Wild Child on How Songs Evolve over Time, Hometown South by Southwests

Since their debut in 2011, Wild Child has become a staple in the Austin, Texas indie scene, but stolen hearts around the world with their endearing ukulele melodies, honest lyrics, and charming live performances. Sweeping the festival circuit this upcoming summer to perform their latest effort, Fools, the folksy six piece is continuously on the rise. 

Before performing their first of three hometown South by Southwest showcases, founding duo of Kelsey Wilson and Alexander Beggins (who may or may not be newly engaged) sat down with Transverso at local favorite, Swan Dive, for a chat about their latest album, touring, and the inspiration behind it all.

Director: Christian Sorensen Hansen Artist: Wild Child Album: The Runaround (2013) Label: The Noise Company Purchase on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/the-runaround/id689505418 New album 'Fools' out now.

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TRANSVERSO: Fools came out in October, how’s that been going?

KELSEY WILSON: It’s going great, we have a lot of really good festivals lined up because of it.

I’ve heard third installments of anything, whether it’s an album, TV series, book, is typically harder to write. Was this true for Fools?

WILSON: Writing has never been an issue for us, that’s something that has always been there. With the first record we did it all ourselves. We rented equipment and figured it out. For the second record we did it professionally in a studio with a producer, like a nine-to-five kind of thing. This last record we found our favorite parts of both of those and just used them. We were in a studio but we could be there all night and we were just with homie producers, so at 2 AM if I was like, “I wanna do vocals right now!” I could.

How has Fools changed your live show?

ALEXANDER BEGGINS: Well, it’s kind of a curse because we just want to play all the new songs we just wrote, but we have to play a back catalog, but it’s been good and I think we’ve written a lot for our live show in mind. There are bigger songs, some more crowd friendly foot-stomping tunes. It’s weird how your live shows can dictate what you write.

What inspires Wild Child as creative individuals? 

WILSON: Other people. It’s always about experiences we’ve had with other people, we can only write about exactly what’s happening. It’s always straight from the journal, which makes it kind of hard because it’s extremely personal and really honest but we cant write something that we don’t agree with entirely and feel entirely. So, yeah it’s always just exactly what’s happening which is funny because then you sing about those tiny ass moments for the next two years every day and it’s like, "I’m still talking about that?"

You’re forced in to remembering those small moments repeatedly.

WILSON: And you have to get right back in that headspace every time you sing it, and Fools is pretty extreme.

Wild Child came together as a band from writing about break ups and situations like that, so is it hard to perform those songs over and over again even after those feelings have passed?

WILSON: After awhile they start to mean different things. You can attach songs that we wrote four years ago to different people. We wrote a song four years ago and still to this day we’ll be playing it live and be like, “That’s what I meant - that’s what that means - I get it now.” So they’re constantly evolving the more we experience and the more that we play them.  It’s not actually always the same, which is cool.

It makes the meaning change over time, so it gives it a whole new feeling towards it. 

WILSON: And you get to celebrate these experiences through meeting other people who’ve had them and connected to the song, so the songs stop meaning a song about a bad thing that happened and now it’s a song that connects you to thousands of strangers you don’t know. 

So how does it feel playing SXSW as a band from Austin?

BEGGINS: It’s really comfortable, this is like in our backyard and we actually only play Austin like once a year, so it's fun for us to get to play. But it feels like no pressure at all we already have everything we need, so it’s not like we’re trying to find this, we need this, this guys gonna be here. We’re just here and lets play some songs. It doesn’t really feel like a festival to me. 

WILSON: Yeah it’s just that one time that our city gets trashed and super crowded.

Back in Chicago we have Lollapalooza, but it's more contained. 

WILSON: We’re going to Lollapalooza for the first time this year.

BEGGINS: We’re stoked; really excited about that.

Are there any cities you are especially excited to go to for this upcoming tour?

WILSON: We have our favorites, I think we’ve played everywhere now so it’s kind of like what friends we have that are living there that we haven’t seen in awhile. It’s always nice to go to New York, LA, Chicago. Chicago has always been really good to us. Always.

BEGGINS: We’re doing a lot of stuff in Canada this year, too. Vancouver for the first time will be really exciting.

Wild Child has a sort of grassroots fan following. How do you think that will develop or evolve as you continue to grow as a band?

BEGGINS: I think that we have this secret weapon. We’ve developed this fan base that I think is going to be with us for a long time. It’s not this overnight success; all of the fans have grown with us for the past five years.

WILSON: It’s been a slow and steady build. For the past five years every single time we go through a city the crowd is 30% bigger, so it feels sustainable and real.

BEGGINS: I think that’s the way to do it these days. I mean, we would take overnight success if it came to us, but it's nice to know you can handle what’s coming at you. 

WILSON: And with overnight success - how do you keep that up? You can’t, no one does. But it’s like we can keep this up all damn day.

How do you keep it up? Last year you were out on tour for about nine months, plus writing and recording a record.

WILSON: We’ll schedule. If we don’t have to leave the hotel room until 2 PM, we’ll wake up early and do some writing. We went to Savannah, Georgia to record Fools. It’s beautiful and we just needed to go somewhere where we didn’t know anyone except for the producer and the studio, so it was like, that’s our option. We rented a house and it was like summer camp. 

BEGGINS: Our whole life is pretty much on a calendar. 

WILSON: It’s in 48-hour sections. I know what we’re doing today and I know what we have to do tomorrow. At all times.

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Fools is out now. You can buy it here.

The Magnetic North's Simon Tong Discusses Past, Present, and 'Prospect of Skelmersdale'

When The Magnetic North first formed they set out as a one-off, planning for their debut release, Orkney: Symphony of the Magnetic North, to act as the consummate collaborative culmination between UK indie staple Simon Tong (blur, Gorillaz, The Verve, The Good, the Bad & the Queen, and Erland & the Carnival), Erland Cooper (Erland and the Carnival), and Hannah Peel (John Foxx and the Maths). Despite the trio's initial desires to run the full lifespan of a group with a single release, demand for a follow up grew (as usually is the case when fantastic records are made), and the band reconvened to contemplate their focus for a potential LP2.

The group's cartographically inclined debut focused on motifs surrounding The Orkney Islands in Scotland (Cooper's home), and turned out to be far more influential than the group had initially expected, opting to orient their sophomore effort on yet another locational premise, this time the Tong's enigmatic hometown of Skelmersdale, England, via Prosepct of Skelmersdale.

I was fortunate enough to speak with The Magnetic North's Simon Tong about the trio's upcoming release, Prospect of Skelmersdale, which consists of a series of vignettes centered on the town where Tong spent some of his most formative years.

Taken from the new album "Prospect Of Skelmersdale" out 18th March 2016. Pre-order CD / LP / DL here: http://fulltimehobby.sandbaghq.com/the-magnetic-north-prospect-of-skelmersdale.html

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TRANSVERSO: Are you looking forward to getting Prospect of Skelmersdale out into the world?

SIMON TONG: I think so, yeah. I don’t know, I’m slightly worried about it.

Why is that?

Well the album [is] kind of about where I grew up. I’m kind of wondering what the people of that town will think about it – whether they’ll like it or they won’t like it. I don’t know.

With that in mind, most people in the US may not be familiar with Skelmersdale. What’s it like?

Yeah, I don’t think many people in the United Kingdom know about Skelmersdale [as well]. Its been strange. We’ve just been doing some press in Paris and Berlin as well, and its been very strange talking about this small insignificant town in England that we made a record about; its very surreal.

Does that put the onus on you to direct the dialogue about Skelmersdale?

Yeah, I suppose so, but the other two members of the group, Erland and Hannah, they’ve been there quite a few times, so they know the place, and they were very much involved with the making of the record – the lyrics and the feel of the whole thing. They kind of have an idea of what they’re talking about as well. But yeah, because our first album was about the Orkney Islands, in Scotland, where Erland’s from. So the onus was kind of on him for that one. So yeah, for this one, it feels like the weight is slightly on my shoulders. [Laughs] It’s a good weight to carry.

Does that mean if there’s a third LP, the onus will be on Hannah?

Very much so, yeah. [Laughs] I hope she’s ready for it.

What was your initial reaction when Hannah suggested visiting Skelmersdale, in regard to the album?

I just wasn’t sure, because we made the first album by accident almost. I don’t know if we got it written in the press release, but the first album was inspired by a dream that Erland had – he was visited by a ghost in his dream who had told him to write a record about where he came from. So, that was kind of the starting point of the group; that was how we kind of formed and made a record, because of this supernatural dream. It’s a strange project, really, and we didn’t think we going to do another album. We just thought we were going to do one album about the Orkney albums, and we thought that’d be it, we’d just leave it at that. Lots of people kept saying, “Oh, you’ve got to do another album, you’ve got to do something else,” and so we kind came around to it thinking, “What can we do it about? What can we do it about?” And Hannah just kind of said “[Simon] Where do you come from?” and I said “Well, I lived a long time in this town called ‘Skelmersdale,’” and she says “Ah, tell me about it. Tell me about the town.”

It was a new town, it was built in the 60s, as kind of an overflow from Liverpool. A lot of the poor people in the slums of Liverpool got moved to this new town. And then in the '80s, the Transcendental Meditation (TM) community set up there and she was like, “Wow! That’s a good plot for an album,” and I said, “Really? Do you really think so?” And she was like, “Yeah, come on, we got to!” So she was kind of the driving force behind getting project off the ground really. In terms of getting me to think about what an album about Skelmersdale would entail. So I basically wrote about ten or eleven track titles from my memory of places in Skelmersdale, just kind of things connected to it. [Then I] sent it over to her and Erland and they were like “Wow, these titles, they’re inspiring us already.” Titles like “Pennylands,” is one title and “Silver Birch,” is another, and it was kind of like “Oh, these sound like such beautiful places.” And then I thought, “Well actually, why don’t you go see for yourself,” so I sent them up there to Skelmersdale, which is sort of Northwest England. I gave them a list of places to go, and they went and visited these places. A place like Pennylands is a not particularly nice counsel estates, you know it’s the housing estates. So a lot of these places sound really nice, but when you get there. It was kind of a good adventure for them to go and see what this place was like, what kind of, its good for them to get a perspective without anything coming from me influencing their mind. They could just go and take some photographs of these places and stay there for a few nights to see what they think of the town. So that was just the starting block to sort of kick the project off.

Was that a significant turning point in regard to getting the album creatively oriented as well? With you being the most familiar with Skelmersdale – did a lot of the creative intuition come from you, or was it largely collaborative?

It was very collaborative, actually. Maybe initially, it came from me – just a few little song ideas and lyric ideas. But they very quickly picked up on things and developed their own ideas. And that was very much what we did with the first album as well, and Erland kind of let me and Hannah write about his town/homeland quite freely, and how we felt while visiting there as an outsider. So I kind of gave them that opportunity to write about it as an outsider, and then I would write about it as someone who actually has experience in there. Yeah, that’s kind of how we do it – we sort of trust each other’s view and intuition, I suppose. We all know what our sound is – we all kind of have a definite sound of what instrumentation we use, and what kind of way of recording and making a song. We kind of all know the general color palate of The Magnetic North.

Did you ever find yourself gravitating toward certain aspects or vignettes of Skelmersdale when Erland and Hannah asked you describe the town?

Yeah, I suppose it was a series of little snapshots that I had drawn from my memory of people and places. Well we knew we kind of wanted to bring in the Transendental Meditation Community, because that was where I kind of grew up in the middle of it. That was all part of Skelmersdale. We had to kind of touch on that, and we used some old audio footage from a friend of my dad’s [who] had recorded when they started building the community. So we have this sort of opening ceremony of this person kind of inaugurating the Golden Dome, which is this sort of place where they all go and meditate. And then we found, when Hannah and Erland went up the first time, they found this woman in the library who had like a local writers group in Skelmersdale, and she gave them this DVD that had these old 1970s industrial kind of promotion videos which were made by the council and the corporation that run the town to kind of promote it for industry. It’s a very funny kind of stiff upper lip kind of British BBC documentary [that was] slightly patronizing of the local community like “Welcome to Skelmersdale, look at these new factories we’ve built; we’re just crying out for industry,” and so we kind used a lot of sound bytes and interwove them with the music and really gave the album its backbone, and kind of backdrop, I suppose; a kind of late 60s, early 70s kind of lens on the music and everything.

Taken from the new album "Prospect of Skelmersdale" out 18th March 2016 on Full Time Hobby. Pre-order CD / LP / DL here: http://bit.ly/1PiF3qp

So is the footage used in the videos for “Signs” and “A Death in the Woods” from those early promotional videos?

Yeah they’re these promotional videos, but they’re great. There’s this kind of sheen of slightly, well its slightly cheap film. Its not high quality Hollywood film; its really kind of faded. 60 mil or… God knows what it is, but its got this sort of grainy look, kind of mostly British look to it.

Where does a song like “A Death in the Woods” come into play when creating the album’s tone/direction?

I suppose that was one of the first songs we wrote, I think. Its kind of a mish-mash or an amalgamation of different memories of mine thrown together; its not particularly one story that runs throughout the song. Its just a lot of images and kinds of things that I remember, like in a dreamscape almost; just thrown in like a stream of consciousness. So that kind of set the feel of the album. Because the whole project was started by [the] supernatural dream that Erland had. Our creative process is sort of the process of trying to revoke ghosts of the landscape of wherever we’re writing about – whether it’s the Orkney Islands, Skelmersdale, or wherever it happens from. That’s kind of what we’re trying to do: we’re trying to find the magic that’s buried under the landscape. With the Orkney Islands it was really easy for the first album, because the Orkney Islands are a beautiful, beautiful place next to the sea, its got cliffs, and it has so much history. Its got Neolithic monuments, five thousand year old villages; its really just soaked in history. Its got great poets and writers have come from there, you just can’t fail to be inspired by the place.

How did Skelmersdale compare to Orkney?

Skelmersdale is the complete opposite of that. Immediately, there’s nothing and you think “Oh, hell. How am I going to write about this place?” Its almost like – it's very brutal – the architecture has lots of concrete, it almost looks like something out of the Soviet Union that’s sort of been picked up and plunked in the middle of England; but in its own way, that’s sort of very inspiring in and of itself. It's sort of modernist, and I’m sure that plenty of people that study architecture and town planning would look at it and go, "Oh, look at this, its fantastic.” You wouldn’t necessarily want to visit there.

So what angles did you find in regard to writing songs about Skelmersdale?

It was funded by the government, so a lot of the houses there are kind of what we call “Council Houses” or sort of rented houses, but over the years people have eventually bought them as they changed the law, but they’re still predominantly rental homes. It was quite a poor place in the '60s, '70s, and '80s; it was very depressed. The industry came initially and then just as soon as any government grunts came out, they just disappeared off to Brazil or wherever it was cheaper to work. So you were kind of in this ghost town of people. There’s no train station there, just lots and lots of roads, and people just kind of couldn’t afford the cars, so people were just kind of stuck in this town. What interested us, we realized quite early on in making the album that we can tell these stories of people and we can try and musically represent the landscape, but we have to give some kind of hope, we can’t just make a depressing album about how shit this place used to be – we had to give some optimism and hopefulness. Going back to the town, I kind of left 20 years ago and I haven’t really been back until the past couple of years since I’ve been doing this album, and it feels kind of like its getting better. It feels like the people themselves are kind of making it better. Its almost like a community needs a long time to develop.

Has the community begun to change at all, or have things just remained the same?

The town is about 50 years old now, and it feels like people are finally building that community and kind of [have] a sense of identity themselves and it just feels like there’s hope there. When the Transcendental people moved there in the '80s, I think they kind of changed the town by bringing optimism in. They had this belief that – the Maharishi is dead now – they had a belief that they wanted to set up a little village in every country that would meditate and people would gather and meditate, and affect the countryside around them. Wherever they were, they gave off good vibes. So they moved to Skelmersdale to set up this community, and there’s probably five or six hundred people there and they meditate every day in the Golden Dome with the view that they were going to improve the town simply by meditating; that they were going to give off these good vibrations. They had lots of scientific evidence to show that they were doing this. Whether that really did happen or not, I think that the fact they moved to the town itself sort of way. It brought these sort of middle class people who brought this attitude, and I think it has made it a more interesting town culturally. The identity of the town changed.

You mentioned the Transcendental Meditation community of Skelmersdale – did TM have any significant impact on the creative process?

Not really, only because it was there. I mean, I don’t do it anymore, but my father was a fanatical follower – and he still follows the Maharishi even though he’s not alive – so its always kind of been in my life. And if I was going to write about a town like Skelmersdale, it was going to have to be there in the background somewhere. I have a love/hate relationship with it, and I’m not going to slag it off and say its terrible, but I’m [also] not going to promote it. Now the Maharishi died ten years ago now, but now David Lynch has taken the mantle, and he’s kind of the leader in waiting, which makes it even stranger.

That’s where my only familiarity with the TM movement stems from, is the popularity of it within Hollywood/creative circles.

I mean they’re having an active push to try and get creative people and artists involved in doing it, to get as much promotion as it can. I mean, the Maharishi used The Beatles in the 60s, he definitely used them to springboard the movement in the West.

Speaking of The Beatles, is your track “Run of the Mill” a reference to the George Harrison song?

Yes! It actually is [the song].

Any particular reason as to why?

Initially it was a coincidence. Erland and Hannah have a studio over in East London, and they were working one day and a friend of theirs, Laura Groves – a beautiful singer from Yorkshire, actually an old friend of Hannah’s just came by and she started playing on the piano [the George Harrison song] and we thought “Oh that’s fantastic, let’s record it,” and we recorded like a simple kind of piano version which is actually the way it appears in the album, and we just put the guitars in after. Initially they just recorded it, and it wasn’t until later that we thought “actually, this would fit so well with this album,” and that’s just kind of the, obviously, the George Harrison connection with the TM. But the song itself, “Run of the Mill,” it has connotations to the north of England anyway, it has mills and stuff, so it just kind of seemed to sit really well. It was one of the last songs to go on there, because we weren’t really sure we were going to put it on. The album was just kind of there and we just plonked on at the end and then listened to it and thought it just kind of closed the album. It was just a bit of serendipity really, and we just kind of ended up using it. It just really fits with everything else, and it was a beautiful way to close the album.

Are there any sort of over-arching motifs or themes you would like to be conjured up for the listeners?

You know, I think you can enjoy the album without knowing anything about the concepts within Skelmersdale. I hope people would just enjoy it as a piece of music whether its just listening to single tracks here and there or listening to the album as a whole – I obviously hope people would listen to the album as a whole album, thought people very rarely ever do nowadays – just to invoke. Its really drawing on childhood memories anyway. Kind of the feeling of looking back on your childhood and seeing these memories that have been buried in your head, I suppose anyone can relate to that. Just kind of having that magical kind of way you remember a Christmas or whenever you remember playing on your front lawn or a holiday. Its just sort of looking back in that 70s lens or whatever era you grew up in, just looking back at it like an old photograph, or an old grainy bit of film. Trying to give that impression while listening to the album, you’re traveling back there into the midst of your sub consciousness. 

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Read our review of Prospect of Skelmersdale here.

AudioDamn! Discuss Wearing Suits, French Toast, and Jeb!

With their curious name, sharp attire, and German accents, AudioDamn! stands out amongst the current crop of upstart debutants hitting the tour circuit this year, but below the blazers burns an energetic mixture of pop, rock, and soul demanding to be heard in its own right.

The Germany-based, Austria-bred trio consists of frontman Oliver “Oli” Wimmer on vocals and guitar, Ali Grumeth on backing vocals, guitar, and bass, and Daniel "Mudi" Mudrack on drums. Affable and eager, their tight suits and polite demeanors don't detract from the rambunctious rock and roll performances they provide, somehow exuding even more energy than the few recordings they've released via an eponymous EP through EPIC Records earlier this year.

Though still largely unknown to broader American audiences, their short headlining tour last year and current opening slot for Highly Suspect have allowed the band to begin quickly winning over new fans with their charm.

Sitting in the dimly lit underground green room of Chicago club Double Door as middle band on the bill And the Kids played over our heads, AudioDamn! sat down to talk with Transverso next to vandalized wallpaper posters of fellow falsetto Maroon 5 and fellow German Zedd.

Download "Radar" on the AudioDamn! EP at iTunes: http://smarturl.it/AudioDamn Amazon: http://smarturl.it/Audiodamn_Amzn Spotify: http://smarturl.it/Audiodamn_Spotify Google Play: http://smarturl.it/AudioDamn_GP Deezer: http://smarturl.it/Audiodamn_Deezer https://www.audiodamn.com/ https://www.facebook.com/audiodamn https://twitter.com/audiodamn (C) 2015 Epic Records, a division of Sony Music Entertainment

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TRANSVERSO: So you say you just approved the final master for your full length debut today. Congratulations, how does it feel?

OLI WIMMER: It feels amazing because we’ve been working on it for quite some time. I mean, this feels like a lifetime of work from back when we started the band. Actually, I feel like the starting point of the band was this album. We had our first gigs, but then we decided let's record a full length, Ali produced it, and we just started off with this crazy idea of playing everything live in one room. I think that was three or four years ago or something, and it grew so much over the years. I did this demo for the song “Radar” and we always played more gigs than we intended to. 

ALI GRUMETH: Our manager once said something that’s coming [true] now, “You have your whole life for your first record; you have a few months for your second.” [Laughs] That might apply for us too but there were some songs [made] during this album we’re already pushing to the second album.

But this is definitely a super special moment. How many times [was] the album almost released or we had almost deals? We were talking to so many people in Europe already and it all didn't work out, and to be true, it felt kinda like maybe having an English speaking rock band in Germany just does not work out. People kept telling us “Yeah, you’re doing great, but do it in German.” We refused. Those days I really felt like maybe we really should let go because it’s so fucking tough to even keep a band alive so everyone can pay their rent, and it was funny because those were the days where things took off in America. We met our management, we met our publisher, and three months later [EPIC Records CEO] L.A. Reid called and wanted to have us signed. [Makes explosion sound]

WIMMER: Transcribe that as the sound of a car transmission. [Makes sound of car taking off] We were on full throttle all of a sudden, it was crazy. Now we are on this American journey seeing the whole country, playing all of the cities like Chicago, and going to the south, going to the small places and the big places, and it’s crazy. Ali said it started out in a basement in Germany, this album, and it came to life in a van in Chicago. 

You said you refused to make music in your native language. Is there a reason why you strictly speak in english? 

GRUMETH: Yes, because it just felt better for us. We were listening to English music since we grew up. We were so much influenced by Green Day, by Foo Fighters, by Nirvana. That was most of the music we listened to, and when we founded this band we decided to found a band that is about the maximum fun. Let’s just always do what feels the best. And we discovered it feels the best for us to do it in English somehow because it sounds more familiar, and so we did. German lyrics are a bit different than English ones. 

WIMMER: Yeah it’s so funny how people listen to music differently in different languages. We both feel like [with] German music people care more about lyrics, I don’t want to generalize it, but it feels like the songs are always a little more about the lyrics and less about the melody, so hooks in Germany can be phrases, can be words. Hooks in America [are] changing now, though, with all the urban, what’s it called, trap or something. [Laughs]

GRUMETH: That’s a good point. English sounds different, it’s a matter of sound and that English speaking sound appealed more to us. 

WIMMER: And English has more of a melody than German, generally. 

GRUMETH: That’s a good description.

WIMMER: You know it’s hard to say, some people might disagree, but for me English was a better language to sing, just as a singer I enjoyed that much more. 

So speaking of the culture gap, I remember the last time I saw you you spoke about playing a Jimi Hendrix cover to an Asian audience that didn't know who he was. How did that happen? 

GRUMETH: [Laughs] We met a university in Germany, a really small university named PopAkademie, and they supported us so [much]. They sent us to China, and the city of Mannheim, where the university is, they had an exchange program going on with the Expo [in Shanghai], so they sent us there. They sent us to France and Norway, all over the place. 

WIMMER: [But] China was crazy. The funny thing was we didn’t even have to play and people were going nuts. We went up on stage and all these people were like “Oh they look different! What are those guys doing? What’s happening?” And we’re just setting up, you know? And then we played and I think [Ali], you said “You guys know Jimi Hendrix?”

GRUMETH: I thought it’s a joke that works every time, but everyone was just fucking looking [confused.] [Laughs]

WIMMER: It wasn’t as funny, it was just absurd.

GRUMETH: It was funny! Imagine you bringing a joke that always works then all of a sudden you see 400 faces staring at you, with no expression in their face! [Laughs]

What was it like playing rock music for people who had no preconceptions, people who didn't know the genre. Was it interesting to perform with that kind of clean slate? 
 
GRUMETH: I can't tell but all I know is they appreciated it so much. They were partying hard. They loved the music. We love playing for them although they didn't get that one joke, that’s okay. [Laughs] It’s just a different world.

WIMMER: It’s an interesting question. I’ll think about it and call you later when I’ve thought about it.

Is there a notable difference when performing for European audiences versus American audiences? 

GRUMETH: Yes, I would say how it’s amazing how we get the most appreciation in America which is the greatest honor for us as well. I mean, we’re sitting in the backstage room with posters from Biffy Clyro, Kings of Leon, Maroon 5. We traveled all those places like our heroes, the people who made us play music, we even worked with some of them, like mixing engineers, mastering engineers, management, whatever, and it’s such an honor to be in a country where all the music comes from that influenced us and play for an audience that is freaking out on our music. I’m even missing the words to describe that.

MUDI MUDRACK: Absolutely.

In a Twitter Q&A that you guys did I saw you said the American food you love most is French toast but the German food you miss most is bread. How do you explain that? 

GRUMETH: [Laughs] There’s just a huge difference between what you get as regular bread here on every corner versus what you get on every corner in Austria or in Germany, that’s just a different bread. That’s the whole story and we are used to that bread, some of us for almost 30 years, others just 20 years. [Looks at Oli, the youngest band member, and laughs] Just used to that bread, that's the whole story. We’ll bring you some!

It’s just funny because French toast doesn’t sound American and is made of bread.

GRUMETH: But it’s not French, right? [Laughs] I haven’t been to France a lot but I never saw French toast anywhere in Europe.

WIMMER: I think all around the world French toast has the English name so it’s got to be British or American. But we have to find that out, there’s no French name for French toast.

GRUMETH: But there you go, that’s one of the basic differences, French toast is sweet and super soft. That’s cool, I love it. But it’s the opposite of the bread that we used to eat when we grew up.

While we’re on the subject, what’s been the strangest thing about being in America? 

GRUMETH: The sizes. It’s all bigger. It’s amazing. When we came here we thought we could walk. When we looked up where’s the label and saw it on the map on our iPhone we thought “Oh, we could walk there,” but it turned out, oh my god, you can’t walk that distance! I mean [Mudi] does, he walks for hours. But also the sizes of the coffee, of the cars, of the streets. Oh my god, remember when we crossed that one street in LA without a traffic light and we just ran over there and, fuck, there were cars as high as my head and the street seemed so wide? [Laughs] It feels really unfamiliar. 

WIMMER: Since then we haven’t crossed the street once, we stay on one side. [Laughs]

GRUMETH: And the fact that can live our dream over here. That’s the huge thing. 

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I don’t know if you guys know, but we recently had a presidential candidate named Jeb! with an exclamation mark at the end of the name just like you guys do. Do you think that that’s the way of the future now, punctuation at the end of brand names to distinguish yourself? 

GRUMETH: We know [about Jeb!]. I don't know, but if so then we started it off because we did it six years ago already, he stole that idea. We’re going to sue you! Be prepared! [Laughs]

WIMMER: Maybe he wanted to hide his last name, I don't know, it’s speculation. 

GRUMETH: Maybe!

Do you have a story behind the name? 

WIMMER: Yes we do have a story behind the name. We were called Amsterdamn! for a few years actually, it was just kind of a weird joke and it just stayed our band name. When we got signed to EPIC Records lawyers and attorneys came and checked the trademark and it turned out somebody else had it, so we changed the name. 

I noticed you guys have a thing going on with the suits. Have you ever not been the best dressed band at a show or festival? 

GRUMETH: I don't think so. Just kidding. [Laughs]

WIMMER: I don't know, it’s a matter of opinion.

GRUMETH: It’s not about the rating, the reason why we do it, it’s some kind of respect for the audience, to show “Hey guys, we’re here for you,” we go on the stage and look nice for you guys. 

WIMMER: We want to play nice music for you and we want to look nice. 

GRUMETH: It also feels good to be honest. It’s also kind of a ritual, no one of us is wearing suits in our common life. It’s a special vibe, you know? When you put on the suit in the backstage room, like yeah I’m going on stage and trying to look good. It’s a ritual I would say.
 
WIMMER: You put on the suit, you’re AudioDamn! 

So it’s like a costume?

GRUMETH: It’s not a costume, we’re trying to be as authentic as we can be, that’s what the whole band is about. When we recorded the album we tried to find the maximum realness, but we can just make ourselves beautiful for the audience.

It’s kind of old school thinking, like a theater thing. It’s a matter of attitude. Some bands have more of a “Rock ‘n’ roll, fuck you” attitude which is also a cool thing, I love a lot of those bands, but for us we found out our attitude is kind of the “Thanks for being here, we respect you, we’re really grateful” attitude.

Oli, you had the number one hit single in Austria at age 17. How did that affect your career from the beginning?

WIMMER: Well I think it did a few things that I am grateful for because it’s a weird experience, managers running away with money, you know, it just made me realize I really wanna make music in spite of all that other stuff that I had to deal with. I met Ali which I’m grateful for, because we had the same manager and he actually connected us to play in a band together for that project back then.

That’s actually how we met, we had a different band, and actually our live sound was way too rock for all those kids that were at those concerts. The kids during these concerts were, you know, progressing to the back of the room and the parents would coming to the front of the stage to start dancing. That seriously is what happened a lot of times. That kind of thing, it didn’t feel right, so we made this band a few years later, fortunately.

GRUMETH: A few years later that same manager that Oli was talking about called us when we lived in Germany (that all happened in Austria). We [hadn’t spoken] to him for years, and he called all of a sudden like, “Guys, I just discovered AudioDamn!! [It’s] Oli and you and a German drummer, right?” [Laughs] Like yeah, that’s what it is! [He said] “I’m so proud! I’m the one who convinced you [to first work together]!” When we were both refusing to work with each other, we were both like, “No, you know I have my own crew, it’s all good,” but he kept talking to us like, “Just meet up! Just meet up!” and we met and thought, yeah that makes sense, and didn’t think of it that we still have the same band he forced us to have five years earlier.

I noticed you guys have a brass section in your recordings, have you ever thought about bringing that into the live performances?

WIMMER: We actually do incorporate the horns sometimes. Not on this tour but we play with horns sometimes and it’s great. I think it’s different experience. To have AudioDamn! as the three piece is something cool as well because it’s more rock, it’s more gritty, and with the horns it’s a little more polished, you know what I mean? It’s nicer, and the AudioDamn! three piece experience is more down to Earth. 

GRUMETH: But that is something that I think is awesome, we need to change, we enjoy so much to play our songs in different arrangements, we enjoy so much playing the acoustic sets, and Mudi is doing this amazing brush thing and going all the way with the dynamic when we play acoustic guitars, and I even play a nylon string guitar, and then on the other hand we have this super rock thing that we play as a trio, and we have this funky horn section thing going on, but I honestly really feel like we need to vary, because it just feels good, and yeah, it’s just fun. 

Anything else you want to add? 

GRUMETH: Stay true. We found out that is the only thing that will work out ever. We tried so much, all of us tried so much, and then we found this band, and we always said it’s about the fun guys, it’s about the reason why we make music. Let’s just always do what feels best. Of course you get distracted a lot along the way and people tell you, “Do this, do that, and you will have success,” but we always came back and we said we can do this and do that to have success in other bands, this band is about fun and the reason why we make music, and it’s the best thing that could’ve happened to us and the thing we want to share with everyone out there. Stay true because you will do best in what you love the most, and we discovered it’s the one that will take off.

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You can buy AudioDamn! here.