Birthdays

<img src="http://www.qromag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/birthdaysinterview.jpg" alt=" Birthdays : Interview" />QRO chats up a happy Birthdays' Sammy Yager about pain medication, Shroomin' Gayote, fighting the law in St. Louis, and his first...
Birthdays : Interview
Birthdays

QRO chats up a happy Birthdays’ Sammy Yager about pain medication, Shroomin’ Gayote, fighting the law in St. Louis, and his first full-length album.  Download the four song EP Mating Falls, which he made while recovering from gangrene, stream "Howolding Girls" below, and watch out for a strange bearded mountain man wandering the Adirondacks this summer.

 

QRO: Howdy!

Sammy Yager: Ahoy.

QRO:  Tell me a little of the basics about Birthdays.  How long have you been playing out shows?  I take it your based in Boston?  Has it always been an electronic outfit, or do you incorporate more traditional instruments?

SY: I’m from New York.  Upstate in Saratoga Springs.  It started there a couple years ago when I got really sick and was in the hospital.  It started out with all traditional analogue instruments.  The way in which I record and use pedals makes them not sound like traditional instruments.

I moved to Boston about a year and a half ago and started touring immediately after relocating

I now have a drummer as well.  His name is Kevin Kenkel.  We’ve been playing music together since we were young teenagers.

QRO: Do you mind me going back to the hospital thing?  I’m wondering what was the matter?  And did you start making music at the hospital, during rehabilitation?

SY: That’s fine.  I got gangrene and my blood became ‘septic’.  I had to be in the hospital for a while on a lot of pain meds.  After I got out, I was stuck in my apartment for about six weeks on lots of pain medicine.  I had already been making little songs that my friends liked in our small town.  I wanted to work on something that I really cared about and was a conceptual labor that would be a positive tangible product I’d have by the time I was better.

People started showing interest in a couple of the songs and I was on some Brooklyn-based blogs among other states and countries.

QRO: Isn’t Brooklyn a country? [QRO laughs at own joke] I imagine that rehab time must be pretty boring- nice to have something meaningful to work on.  Were you working with Kevin during that period?

SY: Mating Falls is the album I made while recovering.  I was only recording by myself.  Kevin was already living in Boston so we didn’t get to see each other for a while.  We’ve started working together a lot more recently.  Kevin recorded and co-produced the Howolding Girls 7".

MP3 Stream: "Howolding Girls"

{audio}/mp3/files/Birthdays – Howolding Girls.mp3{/audio}

 

QRO: Sweet – what prompted the move to Boston?  School, work, lust for baked beans?…

SY: I wanted to move to a city where I could explore more.  Living in the small town of Saratoga Springs was awesome but the music community is pretty small and basement shows basically don’t exist.  I’d consider moving back there now that I have a nice tour regiment and that kind of stuff.  It’s a beautiful place.  Kevin probably wouldn’t move back though…so I’m stuck! [laughs]

QRO: So tell me a little about your music rig, what you generally perform with.  You said it’s mostly analogue instruments that have been electro-transmogrified?  You had quite a rig at the Empty Bottle show, the size of a big gas grill if I recall!

SY: [laughs] My big gas grill.  Yeah, I have a large red suitcase that I have mounted, into which I’ve wired an old toy keyboard, guitar pedals, two samplers, a loop pedal, and a mixer.

I like to open the circuit board of the keyboard and short it out (circuit bend) and then sample that and restore it to the original wiring so I don’t fry my stuff.  I also run guitar and vocals through both samplers and the loop pedal.  Sorry you saw the Empty Bottle show… that’s not a good representation of my set.  But I’m glad you got to see it regardless.

QRO: Did something short out there?  I vaguely remember a technical difficulty, but I enjoyed what I heard! 

SY: Sound guys don’t always like to play electronic bands very loud.  I don’t know.  So you live in Chicago?

QRO: Yup, Chicago.  Though I moved from Boston where I lived for a long time.  The Empty Bottle is a great venue, but it’s primarily a rock joint – the sound guy might not really jibe with the electronic sound.

SY: Yeah, I think that’s the case.

QRO: So how did you learn to fiddle with the inner workings of keyboards?  Popular Mechanics aficionado?

SY: I just messed around with pedals and wires and things like that.  I didn’t do any real reading on it.  A little Googling… 

I wouldn’t consider myself to be well versed in circuitry or electronics.

 

QRO: So tell me about the aftermath of that tour – the infamous kerfuffle in… Missouri?  What happened?  Local law enforcement a bit overzealous, or were you throwing Molotov cocktails out the window?  No comment is acceptable as well, if there are legal concerns.

SY: [laughs] Well, my Mom likes to read interviews and blog posts of mine and stuff. [laughs] I guess… it was just a whole lot of weed in the van.  We could have handled the whole situation way better, but what can you do.  A couple of my tour mates were in jail for a couple days, can’t go back to Missouri ever again.  I’ll go though, because I love St. Louis.

QRO: A tour that included a band called "Truman Peyote" (QRO album review) had weed in the van?  It just boggles the mind.

SY: [laughs] Shroomin’ Gayote.  Insert the hundreds of tour jokes.

QRO: Speaking of Shroomin’ Gayote, that’s another FMLY-involved band.  Do me a favor and give me a thumbnail description of what FMLY does – seems like kind of a nebulous outfit…

SY:

That’s a whole other interview in and of itself.

QRO: Is it a blog?  Is it a promoter?  A lifestyle mag?  A party planner?  A new age guru?  What’s your involvement anyway?

SY: FMLY is the best thing I’ve ever been a part of.  It’s a community.  It’s a Family.

QRO: You know you’re totally sounding like a cult member.  [laughs] Is FMLY a cult?

SY: It’s not about networking or anything like that but apparently that comes with the territory.  It’s about being the change you want to see in the world.  Through mass bike rides, community gardening, guerilla concerts, urban sustainability and just plain partying.  It started mostly as a music blog, which is how I got involved, but the main members and I have become very, very close and we all have different roles.

QRO: I kid, I kid; that sounds cool – very positive.  Ok, one formulaic question now, but I always like to ask it with ‘electronic’ artists, because I don’t know much about electronic music.  Influences?  Who do you look for in the history of music?

SY: Ok, meaning who am I most influenced by?

QRO: Yeah, sure.  Who did you rock out to as a kid?  Want to sound like?  Who do you really like now?

SY: I don’t think of myself as an electronic musician.  Just in presentation.  Well, when I was a kid I loved Hendrix.  LOVED HIM MAN, learned mad solos. 

QRO: Hendrix, nice, legend.  You can take what he did in so many directions – the whole rhythm component of his big band work, I think, jibes with some of the sounds I’m hearing in Mating Falls.

SY: Whoa, thanks… Then [besides Hendrix] jazz and other stuff too.  Wes Montgomery.  And lots of guitar.  I’ve always loved playing the guitar.  Then random stuff.  Lots of hip-hop.

QRO: Eclectic mix; it comes through in the music.  So what’s on the schedule for Birthdays now?

SY: Kevin and I are working on our first full-length studio album and doing a lot of summer shows.  I’m planning a reclusive trip into the Adirondacks where I’ll record a cassette and put it out for free through FMLY.  But yeah, mostly just hanging out with Kevin and recording this album.  It’s going really, really well.  We sound like real musicians.

QRO: Nice – you’re going to grow out that beard and be the lonely weirdo mountain man making music in a shack?  I’ll look for that tape.  And super excited about the album – definitely hit us up with that when it’s ready!

 

http://www.mediafire.com/?llu8wix1cx5chos Mating Falls EP, by Birthdays (download link)

http://firetalk.bigcartel.com/product/birthdays-howolding-girls-7inch Howolding Girls (the buy link)

http://birthdays.bandcamp.com/ Birthdays bandcamp

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