Category Archives: Interviews

Friday: Greg Laswell @ Rumba Cafe

Posted on May 20, 2010 by | 1 comment

Friday night: Greg Laswell, Jimmy Gnecco (of the band Ours), and Brian Wright perform at Rumba Cafe

Though he’s released 3 full length albums and a few EPs over the past couple of years, Greg Laswell’s music reached it’s largest audience when the San Diego native’s “Off I Go” was prominently featured in Grey’s Anatomy’s season 5 season finale last year. It’s not the first time he’s contributed a song to that show, in fact, he’s had six different songs featured on this show alone as well as countless others on shows like True Blood, CSI: Miami, and Three Rivers.

Laswell’s often been classified as a singer/songwriter and it’s a fair comparison though he’s not just a guy with an acoustic guitar playing coffee houses for tips. His writing style fits comfortably alongside peers such as Josh Ritter, Jakob Dylan, and Cary Brothers and his sound is rounded out by a full band.


Take Everything

Greg Laswell | MySpace Music Videos

Greg took a few minutes while on tour this week to answer some questions I sent his way.

As a child of the MTV generation, do you find it interesting that developing artists are getting exposure on TV in the form of soundtrack placements rather than in music videos?

I suppose. I liken it more to the role that radio used to have, back when they weren’t playing the same 10 artists on every station.

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Interview: Cate Le Bon

Posted on April 29, 2010 by | 2 comments
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MP3: Shoeing the Bones

Few new solo artists captivate my ears strongly enough to stay in my personal playlist rotation for very long. Singer/songwriter Cate Le Bon has done just this for me. With the Welsh countryside and some dark childhood memories serving as a musical backdrop, she manages to join psychedelia and folk quite naturally. (Supporting Gruff Rhys of the Super Furry Animals and getting her album released in the UK on his label Irony Bored hasn’t hurt her track record either.) I was lucky enough to catch up with this lovely gal while at SXSW last month.

DW: You’ve been compared to Nico. Is this something you can’t get away from now or something you’ve just embraced and go with?
Cate: I think it’s out of my hands now. I think everybody has drawn these comparisons and especially if you’re female they look for the closest female match and it always seems to be Nico, which is fine. But I think it’s just that our voices are deep, it’s the only thing I can think of. And I’ve got an awful smack habit… (laughs). No I haven’t.

DW: Do you have a job in Wales or have you been able to become a full time musician?
Cate: At the minute I’ve been lucky enough to just concentrate on the music. It’s so nice to just fully concentrate on the one thing you want to do. I don’t lead a very elaborate life so I don’t need much money. Just want to continue working on it so I don’t have to go back to the cafe or keep answering the phones for awful fat businessmen.

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Interview with James Milne of Lawrence Arabia

Posted on April 13, 2010 by | Comments Off on Interview with James Milne of Lawrence Arabia

Lawrence Arabia just wrapped up an extremely successful run through the U.S. with Fanfarlo and Robert Francis. The band, London-by-way-of-New-Zealand, is lead by George Harrison-loving frontman James Milne and live they comes across much louder than they do on their U.S. debut, Chant Darling, (featuring the fantastic pop ditty “Apple Pie Bed”). Milne says that after a run overseas, Lawrence Arabia will be back on these shores, so do your studying now.

I grabbed James for a quick interview before Lawrence Arabia’s set in Columbus on April 1 (no fooling here!).

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Interview: Surfer Blood

Posted on April 10, 2010 by | 5 comments

MP3: Swim

After stopping in Columbus in November, Surfer Blood returns Sunday night for a Benco Presents show with Turbo Fruits (ex-Be Your Own Pet) and locals Tin Armor at the Summit. Oddly, I spent all of last week in the West Palm Beach area, which is the Surfer dudes’ hometown. So instead of previewing the show by attempting to describe their debut using adjectives like “anthemic” (see “Swim,” above) and “youthful” (“Close contact on the couch was fine/Tell me where to draw the line”), I decided to ask singer JP Pitts a few ignorant questions about the Atlantic side of south Florida and what it’s like to play music down there:

Was it tough for a band like Surfer Blood to gig in the West Palm area? To completely stereotype after spending only a few weeks down here in the past three years, it seems like most of the bars are filled with Margaritaville bands, and the “arts and culture” spots are for upper-class, dress-up types?

A lot of the stereotypes associated with West Palm Beach are true. There is a lot of affluence and Jimmy Buffet pride and there are not a lot of young people in bands. However, like anywhere else there is a group of talented and creative young people that are doing cool stuff, you just have to look a little harder for them. Most bands down in South Florida end up playing a lot of house shows and DIY spaces because there is a serious lack of small venues for up and coming bands.

(More about Florida’s lame waves, Willem Dafoe, Robert Kennedy and the awesomeness of Columbus after the jump…) Continue reading →

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Meet Behind You With Knives (again?) – Saturday 4/3 Carabar

Posted on April 2, 2010 by | 1 comment

Behind You With Knives Photo credit to Gretchen King

MP3: Black Forest

If those three purty faces look familiar, it’s likely because you’ve spied ’em as a part of any one of several bands currently making things happen around town. But if the three of them together kind of rattles a particular neuron or two, you were probably spending some quality time in High Street clubs in the early aughts. See, pictured above is ¾ of Frostiva, childhood friends who put together their first band in 2000 and cashed it in 4 years later. God love ’em for leaving the Frostiva website alive, as it’s a nice look back on days passed- full of references to Little Brothers, Diet, Go Evol Shiki… hell even the Angelfire host is some pre-Myspace shit.

Since the demise of Frostiva, the talents of what is now of Behind You With Knives have been plenty in demand (Leslie – Church of the Red Museum, Flotation Walls, Moon High, Nick Tolford and Company; Faith – The Hills Have Eyes, Deerhead; Sharon – Teeth on Teeth, Guardylou). The reunion of these three as BYWK, only a few months old now, has them going in a little heavier direction. The project is young enough that when I first contacted them, there wasn’t yet any recorded material for review, so based on some thin rumors about how they are going to sound, I fired off some questions for the band. As it turns out, literally moments before this thing hit the ol’ blog page, MP3s of a promised 4-song demo materialized out the ether. The demo (cover art by Angie Redmond below) will be available at their first show on Saturday. Behind You With Knives will share the Carabar stage with Rosehips and American Jobs. (EDIT: American Jobs is a last-minute scratch. Suitable replacement is still in the works….)

Dumb questions and patient answers after the jump.. Continue reading →

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Interview: Fanfarlo

Posted on March 31, 2010 by | 3 comments


(Photos of interview by Alysse Gafkjen)

In anticipation of their Columbus show this week at Outland, I caught up with Simon Balthazar, Amos Memon and Leon Beckenham of Fanfarlo while in Austin for SXSW. I must say it’s a bit intimidating walking into an interview being the face of Columbus to a group of musicians who are not only talented and finding success right now, but foreign to our Midwestern scene… quite literally. (Full disclosure: This is due to the fact that I both write for donewaiting and work for Benco.)

Donewaiting: How was Fanfarlo born and how has it developed into it’s current state?

Simon: Ok, so, the short story is.. Fanfarlo used to be a recording project and it kinda came about just before I moved to London [from Sweden]. We pretty much started releasing 7″ on friends labels [in London] straight away before there was really a band. From that recording project, I started meeting people and now it’s become this dysfunctional family of a band we are today.

DW: How long have you been playing together?

Amos: It’ll be the 4th year, later this year together. Originally we were 6, but now we’re 5 people.

S: For the last year, we’ve been playing with guest guitarists.

Leon: We’ve gone through about 6, haven’t we, in the last couple of years?

A: We’ve chewed them up, spit them out.

DW: London seems like a good place to make music, all things considered…

S: It is and it isn’t. It’s a really active scene, there’s all sorts of stuff going on. There’s a very quick turn around, things get old really quickly. And that’s a downside, I think. It’s good in the sense that there’s always something fresh to be excited about. But me personally, I’ve tried to stay a little bit out of the blog bands, you know buzz bands.

DW: In regards to your album Reservoir, how long did it take from start to finish to get out to the general public?

A: I think it was like 7 months.

S: We spent the first two months deliberating over the sequencing, the name and cover art. It’s funny, I mean we did put it out ourselves but I think if we would have had a label kinda whipping us into shape we would have gone through that quicker. I don’t know how interesting it is, you know, the way you sell a record. But for us it was interesting, it was really fun and encouraging to see how many people would get your record directly from you. Continue reading →

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Interview: The Kissaway Trail

Posted on March 29, 2010 by | 2 comments

I’m suffering from both a Kissaway Trail hangover and withdrawal after seeing the Danish band perform as the opening act for The Temper Trap this past Friday night in Columbus, Ohio. The five-piece (six if you count the bearded and dancing tambourine player) blew me away with a sound that was equal parts Arcade Fire, Mew, Snow Patrol, Sigur Ros, Long-view, Modest Mouse and Polyphonic Spree. Everything built up into huge anthemic crescendos that rained on the close-to-sold-out audience and kept me (and hundreds others) in a 45-minute state of bliss.

After their set was done, I went backstage and threw a few questions at Rune Pedersen (bass), Hasse Mydtskov (drums), and Daniel Skjoldmose (guitars, keyboards). Apologies for the background noise (ie – Temper Trap performing), the dressing room walls were pretty thin.

Rune told me that after this run of dates with The Temper Trap, The Kissaway Trail is heading overseas but will be back in the States this summer/fall and will be performing at some festivals (hmm … maybe Lollapalooza?). You can pick up the band’s U.S. debut release, Sleep Mountain (Bella Union / Yep Roc), on April 20.

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David Cobb’s SXSW band previews

Posted on March 13, 2010 by | 1 comment

Y’all remember David Cobb, don’t ya? David’s Houston Calling column was a staple of the Donewaiting site for a few years before it outgrew this site and spun off to it’s own domain (houstoncalling.net). David’s got the advantage of living in the same state as SXSW and while it’s not exactly a short bike ride from Houston to Austin, he’s still a lot closer to the mayhem than the rest of the DW staff. David has spent the last month interviewing bands appearing at SXSW that he likes (for houstoncalling.net) and bands that he was assigned to cover (for spinner.com). In case you missed out on any of these great interviews, here they are:

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Stalley Interview or.. Hi Columbus & SXSW meet Stalley

Posted on March 9, 2010 by | 7 comments
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This is a Stalley video for his song S.T.A.L.L.E.Y. off the upcoming Ski Beatz Mixtape, 24 Hour Karate School which also features Mos Def, the Cool Kids, Jay Electronica, Curren$y, Jim Jones,Nicole Wray and more, out March 30th. This video has various people rocking Stalley’s trademark beard.

No he isn’t from Philly.

Stalley is from Massillon. Thinks about that for a second. He has already dropped a jazzhop mixtape called Mad Stalley:The Autobiography that would make Scott Storch beg to rejoin the Organix Roots and not be funny and has a bunch of projects with whose who in modern Low End Theory land on deck.

But he isn’t from Philly or Queens.
Fucking Massillon.

Stalley is performing in Austin for South By Southwest this year:

March 18-SXSW Urb Magazine Showcase Light Bar,

March 19-SXSW  Last Rights Showcase Firehouse Lounge .

March 20-SXSW Kenny Dorham’s Backyard.

For this interview, we talked Massillon sports, Hip Hop, Islam, Ohio weather, Jamaica, J-Rawls, and mainly how the fuck someone goes from small-town Ohio to being Dame Dash’s latest discovery. You should read it. He is from Massillon and is in a rap group with Mos Def, Curren$y, and Jay Electronica called Central Edge Territory.

Have you been to Massillon?

ME:We are in Columbus, which is close to Massillon. I know you got you’re thing going on in Cleveland with Terry Urban and them. But I’m going to try to get Columbus up to speed. You grew up in Massilon your whole life?

Stalley:I grew up in Massillon until High School  I left Massillon when I went away to college That’s when I left.

So you played for the Massillon basketball team. Sports is big up there uh?

Yeah. Football is huge. As everyone in Ohio usually knows. If they do know about Massillon that’s what they know is football Continue reading →

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Posted in Columbus, Interviews, SXSW Blog, Wes Flexner

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We lost another great one: RIP Mark Linkous (Sparklehorse)

Posted on March 7, 2010 by | 5 comments

Rolling Stone is reporting that Mark Linkous, the mastermind behind Sparklehorse, took his own life on Saturday. This is terribly sad news and comes just months after Vic Chesnutt (who had worked with Linkous in the past) killed himself. And, as in Chesnutt’s case, just a look at song titles and a listen to lyrics reveal that Linkous made no secret about his sadness – “Heart of Darkness”, “I Almost Lost My Mind”, “Sick of Goodbyes”.

Linkous was one of the first musicians I ever spoke to for my old site, Swizzle-Stick, and I found him to be a very interesting and enjoyable person to talk to. You can read that interview, done back in 1999, over on AtomicNed.com.

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