ALRIGHT! An Interview With Andy Stack Of Wye Oak

One album that should be on everyone’s radar for the summer is local band Wye Oak’s The Knot out via Merge on July 21st.  I had the pleasure of chatting with Andy Stack of  Wye Oak just last week.  Andy and Jenn (Wasner) were in Brooklyn heading over to do a recording/practice session with another artist, Flanagan Smith, for his upcoming album.  Talk about timing, right before I made the phone call I found out that Michael Jackson had just passed.  Unfortunately I was the first one to break the news to Andy and Jen and received the appropriate response in, “WHAT?!!!  HOLY SHIT!!”.  We spoke about how much of an influence and icon he was (probably one of the most recognizable faces/brands in the world).  Andy was clearly at a loss for words (as was I) and simply stated. “What can I say.  He’s a legend.  A complete nut job, but a legend.”  Agreed.  After sharing our thoughts on that legend I moved the questions towards their band Wye Oak and their history.

PASTA:  You both being from the Baltimore region, can you tell me a little bit about growing up in the area?

ANDY:  We both grew up in the suburbs outside of Baltimore.  Jenn grew up in Owings Mills and I grew up in Catonsville.  We met in high school and eventually formed a band with a few other friends.  Eventually the band was paired down to the two of us.  It stuck that way because we never really found others that fit into the band.

PASTA:  I understand you attended Berkelee School of Music?

ANDY:  For a short period of time.  Berkelee was not the highlight of my life.  I didn’t really take to what was going on there at all.  I did end up taking a lot of good things from the time there in that as soon as I left there I started to make really strong musical connections here.

PASTA:  And what about Jenn?

ANDY:  Jenn has had a little formal training but for the most part it’s self taught.  Jenn has natural talent.

PASTA: I’ve always been enamored by the tight artist community in Baltimore and how there are blurred lines between visual art, performance, and music.  How has it been for you participating or just being in the city of Baltimore?

ANDY:  Well since we both grew up in the county/suburbs we had the typical county experience and vision of the city.  You know, there’s about a half square mile of safe zone and outside of that everything is scary.
Now it’s been five or six years since we’ve living in Baltimore City proper and we love it.  Also we travel so much we’ve been able to see so many amazing cities all over the country.  This has also shown us that Baltimore is completely unique.  We really have so much pride for this place.
As for the visual art side of it – we have tons of friends that are visual artists and a few close friends who are deep into that community.  They are always inspiring us even in ways that don’t show up consciously.
Overall the music scene and art scene in Baltimore is adventuresome.  While we love and admire it, we don’t claim to be that way.  We just make the music the we make.  Also we have a lot of friends here in the music scene of Baltimore who just play straight up country music.  The bottom line of Baltimore and it’s arts is that it’s completely genuine.

PASTA:  You spoke of a strong pride for the city of Baltimore, Maryland.  Did this factor in the choosing the name of Wye Oak which is the state tree?

ANDY:  I’m not really sure.  Possibly from somewhere in there.

PASTA:  Okay onto the music…describe your song writing process.

ANDY:  Actually the initial song writing process is fairly private, but for the most part the lyrics and general form of each song is flushed out when we begin to work on it.  Arranging is the more collaborative process.  Finding out what works.  The live version [of each song] is different from the recorded version.  When we record it’s all about adding on.  We just record and record and eventually figure out when the stopping part is.  After that we figure out how to perform it live and have it make sense.  The actual meat of each song though are pretty private things that we don’t like to reveal.
As we’ve been growing and become more comfortable as a live band, it’s really affected how we’ve made music.  It’s set the tone for the new album.

PASTA:  That takes me to my next question.  How was the recording process different from If Children to The Knot?

ANDY: If Children was composed of fun hobby songs that each of us had lying around for years.  We just decided to record them.  For that reason If Children ended up being composed of a lot of disparate styles – you know, a country waltz followed by shoegaze.
With The Knot songs were written in  a concise time frame and tested on the road.
A lot of the songs were written within a year or so.  So thematically The Knot has a little more cohesion to it.   Both albums were recorded entirely by us and as for The Knot I took the task of recording and mixing the whole album from start to finish.

PASTA:  You mixed and recorded it all by yourself?

ANDY:  Yeah.  This was the biggest project I’ve ever taken on.  I did have a bit of help from some friends.  I had them come in and take a listen and give their honest opinions.  But on the whole I took on the entire project.

PASTA: On If Children there, like you said earlier, was a broad range of sounds and quite a few tracks featuring your vocals Andy.  I noticed that The Knot has Jenn as the main vocalist.  Is there any reason for the change?

ANDY:  That’s true I did have more songs on If Children.  Well Jenn is a more prolific writer than I am so she has a bit more output.  I am still writing though and the first song on The Knot “”Milk and Honey” is one of my pieces.  Another part of it is that the live set up keeps me so occupied it’s a serious challenge to perform some of the songs I’ve written.

PASTA:  The slide guitar is a prominent addition to many of the tracks on The Knot and it works SO well.  How did this come about?

ANDY:  Ah yes.  The pedal steel guitar!  Local musician Dave Hadley plays the pedal steel guitar for us on this album.  He plays with another great local singer songwriter Caleb Stine.  Dave is one of those musical minds that without fail when people hear him perform their jaw is left on the floor.  We knew early on we wanted to use him on the album.  He came to the studio for four hours, never having heard any of the songs, and immediately had a great feel for what we were looking for.  He’s so good at being subtle and in the background then exploding into a solo when it’s the perfect time to.  We wish we could re-create it live somehow.

PASTA:  A song that clearly stands out on The Knot is “Tattoo” – probably one of the largest feeling song I’ve ever heard by you with the booming choir sound to it.  Can you tell us about how this song came to be?

ANDY:  TATTOO!  Actually I feel that song carries a lot of similarities to the last record in that the vocals really blend with the rest of the song and don’t stand in front.
Jenn had some sort of unfinished fragments [of songs] lying around that we formed together into the song.  It’s actually one of the more collaborative songs we’ve ever had.  In this case we put it together on the first day we started recording.  At the time it was not a song we expected to be on the record.
But it definitely stands apart with the vocals.  We generally tried to put the vocals out front more on this records when in the past we were used to more varied vocals that blended together.

PASTA: Your CD Release show is coming up at the Ottobar (July 21st).  How are you feeling about finally getting this album out into the open?

ANDY:  It feels SO FANTASTIC!  We’ve been living with one record to our name for a long time.  If Children had longer half-life than any record should have.  We understood the circumstances and were happy to get it re-released to a broader audience when we signed to Merge.  But we are really excited to not be this one trick pony anymore.  Hopefully that keeps going.  Having recorded and mixing it myself, I am done with it and ready for the live show.  I don’t want to ever listen to it again.

PASTA:  I can understand that with the amount of times you’ve probably had to listen to it especially during the mixing process.  It could probably be a little monotonous.

ANDY:  Yeah.  Looking back I’m not sure whether I’m glad I took it on all of it myself for that reason.

PASTA:  Well I’m glad you did because the outcome is wonderful and probably one of the best albums I’ve heard this year.  Speaking of new music what are you listening to these days?

ANDY:  Dirty Projectors’ Rise Above was one of the biggest joys of listening in a long time so we’ve been listening to the newest Dirty Projectors (Bitte Orca) over and over and over.  We are also loyal Bill Callahan (Smog) fans and have been enjoying to his new album, Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle.  Also we’ve been loving our friend Dan aka Height’s album, Baltimore Highlands.

PASTA:  Ooh!  I’m loving that album so much.  You two made some sort of guess appearance on it right?

ANDY:  [laughs]  You’re right, maybe for about 3 seconds.  Mickey Free (part of Height With Friends) is a really good friend of ours and one day we were dropping some stuff off and Dan grabbed us and said, “Sing on my record”.  So we sang about two bars of one song.  Dan is another amazing dude in this town.

PASTA:  How about movies?  Seen any good ones?

ANDY:  Up in 3D was AWESOME.  Sooo good.  And we’re looking forward to the new Harry Potter.  Jenn saw Star Trek and loved it.

PASTA: On to the next medium…how about books?  What are ya reading?

ANDY:  Hmmm…lets see… A Fraction Of The Whole by Australian author Steve Toltz.  It was a runner up for the Booker Prize.  Bizarrely fantastical magical realism kind of stuff.

PASTA:  And just for fun here’s a stunner of a question!  If you were an animal what would you be and why?

ANDY: Well….hmmm…Three-Toed Sloth.  I feel as though that kind of animal speaks for itself.

Thanks for your time Andy!  Can’t wait for the Ottobar on July 21st!