Due to complications at the The Walkmen‘s Kansas City show, I was unable to catch them for a face to face interview. However, just when we thought all hope was lost, Hamilton Leithhauser saved the day, opting to take time out of his crazy schedule of recording and touring to answer a few questions for me through email. Check it out!
Joshua, PopWreck(oning): You guys went to Columbia, right? That’s not small ball. What did you guys major in?
Hamilton Leithauser, The Walkmen: Matt and Paul went there. They studied Russian history. I studied philosophy at NYU.
HL: I guess when I saw The Pogues last year…although it doubled as a gig because we were the opening band. But I would have been there anyhow. It was a great way to get a free ticket into the show. They kicked ass.
HL: One of the new ones. Maybe this one called “Canadian Girl” or maybe “On the Water”, “Red Moon” or “I Lost You”. I’m really proud of what we’ve done in the last couple years and all the work we’ve put into these new tunes.
HL: It’s a day in, day out thing. We just do it basically every day, and every once in a while something sounds new and exciting. It can be so tiring and it’s easy to burn out on stuff. But it’s important for us to really do it a lot because you never know when something’s going to work out. It can be the best part of being in the band, but usually we’re working at a snail’s pace.
HL: When the record comes out in August we’ll be traveling around a lot. I hope we write a bunch more songs before we tour so we can do another record soon. We are definitely going to have some quality stuff left over from this record so maybe we can get a jump on the next one.
HL: It’s so crazy it just might work.
PW: Are there any current trends in music that you would like to see go away?
HW: People always ask me to come visit their “MySpace page” and check out the new shit. Isn’t there something just a little unsavory about that? I can’t put my finger on why but it just seems lame.
HL: There’s this group, I think called Super Golden from DC that’s made up of guys from West Africa and a few guys from DC. Pete showed me one of their videos and it was really cool. I’m going to watch out for them.
The Walkmen: website | myspace
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