Real Estate came together in the shadow of New York City at the tail end of the Aughts. Like many of their Generation Y peers, the four musicians—Martin Courtney (vocals/guitar), Matthew Mondanile (drums), Etienne Pierre Duguay (guitar) and Alex Bleeker (bass guitar)—came of age in the digital iPod era where genre lines blurred both on and off the stage. So it makes sense that when the four musicians organized as Real Estate in 2008, the twenty-somethings looked to both the indie noise rock underground and the jamband scene for inspiration. Thanks to the slightly fuzzy indie pop songs on the band’s self-titled debut and an open ended residency at underground New York promoter Todd P’s various venues, the group has attracted a national following in under two years. Below, Courtney and Bleeker discuss their roots in suburban New Jersey, future recording projects and how Mondanile went from listening to Phish’s Farmhouse to living in Todd P’s Market Hotel in just a few short years.
Though Real Estate has only been around for two years, your roots as a band go much deeper. When did you first start playing together?
MC: Well, me Matthew Mondanile and Alex Bleeker all went to high school together so we’ve known each other forever. We’ve listened to all the same people since we were 15 or something. Then we all went to different colleges and played in different bands. Real Estate started in the summer of 2008 after we all graduated from college. We all moved back to the same area. I was living on the West Coast and Alex and Matt were living up in New England. We all moved back to the same area and started a band because that’s what we’ve always done. I had a bunch of songs that I had written.
At the time, we were listening to a lot of Grateful Dead, and a lot of soft rock like Steely Dan and Fleetwood Mac. That was part of the whole idea originally—to be influenced by cheesier ‘70s music and sort of bring it up to date. I dunno if we really achieved that, but it was definitely one of the original things we were thinking about.
AB: Yeah, we’ve been playing in bands together basically for ten years. We all went to these hippie schools that were really similar. I went to Bennington and Matt went to Hampshire. Martin went to Evergreen out on the West Coast. They all have this sort of variation on a theme of super small, really liberal arts colleges. So we had that weird connect going on when we were apart.
The tracks on your self-titled debut album were written over an extended period of time and many were actually released in other forms. How many of the songs off Real Estate had previously been released?
MC:: Almost all of it. We released three singles leading up to the album, and pretty much everything that was on those singles was on the album. Then we did an EP, which was self-released. We made like a hundred of those. So for people that already knew about us, when our album came out, they were like, “Alright, we’ve already heard this stuff.” But the idea was for more people to hear it.
Really those were the songs that we had and that we had been playing. We didn’t really omit that much. But I spent a lot of time making sure the sequencing of the album, was right. A lot of the songs are in the same key, and the entire “A side” of the album is all in the key of D. Every single song—that was definitely on purpose.
We ended up using different recordings that we recorded over the course of the year at different places. If we had recorded it all at one time, the second half of the album would have ended up being something like the second half of Abbey Road. I had this idea one day to bring it as close to that as I could and to make the songs fade out and flow together. There were a lot of things I tried to do to make them flow together. For me, all I could hear was a ramshackle assortment of songs we had recorded over the year. For other people they obviously hear it differently because they’re hearing it for the first time. But for me, all I could hear was something that didn’t sound right, it sounded forced. I tried really hard to make sure it went together well.
Have you started working on any new studio material?
MC: We’ve been recording some stuff right now with a friend who has a lot of nice equipment and we’re trying to get it to sound a little more hi-fi. The drum sound we were going for the really tight, compressed stair sound—almost ‘70s sounding. One of our newer songs sounds a lot like Fleetwood Mac. So if anything, we’re moving back in that original direction. It is hard to write in a certain style or for a certain genre.
It kinda influences the way we think about our music, but when we start writing a song it takes on its own vibe.
You mentioned the Grateful Dead as an influence. In the past few years the Dead has started to influence a whole new generation of bands that play music more often described as psych-rock or freak folk than jamband music. Is the Dead a new influence on your songwriting?
MC:: For me it is a more recent influence. But Alex is the resident hippie of the band. He got me into Phish, and we went and saw Phish shows together. In terms of the Grateful Dead, I had listened to American Beauty but I wasn’t a huge fan. On our first tour, our friend Todd Ledford, who runs this small label, burned us five Grateful Dead bootlegs to listen to in the car. That’s when I got really that amazing music. And that definitely made our music a little more spacey or brought it out there a little bit more. But it was definitely more recent that I got into the Grateful Dead.
We try to play with the arrangement of our songs live. Once the chord progressions and the melodies are there we’ll take a section of the song and stretch it out and sorta jam on it for a while. That is where all of our collective jamband influences came in. We wanted to be a jammier pop band. I dunno if you ever listened to the band Woods, we toured with them just recently and they have a similar idea. They have these pop songs and then they go off into these jam segments and then go back into the pop song. For us, it is a little more structured. But that’s the general idea—to sound really loose.
AB: I was really into—like super into the jamband scene in high school. And like I saw a bunch of Grateful Dead reincarnations like The Dead and The Other Ones. I would always go to shows like that. [I’m still young] so the first Phish show I saw was the very first post hiatus on New Years Eve’s show at the Garden [in December ‘02]. I saw them as much as I possibly could during that time period—I was super into them and I would go out and see String Cheese a bunch of festivals. I always thought Relix was really cool so this is kind of a surreal moment for me.
But I always liked indie rock too and more underground music. I don’t know, there’s this sort of this weird stigma that comes with like jamband culture—especially in the world of like indie rock that gets you picked on in some circles. Except lately I found a sort of like resurgence of this pseudo-jam-hippie, ‘cause psychedelia is really popular indie rock and there’s all this cross over. I have all these friends that play in indie bands who used to be into the jamband scene. Jeremy from Woods is la super, super, super Deadhead—like really hugely influenced by them. It was weird to like reconcile that earlier on, when you felt like you had to identify with a certain genre or whatever. I was never embarrassed about the scene and when to these jam show but now it like cool again for some reason. I think maybe ‘cause a lot of us are coming from the same place. Phish is sort of like a postmodern band, they’ve got all these different styles but they blend them all together. I’m psyched to see them again this summer, I’m going to try to go to a couple shows.
Do you feel that growing up playing music together has helped Real Estate as a band age quicker?
MC: We’ve gone through a lot of changes together. In high school Alex and I played in a band that played all covers. We’d do indie songs and also play Phish songs. I also played in an indie band and a ska band—we’d play anything we could. I played bass back then and all our friends played music so we’d all play together. I was in at least twelve bands in high school—I was the bass player in a lot of different bands. In college, I was in a straight-up indie band—we sounded like Pavement or something. Bleeker’s thing was always more folky. So we’ve all played in a dozen different types of bands. This band definitely didn’t have a specific idea of what we were going to do. It was kind of like we know each other’s style so well it was just a matter of what happens.
AB: It is funny ‘cause I always had an interest in jam music. I was responsible for getting Martin into it, and he definitely had a period where he was like heavy into Phish but then sort of like grew away from it. Then when we were first getting this band together we all sort of agreed that like there were elements of that style that we wanted to incorporate into our style that were cool. Also, what I think was so appealing at a young age is just the sense of community even. Like you go to a show and there’s all these people and there seem to be these sort of traditions which are really exciting and just never seen something like that before. You feel like you’re part of it.
What Phish songs did you used to cover?
AB: We covered “Dirt” from Farmhouse and we also did “Character Zero.” We would play “Dirt” for like half an hour like in practice, just like jam on it. Our “Character Zero” cover would rip.
MC:: I think we did “Divided Sky.” It was pretty hard but we would play with it. I remember Bleeker could play the first part of it. We liked the songs with a downward progression.
Moving back to your original music, can you give us a little more information about this new batch of songs?
MC:: We have a couple new songs that we’ve been playing on tour. We have a friend, who is actually the drummer of Woods, named Jarvis Taveniere. He has this really nice recording setup in his house. I guess his passion is recording. We’re recording some songs that will end up on a 7-inch. We’re doing four songs maybe two or three will end up on the 7-inch. We have some time off from touring so we’ll try to get the new stuff down. But we don’t really have enough songs to worry about a second record. I won’t start worrying about that until the fall. Or whenever we have enough songs.
Alex, you mentioned you have a solo project called Alex Bleeker and the Freaks that you perform with outside of Real Estate. How does that project relate to Real Estate?
AB: It is more of a classic rock kind of vibe—super heavy Neil Young/Crazy Horse influence. All our recordings were all done live, not at shows, but we got live takes and then I overdubbed vocals over them. And so it’s more of an off-the-cuff, kind of folkier sort of thing. I’m also releasing a new song that has sort of a “Touch of Grey,” kind of soft rock, anthem. Actually since the weather’s gotten warm I’ve like only been wanting to listen to like live Dead stuff. I’ve just been playing so much Dead recently.
Will these songs be available online?
AB: That will be online. Our label is called Group Tightener and you will be able to get it from their website and stuff and at our shows. There’s a lot of crossover with members of Real Estate, they sort of like will back me up, you know, and they’ll kind of like move in the same stages.
Earlier you mentioned the sense of community in certain music scenes. One community you are part of is [New York] promoter Todd P’s various venues—many of which are also rehearsal and living spaces. How did you first get involved with Todd P?
MC:: We used to go to his shows in high school. I remember like first couple times we played a Todd P show we were super stoked, like “Oh, shit we’re playing for Todd P” because everybody knows it is a good thing for him to book you because he books so many good shows and so many people go to them. It is this community. We played a few shows that he did and then we were at SXSW in Austin. I remember he was like, “You guys are awesome!” It was the first time that he acknowledged we were people. And now our drummer Matthew is living at the Market Hotel venue and Todd P is his landlord [laughter]. I think he’s doing really cool stuff. He’s got so many different places and all his shows are all ages. Whenever we play in New York we’d love to do shows with him rather than some soulless club. It is a lot more fun that way. A lot of people complain because his shows aren’t always in good areas and the venues aren’t that comfortable.
But you’re trading that for cheaper shows and also all ages shows. It was a good thing for us. We ended up playing a shit load at the beginning of our career as a band because of his clubs. Basically last year we were playing almost every weekend for months at a time, which was a good thing for people to hear about us.
What happened to Market Hotel? They are no longer having shows.
MC: They got busted. It is weird because they have been having shows for three years but now they’ve got shut down. I guess they weren’t technically shut down but I think they’re going to try to go legit. They’re not playing more shows. It kinda sucks. Our drummer lives there. He’s like right in the middle of everything, trying to figure out what they’re going to do. Drama. I don’t think it’s that big of a deal.
You recently played a kids show at Bowery Ballroom with Apollo Sunshine. What is that experience like?
MC:: We actually did something with them in the past. It’s a husband and wife duo that runs this thing called Kidrockers. We did this in October. It’s during the day, you play like three or four songs. You play at a really low volume. It’s for a bunch of 6-10-year-olds. We had a good time doing it so we’re doing it again. [At the October kids show] we had a dance competition and all the kids danced and our drummer picked the best dancer.
Looking ahead, where would you like to see Real Estate playing in the next year?
AB: We’ve been kind of telling our booking manager to get us on the summer festival circuit I and really want to play Bonnaroo. Last year was probably my ultimate year because I’m such a huge Bruce Springsteen fan and I’m a huge Phish fan as well so I’m super bummed I missed them playing together.
