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Chatting with La Snacks
When the Midgetmen held their ninth anniversary party at the Mohawk in May - one day before the rapture failed to drag people into the sky - Austin band La Snacks got the good-sized crowd jumping around and bobbing heads with their upbeat, party-friendly rock music. The group distinguishes itself in the Austin music scene in part because of the conversational lyrics and singing style of Robert Segovia (a true lead singer, with no guitar) .
If you’ve seen La Snacks before, you’ll know that Segovia can be chatty between songs, and that night was no different. (The band plays Wednesday at Red 7; red7austin.com.) He made a few jokes about the end of the world, and he also suggested that Mohawk owner James Moody book the Midgetmen for Fun Fun Fun Fest (which Moody’s company Transmission Entertainment produces), joking that he didn’t care if the “bearded mafia” dragged him off the stage.
While La Snacks have played Mohawk before, they’re not anchored to any one venue in town like some bands that play night after night at a club like Beerland or Hole in the Wall. Part of that, Segovia says, is because their sound doesn’t fit into any specific scene in town.
“The kind of music we play is almost a little too heavy in some circumstances, and a little too soft in other circumstances.”
Google the band and a lot of the results are reviews of their 2009 album, “Newfangled,” comparing the group to influential ’90s indie rockers Pavement. The funny thing, Segovia says, is that he never really listened to the recently reunited group. He doesn’t really mind the comparison, but the only Pavement song he knew was “Cut Your Hair.”
Segovia and his former drummer got some Pavement albums to hear what the influential indie rockers they were being compared to sounded like. “I bought Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain' and she boughtSlanted and Enchanted,’ and her comment to me was that I got the good one,” he says.
“I was into other ’90s bands - Teenage Fanclub, the Afghan Whigs and anything that Bob Mould does, and our guitarist was really into Sebadoh. If we were, quote, ripping anything off, it was them.”
Segovia grew up in Beaumont, where the band was based until 2004. The lineup has changed since, with Joe Deshotel and Trae Branham on guitar, Michael Frazier on drums and Charlie Wilson on bass, but they still maintain ties to Beaumont, putting on the annual Connect the Dots festival, which has included several Austin bands.
“The great thing about Beaumont is that it’s a kind of small, insular crowd, but they show up,” Segovia says.
Since moving to Austin, La Snacks has recorded two full-length albums. Earlier this year they released a 7-inch single, “AA,” with two songs, “Christ Sakes and Milkshakes” and “My Little Sugary Friend.”
Both songs sum up what the band is all about: pop rock with Segovia delivering, in a not-too-serious way, lines like “I could change the words into something more comfortable/I could do the fancy rhymes, but I’d feel like a faker.”
Writing lyrics that don’t sound like everything else is something Segovia takes very seriously, even when the subjects are small.
“Camper Van Beethoven is one of my favorite bands, and they would go and talk about someone at a 7-11 wearing costume jewelry,” he says. “Every song doesn’t have to be `Imagine.’ You can have songs about drinking coffee.”
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