Interrogation: Matt Barrick (The Walkmen)
You were in Australia in November and then Seattle in January.
We just did a little tour in Australia in November [they played a festival as well as some shows with The National] and then most of December we were in Seattle at this place Bear Creek [recording studio]. It’s sort of out of the town. It was a nice place.
How do you handle a recording session? Do you go in with stuff already written or do you just go in and start jamming around?
We try to pretty much have the songs ready when we go in. We went in with like 30 songs.
Before the recording session, you’re in Philly, the guitarist is in New Orleans, the other guys are in New York, how do you collaborate?
There’s a lot of emailing. Each record we work differently because people move around. Paul [Maroon] the guitarist writes the majority of the music. And Hamilton [Leithauser] the singing. A lot of it comes together when we work in pairs. Paul and I would demo stuff, and then Paul and Walt [Martin, organ/bass] would demo stuff. Paul would play with Walt and Hamilton in New York. A lot of little groups, and then if there’s a demo Ham likes he’ll sing over it and him and Walt work on the lyrics together. We don’t practice very much as a group. The smaller groups are easier, because when you get five people in a room starting from scratch….
What’s the process of you whittling all those songs down to an album?
You start with the ones you think are best. You sort of just go through. You write them on the big board and as you work and work you just realize which ones are better than others.
Your albums have a cohesiveness. During the recording session, do you think about if a song goes well with another song? Do you think in terms of an album?
When you write a song you think about what you’re going to need on an album. We definitely think about things as albums. That’s the way we’ve always worked. And that’s how we like to listen to music. You pick the songs you want on there and it’s a record, and then—this happened last time—the record companies want bonus tracks, so it’s like two of the songs you didn’t like as much are now on there. In iTunes it’s basically part of the record now.
You’ve been playing together a long time. Do you feel your sound has changed?
Yeah, I think it’s changed. It changes from record to record. It’s hard to distance yourself from it. Maybe it all sounds the same, I don’t know. It definitely has a certain aesthetic that probably carries through. The first record [Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me is Gone] we were just figuring things out. We were messing around and experimenting a lot. So that had a big role in how the record sounds. The next record [Bows and Arrows] we were just trying to rock harder, I guess. The record after that [A Hundred Miles Off] was kind of a dud. We were trying to change our sound and be as different as possible from before. I think finally with You & Me we worked a lot harder on that record.
How would you describe the new record?
The process was really different. We worked with Phil Ek, who’s a producer. He’s worked with The Shins and Fleet Foxes. We’ve never really done that before; we’ve worked with engineers, but we’re basically running the show. Working with a producer this time was pretty good. He’s really great at what he does, he’s very meticulous. I think it was good for us because the record sounds better than anything we’ve done. Our sound is a little scrappy and he definitely tightened it up. It still sounds like us. A lot of those older recordings, we’d get home and they’d sound a little crazy; the bass is too loud, the drums are too washy. He really made sure we were on time and in tune, stuff like that which we never would have thought of before.
Is that why you went all the way to Seattle to record?
Mainly because of Phil. We had heard the Fleet Foxes record [Helplessness Blues] and we thought it sounded really good. The sound quality was great so we were talking about working with Phil, and sort of randomly he called our manager and asked if we wanted to work with him. He liked us but he’s friends with the Fleet Foxes guys and they’re fans of The Walkmen.
You recorded with Sharon Van Etten recently. Is there a community among indie musicians?
We’ve been around for so long, we just know a lot of people, just from playing shows. It’s friendly. Aaron [Dessner] from The National produced that Sharon Van Etten record [Tramp] and we knew them from a long time ago. They opened for us on a tour. There’s a lot of bands that opened for us that then we have to open for. [laughs] At a lot of festivals you run into people. I play on ¾ of Sharon’s record. I don’t really do that kind of thing. I had played on Alec Ounsworth [Clap Your Hands Say Yeah singer]’s solo record a long time ago because of my friend Quentin from Mazarin—we had toured with them a long time ago, they’re not together anymore—he and Alec were working on this solo record Flashy Python. So I played on that a little bit. It’s a little weird. With The Walkmen you’re part of the process the whole way through with the songs, and it’s just different to come in later. I guess they want my style, but it’s different music so you have to play to the music. With Sharon, Aaron had called me and she was a Walkmen fan, and they came down to Philly and recorded a couple of days in Fishtown. I heard a few of the songs ahead of time, and I went in and a lot of it had been recorded already so I just listened and played along with it. And it was going very quickly so they kept playing me more and more songs. So in two days we did like 10 songs or something.
Three of you were formerly in Jonathan Fire*eater. How did you transition to The Walkmen?
Me, Walt, and Paul, who were in Jonathan Fire*Eater, we wanted to keep playing music together [after Jonathan Fire*Eater broke up] but we didn’t have a singer. We all went back to college and we decided to start a studio [Marcata Recording]. Once it was built, Ham and Pete [Bauer, bass/organ]’s other band, The Recoys, broke up. Hamilton is Walt’s cousin, so we tried that and it went pretty well. So shortly after the studio was up, we started focusing on the band.
Looking back at Jonathan Fire*Eater, did you learn anything?
It was a very volatile personal situation. With The Walkmen, from the get-go, it was a lot more mellow.
Do you think that was because there wasn’t pressure on you from recording contracts?
No, we didn’t really care much for that stuff. I think we probably should have cared more. I think we made a lot of stupid…we were very young. That’s as good as I can put it. We’ve never been good at the music business side of things. We just sort of plow ahead in our own way and hope things work out. We do the music the way we want to.
You started playing with some of these guys in high school. Did it ever cross your mind this would work out?
I didn’t really think about making a living. We started pretty young. When we were in 7th grade we were this tall and in a ska band and the local club promoter [at the 9:30 club in Washington, DC] I guess thought we were pretty funny, so she had us open for Lenny Kravitz. This was before he was huge. And we opened for Fugazi at Fort Reno. We grew up going there because they had concerts every week or two. It was a bit ridiculous. It was us and Fugazi. We were a novelty act. The Toasters, a New York ska band, were playing at American University and we snuck out to go see them play and one of the guys [Stewart Lupton, who went on to be the lead singer for Jonathan Fire*Eater] went back to talk to The Toasters and they let us open for them there, that night.
What did you listen to growing up?
The Specials and The Clash. Sex Pistols. Bad Brains and that kind of stuff. And then I got into the whole DC scene, like Fugazi. It was a pretty unique place to grow up. There were all these bands and there was a huge thing going on and it had this sort of political edge. All the shows they had were all ages, so there were a lot of younger kids there. Nowadays I listen to a lot of older music, 50s and 60s music,some older country. I’ve gone through a lot of different phases. I’m a big fan of the Fleet Foxes, I’ve been listening to that a lot. Touring with them was great. They’re really a step above.
Tell me about touring.
The shows are fun, but that’s a very small part of what you’re doing. We pretty much do everything ourselves, even set up the stage. We travel light, in a van with the five of us and a sound guy. I do most of the hotel booking. There’s a lot of driving. Every now and then you get to go to an interesting place you’ve never been. Playing old theaters is always nice. Usually it sounds better, you get the big reverb sound. People from clubs are very surprised when we show up and do everything ourselves. We opened for the Kings of Leon in England at this enormous stadium and we drove up in a little rental van with a little drum set and two amps and the security guys were laughing at us. We just don’t have a lot of stuff. My drum set is tiny. We’ve got a couple guitars and a keyboard. We’re all trying to support ourselves and it’s not that easy. So, you know, we have to keep costs down. I think it’s part of the reason why we’re still together, because we do all of that stuff for ourselves. We’re a very rare segment of music: just making enough money. We’re a middle-class band.
How would you describe your style as a drummer?
I don’t know. Sloppy.
The Walkmen have been around for a long time. Where does the inspiration for new songs come from?
It gets harder every time. You’re always—even if it’s not noticeable—trying to sound different than before.
What’s the future for The Walkmen?
That’s a hard question. We take it one year at a time. Ten years ago, we probably wouldn’t have imagined that we’d still be playing today. This new record is probably our best. There’s always rough spots, but you just keep going.
Where did the name of the band come from?
It was a silly name. Song titles and record titles are always the last thing you do. Same with this. We had our first show at Joe’s Pub [in New York] and we had a list of silly names and needed a name for the show and just sort of picked it off the list. And here we are.
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