Hello everyone and welcome back to H-Town Rock Interviews. This week, we have the pleasure of interviewing Tambersauro, a three-piece art-prog band that just happens to call Houston, TX home. We’re really enjoying the band’s new album, Theories of Delusional Origin - while it's impressively deep and dense, it remains very accessible to anyone with a penchant for out-of-the-box art-rock. In advance of their album release party at The Mink on Friday night, October 17th, we had a chance to ask Jeff Price, the bass player, and Lance Higdon, their drummer, some questions about how they manage to capture their band’s esoteric sound.
H-Town Rock (HTR): This record is comprised of a highly technical array of sounds, samples, chunks of anthemic rock, and precise prog rock. How does Tambersauro actually go about writing a song?
Jeff Price (JP): Well, that process has really evolved since we started this band back in 2003. The process we go through now is a little more efficient than it was in the past, particularly as it has been applied to a handful of new songs we are currently working. In the past Mike would usually come in with a riff or two and start playing it and then Lance and I would come up with parts on the fly and see where it all went. The technical aspects would be worked out over time with repetition, and if that repetition revealed that the song was boring to play or we were not excited about it, we would drop it. Nowadays we are a bit more settled into what we are trying to do musically and how all that plays out in performance. One thing that we as a band feel very strongly about is that our music as recorded be able to transition to being performed live without losing a whole lot in terms of excitement and energy. It seems like a lot of bands have great sounding albums and great songs, but when you see them play them live it can be a sleeper. With all that, we now have a more keen sense of when a riff or idea comes out of one of us, we can pretty much on first listen say nay or yea in terms of continuing to work on it and spend time with it. As for as the aspects of our music that you mentioned in the question, Lance has also been the one to push the technical, whereas Mike and I have always been the ones to push the anthemic and more melodic aspects of our sound. The samples and other nuances come later after the songs are more or less in their final in state instrumentally. The one really great thing I would add about this band, unlike many of the others I have been in, is that there is no ego. If Mike breaks out into a "too metal-like" riff on guitar, we can say "no Mike, that is lame," and his feelings are not hurt and he is not ready to leave the band. He usually turns around and comes up with something that Lance and I our floored by. And it is the same all the way around with any one of us. It is a wonderful way to work and develop as musicians and artists.
Lance Higdon (LH): The songs just kinda mutate out of us improvising parts together, then tricking them out to be slightly-to-a-lot off-the-grid. There's a subconscious sense of trying to contradict our own expectations and clichés in our songwriting - I am my own worst enemy when it comes to writing something rote and I am always trying to outflank it. And oftentimes an idea from whatever I'm really into at the moment will worm itself in without me noticing. I took a year of Latin [trap] drum lessons for part of this writing process and I think it pokes its head out a few times. I'm still trying to work in some dancehall beats.
HTR: Once the band has laid down a section of a song, how do you progress into arranging that song?
JP: I have typically been the predominant arranger, mainly because I do most of the vocals. However, there is a great tension in this band between two extremes. Lance is the experimental force in terms of adding improvisation and noise elements to our sound while Mike and I are always pushing for a sense of accessibility in our music. Really, in the end, how we arrange our music comes down to an unspoken understanding of an unwritten paradigm we all agreed on early in Tambersauro's brief history; and that is that we stretch the boundaries of what rock music is supposed to be while still make it listenable and entertaining. You can take something that sounds horrific and record it and say, “Look, I am so experimental and original because I played my guitar out of tune and then ran it through a DD-6." This really takes no skill or real work. The harder thing and what we have made as a goal for our sound is to do things that if mentioned in a conversation would turn many listeners away, but when actually heard and seen live, their minds are changed. The way we arrange is what I think makes us who we are and the way we arrange our music is by having no set rules one way or the other. If it turns us on, then let's do it that way, no questions ask.
LH: It's dialectical in the best sense. There is strong pull and push between being accessible and being arcane, but it is precisely that tension that helps us write the music we do. I have other outlets for my weird-sound tendencies where I can go out on as far of a limb as I’d like. In Tambersauro, it’s measured against the other guys' sensibilities and, in a sense, it’s even more far out that what I might intend, since there is such an intense clash occurring.
HTR: Who decides which songs and parts of songs have vocals? Who writes those lyrics?
JP: Again, since I am the main vocalist, I handle most of the lyric writing and ultimately where they go in our songs. However, Lance has taken a bit more active role in writing lyrics and doing some vocal stylings of his own. Again, I see our music as a big canvas and we have all the colors at our disposal and thankfully no one in suits telling how to write our next big hit; so we take advantage. I love the fact that Lance or even Mike can add a vocal part to a track and it completely changes the mood and dynamics of a part or a whole song. I like to see our songs kind of like a circus attended by a small child. There are so many things going on and so much to do that you can't possibly take it all in at once, you must spend some time there. Likewise with a Tambersauro record - we want to challenge the listener to spend some time with our music and take it all in over several listens. I think our lyrics play a huge role in all that. We do not write stupid lyrics about girls or other superficial concepts; we actually try to write lyrics about the larger, more daunting aspects of our own lives or the lives around us, and, with a story, add another layer of imagery to our soundscape. Too serious? Well, our music is not for everyone. And really, whose is?
LH: Jeff writes the bulk, as he is the main voice of Tambersauro. I wrote "Take This and Leave" and "Make Water Sand" on ToDO. It was quite a challenge to fit them in as I am fairly verbose, but I was glad to have a lyrical outlet for the first time in a while. The arrangement is contingent mostly on whether I made up parts that are too hard for me to play, let alone try to yell over.
HTR: You guys run Esotype Records and you're all involved in your various other bands. How do the three of you find balance? How do you make room for lives, work, girlfriends, and wives?
JP: It is very tough. Mike and I are married and I have a daughter and a son. We all three have "real" jobs, as our parents would say. It is a challenge and yes, with Esotype Records as the vehicle for all this chaos we call art and music, one can slide back and forth across the line between insanity and being frailly sane. The key is that we have wives and friends that support us full-force and that we are all eternally trapped in the need to create and produce art and music without compromise. It is like a drug and the addiction to that need is what gets us through the bad shows and the hard and difficult times. I think that the friendships that exist both in Tambersauro and within the staff of Esotype Records are the final catalyst for some kind of balance. I for one, as I know the people around me, do not do this all for fame and money. We do it because we love who we are doing it with, we love doing what we do, and we love the simple process of everything we do within the guise of Esotype Records and all its bands and projects. Besides, true balance in one's life is boring.
LH: I teach high school Latin by day and can't find a woman worth dating in this town, so I just date music instead. It's just as expensive, really, but it is a pretty good listener. In all seriousness, I know that finding a band with this sort of chemistry and talent equity is very rare, and I want to make the most of it before life might drag me into other realms. I like to play a lot of music with several people, but there's no question that Tambersauro is the incubator for all of it and my main project.
HTR: If you could choose one song (or maybe two) from the album that typify your sound, what would they be and why?
JP: I do not know if I could choose one song off this particular album, because in my mind, it is all just one song broken up into nine parts for public consumption. But to be nice and answer the question, I think in retrospect, "Make Water Sand" probably hits the "typify" criteria best, if you could only choose one. It is a journey through many things musically and lyrically. By the way, the lyrics are killer and Lance wrote them. With a variety of time signatures, musical styles and vocal techniques, this song really typifies what Tambersauro is attempting to do musically. In addition, it is a fun song to play live, which satisfies our other paradigm as mentioned earlier. It is a song that allows us to show our musicianship and showmanship all in one passage.
LH: I am really proud of “Make Water Sand,” but I think “Over and Down” and “Blue And White” fragments are the best way to get all the polarities of Tambersauro into one place: mathy, angry, quiet, dreamy, abstract, concrete, acoustic, electronic, et al.
HTR: What's on the horizon for Tambersauro, Esotype, and everything else you guys do? Anything else we should be looking out for in the near future?
JP: Well, as for Tambersauro, we are trying to play as many shows as possible to promote our new album Theories of Delusional Origin. We are also trying to finish up three new tracks that we plan to record with our buddy Andrew Hernandez of Austin-based Meryll at his home studio in December. Those tracks will hopefully go on a split 10- or 12-inch with the Houston-based band The Quietest. As for Esotype Records, we are going through a transition phase of having many bands either break-up or move on over this past year. It has actually been a good thing though, allowing us to take Esotype to a different place, actually a place I wanted to take in at its inception. Over the past 7 plus years, I have worked with many bands from all over Texas, but now, with the exception of Meryll, I really want to make Esotype a Houston-based label and work with artists from Houston and its surrounding suburbs. Instead of being another entity in this town that will not really help the local artists, I want to make Esotype part of the solution, not the problem. Besides all that, the rest of the future for Esotype Records sees another Meryll full-length in the spring and hopefully many more releases to come by uncompromising artists.
LH: I don't want to toot my own horn, but i seem to have a hand in a lot of what's happening with the label in coming months. My other main squeeze, Golden Cities, released our first album this month and will be trying to rev up the hype machine for it as well. I'm also finishing up the first proper Wall With One Side album, which should be out in November. Aside from that, I'm trying to get busy with a dance project with Jeff called Name Is Not Important and be more active in the Houston free improv community.
HTR: What music has the band been listening to lately?
JP: I have been listening to My Disco from Australia and new Meryll demos. As for Lance, probably something that I have never heard before, and as for Mike, a good dose of old Genesis and some Pink Floyd. Again, that good Tambersauro tension mounts!
LH: [I’ve been listening to] Capleton & Beenie Man 7"s, Geoff Farina's Reverse Eclipse album, a bunch of dubsep mixes on the internet, a bunch of weird Scandinavian electronic music called "Skweee", a Ken Vandermark big band recording, and Prairie Home Companion on the radio. How I play what I play in this band, I have no idea.
Band Photo Credit: Free Press Houston and Nathan Nix. Album Photo Credit: Band's CD Baby Page
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