Interview: The Mint Chicks

Ruban Nielson from The Mint Chicks answers some questions.

First up, how have you guys adjusted to life in Portland? It’s pretty freakin far from Auckland
I find it easier to fit in here than in Auckland. Portland is almost too perfect. I bet a lot of people will say that.

Was it hard to gather a fanbase in a new city, in a new country? Most people would stay put where the attention is but you made a drastic decision to get out.
Sometimes I think we’re running away from New Zealand more than running to Portland. I read an interesting sentence in a magazine yesterday: “Ambition as an aesthetic problem“. That’s the issue. It’s pretty important to make a living doing what you love so you can do more of it, yet at the same time you want to make better music rather than watering it down so you can get on the radio and all of that stuff. In Portland there’s more space for us.

Wikipedia tells me that Michael is back in the band. True/False? If False how does Kody do his crazy stage-thang when he has to play keys?
Michael played about six shows with us when we toured NZ, but he didn’t come back to Portland with us. Who knows who’s in the band and who isn’t. We actually had two bass players on the recent tour. Kody was also playing another drumkit some of the time. Two basses and two drumkits going at once. Why not. All of that stuff helps keep it interesting. So there’s always a new problem to solve and new ways of playing a song.

How does it feel to lose a founding member?
It was pretty weird. We decided early on to not replace Mike and continue as a three piece. That was quite hard because we had to re-invent ourselves in a new country. Screens came from trying to solve the problem of having no bass player

Paul is pretty much involved in graphic design and the like… do the rest of you have day jobs? What are they?
I don’t have a day job but I’m doing more and more stuff outside the Mint Chicks. I do quite a lot of art stuff here and there. I’m going to do a soundtrack for a play this year. Mike teaches bass. Kody doesn’t have a dayjob either. Not sure what he does, he seems to sit in his room all day.

How often do you get to play live where you are now? I imagine it’s a lot harder than NZ (bigger population, more choices etc)
We play in Portland a lot more because we can play as much as we like without it being an issue for the promoters. It’s getting a bit different now because we’re just starting to draw a crowd, but we’ve been playing every week or so. We’re going to take a break from playing shows for a few months coming up though. I need a break because I haven’t stopped for about 4 or 5 years. We did our last show on our New Zealand tour recently and Kody just flipped out and wrecked a couple thousand dollars worth of microphones and stuff and finished the whole show halfway through (Here). A week earlier I had an OD/poisoning after a show and ended up getting restrained by cops and hauled out on a gurney and sedated and all the rest. I had no idea what was going on but I was trying to run into traffic apparently. Everybody just got fried. I’ve just been cooling off with my wife and kid here in Portland trying to get my head back together.

Getting back to moving overseas; why Portland? Why not New York or LA or somewhere “high profile” like that?
Just costs way too much to go to those places and I don’t quite get what’s so great about them. I enjoy Portland and if I get rich then I’ll go to one of those places. It would suck to be in NYC or LA with a wife and baby and not much money to do all the stuff going on. The problem with Portland is that there are no jobs here, but I don’t need a job just yet and rent is cheaper than Auckland so everything’s looking pretty good for us here. I know that in San Francisco there are more things going on but if you’ve got no money to go and see bands and art shows then you might as well not be there.

How are the local press treating you? Are they saying good things?
The local press seem to love us. No bad press so far. One of the first things Kody and I did when we got here was put together care packages for the press people. We made hand drawn covers and sent vinyl and little cassette tapes with weird stuff on them. The journalists here really appreciate that kind of stuff. We do well with journalists because we appreciate what they do for us, and that’s surprisingly rare for a band. Most musicians have some idea that people who write are out to get them but you’ll find that’s mostly bands who make shitty music. You’ll see a band who is huge and who pulls massive crowds and sells loads of records and the writers have this platform where they can say “this is shit”. On the other hand, the press is one of the few places where you’ll get praise for doing something good that isn’t commercial

What new bands from the States have you been checking out? What’s worth looking into?
I’ve been ignoring new music for a little while. The whole blogosphere thing has created an unrealistic picture of what’s really going on. Somebody makes a record in their bedroom and puts it out on tape and 7 inch and then the blogs say it’s amazing and a few people write a thesis about it and by the time you hear it it’s already ‘over’. I went to art school and the whole situation reminds me of how a few of the people there viewed creativity. As if it’s all a conversation you have to keep up with in order to ‘get it’. The reality is that there are only a few worthwhile artists. There isn’t a new movement every 6 months, even though the internet needs that amount of bullshit for the rumour mill.

Tell me about the fast food joints and snack foods over there. Been getting into anything? (yeah I love food)
Food here is quite strange. In New Zealand the food seems to be high quality but flavour is less important. Here it’s all about flavour. I love mexican cart food, tacos and sopes and stuff like that. I like tripe tacos best but they have to be made right or they’re gross. There’s a vegan place called Papa G’s down the road form us here that does bbq tofu that’s really good. There’s a bbq place across the road that does ribs but I haven’t been there since we got back. I like bbq but American meat is dodgy. I’m not that interested in the burgers and all that because we have that in New Zealand. There’s also a dessert bar down the street that has frozen custard and I want to try that out.

How did you guys get to become Buddyhead favourites? Those guys hate everything that’s not Oasis!
I don’t know. I was happy that they’re back though because the internet needs a bit more comedy and music blogs are mostly humourless. I used to read Buddyhead back in the day and read it now as well. It’s not quite as airtight as it used to be but it still delivers some good laughs. I think I’m going to design a t-shirt for them.

“My favourite hip hop album from the last decade was MM..Food by MF Doom”

What have you been listening to lately? Who in the rock world tickles you where it feels good?
The rock world is interesting me less and less. A New Zealand guy called Connan Mockasin released an album recently called ‘Please Turn Me Into the Snat‘ which I’ve been listening to quite a bit. I still have my favourites. I still listen to old punk records and still like 60′s music but I listen to a lot of classical music because just listening to something like Bach teaches me a lot about music.

What about the hip hop world?
I’m a bit out of touch with the hip hop world these days. I’m way more into sample based stuff and don’t like the sound of sequenced beats that seems so popular now so my listening habits are throw back 90′s and stuff that sounds like throwback 90′s. My favourite hip hop album from the last decade was MM..Food by MF Doom. I’m sure there’s more sample based stuff out there but I’m out of the loop. I used to listen to lots of hip hop when I was younger. East coast stuff from about 93 to 97 was a golden age to me. Tical, Liquid Swords, Ready to Die and that kind of thing.

What’s your top 5 bands of the past 12 months?
I’ve been following the music scene closely but nothing has grabbed me. My favourite stuff from last year wasn’t by new bands. There are a bunch of exciting new New Zealand punk bands but I don’t want to promote them too much because I don’t want everybody to ruin them before they even leave high school.

What’s the best show on TV?
I’ve been watching Breaking Bad and the new season of Peep Show.

Next up: Me time. Any advice on starting a music website? There’s approximately 53455465 other music websites doing the same… What can I do to stand out?
You have to do something wrong. Maybe you should do everything wrong. Internet people seem to have these unbreakable rules about user interface and search engine optimisation. I say fuck that. They’re just trying to justify their own fear and need to conform. Who cares if you confuse people? Good. Life should be confusing. This need for even the smallest blogs to conform to a set format is just a new wave of boringness disguised as something futuristic. If gmail is confusing then yes that pisses me off, but a music site can be different. The whole need people have for the internet to be easy and straight forward from top to bottom is bullshit. It’s the same as people who are religious because they need to know that everything has been figured out already.

Promise me when you meet Cobie Smulders from How I Met Your Mother that you will give her my details?
Who? OK.

The Mint Chicks have a new ep, Bad Buzz, out now. Buy the limited edition USB stick here.