Band Of Horses will be releasing their highly anticipated third album, Infinite Arms on May 18th. Keyboardist/guitarist Ryan Monroe took some time out of his busy schedule to talk to REAX as the band hit the road. We talked about the new record, shared song writing duties, the switch from indie powerhouse Sub Pop to major label Columbia and a few other things. Be sure to catch Band Of Horses as they swing through Florida. They’ll be in Orlando on April 29th at the House Of Blues.

Ryan: Hey. What’s going on?

REAX: I’ve been listening to the new album. It’s quite good. I’m thoroughly enjoying it.
Ryan: Thank you. I’m glad you enjoy it. We worked pretty hard on it.

REAX: Tell me about the album. What are your opinions of it? From what I understand, the song writing was more of a group effort.
Ryan: Well, Ben still wrote most of the stuff. There are a couple tunes on there, one was written by myself called “Older”, one was written by Tyler Ramsey, the guitarist, called “Evening Kitchen” and there are a couple other co-writes on there as well. Ben would go in to a couple of cabins in the middle of the woods, ripped out a bunch of new tunes and sent ‘em all to us and we were like “I guess it’s new record time now”. He had a bunch of new songs that he had written. I had a couple, Tyler had a couple, and Bill and Creighton, they all had some. We were sending ‘em all back and forth on email; checking them out.

We decided to get together in Muscle Shoals (Alabama) to try to flush ‘em out. I don’t know if we ready or not, but it turned into an expensive demoing session basically. We stayed there for a week or two, went to two different studios in Muscle Shoals. That’s how the project started. Then we went to Asheville (North Carolina) where we recorded the second record. That’s our old stomping grounds, so we started flushing them out there with producer Phil Ek, who was also with us in Alabama and did the first two records. He produced the first half of the record and due to scheduling conflicts he was unable to do the rest of the record. We pretty much produced the record ourselves. We figured out the songs that worked good with the five of us playing them, went through it and rocked it out. It was a little bit more of a group effort than it was before. Before, it was all Ben’s songs and he was cool enough to relinquish some of the responsibility of the song writing.

REAX: I noticed that on this record, the tunes that are more rocking seem to go together better with the slower and twangy ones than on previous records. In the past, even though they worked together, the rockers seemed to be more like stand-alone tracks. On this album, everything seems to gel a bit more.
Ryan: We got some good advise from lot of people that we respect in sequencing the album, so that might have something to with the album sounding a little more cohesive. I see what you’re saying. I hadn’t really thought about that. I know that on the last record there’s “Ghost” and then there’s some… I don’t know. I see what you mean; there are some songs in the middle instead of just heavy as shit and then super mellow. I see what you’re saying, I agree with you there.

REAX: It all works well and it’s a very, very strong record.
Ryan: I’m glad you like it. That’s a good sign.

REAX: You joined Band Of Horses for the second album.
Ryan: Yup.

REAX: So has the line up has been pretty stable since recording and touring for it?
Ryan: We tried out a couple different people to have a sixth member, another guitarist. But we decided that we just needed the five of us. Right now, I play some guitar, where we need three guitars instead of keyboards or whatever. We tried it out and toured as a six piece and just decided upon making the record on the five of us; just the core. It’s been the five of us as the core group going on three years now: me, Tyler, Bill, Creighton and Ben. We tried to have a sixth member, but nature would not let us.

REAX: There is a big gap between the last record and Infinite Arms. Was that just happenstance or people being busy?
Ryan: We were touring for most of that time. We actually started recording this in 2008. It was fall of 2008 that we started recording this and Cease To Begin came out in 2007. We toured a good year on it, and then we would go in the studio. Then we would have to go back out and do three weeks of a tour, then come back, take a week off and then two weeks in the studio or whatever. We did that throughout the year. So that’s what made it take so long, and just trying to figure out what songs to put on it. I think the reason it took so long in between was that we were just kind of working on it off and on.

REAX: What’s up with the switch from Sub Pop to Columbia? Is Columbia able to offer more support or was it time to more on?
Ryan: Ben met with a bunch of different labels and he ultimately made the decision to go to Columbia. I’ve met all the guys at the label and they all seem great. They could take us into a bigger... they could get us out there a little more, which is really good as they have a lot of global pull. So we’re gonna try that with this record. Our contract with Sup Pop was up anyway; it was a two record deal. I think they’ll give us a more global stretch.

REAX: Infinite Arms is officially out on Columbia, Fat Possum and Brown Records.
Ryan: Right.

REAX: I haven’t been able to find too much information on Brown. Is that a Band Of Horses imprint?
Ryan: It is. It’s Ben’s record label. He started that label in Seattle over ten years ago and put out some records. He was in a position to resurrect it. So, we’ve got Brown, which is Ben’s label, Fat Possum and Columbia; so that’s like small, medium and large. We’re trying to cover all the bases, trying not to miss anyone that might like this record.

REAX: Band Of Horses’ songs are fairly diverse. What do you guys listen to on the road?
Ryan: It’s hard for me to say ‘cause everybody’s got their headphones on. But listening to stuff back stage, we always bring out the ELO. We like to listen to ELO before shows sometimes. I actually love ELO. Lots of old Waylon Jennings. But all sorts of different shit. Everybody’s got a little different taste, but we all basically agree on what’s good and what’s not.

REAX: In doing some prep work for the interview, I came across your Myspace page that has a bunch of your songs on it. Are you going to do a solo record at some point?
Ryan: Absolutely! I’m trying to put together some demos and trying to figure out when I can do it. We’ll be busy with Band Of Horses for a while but I’ve been entertaining the though of releasing something by the end of the year.

REAX: The five or six tracks that are up there are very diverse bunch, but they’re all good. I was surprised by the track “Red”, a little funk number.
Ryan: Cool, man. I just got a brand new Alesis drum machine and that was one of the first things I was messing around with when I was trying to figure that thing out. I’ve got some drum machine jams in the bank I might put out.

REAX: It’s good stuff. I enjoyed listening to it and I’m looking forward hearing some more in the future.
Ryan: That’s great. Thank you very much!


Band photo by Christopher Wilson