As I read, I found myself either in a constant state of nodding along in agreement or nerding out so hard in disagreement that it made the author nervous. After we couldn’t find a time to talk record collecting over an in-person digging trip in Austin, we decided to avoid the awkwardness of two writers on Skype and just have an e-mail interview. It turned into this: “Hey @ZackTeibloom do you realize the interview questions you sent me total up 1,816 words? #nervouslaughter #wow.” To be fair, a couple of them weren’t even questions. It was just me ranting about why I didn’t get her snobbery over The Shins getting big, when that was her intent and then a stupid-long non-question rant about vinyl that led to her just saying “Thanks for sharing.” I’d like to offer a far less sarcastic “Thank you for sharing” to Courtney for opening up in this wonderful book. She spills her guts on how music has been integral for her in everything from sitting around, arguing over top-5 lists, how to judge someone before you date them and how to deal with your feelings after you date them. In between, we find out why Britney couldn’t be the next Madonna, why The Rolling Stones need to stop and why Yacht rock is cool.

I worked a lot on mtvU, the college music channel, and it was so much fun. They were just expanding to some cable providers in major college markets in 2007 by popular demand — it had been available only on campuses, but we were finding a lot of people wanted to keep watching it after the graduated. It’s a fun, experimental channel and they let me talk them into putting on all kinds of videos for no reason other than I liked them a lot. They let me make up programming ideas like the mtvU Woodie awards, which I stole (with permission and all due credit) from something Saddle Creek and Sub Pop did when Bright Eyes and the Shins sold 100K records for the first time.

So to see MTV and think just MTV or just The Jersey Shore is a misnomer.

I don’t do any music programming in my current job, it’s all digital strategy. I have to stay very on top of pop culture and music to do that, but it’s a relief to just enjoy the music I enjoy for awhile and not make it part of my work goals.

No, I would never reveal the rock star because his identity isn’t important in the context of what I wrote. Some other exes had their names changed and some didn’t, depending on if we’re still on speaking terms or not.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Get Tickets to the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz Show Here. Tig goes on at 10 for $10.    

It’s sure to be a: Good one.

Here’s 9 of the toughest holes The Boxing Lesson have struggled through: Warning- there is a picture of the most gruesome finger injury you’ve ever seen.

1. [Par 3]- The Boxing Lesson’s contract with their longtime manager Ryan ended in February 2011. They tried to negotiate and couldn’t come to an agreement. The Boxing Lesson went their own ways and have been DIY ever since.
2. [Par 2]- On the second hole, there was a steep incline and Paul hit it up the hill three times and had it roll right back down the hill and he had to start all over again. He never broke a smile, re-focused and tapped in for a 5.
3. [Par 5]- “6 days before that tour, i chopped 1/3 of my left hand pointer finger off in a Stir-Fry accident. I was attempting to cut scallions, and instead cut myself. It literally made a popping sound.I had to re-learn all my parts in 5 days with my main bass finger sticking straight up in the air. I was “#1″ in every picture after that.” -Jaylinn
4. [Par 5]- The Boxing Lesson’s old drummer Jake Mitchell, who is now in jail, plays on two songs on Muerta. His wife cried when she heard the songs.
5. [Par 3]- They were stuck without a drummer for SXSW ’11, prompting Jaylinn to send Venny a text message: “How would you like to get Boxing Lesson out of a jam…or into one. Waka waka.”
6. [Par 5]- “In 2004, I let a “friend” crash in my apartment while I was going out of town for about a week and a half. When I returned, my door had an abandoned sticker on it and the door was open. I looked in and there was NOTHING LEFT but dust balls. I had a breakdown. Filed a police report for like $70,000 worth of gear, etc.  I lost EVERYTHING INCLUDING ALL MY MUSIC GEAR – I was a serious collector, had many amps, guitars, pedals, synths, recording gear, mics, etc.” -Paul
7. [Par 5]- “Months later, I saw my 1964 Fender Super Reverb on eBay. I knew it was my amp right away.  I asked for serial number and the seller wouldn’t give it up.  I remembered a tear in the tolex above the volume knob. I remembered blue chalk on the baffle inside near the speakers.  The eBay auction said, “AMP OF YOUR DREAMS.”  I was like , “NO SHIT!” Jaylinn bid on it and won the auction for like $1800 and they were trying to rush her to send payment. Instead, we sent the LAPD who recovered about 80% of my music gear and NONE OF MY PERSONAL GEAR and made no arrests.” -Paul.
8. [Par 4] “We drove this horrendous drive to IL in the dead of winter to record at Daytrotter and when we got there, the Moog was frozen and I couldn’t play it. We were there to record Dark Side of the Moog too! So it was Dark Side of the Junop instead.” -Jaylinn
9. [Par 4]- Paul is still in pain from a November car accident where a bunch of 16 year-olds t-boned him while he was in the passenger seat. He’ll need expensive shoulder surgery to correct it this summer. “Does that come out in the music?” Caitlin asked. Paul quickly says “No.” “He keeps that in a different spot,” Jaylinn explains.

Click here to read the back 9 holes on Austin Writes Music. Don’t worry, it gets better for our friends. Paul even knocks down a beer with a shot!

And of course, don’t forget their show this weekend! We’re giving away two tickets. Like the story on Facebook, or RT on Twitter to enter by Friday at noon 6/10. Or you can just comment on the story. As long as I see it, you’re entered.

JUNE 11: 101X HOMEGROWN INFO: MIDNIGHT PERFORMANCE

• RSVP on Do512 for discounted admission here:
• 101X HOMEGROWN
• FACEBOOK EVENT
• THE BOXING LESSON BAND CAMP
• BUY MUERTA ON ITUNES

In 2004, The Boxing Lesson recorded an album** that they never intended on releasing. The album is full of dreamy synthesizers, acoustic guitar, drum loops and bizarre ”field recordings,” left vocal-free despite having lyrics and song titles for all songs. It was mixed on cassette for Paul and Jaylinn to take psychadelics, trip out and just blast it for their own enjoyment when no other music was deemed suitable. They listened to it non-stop for months and then hid the tape away in a closet for six years, afraid to ruin the only copy of the master tape. In August of this year, Paul was listening to Ariel Pink and thought “Wait a minute, I’ve made this album,” dug out the tape and was crushed to find it unplayable. He texted Jaylinn “OMG the tape is broken. I’m devastated!”

Fur State is a pun on the fact that it's the "First Eight" songs they recorded for the album. The songs are titled "One," through "Eight."

The Boxing Lesson wasn’t going to give up on their damaged baby that easily. They brought it to their friend Danny Reisch (a producer who has worked with White Demin among many others) and he performed surgery on the tape, moved the housing, used a pro tape deck and pro tools and brought Fur State back to life. What they unearthed was a gem. The first comparison I made while listening was Radiohead’s In Rainbows. High praise, I know, but the mix of drum machines, soft acoustic guitars, etheral dreamyness and synths draw comparisons. I asked Paul and Jaylinn what they thought it sounded like and they sighed emphatically in unison. It’s hard to say what you think your own album sounds like, but Paul said he did enjoy being able to listen to it fresh six years after the fact, which is so rare for a band who’s usually so deeply involved in recording that they can’t separate themselves from the process they’re already wrapped up in. They mention Brian Eno and Pink Floyd, Ariel Pink and a little bit of Wavves. Again, all good company. The Brian Eno held the most water for me. Listen to the album as you’re falling asleep with the window open*** and let it wash over you.

The first words of the album come on the wild track, “Seven,” which features a number of voicemails and field recordings from 2004 when the band was in LA and had “dropped off” and their friends and family were trying to get ahold of them. At the time, Jaylinn was into recording everything going on around her. Conversations on the street, oddballs she ran into, a neighbor who vaccumed incessantly in the morning, voicemails from friends. They created a collage of the madness that surrounded them.**** It’s a beautiful portrait of the band at the time when they were writing songs in hotel rooms and dropping out of society.

If you’ve heard The Boxing Lesson, you will be shocked by this album. You’ll definitely notice the gorgeous signature outer space synth sounds Jaylinn is known for, but without Paul’s usual driving rock voice and guitar, it’s a true departure for the band, but fans who love the sound they know should have no fears. I’ve focused entirely on Fur State, but The Boxing Lesson also finished up a new album, Possibilities, slated for a 2011 release and it will sound far more like The Boxing Lesson you’re used to. They’ll be previewing it at their release party on Thursday as well (RSVP for the Release party on Facebook)

*We decided to meet at a coffee shop right next to where the Austin Film Festival was going on, so after 20 minutes of driving around aimlessly looking for parking, I parked illegally and we did the interview leaned up against my car so I wouldn’t get towed.

**They recorded it in their apartment on pawnshop-purchased instruments after getting robbed of all their possessions in LA.

***I’d recommend listening to all of Eno’s ambient music like this.

****It’s a lot like Frank Zappa’s 200 Motels. Check that out if you don’t know it and you’re into Ringo, Keith Moon and weird Zappa stuff.

Leslie was funny and tragic without intending to be, as he always is. Thax was poignant and insightful, and a little beyond me, as he always is.

I came across Leslie as ACL was just starting Friday early afternoon. I welcomed him to the fest and asked how many ACL’s this was for him. He couldn’t venture a guess or even an estimation, but did note that he wasn’t at the fest last year, “because I was in a coma.” He was wearing a midriff baring t-shirt that read “I’m with the band.” Leslie made what I assume was a joke about how he was a groupie for a band I’m pretty sure wasn’t at the festival. Feeling a tad awkward, I told him he had a nice tan going, pointing to his brown stomach. He replied, “Yeah, I have a nice tan until I bathe” again. That was not a joke. Alrighty, moving on.

I caught a glimpse of Thax’s thick white beard as the Local Natives were halfway through “Sun Hands” Saturday afternoon. Sure, “Sun Hands” is one of my favorite songs of the year and I’ve interviewed Thax at length before, but I felt compelled to chase him down. We caught him halfway to the XX and he seemed a bit flustered. The cluster of the festival doesn’t appeal to him the way it does Andy and I. He’d prefer reading for Miike Snow Friday night at Belmont over seeing Miike Snow-Black Keys-Spoon-Phish amongst the masses. Thax’s best readings were still ahead of him, with Sunday’s fantastic Yeasayer and Flaming Lips poems Sunday, but he told us why his Saturday non-read worked out so well.

The timing of a festival makes squeezing a poem in difficult, but it all seemed to work out for the bearded rock poet. Thax was scheduled to read for the Broken Bells and it didn’t come together in the madness of the fest, but he was OK with that. He told us that whenever he isn’t confident in his poem, inevitably that reading gets canceled, without fail. It’s fated that way. What I found odd was that Thax said he planned on using a lot of what he wrote for Broken Bells and re-working it to fit David Bazan, saying there were enough connections between the two artists that it would work.

I gotta be honest, I can rarely follow much of a Thax poem, no matter how much I love the imagery.His Flaming Lips #5 poem was different. It all made perfect sense and was just what we needed to get locked in for Wayne’s bubble launch.

Thax said he didn’t have his ACL poems written in advance and came up with them as the day went on. I have no idea how he could gather his thoughts in those surroundings, but festivals can bring out the best in us when we’re tested. As Thax said on his Facebook page after the weekend, “ah ACL- just like Lolla it begins as a labyrinthine nightmare, but then opens out into magic and I know I’ll be back next year.” Me too, Thax. Me too.

And we didn’t even mention the constant touring and bombastic live festival shows. How does Matt have the energy to come out balls-to-the-wall every night while battling Bronchitis and a brutal tour schedule? He credits it to a full night sleep and today’s mix of Honey Nut Cheerios and Cinnamon Life, which he says are two of his favorite cereals.

Matt acknowledged he manages to get more sleep on tour than at home and is recovering from Bronchitis slowly, but surely and sprinkling a few coughs into his set. Alright, that makes sense, but have you heard the new single, “Cameras“? Clearly they upped the production ten-fold on this album. Their last album, Grand, was recorded in his bedroom and they used two studios for new album Sidewalks. How are they managing to play it live? Well, they aren’t. And it’s not necessarily because they can’t. Matt said he’s so used to bands saying “Who wants to hear some new stuff?!” met with a chorus of “meh.” “People don’t want to hear new songs. They want songs they know and can sing along to.”  Sidewalks comes out November 2nd, but Matt and Kim will only be adding “Cameras” to their tightly orchestrated set. Don’t worry. You’l still hear the album. They play it over the P.A. before every live show*.

I congratulated Matt on their recent VMA win for “Lessons Learned,” where they got naked and ran around Times Square and asked if he had any lessons to pass on. “One lesson is there’s no harm in getting naked in public. We played at Coachella and a dude got naked and he is now a registered sex offender.” Sounds like there is harm then, doesn’t it? He modified his answer and said “If the venue is 18+, then you can take it all off.**” Personally, I’d be a little more cautious. Getting tased while naked doesn’t seem too fun.

Festival Crashers have always had a deep respect for banter and few do it as consistently well as Matt and Kim***.  I told Matt I saw a video of him preparing what banter he could use on a Japanese crowd who may not know much English. He thinks “Domo Arigoto is what every American band who ever came through Japan would say, so he thought long and hard about what to say and I asked what he ended up going with. “I remembered ‘Konichiwa, bitches!’ from The Chapelle Show, so I said that.”

Banter and nakedness aside,**** the show is really about the music. “It’s a longer set now than we’ve ever had. It used to just be five songs a show. It’s harder to keep the energy up. Ont thing that makes it happen is the crowd going bananas makes me want to get fucking crazy. I sweat out every bit of water I have in my body. Going just over an hour is the top length we can do cranked up to 12.” I told him i knew about Spinal Tap blasting it up to 11, but I’d never heard of going up to 12. “Last time I checked we were turned up to 25.” I’d have to agree. We’d just done the entire interview in nine minutes and I was satisfied.

Catch Matt and Kim on their Massive Tour

*Suck on that, 24 hour rule!

**Festival Crashers have shockingly never gotten naked at a show. Not sure we can advise that move.

***Other best banter nominees: Ezra Furman, Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips, Michael Stipe of REM and Les Savvy Fav. I’m sure I’m forgetting some.

****That was hard to write. Nakedness and banter are two pretty glorious things. Especially together.

Zack Teibloom: I heard you turned down Slash because he wanted you to sing. Who do you want to play with next?

Jack White III: “(Repeating question) I heard you turned down Slash. What do you want to play with next? Oh, who. I didn’t turn Slash down because of singing. I just dont like those compilation albums. I think they’re kind of boring.”

He then mentioned that he was more focused on what he was playing next, but didn’t elaborate.

ZT: What’s the next release from you?

JWIII: “I’m not sure when they come out. I think The Smoke Ferries 7*.”

I know The Smoke Ferries opened for The Dead Weather, but I don’t know much more about this release.

ZT: Who is writing more of the new (Dead Weather) album? You or Alison?

JWIII: “All of us. We’re all writing.”

Funny questions from other video chat users:

• Is that really you? No.
• Who’s your favorite philosopher? karl marx is pretty interesting

Questions I asked that he didn’t respond to:

• Someone asked if he was producing the new stones. He made a joke about kidney stones. I made it clear and asked “Are you producing the new Rolling Stones album?” and he avoided the question.
• There’s so much chemistry with you and Alison on stage? You ever make out? I won’t tell the wife.*
• I just started playing guitar. Any advice on songs to start with or techniques to work on?
• Who will you tour with next? The Dead Weather, Raconteurs or White Stripes?
• What has inspired you most recently?
• Please play guitar more. It melts me. I like your hair. You run fast.**

*I think he read this and smiled, but didn’t respond. OK that didn’t happen, but I just watched some tour videos where Alison blows her straw wrapper at Jack and it’s clear she annoys the shit out of him. They aren’t hooking up. They’re just good actors.

**I actually said that first part. The hair and running fast was an “It’s Always Sunny” joke.

I’mma let you finish, but that was the best surprise Jack White appearance of all time!

Thax had trouble getting comfortable at IHOP, as we moved booths due to a draft and switched sides because the sunlight bouncing off car windshields in the parking lot reflected into his visibly smudged bifocals. He seems comfortable in Austin though. He hasn’t worked in 12 years, he doesn’t own anything and doesn’t travel, but he’s happy to be in Austin reading his poetry before bands take the stage on an almost daily basis.

Just look at his schedule of his readings in a sample week in the first month he’d been here: Oct. 25th: Disco Doom, Built to Spill, Oct. 26th: Underground Railroad to Candyland, Oct. 27th Givers, Dirty Projectors, Oct. 28th: Sea Wolf, Oct. 30th: Rachel Goodrich, Oct. 31st: The Black Angels. The 52 year-old estimates he reads 25 nights a month and has to remind himself to take a night off. Did I mention he doesn’t even get paid for any of these gigs?

Thax moved to Austin 5 weeks ago from Chicago in time for ACL, though he doesn’t much care for festivals saying he’d rather have a night at one show and doesn’t read more than two poems a day at a fest. He’s gotten right into the music scene thanks to connections at C3 (the company who puts on Lollapalooza, ACL and most big shows in Austin.) “C3 has been really cool. They’ve opened a lot of doors,” Thax said.

He started reading poetry for bands in June of 1997 in Chicago, but says he doesn’t feel he got momentum until 2001, when he started getting recognized. It was also the year he read for The White Stripes, just before they became huge. He says Jack White* played two songs before realizing he forgot to have Thax read and brought him out, killing the momentum.

Other than the slight misstep with The White Stripes, Thax says “nothing ever goes wrong” with the process. One time he mixed up a band’s name and almost read for the wrong band, but somehow everything worked out.

He’s written five Ezra Furman poems, describing Ezra’s voice as having a “jagged, passionate quality to it, while still being melodic.” “I feel like I’ve known Ezra forever” he says, even though he’s only been seeing him play for two years.

I ask him to explain how lines from his Ezra poems like “Tendernesses lie in their cartons like lovingly polished golden eggs waiting to hatch” and “gnomes are tickled by the planet like bullies turned inside out” and he said it’s like asking a beautiful woman to tell you why she’s attractive. Fair enough.

Thax feels one with the band he’s reading for, saying “When I do a poem for a band, it’s like I’m an honorary member of that band for a night.” He’s not delusional though. “Just because I read for these bands, doesn’t mean I’m close friends with them. Going back stage can be like going to the office. It can be really dull.” He did love being on stage for Girl Talk, however.**

He’s read for a thousand bands, but won’t read poems for ones he doesn’t like, even if makes it awkward to run into Grizzly Bear after turning them down. Here’s a sampling of 50 of the 1,000 bands he’s read poems before:

The White Stripes, The Flaming Lips, Girl Talk, Animal Collective, Andrew Bird, Bon Iver, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Bright Eyes, Built to Spill, Neko Case, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Cold War Kids, Cursive, Death Cab for Cutie, Dr. Dog, Fall Out Boy, Ezra Furman & the Harpoons, Jimmy Eat World, Ted Leo/Pharmacists, Maps & Atlases, Margot & the Nuclear So-and-So’s, Meat Puppets, Modest Mouse, Of Montreal, OK GO, Okkervil River, Passion Pit, Elvis Perkins in Dearland, Silver Jews, Spoon, The Dandy Warhols, The Dirty Projectors, The Hush Sound, The Kills, The Magnetic Fields, The National, The New Pornographers, The Polyphonic Spree, The Redwalls, The Shins, Them, Tortoise, Vampire Weekend, M. Ward, Wilco, Yeasayer, Yo La Tengo, Zwan

Guster asked him to write a poem four years ago, but something has always come up. His wish list of bands he’d like to write for isn’t that big. He’ll write for bands even if he doesn’t get a chance to meet them. He was so impressed with Radiohead’s Lollapalooza set in 2008 that he wrote a poem for them several days after their set, when the band was long gone.

Here’s Thax’s poem from Dirty Projectors the other night that I attended:

*Probably the only time I will ever take someone else’s side against Jack White, but Jack really set him up to fail.

**I completely remember seeing him there on the side of the stage at Girl Talk almost a year ago today to the date.

“People would sooner pay $10 to see four guys pretending to be KISS than $5 to see four guys playing original songs nobody had ever heard before.” –Chuck Klosterman from his essay “Appetite for Replication” in Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs

In the week prior to Michael Jackson’s death, Thriller sold 277 copies. The next week it sold over 100,000, as Jackson’s entire catalog dominated the charts. When an artist dies, or stops touring, fans clamor for their music. It’s why cover bands exist.

A band that hasn’t made it with originals can achieve an instant fan base by playing the music of a popular band that doesn’t tour anymore. There are exceptions, but most cover bands are around to turn fans on to classic rock legends who no longer tour like Led Zeppelin, Kiss, The Talking Heads and, most importantly, The Beatles.

Steph Paynes is the founding member of Lez Zeppelin, an all-female, don’t-ask-if-lez-means-lesbian Led Zeppelin cover band.

“You see a ton of Zeppelin cover bands that are middle-aged guys in dragon suits with their shirts open and that is not at all what we’re doing,” Paynes said.

Cover bands don’t need to look the part these days. While the Guns N’ Roses cover band Klosterman writes about tries to look like Slash and Axl, cover bands are making it big without having to subject themselves to becoming a carbon copy of the band’s music they play.

Who’s Who of Cover Bands

Dark Star Orchestra plays classic Grateful Dead shows, taking the set-list from one particular night and replicating it song-for-song in order. The Fab Faux plays Beatles songs from the early mop top days. The Easy Dub All Stars record covers of entire classic rock albums like Dark Side of the Moon and Sgt. Pepper to critical acclaim.

Then there’s Joe Cocker, the king of covers. He’s the most successful cover artist of all-time even though he never even picked a band to cover exclusively, though he is known to cover three Beatles songs in a set. Not every cover band has the luxury of playing to headlining festival crowds like Joe Cocker or even Lez Zeppelin who played for 20,000 at Bonnaroo.

What it takes to cover accurately

Chicago-based This Must Be The Band plays to small clubs, works day jobs and doesn’t stray far from the Midwest, but in their quest to cover The Talking Heads accurately, they put everything into it.

Putting on Stop Making Sense wasn’t something This Must be the Band took lightly. Lead singer Charlie Otto says he watched the concert film approximately 200 times to make sure the details were perfect.

“It was like three months of my life. That’s all I did for three months,” Otto said. “At the end of the show they have nine people on stage. I had to learn everyone’s part.”

To recreate the classic 1986 concert, they pulled out all the stops from the big white suit to dancing with lamps to the full choreography.

Should it be identical?

“We try to hit it to a T. We feel like everyone’s looking for every detail,” drummer Ben Domhoff said. Otto “does a good job of channeling Byrne. He smiles a bit too much to be David Byrne. He definitely needs to stop smiling so much on stage.”

Otto responded, “I don’t know if I’m going to try to watch that. I’m sure there are a good number of people who think everything has to be exactly the same. I don’t think it would be fun to have to be exactly like them.”

Paynes shares that sentiment. She says when she hears the phrase tribute band, she thinks of an act trying to “trick the audience to think it’s the same thing,” but that’s not Lez Zeppelin.Especially after seeing Led Zeppelin’s guitarist Jimmy Page play live, Paynes knows she can sound like him without trying to be him.

“I’m so familiar with his nuance and his feel that I can construct a solo that will sound very Page-ian because I’ve been doing it this long,” she said. “But it struck me that I’m never going to play like him. He’s him. I’m me and you can’t really copy someone to that extreme. I wouldn’t want to.”

Putting a unique spin on the music is an important aspect of the cover. Easy Dub All Stars use a distinct reggae tinge that completely revamps the album they’re covering. On “Money,” from the cover of Dark Side of the Moon, they replace the cash-register noise with a bong bubbling and coughing. “She’s Leaving Home” from the cover of Sgt. Pepper has a female singer and steel drums.

Covering Pink Floyd and The Beatles makes sense. One could see Paul McCartney and Roger Waters in rare concert appearances, but the bands have multiple deceased members and no longer tour or make albums. Covering Radiohead is just fun. Easy Dub decided to cover OK Computer after hearing that Radiohead was playing their Dub Side of the Moon on the P.A. before their concerts.

The most puzzling cover of a cover is This Must Be The Band’s performance of “Take Me to the River.” They’re covering a Talking Heads version of an Al Green song, but as evidenced by Al Green’s recent Bonnaroo performance, the soul singer hasn’t lost a step. So what draws these bands to keep the covers going, even when the original is still there? Check out the side-by-side video to see the differences.

This Must Be The Band “Take Me To The River”

Talking Heads’ “Tame Me To The River” If you want the full effect, play this 4-5 seconds after the cover version and watch them side by side

As editor of Festivalcrashers.com. I was lucky to see over 100 bands in the last year on the music festival circuit. It was surprising that the two best shows of the summer (Phish at Bonnaroo and Neil Young at New Orleans Jazz Fest) ended the exact same way. Both bands closed their nearly three-hour sets with a one-song encore of The Beatles’ “A Day in the Life.”

Besides the coincidence of both shows ending on the exact same song, the odd part is it’s a song The Beatles themselves never played live. Phish and Neil Young seem hell-bent on recreating a moment that never happened. It’s not just keeping the music alive. It’s creating an alternate universe where it can come alive for the first time. As the last line in the song goes, “I’d love to turn you on.”

It has the makings for an incredible night. RhythmSektion.com was able to get an exclusive interview with lead singer Benjamin Davis. Festival Crashers decided to post it as well.

It kind of blows my mind how much there is to learn about touring, or at least touring well. All of the ways to maximize the benefit of spending just a few hours in each city. It’s easy to tear through a tour and not accomplish much, other than wearing oneself ragged. What I’ve learned is not actually a very exciting thing to get into really.
As far as what I want to do next? Sleeping in my bed through the holidays sounds nice. Then Australia?

The origins of our band name is kind of a secret.. It is indeed important and has several meanings to me.

Ah, nice! Our new site launched days ago, and you’ve seen it already! I had our site redesigned to adapt to the way we wanted to use the internet. I guess one will have to just keep checking to see what we’ve decided to do with it.

The phone was just something i experimented with, and it turned out being part of our stage show. I have several other ideas and instruments that could be just as integral down the line. If I put the word out now, it would be old news before I ever did it.

Irene has the exact opposite effect than what you’re describing. That’s kind of like saying that drinking water limits your ability to be thirsty. If we really really wanted to play something out of order, we could do it. And any cover we did that might require backing tracks would just end up on the tape anyway. And who said we don’t have encore songs on the tape, just never play them?

I think Irene is here to stay. No matter how many people are onstage, I will always want to hear more. That is Irene’s job!

Ha! I kind of suggested that with my last answer didn’t I? We are open to expansion if something or someone came into our lives. But as of right now, there are absolutely no plans to expand beyond Sebastien, Irene, and myself.

*A duo without Jack White