Austin Sound Check

Interview with John Gourley of Portugal. The Man

by Ana Wolken on July 17th, 2008

Austin Sound Check recently sat down to talk with John Gourley, lead singer of Portugal. The Man. P.TM is playing tomorrow (7/18) at Emo’s (outside) with RX Bandits and Facing New York.

The Alaska natives have relocated to Portland and recently embarked on an extended tour that has taken them to Europe and will send them all over the U.S. Gourley talks about the bands secrets for success and what it was like recording their new album Censored Colors (out September 16) in just two and a half weeks.

Read the full interview after the jump for more on P.TM’s SXSW marathon and why they thanked Austin in the liner notes for their new album.

More Information: Portugal. The Man // Emo’s

Ana Wolken: I was listening to your new album, Censored Colors and I noticed you thanked Austin in the liner notes.

John Gourley: That was a definite shout out. Its one of those amazing cities that is always a fun time and always good people. No matter how big the show is, it’s always a good time.

AW: I actually caught you at a day show at Maggie Maes during SXSW this year.

JG: That one freaked me out. I was so nervous that day. That was one of those shows that was so rushed around, just like all SXSW shows. We played 7 shows all together and an acoustic set maybe, so maybe it was 8. I don’t know. I just remember it was a lot.

We’ve come through Austin quite a few times. SXSW is (a big part of) Austin, of course we’re going to play as many times as we can.

AW: Do you have any advice for unsigned bands in Austin?

JG: Oh man, we are the worst people to ask that. Because we have no idea how any of this happens. I have no idea how to get a booking agent, a publicist or a manager. We’ve just been really really lucky. I think that’s the only way you can do it. There’s so many people playing music and so many MySpace profiles for every kid’s band, every neighbor’s band. Everybody has a band. Honestly, I feel (the key is) getting pretty lucky. It just comes down to falling into place.

AW: Touring is a big part of that success. You’re beginning a pretty long tour this month. Other than the van breaking down and missing the Tucson show, do you have any good stories to share?

JG: You know, we’re a pretty tame band. We’re actually really laid back. Normally we’re pretty good boys and if we’re not, we never talk about it.

AW: What’s your secret to going out on tour so long and staying friends?

JG: That’s the thing too. I have no idea! We all just get in the van. I think we’ve been doing this so heavily and intense for the last three years straight that it’s just kind of become what we do. We’re just constantly on tour. When we’re at home, I have no idea what I’m supposed to do. We were just home for two months and I didn’t do anything. I just sat around thinking about what we were going to do on tour and writing (more songs). It’s just what we do. It’s the reason we left home. It’s the reason we live in Portland. I mean if we’re gonna be away from home we might as well be travelling around the world and playing music. And shit, we all have a good time.

I think its so strange when we’re around bands that don’t like to tour unless they’re making enough money. I mean obviously you have to make enough money to tour. If you don’t and you tour as much as we do, you’re just digging a hole. We did that for the first six months, I guess. It was just constantly digging out of this pile of debt we kept building up and it worked out in the end. It’s what we do. We’re lucky enough to be able to tour as much as we do.

AW: You mentioned you’re in Portland now, having left Alaska. Do you agree with the comparison of Austin’s music scene to Portland’s?

JG: I think it’s a lot like Austin in a lot of ways. It’s just a really great music scene. The Builders & The Butchers live there. They’re from Alaska as well and moved down to Portland and formed the band there. Menomena is from Portland. Panther. There’s so many great bands. It’s so crazy because they all just kind of hang out in Portland. That’s just what they do. They just play Portland every 2-3 weeks. They’re pretty content within the city. Being from Portland they can definitely maintain that pretty well.

AW: The new album is coming out soon, called Censored Colors. You recorded it in 2.5 weeks. That’s a pretty intense recording schedule.

JG: It wouldn’t have been as intense if we had actually written songs in advance. We like to go in with no plan whatsoever. I think when we went in to record, Zach (Carothers, P.TM bassist) & I had gone back home to Alaska for ten days and in the week that we had off prior to that, we had just gone up to Seattle. We were just demoing things and working on EPs.

Kirk (Huffman) & Phil (Peterson) asked us to come over because they wanted to record a couple songs for us for an EP or whatever. We went over there and we did two tracks from Censored Colors. We let them demo it to see how it went. We didn’t really talk to them about recording an album or anything. There were no plans to do it. But it was fun, it was a cool couple days.

So then we went up to Alaska and I was looking at the schedule and said, “Fuck, we have three weeks off before tour”, before we go to Germany and after that we’re pretty much out until July. So if we were going to record, we (wanted to use) those 2.5 weeks.We called up Phil & Kirk and told them we were going in. It seemed like it was going to go really easy and really smooth when we walked in, and in reality it did for as unprepared as we were. The first two days we did a couple songs I had kind of worked out. I started having to write a song a night and just sit down and do it.

There were songs created that we had no thought going into it. We did no songs with finger picking on the record, so we’ve gotta throw it on there. Everything was written just based on what we wanted it to sound like. It worked out really well. It’s a very fluid record. It’s more of an album. The whole second half moves together in one big piece. The first half has its place as well. It was a lot of fun. It sounds completely different than what I thought going into it.

The original idea was that we were going to go in and record the songs and send it to somebody who works in dub to mix it. Just do some crazy stuff with it. We sent sent it to a bunch of producers outside of dub, where we had no connection whatsoever. Paul Kolderie came back to mix it. Can’t say no to that. He’s worked with the Radiohead and Pixies. All in all a good experience. Paul was really nice, really good dude. He took the album and he called me. He asked what we wanted to do and what we wanted it to sound like it. We just told him, you’re the dude that’s going to do that. You’re the man. Just take it and do what you want to do with it. It was a really cool experience to just hand somebody the music and let them do what they want.

AW: Do you have any plans for the release? Traditional, digital, etc?

JG: I’m not even sure. We recorded the album in January and all the work was done in May. So in all that running around we held off on talking to labels. We didn’t want to talk to anybody till the album was done. We’ve been talking to some labels about setting up a partnership that will work out really well. We want to maintain our own label and release the albums the way we want to release them.

AW: So, no free release like Church Mouth?

JG: We did what we always do. The album leaked so we just told everybody to download it. We just want people to hear the music as soon as possible. The sooner people hear it and have it, the sooner we can go back in to the studio.

AW: Well, we’re looking forward to your show at Emo’s on Friday. Anything special planned?

JG: Our drummer had to stay back home. He had some family stuff going on. The drummer of Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground is filling in for this tour. We had four days of practice. It’s crazy. We’ll see where it goes. We’re gonna play a couple new songs. We’ve practiced all of them. Just a matter of how it goes. We’re using this tour to get ready for our headline tour. We have three different sets we’re going to rotate.

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