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Conversing with Giants

Mar 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Geary Yelton

They Might Be Giants talks about their personal studios, production techniques, and tag-team songwriting.

BONUS MATERIAL
Read "Conversing with Giants: The Extended Interview"
Gear talk with They Might Be Giants

IN THE STUDIO, WHO'S IN CHARGE OF THE INSTRUMENTATION AND ARRANGING?

JF: I think we both kind of lead the songs that we write. But in a weird way, our skill sets overlap tremendously. Our collaboration, aesthetically, is extremely active and very real. We both challenge each other is ways that are incredibly profound and hard to even quantify.

JL: We're still scared of each other.

JF: When we go into the studio and there's chart arranging, it falls to John. If there's horns or strings coming in — especially when we're doing outside work, work-for-hire stuff for TV or movies or whatever — a lot of times, I'm the de facto producer. I think we both have the x-y axis of our skill sets. I think we've learned where our strengths lie.

JL: Yeah, that's right.

JF: And it's not like we don't defer to the other one in a million different ways all the time, and it's not like it isn't a collaboration. We recognize that the other one can bring something really powerful to the thing.

WHAT CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT YOUR NEW DISNEY ALBUM, HERE COME THE 123S?

JF: We made it at the same time as we made The Else. We were working on these two projects. In some ways, the fact that we were making a children's record while we were making an adult rock record probably made The Else acerbic [and] masculine-like.

JL: I was saying to John while we were making it, “Boy, this is like the least cuddly record that we've ever made.”

JF: If something suddenly seemed adorable, we would put it on the children's record right away. But there's a track on the album that we did with the Dust Brothers, which is a very cool piece of music called “Seven.” It really has their stamp on it, too. I think if you ask anybody who's written kid stuff, it's so much fun for the writer. It's such a blank check. You really have license to do almost anything you've ever wanted to do.

JL: This is one thing that I feel like we're very off the hook with (off the hook in the old-fashioned sense), which is that the Disney stuff is not going to be judged in the context of rock music. People aren't going to listen to it and go, “Well, it pales before Exile on Main Street.” It's actually going to be judged by young people who don't have any context, for the most part, very little context, or a very strange context.

THERE'S YOUR FUTURE AUDIENCE.

JF: Hopefully.

JL: So a lot of the stuff we're doing, they're hearing an entire genre for the first time in this one particular song. This will be the very first ska-like music that this child will ever hear. They don't really care that it doesn't sound authentic. There's the huge freedom that you have writing for kids, because you're just trying to make it interesting or entertaining or fun or wake them up in some way. Those are the primary concerns for the adult stuff, but often we feel like we are kind of in the spotlight in a way when we're doing adult material.

JF: Where we land in the culture is basically just a source of confusion for us. We don't feel like we're part of the pop world, but that's the only place that our work makes sense. When we're writing songs, we're trying to write songs that will be worthy of repeated listening, just like any other songwriter.

JL: I think we're trying to be astronauts.

I THINK THAT IS THE PUBLIC PERCEPTION — YOU BRIDGE POP AND AVANT-GARDE, AND YOU'RE SOMEHOW OUTSIDE OF IT ALL.

JF: I hope that's true. I feel like there are different levels that you can take that posture as meaning.

HAVE YOUR CAREERS TURNED OUT THE WAY YOU HAD IMAGINED?

JL: We didn't imagine what it was going to be like. When John and I started doing this thing together, we very consciously thought, “We're not going to figure out what people want; we're no good at that. We're going to do the thing that we like instead, and if we're successful at it, then that'll be good. But if we're unsuccessful, at least we'll be something that we like rather than something we failed to anticipate that other people won't like.”

JUDGING BY THE ENTHUSIASM OF YOUR AUDIENCE, YOU'VE MANAGED TO DO WHAT YOU WANTED AND STILL CONNECT.

JF: From the minute we started performing, our act — in air quotes — completely worked. The strange thing about audiences is, it seems like audiences love bad music. What's been our luck is that we've always gone over in the most immediate sense. There have been periods when we were the critics' darlings; there have been periods where we've gotten total indifference from the general music culture. But when we perform, it always just seems like it's going down in a glorious way.

IS THAT WHAT MAKES YOU KEEP TOURING?

JF: It certainly helps. People clapping at the end of your songs is very exciting. It's hard to get used to that. It's a good thing, and it's very validating. It definitely makes you feel like you're doing something worthwhile.

DO YOU HAVE ADVICE THAT YOU COULD GIVE TO SOMEONE WHO'S TRYING TO SUCCEED IN MUSIC?

JL: Gear! It's all about gear [see the online bonus material at www.emusician.com].

JF: [Laughs.] Get more expensive gear! And don't be afraid of presets.

I WASN'T EXPECTING THAT.

JL: I was being a little facetious.

JF: I wasn't being facetious.

JL: The presets thing — that's totally right.

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Geary Yelton has been a full-time EM associate editor since 2000 and has written for the magazine since 1985.

Additional Resources

TMBG facts

TMBG Podcast subscriptions

TMBG's Free MP3 Club

Video for the TMBG song “The Mesopotamians”

Videos of Venue Songs, introduced by John Hodgman

BONUS MATERIAL
Read "Conversing with Giants: The Extended Interview"
Gear talk with They Might Be Giants