With a most-wonderful concert-going partner, we showed up at WOW Hall to find Kenny himself working the merch booth. I perused the wares and shot the shit about his Styrofoam collaborations and the previous night's show in Portland. As in the interview, Kenny was incredibly personable. I asked about the Tylenol sponsored split EP they did with White Magic called Ouch: Songs of Hurt and Healing, which I had never heard. He picked up one of the CDs and handed it to me. "Take it," he said "It's got a neat alternate version of 'The Postman' on it." Rad.
Showing up a bit late, we missed the first opening band, which I think was called Yeltsin, but managed to catch Verevin, an all-female attack. I had listened to some of their stuff on their myspace page (which I just spent 4 minutes looking for, but couldn't find it -- sorry) and wasn't that impressed, but live, they were pretty effing good. The rhythm guitarist doubled as a cello player, and we all know that female cello players are hot by nature.
Halfway through Verevin's set, these two middle-aged women showed up. One was wearing Doc Martin's with a skirt and one had "Jeremy-era" Vedder hair and a leather jacket. I odn't like to pass such harsh judgements, but It'd be safe to say that these women were fierce lesbians. Throughout Verevin's set, which was prety mellow on the whole, these women kept yelling "ROCK!" and "You go girl" and hooting at the band. I'm al for yelling at shows, but this was totally uncalled for -- it was fucking up the experience for everyone else. It was so bad that all the indie kids kept making eye-contact with each other and rolling their eyes. Eye contact is not something their are good at, either.
Anyway, after about 20 minutes of this yelling, during a particularly quiet part of a song, this lady does a 15-second "Woooooo" at the band, at which point I lose it and yell "SHUTUP" with a dramatic pause between the 'shut and the 'up.' I must have been like six feet away from this lady. Indie kids then made eye-contact with me and gave me an approving head-nod. Indie kids aren't good at eye contact.
Prior to the show, I had exchanged a few text-messages with Kenny about a song-request. At first, I wanted them to play "Fool Around" from Promise of Love, but he said that they hadn't practiced that one in awhile. I responded with "Million Young" from Know by Heart and he said maybe, that they'd practice it during soundcheck.
The American Analog Set finally took the stage around 10:30. For this tour, they had their friend Chris, who helped record their latest album working the mixer. The sound was superb. This was the first time that I'd heard a band that sounded exactly-like their recordings. Except for a few slip-ups, it was damn near perfect. Along with my gorgeous concert-going-counterpart, I was perched a mere four feet from the stage.
About halfway through their set, Kenny spoke into the mic "Where's my man Eric?"
A tad bit embarrased, I meekly raised my hand, which caught his eye.
"Oh hey," he said. "This is for you -- thanks." and proceded to bust into a wonderful version of "Million Young."
Ending the set with an incredible (and extended, if my natural clock is any indicator) version of "We're Computerizing" with a callback to the end of "Modern Drummer," it did seem a bit surreal.
Definitely one of the best concert-going experiences of my life, we left the show and proceded to make the trek back to Corvallis, smiling the whole way. Perfect.
Andrew Kenny interview transcription (04:00pm_10_25_2005)
How is the tour going thus far?Well weâre just three days into it, at least the US portion of it. Japan and Europe were awesome, we had a great time. Weâd been to Europe before but it was our first time in Japan.
How were you received in Japan?
We played with Her Space Holiday, who, they say are âbig in Japanâ â they had been there a few times before so perhaps that was good and bad. It was definitely a âHer Spaceâ kind of crowd but we were on the same label and people who are âin the knowâ are aware that we have partied and toured together in the past. People knew that we were âfamily,â so we were received very warmly, but I kind of felt that we were playing shows that were a good bit bigger than we would have been playing on our own. Overall, we were received very well and I was very pleased with the tour â but we werenât on our own dime the whole time.
I know it's lame, but how would you describe the band to an unaccustomed listener?
If Iâm talking to someone who knows a little bit about the band or the circles we run with, Iâll say âmellow rockâ or âmellow indie rockâ with an emphasis on rhythm and melody. I might use our instrumentation to describe us a little bit â percussion, vibraphone, electric piano, organ with guitar bass and drums to back it up. But, if Iâm talking to a friend of my momâs, Iâll say âwe sound like Fleetwood Mac, except without the ego.â
I was amazed to find out that you study biochemisty at Columbia
Actually, my undergrad was molecular biology, which is kind of really what Iâm all about, but my PhD lab was a biochemisty lab and had I decided to continue and not make Set Free, I would have been working on a biochemistry degree. Thatâs what I do â Iâm a good scientist. Itâs the only thing Iâve ever done in my life that I feel like Iâm good at.
Not to boost your ego at all, but I think you are also pretty good at writing songsâ¦
(Laughs) Well, Iâm okay â Iâll say I definitely benefit from the help of my crew. Iâll say âwe couldnât do this without each other,â but especially I couldnât do this without the help of Mark, Lee, Sean and Craig. Iâve played shows by myself and it always makes me long for a band. My crew has been playing together for a long time and a more appropriate band for the type of music that I make, I couldnât find it â they are awesome.
As far as a âone man wrecking crewâ type thing, Iâm a much more capable scientist.
How do you manage to switch gears between music and science?
Unfortunately, I wish it was easier to do both and just pop it back and forth, because the things I like about science are the same things I like about music -- Repetition, attention to detail -- the things I like about recording are very similar to the things I like about molecular biology. A linear DNA molecule is a lot like an analog tape. Putting songs onto tape is a lot like the introns and exons in a gene. In recording, thereâs space, verses, choruses. You get things out of order just a little bit and things donât make sense at all â if you donât have the drums synced up with the music, nothing makes sense. They are both very similar models.
I wish I could do both in life because I love them both so much, but really, science is a 12-hour-a-day job and it doesnât leave much time to make music in a way that you can be serious about it, or at least honest about it.
Iâm just not a very quick musician, it takes me awhile to write songs and it takes me awhile to kind of think about how I want to record them or present them. Iâm a very patient kind of songwriter and thereâs really no way I could do both. I had to leave school in order to make this record and that was kind of it.
Was that a tough choice to make, the music versus science?
It was definitely the hardest decision Iâve ever had to make. On tour for Promise of Love, in the summer of 2003, we had this six week tour and I was thinking the whole time âdo I want to make music?â â in which case, when we get back from tour I need to think about writing songs, making a practice schedule and getting everyone back to Austen to record or âdo I want to be a scientist?â Iâm a year into my PHD and Iâm having a great time, my grades are awesome, I just got accepted into the lab that I wanted to join, I got the scholarship I wanted. Everything was all thumbs up.
I wish I was the kind of person who could look at a decision like that and think âno matter what I do, something I really want to do is going to happenâ but unfortunately, Iâ, the type of person who looks at a situation like that and says âno matter what I do, I have to give up something I love.â
Honestly, Iâm glad you chose the music routeâ¦
Yeah, me too. I mean, Iâm getting older and I know I canât do this forever. Iâm glad that I could make something that I still enjoy, that I think is beautiful. Iâm glad that after all this time of touring and making records, music still matters to me. I did the right thing â thereâs a science career for me in the future.
How is the Arts and Crafts label treating you?
Theyâve been pretty good. They are friends out ours â they are good guys. They are very realistic about the potential The American Analog Set, and so are we. They arenât going to turn us into another Broken Social Scene. They know that weâre not going to sell 100,000 records, and we know that â or if we do, it might take us five albums.
I donât want to call it the âtwilight years of the band,â we still want to keep recording and having fun together, but they know that beyond this album, weâre not going to be doing a lot of touring or play a lot of live shows, so they know whatâs going on.
After I read the rumour about the after-tour disbanding, it made me listen to Set Free in a whole new light.
I will say that Mark, Lee and I talked about our next recording thrust and what direction we want to take the band in and what we want to do next. Seeing how weâre not going to have to play live, I think itâs time to make it a little bit different.
In many ways, Set Free is our last record much in a way that The Golden Band was our last record. After Lisa left and Tom and Sean joined, it was time to flip the script as much as a âlimited scopeâ band like us can. Weâve changed things up a lot. I think the next thing we do will be similar to that â time to switch things up a little bit. Approach recording in a different way, approach writing in a different way.
How has the songwriting changed on this record?
I wish I could say that Iâve just thrown a whole new whammy on the process, but really, I donât try to make the songs similar or different then anything else Iâve done â whatever comes out, comes out. Now, what the band does with it changes a lot.
When I listen to the demos for this record and compare them to the demos for Promise of Love or Know by Heart, they are pretty similar. Maybe I used a different drum machine but basically, youâd be hard pressed to distinguish them.
I did spend a lot longer working on the lyrics for this record, just because I wanted it to be âmore thought out,â that was a big switch on this record.
This is the album Iâm most proud of lyrically, but thatâs kind of the case with every album weâve done to date. My voice was not important on the first couple of records. Eventually the lyrics kind of caught up with how loud Iâve put the voice. Iâve hit the zone where I like the way my voice sounds on the record, I like the lyrics and Iâm pretty much satisfied with the way that it is. None of the lyrics make me cringe, and even if they are kind of cheesy at times, they are honest and they are real.
The mixing on this album is superb, is that due to recording in Chrisâ studio?
Except for the backing vocals on âSheâs Half,â the rest of the vocals were all done in my apartment in Brooklyn.
I go crazy these days recording vocals â I canât make someone else sit there through multiple takes over the course of a couple hours, thatâs just not fair. Iâm the first to admit that they arenât getting any better â they just have to be âwrongâ in a certain way for me to like them. Really, the only things I end up liking about the records are the after-the-fact accidents. I have to slip up in the right way to make it cool down the road.
You recorded part of this album at the infamous âLegend house,â correct?
Right. Thatâs where we recorded the very first album.
Kind of full circle, huh?
Yeah, for about three weeks out of the year, my grandparents make the trek to Arizona and I always housesit for them. I thought âthis is exactly what happened on the first record, so letâs do it again,â so we set up the studio in the original house.
If you could go back ten years, to when you first started recording the debut album, what would you say?
âThis is a sickness, quit nowâ or maybe âIf youâre gonnaâ do it, do it â donât pussyfoot around and take years between records. If you really want to make a life for yourself in music, you should spend your life doing it.â
I wish had been a little bit more serious about it younger â Iâm 34 and my band is extremely tired and thereâs always going to be the feeling like weâre âthe little band that could, but didnâtâ because weâve just been friends that make music instead of a band that makes a career out of it.
Wait, Iâll take that back â the only reason weâve stayed together is because weâre friends. And I couldnât do any of this without their help.
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