Your new project Animus Rexx, tell me all about it. Who is working with you on it? How did it come to fruition?
Two years ago, I had a birthday show. It was my birthday, and I wanted to have a show because it was the first birthday that I could remember in a long time that I didn’t have a gig. I just wanted to have a show and a party with my friends. So I got together with the people I enjoy playing with the most, all of my friends from college. I wanted to play with them because they’re my friends, and I also wanted to play with them because they’re amazing musicians and the people in this jam scene, they don’t know my friends, and vice versa. They’re amazing musicians and this group has an amazing fan base, and they don’t know each other. I’m part of a lot of different scenes and this scene is definitely a scene that caters to some amazing art. They embrace amazing art, and these amazing artists don’t know them, so I wanted to bring them together, doing what I wanted to do.
I was in Lettuce for a while, I was in Soulive, I’m in Trey’s band. I was doing the funk, and the jam and the soul-ish things but I also enjoy playing electronic music. I also enjoy making different things and being out of the box. So these groups that are very established…I wanted to start my own thing. And it went from there, we did the show, and it was fun. The bass player, Reuben [Cainer], said “There’s a rooftop party and they’re looking for a group to play. You wanna do that?” and I said “Sure.” So we did that, and there’s a video that came out, and people liked the video, so it built off of that.
Can you talk about the other band members?
James: The people in the band. Yuki Hirano. He’s an amazing, amazing, keyboardist. He’s a freak of nature. _ Laughs_ There is something wrong with that dude. We all went to school together, and when he first got to Berklee, he was strictly a classical pianist. And now he’s something…out of a…I don’t know man. It doesn’t make any sense how good he is. So that’s Yuki. Yuki’s a freak of nature. Justin Tyson is the drummer, and he’s also a freak of nature but he’s been a freak. Since I moved out here, his plans opened up so much to everything. I’m talking about these guys like they’re something else but they’re my friends, you know? But still they’re all amazing musicians. Randy Runyon…he came in to Berklee just beasting over everybody on guitar, and now…nothing has changed. It’s amazing. The sounds, his ideas are all great. The wild card is Rueben. Laughs I met Reuben and he was a bass player, but Rueben is from London and his ideas of musicality, especially in the vein of electronic musicality, was something I’d never heard before. A lot of our ideas, are brainchilds of him. A lot of the things we come up with as a group were his gems of ideas. And to put it in perspective, Yuki plays with Talib Kweli, Randy Runyon plays with Bilal, Justin plays with Esperanza Spalding, and Rueben…lives in London laughs. Rueben’s … scary. He’s just a scary individual. And then there’s me, and that’s Animus Rexx.
When were you at Berklee?
I left in 2007. I moved to New York in 2007. I was at Berklee studying music business and I wish I would have studied more, because this business is…asinine. Yuki and I, we came out of this club called Wally’s. Wally’s is a sink or swim club, and most of the musicians who come out of Boston come out of this club. Igmar Thomas, Esperanza Spaulding, literally anybody who is in the instrumental world comes out Wally’s. Justin (Tyson) as well. I forgot where I was going with this…
Why you decided to leave Berklee.
It was time to go! Laughs I was studying abroad, in Greece at this conservatory, and while I was there I ended up teaching at that conservatory, and when I got back to school, I didn’t want to be there anymore. I knew there was more to learn but I needed another avenue of learning those things, and that wasn’t school for me. So it was time to go.
So, going back to Animus Rexx. Did it all start with your birthday show and the rooftop party? When did you decide you were going to create music together as a group?
At that time we weren’t Animus Rexx. I think I decided it then, though. It was too much fun. It was fun doing things that were different. We had already written together for that first show, and then by the second show we had about four or five songs. It was something to do, it was something that wasn’t any of the other groups I was with, so I really enjoyed it. I was trying to wrangle everyone, paying for everything—all the money I was making with Lettuce went into this. We just tried to record and trying to get something out so we could play more gigs at Rockwood [Music Hall]. We’d come together and play a show at Rockwood, and then three months later when everyone was back in town, we’d play another show at Rockwood Laughs But, after I started letting other people hear our music, people really liked it. It was great. I just appreciated it, so we just kept doing it. So maybe sometime last year, I just decided that this is what I want to do. I want to make this a priority.
Is this show at the Highline Ballroom on Sunday your “breakout” gig, not at Rockwood? Marc Brownstein of the Disco Biscuits is opening up with a DJ set, that’s impressive.
We opened for Dumpstaphunk at Brooklyn Bowl, but yeah. This is absolutely the breakout, big gig. What has happened in the last month and a half is ridiculous, I can’t even begin to wrap my head around it.
Your single, “Terminal,” has been getting more rotation on the Jam_ON station on Sirius XM. Do you have plans for a record?
We actually released “Terminal” about a year and a half ago, but it just happens that now it’s coming around. We have a new song we’ve released as well [“Forgive”].
To be 100% honest, though, it really doesn’t make sense to make a record, because nobody buys records. Nobody buys albums, people make albums because it’s what you’re supposed to do. You’re supposed to make a record and then your record gets played, but it doesn’t make any sense. If nobody’s going to buy it, you’re basically pouring money into something that will be promoted for no reason. People will be able to stream it, so they can hear you, yes. But you can stream a single. You don’t have to stream a whole album, because most people don’t even listen to whole albums anymore. This is my music business background coming out, so if you let out singles, and do singles, you’re releasing the best, you’re not putting any filler on your album. You’re just releasing everything that’s good, and I guess you could make a compilation EP on Soundcloud, but it truly doesn’t make that much sense. That being said, we’ll probably end up putting out one in the next couple of months. Laughs
Records do seem antiquated in the year 2015, but bands putting them out are still doing fairly well for themselves. How do you plan to create success for Animus Rexx without using an album as an avenue?
That’s a very good question. How do you make a band successful without going to the route that everyone takes, but doesn’t really work? You’ve got to go your own way. It’s hard to say, because there’s no set path. The set path has crumbled a long time ago. To do something different, you have to break a mold and it’s hard.
No plans for that yet?
You put me on the spot. It seems like the best way to actually get your name out there is to play a lot of shows. The bad part about that is, we can’t play a lot of shows, because we’re all touring with a bunch of different people. Because of that, the things that we do, we have to make larger than life, like this show coming up on Sunday at Highline.
Have you been plugging this for a while?
Two weeks. Because it got booked two weeks ago. I’m telling you, as of three weeks ago, or a month ago, everything just started getting weird. I’m just saying. We’re on the radio. The radio! The song that we recorded at Rockwood is on the radio. It’s a live recording of “Terminal,” that we recorded at a show we did. We mixed it, but it’s literally just the audio from the video on YouTube that we recorded that same day. Coming up from inside, I see how it happened, but coming from the outside, I’m like “I’m on the radio! How am I on the radio!?” It’s slightly overwhelming but I haven’t had time to digest it, because I’ve been in rehearsal all week. And I haven’t had the time to promote this show as much as I wanted to because I’ve been in rehearsal all week.
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