Turning a solo project into a group effort can be a tough thing. How do you let go without repeatedly screaming, ‘It’s my baby!’? It’s something Luke Temple has managed to do though, moving his group Here We Go Magic from the realms of one-man-band to creative collective. The band’s first album, the self-titled 2009 effort, was well received, and this year’s follow up – the first release with group members Peter Hale, Michael Bloch, Kristina Lieberson and Jennifer Turner – ‘Pigeons’ is hotly tipped to be one of the finds of 2010. 

The Brooklyn based five-piece are currently in the process of a back-breaking tour, and Bowlegs caught up with them at The Great Escape Festival in Brighton to have a chat about their forthcoming release, touring in the UK, Brooklyn bars and parking, parking and more parking.

(Bowlegs feels it should mention that this interview took place in the band’s van, after they had spent a frustrating amount of time trying to look for parking spaces.)

Bowlegs: How are you enjoying the Great Escape so far? You played a gig last night?

Michael: It’s a bit of a cluster fuck I guess, is the word. We love Brighton; it’s a beautiful place. We’ve never been here before.

Bowlegs: Have you had a chance to see any of the city yet?

Peter: I had to move the van this morning, so I got to see a bit of the city while trying to find parking. And now we’re at it again now, doing it once again.

Bowlegs: It’s not the most fun way to see a city.

Peter: No. But it’s ok. It’s a lovely day so I can’t complain about that. 

Bowlegs: Have you seen any other bands since you’ve been here?

Peter: There were the bands we played with last night. And there was a band called Three Wolves or something.

Kristina: No.

Luke: No. Three Blind Wolves. 

Kristina: Three Blind Wolves.

Peter: Three Blind Wolves from Glasgow were really great I thought. They were the best thing I’ve seen so far.

Kristina: And Young Rivals. The Canadian band.

Peter: They were really good.

Bowlegs: You’re all living in Brooklyn at the moment, is that right?

Kristina: Yeah.

Michael: We kind of live anywhere at the moment.

Peter: We live in this van and we live in another van. And we live on floors, the occasional hotel room. Nice people’s beds. 

Jennifer: Yeah, we gave up our places.

Peter: Yeah, we kind of just left because we’re out for like six or seven months straight. 

Bowlegs: So just sofa surfing at the moment?

Peter: Yeah, a bit.

Bowlegs: Tell us how you all got together. 

Pete: Umm… 

(A combination of chuckles and sighs fill the van)

Bowlegs: Is it a long story?

Michael: It can be. It kind of all just happened pretty naturally and pretty quickly. We kind of all crossed paths at exactly the right time. I’ve been playing with Luke for a few years and Peter had been playing with Luke, so we all knew each other. Tina we knew through other people.

Peter: Jen found us. 

Michael: How this band gelled, it happened really quickly and really easily, and there hasn’t been a doubt about it since. 

Jennifer: That’s the best feeling. No doubt.

Bowlegs: How are you feeling about the release of ‘Pigeons’?

Peter: I personally am really excited about it. We’re all really proud of it. It went through that chain of creating something, then having your doubts about it and having your apprehensions about it. And then it coming back to you as this thing that’s its own little garden, where the flowers are coming out and you can see the work you put into it; but it also becomes its own autonomous thing. That’s how I feel about it and I’m really psyched. I’ve never made a record or recorded anything that I personally feel really good about. So for me that’s why it’s really exciting.

Bowlegs: We kept on reading about how the first album was a two month stream of consciousness. 

Peter: That’s Luke.

Bowlegs: How did the process to differ with this album?

Michael: The first record was something that Luke, who’s thinking about parking by the way, recorded on a four-track. I lived with him at the time, so I could see the process that way. He’d come home every day and zone in on the four-track, and it was a very intimate thing in his own mind. So we kind of all gravitated towards that. And then the process of the five of us working together was that we all went to house in upstate New York, and we lived together and it was a couple months straight of just eating and recording in a beautiful spot. You know, walks in the woods and then recording. We tried to record everything as spontaneously as possible. It preserves that organic spontaneous quality, but it’s the five of us playing instruments together.

Bowlegs: Does the spontaneity translate into your live shows?

Jennifer: Definitely. 

Peter: We’d just come off tour and we were just gelling for the first time, and were putting it down on the tape. Some of the most difficult stuff on the record was stuff that we weren’t doing spontaneously. And then when we stopped that stuff and kind of had some epiphanies about, well, let’s just do what we do when we play together, and it was really inspiring; and that became the MO of the record. And that again carries back over into the show. The show’s always going to be different than the album because we’re a five piece rock band at the end of the day. So with the energy of something that will be a little different every night, but still servicing melodic content and giving people what they’re tuned to hearing in their head; and the singing and things like that are going to be really like the spirit of in the recording and less like the actual ambience of the record. There’s no point in trying to beat yourself up to try and duplicate something or replicate something.

Bowlegs: Do you all have collective influences that you brought to the album, or are your tastes all very disparate?

Michael: We all come from our own worlds, but we overlap in the most important ways. We all have different backgrounds musically, but for whatever reason there’s no thinking about how we play together. From the first moment that we had the first rehearsal as the five of us it’s always worked.

Jennifer: It was always very natural.

Michael: Luke writes the songs, so when we’re recording like that it will be him presenting the idea and then the five of us starting to mould it and work it out. All of it happens very naturally and it’s kind of surprising how both processes click, whether it’s recording together or playing together.

Bowlegs: How do you all prepare for a gig, when you’re not driving around looking for a parking space that is?

Michael: What, in England? That’s it, there’s no other way.

Kristina: Jen and I have a ritual before every show. We run through some of our songs and it’s the same thing every time. Last time we did the abridged version because we had very little time to do it.

Jennifer: And the music was blasting.

Kristina: I like doing it though. It’s kind of fun.

Michael: The whole thing in the UK of venues becoming discotheques after you’re done playing, it’s really got to go. 

Bowlegs: You all have to clear out at eleven.

Jennifer: The disco people and the live music people, they don’t see each other. They shouldn’t hang out in rooms together. 

Peter: And you’ve got to pack down with the blasting music, it’s like…

Jennifer: Disco people are like, ‘I don’t know what you guys are doing, but it’s just not music. I don’t know how you think that this is what you do to make the things that come out of the speakers. It’s a mess, it’s not right. Get out of our way while we dance.’ 

Bowlegs: Did you get that last night?

Jennifer: We always get it.

Bowlegs: Is it different over in the states?

Kristina: There are separate venues.

Peter: It’s a comfort zone thing. 

Kristina: But I’m sure people have come over to New York and had a similar experience when they haven’t known how to navigate. It’s our country so we know.

Michael: We’re slowly acclimating ourselves to the UK. We’re going to get it. I feel like we’re going to figure it out. Once we flip our minds around and figure out that a right turn is really a left turn and all that.

Bowlegs: You don’t have roundabouts either.

Peter: Oh man, those things are the worst. 

Michael: It’s kind of a bizzaro planet, where everything’s almost your planet, but there are things that are slightly different. So there’s this little nagging stress and by the time it gets to a gig and there’s this blasting music while you’re trying to set up, it can be hard to focus. But we’re going to get it. We’re going to figure this place out.

Bowlegs: Just finally, is the Charleston the best bar in Brooklyn?

Peter: No.

Bowlegs: What! Free pizza with every drink order though.

Kristina: It’s pretty good pizza too. It’s not bad pizza. 

Peter: Yeah, it has its charm and the pizzas good too. It used to have more charm. But it’s in the epicentre and it is right by the metro stop of the most trafficked street of that neighbourhood in Brooklyn. We are all more settled there, so we tend to live more on periphery and tend to experience the more village-esque aspects of it.

Michael: It’s kind of a gem that you just get used to walking past.

Peter: Yeah, like in the summer if you’re out having beer and pizza it can be terrific.

Kristina: It can be kind of a nice thing to do every once in awhile. And the people who go there … it’s a pretty chilled thing. Somehow still.

Peter: Yeah, it’s a little oasis. But I just avoid that area.

Bowlegs: Did we just get caught in a Brooklyn tourist trap then? The Charlston and Junior’s Cheesecake. 

Peter: The Charleston is cool.

Luke: It used to owned by this really grumpy old man and his semi-retarded son. They still had the pizza, but it was like this really divey place, and they used to have these open mics every week that were really cool.

Jennifer: Did you ever play there?

Luke: Yeah, I used to play there every week. And their big claim to fame was that Kool and the Gang got their break there. Kool and the Gang used to play there weekly.

Bowlegs: Why isn’t that up on the door?

Luke: But then some people bought it and made it more appropriate for the neighbourhood and spiffed it up. It probably makes more money, but I liked it when it was like before, when you had to deal with this asshole old man all the time, or he’d sick his son on you.

Kristina: Green Point Tavern used to be that way too. Remember that place? It’s still there. They’re famous for huge beers. It’s always watered down and disgusting. 

Michael: The Turkey’s Nest is still like that. 

Peter: Yeah, you can get gin and tonic to go at that place.

Michael: You can get a margarita or whatever you want in a to-go cup with a lid. 

Luke: Ok, we better go. The NME have been waiting for awhile. 

Pete: But next time you’re in New York, the Turkey’s Nest. 

Bowlegs: Definitely.  

Read the Bowleg’s review of ‘Pigeons’ by clicking here: Pigeons Review