Mates Of State: TAS In Session
San Francisco's Mates of State, the married duo of Jason Hammel and Kori Gardner, released one of the strongest albums of their career in 2011, the effusively crafted Mountaintops.
Their busy year included a lengthy tour, a stint on "Late Night with David Letterman" and a festive recording of "A Visit from St. Nicholas" for Fuse (along with Robyn, Portugal.The Man, DJ Khaled and more) ... and a visit to The Alternate Side's Studio A.
Hammel and Gardner played a mini-set of songs from Mountaintops for TAS and chatted about their love for Lars Ulrich and why "selling out" is a misnomer for today's musicians. You can listen to Russ Borris' interview with Mates of State in the WFUV archives here.
Russ Borris: [Mountaintops] starts with “Palomino” and [the lyric] is “you know you’re not in hell.” Is that setting a tone for the record right there?
Kori Gardner: Yeah, quit complaining (laughs).
Jason Hammel: Pretty much. It’s, “What are you complaining about?” When you’re in hell, that’s when you can start complaining.
Russ: Musically, you’re always trying to mix in different elements of the albums. The last record you had more concentration on piano and you moved away from that on this one. Was that a conscious decision going into the recording of this album?
Kori: I think at some point we decided the piano was not where we wanted it to be. It wasn’t like we were saying, going into it, [that] this is going to be a record devoid of piano. But we did that. We weren’t inspired starting that way anymore. We found new keyboards and I think that made the record take off. The first three songs on the record are from patches on this keyboard.
Russ: Do you have a name for this keyboard? It’s awesome.
Kori: You don’t wanna know! We have a lot of names for it.
Jason: We call it a “Segway” sometimes too.
Kori: We’re hoping we can add a Segway to the bottom of it.
Russ: That would be tremendous if you could roll around the stage on it too.
Jason: The plan is to dress it up too. Like a robot.
Russ: It would look warmer if it had a face.
Kori: It does the job!
[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJ1x-KcXbOw]
Russ: Did you guys really just drop that Queen Latifah reference in there?
Kori: Yeah!
Jason: Nice! You got it!
Russ: Did “Maracas” name itself?
Kori: You got it. It was the working title.
Jason: We were like, “Why would we change that?” And we thought, what are we changing this to? [And decided] we’re not.
Russ: Does that happen sometimes? You go title first?
Kori: It’s always title last, but sometimes the working title stays there.
Jason: The working title is always so we can remember it. At the end, we think [about] what the song is about and think of a clever title. Or a not-so-clever title.
Russ: Do you write the songs individually or are they all collaborative?
Kori: It’s different every time, but this record we wrote most of them collaboratively in a practice space. We went outside of our box, literally. We left our basement and rented a practice space and decided to do it the old way: practice five hours straight and play together. Halfway through the record we might have split up a little and did some experimentation on songs and passed them back and forth. There’s a couple of ways we do it, but the majority of this was together.
Jason: Ninety or 85 percent of the songs are 50/50. I think, on every record, there’s one from each of us.
Kori: We always throw in one where I really wrote it and [Jason] can you just add what you need to make it work?
Russ: Don’t change it and screw it up. Leave it as it is!
Kori: That’s pretty much how it goes down! Let me have this one!
Russ: Fun is a huge part of what you guys do. What to attribute that to? Musical influences, your personalities or what?
Jason: I think it’s personality. I think we have, I daresay, an optimistic vantage point on life and music is supposed to be fun. Yes, it’s very cathartic and emotional too, but even when you’re down in the dumps, you can lay it all out there and express it.
Kori: We have dark moments too. Everyone does. But you have to dig deep for them. When we think we’ve written a dark song, people are like, “Oh! They’ve written another song about being in love! It’s so happy and upbeat!” And I’m like, “Those lyrics are not happy!”
Russ: That’s the problem sometimes. People don’t go into the lyrics. They just hear a fun, happy-sounding song. They don’t necessarily get the deeper part.
Kori: The best pop songs are actually sad, in a weird way. If you even look back at the Beach Boys — it wasn’t all happy.
Jason: I would even argue that the majority of our songs are dark. There are dark undertones. At least 70 percent of our songs have a sadness to them, even if the chord progressions or the way that we sing them are not.
Kori: We’re analyzing our life and the music is cathartic and a release. We’ve been able to express our little moments through music.
[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MvPSSrL1IE]
Russ: Where do your influences come from?Jason, what about drummers?
Jason: I’m somewhat ashamed to say it, but Lars Ulrich of Metallica.
Russ: There’s no shame! As long as you take out that one record where all the drums were tin.
Jason: No, nothing after Black, for sure! He was a really solid, outspoken guy. Usually the drummer gets the bad rap — you know, shut up and play those tubs — and he was always like, “No, I’ve got something to say.” He was moving forward with the group.
Russ: Kori, what about you?
Kori: It’s hard for me to answer that; I wish I could run down a list of virtuoso piano players. I’m more influenced by people who are really good pop songwriters. Like anybody, I think of the classics. For this record there was lots of Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen and even Cyndi Lauper. Straight-up pop songs or whoever wrote those songs — I’m not sure Cyndi Lauper wrote She’s So Unusual, but that record influenced a lot of the songs. I rediscovered all of these 80s records that I liked when I was a kid. I’m more influenced by people who can put together more than 10 amazing pop songs.
Russ: How do you guys feel you’ve evolved as songwriters over the years?
Jason: I just hope that we’ve evolved at all. We just want to get better at it because it’s what we really like to do. We know that other people who are good at songwriting really affect us and have a big influence on our lives and we just want to be in that group, even if we’re in the minor leagues.
Kori: I think we used to give not as much thought to things. It was more carefree, manic, chaotic parts all thrown together which still has its place and we go there at points. We’ve analyzed how to connect things and really think about structure in a different way. For our evolution, that’s the one thing I can hear that has changed.
Jason: Fluidity. Before it used to be so jarring, all of our parts, because we’d mash them together. Now we [consider] how one part compliments the next part.
Russ: There doesn’t feel like there’s a part out of place on this record. You’ve really fine-tuned it.
Kori: I like that, but I also don’t want to lose an element of surprise. A lot of times, we’ll have two parts that don’t sound like they should go together. Now, [we think] those two parts are strange and don’t go together; now we have to figure out a way to make it less abrupt. That’s what we’re hoping for.
Jason: When we hear a song [in which we] hear the change that’s totally unexpected, but works, well, we’re trying to ride that fine line. Our next song, “Basement Money,” was actually influenced by Cyndi Lauper’s “Money Changes Everything" [ed. note: written by Tom Gray of The Brains].
[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-r_P4LHnCE]
Russ: As working musicians, how do you create, but know that financially, you have to sustain yourself?
Kori: That’s changed a lot, luckily, for a lot of bands. It used to be that you only made your money touring and with record sales, but now there are so many other venues. The song was talking about a lot of things that people don’t want to talk about: you have to sell yourself, in a way. You’ll get a song in a movie and you don’t know if the movie is going to be good. Now our music is represented by this other person’s idea. But then you get enough money from it to stay home for a couple of months and write more songs. It’s a big trade-off, but we’re pretty okay with it all.
Russ: But it’s got to be more daunting for the newbies.
Kori: I don’t think it even fazes new bands. We were raised in a different philosophy. It was selling out and people didn’t do it. You don’t associate your songs with any product or movie or TV show. Now I don’t think the new generation of bands has that weighing on their conscience.
Russ: I don’t think you can watch a half hour of television and not come across a Black Keys song.
Kori: And great! I’d rather hear great bands’ songs in commecials, if I’m gonna watch commercials.
Jason: It gets sticky, but really, it’s more faith-based. You’re really believing in your art, rather than getting a consistent paycheck. When we first quit [our day job] we saved up a bunch of money and thought, we’re going to give ourselves a year. Tour for a year. We have money to pay our rent in case it all goes belly-up. Then we started touring and thought that if you work at it and continue to make good songs — play nine months of shows which we did — it was easy. It was surprisingly easy, as long as we fully committed to it. Things have changed over the last seven years, but at the root of it, you believe in the songs that you’re writing. The money is going to show up somewhere, just as long as you keep working at it.
