Stereoboard Talk To Oh No Oh My About Their Recent Album 'People Problems' (Interview)
Tuesday, 15 March 2011
Written by James Conlon
Oh No Oh My are an eclectic four-piece from Austin, Texas, known for their distinct melodies, discordant lyrics and cult online following. The band came to London in a whirlwind last week on the first leg of their UK tour, giving an immense and entertaining performance at the Brixton Windmill. Luckily, Stereoboard got the chance to catch up with the band on their brief visit before they continued on to perform dates in the rest of the UK and at the SXSW festival.
Stereoboard (SB) - What was your attitude going into the new record ‘People Problems’? Were you at all intimidated by the cult success of ‘Oh No! Oh My!’?
Daniel Hoxmeier(DH) - We wanted to make a really awesome record with the intention of making a record for the first time.
Greg Barkley(GB) – We really wanted to just make a group of songs that fit together. With our debut album it was a bunch of demos that we kind of threw together when we started getting hype on the internet. We just thought, ‘Well, we have these 12 songs. Let’s put them out and call it a record’. This time around we had a central theme we were going for; the songs all fit together so we’re happy to call it a collection. In our own intentions we were heading out trying to make the debut album that would’ve been.
DH – We definitely put a lot more effort into this second release. We had bigger ambitions, wanting it to sound collected and analogue.
SB - In many senses, with the string section and the more restrained moments on the album, it’s a much braver record. Were there any reservations about taking such a big leap musically?
DH - I don’t think we really thought about it in that respect. We just wrote the songs and put our heart into how we felt about the songs at the time, and the record was just what came out. We didn’t really aim to do anything specifically, but we did certainly have underlying motives: we wanted to do the string section from the beginning, for example. I just heard that string section when we were writing a lot of the new songs, even at the very beginning stages. That tambour needed to be in the songs. But reservations? I don’t really think so.
SB - You’ve been performing together for 7 years now and live in front of audiences for 5. Do you still get the same buzz from playing on stage?
GB – I think I get more of a buzz than I did five years ago. The fact that we wrote this record as a group makes it much more enjoyable – we’re able to melt together more as a group and take the energy as a group. To me at least, that translates live, and it helps to know that we’re all on the same page, we’re all together in that sense. Instead of trying to garner the energy off of the crowd we now rely on each other that bit more to gain it.
SB - Do you find that British audiences tend to differ from the audiences back home in America?
DH - I’m not sure if there’s anything specifically ‘British’. American audiences are definitely more judgemental, and you have to prove yourself to them more so, where I feel that coming over to Europe these past three times, people have much more open minds. Rather than being all ‘show me what you’re doing’, audiences over here tend be thinking ‘well, let me listen. Let me check it out’. They tend to have much more open minds when it comes to music.
GB – One thing that I think is interesting; when we play over here people will come up to us and say “Really great show. My friend was supposed to come but couldn’t make it so I came in his place, and I’ve never heard you guys before”. I think that’s cool: it would never happen in America, where people think ‘If he can’t make it, I’m definitely not going to go’.
SB - What were your main influences, both musical and non-musical, when writing and recording ‘People Problems’?
DH - It was different for each person, we really had our own. For me personally, when we were writing songs I was listening to a lot of Yo La Tengo, I was listening to pretty much the ‘White Album’ and that was it. Then when we were mixing I had a lot of Spiritualized on, so over the year and a half of recording the musical influences definitely changed.
GB – I can’t really pinpoint a certain musical influence. A lot of this album came from my daily life. A lot of things have changed in the last couple of years for me – I’ve gotten engaged, for example. It was day-to-day influence that was driving this record for me.
DH - Also I think this record was a lot more personal than the first album. It is largely about ‘People Problems’, both of others and our own, and that’s how the title came about. The older songs definitely have their own inspirations and influences, but this album had far more specific things that helped influence some of the songs on the record.
SB - Are there any smaller acts or acts that you admire that you think should be getting more credit than they do?
GB – Our friends Scanners, who are here tonight. They’re good friends and fantastic people – we love those guys.
DH – The Deadly Syndrome from Los Angeles. They’re one of the
best live acts we’ve ever played with and/or seen.
GB – Also, this is band that I feel are going to get really big this year – Royal Bangs. Really good friends of ours from Knoxville who signed to Glassnote Records. Fantastic music, Crazy stuff. They’ve got a record coming out really soon which should be awesome.
SB - You had your van broken into on the first leg of your European tour in Belgium, then decided to book more gigs in the country - congratulations on the bravery. How did it feel having the tour halted like that?
GB – The day that happened it was the first week on tour. I got my bag stolen with all my personal items – my computer, all of my books, my iPod. Everything that I had except my clothes was stolen and it was very depressing at the time. But then we got to the next show, In France, which was actually sold out. We were playing the song ‘Party Punch’, and one of the lyrics is “I don’t even care, I don’t even care”. I was so downtrodden at the time, but I really felt those lyrics resonate as we played that show.
SB – Do you think that major labels are using their influence to drive music in a positive or negative way at the moment?
GB - I don’t necessarily know about every major label – I mean they have a lot of money, which we could use right now, but it should definitely be restructured. The whole thing should be. Major labels seem very slow with catching up with the music industry – the whole internet-orientated side of things, which is very much the driving force of music right now, just hasn’t been the focus of enough major labels. I think they’ve dug holes for themselves and made everything harder for the smaller bands who are getting popularity on the internet – they’re being shunned by major labels, in my opinion. They’re definitely necessary for the big bands who are great and are on major labels, but I think it should be structured a little bit differently, like in the 60s and 70s when they were giving more money out to artists who were being experimental.
DH - Development. There’s no artist development any more – either you sell records immediately or you’re done.
GB - Yeah, for the most part if a band put out a dud album then they’re dropped, unless they’re an insanely established act or something.
DH - Instead of rewarding artists for sounding like other artists who are already successful, these labels should be putting money into new ideas, for sure.
GB - But maybe it’s not even the record companies’ fault. I think a lot of people listening to music nowadays listen to really crappy music. I don’t want to say everybody, obviously, but there’s a lot of really shitty music out there that’s making tons of money. It needs to get back to the people who are making music rather than labels generating these ‘mega bands’ from nowhere.
SB - Obviously as a minor label artist you’re hit hardest by illegal music downloads. What’s the band’s stance on people who download your music?
DH – Before we started the band I would have used Kazaa or Napster to discover music – download a song because a title sounds interesting or whatever. But as we became a band I pretty much stopped doing that altogether, that’s a personal attitude, not a band thing by any means. As far as bands that are on our level are concerned, people buying a single song off of iTunes makes such a difference. I had an instance at a show when there was this guy. He stood at the front of the audience, jamming to our entire set: he looked so stoked to be there. Then he came up to me afterwards and said: “You guys are one of my favourite bands – you and Broken Social Scene turned me on to really great music”. I looked at him and thanked him for even putting us into that category, and this was before our album came out but we were selling it at shows. I said: “You can buy our new album now” and he jumped back saying: “Nah, I don’t do that. I just download stuff.” To my face, telling me that he wouldn’t pay for our music, and that really bothered me - that someone would say: “I really like your music, but I don’t value it enough to help you out as a band.” So I told him: “You buying a record helps us to make another one, especially at this level, when we’re self financed and doing this all on our own, you buying an album definitely helps us to even buy lunch the next day.”
GB - Downloads are definitely helpful to get people’s music out there, but there needs to be a system where people can download music and discover it with the artists still making money, but of course it’s impossible. That’s the problem – the fact that bands need to make money from it.
DH - The way we first started as a band was just burning our tracks onto CDs. I would put our web address on it and send it to people for free. That drained hundreds of dollars from my bank account for sure. We still give away free downloads all the time – there’s no problem for us giving people a taster just so that they can get into the band, but if you like it, then buy the record.
SB - Do you ever miss the exclamation marks?
DH - No! It created way too many problems for us - people had far too many preconceived notions of us as a band just because of the punctuation marks in our name. It put us into a whole category that I want nothing to do with at all.
SB - So you’re finishing up your UK tour next week. What’s next for the band?
DH - At this point we’ve got another week on this [UK] tour, we’re heading to SXSW, then we’ve got a couple of weeks of before another three-week tour. I think the plan right now is to chill for a week then ‘dick around with music’ for a couple of weeks then see what happens. Hopefully that will lead to actually writing some new songs and recording a new album.
GB – At this point, where our band is at right now, I really think we’d benefit from getting together and just jamming for a long time, writing songs together as a band. In my opinion, what we should do after the tour is have a couple of weeks off, get together and write some new songs then record another album in the fall, looking to have it released next year. They’re tentative plans, but that’s the goal.
NOTE FROM THE EDITOR
We don't run any advertising! Our editorial content is solely funded by lovely people like yourself using Stereoboard's listings when buying tickets for live events. To keep supporting us, next time you're looking for concert, festival, sport or theatre tickets, please search for "Stereoboard". It costs you nothing, you may find a better price than the usual outlets, and save yourself from waiting in an endless queue on Friday mornings as we list ALL available sellers!
