by Tina WhelskiTally 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."
“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."
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment