I CAN FEEL A HOT ONE
Manchester Orchestra's Bid to Become Your Favorite Band

by John B. Moore

Manchester Orchestra was never really meant to be a big deal. The band initially started out as little more than a solo project for a teenage Andy Hull with a revolving cast of musicians. The group however, soon took up most of Hull’s time and a when a full-time line up stuck – including drummer Jeremiah Edmond and bassist Jonathan Corley - the Atlanta indie rock band decided to soldier on to see what would happen.
The group self-released an EP, which lead to their full length debut in 2006, the promising “I’m Like a Virgin Losing a Child.” Another EP quickly followed, stoked critical praise and a growing fan base, but it’s the powerful second full-length, “Mean Everything to Nothing” that will likely introduce the band to the rest of the world.

Edmond, calling in from a New York hotel room the day before the band plays a sold out show at The Bowery and taping a segment for David Letterman’s show, spoke with InSite about the band’s early beginnings, why “Virgin” wasn’t quite ready for mass consumption and the group’s recent record deal.

I wanted to start out by talking about how you all first go together.

Andy (Hull) started the band originally in high school and it started out just as a solo project for him. It was actually just going to be a rotating cast (of musicians). He eventually ended up getting some member and homeschooled himself to make the first record during his senior year. It just kind of developed into an actual band. I met the guys through some other fiends I was working with in the studio. We just got to be really good friends. They asked me if I wanted to try out. I did and I was horrible. I hadn’t played drums in three years and didn’t practice before. It was awful. I got my chops back quickly and they said “We can work with this.”

Are you originally from Atlanta, too?

No, I’m actually from Hilton Head, SC. Down the coast.

How’d you end up in Atlanta?

I went to school and ended up getting a job here working for (producer) Dan Hannon. He produced “Virgin” (Manchester Orchestra’s debut “I’m Like a Virgin Losing a Child”). How I eventually got to know the band is because I was working on a record with Dan and this other band who knew (Manchester Orchestra). Then Robert (McDowell, guitar) joined the band after interning at the studio. When we did “Virgin,” he was around the whole time. He also grew up with the guys in the band. It kind of all finally came together as a cohesive group.
You were with the band in the studio for the first record. How was it different this time around?
It was definitely a much different process as far as the planning and the work that went into it. “Virgin” we made simply because we needed to make a record. We had these new songs and the band had changed personnel so much that we just needed to get our new songs down, so we did it out of necessity. With this record there was just so much more going on. There was so much planning and all the rules that go into it, you can just get clouded by all of the chaos and stuff going on. So we just went in our rehearsal space and started writing. We were writing about a song a day. We wrote the whole record in about 13 or 14 days. Then Joe (Chicarrelli, producer for “Mean Everything to Nothing”) came in and we did pre-production and started tracking it live in Nashville. It was tough because Joe was pretty demanding. He really pushed us until he got the great performances he was looking for, even if it took eight or 12 or 20 takes. The last album, we had played the songs live for so long; these we had just written. They were really still developing as we were in the studio.

Was there anything you guys were listening to that really affected or inspired the sound of this record?

Yeah, we’ve always listened to Weezer a lot. “Pinkerton” has been one of our favorite records for a long time. We ended up drawing a lot of influence sonically – how we wanted the record to sound. Not necessarily the song structures, but there were different elements we really wanted to pull from Nirvana and Weezer and early Foo Fighters and early Jimmy Eats World. We wanted to make a record that inspires the same emotion and has the same sonic characteristics.

“Pinkerton” is one of those albums that was kind of seen as a disappointment when it was first released, but really stands up over time.

Yeah, it’s kind of like “How did everyone miss that?” The Blue album was so huge and then “Pinkerton” came out and everyone kind of dismissed it and you would hear it a few years later and think “Oh my God. This is amazing. How did I miss this?”

You guys were obviously courted by a lot of labels. Why did you decide to go with Canvasback?

Our whole thing going into it was never to sign a deal. We set ourselves up to be successful on our own as much as we possibly could. Our whole goal was to tour and be able to survive on our own. Do everything ourselves until the right partner came along and it made sense. We weren’t banking on a deal to make our career. We never had any idea we would be in a major label family. The beautiful thing about where we did end up with Canvasback is that we were able to partner our label, Favorite Gentlemen, with them and Canvasback is just a small indie under the umbrella of a larger label. We were able to retain the control that we needed and we also knew we could trust the owner and that they believed in our vision and or long term career. We really had to hold the reins and make sure they stuck with us, We didn’t want “I’m Like a Virgin Losing a Child” to be our introduction to the world. We weren’t ready. There was a lot of holding back until this record was finished.       

Are you pleased with the amount of control they’ve given you guys?

Yeah. And we’ve been able to pretty much retain complete control… We’re incredibly pleased to have an incredible team that believes in us and is fighting for us. We’re incredibly lucky because not many artists are able to say that.

What can you tell me about the band’s label?

Well, Andy and I run Favorite Gentlemen and it started out just as a simple artist community. We realized there were so many bands around Atlanta, and that we toured with, that were amazing and just trying to make it. We figured if we sort of banded together and threw the same logo on our records and tried to support each other, any attention one of us got would feed into the others. It just seemed to make sense to us and it kept growing. When we signed, we ended up getting some funding for the label and some distribution, so know we are able to run the label like a fully functioning label. We signed some bands and now we’re able to put out some records.  

You guys obviously spent a lot of time on the road touring with the last record. Do you plan to keep up that momentum on the road with this one?

Yeah. The way we structured the band, and kind of how you have to do it now, is that you have to be out there on the road. That’s where you make your career in music now. I come from the studio world and I love making records, probably even more than I like playing live half the time,  but (playing live) is where you make your living now. There’s something there that you simply can’t capture on a record. We’ll definitely play a lot. It won’t be as insane as the last two years – because that was almost deadly... But, we’ll continue to tour hard.

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