Home > Austin Music Source > Archives > 2010 > March > 10 > Entry
SXSW2010: 10 questions for The 88
Los Angeles pop rockers The 88 got a hero’s hand in finally making it to one of the big stages at this year’s South By Southwest Music Festival. The hand in question belongs to Ray Davies - the man behind stone-cold anthems such as “You Really Got Me,” “Lola” and “All Day And All of the Night” - who will feature the quartet as his backing band for the finale of his set at La Zona Rosa on Thursday night (March 18).
The pairing came about when Davies, long a hero of the band, sought support for his current tour behind “The Kinks Choral Collection,” that ends each night with a handful of original renditions of the above-mentioned songs.
Adam Merrin, The 88’s keyboard player, talked about the day to day of playing with a legend.
How long did it take you to say yes when Ray Davies offered you the spot?
It happened pretty fast. He was looking for a band to back him up and our old booking agent is his booking agent now. He said we’d be perfect for it and after we sent him some recordings of us doing some Kinks songs he asked if we were free, and we said of course. He’s one of our favorites.
What songs did you record for him to hear?
“Lola,” “Low Budget,” “You Really Got Me,” “Do You Remember Walter?” “Animal Farm”… there were a few others. We just quickly threw some recording equipment up in our rehearsal space and got to it.
You come out at the end of the night and back him up, but how much actual interaction do you get with him?
We’ve just gotten started and only played a couple of shows, but when we were in Maryland it was in a small venue and a small stage so we were all right in there together. It felt like we were a real, full-time band with him, which was also a bit like being in a dream when you stopped to think about it.
What did you learn about The Kinks’ songs by having to really study them and learn them inside and out?
We learned an extra 20 songs of their’s before we went out, and it makes you so better musically. To sit down and figure out the arrangements was really eye opening because you see that he has his own style and his own thing that he’s doing where it’s not all just verse-chorus-verse stuff. The other big thing is you realize just how lo-fi that stuff was recorded… because of that the guitars are a little buried, which made figuring out the chords to everything a little difficult. Between listening a bunch of times I think we got everything covered.
You guys got a lot of attention last year when you recorded (‘Love Is The Thing’) entirely on an iPhone. Did you think that would catch on like it did?
We knew that being the first band to record and release a song done entirely on the iPhone would get some attention, and we did it because it was a song we liked and wanted to get recorded as quickly as we could. But we didn’t know it would get on the news all over the world, and that a video we put on YouTube afterward would get 200,000 hits in a day. It was the perfect type of thing, and we had talked about trying different things and one of them hopefully hitting.
Where are you with your next record?
We got the call for Ray during some recording sessions. We’ve got 15 songs put together and this tour has been a nice pause for us. We’ve produced this record ourselves because we think we’re to a point where we know how we want things to sound and how to make that happen ourselves. We’ve got a great engineer helping and we’re looking forward to finishing up when we get back.
Do you think the experience of playing with Ray Davies is going to to affect your songwriting in the future? Have you learned from doing this?
Some of what he does could have rubbed off on us, for sure, and I’m sure it will influence us. For Keith, The Kinks are already a deep down influence and this will only do that more. We always want to sound like us, and make it as good as possible, though. We never say “Let’s try to sound like that guy.”
What are your thoughts on South By Southwest?
We’ve done it a couple of time and our goal has always been “Let’s do as many parties, showcases and interviews as you can while you’re there.” You meet people and hear just a ton of bands. It can get to be too much, but it’s great no matter what.
But this is going to be the highest profile show you’ve had, right?
Yeah, being there and playing with Ray we’re at a bigger place than we’ve ever done before. We’ve always been in the small clubs and those are great, but we’d talked about wanting to make it onto one of the big shows, so it’s nice to have that happen.
Anything or anyone you’re going to try to catch this year?
I’ve never been big on the idea of staying really on top of who all is playing, because once you get there none of that matters and you just kind of see whatever you see. This year, though, we’re only there one day because of this tour. It’s a quick in and out deal, but I’m going to see what I can in that time.
Follow Austin Music Source on Facebook and Twitter.
Permalink | | Categories: SXSW 2010
