PopMatters: So how did the drums/organ set-up come about?
Kori Gardner: It just came about by chance. We were playing in a guitar band at the time. We had rented practice space and that band wasn’t practicing. We left our drum set and my organ that I bought two years prior to that up there. We just sat behind the instruments and played and it grew into something that we liked.
Jason Hammel: We didn’t even think about writing songs. We just started fiddling about. Maybe that’s a song? And then one song turned into seven songs.
KG: We’ve been in tons of bands before, and [in those bands] it’s always been a conscious effort. Let’s write this song, let’s have it be this long, it’ll have this many parts in it.
JH: We’ll have this many songs, we’ll have a set.
KG: Yeah, and with this band [Mates of State] it was never like that. I think that’s why we both feel a little more laid-back about the songwriting process with this band. I think it’s just because of the way we look at music, and I don’t mean to sound pretentious at all, I think we just go about it and whatever sounds good to us is what we play.
JH: We see the value in all of the music we like, but we certainly don’t want to set up to rip somebody off.
KG: You can’t help not to be influenced by bands. Everybody is. But the difference with us is that we don’t set out to sound like anything. We just go to practice and if we like a part, I don’t know what it sounds like, it just sounds good to us. I hope we can always stick by that. I like it that way.
PM: So what does influence you?
KG: It’s not just music that influences us, it’s film, it’s books, it’s friends, it’s things that happen in our lives. It’s stories that people tell us. Music is the peak of it all because those are people being influenced by stories and books and all that too. I can’t imagine a band that’s only influenced by music. Maybe they just say that, but there are many other experiences in my life hopefully . . .
JH: That you think about, or can express through music.
PM: Musicians often seem reluctant to discuss non-musical influences, scared even.
KG: We went to this independent documentary festival in San Francisco was going on a couple of weeks ago and I’m still talking about that, it was so much fun. We saw this one called Spellbound about following these kids around in the national spelling bee. The fact that I’ve been talking about it constantly — it was just a great idea. Anything that is really human, and you see true emotion in this documentary.
JH: Being in California too, there is such a wide variety of people. It seems like every day we meet somebody and we can’t believe their story. A couple of weeks ago we went out to see a concert and I started talking to this guy about a book and the next thing I know I’m talking to the leader of the Satanic church in Berkeley. The book was about 19th century Satanism and I was talking about the book, wondering if it was still going on in the Bay Area, or whatever. And the next thing I know he’s like “One of the guys you need to talk to is here.”
KG: Next thing we know there’s like 15 people in the place who are satanic worshippers!
The band seems to have shaken off this element of the local crowd. At the Great American Music Hall there are no pentagrams or sacrificial lambs, just a packed audience eager for fun. Mates of State give a glimpse of this newly discovered local color in one of the new songs they play, which has a refrain that sounds like its built around an old haunted house at an amusement fair. The song is not trying to be scary and it does not come across as cheesy. That Mates of State can test such new material out a live audience and make it work shows how several months of touring behind their latest album Our Constant Concern has only perfected the band. They are confident and capable, the songs given life by the band’s performance. If the songs sound great on record, they shine when played live, positively brimming with life. The simple drums and organ arrangement is devastatingly effective, sounding rich and full. Over the next hour, Mates of State play a triumphant set. It’s their biggest headline show yet in their adopted home town of San Francisco (the duo met while at studying in Lawrence, Kansas, and moved out west soon after graduating) and they band are cheered and applauded like they’ve been given the keys to the city. The atmosphere is one of such jubilation it feels as if we’re watching the band through a ticker-tape parade, confetti raining from the skies and ribbons streaming down the lampposts. With such a deceptively simple framework, it is tempting to draw comparisons to other rock ‘n’ roll duos. It might seem particularly lazy to make comparisons to that other couple on the alternative scene, but the White Stripes serve as a good counterpoint to Mates of State. While the White Stripes present a risqué sexual chemistry, an illicit thrill, Mates of State are the exact opposite, being open and honest. Watching Mates of State perform doesn’t feel like voyeurism but like a celebration.
From: https://www.popmatters.com/mates-of-state-020530-2496083511.html
