Limbeck

This interview with Jon of Limbeck was a lot of fun to conduct. He was a very friendly guy, which I assumed due to the fun nature of their songs. Limbeck are hot off the heals of releasing their new self titled album, which departs a bit from the alt country leanings of their first two albums, but is their best yet. This interview, which took place on May 12 at The Middle East in Cambridge, MA, touches upon baseball, their new album, a comparison between country and punk music, and more.

PL: State your name and something interesting about yourself.
LIMBECK: I'm Jon from Limbeck. I play drums. I actually live in Miluawkee, WI, and everybody else lives in Orange County. I'm kind of pretty spread out from the band.
PL: Are you a Brewers fan?
LIMBECK: Big time. We're #1 right now!
PL: How'd they get to be so good?
LIMBECK: I don't know. I think its a fluke. I was really die hard and going to all their games the last three years, and they were sucking it man. If they won, it was a celebration because it was a little extra treat. But, we never win, so I'm kind of surprised.

(This brought up a long conversation about baseball, the Cubs and the National League Central)

PL: How did the writing or recording experience with your new album compare with the first two?
LIMBECK: The first two were actually totally different from each other as well. Each record has been completely different. The writing experience for the first record was us demoing songs repetitively by ourselves. We went in and actually demoed songs with Ed Rose before doing the record, so we had an amazing amount of research for the Hi, Everything's Great record. For Let Me Come Home, it was super raw, kind of laid back vibe about it. It was recorded on two inch tape and everything was live, so what you hear is pretty much what you get. There are a few overdubs like mandolin, bells, glockenspeil, but even the vocals takes are pretty much live, so everything was really on the fly. We did a quick demo and recorded everything in about three weeks. And this one, we wrote half the record in the studio. We only had five songs written going on, and we wanted to record 13 songs. Thats what we wanted for our band goal. We only had five written, so we'd record during the week, and we'd write and demo over the weekend at the studio. We lived in an apartment upstairs. So, it was really intense to be recording and working all week and then writing and working on songs all weekend until three in the morning.
PL: Was it nervewracking not having having all the songs written?
LIMBECK: Not at all. We were pretty confident writing songs in the studio because thats what we wanted to do. Let Me Come Home was recording on two inch tape, live, but we wanted to really study the tones we were getting. Ed Rose was awesome for getting tones and arranging even. We wanted it to be on the fly and write a lot of it in the studio and for it to be really fresh. So, once we heard the songs and play them live, its really exciting.
I like the new one because we took a lot of time to write the songs and a lot of time to track the songs. We were in the studio for two months, which is a lot of time to spend on a record. But, we did it in two different months. In June, we did one month, we went to Australia in July, and we finished it in August.

PL: Did you have any fears or anxieties while working on the new album?
LIMBECK: Actually, I didn't have any anxiety, but I had fear of us being comfortable writing songs in the studio. I wasn't sure if it was going to work out, so I was pretty fearful of that. As soon as we started writing songs and practicing over the weekend, so it was good to go. Once we got over all of that, there were no fears or anxieties.
PL: Do you have any fears or anxieties touring for this album?
LIMBECK: Yes, because we spent a lot of time on it. We're already getting reviews saying that it sounds like a typical Limbeck record, and it sounds country and uninspired.
PL: I didn't hear much of the country vibe in there.
LIMBECK: We kind of got sick being pigeonholed as having songs about the road, being alt/country or emo/country. We were tired of pigeonholed as that and we wanted to make a record that had a little bit more to offer than songs about us traveling and us actually really liking country and writing and alt country record. There's only two songs that get back to the first two records, but people like to see us as not writing something not groundbreaking or us still writing songs about the road. I think its really piano driven and we tried to make it really sparse and fill in the holes later on. We were really influenced by the Beach Boys as of late, and we really took that to the next level with this record. We wanted to take our influence from The Beatles or the Beach Boys. We had Patrick learn how to play piano for this record. All the keys you hear are from Patrick except for a little bit of organ that this guy Chad did. Patrick really wanted to have a lot of keys and interesting sounds to it.

PL: What do you think it is about country music that is so appealling to punk rockers?
LIMBECK: I have some sort of an idea, but it could be completely my opinion. My opinion is that punk rock has a certain style, a certain sound and a certain attitude, and country has all that too. Punk is kind of a do what you want and drink and have a good time, and I think country is like that too. I think people get tired of the loud kind of punk and the aggressive kind of punk, so they start listening to bastard country and drinking, which is pretty punk rock in itself. A lot of punk bands try to, even from back in the day, like Social D started doing a little bit more twangy thing, so its really cool that people try to pick up on it. I think its aggressive and giving off the idea of being out of control.

PL: Is it hard to keep up with current events while on the road?
LIMBECK: It is. You kind of lose touch with reality. But we get a hotel and watch the news, or we'll pick up a paper while we're at lunch, or other people tell us about little things going on. It goes for everything: movies, other bands' records. We're really into finding new music and listening to new bands. You go out with three bands on tour and you hear them every night, and you don't really go out to a record store. You hear different things that they play and you get into it, but you don't have a lot of money to spend on records, too. If you go record shopping while you're traveling, you can't really buy some things. Its good to pick up a newspaper or watch the news when you get the chance, so you don't miss out on a lot of things when you get home. We're really into catching up on movies. We go to movies whenever we get a day off. We really wanted to go see Grindhouse, but we never got a chance, and it probably won't be in theatres when we get home in a week.

PL: How has the rising price of gas affected you on this tour?
LIMBECK: We come home with a lot less money. After tour, we take whatever we made from merch and the door and however else we make money; we take that lump sum and split it. We would have a lot more money if gas wasn't so high. Jon Cheese, our manager, he's really into the veggie oil gas tanks. He toured with Piebald for a long time. They did a three month tour and they spent $450 on gas. You save a ton of money.

PL: Whats one movie everyone should see?
LIMBECK: Texas Chainsaw Massacre, or...it seems that four movies are van favorites. Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Wet Hot American Summer, The Goonies and The Jerk. Those are the movies we always talk about.

PL: Do you look forward to tour ending?
LIMBECK: On this tour, yes. We've been out for about a week and a half short of four months, so we're really interested in taking a break and relax and settle down and not see each other. We get along perfectly fine, but imagine living with your best friend in a car for three and a half months. Throw drinking in there and not eating for a ten hour drive or not sleeping much. Its really nice to take a break.

PL: Name one album, besides your own, you think all kids should have in their collection.
LIMBECK: I'm gonna have to go with The Beatles Revolver. Can I give three? They're not indie records, but I think they're super important. The Beatles Revolver, The Beach Boys Pet Sounds, and The Zombies Oddesy and Oracle. Those are three records that people should listen to or at least respect.

PL: Why should people buy your new album?
LIMBECK: I never know what to say when somebody asks me that. I'd like to say that we made a record where we're coming into our own niche as musicians and people that write songs together. There's a lot of interesting things in it. We act out a lot of different noises in the record in that song "Wake Up." Rob says, "Wake up, its time to smell the coffee," and I play a coffee cup. In "Word Problems," Rob says "The owner was a man from Texas," and a really Texas-y kind of vibe comes in for about two bars. There's a lot of fun little things that will be pretty interested ear candy to listen to.

PL: Is there anything else you want to say?
LIMBECK: Be good to your friends.

Interviewed by: RF
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