TLOBF Interview // Washed Out

There are certain dates on my calendar that for one reason or another will always stand out. It could be a birthday; it could be Christmas, or even the day in September when I’d always have to go back to school. It’s on these sorts of days I always find myself stopping and thinking of what I was doing last year.

More often that not the answer is ‘pretty much the same thing’. Certainly life moves fast, I won’t argue with Ferris on that one. However, it was about a year ago that Washed Out first hit the blogosphere in a wave of fuzzed up, blissful hype. One year. Since then a hell of a lot has changed in the world of Ernest Greene. I caught up with him over an unreliable phone signal to look back over the last 365 days.

Hi Ernest, what are you up to?
I’m sitting outside. I’m not gonna move from this spot so I won’t lose the signal.

Are you in Georgia right now? (For some reason my phone thought I was calling Canada)
Yeah, it’s about an hour east of Atlanta. It’s kind of like a weekend getaway spot so it’s really dead during the week. There’s no one around right now. It’s a lake house overlooking this really large lake. It’s pretty nice.

Are you near Athens? (Home of B-52s, REM, Of Montreal…)
Actually it’s about 30 minutes away. I lived there for probably 5 years. Unluckily this house wasn’t available then but I love Athens. It’s kind of a smaller college town but there has been quite a few pretty good acts come out of there.

So, give us a bit of background. How did it all begin for Washed Out?
I grew up taking piano lessons. I’ve kind of always done music. As I got a little older grunge was the big thing so I learnt how to play guitar listening to that music. I guess that progressed as I went off to college. I started doing more like, electronic based stuff just on a computer by myself. That kind of suited the way I work. It was nice to be able to multi-track and do everything myself but I didn’t study music or anything so it was always kind of a hobby and it has continued to be a hobby until the last year or so when I had a few songs up on Myspace… The right people heard them and all of a sudden there were offers to do shows and stuff so it’s gradually become more and more serious.

Were you expecting that kind reaction when you put your songs on Myspace?
It was pretty strange. It was nothing I really pursued at all, it just sort of happened. I was living in a town in South Carolina called Columbia which is another college town, it’s where the University of South Carolina’s situated, and a friend of mine, Chaz Bundick (Toro Y Moi) he started getting some press attention and stuff which kind of lead to someone stumbling across my page.

It wasn’t even like I was reaching out to people. I think a lot of people these days will send songs to blogs, or whatever. I was lucky enough that a blog in London reached out to me. It was really crazy, especially how fast everything happened. I sent off a couple of songs to this blog No Pain In Pop and then there was an instant response. As soon as the songs were up people started emailing me wanting more stuff… I would finish songs over the next few days and just send them off and they would eventually be put online and the whole ball kept rolling bigger and bigger.

Did you ever pay much attention to blogs before?
It’s really funny thinking back to last summer, I was really into the new up and coming bands and what’s happening and a lot of that discovering new music was done through blogs. I’m far too busy now to keep up like I did then. I was definitely into reading No Pain In Pop. I had been a big fan of Gorilla vs. Bear, I was pretty much into whatever they posted. When I got an email from Chris the head guy asking if I had any songs, that was a pretty amazing feeling.

I do everything in my bedroom. There’s no recording studio or professional mixing or mastering. So I would finish the song, email it to Chris, he would post it later that day and then by the next morning it’s like, thousands of views and everything’s shared all over the Internet. It was really crazy and nice. Like you get an instant response so that was kind of cool.

http://vimeo.com/8180278

Does that translate when you play live or has the response been different?
For me the recording and the live thing is completely different and I’m much more comfortable recording as I’ve done it for years now. I have a certain way of doing things that I’m really comfortable with. The live thing has been a little bit thrown together just because there hasn’t been much time to prepare and I’ve never really done it before. There’s kind of a learning curve. I think I’ve kind of gotten past that.

Through all the blog attention I’ve been pushed to this place where people expect a certain level of professionalism. I did a few shows last fall that were the first shows I’d ever done, these sold out shows in New York. I wasn’t that proud of it just because it was so thrown together. I’ve learned a lot. I’ve done a couple of tours now and I have some time off. I’m currently recording but I have at least a couple of weeks to prepare for the next run of shows I’m doing so I have ideas to make everything better, but it’s definitely a learning process.

Have you started writing tracks now with the knowledge you’ll have to play them live?
Definitely. When I wrote the songs last summer I never thought about playing them live. I’d just keep adding more and more little elements and now as I’m approaching this new set of songs I’m considering if this is a hit song, I’m probably going to have to play this every night for the next year or so, so I’m just having that consideration.

The guys in Small Black are really good musicians and have definitely helped me along with the process. It’s too bad that they’re doing their own thing now. We’ve kind of parted ways which is sad, but they have a new album which is coming out pretty soon… So I’m in the process of getting a band together and that’s constantly on my mind when I’m working on these new songs.

What’s the best show you’ve ever played?
On tour earlier in the spring, we ended it up back in New York for the last show coz the Small Black guys are from there. We played Music Hall of Williamsburg. It was one of the bigger capacity shows and by that point we were really hitting all the marks and really comfortable with each other so it came across the perfect combination. The audience was really great and the sound there is a really good experience. That’s another thing that’s been really crazy, the biggest thing about all the blog attention; a lot of the people are coming to the shows and know the songs and so there’s people singing along.

Going back to the blogs, what about the C word? Are you sick of the Chillwave thing?
It doesn’t really bother me. I kind of think of it as maybe at first being a joke and now it’s reached the point where it’s understood as this certain sound. I kind of find myself as using it dead serious to talk about the other bands or the sound in general. So yeah, it doesn’t really bother me at all and most of the stuff that I’m grouped in with I can relate to and I’m a pretty big fan of the other bands. It’s just inevitable that people are gonna slap a label on it. It’s just really funny how it’s played out with this particular label.

Everyone will have forgotten about it in 6 months time anyway.
Things do move so quickly nowadays on the Internet.