With this column, we seek to give a behind-the-scenes look of a band we like. We banter with them for awhile, hand them a digital camera, and let them fly free. Each installment includes a free mp3 download, a love of conversational tangents, and, hopefully, a view of the musicians that you wouldn’t get just from their discography.
The War on Drugs
Conversation/ transcription by Caitlin Caven
Photos provided by Adam Granduciel
Who they are: Adam Granduciel is the War on Drugs, and he gets friends to back him. (Kurt Vile, another Philadelphia-based musician, is his most frequent collaborator; he is co-credited for a few tracks on Wagonwheel Blues.) The War on Drugs' sound is crunchy, earthy old-style rock with a punch.
Album:Wagonwheel Blues, available now on Secretly Canadian.
Environmental details: This interview took place at an outside table at a coffee shop in Philadelphia on a summer afternoon. Granduciel lamented the closing of his favorite coffee place, which had been next door.
Discussing the surroundings: Granduciel: [This place] is cool. I used to go to Bucks, and I didn’t pay for coffee or anything—sandwiches—for like four years. It got to the point where I knew everybody there—I’d walk in, walk behind the counter, make a drink, and they’d just be like, [lowers voice] “hey.” After awhile, it was like I worked there. Just like walk in, make an iced coffee with a shot of espresso in it, and get like a sandwich and walk out. And now they closed, and I have to, like—it’s amazing how much money I spend. I have a four-year iced coffee habit built on never paying for anything.
Philadelphia is frequently mentioned in the same breath as The War on Drugs, though Granduciel actually grew up in a suburb of Boston. How he ended up in Philadelphia: Granduciel: I was living in Oakland, CA. My friend Julian came to visit—he’s from the northern panhandle of Texas. Came to visit, he stayed for like 4 or 5 months. And one day we were both kind of bored, and were like, “Let’s move. Let’s get on a train.” So we found a deal on a train: like 1-way for 100 bucks per person on the Amtrak from Oakland to—it was like Oakland to Chicago, then Chicago to Philly. And we knew somebody in Philly, so we, pretty much, two weeks later, like got on a train. I pretty much left most of my shit there. Most of my records and stuff. Hopped on the train and ended up in Philadelphia.
Soundcheck Magazine: How long ago?
AG: That was… 2003.
SM: So you were just bored and thought, “Sure, why not?”
AG: Yeah, we were just kinda like, “what’re we doing?” …I don’t think we had any desire to stay [in Oakland] for a long time. So we were like, “we know that dude in Philly—let’s go to Philly.” …So we started meeting people here, kind of haphazardly. And it ended up being a good place to stay.
Anatomy of a Song: "Taking the Farm": AG: My roommate—my deadbeat roommate--had found an organ on the street. Er, I dunno…where he found it. It was like a Wurlitzer Funmaker, with built-in beats on it. It’s a great organ! And I came home and it was sitting in my living room, so I turned it on, and I turned on one of the beats. And it’s the beat in the song. And I just, kind of…pretty much wrote it right there. Real quick. Er, you know, started it—I probably played it for a week or two. And that’s one of the first ones we recorded…that was actually the first song we ever recorded in, like, a real studio. …We just kind of went for it. Most of it’s like first-take, like the guitars.
SM: That's not the first song you've said was kind of a happy accident. Is that a common theme?
AG: Pretty much all [of the songs]…I guess they were all un-, un-…--they came out of nowhere. I mean, “Arms Like Boulders” was a really old song that I had written in 2001, 2002…and I had forgotten about it. …And "Taking the Farm". All the other stuff was pretty loose. Some of the other stuff was recorded on my digital 8 track at home. …And "Needle in Your Eye", which is a sick song…that one took a long time to get where it was--the finished version really only took like 10 hours, but the idea getting there was a long process. Yeah, “Show Me the Coast”—that one just came out of a one-time gig. And it’s like 10-and-a-half minutes long.
…All the songs came about in a real innocent way—they weren’t really “for” anything. You know? We weren’t recording them for an album, we were just recording them. …I was like, working on these songs with my friends, hoping to get something out of them, you know.
…[The songs] all work together, in a way, too. Probably because they weren’t really done with any sort of album in mind. That’s why they all sound real different. They were recorded in so many different places. Like it was started at one studio, then dumped to a computer and done in my friend’s basement, and then re-dumped to a different computer in a different studio, then dumped back to a tape machine—so they sound, like, all over the place.
Stream "Taking the Farm":
In early August, War on Drugs is heading to Europe for two weeks. The conversation turned to tacky American tourists.
SM: …And, like, a fanny pack…
AG: Yeah, the visor…and a new t-shirt for every little town—
SM: Yeah, and the tennis shoes with the socks pulled way up—
AG: That’s what I’m going to do when we play over there.
SM: That would be awesome—if you really committed to it…
AG: Yeah, I mean, Bob Dylan would hang a huge American flag behind him on his tour of ’66, so maybe I’ll take it a step further and dress like the ultimate American tourist. Visor. Striped socks—yeah, you’re right, tube socks pulled way up. White Nikes. Some vintage Jordans. That’d be sweet. Vintage Celtics converse.
SM: And you should have a backpack on the entire time, pulled up way too high—where the straps are tightened as far as they’ll go.
AG: Maybe you should draw a picture of what I should do, and I’ll just dress like that. I’ll send you photos of every European city. …We’ll see how many records we sell after that. That’d be the true test.
Coming off of a tangent about Granduciel's high school band names:
AG: …And then we became War on Drugs like twelve years later. It’s either that, or the Rigatoni Danzas. That’s one I’ve always had—
SM: [laughs] "The Rigatoni Danzas"!
AG: Everyone hates that, but I’ll put out a solo record one day with that as a name.
SM: It’s so cheesy that—I don’t know what I’d expect it to sound like—
AG: …I feel like [it’d be great if you were] the Rigatoni Danzas, and the songs were like impeccable. Like everything was so amazing. You say the name is “cheesy.” You could make a baked ziti joke: “of course you put cheese on your based rigatoni.” Then they’d have to go crawl in a hole.
