Austin is home to a number of underground music scenes, from country to indie rock. What types of shows did you check out as a young music fan?

Well, for me there was more of a rave scene. The rave culture was really big in Austin—this was like the mid to late ‘90s, early ’00. It got pretty huge. There were some underground parties going on with 10-20,000 people. Obviously Austin is kind of a relaxed town and people enjoy their blues and rock and Widespread Panic and all the other jambands that would come through. They embrace everything here so that’s what’s really cool about Austin—the same people you’d see at a rave, you’d see at a jamband concert or whatever. People just want to go out and hear music and experience it and have fun with it. So, that’s kind of a blessing about starting out in Austin because you have people who are very accepting of all kinds of different genres

Do you feel that Ghostland found its jamband audience through being on the festival circuit?

I think it is a combination of that and also the progression and the acceptance of the new sound. I guess seven or eight years ago—when we first started doing electronic music—there was still this mindset like, “Oh, that’s techno” or “I don’t do dance music, I do rock and roll.” Now, other bands have implemented electronics and synths and stuff into rock. So it’s a lot more acceptable to have a four-on-the-floor beat or an electronic sound in your music. And people just kind of stripped away that barrier like, “Oh, I don’t do that because it reminds me of disco or dance or something else.”

Now, it’s just kind of like people don’t care, they just want to have a good time with it. But the jamband thing, yeah, doing the festivals, tons of people go to festivals for different reasons, to see different acts, and you know, people that stumble upon our show may have gone there to see something completely different, and they enjoyed it. And that spreads around and all of a sudden you look out in the crowd and you have young kids, you have hippie kids, you have older people, hipsters, college kids, just all kinds of different people just coming together for experience and that’s great. I mean, we never wanted to just play for any certain crowd, we wanted everyone to enjoy our music so the more people that are into it the better.

Austin, in a lot of ways, is a precursor to some of the modern festivals where in the late ‘90s you have electronic rave music and indie showcases and jamband festivals. And now, whether you go to Lollapalooza, Coachella, Bonnaroo, or Nateva, you can find all these different types of audiences, which is kind of cool.

I think that’s really cool because it gives someone an opportunity. Maybe they’re going there to see Radiohead and they’re just killing time until Radiohead goes on or whomever their favorite band is, and they go and stumble upon some electronic act that they thought they would never like and end up having a better time at that then they did at the Radiohead performance. So, having all these bands at all these festivals and different acts playing, gives other people an opportunity to see what they’re really into.

At a certain point, electronic music was just considered dance music but over time it’s expanded to become a type of music people incorporate everything in, kind of like hip hop in a way—it can be psychedelic, or dark and experimental or it can just be fun to dance to.

Yeah, and that’s really good because I could never get that. I mean, I like all kinds of music, but some people have this perception, “Oh, it’s electronic music, it’s dropping ecstasy and going to raves,” and I don’t do that. And same thing, some people that were into electronic music, that’s all they were into and they wouldn’t hear anything else; they thought everything else was dumb. I think you gotta open your doors up to everything and once things start combining and you get new forms of music, it doesn’t have to be the same thing all the time.

You started your own label. What initially inspired you to start the label and what is your role in that label these days?

Sure, well even before I met Aaron, I wanted to have a little boutique label. I thought it would always be cool to have a small label that, maybe there wasn’t a huge roster or anything, but maybe had five or six acts of really cool stuff; it was either experimental or pop or whatever, just really interesting things that kind of stood out. Always in my mind I wanted to do that, and when we started Ghostland and started to make music and stuff, Aaron encouraged me. He was like, “Dude, I think this is the perfect opportunity to try it out,” and I was like, “All right, I’ll go for it.” And I started the label and then as time went on, started a distribution deal and just kind of kept going with the Trashy Moped thing and as it went on, Ghostland took up so much time, especially with the touring and the growth and everything, that instead of focusing a lot of time on signing new acts or trying to discover new acts, I was just on the road, or touring, or getting this taken care of or that. So, I hadn’t found new talent as much, but now I’m starting to, and I’m excited about that because I think it’s cool—the whole idea of the small boutique label still really appeals to me. It’s something that’s tasteful, kind of like what Warp was back in the day. Just like if it was released by Warp, maybe you didn’t love it or anything, maybe it wasn’t your thing, but you knew it was going to be interesting, you knew it was going to be different than probably most of the other stuff out there.

The current cover of Relix is on a couple different labels that are similar to your situation—a band or a musician who started their own label. It’s kind of cool how artists are able to take that into their own hands these days.

Totally. I think it’s a great thing because now when you are putting out a record and you have people that their main concern is how much money they can make off of you or what the bottom line is gonna be on profit, you’re gonna do a record, they’re gonna listen to it and other people are gonna listen to it, and they’re gonna give opinions on what the single is or what needs works or this needs that. When you’re just making music to make music or you’re making music for a label that just wants to put out cool music, that stuff really doesn’t come into play. You just want the raw form of what it is and what it really is at that moment, and then you want to put it out and capture it for what it was instead of trying to make it into something that will sell a lot.

Now that the album is done and you’re bringing it on tour, is it easy for you to translate that into a live setting, or are there still situations where you kind of have to reinterpret it for a live show?

No, there’s always room for change. I think the way our set is now, after incorporating it with some of our new songs, it flows really well, it’s cool. And you get to add things that aren’t on the record just like our own songs. There are improvisational parts and things that are changed that sound nothing like what’s on the record. So, it’s cool. I think that’s the cool part. You record it and it is what it was at that point in time, and then when someone hears it live, they’re like, “Aw, that’s my song,” but there’s this added two minutes of stuff on top of it. I think the fun part is you record it and take it out live and see if it works live and kind of change things around and that makes it interesting each time you play it.

Finally, I saw Ghostland recently played a Facebook party. I was wondering what that experience was like. Was it an actual live show or is it a webcast?

That actually came about like a week before that party. Someone called our booking agent and they were like, “Hey, we want to have a surprise band play at our Facebook show” or party or whatever it was. I think it was a company party or something like that, and we were just like, “Yeah, sure, that sounds cool.” I think it was a company party if I remember right. Seriously, it was like a week before. They were like, “Can you get here? Can you do it? Can you bring the lasers?” and we were like, “Yeah, sure” [laughs]. It was pretty fun.

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