SPEAKER 1: Woohoo!

SPEAKER 2: Welcome to Austin.

SPEAKER 1: Welcome to Austin.

SINGER 1: Welcome to Austin!

SINGER 2: Check, check, check, woo!

[MIDLAKE PERFORMING]

JOHN SCHROCK: Okay. We’re here in Austin, Texas for South by Southwest 2006, day one, Wednesday right? Here’s a Thursday. It’s Wednesday. We’re here with Midlake from Denton, Texas, a five-piece outfit here, and I guess we’ll start with Tim or anybody who wants to jump in can take this one. I guess we’ll take about how you guys got formed together as a band. What was the genesis of the band?

TIM SMITH: McKenzie can go ahead.

JOHN SCHROCK: [LAUGHING]

TIM SMITH: He’s going to go for it.

MCKENZIE SMITH: We met in North Texas Music School.

JOHN SCHROCK: Okay.

MCKENZIE SMITH: Just around the school. Different times, different years, and I met Paul in the fall of 1997 in an audition, and we directly jumped into funk. [LAUGHING]

[MIDLAKE LAUGHING]

MCKENZIE SMITH: I’m joking but not really. We actually started playing together. It was much different music and then over time we added some people and met Eric, and then before you know it, we have a whole band together, and he was the last member. Well, almost. Out of us four, he was the last.

JOHN SCHROCK: Okay.

MCKENZIE SMITH: And we had a different member and then eventually, Eric joined the band.

JOHN SCHROCK: Okay.

MCKENZIE SMITH: We met in -- that was basicallyu it -- music school 1997.

JOHN SCHROCK: Kind of piece by piece it came together.

MCKENZIE SMITH: Yeah.

JOHN SCHROCK: Over whatever. One or two years.

MCKENZIE SMITH: Many different transformations of music...

JOHN SCHROCK: Okay.

MCKENZIE SMITH: ...and lineups and stuff.

JOHN SCHROCK: Okay. So, when you originally started out, what kind of stuff were you doing? You mentioned funk was with a kind of a half-smile.

MCKENZIE SMITH: We don’t have to go through that, do we?

[MIDLAKE LAUGHING]

MCKENZIE SMITH: It went -- Again, it ran again with everything. I mean it was like a bunch of jazz majors trying to come up with something cool eventually turned into a rock band. That’s basically it.

JOHN SCHROCK: So, what kind of aesthetic were you going for when you decided to go with the Mid -- What ended up being the Midlake sound. I mean is that -- Did you have -- I guess what I’m asking is who you guys were into at the time and what kind of sparked the idea of [OVERLAPPING]?

MCKENZIE SMITH: It changed over time. Yeah.

BAND MEMBER 2: Radiohead, right?

TIM SMITH: At that time, yeah -- Yeah well, at that time, yeah, it was probably Radiohead and Bjork. That’s when we realized that we don’t have to play funk because that was accepted when we were jazz, you know, rockers are really accepted not as if you were a jazz musician it’s -- so maybe more nowadays but huh, I don't know. It seemed to us that funk was like the regular transition to get to rock maybe or like we couldn’t play rock in front of our friends that, you know, would maybe look down on that and call it too easy.

MCKENZIE SMITH: Jazz something.

TIM SMITH: You know, later we find out it’s really tough to write those kinds of songs, but at that time yeah. So, we were into, you know, Herbie Hancock or Stevie Wonder and that sort of thing, and the funk, but then we got into, yeah, Bjork, and McKenzie had always listened to Bjork and showed me some Bjork and then my last term in college, I got introduced to Radiohead. It was had already been -- OK Computer had already been out for a while and got into that and --

JOHN SCHROCK: Yeah. That band seems to be a huge influence, Radiohead, on a bunch of people.

TIM SMITH: Yeah.

JOHN SCHROCK: And I can hear that kind of in your stuff too. That’s like the really close attention to sonics and...

TIM SMITH: Yeah.

JOHN SCHROCK: ...putting together lots of kind of disparate elements and weird stuff into music.

TIM SMITH: Yeah. We used to get tagged out all the time as a Radiohead --

JOHN SCHROCK: Okay.

TIM SMITH: And hopefully not so much anymore.

JOHN SCHROCK: Yeah.

TIM SMITH: You know, it’s hard to get away from that but.

JOHN SCHROCK: So, okay. Can you talk about the kind of progression of your music between the first EP and where you ended up on this latest recording? Does anybody want to take that?

PAUL ALEXANDER: Well, as far as like influences or?

JOHN SCHROCK: Well, just the overall sound I mean. Are you kind of going for the same idea or do you -- Can you see something [OVERLAPPING]?

PAUL ALEXANDER: Well, I guess my perspective on the first full length was we didn’t really know anything about what we were doing. We just decided we were going to spend much money on some pretty menial recording equipment but something we felt like could get the job done, and basically trial and error for a very long time, and we came out with that album. As far as musically, Tim probably talked about the concept of it and stuff like that but --

TIM SMITH: Well, I don't know. I think it all depends on what kind of what I was listening to at the time, and so it started off Radiohead, and we got tagged Radiohead all the time. It’s like gah, you know, my voice is always, it sounds like Thom Yorke, and I get that all the time and, you know, we started listening to other bands. We got into Rufus Wainwright at the time. We got into Clinic at that time.

JOHN SCHROCK: Oh yeah.

TIM SMITH: We got into -- I guess yeah that was probably during the EP time because there were just some similarities in probably the way that I’m singing even on the EP and song style to those bands. It was kind of haphazard, and I forgot what I was really listening to. I guess it was Flaming Lips and Grand Daddy and Mercury Rev. I don't know who else I was really into at that time. Those were the biggies I guess and then so that kind of otherworldly kind of sounding things kind of be a little off the beaten path and...

JOHN SCHROCK: Yeah.

TIM SMITH: ...that kind of sound, so we wanted to do that I guess and so that was a huge influence, and we figured, you know, a million things have already been done on guitar and we played not much more so we used a lot of keyboards for that. I mean I guess a million things have been done on keyboard as well but it was that I would be a little more interesting for where we where at the time, and so I don't know.

JOHN SCHROCK: So you guys kind of write the stuff as a band or do you all bring your own parts to it or just somebody kind of doing the arranging at the time?

TIM SMITH: I usually just write. I’ll just usually write the songs and the lyrics and bring it in and let everyone have a chance to put different parts on there. It’s that usually how it works. It will probably start using recording first I suppose. I mean we don’t have it all worked out. We don’t usually rehearse as a band before we start recording. We just you get the basic song there and then we usually start just laying down drums usually first and, you know, maybe go to it like a scratch bass line. We usually come back and play a bass line later on after the song is more solidified, and we usually -- Well, I wouldn’t say usually but sometimes we screw up the first time, you know, so we have to go back and do it again and we learn.

JOHN SCHROCK: [OVERLAPPING] So, you guys get to start over or --

TIM SMITH: After, yeah, like maybe the tempo’s wrong and something...

JOHN SCHROCK: Yeah.

TIM SMITH: ...with the EQ isn’t quite right. We didn’t nail it that day, and it’s really weird and you just do it another day and it sounds a lot better. I don't know why but --

JOHN SCHROCK: Yeah. I think there’s something to that because a lot of bands they invest so much in like the original tracking and they kind of get married to that what they’ve already laid down.

TIM SMITH: Yeah.

JOHN SCHROCK: But sometimes the best thing is just to start over.

TIM SMITH: Yeah. Good thing we started over on some of it. I mean it was -- Some of it was -- Yeah. Especially on this latest album it was like that.

JOHN SCHROCK: Yeah. So, you guys are recording to tape or hard drive or what?

TIM SMITH: We were at first. While we were just laying down, we had like an eight-track 1/2” I guess, you know, and we would just put down the drums first and maybe the bass. Maybe that’s about it probably, you know. Acoustic guitar, yeah, something -- Yeah.

PAUL ALEXANDER: It’s mostly just rhythm tracks we try to do on tape but that would all -- then that would all go to the hard drive, you know, and occasionally we would -- I don't know what the technical term is, but we’d record to tape and send it directly to the hard drive simultaneously for other tracks, but eventually our tape machine kind of -- is a little too -- What’s the word? -- temperamental, so we basically quit using it and we’d do everything to hard drive.

JOHN SCHROCK: Do you guys use samples too or is it -- or all -- like on Balloon Maker for example like the one kind of repeating the main riff. Is that a sampler? Is that like kind of a keyboard thing you guys...?

TIM SMITH: It’s probably all keyboards. We don’t really use a sampler. I mean live we do. We sample a lot of stuff live...

JOHN SCHROCK: Yeah.

TIM SMITH: ...off the album but, you know, that thing is all keyboards, just little toy keyboards, and we have quite a few keyboards, nothing terribly great but, you know.

JOHN SCHROCK: You guys like visit eBay all the time and try to scrounge for cool stuff?

TIM SMITH: We’re not too big on --

ERIC PULIDO: I think there was a time probably more when we would scrounge for random instruments, looking for, you know, unique sounds, and I think more so on the last album whereas this album, using more just organic, you know, acoustic instruments so it wasn’t trying to look into the bargain bins of, you know, the latest ’85 Casio...,

JOHN SCHROCK: Yeah.

ERIC PULIDO: ...you know, that’s out -- that’s the new thing.

JOHN SCHROCK: So, any kind of gear geek stuff that you have to -- Any particular guitars or amps that you guys like and are very keen on and think that you can.

PAUL ALEXANDER: Not really. I think we’d pretty much try anything that we can make sound good.

JOHN SCHROCK: Okay.

PAUL ALEXANDER: If it’s a piece of crap and we can make it do some sort of twist of knobs and make it sound pretty good, then -- It’s really the standard is only whether will I listen to this? You know, if one of us would really like to listen to it, then it’s not good. It doesn’t really matter what -- how we got there?

MCKENZIE SMITH: There’s a few tracks on the album that I recorded on like the cheapest like worst drum set ever.

JOHN SCHROCK: Yeah.

MCKENZIE SMITH: And for some songs it would work. It sounds great. In other songs it didn’t, so I went to my drum set, which is like the best drum set ever, so yeah.

JOHN SCHROCK: [LAUGHING]

[MIDLAKE LAUGHING]

MCKENZIE SMITH: But no. You know, I have a good drum set that I really love, and then my roommate’s old drum set, which he bought, which was a really cheap piece of junk...,

JOHN SCHROCK: Yeah.

MCKENZIE SMITH: Actually sounded really great for certain things, so it just completely depends on the song, you’ll never now. On our first album, when we were 10, we bought an almost $3,000 or something, and then we bought two microphones for $150 together. It’s like a recording pack.

JOHN SCHROCK: Yeah.

MCKENZIE SMITH: And one of the chose for the album was one of the ones. I had a $150 pack.

JOHN SCHROCK: Yeah.

MCKENZIE SMITH: And that was what he would use mostly for the whole vocals. So, recording is like -- I mean it’s so weed, I mean something may sound for one thing. It just depends. From person to person to day-to-day to everything, it just completely depends.

JOHN SCHROCK: Yeah. Excellent.

ERIC PULIDO: I think than can be a difficult thing too because you kind of lose a little bit of objectivity because you know the means of what you took to get to that place and like, you know, like McKenzie was saying with the mics used or guitar being plugged direct as opposed to, you know, mic’ing an amp and it’s like it’s probably not the most pro way to go about things, you know, but yet, when it comes out, you know, it sounds pleasing and it’s like I said because you know how maybe you got to that point and it wasn’t as glamorous maybe.

JOHN SCHROCK: Yeah. But that’s the artistry of it, right? I mean you guys having you using your musician brains to decide what sounds good. But the means you get t there doesn’t really matter, I guess it’s incidental to the sound

TIM SMITH: Plus you don’t have a lot of money, you know.

JOHN SCHROCK: Yeah. there’s that. There’s always.

TIM SMITH: So, I’m kind of stuck there. I think we would have pretty good gear. We’d always have great amps and great guitars but I got kind of a crappy amp, and it’s maybe a little embarrassing to pull up on stage but, I don't care.

PAUL ALEXANDER: I was it’s not real. That a whole lot of added disposal I mean as far as compared to, you know, even the studio we recorded are EP yet. You know its’ just history, we have what we have and somewhere in that pile of junk, we have something that could make work, and that’s how it is really.

JOHN SCHROCK: Do you find that the level of control you’ve had by doing it yourself is critical factor? Because a lot of bands...

TIM SMITH: Sure.

JOHN SCHROCK: They may be great live and they may have like a big local following, but when the take the step to go into the studio, they kind of lose control, or something. They just kind of -- They lose whatever it is about them that people like and it just comes out like a -- I don't know. Something gets lost.

PAUL ALEXANDER: I think that had -- Well, I think that it mostly has to do with time and money. I mean you can’t just have -- Unless you have an extraordinary budget, you can’t spend too long in a studio as for smaller bands, you know. It’s I don't know how you do it, you know. We couldn’t even afford to record an album we just made and make it sound the same way in a local studio much less of, you know, or to another one, you know, so for us it was the only option. It’s just do it yourself.

TIM SMITH: Yeah. It wouldn’t have sounded the same. I mean if we go into studio or work for the producer, it wouldn’t have sounded the same.

JOHN SCHROCK: Yeah.

TIM SMITH: You may have sounded good but it wouldn’t sound the same. I mean we’re happy with toilet sounds I think. I mean we like to get even warmer on the next time, but we’re happy with our sounds and --

JOHN SCHROCK: Yeah. So, it sounds like you guys the -- You’re garnering attention through getting your recording into the right hands kind of angle as opposed to like building up the fanbase and do it that way.

TIM SMITH: Sure. Sure. After we’ve -- We put out Bamnan and that -- and I think we’ve realized at some point after it had been out like just a couple of months that it’s good, people are appreciating it, but it’s not getting the attention that we like it to get, let’s just get back and get some more songs out of it or so, and that’s what we did, and we didn’t go on tour. We didn’t have an American tour. We didn’t do anything like that. We did some of a few European things. It was all right but we realized we need better music. We need to just keep at it and that’s what we did, so.

ERIC PULIDO: I think, especially now, even compared to when that album came out a couple of years ago, the different forms to listen to your music and hereby your band have grown exponentially, you know, with things like Myspace and blogs and just to get your music out there where you know, our album is not even out and it really isn’t in the hands of many. But, you know, one of the songs is out on the web and it kind of has gotten around somewhere which we’re fine with, you know, and it’s just great to see interest for that, but that is -- That’s not something that could happen without the medium of technology I guess, you know, so.

JOHN SCHROCK: So, you guys are playing here tonight, and then what’s the schedule for the rest of South by Southwest. And another question is how does South by Southwest kind of fit in to what you guys are doing right now like what did you guys show up here?

ERIC PULIDO: It’s kind of really good timing, this year especially because we’re done with the album. It’s now out to press to decide what they think of it and now it’s our job to promote it, you know, and with shows and such. So, a lot of the people that we’ve been working with are here. Our label both in Europe and here in the States and our publicity and booking companies are here, so we get to actually meet them, talk with them, look them in the eye, make sure they’re taking care of us and such, and so it’s a really good thing for us, but we are playing on other days as well for a few parties. So, I think it will just be a good opportunity kind of as a -- I guess the inaugural opening of The Trials of Van Occupanther to people, so.

JOHN SCHROCK: And that should be out in June, you said?

ERIC PULIDO: Yes.

JOHN SCHROCK: To June. Okay. Great. All right. And this is Midlake, and we’re here in Austin, Texas, South by Southwest 2006, and good luck to all you guys, and good luck...

TIM SMITH: Thank you.

JOHN SCHROCK: ...with promoting your album and whatever follows.

TIM SMITH: Thank you.

[MIDLAKE PERFORMING]