Can you give me a rundown of each guy in the band, and what they bring to the band as musicians?
Over the years we’ve gone through lineup changes. We have had guys who have wanted to settle down and start a family. We’ve had a bunch of guys come and go, but right now, we have five core members and a rotating cast of second horn and percussion players.
Matt Wright is our keyboard player. He joined the band in 2010, and he’s stepped up and became one of our primary songwriters. He wrote a lot of the songs on the new record. He was an old friend of ours from Iowa, playing keyboard in a band called Public Property. That band broke up and our keyboard player had left, so we talked him into moving out here.
Adam Grosso plays the bass guitar. He’s been a musician his whole life and has a Master’s Degree in melodic percussion. At one point, Adam was our bass player for a longtime and because of a lineup change, he moved to the drum set, and learned all the songs that way. Then we had another lineup change and he moved back to bass guitar and we brought in a new drummer.
Our drummer is Craig Babineau. We met him in Fort Collins at a Monday night funk jam.
Our primary horn player is Austin Zalatel. He’s one of the primary songwriters, sings lead vocals and plays tenor sax.
What kind of guitar do you play?
I play a 2003 Gibson 335, I really dig that sound because it’s pretty diverse instrument. You can get a lot of different sounds out of it. I’ve experimented a lot with different pickups, pedals and amps over the years – but the one constant has been that guitar. I think I’ve owned it since 2005. I even dropped it at the Miramar Theatre in Milwaukee and broke the neck off of it. And my buddy’s grandpa re-glued the neck, and then I had the guitar fixed and went back on the road with it. It’s been my baby for a longtime. I carry a vintage 1970s telecaster as a backup. Sometimes it’s fun to pull that out and go with a different sound but 95 percent of the time, I’m using the Gibson.
How did the idea of Camp Euforia come about?
It started out being called Euforquestra’s Fan Appreciation Party. It started out as something to do for Iowa City fans and family. A big party out on a farm, everybody camp out, get a few bands and made everything free. We saved up for a while and I think our first year we bought 12 kegs of beer, big grills and we had friends volunteer to man the grills and make burgers all day. We had five bands on a Saturday afternoon into the evening and we did it again a year later. By the third year, we were like, “Maybe, we should try to turn this into a more legitimate event, instead of just a party on a farm.” So we decided to get the permits, make it a real event, came up with a title and it’s grown into a full blown festival with three stages, 22 bands, over two days. This year, we have* Keller Williams, The Motet, Kyle Hollingsworth, Head For The Hills, Cornmeal, Juno What? and a lot of local and regional talent from the Midwest and we headline both nights.
Is the band friends with Keller?
We’ve bumped into him at festivals, but we don’t really know him. That came about because every year we put our heads together and think about how are we going to make this year’s Camp Euforia better than last year. Keller was one of the first ideas we had and he was into it. Last year, we had Dumpstaphunk and the Pimps of Joytime. We had a pretty killer lineup last year, so we had to go big time this year.
And for the new album, how did Kyle get to be the producer?
We called him because we have a connection to him. We have the same manager as Kyle, who deals with his solo career. We did some dates with Kyle back in 2009 or 2010, so we’ve got to know him for several years. So when we started talking about people we could work with to make this record, his was the first name that came up. It was really convenient because he lives in Colorado and he likes the band. He came to our shows and rehearsals, and he listened to our demo recordings. He came in with a lot of ideas, and was very passionate about the whole thing. It was a good fit because he wants to do more of this line of work and be in the producer chair. It was his first time taking on this role. When he first started working with us last summer, he had just finished making the new String Cheese record with Jerry Harrison of The Talking Heads. So Kyle said he was going to channel his experience with Jerry Harrison. Kyle was very passionate and made it his project as well.
What was he like as a producer?
He was encouraging. He listened to the material and he had a good idea what we were going for. We put together a playlist of songs and records that we like the sound of. We shared some stuff back and forth and he came in with a lot of ideas. He helped us edit some lyrics, grooves and song forms. He was not a drill sergeant. He was very open to discussing ideas and encouraged us to experiment with different sounds. He was adamant that we do something totally improvisational and have a moment where we let loose and whatever happens, happens and record it. Toward the end of our first tracking session, we recorded an 18-minute jam that had a spacey, dubby, down-tempo kind of groove. We ended up cutting it up into three different interludes on the album and calling it “Moment #1,” “Moment #2” and “Moment #3.”
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