photo credit, Aaron Colussi
I had a chance to sit down with Astronautalis before his set at Rock Shop in Brooklyn the other night. We talked music, Halloween, booze, books, and more…
Thanks for sitting down with rock nyc. So, you’ve been touring like crazy, you’ve been here in New York twice in the past few days, but unfortunately you played your Halloween show elsewhere. I know you do a good Vampire (Trouble Hunters video)—what did you do for your Halloween spectacular?
I played in Portland, Maine for Halloween. There’s this really awesome venue that’s also an art gallery that I’ve been playing at for years up there called “The Space,” and every Halloween they bring different musicians together to do cover sets. They asked me to do it and said, “Pick whatever band you want,” and I chose The Clash, so I was Joe Strummer for Halloween. They assembled a band for me and we all got together and did a six song Clash set. Man, I felt like I was eight. Some of the most fun I’ve had on stage in years. I died my hair black, spray died it. It was really ridiculous. We went full bore.
Your live show is known for being really energetic and infused with lots of passion. Other than talk to pesky journalists like myself before the show, what do you do to get going? I know you also do a freestyle segment where you take words from the crowd and incorporate them into a freestyle… how do you focus?
In an ideal situation, which is very rare, like when I get to do really awesome and gigantic tours like when I toured with Tegan and Sara, I get my own dressing room and I can relax, listen to music and just kick it and that is amazing, it’s an amazing thing, but I get that so rarely. So most of the time it’s just find the quietest corner of the dirty club that I can find (I gesture to the area where I am conducting the interview—“Yeah, exactly!”), put my headphones in and just listen to music. Sometimes I don’t get that. At best it’s listen to music and sit still for a while, and at worst it’s, “Well, it’s time to go let’s do the damn thing!” and suck it up blood and guts.
You drink whiskey and iced tea on stage, correct?
(laughs) If I had my preferences, man, I’d drink whiskey and tea all the time—forever. I definitely drink a lot of whiskey on stage, but mostly it ends up being whiskey and water.
Bourbon or whiskey guy?
I tend to drink bourbon—well, I’m a single malt scotch guy, but most of the clubs I play at, if they have scotch, it’s a blended and it’s gahbage, and I don’t mess with that—so it’s Jim Beam or Jameson that I’m generally working with.
Whiskey seems to go perfect with your music. You create these soundscapes where banjo, acoustic guitar, accordion, parlor piano are the norm—it’s not your typical rap fare. You accompany this with a story telling technique that reminds me a lot of Depression-era Americana. I also think your style is in many ways very literary and I was wondering if there are any particular literary influences in your music—favorite authors?
Several. The author that—particularly for the stuff that I’ve been writing the last few years—that has been an inspiration is Mark Helprin. If anybody reads any of his books, you’ll see where I pull a lot of my language aesthetic from. It’s very dense, it’s very poetic, and he’s completely unapologetic about word usage. A book in particular, Winter’s Tale, that he wrote about New York City, is just this monster of a book and it’s so beautiful. I read almost all of his books to music and I read a lot of sections out loud if I can because the language is astounding. For want of a better term, it’s very un-Post Modern. There’s nothing cynical about his writing, it’s very sincere and that’s the thing that people who love him love him for and people who hate him hate him for. He’s not like a lot of what comes out now. And I like the McSweeney’s writers as much as everybody else, but when it comes down to it—while it excites me to read that stuff—it doesn’t inspire me in the long haul, like reading F. Scott Fitzgerald or O. Henry. I definitely have a yearning for a different era of writing.
Your forthcoming collaboration with P.O.S. is actually named after a Fitzgerald novel.
Yeah, and all the songs are actually based off of F. Scott Fitzgerald stories as well. It was a funny coincidence that we ended up recording all of it in St. Paul where Fitzgerald is from. Stef (P.O.S.) had just moved to St. Paul and we ended up recording it at his house, probably a couple of miles from where Fitzgerald was born.
I’m always reminded of Steinbeck and Harper Lee when listening to your music.
A I like Harper Lee though I never got really into Harper Lee. Steinbeck I read a bunch of when I was a kid. It’s kind of a funny story. I had never read any Steinbeck and I was in eighth grade, I was still living in Maryland and I was staying at my friend’s house and he was a popular kid and I was super nerdy and I hadn’t really become popular yet where I was starting to talk to girls and stuff. We were going to sneak out of his house in the middle of the night to go meet these girls behind the middle school and make out. I was so stoked, I had never made out with a girl, I was so pumped about it and we get busted because his little brother ratted us out. My friend told his mom “Look, don’t punish Andy it wasn’t his idea it was all my idea. Just don’t tell his parents.” She said, “Yeah, no problem.” As soon as my mom comes, she tells my mom. My mom was furious and my dad, I didn’t realize it then but I can tell looking back now, he wasn’t really that mad he was sort of proud. My parents went and had a conference and clearly my dad like talked her off the edge. My punishment for sneaking out was that he gave me a stack of four John Steinbeck books and said “I want you to read these,” and I had already read a lot as a kid and I was so confused by it. I had never read any Steinbeck and it was The Pearl, The Red Pony, Of Mice and Men, and The Grapes of Wrath. I remember after reading all four of them being like, “I am such a worthless piece of shit!” There is such gut wrenching, horrifying, terrible stories of humanity and it was such an amazingly effective punishment.
I’ve managed to steer clear of The Red Pony, I hear it’s the most rip-your-heart-out-and-eat-it type thing.
It’s AWFUL! It is AWFUL! If you’ve haven’t read it I won’t give away the dagger, but the dagger is out of control.
You’re working on a new album, will it stick with a similar historical focus?
No, I tend to build a sort of framework to focus the theme of the work and this started after reading A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson and I got really excited by science and I had never really been excited by science; I was always a history, literature, and theater kid in school. I started poring through science books, listening to Radiolab podcasts, reading blogs. It was like learning everything over that I had sort of blocked out of my brain or drank away since high school. It has morphed and morphed and it is still a part, but not nearly as literal as the historical stuff in Pomegranate. The record is going to be about the last seven years of my life when we started touring after college in 2003 to where I am now. That entire arc, the collection of stories. Almost every song I’m making with different people I’ve met through touring, and it’s going to be this kind of mega-collaboration. I’m already about four songs deep into it and probably three more where I know where I want them to go. So December and January I plan to start really hammering them out.
What about your collaboration with P.O.S.?
It’s coming out on Doomtree, it just really depends on their release schedule. I’m hoping for the end of February or beginning with March.
Any chance of an Astronautalis and P.O.S. tour?
It’s pretty likely, whether it happens for this record or later. This is just going to be an EP and we’re going to make a full length later next year.
Any favorite spots in NY?
I try to hit UNIQLO just to stock up. We went back today because my manager wanted to get this jacket but they were sold out. They sold out of a pile of them in three days. The volume of business they must be doing there is insane. I always try to hit Punjabi on Houston near 1st and A. My older brother used to live right around the corner in the LES and that was like a staple for drunkenness. I always try to hit that in the middle of the night.
Tiger vs. Polar Bear?
Polar bear. (Emphatically)
Cake vs. Pie?
(moment of thought)…Pie. Pie.
Bike vs. Skateboard?
Skateboard!
Billy Baldwin vs. Stephen Baldwin?
Billy’s the Christian?
No, that’s Steven.
Steven’s the born again Christian.
Billy is Backdraft and Flatliners.
Oooh. I still have never seen Flatliners. Flatliners was going to be the first R-rated movie my parents were going to let me see and my parents were like, “Yeah, you can totally watch this.” I got five minutes into it and was like, “Nope!” and went up to bed. So Billy scared me when I was five, so Billy wins. Take it Billy. I’m not that scared of Jesus.