Washington D.C’s Deleted Scenes have slowly made a name for themselves since releasing their debut, self-titled EP in 2007. Last year, they released their debut LP – Birdseed Shirt – to glowing reviews, and while they’ve made a big splash in their hometown, you can still catch them playing their brand of introspective rock at small clubs across the country.

This Thursday, July 15, the band is bringing Birdseed Shirt’s dynamic sonic offerings to the patio at Ybor’s New World Brewery for a must-see bill that finds the D.C. quartet being supported by two of Florida’s finest bands: Orlando’s The Pauses and Tampa’s own Sleepy Vikings.

The band hits the studio in September to record their still-untitled sophomore release, but REAX caught up with Dan Scheurman as the band was packing their van up for a month-long summer tour and talked cassingles, being approved by Pitchfork, his creative process, and why his band loves Florida so much.

REAX: What’s up with you?
Dan of Deleted Scenes: Getting ready to hit the road it’s our first day. I’m making some coffee right now; we’ll be heading off in a couple of hours. We got some shirts we’ve got to roll up. We’re in D.C. right now and have been rehearsing in Maryland for the past week. Getting ready to get some new songs sounding good for tour.

REAX: So there will be some new songs on tour?
DS: Oh yeah, most of the stuff we’ll be playing will be new. We’re going into the studio in September and we like to have the songs, sort of, lived in before we go into the studio just to know the limits of them, what do they sound like as a band, what do they sound like as a studio production, what the better options are for the song.

REAX: Is that how you write and record?
DS: I write a lot of the stuff using computers, looping, using Ableton, so from the beginning there’s sort of a studio component, but then I bring the stuff to the band. Then it, sort of, becomes much louder and more raw, then we go back to the studio we try to reconcile those two approaches.

REAX: Do you ever see yourself releasing the demos as cassingles?
DS: I don’t know, I’ve hadn’t thought about format. I’ve thought about maybe, once I get more proficient at making the demos, they sound cooler and cooler the longer I do it, there’s sort of a really lo-fi-ness to them. I guess it’s hip now, so I kind of want to stay away from it so I don’t become a “lo-fi guy,” but I think years and years down the road it would be cool.

Maybe not these songs, because the songs benefit from the studio and the band being involved, but if this band collapsed I’d probably consider making demos as final recordings. Right now I feel like the band members add more than I could ever possibly do.

REAX: So you give the band the demo and they help you flesh out the songs?
DS: Yeah, kinda. Me and Matt Dowling work on writing, I work on the demos, and then send them out to the band.

REAX: Are you going back to Ass Fever Studios? What does it smell like in there?
DS: Ass Fever is the name for house that wasn’t even a studio. There was this guy L. Skell, who produced the last record, and is producing this record. We’re gonna doing it in a real studio the whole time, so it won’t be Ass Fever. It’s gonna be done in a real studio run by this guy named Nick Krill (from The Spinto Band in Wilmington, Delaware.

Ass Fever was a group house in West Philadelphia. It didn’t smell bad, it was really nice. The let us crash, and the housemates were cool with us making all sorts of noise. It had some cool sounding rooms, the main room had a wooden floor, so a lot of the echoey stuff was done naturally, so that was pretty cool. But that room was so boomy that you could hear it everywhere in the house, so the housemates were really cool.

REAX: So now that you guys are in a new studio, are you able to take more time, or is it a rush thing? Is that why you’re trying to make sure things sound good on the road? To make things more efficient?
DS: In September, we’ll take less time than the previous recording unless we make game time decision and decide we’ll do more recording, which I wouldn’t discount – but we’re trying to do it quicker.

The last record stretched on for about nine months, because we had a trillion ideas and it took forever to mix. It wasn’t very professionally done. It started out professional – we worked with this guy J. Robbins – but once we couldn’t afford that anymore it just kind of sprawled out became just a crazy long process. It was a really good process, but now we’re trying to streamline.

REAX: Do you think the process helped Birdseed Shirt out?
DS: Sure, some of the sounds that only hear when you put on headphones – some of that stuff is definitely a result of stretching out the recording. The flipside to that is some of the songs didn’t turn out very listenable because, you know, it was just a little too weird. Maybe we followed our muse a little too much, I think.

This time we’re gonna go for a record that sounds interesting and cool over repeated listens, but that also has an individual sound, a sound that sounds like a band at a certain point in time instead of a band kind of throwing shit at a wall.

REAX: Yeah, you covered a lot of different ground on that record, and I wanted to know if that variety in your music was intentional or not.
DS: The variety comes from the songwriting, which I’d say is varied. It’s still varied, the new stuff goes everywhere; from really upbeat Jackson 5-ish grooves, to really slow, dirgy, Radiohead grooves. I think it’s still all over the place, but maybe the sound of the record won’t be all over the place.

REAX: A little more focused?
DS: Yeah, exactly. That’s what we’re going for at least. God knows what we’ll end up doing. You get in there and get an idea and get super excited about it and follow it.

REAX: Pitchfork isn’t gonna disown you for changing your style up are they? You aren’t gonna lose two decimal points are you?
DS: (Laughs) I don’t know if they own us.

REAX: Sorry, didn’t mean it like that. It just seemed like Pitchfork was all over you guys, and you had joked about being a decimal point away from classic band or something like that.
DS: Oh yeah, that’s sort of a joke. You get a decent Pitchfork review and you qualify for “Best New Music” and your career is made. We fell in that area, but to be honest, it’s not like we became darlings by any means. I don’t really follow it that much, but it seems like all the “Best New Music” bands get big, go on big tours and stuff.

It was interesting, in our hometown it was like “Ohhhh, Deleted Scenes exist,” but nationally I don’t think there was a huge dent. We just continued to go on tour, and if they like the next record that’s cool, but I hope we like the next record. That’s all I really care about, it didn’t really make us last time, and so I don’t imagine that it’ll make or break us this time.

REAX: So you guys are really just trying to write music that you like and want to listen to?
DS: Yeah, that’s a good question because that’s the origin, I guess, you want to make music that you want to listen to, but when you’re in the creative process, I don’t think you think about that sort of thing. I sort of go into a wormhole where I sort of just wanna say something true lyrically, and have it be musically appropriate. I don’t know if I’d listen to Deleted Scenes, that’s something I’ve honestly never thought of. I suppose I would. Really, I just want to say something true – that’s sort of the goal.

REAX: So the lyrics come first and then the music comes from that?
DS: Well the music and the lyrics often come together, but the lyrics are paramount for me because if I don’t like the lyrics to a song, it’s not gonna be made into a song.

REAX: Is writing lyrics more of a style thing or does it come from what’s going on in your life? What inspires them?
DS: That’s a really big question because every song is slightly different.

REAX: Birdseed Shirt is about two years old to the public, maybe even four or five years old to you. Are there any songs on the record that mean as much to you now as when you first wrote and recorded them?
DS: Oh yeah, definitely. “Get Your Shit Together for the Holidays” is probably my favorite song – one of my favorite songs that I’ve ever written. I’d say the best songs, the songs that I really like, are inspired almost too autobiographically. Like very, very close to my experience, because I’ll be able to get the most out of that.

I studied creative writing in college, and I was not a good storywriter, but there are two things that actually stuck with me; one is the “write what you know” cliché. It definitely stuck with me. Like if somebody writes a line about, say, “floating on a boat on the sea,” or something like that, I immediately want to know what sea they’re talking about, when have they every felt that, how do the fuck do they know what it feels like to be lost at sea? You don’t, like, you don’t know that, so I’ve had to limit my writing to experiences that I’ve had and, sort of, made a deep emotional impact on me, and use images in lines and subject matter that comes directly from my experience. The other thing is, sort of, the question of “who cares?” I try to write things that I care about.

I also like to fuck around with language and turn language upside down to make it say the opposite of what it actually says. I find that I try to mirror my experience in the language, and the language sort of lies about itself. It’s sort of like…I don’t like to say a lyric unless it has two or three meanings so that all of them are true at any given time – and that’s sort of what it’s like to live. There’s always more stimulus than you can deal with. There’s always more than one rational decision, so that’s sort of what I try to do.

I’m sure I could be criticized for sticking to close to what I know, but right now I’m on a kick, I’m just trying to stick as close to my experience as possible while still making people care, so on a lot of the new songs we’ll use names of people we know, nicknames of people I know, or are involved. We’ll see what the neighborhood backlash is on that.

REAX: You use their real names?
DS: Often, yeah. I’m on like a real reality kick right now. I wanted to name the new album Real Nicknames, but I think that’s a little too weird. But that’s been the idea of the stuff I’ve been writing about, like just very, very real things.

REAX: What is making you want to be so real?
DS: It always starts with the song. If I write a song, it is what I’m doing. So maybe I’m talking retrospectively about what I’m doing because I’ve done it, and now I’m trying to analyze it, but I think I’ve grown out of a phase of early twenties solipsism where you think your own experience is so unique and can’t be understood by anyone else, so you sort of grasp on to, or need, more esoteric ideas to explain the world.

I’m getting more into a phase where relationships are incredibly important now, I’m starting to find life more interesting. Like life, and real people and real things, and I’m starting to see, sort of, the truth of clichés about life and love and happiness, etcetera, etcertera. I feel like I’m becoming a more human being. This sounds terribly pretentious, but I just got married in June, so it’s like how do I connect to the real world, and sort of deal with what you have, deal with the building blocks of real life…I think I’ve just explained absolutely nothing.

REAX: Nah, I think I can see what you’re getting at.
DS: Okay, so that’s probably why I’ve been more interested in “real” life, although I’ve been interested in real life before, but less proclamations of the meaning of things, more just observations of what it feels like to live.

REAX: Earlier this week, Ted Leo caused a false retirement rumor when he was really just talking about trying to find the right way forward while trying to make ends meet as a touring artist that keeps prices low. Some people think that just because you’re a musician, and you tour, that you’re living the good life. You’re a tutor in D.C. right, what is that life like for you?
DS: It’s a job that a sort of fell into and one that I’m very lucky to have. My boss sort of just lets me just take off and it’s not exactly full-time, so I still have time to work on music and stuff. It’s not great for making money, but it’s fine for getting by right now. I like what I’m doing.

REAX: You guys tour a lot.
DS: We were on tour for a month in February, a week in April, and a month-and-a-half last summer. We tour pretty regularly, probably something like a hundred shows a year, or something like that, which is great. I’d probably like tour more, but it’s not paying the bills, and you just go crazy if you tour for five, six, seven weeks. We did seven weeks last summer and it was just unbelievably long, and I didn’t want to tour all fall because of how freaking exhausting it was. So now we’ll do three or four three to four week tours a year, at least right now – at the stage we’re at.

REAX: 'What brings you guys all the way down here to Florida? We’re obviously a little out of the way, and coming down doesn’t exactly make sense economically, but what brings you here as frequently as you guys come?''
DS: I think there’s something to that. I think we make it down there because a lot of others don’t. We’re welcome down there. It’s the people. Everybody we’ve met in Florida has bent over backwards to make sure we’re gonna have good shows, and we don’t get that anywhere else in the country. Last year, we knew like one person in Florida and she liked our record – this girl Lisa in Jacksonville – and she sent emails to every promoter in Florida saying, “Book this band.” So this time we contacted everybody we knew, and the shows were set up before we knew what was going on.

REAX: You’re opening up for Black Kids in Jacksonville, who else are your touring with, any local openers?
DS: Yeah, it’s gonna be cool. We’re doing a few shows with The Pauses from Orlando and Sleepy Vikings from Tampa, we don’t know the Sleepy Vikings personally, but if the past is any indication, I’m sure we’ll be like best buds.

We feel pretty well-embraced in Florida. It’s fun. Tierney from The Pauses played with us twice last year, helped us set up shows and did the same thing this time, and I actually did some vocals on their record when they went up to Baltimore to record, so yeah, I’d say we’re pretty tight with The Pauses and our drummer weirdly knew Black Kids through his girlfriend. When we played in Jacksonville last summer, Reggie from Black Kids came out and let us sleep on his couches and pet his kittens, took us to breakfast.

REAX: Nice. So do you have a timetable your for the new record?
DS: I’d like to have it out in early ’11 because it’s hard to release and album at the end of the year. I feel like the whole machine sort of resets itself after the “new year” lists come out on the blogs and stuff, and people, sort of, are over anything with last year’s date on it, so we’ll record in September…I don’t want to put a timeline on it – it’s like Afgahnistan – because the insurgents will find out and change their plans, so I think as early in 2011 as we can do. I said a shitload. Probably too much for something that we haven’t created yet, I don’t know what it’s gonna sound like, I hope the story isn’t spent by the time it comes out.