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Meet the Casual Victim Pile band: Follow That Bird!
Ricardo B. Brazziell/AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Ahead of tonight’s release show for Austin-centric Matador Records compilation “Casual Victim Pile” (see our interview with compilation architect and Matador co-owner Gerard Cosloy here, review here and photo gallery of the bands here), we’ve talked with three of the compilation’s most notable bands. Tonight’s performers Follow That Bird are featured below, you can check out the Dikes of Holland here, and tune back in tomorrow for an interview with Friday performers Woven Bones.
When powerfully confessional folk rock singer Bill Callahan headlined a show at the Parish back in July, he chose a seemingly unlikely opener: the thunderous pop-rock trio Follow That Bird. If Callahan’s dark, intimate ruminations seemed an odd pair with Follow That Bird’s riot grrl-descended rock, well, they thought so, too.
“I asked him about it, because I was like ‘Bill. What are we doing here? Tell it to me straight,’” drummer Tiffanie Lanmon, 23, recalls with a laugh. “It was weird, because the two times we’ve played really big shows were both at the Parish, and they were with Bill Callahan and Shearwater. Shearwater was a CD release show and they had all these orchestral instruments and … we were Follow That Bird.”
But Follow That Bird’s cachet with accomplished locals like Callahan and Shearwater speaks highly to their status as one of Austin’s (relatively) hidden rock ’n’ roll gems. Lanmon started the band with vocalist and guitarist Lauren Green, 21, in 2005. Bassist Mitchell Tellstrom, 28, joined up last year (as a former member of the Persimmons, Tellstrom manages the impressive trick of having played in two “Casual Victim Pile” bands without actually appearing in either’s songs on the compilation).
Their high-energy, straight-ahead rock, anchored by Green’s Joan Jett-by-way-of-Chrissie Hynde and Siouxsie Sioux wail, also impressed Matador Records’ Gerard Cosloy. The longtime supporter of the band asked them to appear on “Casual Victim Pile” early on in the selection process.
“He presented it as ‘This is really selfish. This is what I want to hear. I want it in one place and this is what I’m doing. It’s just stuff that I’m excited about and maybe want to show everyone else what’s going on,’ ” Lanmon says.
Without much persuasion needed, Follow That Bird signed on and recorded “The Ghosts That Wake You,” a driving anthem that provides the perfect opening for a compilation that has an impressive breadth.
“It has a really broad scope for being, for the most part, bands that play at Beerland. It’s at least an idea of all the different things that go on there,” Tellstrom says. “The difference between No No Hopes and Kingdom of Suicide Lovers is gigantic. But at the same time, they probably all live in the same neighborhood, and they make sense together.”
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