At the release party/start of tour for their new Distraction (QRO review), Val Lopez and TJ Orscher of Bear Hands sat down with QRO. In the conversation, the bassist & drummer talked about Distraction, their longest tour to-date (including South-by-Southwest and Savannah Stopover, but not Iowa…), fighting over set lists, wanting to be a rapper so bad, your racist correspondent, and more…
QRO: How does it feel to have Distraction out?
Val Lopez: It feels great – a long time coming.
TJ Orscher: Finally – really, finally…
QRO: How did making it compare with making Burning Bush Supper Club (QRO review)?
VL: This time, we were much more succinct when we did it.
TO: Prepared.
VL: Burning Bush was done over about a nine-month period; we made this record, we tracked it completely in about three weeks. So we wanted to approach it the exact opposite way we approached the first one.
QRO: Did you not like how you approached the first one?
TO: Little bit of a different process.
VL: We wanted to maintain some of the urgency in our songs. When you take a lot of time, things can get convoluted, and lose some of their immediacy, so we wanted to keep it very short and sweet.
TO: If you’re not as definitive as you should be, you just have a lot more time to really think about things, really go over things, and sometimes it’s not a good idea.
QRO: It’s a little too easy to get Distracted?…
TO: [laughs] Exactly…
QRO: When I talked with you in 2008 (QRO interview), before Burning came out, you mostly had to deal with finding a label. How did you hook up with Cantora Records?
VL: We had a bunch of mutual friends, and we played a show with Violens (QRO live review) at Wesleyan, and they’d been working with them. They saw our set that night, through mutual friends, inevitably started talking – they liked “What a Drag”, so they put it out, and we kind of continued it from there.
QRO: Are you already thinking about the next album?
VL: Always.
TO: We want to get it out sooner than a three-year period…
QRO: You’ve got a pretty big tour coming up, cross-country & London. Is it your longest tour to date?
VL: Definitely. We did one tour in 2010 that was eighty-five days, with one day at home – that was our longest, but this is going to be about four months.
QRO: You’re going to be playing South-by-Southwest (QRO preview) as part of that tour. What do you think of ‘industry’ festivals like that?
VL: They’re grating.
TO: I found South-by now to be… people have caught on, which is great for the festival, but it kind of convolutes the whole… It’s spring break now; it’s like all these college kids running up & down Sixth Street, craziness…
VL: You can scam people for free drinks a lot more now…
QRO: It’s a little like, ‘I knew that band back before they were popular’ – it’s good for the band to be popular, but you’re…
VL: Totally…
QRO: Is it less special, having done it multiple times before?
VL: As long as the shows are good or better, it’s still fun.
TO: I do remember our first year there. We were super-psyched – super-psyched, and we were playing the shittiest shows. But it was awesome; we had a great time.
Actually, we played some good shows. We played with some cool bands.
VL: But as you get older & more jaded, [TJ laughs] the shows have to get better to keep your interest.
QRO: You’re also going to be doing Coachella. Do you do anything differently when you play outdoors?
VL: More reverb.
QRO: Have you ever done a ‘two weekend’ festival like that?
TO: No – that’s what Coachella’s doing this year.
VL: I think Sasquatch! is the only one doing two weekends in a row.
QRO: Austin City Limits (QRO recap) did it last year.
VL: Oh, Austin City Limits did it, yeah…
QRO: Ultra Music Festival did it previously, but isn’t this year…
VL: Well, I can see a lot of potential for it to fail.
Coachella has such a built-in base – they’re one of the only festivals that sells out immediately.
QRO: And that week in between, bands would play random places – like The Shins in Reno (QRO photos)…
TO: [laughs] There’s only so many same level bands that can play in certain cities.
QRO: Yeah, plus Coachella probably has a…
TO: No-radius clause, definitely. Especially for a band like that.
VL: We’re doing some smaller shows, opening gigs and stuff – we can float underneath the radar.
TO: They have to be approved by Coachella. We’re playing with Bombay Bicycle Club (QRO album review) at the El Rey, and that had to be approved by Coachella, actually.
QRO: Are you gonna play any cities that you’ve never played before? I saw you’re playing Savannah Stopover (QRO preview)…
TO: We played Savannah once.
VL: No, not this band. Our old band did.
There’s two cities on this tour we’ve never played – one is Savannah, and the other is Baton Rouge.
QRO: Keith Murray from We Are Scientists just said (QRO interview) that Baton Rouge was one of the few cities they’ve never done before that they’re doing on this tour – Baton Rouge and Perth…
TO: Oh, they’re going to Australia? That’s cool…
VL: Those are the ones we’ve never played.
Oh no, Nashville! Of all the places, we’ve never played Nashville before!
QRO: I noticed you’re not playing in (“Vile) Iowa”…
VL: No, we’re not playing Iowa.
We actually like Iowa, though. We played a festival in Des Moines [80/35 – QRO recap] – it was really good. And then we played another show in Des Moines, and it was really good. People actually came – I had no idea…
QRO: How do you fight ‘tour burnout’ – or getting sick of each other?
TO: Keep doing it over & over again.
VL: I don’t know… drink…
TO: That’s kind of a major issue for touring bands, bands that are out a lot, whether or not you can get along.
VL: More hotel rooms.
TO: More hotel rooms – it’s space when you can get it, when you can have it.
I mean, we tend to come in and like do soundcheck, and then maybe we’ll take a couple hours – some of us will get food, and some of us gonna go do other things, or whatever we get to do, and then come back on set.
VL: Yeah, make the most of your free time.
QRO: Do you all still fight over set lists?
TO: All the time… [laughs]
VL: Every single night.
TO: Even if it’s the set we’ve been playing for seven, eight shows…
VL: We know that nobody in the crowd gives a shit, but, for some reason, we do…
QRO: Do you argue not even just about which songs to play, but even just the order?
VL: Yeah – it’s all the order!
QRO: I suppose this tour it’s gonna be mostly Distraction. Are you just gonna play the same Distraction songs and then vary up the rest?
VL: We’re gonna do a variety of everything. There are certain songs that we’ve been playing for so long that we’ll probably play forever, [laughs] ‘cause we like them and they go over well live, but we’ll probably rotate new songs and sort of integrate old songs as well.
TO: Well it’s funny, talking about the songs we’ll play – we had a conversation kind of earlier before about what to play in the U.K., and our first record never came out over there. So we had the first EP, which is like seven years ago, and the single, “What a Drag”/“Can’t Stick ‘Em”, that single came out over there, but the entirety of Burning Bush Supper Club didn’t come out over there. So it’s like, do we cut the songs we normally play here, in lieu of playing the older ones that maybe people like, or we just screw it all just play what we want to play?
We usually do the latter…
QRO: You probably have to play “Long Lean Queen” over in the U.K…
VL: I hope not… [laughs]
Bear Hands playing “Long Lean Queen” live at Maxwell’s in Hoboken, NJ on April 4th, 2008:
QRO: Is it harder now, with more songs to choose from? I suppose your set has gotten longer, since you’ve gone from opening to headlining…
TO: Yeah.
VL: It’s easier, actually, because you have to play less songs you don’t like.
QRO: Do you still play old songs, like from Golden EP?
VL: No – fuck Golden…
TO: It’s a rare, rare, rare occurrence.
VL: Maybe once a year.
TO: They’re not slotted in. If you’ve got like a crazy group of fans, shouting one song, maybe, and they’re like ten people in the audience, that kind of thing… [laughs]
QRO: Last fall you toured with GZA (QRO photos from that tour) – what’s it like being an indie-rock band opening for a hip-hop artist?
VL: Makes you want to be a rapper so bad. Just makes you want to be a rapper so bad…
QRO: That tour actually hit NYC as part of CMJ (QRO recap) – did you prefer doing CMJ as just one, ‘regular’ show, as opposed to a bunch of shows?
VL: Yeah, definitely.
TO: That was nice.
VL: That was way better – fuck playing Piano’s at two o’clock. I love but Piano’s (QRO venue review), but come on…
QRO: I’ve noticed that you guys work with hip-hop and the like a bunch, like also Das Racist (QRO album review) – “Giants” (QRO single review) has beats similar to hip-hop (and an ODB reference…). Does hip-hop influence you guys, musically?
VL: Absolutely. That’s a big influence on the band.
QRO: Do you ever worry that someone’s not gonna catch the ‘d’ sound when Val sings, “Bone digger”? If they just catch “boNe” and the “dIGGER”…
[both laugh]
VL: Ted Chase is a racist!… [laughs]
QRO: [laughs] Or are you like, ‘That’s [singer/guitarist Dylan Rau’s] problem…’
VL: Yeah – that’s not my problem…
TO: E-nun-ciate…
No, we never thought of that…
VL: No, hadn’t thought of that…
Bear Hands playing “Crime Pays” live at Knitting Factory in Brooklyn, NY on July 20th, 2012:
