Full interview with Russenorsk
By Jen Kessler, Entertainment Staff Writer
November 2, 2007 | 11:59 a.m.
Speakeasy had the opportunity to sit down with vocalist/guitarist Tim Race and cellist Jack Martin to peel back a few layers and get acquainted with the talented hearts that beat at the core of Russenorsk.
Editor's Note: What follows is a full transcription of the Russenorsk interview. For a band profile and album review, click here.
First question –phonetic pronunciation? There was a little bit of debate at the Speakeasy meeting.
Tim Race: The phonetic pronunciation is Roos-eh-norsk.
Jack Martin: Or! Rus-eh-norsk.
TR: Yeah, you can say Rus-eh-norsk, we don’t really mind (laughs).
JM: But we like it better Roos.
TR: Yeah, we say Roos.
What does it mean? Where’d it come from?
JM: Well, I was in a linguistics class fall quarter of last year and it’s a language in between Russian and Norwegian that sailors used to communicate about fishing and sailing and trading, things like that. It’s now extinct, no longer a language.
TR: If only we could speak it.
JM: Yeah! Talk about whales.
Well let’s go back to the beginning- how’d you guys get started? What made you want to do this?
TR: I heard Jack playing an acoustic bass, he was playing slap bass in the Washington lobby, and you know how much that resonates. So I heard that and I was just like, “What is that noise going on!?” So I went down to investigate and he was playing with some other guys, and I was like “Do you guys mind if I sit in?” So we played some guitar, it was probably pretty annoying for everyone else around, it was a little bit of a play guitar party kind of thing, but I ended up talking to Jack about how long he’d been playing bass because I thought it was really sweet, what he was doing. And he was like “Well, not that long, but I also play cello,” and I was like “Oh really!” There was one song [of mine] in particular that I envisioned cello on, which ended up on our record, and after we found out that that song worked with cello we were like, “Well, why not continue it?” and it ended up being a standard thing, we just kept it. I’m such a fan of stringed instruments but I didn’t want to have a full quartet kind of thing going on, and I’d never really heard of a band that had a cello as its main instrument so we thought maybe we could do something interesting with that. From then on it was open mics and whatnot.
How do you guys feel about the local music scene? Do you feel it has received you well, given you support?
TR: Yeah! Everyone we’ve played with, everyone we’ve talked to, they’re just the most unbelievably friendly people in the world. I have no qualms with anyone in this town. It’s actually kind of an honor to be part of the Athens music scene because it’s so diverse and so unique, and it seems like every show I go to that features local bands I walk out just blown away by. It started with Adam Torres, and since then I’ve just heard so many bands that I’ve fallen in love with. It’s been going really well, I don’t think we could ask for a better town to play in, really.
Do you guys have a difficult time at all balancing school and music?
JM: I don’t really have any problems with that, I’d say usually it’s more difficult balancing work and the band. During the summer Tim and I will both be working, like, I was working two jobs this past summer, and we were trying to go on tour, or some kind of a tour. So that’s kind of difficult sometimes, but it usually works out.
TR: Yeah. I mean, it interferes a little bit because it’s a lot more fun to play music than it is to read books (laughs). It hasn’t been disastrous yet, it’s definitely a busy schedule but that’s just something we have to get around. Once we get out of the dorms I’d imagine it will be better.
Let’s talk about In A Great Wave Of Horns – did you guys both write songs for that?
TR: Yeah, I like to say it was heavily a collaboration. Some of them I’d come to Jack with rude ideas of a song, maybe even just a chord progression or something, but the song didn’t really matter to me until I heard what the cello would sound like against it. Once we’d hear that it just kind of sparked. Some of the songs we went into the studio with them unfinished, and, you know, we kind of had to finish them in the studio (laughs). But the thing about IAGWOH in the songwriting aspect is that we were introducing instruments that we had never played with before in our band, drums especially, which was hard to do. But for the most part, with the help of AJ who played drums on our record and Nate who produced it, it was definitely a heavily collaborative endeavor.
JM: There were numerous songs where Tim would just start, like, he didn’t even know the chord progression, he’d just give me a key (laughs). Or sometimes not even that. We’ve been writing recently, and he’ll have a few notes down and real quickly those notes can change. It really changes so much between the time we start writing and end writing.
TR: I guess the best way to describe it would be that our writing is ephemeral. It’s right there and the thing is, sometimes the best writing that we do just goes away, and we forget it (laughs). But it’s definitely a collaborative thing, you know, because why have more than one person in the band if not everyone is writing songs?
Is there anything that you guys can name, either together or separately, as inspirations behind you as you wrote this album?
TR: Well I absolutely adore Arcade Fire, and I love their tendency towards an authentic style of music. So what we were going for, personally I felt, was kind of a darker, brooding, folk kind of thing which ended up turning into more rock folk kind of stuff, but yeah, I’d say that Arcade Fire was a huge influence in that album for me in particular…Jack looks a little confused (laughs).
JM: I was trying to think of what we’d listen to in the car on the way over there…there was a lot of Grizzly Bear…
TR: Oh, Grizzly Bear, sure. And Mogwai!
JM: Mogwai! That was it.
TR: Mogwai was a big one, because we wanted to introduce at least a track of atmospheric stuff, which ended up happening with [a track called] "Expansions in Water." That heavily takes from the Mogwai vein of experimental sounds. At that point we were just listening to so much music that it’s hard to decipher what was our hard influence. In the acoustic realm, we’re definitely big fans of Elliott Smith.
You already have a video out for one of your songs, "Science Tells Me." How did that come about, where did the idea come from?
TR: Well, it’s funny because…
JM:…we weren’t really involved in the production (laughs). Sometime during spring quarter [our friends] Conor Hogan and Andy Poland came to us and said, “We have a script, can we shoot this this summer?” And we ran through the script and we were like, “Alright, cool, just let us know what you’re doing with it, you know, keep in touch.” And a few months later they said, “Hey, go online,” (laughs) and we had a video waiting for us.
TR: That was an interesting day that I found out there was a music video made to one of our songs. What Jack forgot to mention is, they talked to him. I didn’t even know they were making it. I read the script like, way, way earlier, but I had no idea. So when I saw that I was just like, “Wait, what?” But I was blown away, I love those guys to death and they’re both so talented. We couldn’t have asked for better people to do something for us, for sure.
You guys play often, and recently shared the stage with The Gunshy. Is there any show in particular that you can say sticks out as your favorite show?
TR: Well, we tend to differ.
JM: The CD release was tremendous. It was just so much fun. That was at Baker Theater last year.
TR: Yeah…I broke my strings. I was pretty pissed (laughs).
JM: Yeah, we had so many malfunctions with the instruments themselves. But I had a really good time. And any time we play at Casa is a really fun time.
TR: Oh, yeah. The Gunshy show, that was the best of this quarter for sure. That was the most fun. We don’t necessarily measure completely by how we play; it’s also how the crowd feels, how the place feels, how the other bands are. With The Gunshy, they’re such a fantastic band and equally as fantastic people, so it was overall a really fun night. We got cut off early, but it didn’t matter. We were pretty elated.
In the same vein, is there anything that really sticks out for you guys as just the best thing about this whole experience?
JM: Driving around, playing music, having fun. Not a whole lot of people get to do this, it’s really cool. Like, I have a very classical background in cello, and all my friends from high school, they’re either going to go play in the orchestra or they quit. So it’s a cool thing for me that I get to keep playing cello and really use it as a tool to express myself rather than playing orchestral music, somebody else’s music. It’s cool to be creative with the instrument.
TR: Yeah. To have some kind of outlet is always fantastic, and it’s something that at the end of the day you know you still have. You always have the band; you always have the people that you make music with. It’s always been a big passion for both of us. I mean, I’m sure that sounds pretty generic (laughs), but it’s really the most honest thing.
Where are you going to take Russenorsk in the future? What are your hopes?
JM: Hmm.
TR: Hmm…yeah (laughs). Right now we’re doing some recordings, writing as much music as we can. What we hope to do is get out and play, tour a little bit, I don’t know that it’s necessarily that we’re shooting for any specific level of fame or anything like that, but we want to get to the point where we can do this for the rest of our lives. That’s the ultimate dream, I think.
JM: I think we said it before, we’re just in it to have fun. If we get famous doing it…great! (laughs) But we’re not real worried about it. We’re just having a good time.
TR: Yeah. We’d love to get a call from a record label some day, but at the same time it all comes down to the fact that as long as we’re still writing music that we’re happy with and we think matters to us, that’s the best thing we can do. I just want to keep this going as long as possible. That’s the idea. Keep it going, be happy with it.
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