by Ida Griesemer
This interview with Alex Bleeker (of the Ridgewood, New Jersey bands Real Estate and Alex Bleeker and the Freaks) took place on January 13, 2010. It will appear in six parts.
View: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 5, Part 6
In which Real Estate finds their name when Martin’s parents offer all four band members jobs in their realty firm.
LL: How did the name Real Estate happen?
AB: I guess it was because over the summer Martin was going to real estate school to get his realtor’s license. His parents are realtors so he had this safety net job as a realtor. And we were having the like – I’m sure you’re very familiar with it – the common post-college existential crisis, like, What are we going to do with our lives? We’ve been so sheltered and institutionalized for the past 16 years. We don’t wanna get jobs! How do we even get jobs if we wanna get jobs? And so Martin was doing this thing, and we were having dinner and his parents were like, You guys can all work for us if you got your real estate licenses. And we were like, What if we all went to real estate school and all were realtors, and we also had a band, and we called it Real Estate. It was a just a joke. And when the band became an actual band and we had a show booked – our first show was two Octobers ago – we needed a name and that was the only thing… And we thought it sounded vaguely like a soft rock staple, sort of like Steely Dan, I don’t know why. For some reason we were interested in that kind of aesthetic.
LL: What about the Steely Dan aesthetic was appealing to you?
AB: Especially Etienne and myself, but also the other guys, got really into soft rock for some reason. We wanted to make music that was like – and in a way we’ve achieved it with Real Estate – music that was like, smooth. Laid back, you know, head bobbing, grooving. And so that was sort of the original inspiration for the band, and we wanted the name to fit that. I definitely think we have stronger influences than bands like Fleetwood Mac or Steely Dan, but that sort of idea was attractive to us at the time.
LL: It’s interesting that you felt connected to that kind of music because it was at a time when you were like, Are we gonna be realtors? Are we really gonna do this as our job? I mean, we could. And that’s sort of a serious thing.
AB: Totally. And you know Martin, who’s the front man of the band, is. He goes to work at his parents’ real estate office when we’re not on tour.
LL: I love that. It’s so literal.
AB: Yeah. I mean it’s definitely become totally associated with us that we’re from New Jersey. We’re these very normal, typical suburban kids. A you-know-these-guys kind of aesthetic.
LL: Well it’s familiar to you guys, because that’s where you are.
AB: True, but I think we’re interested in appealing to common experiences. You know, we wanna make it clear that I think our music is relatable because it’s coming from an honest place where we’re those kids that played music in high school. We just never stopped.
LL: So if that’s where you’re coming from, where do you think you’re going as a band? What do you think is most crucial?
AB: I think we need to – right now we’re experiencing a lot of success, which is really exciting, but can also be really intimidating. Because when we wrote these songs, when Martin wrote these songs and when the band formulated and when we started – you know, I think Martin is the chief songwriter of Real Estate for sure, but I think a lot of our appeal, especially the appeal about the live show, is it’s obvious that we know each other and that we’re having a lot of fun and that we have a deep musical connection. We didn’t meet each other for the purposes of being in a band together. This is something that we’re all passionate about, in different ways, but we’re on a similar wavelength, and I think the magic of Real Estate comes from that. It comes from that long friendship and pure love that’s come into the creation of it. And we had 10 years to develop that, in a way. Even though all the songs that were on the record were written within the span of a year, there was no pressure to write them. It took us five years to arrive at this specific sound that makes sense for the four of us to play together. And you know, we’re going to have the opportunity to put out a second record, and now there’s a different kind of anticipation for that record, or a different kind of attention going on. I think right now it’s important for us to stay calm and to stay grounded. Take everything as it comes. We’re about to have a really busy year. We’re doing a lot of traveling.
LL: Do you feel yourself floating and getting a little bit detached at times?
AB: I mean, it becomes more of like a – when you play shows every night it’s great, it’s a dream come true, it’s amazing - it’s also a job. So we have to keep the spark and the energy there. We have to want to play together. We have to be careful and look out for each other’s feelings, and we also have to not worry - in a weird way this is funny because this is a press-related moment – we have to not care about the press. You know, we have to write good songs, we have to evolve naturally, and not try to cater to a sound that we’ve been pinned to. We don’t have to write songs about the summer. It’s about not being compelled to be anything and to allow the music to come organically, which can be scary and hard now that you can read people’s comments about you on Brooklyn Vegan. Which is the worst feeling in the world, in a way. My darkest moments are when I go scour the internet for hate comments about our band. You look for the bad things, or you anticipate the backlash because you know it has to come, because we’re getting a lot of positive attention.
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