Intervws

Average Girl

[YeahD correspondants (yeah, duh) Eres and Nunez sat down with Matt and Cary of Average Girl over a couple of Brooklyn Lagers]

YeahD: So how’d you guys meet?

Cary: We met at Fordham freshman year (2006). I think we were both a little scared to be in our new environment, and I’m pretty sure I noticed that Matt had a minute men t-shit on, and that might’ve been the start of it.

Matt: I saw Cary on Facebook before I came to school and I saw he had a t-shirt on with a tie and all that, and I just thought he was an asshole and didn’t want to talk to him. But then he won me over.

Cary: and then I was really nice

Matt: and then our other member, who we’ll just speak for because he’s in panama city…

Cary: Florida

YeahD: Oh…florida?

Matt: Yeah, I thought he was in Panama for a while

Cary: Poor man’s panama city.

Matt: but he and I are from the same place, Mountaintop Pennsylvania and he was going to school here.

YeahD: Where?

Matt: Mountaintop, it’s pretty small, it’s on top of a mountain

YeahD: No way, mountaintop’s on top of a mountain?

Matt: Yeah it’s one of those weird naming things. It’s kind of like a suburb of Wilksbury?

YeahD: So I was wondering, okay, you guys are average girl… are you the average girl?

Matt: Me?

YeahD: Yeah, sure

Matt: It’s up for debate. Burton says, “hi I’m Burton and these are the average girls”

Cary: I think there’s an average girl in everyone, it’s a collective.

YeahD: Are you saying that because everyone has an X chromosome?

Cary: I think even less biologically, I think there’s a pervasive feeling of average-girl-ness in everyone.

Matt: I don’t know about that. I hate our name.

[laughs]

Cary: Matt was fine with the name when we started, and now has slowly drifted away and would like to be renamed “the hired guns.”

Matt: No that’s my solo project

[laughs]

Matt: I can’t think of anything else, I mean, obviously we’re not going to change it.

YeahD: Well at least its not average boy, I mean, that’s just sexist. But yeah, what kinds of music have you been getting into these days?

Matt: Well, I feel like I don’t listen to a lot of music or a great variety of music. I feel like I kind of just listen to the same things over and over again and it slowly builds up. Um, Lucero is a big one. Towns Van Sant is probably like 33% of what I listen to. And, all kinds of stuff like that. And I don’t know, I mean my laptop isn’t even working now and that’s the only way I have to listen to music, so for the past couple of days I haven’t listened to anything. Um, Cary probably has a better answer.

Cary: Um, I would say I think I probably need to expand more too, but I listen to a lot of music from my area because its nice to get inspiration from people I grew up with. I think one of my favorite new jersey bands that’s kind of gaining some ground now is the spider bags which are an awesome alt-country band and we’ve been trying for many months to get a show with them together, but its kind of been hard, but hopefully we’ll play with them one day. We are playing with one of my favorite bands, Titus Andronicus so we’re excited about that.

YeahD: So it’s interesting you bring up alt-country…What genre would you define yourselves as? You guys clearly pull a lot of influence from Miley Cyrus

Cary: Nailed it

Matt: More of a tailor swift guy really

YeahD: No, but really, what you do guys define your sound as?

Matt: I feel like when I’m answering that question it depends who I’m talking to. Cause you know, you kind of gauge. Do I want to come off looking like an asshole say like, “alt-country with hints of”-like you’re describing a wine or something like that. So a lot of times I say like country punk, which I don’t think really nails it, but I feel like that’s a nice short way to do it.

Cary: It’s tought because I think we just recently settled into what seems to be our sound kind of…there was period of time where we sounded all over the place a little bit, just trying to get some sort of cohesion going. I think probably now I would describe us as country punk or cow punk…

Matt: No, not cow punk.

Cary: I like that

Matt: we have yet to reach that.

Cary: We’re almost there…

Matt: I think that to be cow punk we need to be funnier, not that all cow punk needs to be funny, but I feel like there’s an element of humor that we haven’t quite hit yet. And also I think there’s not a whole lot of cow punk around right now…

YeahD: Which really just leaves a wide open door for average girl. I don’t think that anybody in new york has actually ever heard of cow punk… or at least in, actually, I just, have no clue

Matt: No, just go with it.

[laughs]

YeahD: Just roll with it!

Matt: No one knows

YeahD: Not a soul.

…What are some of your contemporaries to help others get a feel for your sound?

Cary: I think we want to sound, I mean want to aspire to the same level of greatness as lucero… There have been people that have said…deer ticks, deer tick?

YeahD: There’s a lot of deer bands aren’t there?

Matt: Yeah a lot of deer bands, and now there’s also a lot of girl bands. Girls…

Cary: Yeah, Girls really fucked us.

[laughs]

Matt: I saw that one with the video…that song sounds pretty good

YeahD: Yeah, the “lust for life” video?

Cary: I’m a fan

Matt: Although I didn’t see the one with the porn in it

Cary: I’ve seen the porn one… every night I watch it

YeahD: What has been your favorite venue or best crowd?

Matt: Like New York?

YeahD: Well actually anywhere, like what’s been your most receptive audience?

Cary: Well I think we all had a great time in Nashville.

YeahD: Nashville?

Cary: Yeah, we did a little tour, like a 10, 12 date tour…it was interesting

Matt: It was the badger extermination tour, which was just some dumb inside joke about us hating badgers. Yeah, It was something like 10 or some dates and we definitely drove too far in between them

Cary: 8 hour drives in between each show

Matt: yeah, and Nashville was the kinda like the furthest point, but it ended up being one of the best shows and then… I don’t think any of the others were really that good.

Cary: you know what was good is Boston… PA’s lounge, that was pretty good. which we didn’t expect, we didn’t think the boston crowds would…but we were wrong

Matt: and in Baltimore, this place called charm city art space, which was small, and pretty good. But our two shows in North Carolina…

Cary: were hilarious….

Matt: Yeah… you’re asking the right questions. Well, yeah, but the first one in North Carolina, I can’t remember which order they were in. but one was in Ashville, NC, and it was like a beautiful town in a small city in the middle of the mts and this artsy community and they were setting up for this music festival and we were like hanging out and looking at all this cool stuff  and then we like went to the place and it was this little like …

Cary: Biker Bar

Matt: Biker Bar basically

Cary: Really like a no bullshit biker bar. There were bikers, like Real bikers went there

Matt: Well there was like one bike outside, but the people inside I’m sure had ridden bikes in their life. The people inside were really nice, there weren’t that many of them. They didn’t have a sound system or anything

Cary: So we just played with electric instruments and just yelled and no PA system

YeahD: And they didn’t kick your ass?

Matt: No!

Cary: They were like the sweetest people in the world

Matt: Yeah, like you wouldn’t expect it cause like when we first walked in, we had like set up flyers and they were hanging around the bar and when we pulled up all the heads turned this one dude who like wasn’t wearing any shoes, and who did not look like someone you’d expect to be very nice, but he was,  just goes, [southern accent put on] “you boys average girl? Where’s the girl?”

Cary: At that point Burt and I were terrified. When we found out there was no PA system we just didn’t want to be there at first. And Matt was just in 7^th heaven.  It was exactly what Matt had dreamed of.

Matt: See I think he exaggerated the kind of place it was. It was mostly like older people…

YeahD: What are you guys working on now? Are you just spending most of your time doing shows? Writing?

Cary: We have stuff in the works but just haven’t progressed to the place where we’d like to be.  We’ve been shopping around for studios to do possibly a 7 inch so hopefully that will happen fairly soon and there was a talk of a possible tour again this summer.

YeahD: You guys are definitely going to make NC a spot you have to hit this time right?

Matt: Yeah, we are going to do it right this time

Cary: Yea it couldn’t be worse so

Matt: I think we hit two music festivals on both days that were going on so-

Cary: One was gigantic too.

YeahD: so what are you guys thinking for the summer?

Cary: Less driving between shows. More shows less driving.

Matt: Maybe a private plane.

YeahD: A private plane is really the easiest way to fly.

Matt: I mean the airlines aren’t doing too well, they’re looking to just give them away.

YeahD: You should definitely just steal one. I mean, being from Pennsylvania you definitely have a pilot’s license.

Matt: Oh yeah…Rogue Squadron

YeahD: Star Wars Reference…  But yeah, so you guys have been all over, how do you feel about the Brooklyn scene? The hipster posers, and the good music too

Cary: I think in general it’s great. Any location that has a collective of people that are working together in some capacity creatively is not going to be a bad thing. I think there’s a lot of good music coming out of there. And yeah, we can’t complain. We’ve had really good experiences playing around that area, and the clubs around there have been better and more conducive to what our goals are than the manhattan scene.

Matt: But at the same time, I have to say that a group of people living together and working collectively doesn’t necessarily have to be a good thing.

[laughs]

YeahD: The Nazis did the same thing.

Cary: I wouldn’t say that’s quite creative…

YeahD: that’s arguable.

Matt: But yeah I feel like I’m kind of conflicted about it because definitely some of the better shows we’ve had have been there and there is kind of that thing… but then there’s the whole gentrification thing….

Cary: There’s pros and cons…

Matt: Probably more cons than pros, but hopefully we benefit from the pros.

Cary: But one third of our band lives there.

YeahD: Speaking of that third member, is there anything you’d like to say about him while he’s not here?

Cary: [sigh] oh my god, so many things…well, in the words of an average girl attendee, I think he’s been described as the guy who holds the shows together through his crazy drunken banter.

Matt: he often just says things that are really offensive or things to like the audience or friends in the audience or things like that to create tension…or like to other bands that were playing before us or after us, he’ll like heckle other bands. So it’ll be great or funny,, get some tension, or just offend somebody.

YeahD: So essentially he’s the coolest one in Average Girl to hang out with…  So one last thing that I’d like to personally ask… there’s one track, “Ramon,” it obviously proves that average girl is a friend to the Latin American community. Are you guys aiming for a Latin Grammy?

Cary: [laughs] That would be great.

 

 

 

 

yeahDef presents: Toro Y Moi

 

{yeahD correspondents Erez and Dufflebagboy have a sit down and cup of tea with Chaz from Toro y Moi}

Cheers to the first installment of YeahDef, a new outlet for artist interviews and casual video adventures through the nyc music scene. Here we have footage from Toro Y moi’s set at Brooklyn Bowl from December 2009 (the video has literally been uploading to vimeo since the day after the show). Chaz Bundick’s chillwave glo-gaze shoe-house experiment is, in the humble opinion of YeahD, one of the most original and largely overlooked of this new “genre.” Check out some live clips from his set and listen to Chaz talk about South Carolina, his friendship with Ernest Greene of Washed Out , and all-yall fuggin hipsters!

If you missed DP’s original post on toro y moi, check it out here. Also, be on the look out for Chaz’s full-length “Causers of This,” which officially debuts 2 Feb.