SXSW: Interview with Alex Robins of Or, the Whale

Or, the Whale – Alex Robins
SXSW shows:
Mar. 18, 1am @ The Independent
Mar. 20 @ The Wave (SFxSXSW showcase)
Upcoming Bay Area shows:
Mar. 28 @ Starry Plough in Berkeley;
Apr. 17 @ The Fillmore (green apple music festival); San Francisco

The Wave: So what are you up to, man?
AR: We were actually finishing mixing our new record that’s coming out in the fall last night. No official release date yet. It’ll probably be at the end of September. But we’re sort of still working towards that. It’s funny, we were mixing the record and I got a phone call from my fiancé saying she smelled gas in our apartment. So I came home and then basically smelled the gas also, I picked her up, I turned off the gas, we went to the studio to wait it out and I made a call to our gas company and now I have to wait here at home until they come out and see what’s up.

TW: Well, be sure to crack a window or something.
AR: Yeah, well it’s fine now. Everything’s fine now. It’s been off for twelve hours but it’s definitely not how I wanted to spend my day.

TW: Are you up in San Francisco?
AR: I live in San Francisco, yes.

TW: Are you from there?
AR: I’m not originally from here. I was born in Michigan, in Detroit, and I sort of lived there until I was a pretty little kid, I was like nine, and then my family, along with myself, moved to Southern California and I grew up from nine to 18 there, San Diego, and then I went back to college in Michigan, and then I came here. So I’ve basically spent half my life in Michigan and half my life in California.

TW: So where did you pick up on the country undertones to your music?
AR: It’s strange how much this genre of music gets put into a box. If someone’s into techno they don’t automatically think they’re from Detroit, which has a very reputable foundation in creating techno. Or if it’s very upbeat pop music it’s from a certain area. Plenty of bands have sang with quote-unquote fake British accents and no one thinks they’re from England. To me, country music is really just another form of music; it’s another genre of music that I think the more you limit and the more you pigeon hole it the more you’re cutting yourself off to all the possibilities of it. We all came collectively together with a love for just playing music as this big band and having a good time. I think that a lot of classic stuff like The Band and the Rolling Stones, it always seemed like a lot of fun to be in bands like that and just listening to the music you could feel the energy and feel the great down-home vibe and I think that’s very apparent to those types of records and those types of bands. When we got the band together it was very much trying to be like that and trying to create that kind of energy, that family band kind of atmosphere.

TW: Ever played down here in San Jose?
AR: I think we did one show down there and it was very strange. It was just not put together super well…but that’s a cop out. I think we should get our asses down there. It’s not very far and it’s a different city. I don’t think we should expect people from the South Bay to come up here. We should go out of our way.

TW: Have y’all played Texas before?
AR: We have played Texas. We’ve only had one national tour and we did it in the summer right after we originally released Light Poles and Pines. We released it ourselves and distributed it ourselves and it was very local, very low budget, a good way to get something we had and sell at shows and go on tour and sort of do it in the self-motivated world. We did a month-long tour around the country. We’re really excited about coming back to Austin. Everyone always says “You’d do great in Texas”

TW: The music seems kind of fitting.
AR: Yeah, and not only that, I don’t know if it’s necessarily limited to Texas. You want people to see you so we need to go there. People want to see us play music. We’re slowly becoming a better studio band, but we’ve always prided ourselves on being a good live band and it’s definitely a different story from Light Poles and Pines. That record was made two years ago, and we’re a far better band now in all walks of life. We’re really proud of it and it’s a great record and we’re happy with it. But in terms of the actual output and the product on it, we’re itching to get this next record out in the Fall.

TW: Do you have a title for it yet?
AR: I think we’re gonna just self title it. It’s sort of one of those things where it’s going to be our next band statement…and it’s also really hard to make decisions with seven people in the band with pretty much a democracy like we have; it’s very hard to get every one to agree on it. But I think that we’re sort of all in the same boat. It seems like the right thing to do. And people love to talk sh** about our name.

TW: It’s a Moby Dick reference, right?
AR: It is. People ask, “Well, why is there a comma there, what does Or, the Whale mean?”…and I appreciate that because at least it’s creating a reaction, you know? I think people either love it or hate it. I was reading some article about us coming up to Seattle and someone commented on the bottom of it, “Could this be the worst band name ever?” And it’s like, do you really sit at home and think about what could be the worst band name ever? Is this really it? I mean, come on, there are so many terrible band names out there.

TW: Who came up with it?
AR: Matt [Sartain] came up with it. We actually have three English majors in the band and I’m a history major. Some of us in the band have this affiliation with cool nautical stuff and had read Moby Dick and I’m a big Melville fan; he’s written some cool stuff, and I think that we were trying to pick pieces from lyrics we liked or songs we liked and it’s so hard because you’re basically saying this is what our music is going to represent. It’s very hard to narrow it down. We often get literary nerds, or emails from the Melville Society that are like we love your name and we got emailed by a couple of biologists from up in Seattle about narwhals and had a long conversations about it and I honestly feel like we’ve really sort of grown into the name. And I think the name really fits our band.

TW: Will you be playing a lot of the new material at SXSW?
AR: We’ll be splitting it up pretty evenly, because honestly these songs are relatively old to us. We’ve been playing most of them for at least eight months to a year but we definitely understand that songs off the first record have some great merit and there are some awesome songs on that record and we’re really stoked on them. With that said, I definitely think the newer songs feel fresher and feel a little more lively and a little more like us, considering that the older songs were some I wrote before the band even formed.