Junior Private Detective sounds like the name of some kind of hardy Nickelodeon TV Show. Is it some kind of hip scene/anti scene thing I’m not in on? Oh no, it’s just a phrase that Bo used to say when someone said something obvious. Good work, junior private detective along the same lines as no shit Sherlock. No hipness involved whatsoever.
The name does kind of remind me of that old cartoon called Inch High Private Eye, remember that?
It was on USA Cartoon Express with Grape Ape, and Foofur, with the cartoon train in the preview. That was cool. Some friends of ours think it\'s a fallic reference and started calling us Little Dicks, but that\'s not our intention at all. It\'s the last thing that Bo and Jason want equated to them.
Do you like the touring aspect of getting bigger and getting your name out? Or do you prefer the familiar faces?
Of course we love familiar faces, it\'s always nice to have the support of your buddies in the crowd but we also love touring and getting our name out. If we had the money to cover it we\'d be on tour all year.
Out of all your songs I like the feel of Horoscope the best, even though I find astrology desperate. Tell me a little more about it.
This is one that Emilie wrote a long time ago and brought to practice one day. We just started layering stuff over it and experimenting putting different parts on top of it. It began as this beautiful sort of singer/songwriter/classical tune, and then evolved as we all threw our two cents in. It has a much bigger feel to the production of that song compared to the rest of the album, and that’s something that we tried to move towards on this new album. Were not as concerned with how are we going to do this live if Emilie puts a couple of harmonies on this because the songs typically come across much, much better live, we\'ve been told.
You don’t see nearly as many female fronts for indie rock bands. Why do you think that is? And have you found it to be a hurtle, a helper or of no significance?
Why are there not as many female fronts? Probably because they\'re too busy breastfeeding and tidying up the kitchen to rock…just kidding of course. I honestly don't know. I think in the big picture it probably has something to do with the fact that most record sales are generated by pubescent boys. These kids probably just relate better to male singers. I could give a long winded answer about sexism in the music industry, but would be talking out of my ass, because I really don’t have much experience in the industry and don\'t understand the insanity of it. I do know that it seems like the music suffers a lot once you bring in corporate types to make a decision about what the target audience wants, but luckily we\'re not at that level in the rock hierarchy and well, that's a different subject entirely. Back to the girl/boy thing. We’ve found it to be a helper. Perhaps it makes people remember or recognize us a little better. We also have a theory that strangers are more apt to offer their floors to us while on tour since we have both girls and guys in the band. That could be total B.S. though, especially since on the last tour we slept in the van the majority of the time. I would like to think that the main significance of the boy/girl aspect is that as individuals we all listen to a lot of different styles of music, which offers a lot of accessibility to people. And that obviously helps. I'm always surprised by the different types of people that like our music. All the teenage girls on Myspace are a surprise. And I wouldn't expect Marci\'s dad to like us, but he loves the last album
When can we expect the new album? And how is it going to be different from what we\'ve heard from you in the past?
We had the luxury of spending much more time in the studio on this recording and we feel that it really shows much more layering, much more thought, just a bigger sound in general. There are a lot more dynamics in the songs emotionally and sonically. A particular song might range from pretty and melancholy to heavy and abrasive. We're really proud of it. Plus, Skyler Norwood, who recorded the album, also took on the role of producer. He really has a knack for getting just the right take out of us. This record would sound much different if Skyler hadn’t been involved. Also, it’s important to note that we only knew each other for about 6 months when we recorded the last album. The new stuff sounds more mature and cohesive.
I've heard a lot of comparisons between the music scene in Portland and the one in San Francisco; do you think this city took you places you couldn’t have gotten anywhere else?
There is this great sense of community in the Portland music scene. 9 out of the 10 bands out there want to help each other out, rather than better you in some way. Also, it seems like the Portland music scene is more open to the kind of music we play. With bands like
Quasi and Viva Voce already paving the way for boy/girl bands, that\'s helped. And there\'s tons of other bands here playing stuff that\'s mathy or using a Fender Rhodes, so it's not such a stylistic shock when we play to an audience in town. For example, we played a show in a club that\'s primarily for punk in the Midwest, and the audience was more confused by us then anything. Afterwards, I had someone say, your stuff is interesting, kind of reminded me of the Doors. Of course, we sound nothing like them, but since the guy was not used to hearing a keyboard in a band, usually just guitar, that\'s what he noticed about the band. Not the song structure or melody. I don\'t think we\'d have nearly the success if we lived in a town like Austin, where most of the bar bands tend to be blues or country. Basically, the city of Portland is a lot more open to quirky experimental rock bands than a lot of other cities, so it fits us very well.
How's living together as a band treating you? It seems like those kinds of situations can hold a lot of inspiration inside of them.
We actually don’t live together anymore. Bo and Marci moved out, and Emillie and Jason stayed for a while. Then we had a couple big parties and noise complaints with threats of eviction, and eventually Jason moved out too. But honestly, while there were a few drunken sessions that wouldn\'t have happened had we lived apart, most of the time at home was spent being domestic, watching Sopranos, playing cards, or sleeping. Practice was still a scheduled event, and we didn't commonly have jam sessions. Most of our songs are very precise and that could be because we don\'t jam out that often. Usually one person will come in with a structured idea, and we\'ll build parts on that, but rarely will we all just improvise. We\'re pretty far from Miles Davis or Phish that way. Although Bo is kind of jazzy and I thought he was a hippy when I first met him. Turns out he\'s more into Built to Spill and Black Sabbath than The Dead.
What mood do you think brings out the best creative aspect of your music do you think?
I think generally our material is generally dark and somber. There are some songs with lyrics that are playful about video games or whatever, but like most art, a lot of the songs were inspired by depression and trying to overcome it. Like you sit down and write when you\'re really sad to vent or whatever. But really, who wants to listen to someone singing about sunshine and lollypops anyway.
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