interview: Phoenix and the Turtle
Phoenix and the Turtle hail from Yucaipa which is just outside Los Angeles.
They are amongst a group of interesting bands from the region making new
sounds and exploring new ways to do things. Rather than summarize what this
band is doing, let's let them do the talking...
www.myspace.com/phoenixandtheturtle
And! if you'd like to listen to Phoenix and the Turtle while you read,
why not open our podcast page in another tab and have a listen.
First of all, tell us about yourselves. We know there's a Mister and Mrs Curtis but not much else. Better tell us about Yucaipa as well!
Cahn: Well Yucaipa for one is a kind of desolate (absolutely nothing to do unless you like hanging out in drug stores) and overpopulated place with its own species of people. The surrounding cities can always tell Yucaipa people, which being one myself, I cannot tell you why. Yucaipa has been the background for our music (meaning myself, Mikie and Bill) for fifteen plus years. Mikie is my younger brother so I guess I have known him my whole life. And Bill is my brother from another mother and we have been best friends since high school. Valerie and I met at a party that was taking place at my house at the time, it was around that time that a dear family friend of ours, Robert Condi, died, and we got all of our previous band members to do his favorite song at his wake, we asked Valerie to play violin with us and that was that, we just started writing music together from there.
Bill: I like Yucaipa, it is so pretty here in the spring when all of the hills turn this bright green color, but that only lasts like 2.5 months then the rest of the time it is brown and you can't see the sky because of the poor air quality. It is growing a lot right now which I really hate seeing. The city bulldozed all of the orange trees to put in tract houses. A lot of people bag on Yucaipa because of the cars on blocks in front of people's houses and the fact that on any given day you can see people horseback riding down the main street. But places like this are becoming rarer by the year, it is nice to be able to live in a place that does not look like every other town in Southern California.
You have an interesting mix of classical instruments and electric. Was there an exploratory road that led there or did you just say "hmmm, let's try this!"?
Cahn: Well Bill, Mikie, and I have been playing music together for over 12 years. When Valerie started playing with us she played the violin (she played classical music in orchestras for years) so that was her instrument and her style of music so we decided to meld the two structures, rock and classical. We wrote our music in movements or parts and have stories that kind of go with the songs, like a movie soundtrack without the movie - that's how it started. Valerie started playing other instruments (cello, piano) and we started adding them. We just kind of played what was comfortable for all of us.
How do you describe what you do?
Cahn: 'Controlled chaos' I guess. Valerie is very thoughtful and takes her time writing parts, the rest of us stumble onto parts and write around them, see what works, and give each other suggestions. It's not like that all the time, sometimes one of us will bring in a riff and let that be a starting point. We are all very vocal and very involved. There's not [just] one song writer in the group. I really think we are creating something very original but kind of by accident. We are just playing what we know.
What is your actual lineup and what sort of electronics do you use? I think the first track we heard had a bit of voice groove stuff but that seems untypical.
Cahn: Well I really don't know what "voice groove" is, but if you're talking about techno-like stuff, we have our influences. We almost covered a Daft Punk song once! We use keyboards and a couple of drum loops on the album, nothing's really out of reach with what we are doing. I think you could almost make anything work in the format we are in, right now we are starting to experiment with synthesizers and samplers.
Your compositions seem open in a way that might welcome improv work. Do you? Classically trained musicians usually need to cross a few barriers to get to there and we suspect at least two of you are. True?
Cahn: Yes, we like to jam on things. Our songs are always changing. Since recording and adding instrumentation on things we could never replicate, we need to keep the songs interesting live. For instance, there are completely different melodies on the album that we just can't play because they are piled on top of each other, so you have to make those parts more interesting live.
Valerie is the only classically trained musician in the group and even working with music that wasn't written down was hard for her at first, but now she's probably better than any of us, she has a good sense of melody.
What sort of audiences do you play to mostly?
Bill: The audiences that we tend to play to have always been very open to us. It usually feels like we are playing to a bunch of our friends. In the beginning we had what seemed to be a series of shows that when we got to the venue they were closed or the power was out, it was crazy. But every time it would happen someone would say "Hey we can do it I at my house!" Sometimes it would be a complete stranger and we would all go over to their house and play. One time this happened and we went to a house and everyone had to take there shoes off, so there we like 100 pairs of shoes lying by the door. It was fantastic!
Cahn: Our crowds tend to be a bit diverse. We have played to metal-heads, hardcore punk kids, emo-screamo kids, but the indie crowd has been the most open-armed. I think that our kind of music, with a true sense of instrumentation and not just hooks, is still something that not everyone is used to, but it's starting to get more popular. People are looking for more than just verse-chorus-verse nowadays. With the internet, you have a kind of immediacy of music that wasn't there before, so you have people getting bored with the standard format.
Do you think you can generalise about L.A. audiences and say that they're different in some respects from other places?
Bill: L.A. is such a big area, sometimes it seems that everyone that lives there is in a great band. So I think the audience expects a little more. We played at The Scene in Glendale a week or so ago and every band that played that night was really good. We have met some really good people in L.A. so far that seem to really care about helping bands get on their feet. Like the fine folks at L.A. Underground and The Rockit who have been very open to us.
Cahn: There is just so much happening in L.A. every night that if you don't impress them right off the bat, they have ten other shows that they can go to. When we played The Scene in Glendale, Daniel Johnston was playing in L.A. the same night, it was hard not to ditch our own show! But when you get the Los Angeles crowd interested, then it is a powerful group of people to have on your side, we have met a lot of nice people out there.
There seems to be a fair sort of club-sized audience available for the sort of thing you're doing in London and Europe. Any plans that way?
Cahn: We would love to, maybe within the next couple of years but I think it takes a lot of planning and connections and money to get that done. I think that it would be a great experience.
Bill: We would love to play in London and Europe but none of us have gotten our pilots license in the mail yet. But we have been selling a fair amount of albums out that way.
I guess one thing that hasn't changed in the era of the internet is that touring still costs and takes a fair bit of doing to put together. What do you think?
Bill: Touring is definately in the future. It seems like a constant tug of war to get the necessary resourses to get out and do it for any real length of time. I don't feel as though the internet will ever make it so a band doesn't have to tour. I think the internet is great for bands though. How else would smaller bands be able to get their name out to people that live 3000 miles away?
Cahn: We went up north to San Francisco and had a really good mini tour. And let me say Modesto really kicks ass!
One obvious question I forgot to ask you before was about your name!
Bill: The name Phoenix and the Turtle came from a poem by Shakespeare. It is about a mythical phoenix and a turtledove. The two fall in love but cannot be together because one is mythical or celestial and the turtledove is flesh and blood. So the turtledove flies in to the phoenix and kills itself so the two can be one, and now their love can transcend all space and time. That's the rough idea, of the poem.
What are your general plans for the next little while?
Cahn: Well, as we speak our album is on iTunes. We do have a tour in the works, some high profile opening gigs, and right now we're getting ready to record some new stuff, maybe put out an E.P. soon. You can see us in Los Angeles on Oct. 5 with The Monolators for free at Mr. T's Bowl. Oh yeah, and we're going to sleep.
Bill: The next venture for us is to get out into the L.A., Long Beach and San Diego areas on a more regular basis. Also we are all looking forward to starting our next album. We are really excited about the new stuff we have been working on.
Big thanks guys.
Photos: Zuhair Abdulla - Photo mangling: Mstation
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