Taylor also adds that it s pretty common that he finds himself tearing up at the end of that song, Columbia, in particular.

Transcription

1 The members of Local Natives (vocalist/ guitarist Taylor Rice, vocalist/ keys/ percussionist Kelcey Ayer, vocalist/ guitarist Ryan Hahn, drummer Matt Frazier, bassist Nik Ewing) have been through a lot since the release of their debut album Gorilla Manor in February Including the departure of bassist Andy Hamm and the death of singer-keyboardist Kelcey Ayer s mother in These rough patches directly shaped their 2013 album Hummingbird. Hummingbird was less buoyant and energetic than Gorilla Manor, but that s not a bad thing. With this album they showed their audience that they can in fact be very emotional and personal while still being very relatable. Through it all, the members of Local Natives still managed to find a way to add an undercurrent of joy in the record. For them, Taylor says, the writing process can differ from being able to come out easier when forcing themselves to sit down for a while and also when they don t stress about it and a line or two just comes out naturally. Each song has a pretty different story, and both of those processes described have worked really well for a song, and both of them have failed for certain songs. Since our band is so collaborative, there are so many factors and reasons a song can take a sudden turn and become something really different from how it began. That's what makes playing in a band exciting. Taylor adds that even when songs do take a sudden turn and are re- envisioned almost always the lyrics are the last to be finalized since they really labor over them. One of their songs, Columbia, Kelcey wrote about his mother. For the members the song represents the conflict of having all these great things that they ve always wanted to happen, happen vs. the rough patches of life that they ve had to work through together as a band. When the members were talking about the songs being too personal on the album they all had some hesitation about offering up too much emotionally and personally, but they wanted to dig deeper and be a lot more direct and up front with the lyrical content and emotional content. Taylor recalls, When Kelcey's mom passed away, we took a big break from writing and our lives as we had known them in general. It was a super difficult time, and when we got back together, we had to decide how we were going to be about what we were going through. We decided to be honest basically because the other option was a lot worse. Hummingbird is an album of catharsis, and it seemed impossible to try and be sly about that. Matt says that he can t speak for everybody, but it can be a pretty emotional thing performing these personal songs like Columbia live, even though it s directly from Kelcey and even after the hundredth or two hundredth time. There s just something about it. The content of those songs, even though it's directly from Kelcey and personal to Kelcey with his Mom and what not, we're all so close and tight knit, we were there, right by his side when it happened and it's something we all experienced in a way. Obviously, it was hardest for Kelsey but we're like brothers. When you feel the energy from the crowd really singing along and really feeling the emotions, there's a new energy going back and forth and thinking about the content of the song, it is kind of an overwhelming experience at times and I've even had times when I borderline teared up. Taylor also adds that it s pretty common that he finds himself tearing up at the end of that song, Columbia, in particular.

2 Back when they were working on Hummingbird and after a year spent in LA working on the album, they knew they needed to get out of their comfort zone to record, that s why they enlisted the help of The National's Aaron Dessner for production duties, and headed to Brooklyn and Montreal to record. Matt says that although they loved going to both cities to work on Humingbird, for the third album they would probably use someplace different. Maybe even just do it back home. It's the type of thing that will just come when it comes, when the record's actually ready to be made, we'll know more. I think it might be too soon to decide where we would do it but I think we'd probably want to mix it up and try somewhere different. Matt proceeds to say, We had this ridiculous list of awesome studios across the world or awesome places that we, in a fantasy world where we had unlimited money, would want to go to. There was this studio where Bowie did a bunch of his records and tons of other people, I can't remember the name of it off the top of my head, but it's in Berlin so that was always something we would have loved to have done but it was a total kind of pipe dream. It wouldn't make sense for us to go all the way out there for a rough few weeks or something but, maybe next time around we'll make it out there, who knows. Now, three months later Taylor says that they are currently in the process booking some studio time in Thailand. For this third album, currently in the works, he says that the most specific he can be about it at this point is that hummingbird felt like a very inward record, while what we are writing now feels very outward. According to calculations done by Songkick, Local Natives were one of the hardest working bands of The bands were ranked depending on how many shows a band has played, and the exact distance between each venue on their tour. Local Natives came in at No. 1 with 188 shows played and 119,605 miles traveled. Taylor says it absolutely felt like that many show and miles traveled. I'm glad I happened to be at home when I read that article, and not in an airport on a layover. We've sort of smugly prided ourselves on how hard we tour, but I think we all feel last year is a water mark best left untouched for a while. Since being out on the road that much it made them anticipate getting home to work on new music, just as working on new music for a long time makes them want to go on tour, Taylor says. Earlier his year they got the opportunity to work on new music, well it was a cover. An unreleased Johnny Cash cover to be specific. The occasion was for a La Blogothèque s Take Away Shows special. The special would feature Local Natives, Brandon Flowers (of The Killers) and Father John Misty. Taylor recalls, That song is special to us because of how amazing the circumstances surrounding it are. If you don't know the backstory, basically Johnny Cash's son came across this record his dad had never released, and we were contacted to see if we wanted to cover this never before heard cash song. Johnny Cash is an inspiration as a human to me, so it felt like an honor to get that privilege. We purposefully changed the song up a lot, changing the verse melody and chords completely, and we didn't even use guitars for the arrangement. This was not the first Take Away Show that Local Natives have done. Through the years they ve formed a good relationship with the company and Matt says, have been lucky enough to do a few of them. I think what's still really exciting about doing them is that each one is totally unique and really forces you to do something outside of the box and we really try to kind of re-write the song almost, and try to do

3 something totally different. We don't just necessarily strip it down to the bare instrumentals, sometimes do totally alternate arrangements of the song, which I think is always cool for us and keeps things fresh. It's a really awesome thing to be a part of and I'm glad that they like our band. The same goes for Daytrotter. The band has had the opportunity to work with and be featured on the site a few times and the band also happened to be one of eight bands on Daytrotter s first ever Barnstormer Tour in Matt says, I look back on that fondly. That was a totally, unique, weird, crazy thing because we were just kind of in the middle of the country playing in these really secluded barns, it was really cool. That specifically was kind of the first time they'd done that. Two of their high points for the band last year Matt recalls was one; getting to play on Austin City Limits (which was nerve wracking for them because it s filmed and they want to deliver the best performance possible) and two; right before they went on they decided to ask Nik to be an official member of the band and he, Matt says, of course said, yes, happily said, yes. Flash-forward to this spring and Local Natives were taken out on tour from March 19- April 11 as support for Kings Of Leon. As of their third show with them, Matt says that the shows were great so far. We had one of our own shows, in Las Vegas, a couple nights ago. The big shows have been good, it's crazy. These are the biggest shows I think we've ever played in our career. Matt adds, The sheer amount of people coming to each show is great because we're hopefully going to make a bunch of new fans off this. Now, after the tour, Taylor recalls that they were even touring hockey arenas in Canada. He proceeds to say how much he loves being the opening band because they have to try and win the audience over. I love being the opening band because it brings me back to when we started out touring as kids, playing in front of people who don't know you, playing as hard as you can to win them over. Opening arenas or playing festivals is exciting because you have to fight hard to win over hearts and minds, you have to give something people will think is amazing. For every show and every tour that Local Natives play they have to judge an audience on whether or not they are going to want an encore. Taylor says that all the members have internal band fights and debates about how to deal with it. If the band thinks that they will have an encore and the audience doesn t end up asking for it, they don t want to leave one of their most popular songs out of the set list. On the other hand, from first-hand experience, some magnificent things happen when Local Natives play their go to encore song in their set and the audience asks for an unexpected encore and the band members are legitimate surprised and are scrambling to figure out what other songs to play. When this happens Taylor says, it s very rare and incredible. We usually just have a couple old songs left to choose from, so that's always a fun scramble to try and agree backstage. I think after having three records we'll have some more options to choose from, so hopefully it'll be a more harmonious discussion. Music isn t the only focus for bands, they have to also think about their album artwork and their press photography. The members in Local Natives take great pride in how they want to be represent throughout both. Taylor says that because most of them having been playing in the band since high school they learned pretty quickly that best way to succeed was to do everything yourself and not rely on anybody else. We've kept that ethos with us as we've grown, and all of our artist output is

4 important to us and pretty hotly debated at band meetings. I'm sure there're easier ways to do business, but this is the only way it works for us. Matt, Ryan, and their previous bassists Andy, have done most of the band s art work - Andy did the Gorilla Manor cover. With their artwork just like their songwriting Matt says that everybody pulls from different directions. Now with the new member Nik, who has a graphic design back ground, they once again have three people working on the designs. I'm glad it's not just one of us, or just me or something because I feel like it's cool that everybody kind of does have different taste. It's not just a lot of the same over and over again. We each have our own little way of doing things and kind of bounce different ideas off each other and stuff. It's a cool process, we pull from all kind of walks of art and what not. I really am a fan of surrealist type stuff so I've had to lean that way a lot. This time around, trying to mix it up a little bit, try something different. When it comes time to decide what to have as their album artwork Matt says that for the first one Gorilla Manor the record was close to being done and that they had a few different ideas and that one the majority went with. For Hummingbird though, they worked on it throughout the summer of 2012 and although it was something that was created before the record was finished it wasn t chosen as the artwork until the record was done. Matt says, We were living in New York and I spent a lot of time just shooting photos and trying to come up with a bunch of different concepts and the one we ended up going with was something that I had done actually before we even started making the record. It was this image that everybody really liked and we kind of stuck with it, even after Brian came up with a couple options, I came up with a couple options after that but nothing felt as good as the original one that ended up sticking. The image on the cover Taylor says really captured where they were as a band during that time. It was cool that it was sort of this weird inside, accidental snapshot of one of our normal days making the record. It s the four of us since Ryan is behind the lens of the shot, and Kelcey had sort of fallen trying to climb up onto the roof of our practice space. He has this look about going through this struggle but finding the joy and humor in it, and that resonated with how the last year had felt as a band, and is a lot of what hummingbird is about. Matt says that because press photographs are hard for them and they are still learning all the time about how to get a good photo they ve taken it into their own hands. We've done a lot of our own photo shoots. I have this tripod and this camera and we set up a bunch of little scenes and what not, try to shoot some of our stuff and we've got some kind of cool stuff from that. Just trying to have something that's not always just the stereotypical band photo, everyone looking way too serious at the camera or something. Just gets tired and boring, we've definitely got some of those photos floating our there because it's inevitable but just trying to have something a little bit interesting about it and still within our aesthetic as a band. Taylor says that they approach their photo shoots like they do their music, basically experiment a lot until we find something that clicks. I think my favorite visual representation we've ever gotten of us as a

5 band was the video we made for 'Breakers.' We made that video with a director friend of mine Jaffe Zinn, but it s the most control we've ever had over a video and my favorite that we've ever made. Another one of their music videos ( Ceilings ) they actually put together themselves, using tour footage they took from their own cells phones. Matt and Taylor both say that they as a band have thought about sometime putting together a tour documentary since they have a lot of footage especially from the time they were creating Hummingbird. Matt says that he would love to eventually put something together, whether it's collaborating with someone or something they do on their own. We all are always shooting photos and videos on our phones and I've got this camera that I take on the road and I shoot a lot of stuff with and everyone will grab it sometimes and just film random shit at sound check or sightseeing or whatever. From Taylor s perspective tour is like a shattered mirror, with hundreds of little days and experiences going by super fast, all of them really different but also weirdly sort of identical to each other and because of this it would take an amount of focus that they haven't been able to pull together so far. One thing they are sure of that pulls them together, Taylor says, is how Local Natives art form heals and connects them. We are all addicted to the feeling of being connected with other people through music.