Conceivably you could experience all three versions of the Freelance Whales today–the recording, the busking and the staging–in San Francisco.

Their record Weathervanes has been out since April and it’s available on their site, where you can also indulge by downloading their single free. Busking (in their case, “freelance” busking?) in New York subways has allowed them to bare down the sound to acoustics and try out new songs on charmed strangers. They’ll be doing a free live set at Amoeba Records on Haight Street at 7 p.m. Finally, they will stage an opening act (in support of The Shout Out Louds) in full plugged-in splendor with synths, harmoniums, drum kits and waterphones on the gilded stage of the Great American Music Hall at 8:30 p.m.

For Chuck Criss, one of the many multi-instrumentalists in the Freelance Whales, the GAMH show is another homecoming (just two months after their Bottom of the Hill gig). He was raised in San Francisco, attending St. Ignatius Prep in the Sunset before taking his banjo-playing chops to East Coast schools, Great Lakes territories and finally to Queens, New York where the wonder of (irony, O, irony) San Francisco-founded craigslist.com put him in contact with the Freelance Whales.

Here Chuck Criss tells the story himself and talks about long bus rides, cold toes, musical friends, vinyl comebacks and, when pushed, gardening.

Chuck Criss: When I moved to New York I was looking for like-minded people. I think I typed in, like, “banjo” on craigslist and then it kind of went from there.

Perry Shirley of MuseZu: It’s that simple, huh, to find band members?

Yeah! [laugh] Well, yeah, in retrospect, it’s that simple. It was a long process. There was a lot of hit-and-miss. I was actually the last member to join the Freelance Whales. They were kind of recycling and going through a lot of members that didn’t exactly fit right so it was pretty serendipitous. We hit it off really well. They were looking for a banjo player and multi-instrumentalist and Judah [Dadone] had put some demos up online that were just great. It was just like, “I have to be part of this. It’s going to be a really great record.” Even from hearing the demo I could tell.

There’s also a visual side. There’s these videos of you guys playing in this strange place on Staten Island…

It’s like an abandoned farm colony slash hospital. It was our photographer friend Kendall [Mills] who had taken some shots there. That was really early when we first got together. We wanted to get some video content so we rearranged some of the songs acoustically, went out there. Took the ferry over there and then like another bus. Got to the middle of the island where it is and just filmed us playing song acoustic and put it online and stuff. But I mean the coolest part of our experience was it kind of encouraged us to arrange more of the songs in an acoustic kind of format and really start going on the streets and more like busking on subways which is a great way of meeting people–which is tough to do in New York

So the setting directly influenced the sound of your band… that you kind of kept with

You’re talking about the performance?

Yeah.

Yeah it defintely did and it really encouraged a group vocal energy which kind of translated to our live set we have now.

You’re going to be going on tour with the Shout Out Louds. First of all how did that come about? Is it your label that paired you guys together?

Yeah, our booking agent put us together. It was a band that I’ve definitely listened to before and admired. We played a show with them at the Music Hall in Williamsburg and met those guys, played with them and kind of of hit it off. We wanted to stay busy ’cause our record came out pretty recently, like April 13th, so we were trying to find something where we could go and tour that record a little bit.

And along the way there you get to play a few shows, like the May 25th UC San Diego show at The Loft, where it’s just your band headlining.

Once we get to California after those two shows in L.A. we are going to break off and do our own thing just to do some more shows in California ’cause we have Sasquatch coming up on the West Coast at the end of May so we’re going to go up there and do the Sasquatch [Music Festival] thing which we’re real excited about that, to get some to play a really huge festival like that.

You recently did SXSW also.

Yeah, that was really great. It was really busy; we played 12 shows in four or five days so it was pretty chaotic. It will be nice to go to Sasquatch and just be able to play one show and actually get to go around and camp out and watch all the other great bands on that that show.

Soak it in a little bit yourselves…

Yeah Pavement’s playing the night that we are playing.

You’re telling me! I’m the biggest Pavement fan [complete loss of professionalism]

Yeah, me too. I was really excited for that too especially since they are only playing big festivals. They’re not really touring properly.

They did the Coachella show; they exorcised their demons, after getting mud slinged on them the last time. But talk about that what have you been listening to. What would you say are some of the band’s influences as far as other bands go?

We have a pretty diverse taste in music but I guess you could say as far influences that plugged their way in the record: Broken Social Scene, Stars, Sufjan Stevens, bands like that. One of the influences is this band, you know “Le Loup?”

Le Loup. Yeah, uh huh…

They’re great. Judah’s kind of good friends with them. That’s probably one of the biggest influences on the record, I’d say.

The viral videos of you guys playing in subways in New York remind me a lot of this girl, Lykke Li.

Oh really?! [genuinely excited]

You know what I’m talking about?

I’m not familiar with her viral videos. I know her music and it’s great.

They do a lot of these outdoor performances where it’s a lot of her with musicians playing just sparingly.

Thanks, man it’s fun to do stuff like that. Keeps the songs interesting. Well, thanks that’s a compliment to be compared to Lykke Li.

So between the bigger stages when you’re playing with the Shout Out Louds and the smaller stages you get to play later, what’s the ideal setting for someone to hear your music?

The band’s kind of got three different sounds going for it. The acoustic thing to do on the streets and stuff and then how we sound on the actual recording and then our live set. I think they’re all great experiences and good ways to try to listen to and understand and enjoy the band and what we are doing. All three of them. It’s just a matter of preference, I mean. What we are doing more than anything is playing live, full, proper shows with all the instrumentations and full kit and a more brash setup than it is on the recording. I’d say to come to the live show, on a proper stage I guess. It’s good clean fun.

And you bring all these instruments with you on tour?

Yeah. Us, the banjos, the harmonium, the guitars and the synthesizers, it all manages to fit in our 15-passenger van. It gets there. We definitely carry a lot of fragile things with us.

Yeah have you ever had any trouble with that? If something breaks down are you going to have to bring it to some old repair place in town?

Yeah, things break. We broke the banjo but we were in Nashville so there was a shop practically on every block. That was a very fortunate place to have to restock on gear If we broke a synth that would be a bummer just ’cause we have a lot of presets on there. If we ever broke a harmonium that would be really tough too because Judah ordered that I think from India. But I think we can find them around. We would make do. We know how to play a lot of instruments so could cover it up but it would be a bummer yeah .

You know, you mentioned bands like Broken Social Scene and Stars of course there’s a girl singer and a guy singer in those bands. and you have that in you theres a chase or love story going

It was kind of based off… Judah had doing some dream-logging for about a year just writing about his dreams and we kind of pieced together this love story between a ghost and someone living in a house and we just kind of ran with it. There’s definitely some romantic elements. There’s a lot of life and death stuff. The whole albums goes into different elements of energy transference whether it’s body heat or electricity or passing from life to death. It’s all in there. All the lyrics are based off a dream kind of scape.

And in the video for Generator 2nd Floor, you guys kind of recharge this body…

Yeah, that was a fun video to shoot. It was probably one of the coldest days of the year and no one could feel their toes. It was like in Pennsylvania somewhere at the video director’s. Near his house. His dad had some farmland. It was freezing. Luckily, we were somewhat warm but the girl in the video, Alicia, she’s in it pretty briefly but she’s in nightgown and had to lie down on the snow. It’s only like 20 seconds of video but she was probably there for about an hour. So she took one for the team but she did a good job.

So, does the director kind of come up with the idea and you go “Meh, well okay that fits” or do you get to say “Here’s what we were going for…”

In this case we had to do that really quick. We had gotten back from a short tour just around the Northeast and we had a couple days off before we went out on the road again with Cymbal Eat Guitar and Bear in Heaven. So in that case, I mean… Eventually we’d like to get to the point where we kind of mock-up our own ideas for the videos. In this case, it was like we really want to have a video to coincide with the album release and the director had kind of sketched out some ideas for what he wanted to do and we just kind of showed up, praying it would be good and it turns out well. And that’s how it is most of the time. Normally you can give a little direction but there’s the directors and the artists. But yeah that was a fun first video to do

Okay so arguably one of your more popular songs is the next to last song on your album. I feel like other bands would be tempted to put it right there at the top of the tracklist, just say, “Screw it, we’ll give the people what they want.” Did you feel firmly about the story-telling process?

The way the album is track is very intentional. That’s the order we want and that’s what we intended to have. It woudn’t have really made sense to come after one because Generator 1st Floor opens the album and it’s about revving up a house and waking up. The end of the album is a little darker. Generator 2nd Floor is very funeral like, about putting a body into the ground. So there’s a whole story in between.

I get frustrated by how many people just want to hear singles.

Yeah. I mean most people just listen to their iPod Nanos or whatever and maybe listen to one song. We all love listening to an album in its entirety. I think it’s coming back. A lot of people are getting into vinyl. [Even the founder of Amoeba records said so]. Sales are up and listening to vinyl you can’t skip songs. It’s an experience. You have to listen to it and flip it over. A lot of time people will find the single and hopefully they will gravitate towards the album and listen to it order, the way it’s supposed to be. It’s out of our control, you know?

Yeah I was doing some gardening this weekend and i played your album through a couple of time. It works really well for that.

Nice. “Music For Gardening” that will be the name of our next album.

What’s the weirdest story you’ve heard about the band?

Rumors spread in weird ways. A lot of people think that we were kind of busking to make money which isn’t true. It was just a way to meet people it wasn’t like we were professional buskers. A lot of people think that we were all street musicians that all met up and happen to be in a band.

Do people in the subway ever join in on your playing?

Yeah that’s happen a few time–a kid with a harmonica will jump in. The subway is pretty rife with crazy stories. We’ll play and then some crazy homeless guy just likes stands in front and start yelling nonsense. It’s like a free for for all. It’s definitely a much more eclectic audience then playing at, like, the Great American Music Hall.

Are you going to have to give that up at some point if you start headlining more shows?

You know, it’s not about giving it up. It’s a good place to try out new material. It’s more just [about the] time. We don’t have a lot of time, which is great. It’s good to be busy. The time off between tour is much-craved time off where we tend to go home and sleep and water our plants.

“Water our plants”? I guess the Freelance Whales really is good for gardening. [Pay no mind: this is only the lame joke send-off I should have made but didn't think off at the time]

DO play mind, however, to the Freelance Whales. They released this album essentially on their own and, if it’s a sign of things to come, they’ve reached the right balance of talent, they should be lauded for sticking to their guns with running themes (a la Decemberist’s The Hazards of Love or The Antlers’ Hospice) and should be nothing but bigger their next time around on your radar.

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Conceivably you could experience all three versions of the Freelance Whales today–the recording, the busking and the staging–in San Francisco.

Their record Weathervanes has been out since April and it’s available on their site, where you can also indulge by downloading their single free. Busking (in their case, “freelance” busking?) in New York subways has allowed them to bare down the sound to acoustics and try out new songs on charmed strangers. They’ll be doing a free live set at Amoeba Records on Haight Street at 7 p.m. Finally, they will stage an opening act (in support of The Shout Out Louds) in full plugged-in splendor with synths, harmoniums, drum kits and waterphones on the gilded stage of the Great American Music Hall at 8:30 p.m.

For Chuck Criss, one of the many multi-instrumentalists in the Freelance Whales, the GAMH show is another homecoming (just two months after their Bottom of the Hill gig). He was raised in San Francisco, attending St. Ignatius Prep in the Sunset before taking his banjo-playing chops to East Coast schools, Great Lakes territories and finally to Queens, New York where the wonder of (irony, O, irony) San Francisco-founded craigslist.com put him in contact with the Freelance Whales.

Here Chuck Criss tells the story himself and talks about long bus rides, cold toes, musical friends, vinyl comebacks and, when pushed, gardening.

Chuck Criss: When I moved to New York I was looking for like-minded people. I think I typed in, like, “banjo” on craigslist and then it kind of went from there.

Perry Shirley of MuseZu: It’s that simple, huh, to find band members?

Yeah! [laugh] Well, yeah, in retrospect, it’s that simple. It was a long process. There was a lot of hit-and-miss. I was actually the last member to join the Freelance Whales. They were kind of recycling and going through a lot of members that didn’t exactly fit right so it was pretty serendipitous. We hit it off really well. They were looking for a banjo player and multi-instrumentalist and Judah [Dadone] had put some demos up online that were just great. It was just like, “I have to be part of this. It’s going to be a really great record.” Even from hearing the demo I could tell.

There’s also a visual side. There’s these videos of you guys playing in this strange place on Staten Island…

It’s like an abandoned farm colony slash hospital. It was our photographer friend Kendall [Mills] who had taken some shots there. That was really early when we first got together. We wanted to get some video content so we rearranged some of the songs acoustically, went out there. Took the ferry over there and then like another bus. Got to the middle of the island where it is and just filmed us playing song acoustic and put it online and stuff. But I mean the coolest part of our experience was it kind of encouraged us to arrange more of the songs in an acoustic kind of format and really start going on the streets and more like busking on subways which is a great way of meeting people–which is tough to do in New York

So the setting directly influenced the sound of your band… that you kind of kept with

You’re talking about the performance?

Yeah.

Yeah it defintely did and it really encouraged a group vocal energy which kind of translated to our live set we have now.

You’re going to be going on tour with the Shout Out Louds. First of all how did that come about? Is it your label that paired you guys together?

Yeah, our booking agent put us together. It was a band that I’ve definitely listened to before and admired. We played a show with them at the Music Hall in Williamsburg and met those guys, played with them and kind of of hit it off. We wanted to stay busy ’cause our record came out pretty recently, like April 13th, so we were trying to find something where we could go and tour that record a little bit.

And along the way there you get to play a few shows, like the May 25th UC San Diego show at The Loft, where it’s just your band headlining.

Once we get to California after those two shows in L.A. we are going to break off and do our own thing just to do some more shows in California ’cause we have Sasquatch coming up on the West Coast at the end of May so we’re going to go up there and do the Sasquatch [Music Festival] thing which we’re real excited about that, to get some to play a really huge festival like that.

You recently did SXSW also.

Yeah, that was really great. It was really busy; we played 12 shows in four or five days so it was pretty chaotic. It will be nice to go to Sasquatch and just be able to play one show and actually get to go around and camp out and watch all the other great bands on that that show.

Soak it in a little bit yourselves…

Yeah Pavement’s playing the night that we are playing.

You’re telling me! I’m the biggest Pavement fan [complete loss of professionalism]

Yeah, me too. I was really excited for that too especially since they are only playing big festivals. They’re not really touring properly.

They did the Coachella show; they exorcised their demons, after getting mud slinged on them the last time. But talk about that what have you been listening to. What would you say are some of the band’s influences as far as other bands go?

We have a pretty diverse taste in music but I guess you could say as far influences that plugged their way in the record: Broken Social Scene, Stars, Sufjan Stevens, bands like that. One of the influences is this band, you know “Le Loup?”

Le Loup. Yeah, uh huh…

They’re great. Judah’s kind of good friends with them. That’s probably one of the biggest influences on the record, I’d say.

The viral videos of you guys playing in subways in New York remind me a lot of this girl, Lykke Li.

Oh really?! [genuinely excited]

You know what I’m talking about?

I’m not familiar with her viral videos. I know her music and it’s great.

They do a lot of these outdoor performances where it’s a lot of her with musicians playing just sparingly.

Thanks, man it’s fun to do stuff like that. Keeps the songs interesting. Well, thanks that’s a compliment to be compared to Lykke Li.

So between the bigger stages when you’re playing with the Shout Out Louds and the smaller stages you get to play later, what’s the ideal setting for someone to hear your music?

The band’s kind of got three different sounds going for it. The acoustic thing to do on the streets and stuff and then how we sound on the actual recording and then our live set. I think they’re all great experiences and good ways to try to listen to and understand and enjoy the band and what we are doing. All three of them. It’s just a matter of preference, I mean. What we are doing more than anything is playing live, full, proper shows with all the instrumentations and full kit and a more brash setup than it is on the recording. I’d say to come to the live show, on a proper stage I guess. It’s good clean fun.

And you bring all these instruments with you on tour?

Yeah. Us, the banjos, the harmonium, the guitars and the synthesizers, it all manages to fit in our 15-passenger van. It gets there. We definitely carry a lot of fragile things with us.

Yeah have you ever had any trouble with that? If something breaks down are you going to have to bring it to some old repair place in town?

Yeah, things break. We broke the banjo but we were in Nashville so there was a shop practically on every block. That was a very fortunate place to have to restock on gear If we broke a synth that would be a bummer just ’cause we have a lot of presets on there. If we ever broke a harmonium that would be really tough too because Judah ordered that I think from India. But I think we can find them around. We would make do. We know how to play a lot of instruments so could cover it up but it would be a bummer yeah .

You know, you mentioned bands like Broken Social Scene and Stars of course there’s a girl singer and a guy singer in those bands. and you have that in you theres a chase or love story going

It was kind of based off… Judah had doing some dream-logging for about a year just writing about his dreams and we kind of pieced together this love story between a ghost and someone living in a house and we just kind of ran with it. There’s definitely some romantic elements. There’s a lot of life and death stuff. The whole albums goes into different elements of energy transference whether it’s body heat or electricity or passing from life to death. It’s all in there. All the lyrics are based off a dream kind of scape.

And in the video for Generator 2nd Floor, you guys kind of recharge this body…

Yeah, that was a fun video to shoot. It was probably one of the coldest days of the year and no one could feel their toes. It was like in Pennsylvania somewhere at the video director’s. Near his house. His dad had some farmland. It was freezing. Luckily, we were somewhat warm but the girl in the video, Alicia, she’s in it pretty briefly but she’s in nightgown and had to lie down on the snow. It’s only like 20 seconds of video but she was probably there for about an hour. So she took one for the team but she did a good job.

So, does the director kind of come up with the idea and you go “Meh, well okay that fits” or do you get to say “Here’s what we were going for…”

In this case we had to do that really quick. We had gotten back from a short tour just around the Northeast and we had a couple days off before we went out on the road again with Cymbal Eat Guitar and Bear in Heaven. So in that case, I mean… Eventually we’d like to get to the point where we kind of mock-up our own ideas for the videos. In this case, it was like we really want to have a video to coincide with the album release and the director had kind of sketched out some ideas for what he wanted to do and we just kind of showed up, praying it would be good and it turns out well. And that’s how it is most of the time. Normally you can give a little direction but there’s the directors and the artists. But yeah that was a fun first video to do

Okay so arguably one of your more popular songs is the next to last song on your album. I feel like other bands would be tempted to put it right there at the top of the tracklist, just say, “Screw it, we’ll give the people what they want.” Did you feel firmly about the story-telling process?

The way the album is track is very intentional. That’s the order we want and that’s what we intended to have. It woudn’t have really made sense to come after one because Generator 1st Floor opens the album and it’s about revving up a house and waking up. The end of the album is a little darker. Generator 2nd Floor is very funeral like, about putting a body into the ground. So there’s a whole story in between.

I get frustrated by how many people just want to hear singles.

Yeah. I mean most people just listen to their iPod Nanos or whatever and maybe listen to one song. We all love listening to an album in its entirety. I think it’s coming back. A lot of people are getting into vinyl. [Even the founder of Amoeba records said so]. Sales are up and listening to vinyl you can’t skip songs. It’s an experience. You have to listen to it and flip it over. A lot of time people will find the single and hopefully they will gravitate towards the album and listen to it order, the way it’s supposed to be. It’s out of our control, you know?

Yeah I was doing some gardening this weekend and i played your album through a couple of time. It works really well for that.

Nice. “Music For Gardening” that will be the name of our next album.

What’s the weirdest story you’ve heard about the band?

Rumors spread in weird ways. A lot of people think that we were kind of busking to make money which isn’t true. It was just a way to meet people it wasn’t like we were professional buskers. A lot of people think that we were all street musicians that all met up and happen to be in a band.

Do people in the subway ever join in on your playing?

Yeah that’s happen a few time–a kid with a harmonica will jump in. The subway is pretty rife with crazy stories. We’ll play and then some crazy homeless guy just likes stands in front and start yelling nonsense. It’s like a free for for all. It’s definitely a much more eclectic audience then playing at, like, the Great American Music Hall.

Are you going to have to give that up at some point if you start headlining more shows?

You know, it’s not about giving it up. It’s a good place to try out new material. It’s more just [about the] time. We don’t have a lot of time, which is great. It’s good to be busy. The time off between tour is much-craved time off where we tend to go home and sleep and water our plants.

“Water our plants”? I guess the Freelance Whales really is good for gardening. [Pay no mind: this is only the lame joke send-off I should have made but didn't think off at the time]

DO play mind, however, to the Freelance Whales. They released this album essentially on their own and, if it’s a sign of things to come, they’ve reached the right balance of talent, they should be lauded for sticking to their guns with running themes (a la Decemberist’s The Hazards of Love or The Antlers’ Hospice) and should be nothing but bigger their next time around on your radar.

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Check out MuseZu for more of the same…

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Listed in MuseZu Articles

 

 

Conceivably you could experience all three versions of the Freelance Whales today–the recording, the busking and the staging–in San Francisco.

Their record Weathervanes has been out since April and it’s available on their site, where you can also indulge by downloading their single free. Busking (in their case, “freelance” busking?) in New York subways has allowed them to bare down the sound to acoustics and try out new songs on charmed strangers. They’ll be doing a free live set at Amoeba Records on Haight Street at 7 p.m. Finally, they will stage an opening act (in support of The Shout Out Louds) in full plugged-in splendor with synths, harmoniums, drum kits and waterphones on the gilded stage of the Great American Music Hall at 8:30 p.m.

For Chuck Criss, one of the many multi-instrumentalists in the Freelance Whales, the GAMH show is another homecoming (just two months after their Bottom of the Hill gig). He was raised in San Francisco, attending St. Ignatius Prep in the Sunset before taking his banjo-playing chops to East Coast schools, Great Lakes territories and finally to Queens, New York where the wonder of (irony, O, irony) San Francisco-founded craigslist.com put him in contact with the Freelance Whales.

Here Chuck Criss tells the story himself and talks about long bus rides, cold toes, musical friends, vinyl comebacks and, when pushed, gardening.

Chuck Criss: When I moved to New York I was looking for like-minded people. I think I typed in, like, “banjo” on craigslist and then it kind of went from there.

Perry Shirley of MuseZu: It’s that simple, huh, to find band members?

Yeah! [laugh] Well, yeah, in retrospect, it’s that simple. It was a long process. There was a lot of hit-and-miss. I was actually the last member to join the Freelance Whales. They were kind of recycling and going through a lot of members that didn’t exactly fit right so it was pretty serendipitous. We hit it off really well. They were looking for a banjo player and multi-instrumentalist and Judah [Dadone] had put some demos up online that were just great. It was just like, “I have to be part of this. It’s going to be a really great record.” Even from hearing the demo I could tell.

There’s also a visual side. There’s these videos of you guys playing in this strange place on Staten Island…

It’s like an abandoned farm colony slash hospital. It was our photographer friend Kendall [Mills] who had taken some shots there. That was really early when we first got together. We wanted to get some video content so we rearranged some of the songs acoustically, went out there. Took the ferry over there and then like another bus. Got to the middle of the island where it is and just filmed us playing song acoustic and put it online and stuff. But I mean the coolest part of our experience was it kind of encouraged us to arrange more of the songs in an acoustic kind of format and really start going on the streets and more like busking on subways which is a great way of meeting people–which is tough to do in New York

So the setting directly influenced the sound of your band… that you kind of kept with

You’re talking about the performance?

Yeah.

Yeah it defintely did and it really encouraged a group vocal energy which kind of translated to our live set we have now.

You’re going to be going on tour with the Shout Out Louds. First of all how did that come about? Is it your label that paired you guys together?

Yeah, our booking agent put us together. It was a band that I’ve definitely listened to before and admired. We played a show with them at the Music Hall in Williamsburg and met those guys, played with them and kind of of hit it off. We wanted to stay busy ’cause our record came out pretty recently, like April 13th, so we were trying to find something where we could go and tour that record a little bit.

And along the way there you get to play a few shows, like the May 25th UC San Diego show at The Loft, where it’s just your band headlining.

Once we get to California after those two shows in L.A. we are going to break off and do our own thing just to do some more shows in California ’cause we have Sasquatch coming up on the West Coast at the end of May so we’re going to go up there and do the Sasquatch [Music Festival] thing which we’re real excited about that, to get some to play a really huge festival like that.

You recently did SXSW also.

Yeah, that was really great. It was really busy; we played 12 shows in four or five days so it was pretty chaotic. It will be nice to go to Sasquatch and just be able to play one show and actually get to go around and camp out and watch all the other great bands on that that show.

Soak it in a little bit yourselves…

Yeah Pavement’s playing the night that we are playing.

You’re telling me! I’m the biggest Pavement fan [complete loss of professionalism]

Yeah, me too. I was really excited for that too especially since they are only playing big festivals. They’re not really touring properly.

They did the Coachella show; they exorcised their demons, after getting mud slinged on them the last time. But talk about that what have you been listening to. What would you say are some of the band’s influences as far as other bands go?

We have a pretty diverse taste in music but I guess you could say as far influences that plugged their way in the record: Broken Social Scene, Stars, Sufjan Stevens, bands like that. One of the influences is this band, you know “Le Loup?”

Le Loup. Yeah, uh huh…

They’re great. Judah’s kind of good friends with them. That’s probably one of the biggest influences on the record, I’d say.

The viral videos of you guys playing in subways in New York remind me a lot of this girl, Lykke Li.

Oh really?! [genuinely excited]

You know what I’m talking about?

I’m not familiar with her viral videos. I know her music and it’s great.

They do a lot of these outdoor performances where it’s a lot of her with musicians playing just sparingly.

Thanks, man it’s fun to do stuff like that. Keeps the songs interesting. Well, thanks that’s a compliment to be compared to Lykke Li.

So between the bigger stages when you’re playing with the Shout Out Louds and the smaller stages you get to play later, what’s the ideal setting for someone to hear your music?

The band’s kind of got three different sounds going for it. The acoustic thing to do on the streets and stuff and then how we sound on the actual recording and then our live set. I think they’re all great experiences and good ways to try to listen to and understand and enjoy the band and what we are doing. All three of them. It’s just a matter of preference, I mean. What we are doing more than anything is playing live, full, proper shows with all the instrumentations and full kit and a more brash setup than it is on the recording. I’d say to come to the live show, on a proper stage I guess. It’s good clean fun.

And you bring all these instruments with you on tour?

Yeah. Us, the banjos, the harmonium, the guitars and the synthesizers, it all manages to fit in our 15-passenger van. It gets there. We definitely carry a lot of fragile things with us.

Yeah have you ever had any trouble with that? If something breaks down are you going to have to bring it to some old repair place in town?

Yeah, things break. We broke the banjo but we were in Nashville so there was a shop practically on every block. That was a very fortunate place to have to restock on gear If we broke a synth that would be a bummer just ’cause we have a lot of presets on there. If we ever broke a harmonium that would be really tough too because Judah ordered that I think from India. But I think we can find them around. We would make do. We know how to play a lot of instruments so could cover it up but it would be a bummer yeah .

You know, you mentioned bands like Broken Social Scene and Stars of course there’s a girl singer and a guy singer in those bands. and you have that in you theres a chase or love story going

It was kind of based off… Judah had doing some dream-logging for about a year just writing about his dreams and we kind of pieced together this love story between a ghost and someone living in a house and we just kind of ran with it. There’s definitely some romantic elements. There’s a lot of life and death stuff. The whole albums goes into different elements of energy transference whether it’s body heat or electricity or passing from life to death. It’s all in there. All the lyrics are based off a dream kind of scape.

And in the video for Generator 2nd Floor, you guys kind of recharge this body…

Yeah, that was a fun video to shoot. It was probably one of the coldest days of the year and no one could feel their toes. It was like in Pennsylvania somewhere at the video director’s. Near his house. His dad had some farmland. It was freezing. Luckily, we were somewhat warm but the girl in the video, Alicia, she’s in it pretty briefly but she’s in nightgown and had to lie down on the snow. It’s only like 20 seconds of video but she was probably there for about an hour. So she took one for the team but she did a good job.

So, does the director kind of come up with the idea and you go “Meh, well okay that fits” or do you get to say “Here’s what we were going for…”

In this case we had to do that really quick. We had gotten back from a short tour just around the Northeast and we had a couple days off before we went out on the road again with Cymbal Eat Guitar and Bear in Heaven. So in that case, I mean… Eventually we’d like to get to the point where we kind of mock-up our own ideas for the videos. In this case, it was like we really want to have a video to coincide with the album release and the director had kind of sketched out some ideas for what he wanted to do and we just kind of showed up, praying it would be good and it turns out well. And that’s how it is most of the time. Normally you can give a little direction but there’s the directors and the artists. But yeah that was a fun first video to do

Okay so arguably one of your more popular songs is the next to last song on your album. I feel like other bands would be tempted to put it right there at the top of the tracklist, just say, “Screw it, we’ll give the people what they want.” Did you feel firmly about the story-telling process?

The way the album is track is very intentional. That’s the order we want and that’s what we intended to have. It woudn’t have really made sense to come after one because Generator 1st Floor opens the album and it’s about revving up a house and waking up. The end of the album is a little darker. Generator 2nd Floor is very funeral like, about putting a body into the ground. So there’s a whole story in between.

I get frustrated by how many people just want to hear singles.

Yeah. I mean most people just listen to their iPod Nanos or whatever and maybe listen to one song. We all love listening to an album in its entirety. I think it’s coming back. A lot of people are getting into vinyl. [Even the founder of Amoeba records said so]. Sales are up and listening to vinyl you can’t skip songs. It’s an experience. You have to listen to it and flip it over. A lot of time people will find the single and hopefully they will gravitate towards the album and listen to it order, the way it’s supposed to be. It’s out of our control, you know?

Yeah I was doing some gardening this weekend and i played your album through a couple of time. It works really well for that.

Nice. “Music For Gardening” that will be the name of our next album.

What’s the weirdest story you’ve heard about the band?

Rumors spread in weird ways. A lot of people think that we were kind of busking to make money which isn’t true. It was just a way to meet people it wasn’t like we were professional buskers. A lot of people think that we were all street musicians that all met up and happen to be in a band.

Do people in the subway ever join in on your playing?

Yeah that’s happen a few time–a kid with a harmonica will jump in. The subway is pretty rife with crazy stories. We’ll play and then some crazy homeless guy just likes stands in front and start yelling nonsense. It’s like a free for for all. It’s definitely a much more eclectic audience then playing at, like, the Great American Music Hall.

Are you going to have to give that up at some point if you start headlining more shows?

You know, it’s not about giving it up. It’s a good place to try out new material. It’s more just [about the] time. We don’t have a lot of time, which is great. It’s good to be busy. The time off between tour is much-craved time off where we tend to go home and sleep and water our plants.

“Water our plants”? I guess the Freelance Whales really is good for gardening. [Pay no mind: this is only the lame joke send-off I should have made but didn't think off at the time]

DO play mind, however, to the Freelance Whales. They released this album essentially on their own and, if it’s a sign of things to come, they’ve reached the right balance of talent, they should be lauded for sticking to their guns with running themes (a la Decemberist’s The Hazards of Love or The Antlers’ Hospice) and should be nothing but bigger their next time around on your radar.

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Conceivably you could experience all three versions of the Freelance Whales today–the recording, the busking and the staging–in San Francisco.

Their record Weathervanes has been out since April and it’s available on their site, where you can also indulge by downloading their single free. Busking (in their case, “freelance” busking?) in New York subways has allowed them to bare down the sound to acoustics and try out new songs on charmed strangers. They’ll be doing a free live set at Amoeba Records on Haight Street at 7 p.m. Finally, they will stage an opening act (in support of The Shout Out Louds) in full plugged-in splendor with synths, harmoniums, drum kits and waterphones on the gilded stage of the Great American Music Hall at 8:30 p.m.

For Chuck Criss, one of the many multi-instrumentalists in the Freelance Whales, the GAMH show is another homecoming (just two months after their Bottom of the Hill gig). He was raised in San Francisco, attending St. Ignatius Prep in the Sunset before taking his banjo-playing chops to East Coast schools, Great Lakes territories and finally to Queens, New York where the wonder of (irony, O, irony) San Francisco-founded craigslist.com put him in contact with the Freelance Whales.

Here Chuck Criss tells the story himself and talks about long bus rides, cold toes, musical friends, vinyl comebacks and, when pushed, gardening.

Chuck Criss: When I moved to New York I was looking for like-minded people. I think I typed in, like, “banjo” on craigslist and then it kind of went from there.

Perry Shirley of MuseZu: It’s that simple, huh, to find band members?

Yeah! [laugh] Well, yeah, in retrospect, it’s that simple. It was a long process. There was a lot of hit-and-miss. I was actually the last member to join the Freelance Whales. They were kind of recycling and going through a lot of members that didn’t exactly fit right so it was pretty serendipitous. We hit it off really well. They were looking for a banjo player and multi-instrumentalist and Judah [Dadone] had put some demos up online that were just great. It was just like, “I have to be part of this. It’s going to be a really great record.” Even from hearing the demo I could tell.

There’s also a visual side. There’s these videos of you guys playing in this strange place on Staten Island…

It’s like an abandoned farm colony slash hospital. It was our photographer friend Kendall [Mills] who had taken some shots there. That was really early when we first got together. We wanted to get some video content so we rearranged some of the songs acoustically, went out there. Took the ferry over there and then like another bus. Got to the middle of the island where it is and just filmed us playing song acoustic and put it online and stuff. But I mean the coolest part of our experience was it kind of encouraged us to arrange more of the songs in an acoustic kind of format and really start going on the streets and more like busking on subways which is a great way of meeting people–which is tough to do in New York

So the setting directly influenced the sound of your band… that you kind of kept with

You’re talking about the performance?

Yeah.

Yeah it defintely did and it really encouraged a group vocal energy which kind of translated to our live set we have now.

You’re going to be going on tour with the Shout Out Louds. First of all how did that come about? Is it your label that paired you guys together?

Yeah, our booking agent put us together. It was a band that I’ve definitely listened to before and admired. We played a show with them at the Music Hall in Williamsburg and met those guys, played with them and kind of of hit it off. We wanted to stay busy ’cause our record came out pretty recently, like April 13th, so we were trying to find something where we could go and tour that record a little bit.

And along the way there you get to play a few shows, like the May 25th UC San Diego show at The Loft, where it’s just your band headlining.

Once we get to California after those two shows in L.A. we are going to break off and do our own thing just to do some more shows in California ’cause we have Sasquatch coming up on the West Coast at the end of May so we’re going to go up there and do the Sasquatch [Music Festival] thing which we’re real excited about that, to get some to play a really huge festival like that.

You recently did SXSW also.

Yeah, that was really great. It was really busy; we played 12 shows in four or five days so it was pretty chaotic. It will be nice to go to Sasquatch and just be able to play one show and actually get to go around and camp out and watch all the other great bands on that that show.

Soak it in a little bit yourselves…

Yeah Pavement’s playing the night that we are playing.

You’re telling me! I’m the biggest Pavement fan [complete loss of professionalism]

Yeah, me too. I was really excited for that too especially since they are only playing big festivals. They’re not really touring properly.

They did the Coachella show; they exorcised their demons, after getting mud slinged on them the last time. But talk about that what have you been listening to. What would you say are some of the band’s influences as far as other bands go?

We have a pretty diverse taste in music but I guess you could say as far influences that plugged their way in the record: Broken Social Scene, Stars, Sufjan Stevens, bands like that. One of the influences is this band, you know “Le Loup?”

Le Loup. Yeah, uh huh…

They’re great. Judah’s kind of good friends with them. That’s probably one of the biggest influences on the record, I’d say.

The viral videos of you guys playing in subways in New York remind me a lot of this girl, Lykke Li.

Oh really?! [genuinely excited]

You know what I’m talking about?

I’m not familiar with her viral videos. I know her music and it’s great.

They do a lot of these outdoor performances where it’s a lot of her with musicians playing just sparingly.

Thanks, man it’s fun to do stuff like that. Keeps the songs interesting. Well, thanks that’s a compliment to be compared to Lykke Li.

So between the bigger stages when you’re playing with the Shout Out Louds and the smaller stages you get to play later, what’s the ideal setting for someone to hear your music?

The band’s kind of got three different sounds going for it. The acoustic thing to do on the streets and stuff and then how we sound on the actual recording and then our live set. I think they’re all great experiences and good ways to try to listen to and understand and enjoy the band and what we are doing. All three of them. It’s just a matter of preference, I mean. What we are doing more than anything is playing live, full, proper shows with all the instrumentations and full kit and a more brash setup than it is on the recording. I’d say to come to the live show, on a proper stage I guess. It’s good clean fun.

And you bring all these instruments with you on tour?

Yeah. Us, the banjos, the harmonium, the guitars and the synthesizers, it all manages to fit in our 15-passenger van. It gets there. We definitely carry a lot of fragile things with us.

Yeah have you ever had any trouble with that? If something breaks down are you going to have to bring it to some old repair place in town?

Yeah, things break. We broke the banjo but we were in Nashville so there was a shop practically on every block. That was a very fortunate place to have to restock on gear If we broke a synth that would be a bummer just ’cause we have a lot of presets on there. If we ever broke a harmonium that would be really tough too because Judah ordered that I think from India. But I think we can find them around. We would make do. We know how to play a lot of instruments so could cover it up but it would be a bummer yeah .

You know, you mentioned bands like Broken Social Scene and Stars of course there’s a girl singer and a guy singer in those bands. and you have that in you theres a chase or love story going

It was kind of based off… Judah had doing some dream-logging for about a year just writing about his dreams and we kind of pieced together this love story between a ghost and someone living in a house and we just kind of ran with it. There’s definitely some romantic elements. There’s a lot of life and death stuff. The whole albums goes into different elements of energy transference whether it’s body heat or electricity or passing from life to death. It’s all in there. All the lyrics are based off a dream kind of scape.

And in the video for Generator 2nd Floor, you guys kind of recharge this body…

Yeah, that was a fun video to shoot. It was probably one of the coldest days of the year and no one could feel their toes. It was like in Pennsylvania somewhere at the video director’s. Near his house. His dad had some farmland. It was freezing. Luckily, we were somewhat warm but the girl in the video, Alicia, she’s in it pretty briefly but she’s in nightgown and had to lie down on the snow. It’s only like 20 seconds of video but she was probably there for about an hour. So she took one for the team but she did a good job.

So, does the director kind of come up with the idea and you go “Meh, well okay that fits” or do you get to say “Here’s what we were going for…”

In this case we had to do that really quick. We had gotten back from a short tour just around the Northeast and we had a couple days off before we went out on the road again with Cymbal Eat Guitar and Bear in Heaven. So in that case, I mean… Eventually we’d like to get to the point where we kind of mock-up our own ideas for the videos. In this case, it was like we really want to have a video to coincide with the album release and the director had kind of sketched out some ideas for what he wanted to do and we just kind of showed up, praying it would be good and it turns out well. And that’s how it is most of the time. Normally you can give a little direction but there’s the directors and the artists. But yeah that was a fun first video to do

Okay so arguably one of your more popular songs is the next to last song on your album. I feel like other bands would be tempted to put it right there at the top of the tracklist, just say, “Screw it, we’ll give the people what they want.” Did you feel firmly about the story-telling process?

The way the album is track is very intentional. That’s the order we want and that’s what we intended to have. It woudn’t have really made sense to come after one because Generator 1st Floor opens the album and it’s about revving up a house and waking up. The end of the album is a little darker. Generator 2nd Floor is very funeral like, about putting a body into the ground. So there’s a whole story in between.

I get frustrated by how many people just want to hear singles.

Yeah. I mean most people just listen to their iPod Nanos or whatever and maybe listen to one song. We all love listening to an album in its entirety. I think it’s coming back. A lot of people are getting into vinyl. [Even the founder of Amoeba records said so]. Sales are up and listening to vinyl you can’t skip songs. It’s an experience. You have to listen to it and flip it over. A lot of time people will find the single and hopefully they will gravitate towards the album and listen to it order, the way it’s supposed to be. It’s out of our control, you know?

Yeah I was doing some gardening this weekend and i played your album through a couple of time. It works really well for that.

Nice. “Music For Gardening” that will be the name of our next album.

What’s the weirdest story you’ve heard about the band?

Rumors spread in weird ways. A lot of people think that we were kind of busking to make money which isn’t true. It was just a way to meet people it wasn’t like we were professional buskers. A lot of people think that we were all street musicians that all met up and happen to be in a band.

Do people in the subway ever join in on your playing?

Yeah that’s happen a few time–a kid with a harmonica will jump in. The subway is pretty rife with crazy stories. We’ll play and then some crazy homeless guy just likes stands in front and start yelling nonsense. It’s like a free for for all. It’s definitely a much more eclectic audience then playing at, like, the Great American Music Hall.

Are you going to have to give that up at some point if you start headlining more shows?

You know, it’s not about giving it up. It’s a good place to try out new material. It’s more just [about the] time. We don’t have a lot of time, which is great. It’s good to be busy. The time off between tour is much-craved time off where we tend to go home and sleep and water our plants.

“Water our plants”? I guess the Freelance Whales really is good for gardening. [Pay no mind: this is only the lame joke send-off I should have made but didn't think off at the time]

DO play mind, however, to the Freelance Whales. They released this album essentially on their own and, if it’s a sign of things to come, they’ve reached the right balance of talent, they should be lauded for sticking to their guns with running themes (a la Decemberist’s The Hazards of Love or The Antlers’ Hospice) and should be nothing but bigger their next time around on your radar.

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Check out MuseZu for more of the same…

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Conceivably you could experience all three versions of the Freelance Whales today–the recording, the busking and the staging–in San Francisco.

Their record Weathervanes has been out since April and it’s available on their site, where you can also indulge by downloading their single free. Busking (in their case, “freelance” busking?) in New York subways has allowed them to bare down the sound to acoustics and try out new songs on charmed strangers. They’ll be doing a free live set at Amoeba Records on Haight Street at 7 p.m. Finally, they will stage an opening act (in support of The Shout Out Louds) in full plugged-in splendor with synths, harmoniums, drum kits and waterphones on the gilded stage of the Great American Music Hall at 8:30 p.m.

For Chuck Criss, one of the many multi-instrumentalists in the Freelance Whales, the GAMH show is another homecoming (just two months after their Bottom of the Hill gig). He was raised in San Francisco, attending St. Ignatius Prep in the Sunset before taking his banjo-playing chops to East Coast schools, Great Lakes territories and finally to Queens, New York where the wonder of (irony, O, irony) San Francisco-founded craigslist.com put him in contact with the Freelance Whales.

Here Chuck Criss tells the story himself and talks about long bus rides, cold toes, musical friends, vinyl comebacks and, when pushed, gardening.

Chuck Criss: When I moved to New York I was looking for like-minded people. I think I typed in, like, “banjo” on craigslist and then it kind of went from there.

Perry Shirley of MuseZu: It’s that simple, huh, to find band members?

Yeah! [laugh] Well, yeah, in retrospect, it’s that simple. It was a long process. There was a lot of hit-and-miss. I was actually the last member to join the Freelance Whales. They were kind of recycling and going through a lot of members that didn’t exactly fit right so it was pretty serendipitous. We hit it off really well. They were looking for a banjo player and multi-instrumentalist and Judah [Dadone] had put some demos up online that were just great. It was just like, “I have to be part of this. It’s going to be a really great record.” Even from hearing the demo I could tell.

There’s also a visual side. There’s these videos of you guys playing in this strange place on Staten Island…

It’s like an abandoned farm colony slash hospital. It was our photographer friend Kendall [Mills] who had taken some shots there. That was really early when we first got together. We wanted to get some video content so we rearranged some of the songs acoustically, went out there. Took the ferry over there and then like another bus. Got to the middle of the island where it is and just filmed us playing song acoustic and put it online and stuff. But I mean the coolest part of our experience was it kind of encouraged us to arrange more of the songs in an acoustic kind of format and really start going on the streets and more like busking on subways which is a great way of meeting people–which is tough to do in New York

So the setting directly influenced the sound of your band… that you kind of kept with

You’re talking about the performance?

Yeah.

Yeah it defintely did and it really encouraged a group vocal energy which kind of translated to our live set we have now.

You’re going to be going on tour with the Shout Out Louds. First of all how did that come about? Is it your label that paired you guys together?

Yeah, our booking agent put us together. It was a band that I’ve definitely listened to before and admired. We played a show with them at the Music Hall in Williamsburg and met those guys, played with them and kind of of hit it off. We wanted to stay busy ’cause our record came out pretty recently, like April 13th, so we were trying to find something where we could go and tour that record a little bit.

And along the way there you get to play a few shows, like the May 25th UC San Diego show at The Loft, where it’s just your band headlining.

Once we get to California after those two shows in L.A. we are going to break off and do our own thing just to do some more shows in California ’cause we have Sasquatch coming up on the West Coast at the end of May so we’re going to go up there and do the Sasquatch [Music Festival] thing which we’re real excited about that, to get some to play a really huge festival like that.

You recently did SXSW also.

Yeah, that was really great. It was really busy; we played 12 shows in four or five days so it was pretty chaotic. It will be nice to go to Sasquatch and just be able to play one show and actually get to go around and camp out and watch all the other great bands on that that show.

Soak it in a little bit yourselves…

Yeah Pavement’s playing the night that we are playing.

You’re telling me! I’m the biggest Pavement fan [complete loss of professionalism]

Yeah, me too. I was really excited for that too especially since they are only playing big festivals. They’re not really touring properly.

They did the Coachella show; they exorcised their demons, after getting mud slinged on them the last time. But talk about that what have you been listening to. What would you say are some of the band’s influences as far as other bands go?

We have a pretty diverse taste in music but I guess you could say as far influences that plugged their way in the record: Broken Social Scene, Stars, Sufjan Stevens, bands like that. One of the influences is this band, you know “Le Loup?”

Le Loup. Yeah, uh huh…

They’re great. Judah’s kind of good friends with them. That’s probably one of the biggest influences on the record, I’d say.

The viral videos of you guys playing in subways in New York remind me a lot of this girl, Lykke Li.

Oh really?! [genuinely excited]

You know what I’m talking about?

I’m not familiar with her viral videos. I know her music and it’s great.

They do a lot of these outdoor performances where it’s a lot of her with musicians playing just sparingly.

Thanks, man it’s fun to do stuff like that. Keeps the songs interesting. Well, thanks that’s a compliment to be compared to Lykke Li.

So between the bigger stages when you’re playing with the Shout Out Louds and the smaller stages you get to play later, what’s the ideal setting for someone to hear your music?

The band’s kind of got three different sounds going for it. The acoustic thing to do on the streets and stuff and then how we sound on the actual recording and then our live set. I think they’re all great experiences and good ways to try to listen to and understand and enjoy the band and what we are doing. All three of them. It’s just a matter of preference, I mean. What we are doing more than anything is playing live, full, proper shows with all the instrumentations and full kit and a more brash setup than it is on the recording. I’d say to come to the live show, on a proper stage I guess. It’s good clean fun.

And you bring all these instruments with you on tour?

Yeah. Us, the banjos, the harmonium, the guitars and the synthesizers, it all manages to fit in our 15-passenger van. It gets there. We definitely carry a lot of fragile things with us.

Yeah have you ever had any trouble with that? If something breaks down are you going to have to bring it to some old repair place in town?

Yeah, things break. We broke the banjo but we were in Nashville so there was a shop practically on every block. That was a very fortunate place to have to restock on gear If we broke a synth that would be a bummer just ’cause we have a lot of presets on there. If we ever broke a harmonium that would be really tough too because Judah ordered that I think from India. But I think we can find them around. We would make do. We know how to play a lot of instruments so could cover it up but it would be a bummer yeah .

You know, you mentioned bands like Broken Social Scene and Stars of course there’s a girl singer and a guy singer in those bands. and you have that in you theres a chase or love story going

It was kind of based off… Judah had doing some dream-logging for about a year just writing about his dreams and we kind of pieced together this love story between a ghost and someone living in a house and we just kind of ran with it. There’s definitely some romantic elements. There’s a lot of life and death stuff. The whole albums goes into different elements of energy transference whether it’s body heat or electricity or passing from life to death. It’s all in there. All the lyrics are based off a dream kind of scape.

And in the video for Generator 2nd Floor, you guys kind of recharge this body…

Yeah, that was a fun video to shoot. It was probably one of the coldest days of the year and no one could feel their toes. It was like in Pennsylvania somewhere at the video director’s. Near his house. His dad had some farmland. It was freezing. Luckily, we were somewhat warm but the girl in the video, Alicia, she’s in it pretty briefly but she’s in nightgown and had to lie down on the snow. It’s only like 20 seconds of video but she was probably there for about an hour. So she took one for the team but she did a good job.

So, does the director kind of come up with the idea and you go “Meh, well okay that fits” or do you get to say “Here’s what we were going for…”

In this case we had to do that really quick. We had gotten back from a short tour just around the Northeast and we had a couple days off before we went out on the road again with Cymbal Eat Guitar and Bear in Heaven. So in that case, I mean… Eventually we’d like to get to the point where we kind of mock-up our own ideas for the videos. In this case, it was like we really want to have a video to coincide with the album release and the director had kind of sketched out some ideas for what he wanted to do and we just kind of showed up, praying it would be good and it turns out well. And that’s how it is most of the time. Normally you can give a little direction but there’s the directors and the artists. But yeah that was a fun first video to do

Okay so arguably one of your more popular songs is the next to last song on your album. I feel like other bands would be tempted to put it right there at the top of the tracklist, just say, “Screw it, we’ll give the people what they want.” Did you feel firmly about the story-telling process?

The way the album is track is very intentional. That’s the order we want and that’s what we intended to have. It woudn’t have really made sense to come after one because Generator 1st Floor opens the album and it’s about revving up a house and waking up. The end of the album is a little darker. Generator 2nd Floor is very funeral like, about putting a body into the ground. So there’s a whole story in between.

I get frustrated by how many people just want to hear singles.

Yeah. I mean most people just listen to their iPod Nanos or whatever and maybe listen to one song. We all love listening to an album in its entirety. I think it’s coming back. A lot of people are getting into vinyl. [Even the founder of Amoeba records said so]. Sales are up and listening to vinyl you can’t skip songs. It’s an experience. You have to listen to it and flip it over. A lot of time people will find the single and hopefully they will gravitate towards the album and listen to it order, the way it’s supposed to be. It’s out of our control, you know?

Yeah I was doing some gardening this weekend and i played your album through a couple of time. It works really well for that.

Nice. “Music For Gardening” that will be the name of our next album.

What’s the weirdest story you’ve heard about the band?

Rumors spread in weird ways. A lot of people think that we were kind of busking to make money which isn’t true. It was just a way to meet people it wasn’t like we were professional buskers. A lot of people think that we were all street musicians that all met up and happen to be in a band.

Do people in the subway ever join in on your playing?

Yeah that’s happen a few time–a kid with a harmonica will jump in. The subway is pretty rife with crazy stories. We’ll play and then some crazy homeless guy just likes stands in front and start yelling nonsense. It’s like a free for for all. It’s definitely a much more eclectic audience then playing at, like, the Great American Music Hall.

Are you going to have to give that up at some point if you start headlining more shows?

You know, it’s not about giving it up. It’s a good place to try out new material. It’s more just [about the] time. We don’t have a lot of time, which is great. It’s good to be busy. The time off between tour is much-craved time off where we tend to go home and sleep and water our plants.

“Water our plants”? I guess the Freelance Whales really is good for gardening. [Pay no mind: this is only the lame joke send-off I should have made but didn't think off at the time]

DO play mind, however, to the Freelance Whales. They released this album essentially on their own and, if it’s a sign of things to come, they’ve reached the right balance of talent, they should be lauded for sticking to their guns with running themes (a la Decemberist’s The Hazards of Love or The Antlers’ Hospice) and should be nothing but bigger their next time around on your radar.

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