We All Have Hooks For Hands, an indie folk-pop band of early-twenty-year-olds from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, has already begun to make an impact.  Their second LP, The Shape of Energy, was recently released last month, and the band will be making their second appearance in St. Louis this fall at the Firebird on November 29th.  The band has six touring members, and ELEVEN was lucky to speak with a few of them before their concert in St. Louis in October.

We All Have Hooks For Hands – Made Up of Tiny Lights

[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

How did you come up with your band name?

Eli Show:

We were in the van thinking of band names, and it was just one really bad band name after the other, so this was like, the least worst of all of them. We were just kind of thinking of naming it something different, with a sentence type of title to it.

Is it specifically alluding to Peter Pan?

ES:

(laughs) I don’t know, I think it was more of what the words sounded like together rather than what it actually meant.

David Lethcoe:

I don’t think we were taking the name that seriously, so…but yeah, how it sounds is something.

ES:

Yeah, which sucks, ‘cause titles are important, I mean, we totally dig titles. The name for the new album is The Shape of Energy, and that actually means something. And we took a while thinking about that. But the band name kind of just…we were short on time (laughs), and we needed to name it something.

Could you tell me about the title of the album?

ES:

The Shape of Energy is a reference to something Tom Robbins said: “The only thing that dies is the shape of energy.” Energy has that law of conservation: it cannot be created or destroyed – it’s just transferred. So the only thing that actually dies is the shape of energy, so it’s the idea that music is [like energy in] that it’s like past influences dying and then creating new in a different shape.

DL:

Yeah or filling like a vessel or something…

ES:

Like postmodernism.

How did you all end up together in a band?

ES:

We were kind of just friends. I mean we just grabbed everybody we knew that played something, and then kind of cherry-picked a few people from other local bands and started a really huge band project at first, and then we kind of just narrowed it down so that we could tour really easily.

How does having two drummers influence your sound?

ES:

Obviously it gives it a lot more percussion, but I think it adds a lot more to the rhythm of everything, and everybody pretty much playing off of movement and rhythm.

DL:

Everybody seems to sort of like the aesthetic look of it for live shows too.

What are some of the influences on your music?

ES:

I’ve been thinking about this. I think, actually, the influences are more or less stuck in stuff we listened to a while ago ‘cause I think The Rents, Broken Social Scene, and The Microphones are big influences, but then I think there’s also subconscious influences from our area, like folk music.

DL:

I think there are things that influence us creatively, and then there are things that influence the sound, too, and they are kind of separate things.

ES:

Yeah. I think what we’re listening to now is just what we like rather than what we actually are influenced by. And maybe that might be in the next record, I mean, ‘cause right now we’re listening to a lot of older rock n’ roll, like The Band, Fleetwood Mac, and Creedence Clear Water Revival, and then we’re listening to Diana Ross and a lot more soul music. I don’t think that comes out too much in this album, but I think the next album will have a lot more influence-wise. But we do love soul music, and we do have a brass section.

So do you think that with each album you’re getting closer to your individual style, or do you think you’ve already kind of established that style?

DL:

I wouldn’t say that we’ve already established it.

ES:

Yeah, I think we’re getting closer to sort of establishing [the] style for the band. We’re all used to playing with each other at this point in time. I still think our last album was kind of like lo-fi happy pop, and this one is kind of a marriage between rock n’ roll and lo-fi pop, plus a folk-sense.

DL:

Yeah, and I’m sure the way that we make music will change, just through time, too.

ES:

Oh yeah, or how it’s actually recorded, ‘cause we recorded this album live; everybody was in one room, and we played together and recorded every song together, and then we tracked over the top of that. Where I think if you single-track everything, you have more of an opportunity to add really weird layering and stuff.

So you haven’t done that yet?

ES:

We did that for the first album kind of, and then the second album with the full band, and on the next thing we try to do I think we’ll return to doing really weird movements or very weird compositions.  This record we’re releasing right now is definitely more straight-forward, but it sounds extremely solid, it’s very warm-feeling, and it has a lot of energy to it because we’re all in a room.

Timothy Evanson:

Yeah, and the fact that we recorded it in five days pretty much in just two places, and we didn’t have a lot of time to sit with the recordings and listen to the recordings over and over again and go crazy adding stuff to it — we just kind of did it.

ES:

Yeah, it’s very gut-feeling, very right-straight-up-front this is what we did, and we’re going for it.

Can you explain the art on the cover of the album?

ES:

It’s far fetching to throw the name with the album cover. It was a picture from a film we did, somewhat, but I think it was just the idea of smoke coming out of this hole, and smoke could have [represented] energy.

DL:

Wasn’t it kind of a symbol?

ES:

Yeah, I think the hole actually extends from a Native American symbol for the subconscious. It’s called kiva, a ladder going into a hole, like into your subconscious, and then there’s a fire in the hole. And that’s kind of where the idea originally stemmed from, the actual visual idea from it.

The words “We All” are kind of squished together, and then the rest of the words are clumped in a different space. Is there a reason for that?

ES:

I thought it was interesting text-wise. I liked the idea of putting “We All” together because we’re kind of a big band, and we’re about being a giant project, so “We All” was more important than the rest of the name (laughs).

Do you all have a favorite song from the album?

TE:

I suppose we all have probably different favorite songs.

DL:

There are parts that I really like.

ES:

Whenever the trumpet’s going?

DL:

Yeah. (all laugh)

ES:

It’s kind of like what we’ve been pushing out. I like “Made Up Of Tiny Lights” best so far, but I think after hearing that one a lot I’m probably going to move to a different one. But I think that one has some of my favorite dynamics and kind of like…

DL:

More immediate appeal.

ES:

Yeah, I just like the immediacy of that one, very energetic.

DL:

I like playing all of them right now. Favorites as far as which one I like listening to more, I really don’t know, but playing “Made Up Of Tiny Lights” is a lot of fun.

So how did each of you begin playing music?

DL:

We all kind of came from music—

Tory Stolen:

Yeah, we were all in metal bands, pretty much.

ES:

Well, more punk-rock bands. And Tim was in a country band…slash…folk? I don’t even actually know.

TE:

Well, old-time folk music.

ES:

The drummers, [Logan,] and I—so four of us—were in like punk rock, kind of hardcore bands. And then Dave was in marching band (laughs).

So did you just pick up your instruments before you joined bands or because you wanted to play in one?

ES:

Well I think Dave didn’t probably play keyboard that much before he joined the band.

DL:

No, I started through music through my schooling and stuff.

ES:

And I used to play bass in the punk band, and Tim kind of taught me how to play guitar. (to Tim) and you’ve just known guitar for a hell of a long time haven’t you?

TE:

Probably six or seven years. But yeah I learned playing mostly folk music, pretty simple songs, and that’s probably one of the aspects from folk music that comes through a lot in our music. It’s very melody-driven, and the actual structures of the songs are pretty simple and straight-forward, a lot like folk music usually is.

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