A&SB Interviews Built by Snow’s JP
Built by Snow is the indie pop equivalent of straight-ahead jazz. There are off-kilter keyboard bloops to be sure, but it’s all about the three-note melodies and manic energy. The members hail from Austin, Texas and don’t have a Wikipedia page, so I can’t pretend to know anything else about them. Get on that, guys. Their first full-length MEGA releases Jan. 20, and you can listen and download four tracks of it at www.builtbysnow.com/rad/. Air and Sea Battle talked to frontman JP about making television, being foiled by Jet, and, mostly, science.
How did the band come together?
It’s almost been about three years now. We all work at a TV station together. I started writing songs and wanted some pictures for my Myspace page that proved there was a real band behind these songs … so I got my friends together and took some pictures of them. Then I realized that they actually played instruments, so we decided to make it official and do it for real.
What do you guys do at the station?
We all work at the same TV station. … Matt is a graphics designer, Ben is an audio operator, and Brandon is a video editor, and I’m the technical director. I’m the one pushing buttons and making the pictures appear on the TV screen. Out of high school, I took all the college music classes I could, music theory and production, but I needed a summer job. The local station hired me as a camera operator, so I started doing that and working my way up the ladder, and now I’m the technical director. I’ve been doing this for 10 years now, and never went back to college. It’s funny because the other guys in the band are actually using their [television] production degrees working the same jobs as me.
What’s your songwriting process? Do you come into the studio knowing exactly what you want?
We all write, but I’m the primary songwriter. Matt wrote two songs on “MEGA” and Ben has been doing some writing too. I built a little recording studio in my garage that I use to record everything I wrote and put together kind of a crappy demo to give to the guys. Then we flush out the songs together and make it work. Matt has a similar song writing process.
We were really prepared for this album. We originally only booked five days in the studio to record everything. Then we needed more time to finish mixing, but the Australian band Jet locked out the studio for two months! We had to sneak in early mornings to do the mixing and leave before they got there. It was a lot of fun though; we played with their guitars and some equipment they left in the studio. We didn’t tell them. We were afraid they would freak out.
Do you write lyrics for their own sake or more to move the song along?
“Weird Kids” was the first one I wrote on the new album. I picked up an Onion in a newsstand, and saw the headline “Weird kid shines in frog dissection.” [I thought], “Weird kid shines,” that’s awesome! So I told everyone in the band, “‘Weird Kid Shines,’ that’s our next song.” But I couldn’t think of anything that rhymed with “shines” so I changed it to “Weird Kids Know.”
I carry around a notebook in my back pocket and I’ll read something or hear something on TV and write it down. I have about 25 notebooks lying around now, and I’ll look through them when I’m writing a song for lines that would work well.
For me writing songs starts with one line, and that usually ends up being the title and in the chorus. I will build the rest of the words around that lyric. I write about things that are interesting to me… maybe they don’t make sense to other people, but if I think a line is hip then it is. I try to tell a story and maybe reach people who like things that aren’t necessarily cool. I hope people see a story in the lyrics; I spend a lot of time on them.
A couple blogs I read called you “early Weezer,” and I can definitely see that in the “ooh-ooh” backup vocals in “Something in 3D.” How do you feel about that?
I don’t mind. Pinkerton is probably my favorite album. I listened to the Red album and it just didn’t connect with me, it’s early Weezer I’m into. That’s what I listened to growing up. Yeah, I’m flattered when I hear the comparisons, and I think a couple of our first songs are basically Weezer copycats. [Laughs]. But our new songs definitely aren’t like the new Weezer.
What do you think ushers in new eras in pop music?
That’s a good question. Something that’s different is usually a big part of what starts new eras. The different stuff today is coming from independent bands. It’s weird that “indie” is a genre now as opposed to meaning “independent.” The title “indie” music has become a lot like how “alternative” was used in the ‘90s. “Oh, we’re independent; we’re not what’s on the radio.” Eventually it comes to the point where it all sounds the same, and then bands will say “No we’re not indie,” or whatever the name is then, they’ll say they’re the opposite of mainstream. I don’t know, what do they play on the radio these days, Creed?
I think it’s mostly Soulja Boy-esque.
Oh man, some of the stuff on the radio now is just terrible. I used to listen to hip-hop, some of the older stuff is really good, rap music today just — I sound like my dad now.
It’s interesting, some hip-hop artists are calling themselves “indie” now.
I didn’t know that. That’s awesome. I hope that people start pushing new sounds in hip-hop.
What will be the cultural underpinnings that will be linked to our generation’s music? (i.e. greed and epic metal hair for the ‘80s; disaffected flannel-wearers for the ‘90s)
Hmm, it all changes so fast now, I’m not sure there will be any single thing defining our generation’s music. It would have to be things like eyeliner, 80’s music revival, keyboards, extravagant flashy hip hop, bright colors, dark colors, skinny jeans, songs rebelling against the Bush administration, etc. … It seems like there’s something else every other month!
Are you planning on signing with a label, or do you think that’s outdated?
We thought we didn’t really want to sign with a label because we thought we could do everything we wanted to do on our own. But you need a label to be able to get tour support, to tour with a big name and be able to play to their fan base. We have fans in cities all over the country that want to see us play, but we would love to tour with a band that can definitely bring people to shows. If we tour on our own and nobody comes out to see us, then it really doesn’t matter that we just toured. So we sent out press kits to a couple labels. I’m not expecting them to open the packages we sent for like six months.
Will you be touring for the album?
We’re all still working at the TV station, so that makes it tough. Four months out of the year there are the big sweeps periods and you can’t take time off then. We might have quit our jobs to get on the road, just close our eyes and do it. We’re want to do an East Coast and West Coast tour in the spring and summer. We’ve got some cities in mind, so hopefully everything works out.
– Interview by Tim Williams, A&SB Contributor
Related posts:
- Reminder: Built by Snow – MEGA
- A&SB Interviews Forgive Durden’s Thomas Dutton
- AWESOME IN 1996: WEEZER
- Westbound Departure [Check 'Em Out!]
- Lost In A Sea of Bands
