 |
| Yep Roc Records |
The multi-faceted musician formed the creative core of critically-acclaimed New York City-based alternative pop duo Fountains of Wayne, best known for the gold-selling, Grammy-nominated '03 single "Stacy's Mom."
He also had extensive producing, writing and performance credits for a wide range of musicians over 25 years including The Monkees, America, Ivy (for which he was a member), Jonas Brothers, Katy Perry, the Verve Pipe, Lloyd Cole, They Might Be Giants, Darlene Love, The Sounds, Fastball, James Iha and many others.
Schlesinger was nominated for an Oscar and Golden Globe Award for the 1997 Tom Hanks film soundtrack "That Thing You Do!" and eventually landed a Grammy for his work on a Stephen Colbert Christmas album.
We chatted via phone from his place in Manhattan, right before Fountains of Wayne was preparing to play the Coachella Festival in Indio, Calif. for the first time. The band's fourth album "Traffic and Weather" had just come out.
Q: So, what do you think of the festival lineup on the day you perform?
A: We get compared to the Chili Peppers a lot, so we’ll have to overcome that.
Q: Do you enjoy the whole festival vibe?
A: It’s fun to meet other bands and get to play in front of a huge audience. It’s something different and definitely a novelty for us.
Q: I’ve seen you perform several times over the years and I always enjoy when you guys suddenly veer off into various classic rock riffs.
A: That was a thing that actually started on our first record when we didn’t really have enough material. We’d have to stretch to fill up a whole show [laughs]. We’ve done it ever since then. We can’t really help ourselves. We’re a cover band at heart.
Q: The new record came out last week. What is the early feedback?
A: I think people that like Fountains of Wayne would generally like this record more or less.
Q: It’s not like you’ve gone onto some weird tangent like metal.
A: No, that’s the next album. We’re just writing for that now.
Q: What was the reason for a four year gap between albums? Were you too busy with other work?
A: Yeah, it’s a combination of being busy with other things and just having lives outside the band. Also, just needing time to write and get away from it all for awhile. We could probably make it happen a little faster, but not too much. We can only put something out when we feel we’ve got enough stuff. People are always pushing us to pick up the pace and it’s not like we don’t want to, but it just always seems to take awhile.
Q: With this new album, you’ve got another batch of glowing reviews. I bet that never gets old.
A: I’m happy to have people say nice things about us; that’s fine.
Q: A few snarky reviews have said that the band’s sound is aimed squarely for radio play. Isn’t that a good thing?
A: I think that’s a weird perception about the album. I mean our first single is about a lawyer. Sometimes people mistake something that sounds really catchy with something that sounds like it should be on the radio. We don’t sound like anything like what’s on the radio. The one time we got on the radio, it was a total fluke. But for the most part, what’s on the radio has no resemblance to our music in any way.
Q: Do you think one of FOW’s strengths is you sort of have your own musical niche?
A: I do think that’s what any band strives for – something that’s your own. Obviously, hearing lots of influences. I do think we have a little thing we do that’s ours. That’s more important to us than whether we have a smash hit single every time out.
Q: With your songwriting, does Chris still tend to write about real people and you gravitate toward creating characters in the songs?
A: I don’t think it’s a hard and fast rule. Maybe there’s a few more of Chris’ songs that are autobiographical than mine. I think both of our real lives get into the songs in some indirect way.
Q: The scenario in the title track “Traffic and Weather” reminds me of Will Ferrell in “Anchorman.”
A: [Laughs] Too bad that movie already came out. If they do [a sequel], we’ll have to pitch it to them.
Q: Do songs like “Fire in the Canyons” and “Seatbacks and Traytables” usually come from Chris since he’s played in country/rock music bands?
A: Those two are definitely Chris songs. Usually the songs about being depressed are Chris’ too.
Q: Where do usually get ideas from songs? From overhearing conversations?
A: Sometimes a song will be inspired by just hanging around. The idea for “Yolanda Hayes” did actually come to me while I was sitting at the DMV just bored out of my mind. I started thinking how inappropriate it would be to wait in that line for an hour and then hit on the woman when you got up there. Sometimes the stuff is taken from bits of memories.
Q: Is there a real “Hotel Majestic” that inspired the song?
A: Yeah, there is. That’s another song Chris wrote. Whenever we work in New York, Chris and Brian, because they don’t live here, they stay at hotels and that’s a hotel they’ve stayed at a few times. I guess it’s actually not so majestic. Brian went up to the guy at the front desk one time when he was checking out and said, ‘you really shouldn’t call this place the majestic. You should call it the dump.’ That’s where the first line came from.
Q: On “Planet of Weed,” there are a lot of background noises like you’re having a party while recording. What’s was going on then?
A: We put some mikes in the studio room and had a bunch of our friends hanging around. We were recording them the whole time and we cut it up in bits and pieces.
Q: Since “Welcome Interstate Managers” was your most successful album to date, did you feel any pressure in following it up?
A: Not particularly. We kind of saw that as a bit of a fluke. We don’t really know how to change our methods even if we wanted to. We just went about our business. Obviously, we’d like to keep making records. We didn’t think about it in terms of commercial success so much.
Q: “Stacy’s Mom” brought some long-deserved attention to the band.
A: Definitely. It opened all kinds of doors for us and gave us a whole new lease on life as a band. For the most part, the people that are real FOW fans, that’s not even their favorite song by a mile. They probably don’t even want to hear it. It’s probably one of those songs we’ll have to play for the rest of our lives. If people only want to hear [that song], they’re probably not going to come to a FOW show anyway. They’ll just go listen to it on You Tube or something.
Q: I'm curious what your fan base is like in Europe.
A: We have a nice fan base in England and Japan; certain pockets of Europe. We haven’t spent the time over there a lot of bands have. We’d probably be bigger over there if we put in the touring time, but it’s tough. You can only do so much.
Q: What was the experience like working on the soundtrack to the Drew Barrymore/Hugh Grant film "Music and Lyrics?"
A: It was a fun project all around. The director is a super cool guy I got along with really well. It’s fun to get to work with movie stars and get out of my own head for awhile and just write for something more specific. The songs were definitely written for the movie. That was the challenge at the time, to make it fit the script. I only wrote three songs for that movie. I had a few other songs placed in there that were pre-existing.
Q: On that soundtrack's “Meaningless Kiss,” you got ABC’s Martin Fry in to add some ‘80s pop star authenticity.
A: That was sort of just a little treat fan to myself because I’ve been a huge ABC fan for 20 years. We brought him in, partially to sing on it, but also so Hugh could watch his style and listen to his voice and pick up on his vibe.
Q: How did you and James Iha of Smashing Pumpkins end up handling the America album?
A: We had been fans for a long time. I started having an email correspondence with Gerry Beckley. That led to us working on a couple songs together and that turned into doing a whole record together. It was a really pleasurable record to make; very relaxed and spread out over a long period of time.
Q: For many people, America is a guilty pleasure.
A: I’m not guilty about it in the least. I think they just write good songs. If those songs weren’t strong, they wouldn’t still be played on the radio as much as they are. Their classic hits are still radio hits 30 years later.
Q: You got Ryan Adams, Ben Kweller and the guys from Nada Surf and My Morning Jacket to play on the covers of their own songs. Those are two of my faves.
A: Those both came out really good. I was happy to do those and get to work with those guys.
Q: Do you think the special guests lent sort of hipper credence to the album than people would expect from America?
A: (The artists were into it). It wasn’t like a Santana thing, where it was cooked up in a board room. It was really organic. It was us hanging out and saying, 'let’s invite some people down and who can we get?’ We called some of our friends and they called some. It was very casually thrown together.
Q: Got any other Stratosphere Studio projects in the future?
A: I just finished co-producing eight tracks for Motion City Soundtrack along with Eli Janney of Girls Against Boys. I’m real psyched about it.
No comments:
Post a Comment