while ago ?”
Yeah, the Bruce Haack one.
Was that the one with “Army Ants in Your Pants”?
Yeah, Yeah, that was the Bruce Haack compilation. It was for the Cure for Autism or whatever. Yeah, our label fell in love with him because he was one of the pioneers of electronic music or whatever, and he did children’s music, so she [Reiko Kondo; founder of Eenie Meenie records] called a bunch of band’s managers, asking them if they’d be interested in doing this. Like Beck, Cornelius ?”
And Oranger.
Yeah. Oranger and Irving, we were both on Eenie Meenie so it was kind of a gimme. But then she got some bigger names, like Apples in Stereo and Stereolab. It was a bunch of covers, so we had to wait for Beck to get back to us because he got first pick [laughs], but after that we just picked “Army Ants in Your Pants.” I don’t know why we picked it, because we’d never heard it, but we didn’t want to hear his [Bruce Haack] version of the song, we didn’t even want to copy it in anyway. Cover songs are always so much more fun when you sort of, you know…
Make it your own.
Exactly. Totally on your own. There’s no reason to just sing someone else’s song just to sing it. Well I guess for purposes of karaoke or fun I suppose. But anyway, we just took the skeleton of a song we’d had from a long time ago called “Never Winter Garden Music” and that’s where the da-da, da-da-da, bownownownownow ?” that’s where that came from, and after that Alex just sort of picked up the lyric sheet and started singing and he grabbed the melody and everyone was like, wow, and it took us one day to write it, record it, mix it, the whole thing.
No way!
I kid you not. We actually got there in the morning, set up our stuff, figured out how we were going to do it, the very basic structure, and we just started laying down the drums, the keyboard, the bass, and then the guitars, and then the vocals, which were sort of easy because there wasn’t that much backup singing. I mean it was actually really fun because we had kind of labored over things in the past and really tried to get the perfect sound for this and that, but instead we sort of experimented. We were like, well let’s just do this, and let’s see if we can do it today. And we did. It was just straight up. But I mean you rarely see that in a band with no real leader. Well maybe with the White Stripes, but I mean, they have to get a guitar, drums and maybe a piano and then his single voice and they’re done. I mean with “The Curious Thing About Leather” we had like 159 takes, it was ridiculous [laughs], it’s hard to make decisions sometimes.
We talked about the label briefly before, and you guys have been on Eenie Meenie for quite sometime now, for some 5 odd years, and throughout your entire discography, so I’ve got to know: What’s so great about Eenie Meenie? Have you ever thought about switching labels?
Yeah actually, before this one came out we got a lot of really interesting offers, but we were thinking unless something really ridiculously fantastic happens where the deal is not only way bigger but also has as much creative freedom, because that’s the thing about Eenie Meenie, we get to do whatever we want, when we want. We could put out a thousand song record tomorrow, and she [Reiko] would be like ‘Let’s do it! It’s brilliant! Let’s do it!’ She’s Japanese actually, so know I am just being rude [laughs], but she’s so behind us on everything. She even bought us a van to tour on. So while there were a lot of offers that were really cool, and from some big labels, Eenie Meenie remained really great because they made it possible for us to give ourselves a chance, to make a little money or make an impact, so that’s what we’re doing.
If you could characterize Irving’s purpose in one word what would it be?
[Silence] Characterize Irving’s purpose….
What keeps Irving together making music?
Actually this is a really good question for Brian. [Off phone]: Brian, why won’t you wear Alex’s sunglasses instead of mine?! [On phone]: No I am just kidding [laughs]. [Off phone]: Characterize the purpose of Irving in one word. Yeah, like why do we get together and make music? What’s that word? That’s a good one, that’s what came to mind to me. [On phone] Fun!
Fun?
Fun. It’s what we do. I think that when we started, it was just fun. I mean like I said, it was just me, Alex and Brian getting together and making songs, because that’s what you do when you drink, and smoke pot and hang out, and then someone said “Oh you guys should play ?” whatever” and then he listens and goes “Oh man, you guys are really good, you guys should write some more songs, and practice, book some shows at The Spaceland, at The Garage, and whatever.” That sounds fun, let’s do it. And then people started to pay money to come see us. Fun. I mean…I’d like to cure cancer, but Irving’s music is not gonna do that.
One step at a time.
