Odawas Interview

by Vinh on April 11th, 2009

Jagjaguwar had a phenomenal year in 2008 and spacey indie-rockers Odawas have followed it up  with a delightful new release in The Blue Depths. Michael Tapscott of the duo recently answered a few of our questions concerning the album, cohesion, and…melons. Enjoy.

Before we get started, please state your name and role in the band.

Michael Tapscott – singer/songwriter.

So you guys played SXSW recently. How was it?

It was our first time there, I won’t say it was a bad experience because the journey was incredible and we saw old friends and made new ones. The shows themselves were pretty baseless and didn’t seem to further the cause a whole lot – but such is the nature of this festival I am told. I am glad we went though.

How do festivals compare to the regular indoor concert experience?

I don’t think a music festival is usually the best way to ingest and digest music. There is too much going on, the sound is usually not great, people are being pulled in too many directions to have any concentration on what we on stage our doing. Right now, we are an incredibly quiet band live, so it is difficult….

2008 was a huge year for Jagjaguwar with The Stand Ins and of course, For Emma, Forever Ago’s re-release. What was it like as an act on that roster to watch this all unfold?

It’s been amazing to see this happen, and it opens a lot of doors for us before people even hear the record. We always knew Jagjaguwar had it in them though!

Speaking of Bon Iver, much has been made of that moniker’s origins. How did yours (Odawas) come to be?

Well the name is a tribe of Indians who live in Northern Michigan where my family spent almost every summer until I went to college in a tiny green log cabin in a town called Good Hart. The house overlooked Lake Michigan and on the horizon was a tiny island called Beaver Island on which many of the Odawas Indians still live. The name harkens back to the distorted perceptions of a child. We would often claim we were going to take our blow-up raft out to Beaver Island, but in reality this island is 20 miles off shore and we would have never got there. As I’ve grown older, I’ve also learned that the island is mired in poverty and other social problems and is slowly sinking back into Lake Michigan. So yeah…heavy story, right? It also includes Mormons and America’s only self-proclaimed King, all of whom once dwelled on Beaver Island.

Wow. On a different note and if I may go out on a limb, I’ll state that The Blue Depths is your finest work yet. Was the recording process different this time?

We had a lot of time, because Isaac and I each have our own home studios now. Which made it more of a distant dialogue than a communal creation, we worked alone. I guess it worked?

I’d also venture to say it’s your most cohesive album. Was there a push, a desire to create an album that felt like one seamless journey rather than a collection of songs bound together by a track listing?

Actually it was more the other way around, which is funny. Before we always tried to tell an entire story through song, like one long song and that is the album. Now, I just concentrated on writing the best songs I could possibly write and just trust they were coming from the same mental space so they would have to sound good together. I agree with you on this being our most cohesive, funny how that works…

When listening to a record, I typically single out a song or two that encapsulate the prevailing themes. In your view, is there a song on your latest effort that occupies this role?

‘Case of the Great Irish Elk’ – it was the first recorded song, and set the tone for the way this record was going to sound, the particular keyboard settings and atmosphere I was going to work in. “Secrets of the Fall” set the mental space that the lyrics would occupy – a world where darkness and light co-mingle and love is never-ending but always changing directions.

It would have to be ‘Swan Song For The Humpback Angler’ for me with lines such as “you’ll notice the peace/it’s real” and “everyone will go down below/where the water is cold/through miles of light and hours of dark” that interact perfectly with the album’s title and general aesthetic. Was the lyrical content immediately paired with complementary arrangements or were the two elements worked on separately only to be joined later down the line?

I tried to be as concise as possible with the lyrics – the songs and arrangements always come before the lyrics for me, it’s just easier that way…

The Blue Depths strikes a delicate balance between the organic and artificial. Was there discussion regarding how to toe that line when in the studio?

No not at all – we were using an incredibly cheap keyboard and pairing it with a classical guitar. That cheap keyboard sounds incredibly organic to me…matching these deep synthesized sounds with nylon strings sounded like magic. It was so soft, but yet moving and deep, it just sounded like being underwater to me.

You guys relocated to Chicago last year. Did the move have any significant bearing on the new music?

Well, now we live in the East Bay in California. I don’t know that the move had a real significant bearing on the music – other than Isaac and I have always been loners and just love working on music alone and all night. Moving to new spaces and having no friends to distract you from that goal always helps!

Haha definitely. Now lazy journalism or not, your voice is often likened to Neil Young’s. As a Canadian, I feel it is my duty to ask this. Are you a fan?

Of course I am. I’d be lying if I said he wasn’t influence #1.

At times, Isaac Edwards’ fantastic work here sounds like a tip of the hat to the 80s. Is this is a fair assessment?

Yes, it was the arrangement map we discussed, the palette he was given.

Odawas also occasionally dips into the vocal reverb bag on The Blue Depths. Did you find it difficult to incorporate this element without overpowering the core of the songs?

I think we are trying to get away from using so much reverb. Of course, I love vocal reverb, but I think we’ve gone a little overboard with it. Isaac stripped a lot of the vocal reverb away on The Blue Depths actually, for which I was not a little annoyed. But clearly, this was the right decision.

This is the second interview I’ve conducted for Sun On The Sand and I’m trying to spearhead a tradition which involves getting one of our subscribers to ask guests an entirely gratuitous question. So here goes: Cantaloupe or honeydew, and why?

I have all melons, including watermelon. Seriously, what is the point?

No clue. What’s next for you guys?

We’re doing some rare touring. Isaac has a solo record for BlueSanct coming out, we have a movie soundtrack coming out, and we will be making a recording for our favorite record label, Digitalis as well. New music, keeping busy.

Any parting words for our readers?

Welcome to the land of the living.

Interview conducted by Vinh Cao