Photo by Kelsey Winterkorn
The Disco Biscuits entered 2010 running on all sonic cylinders after an impressive 2009 live campaign, which featured numerous milestones, including their first headlining gig at Red Rocks with the inaugural Bisco Inferno. Not a band to rest on their laurels for long, the new year saw the release of Planet Anthem, which belies the fact that although the group is able to improvise for lengthy stretches on stage, the quartet can also harness their various creative motifs into a rather impressive collection of diverse songs.
The landmark new album is not without its detractors from confused critics and longtime fans, but that, and a post-gig broken wrist suffered by guitarist/vocalist Jon Gutwillig in Albany, which necessitated two guitarists to sit in with the Biscuits for multiple dates—Tom Hamilton (Brothers Past) and Chris Machetti (RAQ)—has not appeared to slow the band down, nor seriously alter their artistic and commercial momentum.
Indeed, as Jambands.com sat down with keyboardist Aron Magner on the eve of an appearance on NPR’s World Café, their focal point is on their recent successes on the radio and club charts, high profile festival gigs like the second annual Bisco Inferno at Red Rocks, and the ninth Camp Bisco, and a legion of other opportunities for a band, that up until recently, had seemed to dwell in their own private “secret society,” according to Magner. The keyboardist is a proud member of a band about to celebrate their 15th anniversary, but he is also an astute speaker and self-deprecating man, who isn’t afraid to get to the heart of the Biscuit beast with a refreshing dose of insight and candid wit.
RR: Seems like there are a few bands hitting key milestones within the next year. It’ll be 15 years for the Biscuits soon, right?
AM: Yeah, July 4th, actually. (laughs) Oh, God. This July, actually, marks our 15-year anniversary. Pretty crazy, huh?
RR: Indeed. Anything planned to celebrate the occasion?
AM: You know what I think we’re going to do? I think we’re going to roll our 15th anniversary celebration into Camp Bisco. It seems to make the most sense. I would love to plan a July 4th extravaganza, and we had talked about it—the feasibility of doing something on, actually, July 4th to celebrate the actual day of 15 years. We tried, and it just wasn’t possible with everybody’s schedule. Camp Bisco definitely seems like a perfect time to be able to bring as many of our fans together as possible to help celebrate something as momentous and monumental as 15 years with the same band. It’s impressive, and definitely something I’m proud of.
RR: Let’s talk about some other peaks. I returned to listening to most of the Disco Biscuits’ live output last year. I thought the band kept playing really strong shows throughout 2009, and one of the main peaks was when the Biscuits headlined Red Rocks for the first time on May 30. Of course, the band is returning for a second time on May 29 of this year. What were your thoughts about the 2009 gig?
AM: Just as a 15-year anniversary is something to be proud about, Red Rocks was definitely a momentous occasion for us, especially with our inaugural year there last year. When we started booking it—an entire year prior to that, and thinking about the show that we wanted to present, and the specials that we could do at such a large venue, and a venue that we’re now thrown into—it was a little bit of a leap of faith at the time that really came true. There were 7,000 people at Red Rocks last year, and it was something that we all, as a band, looked out upon our fan base like proud fathers at what we had accomplished. It was also really gratifying and satisfying to see that rewarding of what we had accomplished.
What was interesting was that I know that was felt from the fan side, as well. It was like all 7,000 of us at Red Rocks were all looking at each other as a community at what we had accomplished. Because I owe everything to the fans for being there supporting us, and being so rabid and so loyal throughout everything of our career—we really owe it all to the fans. I think we showed that appreciation, but the fans also realized that, as well, so everybody was in it together, looking around, and it wasn’t like “look what the Disco Biscuits accomplished.” It was “look what we accomplished.
And that was really a great feeling.
RR: What is particularly amazing is that the Biscuits hit a key improvisational peak on the road, while creating a completely different personality in the studio, spending the time to create a new vision of itself with Planet Anthem.
AM: That’s the great part of having our own studio, and what it enabled us to do—write for the sake of writing, and just see what comes out of it, as opposed to being restrained by any sort of finances, or anybody looking over our heads, or, most importantly, any sort of time restraints. It enabled us to write a lot of songs, which is great for our catalogue, as well, and then, some songs we decided were going to be more appropriate for “let’s start playing it live. This is going to be great live.” We couldn’t wait to play “Minions,” so we played “Minions.” Over the process, we decided this was more of a live song than an album song. That’s not to say that eventually we won’t record it for an album. It would be killer, and that’s definitely something that I want to do. We were able to write so many songs that we could pick and choose which ones would be best for an album, and which ones would be best to just start playing live.
It got to the point where, man, we were itching to start playing this stuff live. It was almost a godsend that we started putting out the EPs—the On Time and Widget EPs—because now it’s out there, and now we have the ability to start playing it. That was what we said all along. We didn’t want to start playing these songs until it came out in some sort of physical form.
RR: So the new studio dictated the songwriting process, or did you get together at the beginning, and decide to try any idea, but do it in a collaborative way?
AM: It really wasn’t any sort of regimented process of how we were writing these songs. It was an open door process. On previous albums, we would write the song—one person would write it, bring it to the band, and say, “O.K.—I’ve got this song, but I don’t know what the other parts are, so let’s collectively make the song as a band.” Or, the opposite—“O.K.—here, I’ve got a song. This is the guitar part, this is the bass part, drums, and I’m looking for this type of beat.” This was more like “O.K.—we’ve got a computer screen that’s open. Let’s fuss around and come up with a cool groove that we could work on.”
Or, in the case of “Rain Song,” for instance, that was something that I did three years ago. I recorded the piano intro and outro on my grand piano that sits in my house here. I took a really nice mic from the studio, hooked it up to my laptop, and just started playing and I came up with that riff—the very beginning of “Rain Song” where it sounds like a cabin in the woods with rain falling down on it. I brought that into the studio, and I had the other main riff of the song, if you will, as well. I said, “O.K., guys, I’ve got what’s only an idea, but the vibe is there, the feeling is there, and it almost feels cinematic to me. Let’s do something with it.” We listened to it, and Allen [Aucoin, drums] started putting a beat over it, and then we got a little bit further, and Dirty Harry [track producer] and Jon [Gutwillig] said, “Here’s a cool lyric. Let me just go into the vocal booth, and just sing this lyric.”
So piecemeal, all of these different thoughts from different musicians started to come together, and then Marc said, “Dude—I’ve got a killer idea for a bridge.” It was a very interesting and collective process. We’ve gotten mature enough where we’ve learned to trust each other a lot: “O.K.—go for it. You have carte blanche. I have idea somewhere in the back of my head where I want this song to go, but if you’re feeling it right now, get in there, and you’re in the driver’s seat. Get behind the computer, and see what you’ve got.”
I already know what idea I want to put in, but I’ll put that one later, and see which one works.” It was a very trusting process, which I think comes with age and maturity (laughter) that we were able to allow ourselves to do it.
Plus, it was just really fun to have that open door policy with different musicians coming in. We never really set out to say “O.K.—we want Tom Hamilton to produce this track.” Tom’s a good friend of ours, and was in the studio a lot with us. He was just always in and around the studio, and it happened very organically with Tom getting involved to the point where he contributed so much that we said, “Tom, you’re going to produce this track. You earned it, buddy. You helped us work on it; now, you’re producing it. This track is now your baby, as well.”
RR: Speaking of your work on “Rain Song,” you also had a sweet piano interlude in “Fish Out of Water.”
AM: (laughs) Yeah. It’s funny—the derivation of that. “Fish [Out of Water]” was written before I put that little piano break in. The similarities are definitely there. There’s no hiding it. Obviously, everybody loves the Beatles, and Tom and I have an acoustic show that we try to do every December, and one of the songs that we do is “In My Life.” Learning the piano solo to “In My Life”—I was in that mode: “What can I do with a two-handed piano solo?” The chord progression is descending as it is, and very arpeggio-friendly, but still very organic in the instrumentation of it. I didn’t want a synth to be arpeggio, or anything like that. I still wanted it to sound somewhat classical. The chord progression is descending, which is a very typical Beatles progression as is. I spent a couple of hours, and I wrote the right-hand line. I thought, “There needs to be a contrapuntal line. There needs to be some sort of harmonic structure in it with the left hand that’s not just calling out where the chord changes are, but complementing it contrapuntally. I then came up with the left hand, and put the two of them together, and came up with a piano solo bridge, I guess, that I’m really proud of. I love that little break.
RR: Once the songs were all nailed down, and you had this exciting collection, how difficult was it to sequence the album so it would flow from song to song?
AM: It was difficult. What everybody did was that we came up with our own album order. Interestingly enough, everybody’s was fairly similar. Everybody had the same thought. We wanted “On Time” to be in the number two position. We wanted “Loose Change” to be up there. We wanted the [Simon] Posford tracks to be somewhat together because they have a similar vibe and a similar feel, and were also recorded at a similar time, so the sound is kind of similar so we wanted to put those tracks together.
Everybody came up with their own album order, and we discussed it, and everybody had different playlists. We were putting it in our iTunes: “O.K., this is Jon’s playlist, this is Marc’s playlist, this is my playlist, and Allen’s playlist,” and, then, everybody would listen to the whole fuckin’ album (laughter) again and again in different orders to check out the flow. What we found was there were a lot of different things that worked. It became obvious which ones didn’t work, so that was pretty easy, but a lot of the different transitions did work, and we just—very unanimously, actually—agreed on one. In the end, most of our playlists could have worked. You could have picked any one—they weren’t that different from each other—and they could have worked. We all agreed pretty quickly that the one we came up with was perfect.
RR: How did you get Simon Posford’s involvement?
AM: We started befriending Posford years ago when we brought him out to Camp Bisco in ’05, and then brought him back the next year, and in ’07, we brought him in for our New Year’s thing. We’ve been trying to get Posford to work with us for a while, even before 2005, contacting his camp, and it always felt like [affects a British accent]: “Who are these American blokes that keep on faxing me, and they’ve got shows, and they want me to play?” Posford would only play about a dozen shows per year in the most remote locations in the world. He’s on a full two-month long Shpongle tour right now, and it’s his second one in the last twelve months, as well, of the States, nonetheless. I feel that we helped open up those doors, helped expose our crowd to Posford’s music.
That’s kind of what Camp Bisco is about, in general. We’re very hands on with a lot of these artists, and a lot of these DJs, and part of the M.O. is to expose music that we feel is really good and genuine and has soul to it—still, obviously, somewhat in the electronic world—and we want to expose that to our fans, whether they’re huge in Europe already, or whether they’re up and coming, and our fans haven’t necessarily heard of them yet, but put them in front of our fans because it’s music that we believe in. That is part of the ethos of Camp Bisco to begin with.
RR: Let’s talk about that ethos. What are you looking forward to at Camp Bisco?
AM: Camp Bisco has grown from the ground up, so every year…(laughs)…it’s just like how it was at summer camp as a kid. We get there on Wednesday night, and each passing day, I get this anxiety the way that I do when there’s only 15 minutes left of each Lost episode, you know? “OHMYGOD! It’s almost over! I don’t want it to be over!” I pause it for a minute, I go in, I get a drink, and I prolong it for as long as possible. (laughter) That’s how I deal with Camp Bisco. I never want it to be over, just like as a kid at camp. Your parents bring you out to camp when you’re nine years old, and you have all these friends for an entire summer, and the last thing you want to do is leave. It’s such a good feeling, a good vibe, and you have such good friends that you met, and you had such a blast all summer long that you never want to leave. That’s the same thing at Camp Bisco. It was part of the impetus for why we extended Camp from a two-day festival to a three-day festival. It was just too quick. It was just too quick.
RR: Bisco Inferno is something else to look forward to at the end of May at Red Rocks. What are your thoughts about the development of that festival?
AM: With Bisco Inferno, it’s interesting. I’m psyched to see what the development of it actually becomes. We could do something completely crazy like bring in our first video projections, or put dancers on stage. That was crazy and awesome and it worked so well. We definitely have some tricks up our sleeves. A lot of things are still brainstorming. I’m just as curious as you are to see what the development of that festival is going to be. This is only its second year [at Red Rocks], and I’m just as excited as you are to see how it develops.
RR: Speaking of, let’s talk about the development of the new songs from Planet Anthem in a live setting where they take on a second life.
AM: It’s pretty cool. Doing them at the TLA [3/16/10 at Philadelphia’s Theater of the Living Arts] was the only time we have played all of those songs from the album in its entirety was really cool for us. Bringing up those other musicians that contributed to the album—the horn players, particularly—added such an interesting dimension. We’d never played shows with horn players. Yes, we’ve brought up Elliot Levin on saxophone to blow a sax solo on some waltz or something, but we’ve never really brought in a horn section. Those guys are so good, and they lent so much to the tracks. It was really cool seeing these songs suddenly come to life, especially because there was definitely a little bit of trepidation for how these songs were going to play out live. It is still miraculous to me that we are able to, and they do fit into that live setting so well. I wish we were able to do another “Save Your Soul” and another “Sweatbox.” We just haven’t been able to do it because of the chaos, if you will, of the last month. But those are songs that I think can develop huge. They’re huge club-banging hits. They’re going to be huge live in the same way that “On Time” is a huge live song.
RR: Why did the band decide to release two EPs ahead of Planet Anthem ? Was it a chance to offer remixes and videos of songs before the album release?
AM: Planet Anthem was done at the time. We wanted to get something out, and build the momentum towards the album. There’s so much anticipation behind putting out an album in the first place. Then it comes out, and then that’s it—it’s out there. Putting out the EPs—number one, we had pushed the release date back a couple of times already, so we wanted to give something back to the fans who were so eagerly awaiting the album coming out. We thought it was a really cool way to still release these tracks, and continue to build anticipation for the album release without necessarily doing it in one swell swoop. I really enjoyed the piecemeal aspect of getting this album out there, actually.
RR: The year is filled with high profile gigs, but I wanted to ask about October 29 at Hampton Coliseum with the String Cheese Incident.
AM: Hampton is a venue that we’ve always wanted to play. There’s been so many epic shows that I’ve seen there over the course of my lifetime. That’s really what I enjoy about the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium in Asheville. To me, it seems like a mini Hampton. It has that same vibe to it. [Hampton] is a venue I’ve always wanted to play. I hear what you’re saying. It’s definitely an interesting billing, but I think that it works. I’m really excited for that show.
RR: I’m open minded, and I am not tilting my critical hand in a negative way towards that particular lineup. I think everyone is going to have a great time.
AM: Yeah, in that venue especially. That’s certainly a milestone venue, and something
that we’ve always wanted to play, as well. Check that off. Madison Square Garden is next on our scorecard.
RR: Let me throw out another choice location: Mayan Riviera in Mexico, where the Biscuits, Umphrey’s McGee, and STS9 will play at the Mayan Holidaze in January.
AM: I feel like the change of pace—though, doing it in Jamaica was great and amazing for so many reasons—and breathing some new life by throwing in a little bit of a curveball and moving the [Holidaze] festival is a good thing. I feel like we got a lot of repeat customers on years 1 and 2 at Caribbean Holidaze, and to move it to another place, I think we’re going to start getting back to the people that had such an amazing experience the first couple of years, but are now looking for something new and different, and for us, it’s new and different and fun, and adding Sector 9 to the bill, as well, all of a sudden, Caribbean Holidaze is evolving just like the rest of our festivals have, rather than having it stay stagnant: “Here we go again, and let’s go down to hedonism.” It’s still an awesome, awesome time, but it is what it is, and it needs room for growth. Moving it to Mexico, in a bigger spot, and a bigger venue, nicer hotels, nicer resorts, allows us to grow the festival as organically as it needs to.
RR: Well, the Disco Biscuits are so unique, but you also seem to fit into any environment, and make it your own. You guys just bring your own party.
AM: Right. (laughs) That’s definitely true. Let’s see how it goes at BamaJam. (laughter)
RR: Over the last 15 years, there have been many side projects involving various Biscuits’ band members. Are you planning on some new things to do this year beyond any documented side projects?
AM: Always. Always. I have nothing strictly in the pipeline yet, but I’ve been writing a lot of different electro stuff, recently, and I’ve had some thoughts of putting together an Aron Magner DJ set, which is kind of cool. I’m starting to think of what material I would want to start DJing, and how I would go about doing it—setting up my computer, and all my different gadgets, and have a whole bunch of interfaces there. I’d have to learn how to use a DJ mixer, and start to DJ some of this material, as well. It is something that I’m personally thinking about on the horizon soon.
With these side projects that we do, part of it is that I love playing with the Biscuits, I love the music that we play, I love the melodies that Jon comes up with, Marc’s been fucking killing it on the bass, of recent, and Allen’s a monster of a drummer, and I love playing with the Biscuits, but it’s always refreshing to play with other people, and do other things, as well. You learn a little bit more of yourself as a musician. You learn other people’s tricks of the trade, as well. Playing even like these Join shows with Jamie Shields, who I revere and respect so much as a musician, yet alone as a good friend of mine, I learned so much from his masterful control of his keyboards, keyboards that are not meant to have that much variety of sound, yet it always amazes me that he continues to get new and interesting tones out of his keyboards. My keyboards are setup to have an infinite amount of tones—digital boards that have 4,000,000 different presets, and 70,000 different buttons you can press. His main keyboard is his Moog, and it isn’t setup to do that much, and yet, his masterful control allows him to really dial in some of the most interesting tones I’ve ever heard, and the most beautiful melodies that he consistently comes up with. It’s great to play with other musicians like Jamie Shields because you learn more about music, and you learn more about how you can develop as an artist by learning from other people, as well. It’s just fun. Like I’ve said, I’ve been playing tennis with the Biscuits for the last 15 years, and I know their strengths and their weaknesses, and I still love it, but it’s always fun to get out on the court with somebody else, and you don’t know what their backhand is going to be like, and you don’t know what their forearm is going to be like. You don’t know the tricks that they’re going to start pulling out of their pockets. To me, that’s fun, and that’s the point of side projects.
And then, you come back to your main project, and you can start to associate all that stuff. It’s the same way with Conspirator. When Marc and I started Conspirator in ’05, we learned so much about electronic music, and how to incorporate these electronic tones and even computers back into our setup. Or, for that matter, how to take some of these songs that were written in an “acoustic way,” and then, suddenly, transfer that over to the electronic world, which we did in Conspirator, and we were able to bring that thought process back over to the band, and the Biscuits benefited from it. So, to me, it’s only positive things that come from side projects. And, at the end of the day, they’re just fun.
RR: Right. An artist should always fight complacency, too. For example, when I listen to Planet Anthem, I can hear the band conquering that vibe quite well, while also creating enjoyable music. Now, there are fans that are put off by the new material because of its diversity and, in some cases, accessibility. In this instance, is this a case where the longtime listener has become complacent, and not the artist?
AM: I think that whenever you put new music out into the world that…you know, any kind of change is always kind of difficult to accept regardless of what it is—a life change that you have to deal with, or whether it’s an artistic change from a band whose sound you’re used to, and then, it sounds a little bit different, or the songs are even different. What’s interesting is that whenever we put out new songs into our catalogue, inherently the listener closes themselves off—most listeners; not all, but at least some closes themselves off because they just want to hear the older material, the material that you know. And I know that because I’ve been fans of other bands, and I’m at a concert and they’re playing new songs, and you just want to hear the old songs. It is the bane of existence for classic rock artists. Nobody wants to go out and hear a new Who album. They want to hear “Pinball Wizard.”
What’s interesting is that these new songs—people just want to hear “Cricket,” but at one point, “Cricket” was a new song, and people just wanted to hear “Basis [for a Day].” Now, “Cricket” is an old song and classic and huge in the same way that all these songs on Planet Anthem —“On Time” is no longer going to be the new song when the next batch of songs comes in, and “On Time” is going to become the classic that everybody can’t wait to hear, the song that you bury for a month or two, and then, rip back out again, and everybody’s so glorified that they were able to catch their “On Time.”
It’s a Catch-22.
RR: Are you living in the moment these days, or can you project out a few years?
AM: We’re at such an interesting place in our career. There was so much built up leading to Planet Anthem, and we’re still so wrapped up in the album cycle of Planet Anthem and all these crazy festivals that we have on their horizon, and another huge tour in the summertime, and a bunch of shows that I’m concentrating my efforts right now on this period of time. I really want Planet Anthem to be as big as we could possibly make it. We put our hearts and soul into that album for the last three years, and there are so many wonderful things that are coming out of it. We’ve got not one, but two videos that are played in full rotation on MTV. Who would have thunk Biscuits on MTV? (laughs)
They’re still playing “On Time” on the radio stations here, and I hear it all the time from the most random of people—the dental hygienist: “What band do you play in?” “Disco Biscuits.” “Oh, I just heard that song on the radio the other day.” That’s a new and interesting thing for us and our career, and it’s interesting to see where that can take us. The goal is to expose our music to as many people as possible. That has always been the goal. What we do—and I think our fans all agree—is so interesting and so energetic and so different and so unique, even the show experience itself. We might as well be able to share that with as many people as possible.
Obviously, there’s the secret society aspect of it, which I get. The Biscuits are the secret, and you don’t want to let that many people know about it because it’s really fun when, you know, we can play 2,000-person seat places, and not 5,000-person seat places where it’s going to be too much mayhem. I get the whole secret society thing, but really, this is music that we’re really proud of that we want to get it out there to as many people, so I’m really quite psyched to see what we can do. “On Time,” last week, was number 24 on the Billboard Club Chart, and it’s just been moving up and up and up ever since. That’s a first for us, as well. There’s DJs all around the country right now—at least, says Billboard (laughs)—that are playing “On Time.” That’s a first for the Biscuits, and I’d like to see where that leads, so I’m kind of in album-cycle mode right now.
RR: Not that I want you to start thinking in a future tense sort of way.
AM: And you’re right. The smart thing is to always be thinking about the future, and where it goes. As for me personally, I’m absorbing what’s going on right now in the here and now. Maybe next month as the album cycle has now reached its third month, then personally, I’ll start thinking about “O.K.—what’s the next step? Let’s get back in the studio, and follow it up immediately with another album.” We certainly have the material.
There was a point—before we left for tour—about a month ago when our studio was operating on all cylinders. We’ve got two control rooms—an A room and a B room—and both rooms were pumping out some of the most unbelievable music that we’ve made to date. It was so cool because if you stand between the two doors of the two studios, your left ear would hear some crazy awesome electronic hip-hop coming out, and to your right, you’d hear some crazy electro/new disco music coming out. They obviously didn’t sound that good together when you’re standing in the middle of the hallway, and you’re hearing these different beats coming. What was so cool was that vibe was just so positive and so refreshing and so forward thinking that it really got us excited like “Holy shit! This album has barely been on the shelves for more than a day, and here we are already starting to write material for what I would think would be the next album. If not, then the next song that we start to play live.
That’s exciting if we can keep that momentum up. That’s always been our mantra—continue to write songs. Always be writing. (laughs) A.B.W.—Always Be Writing. If we keep that up, only good things come about from that. We recognized that in a very, very early stage in our career. In 2000, even, we realized that we were touring too much. We’d go two, three months on the road at a time, and it wasn’t really giving us the downtime that we needed to collect ourselves, take a breath, absorb what’s going on, and then, start to get into a mental state where you’re ready to write again. So, we made a rule ten years ago, mind you, that we didn’t want to be on the road for more than four to six weeks at a time with breaks in between. If it comes down to it, and you need to go on the road for longer, obviously, there’s exceptions to the rule. But the whole reason behind it was that we needed time to allow ourselves to come home and continue to write new material. If we were going to push ourselves ten months out of the year, it just wasn’t going to happen. And that mantra stays true today.
