Band: Southwork
Interviewed By: Lauren Evans
STPP: When did you guys form? What’s your “origin story”?
Southwork: We’ve been rehearsing, writing, and performing as Southwork for a little over a year now but we’ve all been in bands together and been friends since we were kids. We grew up in South Philadelphia as part of a small incestuous community of musicians. Young kids playing rock and roll were sparse in South Philly in those days. We built our own little “rock scene” in the weird diners and crappy bars that would let 14-year-old kids in to play music. Al and Joe are twins and Vivas is their first cousin. We all happened to be musically stagnant at the time we formed Southwork so we decided to go on a seven-piece adventure.
STPP: Your bio describes your shows as an “interactive experience.” Isn’t all live music – ideally- sort of an interactive experience? What makes yours especially interactive?
Southwork: We try and stay away from the old “four guys on stage looking at their feet in over-sized sweaters” model of live performance. We want it to be an immersing experience, like another dimension that you are sucked into for 40 minutes. Every show should be the best party the concert-goer has ever been to. We drop balloons on them, bring our own light show, use a fog machine with vanilla scented fog, and shoot bubbles in the air to help make it seem larger than life. We’ve also dressed our stage and equipment more like the set of a play than the stage at a rock show. We want to immerse the crowd in an orange, yellow, and blue dream that they never want to wake up from. Every one of their senses should be fully engaged by the show.
STPP: Tell me about your ideal live show. Is it in a mega stadium with big, swooping lights and thousands of screaming fans? A small, intimate dive bar? Something in between?
Southwork: Ideally it would be something in-between. When you go to see a stadium show, even when it’s a band with a mega-show full of puppets, projection, and pyrotechnics, it’s still not as exciting as an indoor venue. Being at an indoor concert is like being at a casino. You forget what time it is, you forget that there is an outside world. You are only concerned with what is going on directly in front of you. You lose intimacy in overly large settings.
STPP: Speaking of which – are you touring now? Do you have plans to tour?
Southwork: We actually just took some time off in order to secure our own vehicle so that we can stop renting vans for tours. We just purchased a school bus, to which we are currently adding bunk beds and other amenities. Her name is Layla (not a Clapton reference) and once she’s road ready, we’re going to be out and about again. We’re aiming to release our debut album “Arise” in February 2012 so between now and then we’re going to blaze the trail around the near South, Northeast, and Midwest. Once the album is out, we’ll be embarking on a road trip to dwarf all of our previous ventures.
STPP: Horns and ukuleles tend to be underused commodities in much of today’s music — where did your sound come from? Who are your big influences?
Southwork: The early masters of modern recording techniques created really great effects simply by incorporating odd instruments into rock music. The Beatles and The Beach Boys used oboes, bass harmonicas, and sitars to create psychedelic effects while these instruments in and of themselves were far from psychedelic. Any instrument that seemed out of place had potential for inclusion. Looking at ukuleles and kazoos in our own music with an open mind comes from observing that philosophy. As for the horns, we chose our instruments based on our abilities as well as our wants. Al and Tony learned saxophone in high school and had both kept playing through college so adding horns to the mix was a no-brainer. Cake is always better with icing. They also play the bongos, tambourine, ukulele, and sing background vocals. As for our influences, we’re music nerds tried and true. We listen to just about everything. Our musical sound and style can be traced to the aforementioned bands as well as Motown, Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound, Chicago, and Nirvana but there’s a million other bands we’re into collectively and individually.
STPP: How’s the album coming along? Has making an album been the experience you thought it would be? What surprises/challenges have you faced?
Southwork: Recording is basically finished with only horns and backing vocals to be laid down. Then comes the fun stuff of mixing, mastering, album art, duplication, and the rest. We’re dropping the album in Philadelphia in February 2012 and then touring on it. We’re also going to film a music video for one of the songs but it’s a surprise which one it will be. As far as the experience itself and the challenges it has brought, we’ve all made albums before in other projects, sometimes with each other. We knew coming in what to expect and prepared for it obsessively. We rehearsed our set for 9 months before we played a show and then for another month or two before we first went into the studio so we were ready to kick it. We’re cutting the album at Forge Recording Studios in Oreland, PA with our long-time friend Ron DiSilvestro so it’s been a super comfortable experience for us.
STPP: Worst (or at least, most interesting) day job to date?
Southwork: Right now, Nick and Vivas work for moving companies, Tony does carpentry for movies and commercials as well as running South Fellini, a movie/comic production company that operates within a venn diagram with Southwork, Vogel works in an office, and Al and Joe work for the government, giving people money to help pay for their heating bills during the winter. Throughout the years of being musicians by night and working stiffs by day we’ve been painters, janitors, truck drivers, butchers, bank tellers, delivery people, lottery ticket punchers, and sold everything from khakis to video games to live eels.
STPP: If you had to select one style of facial hair to commit to for the rest of your life, what would it be? (Handy reference guide here)
Southwork: We’d have to go with the Garibaldi, also known as the Castaway. The less manscaping the better.
