Indian Jewelry

So we already told you why we're excited to see Indian Jewelry this evening at the Lounge, and in antcipation of their performance, we decided to ask them a few questions via email. We wanted to talk about their live show, their rotating membership, and how they go about writing their songs. Some of their answers are more informative than others, but hey, what can you do when you're answering email questions on tour? Our questions and their answers are below:

1. The last time we saw you guys in Denton, you had an insane live show that was particularly intense thanks to use of a strobe light flashing at the audience for literally the entire performance. What do you guys aim to do to or with the audience when you play live?

What an audience does is an audience's business so long as they show us some respect and stay out of our space. If they don't that's fine too. We have acquired a bullwhip. With the strobe light flashing any insolent fools won't know where the lashes are coming from, only where they are landing. It used to be that we were trying to help them find their way to total freedom through the time-worn paths of hypnotic light and sound. But then we heard that freedom wasn't free, and we weren't feeling that generous after all.

2. How crucial is visual art to what you are trying to do with your music?

You may not know it but I was once on top of the art game, vis a vis writing and curating. i retired a champion, undefeated. The difference between me and any other artwad is that I walked out upright and on the same legs that brought me in. Art, like everything else, is fine in its time and place but like everything else it is full of pimps and other middlemen and they all need to get out the way.

3. Can you tell me about who started the band and how it was started? What inspired you early on, and what were things like in Houston when you got started?

Erika and I started the band as 2001 turned to 2002 new year's weekend in big bend. We had big plans. Full bore aesthetic hijacking for king's ransoms. Beauty in volume. Spirit frequency smearage. Swarm of angels guerilla warfare. Disindoctrination. Blood on the parquet. Dancing in the bus lane. Houston, however, don't shine to big plans. Then as always it was a spotty place where inspiring people and lifeless jackoffs share chips and salsa every night without regard for snobbery or even basic aesthetics. At the time we were mesmerized by the utopian promise of noise. It took us a while to realize that it was just another closed-circuit social channel.

4. I've read that the band's membership is constantly changing and fluctuating depending on who happens to be around. What are some of the advantages of working in this manner? What are some of the disadvantages?

It is true to a point. Our membership of active players does change fairly often, but we have circles within circles. Certain people have been with us from the start and they work their way in and around the general mess. The advantage to the way we work is that we can get more done than other bands doing it the older way, especially with regards to recording and touring. Also, it keeps us from becoming too complacent, especially insofar as our band identity is hardly fixed as we, and here I mean both erika and I as well as the whole working group, have to adapt to the ideas and the ways of the different people we play with. On the other hand, it is difficult to make everyone feel fully invested as they step in and out of the circle of activity. It can be hard work scaring up a posse, and sometimes we lose momentum abruptly. What's more, I love the old romance of the classic rock band and i hate to see people come and go.

5. Can you tell me a bit about your songwriting process? Your music is obviously very unpredictable but certainly not random or purely improvisational in nature, and I'm curious as to how this all comes together.

Not to be glib but while we write songs as they come to us they are in fact written. People might not believe it to see us play live but we put more care into every second of our music and lyrics than most precious singer-songwriters invest into their whole wee catalogs.

6. What has touring been like for you recently? Do you find that you have a healthy audience throughout the country?

We used to have fans and no audience. Now we have an audience but fewer fans. And I'd hardly call it a healthy audience, looks to me like they could spend less time in the buffet line and more time outdoors.

7. Your new album sounds a bit more accessible and a tad less dark than your last one. What do you think accounts for this slight shift in sound, if anything?

Psychology. Invasive Exotics (first record) is about dark feelings. It was written in the midst of dark times and dark places. Free Gold (second record) on the other hand was supposed to be morning music, the kind you put on in the morning, but things soured. To be sure, it has a lot of California in it in my opinion, and reflects the time that we spent in los angeles.

8. What is your typical set up when you play live?

In a nutshell, three things. Things what repeat, things what amplify sound, and people what get the job done.

9. It seems that you guys apply elements of classic psychedelic rock and droning electro pretty much equally in your music. Can you tell us some of your favorite psyche rock bands and early electro/experimental groups?

We are barbarians at the gates of the palace of the record nerds. We've spent so much of the last several years writing songs and making records that, sadly, our own
listening habits have suffered. But van time is different, and there you have Fleetwood Mac, classic rock radio, and occasionally rap stations.

10. Any funny stories from this current tour?

Funny is tragedy plus time and we haven't had the time.

11. Any noteworthy plans for the immediate future?

There is no future. only now. Of course, that is until the next bout of now and I'm a little nervous about that one and the one after it.

(Indian Jewelry play this evening at the Lounge in Dallas)