Interview: Avers
We were able to sit down with the Avers at SXSW this year and chat about how the band formed and what their thoughts are for the future. The Virginia based indie pop group consists of six members: Adrian, Alex, James, JL, Tyler, Charlie
Interview with the Avers
March 21, 2015
The New LoFi: Where did the idea to start the band come from?
ADRIAN: Something new and try to work with some people and talent we hadn’t had a chance to. James and JL had played in a band previously. and tyler and charlie had previously and alex and I had previously but not all together. never.
TNLF: Were you guys all fans of each others bands? Is that how you came together originally?
TYLER: Yeah, actually I saw Hypercolor which was Adrian and Alex’s band. Yeah, definitely. We had all heard each other play before so it was actually pretty nice to play music with them instead of just listening to them
ADRIAN: It was one of those cool situations where (i don’t know if you’re a musician yourself but) you collaborate with someone for the first time and it just kinda clicks. You’re like ‘oh man, that was sweet, let’s do it again” and we just kept doing it until we had enough material to put out our first record.
CHARLIE: It was a pretty interesting. none of it was rehearsed before going into the studio. It was all kinda born in there. Every song we’ve done has been written in the studio. You know, somebody will bring in an idea or at least something you can get started on. but it’s not like a situation where….
at least every band I’ve been in before this band… where you bring a pretty finished song to the band and then work on the arrangement or whatever. but this… you could have something as simple as a chord progression and maybe an idea for the tune and you can just take it and go.
TNLF: It’s surprising that a band like this has come together in the studio.
CHARLIE: I think also, like ADRIAN mentioned. it’s just really fun. when you get together with this group of people in the studio it’s a lot of fun. we come up with good ideas and i think everyone has bought into the kind of collaborative spirit of this project.
another cool aspect is that everyone in the band is a multi-instrumentalist more or less. Adrian plays drums on some of the song. Tyler, on this new record will be playing keys. he’s got a key riff.
you know, we’re all swapping guitars and bass and singing above and below and all over the place. so that;s really exciting too. everyone throws everything they got into the mix
ADRIAN: It’s like, if you could imagine being in the tracking room and we all lay down the skeleton of the project and then we all come back into the control when we feel good about it. and we sit around listening and all of a sudden it’s like six writers going “I want to try this , I want to try that” and we start working in teams. Yeah, it’s pretty good.
TNLF: Yeah, I think most bands would struggle with that sort of setup and it’s amazing that you guys can come together and record like that and become so successful with that model.
Speaking of success, since it has been so successful and you’ve received such good reviews on your first album and you have a ton of buzz coming into SXSW, what’s going to happen with the band going further? Do you still consider this band a side project?
TYLER: I don’t think we’ve ever really considered it a side-project. It was almost born out of the necessity of having to play these songs because we love them so much, you know what I mean? It was almost like…it had to go there. it was just a natural kind of transition. yeah, I definitely wouldn’t call it a side-project. It’s a band.
TNLF: So what does that mean for all of your respective bands? are any of your other bands over or are they all still alive and you are going back and forth between the bands? How does that work?
TYLER: For Head and the Heart personally, I can’t speak for everyone else, but for Head and the Heart I think it’s more of like you know, we have a lot of time off. we are going to have a lot of spacing between records, so let’s do it that space that we have.
TNLF: Do you all feel the same way?
CHARLIE: well my old band we play like twice a year now. I mean everyone is in graduate school and having kids and all that stuff. so it’s like, that had kind of tapered off to the point of playing maybe ten times a year before and now it’s much more just like special occasion stuff. which is good. everybody’s happy about that.
TYLER: Like you said earlier, we are so committed that it’s not very hard to find that time. we carve that space out for this.
{ coffee machine loudly interrupts our interview in the background }
TNLF: (nervously) I’m not sure how much of this is actually going to record clearly in this place.
TYLER: you can make it up if you want to. just make the whole interview up.
{ everyone laughs }
TNLF: Is there any dress code on stage. I know that some bands like to coordinate, do you have those kinds of rules?
TYLER: No no no
CHARLIE: we try to wear what’s clean. whatever’s clean
TNLF: so now that your debut album has been out for about a year now, are you going to take a break after SXSW?
JAMES: There’s no breaks
CHARLIE: No, we’ve been working on this follow up record befroe we even put out the other record. we kept recording new songs. so we’ve got to go home and finished that.
TNLF: You’ve toured most of North America this past year… are there any plans for doing a European tour?
TYLER: Yeah. we’d love to. it kind of boils down to where we end up with this new record. We have a couple of conversations going on with labels right now and… it’s so hard to get over to Europe without a label backing you. we would really love to.
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Catch the Avers debut album Empty Light on Vinyl at http://avers.shop.redstarmerch.com