Tally Hall - Joe Hawley Interview

by Tina Whelski

Tally Hall’s trademark neckties—Rob Cantor - yellow tie (vocals/guitar), Zubin Sedghi -blue (vocals/bass), Ross Federman - silver (percussion), Joe Hawley - red (vocals/guitar), and Andrew Horowitz - green (vocals/keys) draw attention at first glance, but once the band starts to play, the rainbow visuals against stark white shirts fade from focus.

“Some people may interpret them as hokey,” says Joe Hawley about Tally Hall’s colorful ties, “But I guess we just didn’t want to look like an era. If you wear street clothes on stage I think it’s generally less respectful. I like the idea that we all agreed to come up with something a little more interesting…It promotes unity and individuality all at the same time. To some the uniforms are similar, but at the same time, each color shows that we’re a little different as well, which is how I think our group functions. It’s kind of like five chiefs and no Indians and that can be frustrating at times, but it’s also pretty productive.”

Tally Hall’s cooperative approach has worked so far. The band started generating buzz early on with Hawley’s surreal music video for the calypso-tinged “Banana Man,” which has been downloaded over two million times. Then they captured attention with Horowitz’s song “Good Day,” which was not only featured on Fox’s series The O.C., but won him the BMI/John Lennon Songwriting Scholarship. The band’s new album, Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum, where the song appears, pushes people’s curiosity further.

“I think ‘Good Day’ serves as a microcosm toward the stylistic changes evident within the album,” says Hawley. “Basically we saw Marvin’s as a place of extremist eccentricism, if that’s a word?”

Located 25 miles northwest of Detroit, Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum houses an impressive array of collectible curiosities and mechanical antiques that tickled Tally Hall’s creativity. From the coin-operated fortunetelling machines of the 1920s to the latest high-tech video games; from model airplanes to P.T. Barnum’s legendary Cardiff Giant, the band found music.

“…There were so many different kinds of antique machines,” says Hawley. “It’s just a mish mosh of all of these ideas and artistic achievements and we thought that would be kind of interesting corollary to what we were doing.”

The Michigan-based five-piece band, which includes three songwriters and four vocalists, originally came together at the University of Michigan. There they shared the idea that a song should be pictured in its own universe.

“We had been working on songs at U of M for a couple of years and we had compiled about fourteen or fifteen that we liked and we decided to turn it into an album,” says Hawley. “We carefully planned out each song and made arrangements and thought of each song as its own little world. I hope that comes across in the album.”

Tally Hall performs at the Knitting Factory on August 11.

Originally published in The Aquarian Weekly (8/9/06).

Tally Hall video for "Bananaman."

The Frames - Glen Hansard Interview

by Tina Whelski

“If you trust in the moment, if you’re willing to be the fool and make the mistake and get it wrong, then you’ve great potential to get it absolutely right,” says The Frames’ Glen Hansard (vocals/guitar). And for the record, The Frames “get it absolutely right.”

Dublin’s acclaimed rock quintet Colm MacConlomaire (violin/keyboards/vocals), Joseph Doyle (bass/vocals), Robert Bochnik (guitar), Johnny Boyle (drums), and front man Hansard use that risky philosophy to create brilliant albums, like Burn The Maps released via Anti- Records early last year and when it comes to live shows, that’s “a completely different animal.” The band hits a place with audiences that can only exist when everyone throws caution to the wind.

“When it really breaks down to it, people generally go to a concert, not necessarily to hear the album or because they like the sound or whatever, but I suppose to be touched by something that is some kind of energy,” says Glen Hansard. “When a band is in the right headspace and you’re present and you’re living the sound, then there’s an alchemy that can take place sometimes. Something can transcend for both the audience and the band. I think that magic can only happen at any concert, in any situation, if both sides are completely willing to allow the moment to be the leader, or the guide if you like. So at a gig for instance, if we’re standing there playing our music and the audience is there, it’s almost like all I need to do is be absolutely present, then whatever’s going to happen, will happen. If I’m not present, we go through the motions, nobody experiences anything great. Everybody leaves saying, ‘Yeah I heard the songs. I recognize the songs that I know. The band was ok.’ Nobody leaves that situation feeling in any way uplifted or that they’ve experienced anything new…Where the real magic is in any gig is in the audience’s experience. If the audience is experiencing it in a really good way then the atmosphere can only build and whatever energy is in that room can only grow.”

The Frames find commonality with their audiences by understanding that music is more conversation than show.

“It’s a discourse rather than a performance,” says Hansard. “The whole idea of ‘entertainer’ sort of denotes this trickery, this idea that there are certain things that you’ll do. If I do ‘x’ and ‘y’ it will result in action ‘a’ and ‘b.’ Often that can be a thing that people can fall back on, but for me the most interesting gigs are those where no one in the audience knows your band and there isn’t any expectation. Somehow we all catch each other in a moment…I love playing for strangers because that’s where I started, playing music on the street for people who walk by, so there’s definitely an excitement about playing in front of a few thousand people who don’t know who you are.”

Don’t miss The Frames perform August 3 at Central Park Summer Stage.

Originally published in The Aquarian Weekly (8/2/06).

The Frames performing "Star Star."