by Ida Griesemer
Andy, Carolyn, and Matty are in the Austin, TX band Woven Bones. When I was there in August I was talking to Andy about where we were going to meet for the interview. He said I could come to their practice space. He said there was a giant moon rock out back. I said that sounded good. When I got there, the trio took a break from playing and led me to the moon rock. Together we orchestrated a conversation, and below are the stories that came out of it. I edited out most of my prompts and left Andy's words, because that's how my man Studs Terkel used to do it. The band will be in town next week for CMJ so feel free to check their dates and catch a show.
Andy: As far as like a, "what is the coolest thing is the world that you could do?" kinda level, always in the back of my mind I think, "being in a rock band." Giving your songs to people. Having people like your songs. It's been a fantasy of mine.
Nivana, the Cure, fuckin Sonic Youth, fuckin Weezer. I mean, Jesus and Mary Chain. Velvet Underground is one of our bigger influences but I didn't even really know the Velvet Underground until I was like a senior. In high school. I grew up in a real - I got into everything through 120 Minutes on MTV. That or whatever my skater buddies listened to. My parents liked the Beatles and the Mamas and the Papas and the Kinks. And Tommy James and the Shondells. That was their biggest contribution to my record collection. Nothing too far out or wicked cool or underground or anything.
I grew up in Jacksonville, in the city, five minutes from downtown. I grew up skateboarding and playing basketball and riding my bike. Doing all kinds of shit. Skateboarder forever. My parents moved out to the burbs, far out, when I was 13. Kinda like the country. I didn't want to at the time. Because all I did was skate. And we were an hour away from downtown. But it was cool because - they were few and far between - but the kids that I met there were all really cool. I met people, and driving an hour back to town and having older friends that could do it ended up not being a problem. I did that whenever I could. And there was actually a cool punk scene of, not house parties, but more at veterans' halls and crazy shit like that, in the area where my parents lived. It was a weird time. Veterans' halls – they would just rent out a space and throw a show for a band that was on tour. It wasn’t total hickville. It was, but it was a different day and age. It's backwoods Florida but there's a beach there. There's a beach, there's a downtown, there's an urban area around downtown. It's a legit city. It's not as far behind as some people think Florida is. I mean it is, but it's not.
There was an old place called Einstein a Go Go that was on the beach. And I mean, The Breeders and Nivana and The Pixies, and The Melvins, and Arches of Loaf - all these cool bands, like Luna, right before they got big - they would come through and play Einstein a Go Go. All of the people that were older, in their late teens to mid-twenties, a lot of them are still around in Jacksonville. They've always done nights in Jacksonville. So from when I was able to go out, there was always really good indie rock/rock and roll/punk rock dance nights. Those don't exist in Austin, or lots of places. Where they just play really fucking good indie rock, and a sea of people dance. It was different places, after Einstein a Go Go. When that place went down, everybody filtered into the urban neighborhoods around downtown. There were a few places that had that kind of thing. Thursday and Saturday nights. There were two different places. Every hip kid - that's where we were all at. And we'd just get wasted. I mean, whatever 90s indie rock to whatever's cool now. They'd play all that. And all the hits. And everybody just danced their asses off and has a good time. Old school dudes would dj. It was fun. It was what we did. Compared to Austin. I mean I like dancing. You like dancing, huh Carolyn?
Carolyn: I love dancing.
Andy: Yeah, I mean I like dancing and having fun. We all like – from shitty new pop music to - I mean they'd even play whatever crazy hip hop was rad. It was just good shit that kids like. Just the regular shit that everybody loves. It was not genred-out or anything. It was just the shit and everybody danced.
Besides really crappy punk pop bands - like Limp Bizkit is from Jacksonville, really crappy shitty stuff like that - there was never really any cool bands that played good stuff. That's kinda why I moved out. I went to college and I went through a bunch of shit, and came back home and wasn't really doing anything. Everyone was still there. Everybody goes out and parties and has good taste and are good artists, but they're all armchair critics, and I mean it in the kindest way. I love everybody from there. Everybody's an armchair critic, they talk about everything, the good and the bad, smoke shitloads of weed and get wasted, but nobody ever actually participates in creativity in a fashion that they actually try to go out, and get it out. A lot of people don't do anything. They're just lazy.
I had sort of a panic attack. Actually, it was the worst job I ever had. I was working at Guitar Center. I went through a bunch of dark times. I broke up with the girlfriend I was with for years when I was in college. And then a few months later I lost myself to drug-fueled abandon. When I got my head out of that I was living at home just to get my feet on the ground again. I worked at Guitar Center. When you first work there you work in accessories. So I just knew about guitar pedals and a bunch of stuff. I knew about the stuff because I was interested in it. A lot of people work there and don't give a fuck. They're ex-musicians who were used car salesmen and got fired from that, and now they're selling musical instruments as if they were used cars.
You work on commission. You have to fade your pay. That's what they call it. To get commission on what you sell you have to outsell your hourly wage, and then you get a percentage of what you outsell. And if you don't outsell your hourly wage, your job is at risk. So they make you make these annoying phone calls to people, which I never did. I just acted like I was doing it.
I did really good and they tried to move me to guitars, which is a more money-making side of the job. I did really good the first day and as soon as I did good all the old dudes who worked there, all the sharks – I'd be talking to a customer, trying to give them the right deal for what they needed and get them out of the store. It's like, moms shopping for their sons and daughters. The kids, either they know what they want but it's too expensive but they can get something that's just as good, or they don't know what they want at all, and you want to get something that is proper for them. And all these other guys wanna do is make as much money as they can and they don’t give a fuck. You know what I mean? So they would cuss me out or try to make me look like an idiot and get loud and then swoop in and steal my customer. And I was like, "Well, I don't give a fuck. Hey, brother, I'd just rather be king shit of my little shit-fuck mountain in accessories and work back over there." I don’t give a fuck about competing with some dude who used to play keyboards for Gloria Estefan back in '85.
I was starting to write Woven Bones songs and I had a lot of stuff going. But it was so soul-sucking and fucked up. I started having all these like – the economy was just starting to fall – and they started having all these sales meetings. And they were talking. And there was all this shit. They were crazy sharks and weird shit. I was just stoked to work around instruments. Even if it was at fuckin shitty ass guitar center, it was cool. Then I worked every day of the week. I only had one day off. I basically worked from 10 until 8 at night, and I drove an hour to work in the morning and an hour home. I didn't ever get to do the stuff that I wanted to do, that I thought would be more possible because I worked in a music store. Then shit just keep getting more and more corpo and sales-oriented and weird. I sort of had this panic attack one day. I and talked to my friend in Orlando and I was like, "Dude, I'm just getting the fuck out of Jacksonville. I don't know what I'm gonna do, but all I need to do is get out of here." It's only an hour away. It's a quick move. I moved to Orlando. I worked at a vegetarian café that was family-run. I was the only employee besides the family. And I played music with my friend Curtis. We started Woven Bones up as a two piece band. When the economy crashed, a bunch of shit went awry at the restaurant. A bunch of equipment broke, like the air conditioner broke and shit. They were all kinda like, bumming around. I was like, "I know I'm the only person who's getting a non-family paycheck. A legit paycheck. I don't wanna beat around the bush or be a burden on you guys. Let me know. Because I've got some friends in Austin that told me I should move there. And I'm sure it wouldn't take a lot to move there." They were like, "Yeah. We were gonna tell you that we might need to let you go." I was like, "Well let me work until next Friday and just pay me out in cash and don't give me a check and I'll be out and everything will be cool." So that's what happened.
I've been able to get by. I get by by the skin of my teeth a lot. There's a lot – I dunno. It just seems each easier here right now for me. And it has since I moved here. I think that I was lucky that things kind of took off for our band in whatever way they took off. It's given me, even in a miniscule way, opportunities to make money doing design work and stuff like that. Just freelance. It's cheap here. I haven't lived in the best places. I haven't been as comfortable as I have been in the past. But I've been able to get by. At least for me and Matty. Carolyn's just now stepping into the role of casting aside things to play in a band. It's enabling. To get by and keep up. The town is supportive of music. We're lucky enough to have - for whatever strange reason, right when we started people paid attention to our band.
LL: How did that happen?
Andy: I dunno, do you?
Matty: I dunno. We're good?
Andy: Maybe we're good, I dunno. I had people who wanted to do our record – like Hozac – when it was just me. They heard songs on the internet. I moved to Austin with a bag of tools that enabled us to do things. A bag of tools that a lot of people don’t have. Record labels that wanted to do records. I told them to wait, that I would find a band and we would tour. There's a lot of bands these days that never leave the bedroom. They write cool records and it's 7 inches and stuff, but they're just bedroom projects. I was like, "I really don't wanna be one of those. If you want to spread my music around to the world or the internet or whatever, I would love to be in a real band and actually support it and try to do as much for you as you can do for me." It's worked out. Everything we have right now has been a successive thing of people hearing what we put out. I've never sent off demos to anybody. There's a lot of small record labels around, and we've tried to pick the best ones to work with who wanted to do stuff for us. It ended up being, as far as we can see right now, the right decision. We signed. Now we're on a label called Hardly Art, which is part of Sub Pop. Which is cool. We're all stoked on it. We're not rich. We didn't take a bunch of money, agree to get a big advance or anything. We're happy to have a home with a really good team of people behind us who genuinely like our band a lot. We signed for two records. So if our first record that we do with them totally tanks, they can drop us. But as long as we work on it, I doubt that will happen.
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