Nathan Williams, lead singer and brainchild of WAVVES, has had a pretty tame year so far. And not tame like your mom’s decrepit Lhasa Apso Scrappy back home, but tame in the sense that he managed to not repeat what happened last year at The Primavera Sound Festival in Spain, where after ingesting what Williams blogged as an “Ecstasy, Valium and Xanax cocktail,” he terrorized the crowd and started a fight with his own drummer. After explaining that he doesn’t remember the set and canceling the European tour in 2009, he re-casted the group with bassist Stephen Pope and drummer Billy Hayes, who formerly made up Jay Reatard’s band before his death last January.
Williams and his new band bounced back onto the scene recording King of the Beach with producer Dennis Herring of Sweet Tea Recording in Oxford, Mississippi. Since the album’s release at the beginning of August, the band has been surfing the highways all over the country, playing their pop-punk sound at equally grungy venues. I wasn’t allowed to ask Williams about last year’s meltdown so instead we had a pretty mellow chat discussing topics like the new album, dropping out of high school and declining numerous college soccer scholarships he was offered.
DV - Hi, Nathan. Basically, I wanted to start off asking about highlights from the tour so far…
NW - I think the coolest show that we played was on a beach in Italy, like literally on the beach with sand in our toes. That was the best. It was so awesome.
DV - How about in the states?
NW - We played a show at The Glasshouse in Pomona, California that was pretty cool. I hadn’t been there since I was a kid. Just a bunch of insane kids losing their shit. Most of the shows have been pretty fun. There have been a couple sinkers along the way, but we haven’t had a show that people didn’t like. So far, it’s been a pretty amazing experience.
DV - So you recorded King of The Beach this year at Sweet Tea Recording with Dennis Herring in Oxford, Mississippi. How was recording with Dennis and putting your concept into someone else’s hands? Was it a little freaky for you?
NW - It was a little weird at first. It was like handing your baby off to a babysitter. Throughout the mixing and recording process, I was sitting right next to Dennis. I was a little bit annoying how close I was with it, but at the end of the day, if I wouldn’t have been there and been a hawk about it, it wouldn’t have turned out how I wanted it. And it was probably good for Dennis too because I was able to tell him certain things that I wanted and somehow he made whatever I asked possible.
DV - He somehow miraculously did it, like a magician?
NW - Yea, think of it as magic. But there were a couple of times where we kind of got into it on different opinions but I think that’s pretty healthy in a creative environment. It comes with the territory.
DV - I really like your new album, I know my opinion doesn’t really matter, but I do like it. Ha.
NW- Well I think you’re opinion matters!
DV - After playing the album a couple of times, I heard varying hints of Nirvana and The Beach Boys, for sure. Who exactly were your influences for King of The Beach?
NW - I think you kind of caught it. I think Nirvana is definitely one of them and a lot of alternative music that we grew up on, like Green Day and a lot of pop punk stuff. The Beach Boys is obvious because of the name of the album but I also think The Beatles, particularly structure-wise, song writing and melodies.
DV - Definitely, and the experimental songs at the end of the album reminded me of some old Of Montreal tracks.
NW - Oh, really?
DV - Yea, it reminded me of some of their older, more whimsical, quirky stuff.
NW - Well "Convertible Balloons," was co-written. Billy and I wrote that song.
DV - When did you decide to try something a little more out of the box?
NW - Honestly "Convertible Balloons," and "Baby Say Goodbye," were old demos that Billy had and were just gonna throw away. And I heard them and was like "No, these could be really good, we just have to play with them." So we took it into the studio and those were some of the only songs that we worked on while recording. I had written all the other songs prior to going there. We got to work through them at the studio so I think that’s probably why they turned out more experimental. We asked ourselves, "What else can we add to it that’ll make it sound different from the rest of the record?"
DV - Your album artwork looks like a psychedelic hand-made arts and craft masterpiece. I even noticed some pipe cleaners included. Who made it for you guys?
NW - Her name is Kelly and she’s Billy’s girlfriend’s friend. She lives in Memphis. I saw a mural that she had drawn of Stevie Wonder and I just thought it looked amazing so I asked her if she would do it. I told her the idea and she pretty much did what I said and added pipe cleaners.
DV - It took me a couple weeks of staring at the album to even notice the pipe cleaners. I finally saw them after staring at it for a while one night.
NW - Yea, I’ve sat stoned and stared at the cover before, for sure.
DV - To me the song ‘Take On The World’ is the perfect anthem for musicians. The verses are all about feeling like your work is shitty, but the chorus, ‘To take on the world would be something,’ is a little more optimistic and grasps the musician dream of spreading your music as far and wide as possible. Would you agree?
NW - Yea. It’s funny because whenever anyone asks me about that song they’re like, 'So why were you so depressed? You’re so self-deprecating on this album.' No, not really. I talk about how I’m the shit a lot on the album. But yes, sometimes that’s just how you feel. Try not to over-think emotions too much. It’s like, today I woke up and felt like shit. But I don’t wake up every single day and feel like shit. So it’s weird when people ask me if I’m depressed and if I’m going to kill myself. What? Maybe, I might. If I keep getting asked question, I might.
DV - Fair enough. Were you born in San Diego?
NW - No, I was born in L.A. and grew up in San Diego.
DV - So what were you like in high school?
NW - I dropped out of high school in tenth grade. I wore whatever the skateboarders I watched wore, so like cargo pants and skate shoes and Kid Dynamite t-shirts. I just dressed like a southern California kid.
DV - I read you started playing music in middle school.
NW - I started playing in bands when I was like 13, yea.
DV - Did you grow up taking guitar lessons?
NW - No I never took guitar lessons. I got a guitar when I was 11 and just wanted to play music to meet girls or something. I kind of just screwed around with my friends and played soccer my whole life. That took up a lot of my time.
DV - You did?
NW - Yeah, I played soccer from age 7 to 17.
DV - I played from like 4 to 16.
NW - Oh, really? Wow. Yea, I played Olympic Development and traveled all over with my club team.
DV - That’s so weird. Me too. I mean, it was a yearlong job for me. It was like my whole fucking life.
NW - Yea, it was no joke. I played school, travel and ODP all at the same time, and then finally, when I was 17, I was like, ‘Ok fuck this, I can’t do this anymore.’
DV - I thought about playing in college but I wanted to party and do whatever the fuck I wanted instead. It ran its course.
NW - Yeah, I had scholarships to a couple of schools but I just didn’t want to go to college. I didn’t feel like college was for me. And my parents were bummed but then I got into this. If you look at how much MLS players make it’s like $30,000 a year, so I was like fuck that. I think I chose pretty well. I’m getting by.
DV - I heard you say in a video interview that the band, "got as big as it did on accident." What did you mean by that?
NW - I knew I wanted to do something musically. I was managing a record store and I quit my job there. I recorded some demos and I wasn’t going to show them to anybody but a friend of mine was like "Oh these are so good, you need to put them up on MySpace." I showed my friend Jeremy who runs this label in New York and he really liked it. I just kind of let the song sit there and it just snow-balled.
If you missed their latest show at Music Hall of Williamsburg, WAVVES are set to play Madison Square Garden with Phoenix October 20th.
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