SURFER BLOOD

INDIE-ROCKS NEW VISCERAL FEEL

JP John Paul Pitts (Dubbed the Mastermind/Vocals/Guitar)

Tyler Schwarz (Drums)
Thomas Fekete (Guitar & Vocals)
Brian Black (Bass & Vocals)
Marcos Marchesani (Keyboards/Percussion)
Ian Witlen (photo)

With an International tour underway and the recent release of their self produced emerging album Astro Coast, Surfer Blood is unleashing a massive tsunami bound to crash the indie-rock scene with eclectic textures & anthems influenced by empathy.

Off the beautiful peninsula of West Palm Beach derives a persevering story of five sincere and neoteric indie-rock musicians called Surfer Blood.

I felt a sullen sensation when I noticed a thick novel of Edgar Allen Poe’s greatest works on their van’s dashboard; however, when I was told that the Honda van they came in was borrowed, I quickly was overcome with a spirit of their humbleness. Surfer Blood is currently scheduled to tour with The Drums in the UK in less than a week. The show they played that night could have been easily canceled or re-scheduled due to travel inconveniences- it must have been important for them to be at Café Eleven in St. Augustine that Monday night. I was glad to get this interview with them before they flew over the Atlantic.

REAX: According to an article in the New York Times Surfer Blood was defined as emblematic performers at the 29th Annual CMJ Music Marathon and that your songs encompassed a broad stretch of the convention’s musical spectrum. There were over 1,300 bands in the Lower East Side of Brooklyn performing that week, how important was that gig for you guys?
JP: CMJ was super important and it was an awesome weekend and that was really flattering for the NY Times to say. Before the festival we were kind of struggling to get on some shows, and our booking agent kind of helped us out and the next thing you knew we had 12 shows.

REAX: That’s right I heard you played the CMJ twelve times.
JP: It’s really not so bad. Everyone made it out like we were spreading ourselves too thin or we were going to wear ourselves out, breakup, etc. But I think if anything this is what we like to do. Playing two shows a day is not the end of the world. As a matter of fact it was a really fun week for all of us
TOM: It was crazy because at first we were struggling to get even one show and we started getting these offers and we were saying yes to everyone of them and by the end we actually had to deny a couple, which is really interesting, a month ago we were hoping we would get one. Now we were denying shows you know, all the sudden these people were asking us to play. It was great. It was really flattering.
JP: The thing about being emblematic, like you know there were so many talented bands that we saw that week: Groomed from New York? is really good, Surf City? from New Zealand, like Holiday Shores played our first show with us, so I mean there were a ton of awesome bands. I’m just really happy we got all the good press that we did from that week.

REAX: So you guys are getting ready to leave for the UK and will be back by mid-February to continue your headlining tour, are you guys exited about being in London?
JP: It’s really awesome. It’s going to be really awesome to play for a completely different market that we’ve never played for before. And yeah British people seem really cool. We toured with Arbor recently and they were really funny so I hope all British people are like that.
TOM: They’re also playing us on BBC1 over there, which is just insane to us that’s just mind blowing. So um, we don’t really know what to expect right now.
BRIAN: Were playing a show with The Drums in Manchester, right.
TOM: Yeah Manchester
BRIAN: And were really looking forward to that because we know that they blew up over there pretty big, so it’s going to be a really cool show and we just played with them recently so were looking forward to hanging out with them.
JP: And from what everyone says, there’s like this whole culture of vinyl in the UK, like people are always looking for new artist and actually playing new and upcoming artists on the radio as opposed to here where they play the same, you know fifteen artists over and over again. So I think there’s a real thirst for new artists over there.

REAX: Rolling Stone has defined your sound as Weezer meets Pavement other major music publications have stated Beach Boys? mixed with the indie rock sounds of The Pixies?, The Shins, and Vampire Weekend. But to hell with all that, what do you guys define your music as, or what would you best explain it as, in your own words?
JP: Guitar idiosyncratic indie rock with a lot of whirly wavy textures.
TOM: Definitely, Pavement inspired.
JP: Yeah, Pavement is one of our favorite bands. We hear the Rivers Como thing all the time. It’s not a bad thing because he’s, you know, a genius, but…
TOM: It was just unintentional.
JP: Maybe sub-consciously that worked its way in. But I wouldn’t really site Weezer as one of our primary influences at all.
TOM: But we do love the Blue Album
JP: Yeah but the Blue Album is great.

REAX: Yeah the Blue Album is so great. Any other primary influences you can think of off the top of your head?
TOM: Pavement and Sonic Youth are two we’ve always…
JP: Bead Head?
TYLER: Built to Spill
TOM: Modest Mouse
JP: Oh absolutely, when I was learning how to play guitar I was playing nothing but Pavement.

REAX: I kind of wanted to get the record straight because I’ve been through a lot of websites a lot of different reviews and I’ve been getting like The Shins and Vampire Weekend, does that kind of piss you off?
TOM: No. No.
JP: No- I never got in to The Shins but I know Tom loves The Shins.
TOM: No I love them. It’s strange because I guess I kind of got The Shins references after I read them I never thought about that before. But definitely like Twin Peaks I could see James Mercer writing that chord progression definitely.
JP: Yeah it’s not upsetting at all. Those are all great bands, Vampire Weekend their first record is incredible I still haven’t honestly listened to Contra all the way through.

REAX: Yeah I listened to it for the first time on the way over here, eh, it’s Vampire. Another question: Astro Coast dropped on Jan 19th there’s been tremendous success with the CD as I mentioned earlier. How is that hitting you guys is that really messing with you it all or is it all good?
BRIAN: It’s just cool
JP: It’s a relief because this CD has been done forever. We went on our first tour that we booked ourselves with this exact same LP ready to go all the CDR’s burnt just handing them to people at shows saying please just listen to our record. Please give us a chance and now, the fact like that it’s out on the label and we have vinyl’s and CD’s in our hand and people are buying the record is just what we’ve been waiting for this whole time. It’s exactly everything we could have ever wanted.
TYLER: The fact that people are buying it is really cool because we went on tour seriously we were passing out like Kinko’s copies of track list with our albums for months and months now and then we see ourselves on #15 for most downloaded albums on ITunes. It’s really surreal you never expect that to happen.
TOM: I then today we hit like #2 on the E Music Chart. So like we don’t, it’s crazy because like this is the first time all this has happened so we don’t really know what that means yet… I mean like we haven’t had like any numbers come in yet or anything so were just kind of waiting …
JP: We hope people are buying it our label hasn’t been calling or giving us any nasty phone calls
TYLER: Our shows are getting better though.
TOM: Were not used to having people standing in a line, out there standing.

REAX: How’s Kanine Records been working out with you guys and do you like artist lineup that hey have, was that a big deal did you really want to work with that record label?
TOM: Yeah we, we did…
JP: We were introduced to Kanine through our friend Jacob Graham, or my friend from Orlando he’s in a band called, The Drums. They are originally from Co Co Beach but their living in New York now. And he just said hey, trust me, you really want to work with these guys, they’re really good at breaking new bands, that’s what they do and they know exactly how to market it.

REAX: They got Grizzly Bear on there and…
BRIAN: Chairlift?

REAX: Yeah Chairlift?! They’re bad ass. I saw both of them at Bonnaroo last year. That was sick… So was Astro Coast really recorded in a dorm room at The University of Florida with equipment purchased from scholarship money?
JP: That is mostly true.
JP: Because it was recorded in an apartment across the street from Florida Atlantic University where I was living by myself, which was student housing and it was recorded on the Pro Tools interface.
TOM: That’s how we got these cheap microphones that we use.

REAX: Did you guys really do away with a polished studio album that was set-up by your label and you didn’t like the sound or is that BS on the internet?
JP: That’s BS on the internet. We didn’t have a label when we recorded Astro Coast we had nothing. We had whatever money in our bank accounts and whatever money our parents let us borrow.

REAX: If you guys go through every review like have then you will find that on there…
JP: It’s so funny because we went in to the studio, him (Tom) and I, and we had like three hundred dollars to spend in the studio and we thought like, okay were going to tack everything and it’s going to take two days, were going to get in and get out, and it took two days to do the drum tracks alone. And then when we started doing the other stuff I just thought it was taking to long. I didn’t like the way the engineer was approaching it. And I said you know I really don’t need this. I can do this in my apartment by myself. We didn’t have a record label who was paying for us. We weren’t being groomed for anything. We went on our first few tours hoping not to declare bankruptcy. You know what I mean like?

REAX: Yeah, I know about that…
TYLER: There definitely wasn’t like any constraints at all. It wasn’t like you have to get this done right away. It was definitely just ourselves pushing it.

REAX: If you can’t mention it, you can’t mention it but are you scheduled for any major festivals this summer like Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, or Rothbury?
JP: Were still waiting to announce all that.

REAX: Yeah, alright not mentioning it, that’s all off the record. Congratulations if that fucking happens guys.
TOM: It is happening. How about add that. It is happening.

REAX: You know that’s alright will take that off the record, but you know fucking God Bless you guys…
BRIAN: You can put a teaser in.

REAX: There’s possibilities?
BRIAN: You can say, you can say, there’s a certain place in the Windy City that a lot of people will be watching us (laughs).
TOM: And a certain place in Spain.
BRIAN: And a certain place in Spain (laughs).
JP: That’s quite a few, yeah.

REAX: God Bless it and thank you (laughing)…

REAX: Last question… Is there a meaning to your band? An idiosyncrasy that most people are going to miss that you want to tell people about?
JP: I think every one thinks that we write exclusively pop music and I just want everyone to know that, no, our music is like extremely emotive. I mean like that’s like the nature of it and I don’t see why, I mean we get miss construed a lot because people automatically hear swim and they want to lump us in to one thing. You know everyone talks about that song the most obviously because it’s the single but… I think there’s a lot more to us. I think we have a lot more depth and a lot more to us.
TOM: All to bro as Pitchfork calls it, all to bro. Did you read that?

REAX: Oh I did, I did. And I know if I asked you guys if you surfed you were probably going to throw something at me.
BRIAN: Check this, check this out. A lot of people, well every knows that JP is like the mastermind and it gives me an interesting perspective because I can look at it from an outsider’s perspective even though I play the music, and I see like the intent of having like the longevity of having a 90’s band and not writing like throw away pop songs that people can get rich and famous off of just for five minutes you know like… We want to play music. We want to like be around…
TOM: We want it to last…
JP: That’s increasingly hard these days too with the internet and the disposability of music. And it’s going to be a real challenge to keep this sort of work ethic and this sort of thing up. You know what I mean?
TOM: But I mean um, look at like this. I mean our van broke down and we all threw some equipment in a mini van and got it all together and when came on these three dates. I mean were not turning in to divas, were gonna keep working hard and were gonna do what we got to do. You know that’s what, this is all we want to do. All of us quit school and quit our jobs…

REAX: And it’s all on the wire man… I can’t thank you guys enough again.