Speaking of a lot of records you made, your discography is so interesting because you’ve played in some bands who would be perceived as more traditional indie-rock bands, and then there are these other very experimental records. Where do you see the overlap of between the more experimental music and the more pop-leading independent music that you are currently working on?

I think that Dan and Leon and I equally want to make experimental kind of music, but sometimes experimental is pop music. You can make the weirdest sounds all day long and then sometimes we just wanna sing it by its chorus or write some good lyrics for a verse. We all equally add to the weirdness in The Arcs’ records. We’re almost finished with our second record. And that’s just a couple days of flying to Nashville, or going to Queens, or meeting at my place, or just kind of fucking around in the studio. I definitely love pushing the boundaries as much as we can.

Everything’s based on a live performance. Every single song. It starts with three, four, five of us in the studio together performing a song, performing a verse and the chorus, a middle eight. It’s pretty traditional, actually. And then we just stay up really late at night kind of hashing out and stretching things and cutting things out and adding strange noises, all that kind of stuff.

You mentioned the quickness of the recording, which is something of a hallmark of your recording approach.

Yeah. I like spending maybe a day. If a band comes to me and they’ve got ten to twelve songs, the sessions are going to take ten to twelve days. The longest time I’ve ever spent on a record was with Guster [for 2015’s Evermotion ], and we spent like a month on their record. And that was a long time. We ended up actually taking days off because we were like, “This is ridiculous.” I think the Foxygen record we did took like eight days. And then some stuff is really quick, like Lonnie Holley. I’ve recorded 40, 50 tracks with Lonnie so far, and maybe we’ve done like a week’s worth of actual work. The Tijuana Panthers, when they come in, those guys know their songs really well. They just come in and we record it really quick. We’re done with their records within two or three days. It all varies. I feel like when I work with bands, it goes really quick.

The Foxygen album not only opened up a number of doors for you as a producer, but also has come to define what many people consider your sound. As the story goes, they approached you with a demo after one of your shows. How much did you push their sound in a certain direction?

I just feel very fortunate to have worked with such great artists recently. More than anything, I’m actually more proud that I really, really pushed [record labels like] Secretly Canadian or Jagjaguar. I’m really happy that I actually helped discover that band and pushed that band to a label. I played drums on their record, and I’m also proud that I could actually pull off those drums because their arrangements that were so complicated and I normally don’t drum that way. I just recorded [Jonathan] Rado’s second solo album as well, which turned out really fuckin’ great. I’m really excited about it. I guess people do expect that sound, but it’s half and half. I engineered and mixed that record and played drums and a bunch of instruments. But also, Sam [France] and Rado are special little boys, and that’s definitely their sound. It’s not like every band that works with Radiohead’s producer can come in and sound like Radiohead. There’s obviously chemistry or something that goes on between those guys. There’s also that silent member. I think the producer ends up being some sounds. Like Pure Bathing Culture, I just heard their new record which I love. Pure Bathing Culture, the record and EP that we made together, I was very, very, very hands-on with that. They worked with a different producer, which is a really good idea for them, but they sound completely different. It still sounds like Pure Bathing Culture, but there’s something that’s different because I’m not engineering and fixing it, kind of overseeing the project.

Are you going to play drums with The Arcs live this year?

Yeah, it’s Homer Steinweiss and I playing drums, double drumming. On the new stuff, I’m playing drums all the time—on the second LP and the new EP, I did all the drums. On the first record, I think I played drums on like 80 percent of it—I played on like everything but three songs. So, live, Homer and I are doing double drums and then I’m switching from drums to keyboards, maybe playing guitar, I don’t know. To be honest, we’re just figuring out what stuff we’re gonna do live. We shot that video yesterday, and I was on drums all day and it felt great, man. Drums are my favorite instrument to play, and [it’s great] to be able to be in a band where I co-write the songs and sing the background vocals. I help produce, but then I get to play drums live? That’s too easy. I’m really, really over the moon about it.

The Grateful Dead were an early reference point for The Arcs. What are your roots in that world?

Well, we definitely love the Grateful Dead, and I love some Allman Brothers. They have been a huge touchstone for us for years. Dan and I, very, very many times, offstage, are just like, figuring out the chords of “Candyman.” We’re constantly not just listening to the Dead but physically playing Grateful Dead songs. I think Dan’s first or second concert was the Grateful Dead. I lived just outside Eugene, Oregon, so the Grateful Dead is part of my culture. I’ve had friends who have gotten married into the Grateful Dead family, so that band is really important to us.

I never saw them live, and I didn’t want to go to these last concerts [Fare Thee Well] just because Jer Bear wasn’t there. I wish I could have seen him. There’s plenty and plenty of inspirational shit on YouTube, and there’s ways you can still kind of experience them. I still love their records, too. American Beauty is personally one of my favorite records. I enjoy them as much as I can. I love Leonard Cohen, and I’ve had plenty of chances to see him, and I would just rather not see him. I’d rather keep his early records in mind.

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