LiveMusicDaily
Exclusive Interview
Nashville based synth-pop-jam-rock outfit, Moon Taxi, is one of the best rising acts on the live music circuit. The group has long been known on the jam scene and recently garnered national recognition with their last two studio releases, Cabaret & Mountains, Beaches, Cities. Trevor Terndrup (Guitar, Vocals) and Tom Putnam (Bass) of Moon Taxi spoke with the creator of Live Music Daily, Andrew McConnell, to discuss their new album, their short-term & long-term ambitions as a group, and their evolution as a band. The group will be performing on the David Letterman Show tonight at 11:35/ 10:35 c.
Moon Taxi’s original sound is progressive-jam-rock, as exhibited in Live Ride and the sound has since evolved.What was it that led the group’s sound to evolve to what we hear on Cabaret and Mountains, Beaches, Cities? Also, could you explain the recording process for the new album?
Trevor: I think there is a definite point where we decided to start writing to write songs more suited to a studio scenario as opposed to live. Up until then we had just concentrated really on just performing songs live and that really affected the writing process because when you are writing songs for live performance like that is what you think of.
You think of what is the best way to get the biggest reaction out of the biggest crowd, and you are not really thinking about a studio effort, which involves more cohesive songs put together, and better arrangements for a studio setting.
That really marked sort of a big, not more of a turning point, but more of a pivot in our writing. You know we were concentrating on how to really put songs together in the studio and we started not writing songs together as a group in the band practice room, but we wrote them, constructed them, sort of at a computer with drum loops instead an actual drummer and we looked at the whole song as it is as opposed to bit and pieces of songs like we would do if we were trying to figure it out live.
It really changed kind of the whole scope of our writing process and expanded it, now we have two really solid studio efforts. Sometimes when we play the songs live they don’t sound exactly the same, but I think we learned that about great bands. That they have songs that are great in the studio and live they might not translate as well, but that is part of it you need to have kind of long lasting studio records that you can really be proud of, and we had already had the live performance in the bag for awhile.
So it was around that time we writing for Cabaret that the songs changed and the arrangements got tighter, stronger, and really started concentrating a lot on melodies. Vocal melodies and instrumental melodies, but mostly just catchy vocal hooks. You can definitely tell from our early stuff that we were not as concentrated on that, we were focused more on live progressive rock. Now it is more like progressive-synth-pop-rock, but live it gets real dirty still.
Tom: We still have to go into a room and figure out how to play these songs live and it is not like that process takes any less time. We just are not all in a room anymore [when writing songs], but we still have to do that part and arrange them for a live setting, sometimes takes awhile.
Trevor: Now we are doing that after the fact, we are kind of almost learning our own songs to play live.
Andrew: That was a very thorough answer…actually answered another question I had.
Trevor: Yea I was hoping to just knock out the whole interview with one answer (laughs).
How were you able to come up with another full-length album with such a quick turnaround (one year later)?
Tom: I think it is because, once we saw what we did in Cabaret we kind of already knew how to do it and how to approach it.
It did not really take us that long, we knew who we wanted to mix it. It really was not anything difficult. We also have lots of people writing lots of different things. I know Wes, Trevor, and Spencer are always writing. I write stuff too, so there is always song to kind of choose from, at least the beginnings of songs that we can do a demo and we can turn that into an actual track.
There is a theme of travel in a lot of your songs. Is there something with Mountains, Beaches, Cities that is special about each of these places together or each one exclusively, and how does this tie back into your overall theme of travel that dates as far back as Cabaret as seen in songs like “Let’s Go Back”? In general, what was the theme of the lyrical content you wanted to deliver in Mountains, Beaches, Cities?
Trevor: Yea I totally get what you are saying, the theme of travel is very prevalent, and it is kind of a thread that ties both Cabaret and Mountains Beaches, Cities together. Whereas, Cabaret the travel vibe was more like places that you have been to.
Mountains, Beaches, Cities is less contemplative and more hopeful, you are kind of setting your sights on these destinations that might be in your immediate future or a goal you can try to attain, that is what I feel like when I sing “Change”, it is not really talking about traveling, but it is thinking about things you may be able to improve on in yourself in the future. Nonetheless, we have never actually been to “Morocco”, but the word itself, when I say it, I can almost taste the word. It is something you are yearning for, that exotic journey. So I think that is the main difference in traveling aspects. There is sort of two elements there, places you have been to and places you want to go. In this one we were concentrating on places we eventually want to go to.
Tom: All that said Andrew, I don’t think that was intentional, I think it is almost like a subconscious thing that is coming out in all of these lyrics.
I know you’ve said guys were trying to stick with a sound you developed on Cabaret and you decided to stick with a similar sound for the newest album, but in what ways would you say Mountains, Beaches, and Cities is distinctly different? Also, Trevor how has your song writing evolved over the course of the past studios efforts?
Tom: As a whole, I think Mountains, Beaches, Cities is much stronger than Cabaret because it is a more fluid piece of work. Whereas, Cabaret there are still some things we are trying to hone in our sound, that in hindsight may not have made the best record, but in this newer album I feel like we got a bunch of songs that really fit a lot better together.
Trevor: Even on Cabaret there were some songs that had some groggy elements to them, I would say “Pennies From The Grave” is one of those songs, it was like a relic from the past… where is goes from 7/8 into 4/4 and has these really elaborate passages and that kills live and was a song we would perform live pretty often…then when we got into the studio it was pretty cool, but it already had an identity. It is hard to divorce the live song from the studio track if you have already been playing it live. So a main difference was that we were not playing any of these Mountains, Beaches, Cities tracks live before we put the record out. We learned them after we put out the record or maybe right beforehand, but none of them had an identity before the record. That is the huge difference.
I think 2014 could be Moon Taxi’s year, I know you just played String Cheese Incident’s Hulaween and have some upcoming dates with Umphrey’s McGee in February, what are Moon Taxi’s short term goals for 2014 and what are the long-term goals?
Tom: We really want to do some international stuff next summer, particularly Europe & the UK. Play some bigger festivals again, I really want to set us up for 2015 to be the biggest year, where we are a potential headliner for certain festivals, that is really long term goals. In the short-term we want to keep doing what we have done and get some bigger slots at festivals and get some really good tours with some really good bands, do some co-headlining stuff. We are going to play out West I think at least at some point. Just spreading the web more, we have been around the Southeast forever, we are just getting into Texas and that is going really well, really excited to come to Dallas. Overall, spread what we have done in the South to the rest of the country.
What can fans expect for Moon Taxi’s upcoming performance at Trees on Thursday Nov. 21st?
Trevor: I’d say fans can look forward to being blinded by the light and getting wrapped up like a douche.
*A Special Thanks to Lauren, Dawson, Tom, Trevor, and Bennett