The Walkmen Interview

The Walkmen have had their share of luck. With a second wind of fan base fueled by lucrative commercial spots and features with the O.C., the band has established a core audience outside of conversation in your local record store. But you'd be a fool to think they are pop-tart industry machines.  Instead, they are a hazed line of music snobbery and innovative alt rock led in equal parts of singer Hamilton Leithauser's echoing cries and the band's savvy compositions.  Case in point, they prefer to play on vintage instruments - one of which is a classic upright piano that they continue to lug around on tour.  But its their progressive muse that seems to generate the fans beyond a hit machine.  Their 2002 debut Everyone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone was not only bombastically different in a time of question marks for the indie music scene, but it was as experimental as it was aggressively smart.  Then, by debunking the sophomore slump in 2004 Bows + Arrows, the band seemingly took a step back with their next release A Hundred Miles Off just two years later.  But that's all in the past as the band begins the home stretch of a new album in the works and the recent addition to the Spider-Man 3 Soundtrack.  We caught up with lead singer/guitarist Hamilton Leithauser returning from their Australia tour as they trek back across the states to the East Coast to discuss the new album, drunken recordings and the now infamous arrest at SXSW.

Pensatos: You guys just finished the tour, right?  How did it go?

Hamilton: We're in Colorado right now. I volunteered to drive the van back across the country after the tour.

Volunteered or did you lose a bet?

I volunteered.  I don't know why I did - I still don't know why I did.  But I'm having a nice time.  We're heading back to New York.

Looking to work on new material; the new album?

Yeah we are.  We're about half way done with about six songs recorded.

Anything different (direction) we can expect on this one?

Big difference.  It's a big leap from our last record I think - our song writing for one.  Our songs seem a lot bigger than before. It seems like we ... [pauses].  It's really hard to put my finger on [what is different] this one.  I guess we just really like the songs a lot more [laughs].  The songs are more exciting to us - more so than they have been in awhile.

When can we expect it?

I would love it to come out in the fall but I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't early next year.

I know you were all friends from school but how did the band become 'The Walkmen' finally?

We started off in two different bands - two different groups from high school.  Then when we got a little bit older and one band wanted to play with the other so we tried to get together and it just seemed to work out.

What's up with the vintage instruments?

It's the sound, and they look really cool too.

What happened at SXSW when you got arrested?

It was just a big misunderstanding.  I was up late drinking and couldn't get into my room. The hotel guy was a jerk.  It turns out in the long run I was right and he was wrong but [the hotel clerk] called the cops and I went to jail.

How was jail?

It sucked! I was in there all night.  I wrote a review of it on our website. 

You wrote a review about jail?

Yeah, you should check it out.  I wrote all about my stay there. It's under the walkmen.com review section. 

You guys have kinda been the media darlings of sorts over the past few years.  You had the Saturn commercial, your music was featured in a baseball videogame, a handful of songs and an appearance in the O.C.  Did that influence the direction of the band or the music in any way?

It didn't affect the songwriting necessarily, but it did affect the business aspect. You do a little advertising of sorts to make some extra cash or income when possible.

So would you say that it's deals like those that give you the flexibility to work on solo or pet projects - much like the cover of the John Lennon / Harry Nilsson misunderstood drunken Pussy Cats album?

It allowed me to do that.  But I mean we knew it wouldn't sell but it allowed me to do something I wanted to do.  But it wasn't like it was really planned or anything.  We were just sitting there. We did a song and then realized that only took ten minutes.  So then we did another one, and another one and then two hours later we had all the tracks done.  It was really a lot of fun.  Then we only decided to release it once we had a chance to jazz it up by adding a lot of things to it.  But it did feel weird to put out someone else's record but I think we did a pretty damn good job with it.

Did you guys take the same approach as Lennon and Nilsson and get wasted to record it?

Yeah, we had a pretty big party. And yeah ... it was wild.

So good stories then, I'm sure...

Not that I can remember [laughs].