TAS in Session: Free Energy

Take a band with a love for old Cheap Trick and Tom Petty vinyl, add in their own raucous, exuberant energy and you've got Free Energy. The Philadelphia-by-way-of-Minnesota quintet released their debut album Stuck on Nothing earlier this year. The man who produced the record? None other than LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy, who also happens to be one of the co-owners of Free Energy's label, DFA Records.

The band, which includes former Hockey Night members Scott Wells and Paul Sprangers plus Scott's brother Evan Wells, Geoff Bucknam and Nick Shuminsky, played Beijing, China over the weekend and returns to North America for another lengthy tour with Foxy Shazam beginning October 12 in Portland, Maine. They'll make their way to New York on Thanksgiving eve, November 24 at Bowery Ballroom and post-turkey day on November 26 at Music Hall of Williamsburg.

Not long ago Free Energy dropped by The Alternate Side and not only revealed their admiration for sheep and old school record shops, but played a few choice songs off of the new album, including recent MTV2 addition "Bang Pop."

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPHV5pW_I6w]

Alisa Ali: Is “Free Energy” your anthem? Was that the first song you came up with for the record?

Scott Wells: It was the first song recorded for the record, it wasn’t the first written.

Alisa: Is it easy to work with each other when writing songs?

Paul Sprangers: We write songs apart and together. Scott, go ahead. We’ll collaborate on this answer.

Scott: Paul’s doing a great job. He’s gonna take it.

Alisa: How did you meet?

Paul: The easy part is that Scott and Evan grew up with each other as brothers. Same mom, same dad.

Scott: We grew up with Paul also and then later, we picked up [Geoff and Nick].

Alisa: Geoff, What were you doing in Minnesota?

Geoff Bucknam: Milking sheep and herding them Making cheese.

Alisa: Really?

Geoff: Do I look like I’m joking?

Paul: But didn’t you go to Minnesota to be with your girlfriend first?

Geoff: Correct. And the sheep came after.

Alisa: You don’t do that anymore?

Geoff: I talked to the guys about bringing on some livestock, but our van isn’t quite ready. Maybe if we get a trailer at some point we can do some fresh cheese products for the band.

Scott: Sheep don’t last very long on the road, though.

Geoff: It’s a tough life. They start smoking, they start drinking.

Alisa: This record Stuck on Nothing is your full-length debut but you had an EP out?

Evan Wells: We had a 45. The EP was pretty much just songs from the record before it was ready. But we had a 45, “Free Energy” and a B-side that isn’t on the record, “Something in Common.”

Alisa: This next song is “Dream City” - can you tell me something about it?

Paul: If you picture yourself in a 57 Chevy with slicked-back hair, 50s greaser style, and you’re driving. Then you suddenly realize that it’s a dream and that the city you’re in is a dream. And then you wake up and it’s a memory of a dream you had before.

Scott: Wait, are you talking about “Dream City” or the plot to Inception?

Paul: It’s actually the plot to Inception. What was the question?

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTitN_RiyKM]

Alisa: Your album has been getting a lot of comparisons to Thin Lizzy and T. Rex and classic 70s rock. Is that something you have an affinity for?

Paul: Yeah, absolutely. We kind of grew into that and found it through digging. Certainly in St. Paul, [Landfill Books and Music] where you could buy a classic rock record for a dollar was part of a serendipitous situation. You could go through the stuff you heard about on the radio.

Scott: I got a job painting for a summer so we used to listen to classic rock radio all day. Any of those songs you heard you could get for 50 cents or a buck. Including stuff like Thin Lizzy or T. Rex which is expensive now. Back then, it was cheap.

Alisa: You spent a lot of time at the record store?

Scott: As much as possible. We grew up in a small town [Red Wing] so on weekends we’d go to the record stores. We were in the Twin Cities so there were really good record stores.

Alisa: Do you think it was easier to discover new music by going into record stores? Picking up a dollar cassette or record you’d heard.

Paul: I never found new music that way.

Alisa: But old music.

Paul: Yeah, where you could take chances about a band.

Scott: I like having everything in front of you. I don’t do well with the infinite possibllities of the internet. You’re limited, in a record store, with your choices with what’s there. So you’ll discover something.

Alisa: I’ve heard your music described as the soundtrack to a montage of the last day of school. I enjoy that analogy.

Nick Shuminsky: A studying montage from “Teen Wolf II.”

Alisa: James Murphy plays a big part in this record, doesn’t he?

Scott: He produced it. His partner [Jonathan Galkin] who runs the [DFA Records], likes us and is the one who signed us. I think we were a slow burn in James’ brain. For whatever reason, that wasn’t the idea from the get go. We thought we were going to work [with someone else] but it seemed the right thing to do.

Alisa: What was it like working with him?

Scott: It was slow. It took forever. We were probably in the studio for four months, on and off. He’s busy so we’d work a lot and then we wouldn’t. He just wanted us to stick to our demos and make the stuff that was important sound right which was a big step for us. Making things sound good isn’t our strong suit. We can come up with good ideas, but we don’t know how to record very well.  

Alisa: Does the music have to be fun? Do you have a theory of how you want your sound to be.

Scott: Fun is part of it. We want to have enough songs to play live that it’s exciting. Big hooks.

Evan: Every song is supposed to be like the best song ever. That’s the idea. To keep trying. I think montage is a good way of describing how we approach our music. We try to take the best moments and put them together. That’s usually pretty exciting to watch or listen to. To cut the fat, just put in the good stuff.

Alisa: What about doing the complete opposite of that one day? Put together all of the worst times that you have and personify them through music. What would that sound like for you?

Evan: The Decemberists?

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0a53n54IJ8]