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self-evident
Examining the evidence: Minneapolis' rock kings Formed in 1997, Minneapolis-based Self-Evident has been one of the hardest-working bands in the Midwest indie scene, playing more than 450 shows in 15 states and sharing the stage with Don Caballero, Life and Times, Oxes, Big City Rock and Local H to name a few. Nearly a decade later, the recently reshuffled three-piece is still bringing its impossible-to-categorize blend of indie-jazz-math-noise rock -- lovingly referred to as "transcendental" by the band -- to the masses with a new self-titled album and an upcoming tour with Traindodge (Oklahoma City). The Advance-Titan talked with Tom Berg, Conrad Mach and new drummer Ben Johnston as they prepared for the tour, which makes a stop in Oshkosh Saturday. Advance-Titan: How does the new self-titled album compare to the band's previous efforts? Tom Berg: I think it's a little bit more condensed as far as songwriting. Especially our earlier stuff, we'd have some five, six, seven-minute songs where we'd repeat parts a couple of times. It's more streamlined. Where the other albums may have been eight, nine, 10 songs long and 50 minutes, this is 12 songs at a whopping 34 minutes. A-T: How has the addition of Ben (Claire de Lune) impacted the sound of the band? Conrad Mach: Streamlining a lot of the songs and taking Tom and my wandering guitar parts and basically making them a little more accessible. Tom: I also think Ben stylistically is more of an assembler. With [ex-drummer] Brian [Heitzman] it was more like every time he'd play a part it would be different, which is cool, but it doesn't give you as much to grab onto -- it's more improv -- whereas Ben tries to incorporate the whole thing more than all three of us going off and freaking out and noodling around. A-T: The band is about to celebrate its 10-year anniversary. What keeps you guys going? Conrad: Continuing to have gigs, rehearsals and stuff. If I didn't have this to look forward to, it would just be the same routine. If you talk about what keeps you interested, well, this is the main thing that I'm alive for is to do this. This is what I enjoy. Ben Johnston: Even though I haven't been a part of this band for a 10-year span, I can see that it's constantly growing, that it's not getting boring. The music that we're playing has so much room to progress and not get stale. We're always moving in a new direction, and we're always coming up with a new sound inside of what we're already doing. A-T: What has been Self-Evident's greatest accomplishment? Tom: For me, it's the next step; the next step is always the best part. It just keeps getting better. Every tour gets better because the bands we play with are better, the shows are better, we hope all the records are better than the last one. Playing with certain bands is always a highlight or playing certain clubs or certain towns. The touring every time is the highlight, that and recording and writing; the whole package. Definitely [playing with] Big City Rock, that was a really big opportunity for us. A-T: Why do you guys enjoy playing in the Fox Valley so much? Tom: The furthest back was Sunday Flood in Appleton. We started playing with them seven or eight years ago. So we started coming back on a semi-non-regular basis, but in the last four or five years, we've been playing there quite a bit. Happy and other bands like Scarlet Escape and a few other bands have really treated us well. We've always had pretty good luck there. Sounds Like Braille really helped us fit in as far as not being the weirdest band, and that always helped. So we've sort of tried this, tried that, played here, played there and everything has seemed to be a lot of fun and been pretty good shows. We've gotten pretty lucky. A-T: You come from such a great music scene. What is it about Minneapolis that has produced so many amazing bands? Ben: Winter; the weather. You're going to be stuck inside when it's 20 below for a week straight, you're going to need something to do. People get kind of depressed in the winter months, emotional. It makes for good songwriting, I guess. If we were an emo band, we would be even better. See Self-Evident this Saturday at Peabody's Ale House with Traindodge, Sunday Flood and doubleplusgood records labelmates Happy (CD-release show). Show starts at 10 p.m. Self-Evident's new self-titled CD is available at Exclusive Company (Oshkosh and Appleton) or online as doubleplusgoodrecords.com, iTunes, eMusic, Rhapsody and Napster.
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doubleplusgood records
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