Twin Speaks: A Conversation with Clay

by Audiograted Team | Oct 28, 2015 | Uncategorized

After some slight technical difficulties, Audiograted Radio  had the opportunity to sit down and talk with a guitarist from the Chicago band, Twin Peaks  before their show at the 9:30 Club in Washington D.C. This was one of their last shows on the nationwide tour with the band Wavves. We were fortunate enough to steal Clay away for 15 minutes before the doors opened. A big thanks to our interviewee for being superbly mannerly and putting our interviewer (aka me), at ease for her first interview. This is the write up of  the conversation:

HANNAH: Hello, I’m Hannah Arrington and we are here today with Clay Frankel from Twin Peaks.

      We’re currently at the 9:30 Club in DC.

CLAY: Happy to be here.

H: I’m glad you’re happy to be here.

H: So how’s the tour with Wavves going?

C: Oh, it’s going fine. It’s going pretty well.

H: Favorite show?

C: Um, Austin was pretty good. We played at the Mohawk on like the outside stage so it was

     nice and breezy. Good people.

H: You guys just got added to a festival in Mexico.

C: Yeah in Monterrey.

H: The Strokes are headlining.

C: Yeah that’s pretty cool.

H: Are you gonna meet them?

C: I dunno, sometimes when people are that big they kinda hide.

H: Yeah that’s true, they hid at Landmark.

H: How do you feel about your success coming off Wild Onion?

C: [giggles] Success, um, that’s great. Yeah it feels good. The shows are getting a little bigger.

     Um, I guess more people know the songs. It feels pretty good.

H: Do you like it when people sing along?

C: Yeah I like it when we play new songs and people sing along and they don’t know the words.

H: That’s good!

C: Yeah I see people do that sometimes.

H: People catch on quickly though, like if it’s a repeating chorus. I think you should give them

     some credit.

C: I think most of the time they are just drunk. I think they just make up their own words.

H: The song “I Found a New Way” is the most downloaded song on iTunes. Why do you think

     that it is?

C: Cause it’s the first one and people are lazy.

H: [laughs] Fair enough.

H: Do you prefer large or small venues?

C: Smaller. They tend to sound better. A lot of these big places they’ll put up a barrier as well. I

     think they’ll probably have one tonight. And then the barrier’s weird cause the stage

     lights only light up so much and people are far back. It feels like you’re all alone up there.

     It’s kinda cool too cause it’s kinda liberating to see the crowd.

H: Before Sunken came out, you guys played a bunch of house shows. Would you ever do

     another house show tour again?

C: Oh yeah we still do that. We still try to do that in Chicago if we have the time. We’re trying to

     get a house show together on Halloween. We’re gonna rent out the space and it’ll be like

     5 bucks.

H: 5 bucks? A lot of people will come.

C: Yeah you could fit like 250 people in the building.

H: Are there any underground demos from your days as “Friend?”

C: I think Cadien has some of those on his phone, like some really old ones.

H: Will you ever release them?

C: I dunno I just remember this one song that they had called Brother Moon. I wasn’t there when

     they recorded it but they were getting really high and wrote this crazy song that they didn’t even play. I don’t think we could even play it now.

H: Were you there when they renamed yourselves Twin Peaks? Or was that before your time?

C: Yeah they came up with Twin Peaks before I was in it.

H: So none of you had watched the show and you didn’t know it was a bar, or did you?

C: No I didn’t know it was a bar either.

H: So how did you come up with Twin Peaks?

C: Okay so, when I heard the name, they were playing a show while I was in another band in

     high school. And we played a show together, and this was like when we were first

     starting to hang out. I mean I knew Connor ‘cause he was in my high school class. When

     I first heard Twin Peaks I just thought it meant breasts. Thats where I thought the name

     came from.

H: [laughs] Obviously that’s the best name a high school band could think of. But you guys kinda

     got saved ‘cause of David Lynch.

C: Is that being saved? I dunno. We get a lot of crap for it. Especially fans of that TV show.

H: Well that’s how I first knew about you guys. Because of the TV show.

C: See, that’s a good reaction. But I think some people hear the name and think “Oh how dare

     you?”

H: So the Chicago DIY scene helped you guys out you while you were in high school, do you

     keep up with young Chicago bands?

C: Yeah we try, it’s kinda hard now cause we are never in Chicago. A lot of venues that we used

     to play in high school are just houses now. They come and go, you know? It changes,

     it’s hard to keep up with them

H: If you were home enough would you ever mentor one?

C: We try and bring them on tour sometimes when we can. We brought that band Modern Vices

     on tour. They’re from Chicago. It’s tricky you can’t always pick who you go on tour with.

H: What’s your go-to tour food?

C: Whatever’s available. Um I eat a lot of soup. Soup is good for your throat and I hate eating

     vegetables. Thats a good way to just get ‘em down quick. My grandfather calls

     vegetables “rabbit’s food.”

H: Hardest part about being on tour?

C: It’s a lot of moving around so it’s weird meeting people and then leaving right away. Sleeping

     while 4 other guys are in the room snoring away.

H: Do you all share a room?

C: Yeah we’re up to two rooms now. It’s how we measure success. We just had one for five

     guys and now we got two. Sometimes we’ll even get three if it’s really cheap.

H: So the new album, finished yet?

C: It’s almost finished, its unmixed. We just have to record a few things over again.

H: Any surprises? New sounds, directions?

C: It sounds a lot different. It’s way better.

H: Cool, I think bands should grow.

C: I think they should too. Unless you’re like the Ramones or something. Some bands do the

     one thing really well. Like AC/DC. But I think bands should try to be different.

H: Is the new album named?

C: No its not named, any suggestions?

H: So when’s it coming out?

C: Sometime in the spring.

H: Spring? That’s so far away.

C: It seems like it doesn’t it?

H: That’s it that’s all I got. Thank you  so much for taking the time and good luck tonight!

C: It was a privilege and a pleasure.

Written by Hannah Arrington and Taylor Zarif.

TAYLOR SWIFT RELEASES NEW ALBUM “1989”

by Audiograted Team | Nov 13, 2014 | Uncategorized

Taylor Swift is a seven-time GRAMMY winner, and the youngest recipient in history of the music industry’s highest honor, the GRAMMY Award for Album of the Year. She is the best-selling digital music artist of all time, and the only female artist in music history (and just the fourth artist ever) to twice have an album hit the 1 million first-week sales figure (2010’s Speak Now and 2012’s RED). She’s a household name whose insanely catchy yet deeply personal self-penned songs transcend music genres, and a savvy businesswoman who has built a childhood dream into an empire.

But the numbers don’t tell Taylor’s story half as well as she could. After all, it’s the intangibles that elevate Swift into the stratosphere of our pop culture planet, allowing the 24-year old singer-songwriter to orbit in a more rarified air. Her large-scale charitable contributions are one thing, but it’s in the small gestures – the notes of compassion she posts on the Instagram photos of lovelorn fans, the genuine hugs she distributes without discretion – where Swift proves time and time again that platinum-selling, record-setting success has not changed her inherent nature. She is awkwardly honest and powerfully empathetic; a brazen superfan, loyal friend, fierce protector of hearts; and one of the world’s greatest ambassadors for the power of just being yourself.

Granted, for Taylor, “being herself” tends towards shimmering, gossamer perfection – but that’s an image regularly blown whenever she dons fake braces and a tri-pony to clown around on late night TV. She’s the first artist since the Beatles (and the only female artist in history) to log six or more weeks at #1 with three consecutive studio albums, and while she’s been named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World, she’s probably the only person on that list who uses social media to post notes to her best friends and videos of her cats.

As Billboard’s youngest-ever Woman of the Year prepares to release her fifth album, 1989, she finds herself, as always, in the glare of a blinding spotlight of expectation – but if you think that scares her, you haven’t been paying attention. She calls 1989 her most sonically cohesive collection, and armed with first single, “Shake It Off,” she’s ready to blaze into the next phase of her still-young career, where she’ll continue to dance like no one’s watching, write like she stole our collective diary, and inevitably soar to ever-greater heights. All that’s left to wonder is how many more lives she’ll lift in the process.

GWEN STEFANI RELEASES NEW SINGLE “BABY DON’T LIE”

by Audiograted Team | Nov 13, 2014 | Uncategorized

Global superstar and The Voice season seven coach Gwen Stefani has just released “Baby Don’t Lie”, the 1^st single from her upcoming album due out in early 2015. The track is available now for digital download and streaming via digital subscription services. Listen to “Baby Don’t Lie” here.

“Baby Don’t Lie,” is the three-time Grammy Award-winner’s first new solo effort since her platinum-plus sophomore album Sweet Escape debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard Top 200.

Stefani has achieved worldwide success as a performer, songwriter and recording artist selling over 30 million albums worldwide for No Doubt and as a multi-platinum solo artist. After the double-platinum No Doubt retrospective Singles Collection, featuring the hit “It’s My Life,” Stefani released two highly successful solo albums – Love.Angel.Music.Baby and The Sweet Escape – featuring hit singles “Rich Girl,” “What Are You Waiting For?,” “Sweet Escape” and “Hollaback Girl,” a No. 1 single that was the first digital download to sell over one million copies in the United States. In the fall of 2012 No Doubt released Push and Shove which debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard Top 200.

In addition to her singing-songwriting career, Stefani is widely recognized as a trendsetter and accomplished designer within the fashion industry launching several brands including L.A.M.B., Harajuku Lovers, DWP and Gx.

Stefani is currently putting the finishing touches on her new album to be released in 2015.

www.gwenstefani.com

MARY LAMBERT RELEASES NEW SINGLE, “SECRETS”

by Audiograted Team | Oct 13, 2014 | Uncategorized