Oregon Music News

Touring on and off for the last few weeks, Portland’s And And And has made it as far south as San Diego and back. This Friday the five-piece will hit up Seattle before returning to Oregon for the record release party of their new 10-inch EP, Lost, on Tuesday, February 14th (Valentine’s Day!), celebrating with a free, all-ages show that kicks off early (5pm) at the Record Room.

Then it’s Sam Bonds Garage in Eugene on Friday, February 17th with Aan and Father Figure before the big PDX party at the Doug Fir on Saturday, February 18th with Aan and The Blimp.

X-ray album cover: One of many custom die-cut album covers for Lost.

And And And’s first-ever vinyl release, available through Exploding Green Records, ”consists of six songs recorded during the spring of 2011 by Eric Early and Michael VanPelt of Blitzen Trapper,” with songs centering on “the themes of alienation, concealment, and becoming ‘lost’ in the confusion surrounding everyday life,” and ranging stylistically ”from lo-fi garage pop to folksy ballads with clarinet or trumpet.”

OMN had the chance to talk with the band before its performance at the Tin Can Alehouse in San Diego.

What has And And And been up to lately?

We just started this tour a few days ago, our van exploded on the drive, so that sucks. We had to cancel our first show. But we’re touring with Death Songs. They actually just released on tour a 7-inch that they recorded at the same place we just recorded ourselves. They won’t be at the Portland show unfortunately…

This guy [Berg Radin, guitarist] rescued a baby from a burning car. We witnessed the most horrific car accident I’ve ever seen outside of Los Angeles. There was this silver car that went out of the gas station and this blue truck clipped the silver car. Tore the whole front of the car off and flipped in the air, like ten feet in the air, and it rolled three times and clipped another car and the other car flipped. It was the most gnarly crash we’ve ever seen.

You guys saw this all going down? Were you driving when this happened?

No, we we’re at the gas station hanging out, getting some drinks. And right when it happened Berg and Bim [Ditson, drummer] were gone. I see them running across the highway and I guess Berg pulled kids out of the car. And one of the kids is like, “Who are you?” and Berg said, “I’m with your mom!” It was really bad but everyone got right out of the cars, the kids were standing up–no broken backs, very minor injuries.

That’s wild! Crazy start to the tour! So, before the tour started, you all have been working on some new music, right?

We have a bunch of new music and a full-length in the works. We just recorded a short album, four songs, we’ll be releasing it on 7-inch.

And that’s different than your most recent 10-inch Lost?

Yes.

[Word from Bim Ditson is that next, still-nameless release will come out around May.] 

Trying out any new elements with this new music?

It’s a lot darker and… it’s a step up for us, we are just really proud of it! It was a direction that we really wanted to go. But before, in Portland we just had a 10-inch released. The 10-inch is our first vinyl, we recorded that last spring with Eric [Earley] and Michael [VanPelt] from Blitzen Trapper.

Did Blitzen Trapper collaborate at all on the EP?

They actually produced it, and they don’t do it a lot. But our first couple albums we recorded ourselves.

I’m curious where the title from one of And And And’s first albums, We’ll Be Better Off With The Plants, came from.

It’s one of Tyler’s lyrics, when Tyler [Keene] was in the band. One of the songs had that in the lyrics, and Nathan [Baumgartner] picked that out.

Any new influences that made it onto the new record?

The band went through a pretty drastic change when Tyler moved on. And we kind of reformed it inside-out. It’s like a rebirth, we’re more together. I think it’s more collaborative with the parts; Nathan mostly writes the bones of the song and we fill it in, and before that Tyler would write everything basically. So, for this we wrote our own parts the way that we wanted to do it.

Watch And And And live from Peter Criss’… err, Bim Ditson’s living room via Into The Woods:

Not exactly. Nathan would really develop it on the acoustic and sing it and have pretty much the whole structure down. Usually, he develops it for a while. I mean he’s [Nathan] always playing songs around us and we’ll be like, “Let’s play that one.” It’s usually super quick, once we get it to the point that we want to try to do it as a band… everybody knows what they want to do with it.

When you take your studio work and adapt it to the live show, is it a seamless process putting that all together?

It is kind of the exact opposite. We really enjoy our live shows and the recording process up until now hasn’t been capturing it really for us. And now, we’re in a studio where we can record live all together and then we can overlay more stuff. But the main burst of it is something that’s capturing the live essence of what were doing.

So, does that really come out on the EP you’re releasing?

On the new 7-inch it will. I mean a lot of the songs on it are songs we’ve been playing for quite some time. It’s really reflected by our live performances because they are exactly how we play them live. For instance, “She’s Got A Gun,” that’s on the new album and it’s also from We’ll Be Better Off With The Plants. And it’s a night and day difference.

Listen to “She’s Got A Gun” from Lost:

It’s going to be “bone” rock. We’re really excited about playing it, it’s going to be really energetic. It’s off of our longest break from playing in Portland in our history, ever. So, it will be super fun to come back and play the Doug Fir where it sounds good.

When playing live, do you guys like to leave room for improv?

We like to keep it short and sweet most the time. It is to the point. There is very little improvisation. Ryan [Wiggans] and Berg have a couple parts to expand on because Berg’s the lead guitarist and Ryan does a lot of intricate guitar, trumpet,  and instrumental work. So some of that stuff is pretty free-form at times, but there’s no kind of extended solos or improvisation stuff. We just write short structured pop songs. Keep to our bread and butter.

When did music start taking over your guys’ lives?

Berg: I grew up with an organ and guitars in my house but I was never into it. But I thought I could get into it when I got this bass guitar, and I met these dudes that let me play a bunch of John Mayer covers with them… So, then I lost interest again. And when I started hanging out with Nathan and Ryan, I started getting interested in doing more stuff. We started making really crappy little pop things. So I didn’t really get into it till my 20s. Nathan, Ryan, and myself started a band in Eugene. That was a big learning process for me. I was just learning how to play they keyboard–I pretty much only played black keys or white keys.

Bim: I was born into it. My mom was a music therapist and a flute major; I was home-schooled. My whole growing up was playing instruments. In my family when you’re five, you pick an instrument and then you play it. It was all classical and Celtic traditional. So, I was always consumed by it. And then I got into punk rock and met these guys. My rebellion was to get a drum set and smash the crap out of it.

Nathan: Ryan, Jon, and myself all grew up together on the coast and played in a few bands together. It took several years before we really got into it.

With a lot of different backgrounds was it hard to pick a direction to go toward with your music?

It’s not really hard, I think. Our songwriter pretty much takes over and tells everybody what would be best for the song. And then, our skill levels are really different. With what works and what doesn’t–we all seem to agree. I think basically, we all have our own role and we each know and respect that. There’s no bickering over it. We’re all really fortunate because we get along with each other. I can’t remember having a disagreement about how a song should go–maybe once or twice.

I saw your video for the song “Is It Any Wonder” [below]. Have any more in the works?

We just filmed another one with the same guys. The video should be coming out the same time as the Doug Fir show, so there may be a premiere of it then. It’s for the song “I want More Alcohol.” Shot a crazy weird video. “Is It Any Wonder” was a student project though.

Since you guys started, what has been the biggest challenge in getting your music out there and building an audience?

We were doing two to three shows a week for a year and it was exhausting and expensive–to take all that time just plugging in the work really. It all kind of fit together pretty well, but we just had to plug in the man hours, you know, put in the work with no guarantee of a reward. It does take over your life and everything. It is like having a girlfriend basically–an extra girlfriend. And you can’t have a girlfriend if you’re in the van, because of this constant trail of really attractive women that never want to talk to you again. It is like playing Super Mario, being in a band. You can win it, but you didn’t win–you’re just going to play it again. It’s fun, and it takes over your life, and then you’re 30.

Three upcoming opportunities to see And And And: Valentine’s Day (Tuesday, February 14th) at the Record Room for free, all ages, 5pm. Sam Bonds Garage in Eugene on Friday, February 17th at 9:30pm and Portland at the Doug Fir on Saturday, February 18th at 9pm. The last two shows are 21+.