I can't remember how I stumbled across New
Beard, neither can I remember which song I heard first. What I do know is that
since getting my grubby little mitts on their album promo I have listened at
least once a day without fail and like fungus the album has grown on me even
though I loved it on first listen.
After a successful EP release last year,
the band are currently gearing up for the release of their full length debut ‘New
Beard City’. Rather than me going on and on about the band myself, I caught up
with front man Ben Wigler a couple of weeks ago and quizzed him instead...
DDMB - Hi there and welcome to Dr. Dan's
Music Blah. How are you doing?
BW - Hi Dan! Ben Wigler (vocals) here. I'm
doing pretty well - chugging hot tea & honey and Airborne health formula
because I have a cold. Tony (our drummer) and I went out to see Prometheus (the
Alien prequel) last night at midnight as part of a birthday celebration planned
by my girlfriend Bridget. I've been spending most of the day on twitter and
Facebook trying to work out my problems with the film, which was probably my
most anticipated movie premier of all time, and I wasn't entirely thrilled with
the result.
DDMB - So tell us all a bit about the band
(who are you, how long has the band been together and where are you based?)
BW - The current line-up consists of five
musicians - TubaJoe Exley (also of Gato Loco, Red Hook Ramblers) on amplified
Tuba, Tony Waldman (also of Edensong) on drums & Japanese-lyric vocals,
Maria Christina Eisen (Holly Miranda, Dub as a Weapon, Underground System) on
tenor/bari sax, synth and harmony vocals, Yazan (founder of Shouldertap
records) on blazing lead guitar, lap-steel and lead harmony vox, and myself
(formerly of the band Arizona) on lead vocals and an ever changing arsenal of
accompaniment instruments. The core line-up of Tony, Joe and myself has existed
since 2010, but we added Yazan at the top of 2011 and have been getting
increasingly more serious. We all live in Brooklyn except Joey who lives in
Harlem like a good brass guy;)
DDMB - I'm intrigued by the fact you
don't have a bass player, instead opting for a Tuba player. How did that
happen, and how do you think it adds to your sound?
BW: I like to describe Joe as a combination
of Jamie Jamerson (famous Motown bassist), Cliff Burton, Les Claypool, and
Geddy Lee - except on the tuba. He's a master of applying effects to his tuba,
from synth octaves to delays, phasers and looping. He provides all the low end
of a bass guitar, but also has the expressiveness of an amazing singer. His
notes don't sustain forever unless he uses a delay to do it, so there's really
a vocal quality to what he does that appeals to me tremendously as a singer.
I have a great friend from Paris named
Cyril Besnard, who made some videos for my old band Arizona and in general was
one of our biggest supporters for the 5 or so year that AZ struggled to bring
our dreams to fruition. When the band split up and I started to put New Beard
together, he suggested that we use a Sousaphone instead of a bass, or at least
try it. I wanted to impress him by taking his advice, and hired TubaJoe for our
first gig, just to try it. After that first gig, TubaJoe and I knew we were
going to be band mates for a very long time - there are no hired guns in New
Beard (not that there's anything wrong with that). TubaJoe joined up
immediately after that gig, and I twisted Tony's arm into splitting his time
between New Beard and Edensong. After Tony and Joe recorded their parts for the
New Beard City LP (the drums were tracked live in 3-4 days, and most of Joe's
takes are live as well) - we grew even closer as a band and it became everyone’s
true passion project.
I'm a bass player by trade (I play in Dima
Drjuchin's Corrupt Autopilot, Greg Barris' Heart of Darkness Forgiveness Choir,
and Edensong, a progressive orchestral-metal that Tony writes music and plays
drums in). So I'm a big fan of bass guitars but once I found TubaJoe, I knew
that I never really wanted to ever play with another bass guitar player in my
band. It would either be me playing bass in other bands, or TubaJoe providing
the lyrical low end to songs New Beard would arrange together.
DDMB - And what would you say are your
influences?
BW - It may sound odd, but classic-era
Metallica is the biggest influence on Tony and me. I've never loved them for
the heaviness, but rather for the ambitiousness of their harmonies and
complexity of their arrangements - we're talking mainly about the ‘And Justice
for All’ album, which is the album that made me want to be a musician. I also
owe a huge debt of gratitude to Nirvana's ‘Unplugged in NYC’ record, for its
rawness, and for the impression it made on me early in life. It was the first
album that got me singing along.
As I got a little more sophisticated, I
learned to really love Yes & Neil Young, and was introduced to the Kinks by
my former AZ band mate Andrew Dunn. I'm also a big fan of ‘The Fragile’-era Nine
Inch Nails. Lately, I've been really into Hot Chip, MGMT (Andrew Weingarten was
briefly the bassist in Edensong!), Dungen, Fiery Furnaces, and Deerhoof. And I
also really really like Belle & Sebastian.
Tony and I are also huge fans of classic
video game music like the Final Fantasy series, while Yaz and TubaJoe both
bring a lot of funk and soul into our equation.
DDMB - Do you consider yourself to sound
like any of them?
BW - The only band I guess I've wanted to
sound like is Dungen, and I was extremely lucky that Gustav Ejstes, their lead
singer/musician/studio wizard, was available and interested in mixing and in
many instances co-producing New Beard's debut album. Not that New Beard City
sounds like a Dungen record, but the influence is there and the sonic palette
has a lot in common. I think Dungen's music is the most beautiful music I've
ever heard, and it was a big influence.
I never spent a huge ton of time listening
to Coldplay, but I have to admit that Coldplay probably is the main band that
switched me from being a thrash metal rhythm guitar player into a singer/songwriter
type. It's cheesy, but I have to admit it.
When I did move away from being an
instrumentalist and into singing, I would say my biggest influences are Jon
Anderson from Yes and Neil Young, with splashes of Belle & Sebastian.
Pre-crapfest Chris Cornell is also in there somewhere as I can get quite
aggressive with my vocals. I love the jazz meets indie meets metal meets
who-the-hell-knows aspects of Deerhoof and that is in there as well.
Well, that’s it for part 1 of the interview;
the second part will be here tomorrow at some stage.
You can keep up to date with everything New
Beard through the following social media/web outlets:
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