When we played in Dallas in February, we met members of the North Texas Dieselpunks, including Larry, who interviewed Lyndsy and Bart through email.
This question is for your lead singer Lyndsy Rae. According to your band’s web site, you spent most of the 2010-2011 school year in southern France. Dieselpunks.org has quite a few French members. Could you share some of your experiences while there?
Lyndsy: Well, I lived in France for a year to attend the Université de la Mediterranean. Everything in Europe is so close and cheap to get to so it is foolish not to travel while your abroad. I took time and went to Spain, Ethiopia, Monte Carlo, Istanbul, Turkey and Paris.
I was living in Aix-en-Provence (30 Minutes from Marseille in the very South of France) which is right on the French Riviera. It was literally just like a storybook. The South of France is overwhelmingly different. HOW? Hardly any police (the butcher, the baker, the grocer, the people mostly look after their town) teachers will smoke in class sometimes, everyone is late (“take your time” “life is good” “Do as you need”), they are all so laid back, open minded, music everywhere (accordions!) cobble stone streets that look like allies. Cute little cafés by the bucket loads, and there is of course the beautiful French language. Fresh food that you can easily rise in the mornings and then go glean from the markets. The farmers all come into town and sell you their hand-picked goods, its heaven. The olives, honey, wine, are to die for. That place was ethically blissful.
To say the least I loved it and I miss it very much. I do hope that End Times Spasm Band ends up over there soon.
Lyndsy and Bart were interviewed by Jason Kendall for The Savannah Morning News
On making music in the ‘End Times’
Lyndsy: “Bart chose the name, and I personally loved it because I obsess over the end. I find it to be the most beautiful of all things. I am a huge fan of Nosforatu or Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” for that very reason. The Count states that us humans are allowed to find beauty and romanticize things like sunsets and such because we are not going to see millions of them forever. The “End Times” have been twisting tongues since the beginning of time, and we wanted to take our stab at it.”
Bart: “I’m not a believer, but I enjoy learning about mystery cults and secret societies. The idea of an end to history has always intrigued me. These kinds of beliefs reveal a lot about what people think it means to be human, to live within a society. I wanted a band name with a bit of mystery to it, so that’s what I reached for.”
Hello friends! We’re returning to some old favorites this March as well as making our first visits to Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia!
3/9 – The Hoosier Dome, Indianapolis, IN w/ Rodeo Ruby Love
3/16 – Epicure Cafe, Fairfax, VA
3/18 – The Green Bean, Greensboro, NC
3/24 – The Sentient Bean, Savannah, GA
3/25 – Highwire Lounge, Athens, GA
3/27 – Acoustic Coffeehouse, Johnson City, TN
3/28 – WDVX Blue Plate Special, Knoxville, TN
3/29 – WBOI Meet the Music – Live at C2G, Fort Wayne, IN
3/31 – Bottoms Up Burlesque’s breast cancer charity fundraiser at Radio Radio, Indianapolis, IN
February can’t come soon enough! We’re excited to play a mini-tour through Kentukcy with The Lost River Cavemen. Hopefully we can convince them to head north later this spring.
In the last two weeks we’ll head down to Texas to visit our friends and labelmates Church Shoes. They were kind enough to set up a show in Austin, and we decided to visit Tennesee, Louisiana, and Missouri on the way there and back – including return to Farmington.
But before February can start, we’ll be playing benefit concert to raise money to bring two Ukrainian orphans to the US. Our good friend Hope Arthur will be there. If you haven’t heard her new EP, you badger her until she finds you a copy.
01/27 Fort Wayne, IN Pint N Slice w/ Hope Arthur
02/02 Lexington, KY Green Lantern w/ Lost River Cavemen
02/03 Richmond, KY Paddy Wagon w/ Lost River Cavemen
02/04 Bowling Green, KY Tidball’s w/ Lost River Cavemen
02/12 Chicago, IL Quencher’s Saloon
02/21 Louisville, KY Hideaway Saloon
02/22 Memphis, TN P and H Cafe
02/24 Austin, TX Skinny’s Ballroom w/ Church Shoes
02/25 Dallas, TX Double Wide Saloon
02/28 Katy, TX Dunn Bros
02/29 Lafayette, LA Artmosphere
03/03 Farmington, MO The Vault
Anyway, we’re sitting here in a warm but cloudy Tennessee and thinking of our freezing friends back north. Time to finish these coffees and put some Etta James on the stereo, I think.
Not long ago now we finished our longest tour to date. Nine days, eight shows. We swung through Michigan, drove out to Kansas and Nebraska, and returned via Indianapolis. If the others are like me, then we caught a giddy second wind towards the end and the last few days felt like we’d only just left. It was a success by our own standards, but we also know it hasn’t made us pros overnight. In fact one of the reasons I can’t wait to do it again is so we can apply the lessons we learned.
This has been one of the bigger differences between End Times and the other bands I’ve been in. If we’re doing the same things we did last month, we feel unsatisfied. We make as many mistakes as anyone, but within a day we’re saying to each other “next time, lets try it this way.” We’re always asking “what’s next?” even in the face of failure.
A few days after returning I listened to Merlin Mann’s 2009 presentation “With All Due Respect to the Seduction Community” for what must have been the fifth time. The presentation is about creative projects and the barriers that stand in the way of starting a new one. I highly recommended it for anyone who’s been meaning to get to work on a project, whether it’s an album, a novel, software, or some fantastic experiment in knitting. The last few times I listened to it, I heard it in relation to songwriting and it was helpful. But this time – because of where my mind already was – I heard it in relation to touring and tour-planning. Read that way, it sends a very clear message to every band out there.
You have what you need to book a tour right now.
It might be a 30 date cross-country tour. Or maybe a 75 date European affair. But more likely it will be two or three days through towns within a five hour drive from your home. The length doesn’t actually matter because at some point you will have to go “from zero to something,” as Mann describes it. Psychologically, it’s the hardest step to take, but what most don’t realize is that it’s identical to every other step you’ll take on your way.
There will always be a gap between what you’ve done and what you need to do next.
The difference between the people struggling to start and the people at the level the non-starters aspire to is that the pros have accepted that they’re forever blindly taking steps into the beyond, that they’ll never know everything. They’ve accepted that they’re going to suck sometimes.
Sometimes projects fail. Some novels will never be published. Some tours lose money. But a pro doesn’t let that get in the way. Success isn’t doing it right once on accident; success is trying again and again and again. To keep moving forward, you’re always going to have to take steps you’ve never taken before. Going to from zero to something feels like a huge undertaking, like an act of creation fundamentally different from anything else you’ll do, but ultimately it’s no different in nature than going from that something to a bigger, better something.
In the accompanying blog post, Mann lists some of the fears that keep him from starting.
Fear of Apathy. “I can’t start this until I’m positive the work will never become dull or difficult.”
Fear of Ambiguity. “I can’t start this until I know exactly how it will turn out (as well as the precise method by which I’ll do it).”
Fear of Disconnection. “I can’t start this until I’m totally up-to-date and current on everything.”
Fear of Imperfection. “I can’t start this until I know the end product will be flawless.”
Fear of Incompletion. “I can’t start this until I’m already done with it.”
Fear of Isolation. “I can’t start this until I know making it will never be lonely.”
Fear of Sucking. “I can’t start this until I’m already awesome at it (and know that even horrible people whom I dislike will hail me as a genius).”
Fear of Fear itself. “I can’t start this until I’m guaranteed that making it will never be scary.”
I think all of these can apply to a band who wants to hit the road but hasn’t yet. I know I’ve felt each of these while doing End Times’ booking. I wish there was a simple solution to dealing with these fears, but the list includes some legitimate concerns. The issue is that if you want to get started, you have to let go. You have to be ok with sweeping the project under the rug at the end.
This is an exciting time in music because we the artists have the power to make things happen. But it means continuously dealing with subjects with which you have no experience or expertise. You can read all the new music blogs’ advice on touring, but you won’t book one until you accept that failure is a possible consequence. Not having enough information about a venue, a city, a scene – that’s a part of touring. Just like forgetting your sleeping bag or not bringing enough socks. You will never have everything you want before it’s time to take the next step.
So if I have any advice, it’s to focus on one thing at a time. Do your research, but not too much at once. Target one city and learn about each venue there. Or scope out one band you’re envious of and study the route they take through your region. The point is to keep things incremental. It’s possible you could bribe your way onto a side-side-side-stage at SWSW, but if you don’t know what to do after that, you’re still stuck where you were. You don’t need to book a show 18 hours away when you’ve never played one two hours away. You don’t need to book a weeklong tour over spring break when you’ve never played two out of town shows back-to-back. Find the smallest thing that you’ve never done before and do that.
Lyndsy and Bart offered up some of the things they discovered in 2011 (along with friends like Anthony, Morrison, Greg, and Lee).
Lyndsy Rae Patterson
Lead Singer and Snake Charmer, The End Times Spasm Band
Favorite Read of 2011: Patti Smith’s Just Kids
Favorite Film of 2011: Nosferatu (1922), White Zombie with Bela Lugois (1932) and A Clockwork Orange(1971)
Bart J. Helms
Guitarist, The End Times Spasm Band
Favorite Read of 2011: Ernest Nagel, James Newman and Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel’s Proof. The original came out in 1959, but I picked up the revised edition this year on the strength of Hofstadter’s recommendation. The book explicates one of the most important mathematical papers ever written with an enviable clarity.
Favorite Film of 2011: I finally caught Suzuki’s Pistol Opera (2001) and loved it.
Favorite TV Show of 2011: “Downton Abbey.” Simply amazing on all counts.
Even as the band’s computer geek, I didn’t join a 20s/30s-inspired jazz band expecting to draw on that knowledge. A linguist with computational interests, I assumed I’d shelve those skills along with my other academic interests while I took some time to focus on music. Yet the problems of managing a band where multiple members are involved on the business side turn out to be very similar to the problems faced by a team of software developers, and one of the more admirable things about programmers is that they like to solve problems. Consequently, we’ve adopted a few geeky tools to help us coordinate and divide the tasks that make the band function. Here’s three of them.
Dropbox
Once upon a time. learning new music meant making copies of a demo CD, printing out copies of lyric and chord sheets, and doing it all over again when the first round were inevitably lost. Dropbox is a way to share files computer-to-computer or person-to-person via each computer’s file system. Now whenever I complete a demo, I add it to our shared folder and it appears on Lyndsy, Zach, and Eric’s computers the next time they connect to the internet. We now have access to everything related to the band, from finance statements to poster art, wherever we take our laptops (which is everywhere). This has been useful on the road for set lists and contracts.
(Now if only Dropbox for iOS would implement an Open Document reader.)
Workflowy
The name disguises an excellent list-making tool that’s hard to describe. So here’s a 45 second video.
We use Workflowy for a dozen tasks small and large, from basic to-do lists (press kits to mail, gear to buy, stuff to do at practice) to a fairly detailed calendar where we note cities and venues we’d like to play, when to do it, and who we’ve already contacted. We’ve actually divided up a lot of tasks so that each person is doing a small, easy-to-manage chunk. Workflowy lets each of us concentrate on just our part without being overwhelmed by how complicated the entire business of running a band actually is. We probably wouldn’t be able to run as smoothly as we do now if we returned to bouncing emails back-and-forth.
Google Calendar
Once a show is confirmed, the details go into our Google calendar which syncs with my phone’s calendar. We know a number of other bands use Calendar to note days they have other commitments or to power their website’s tour schedule. We used to do both, but found we prefer Workflowy for the former (despite the lack of native calendar) and wrote our own code for the second. Still, pulling up the day in my phone’s calendar and being able to click on the address or phone number of the venue is incredibly useful and certainly scales up better than a paper daily planner.
We had a lot of fun performing for Downtown Fort Wayne’s Fright Night as part of the zombie walk. Thanks to DID for inviting us and big props to our Indianapolis friend Tanya for driving up and daring to swallow fire on the wobbily float!
Everyone in the walk looked fantastic. There’s some real (creepy) creativity running through this town! Here’s a video of some lovely zombies via WANE News Channel 15.
