Despite being exhausted from a late night of video making and having just wrapped up a sound check for a special Valentine’s performance in Kansas City, OK Go bassist Tim Nordwind was gracious enough to share with PopWreckoning his views on the holiday, videos, social media and so much much more. Check out the full interview below.
Bethany, PopWreckoning: You’re doing a Valentine’s Day show for free in Kansas City. Since it is a special holiday show, do you guys have anything extra or special planned for it?
Tim Nordwind, OK Go: Isn’t that enough? Nah. We always have special things planned for our shows, regardless of whether or not it is a Hallmark day or not. We always have special things and we have special things planned for our Kansas City audience tonight. Luckily, there’s an awful lot of love in our set, so we’re an obvious pick for a Valentine’s Day show. We love to love.
B: Did you find yourselves planning a special set list then? I’d argue that at least on the most recent album these are some of the most heartbroken songs as opposed to lovey dovey.
TN: Yeah. We’re playing all of them tonight. Only the most heartbroken ones this evening. We have given some thought to the show tonight and come up with a good set list. We’ll take the audience through all the different kinds of love this evening.
B: Excellent.
TN: It’s good to remember both the good and the bad parts of love to fully appreciate it.
B: So at your shows, I’ve seen you before, they’re big shows. You’ve had lots of confetti and extra marching drums. How much time in advance do you start planning these shows and figuring out what goes into your tours?
TN: The great thing about live performance is the connection that you make with the audience. We spend a lot of time figuring how to form different connections with the audience. Quite a bit of thought goes into our production and its fun stuff to think about for sure. We enjoy figuring out new ways to create a party for the people who come to the show. As you said, on this new record, there are a lot more heartbroken and melancholic songs and we were wondering how that was all going to work in the set next to the high energy, less melancholic songs. What’s interesting is that when you set up a mood, as long as everyone in the room is sort of feeling it together, it always feels good. If we’re playing a slightly sad song, as long as everyone can relate to that emotion and you can also go celebrate that emotion together, then everything seems to work fine. Yeah, the production really has to do with trying to line up these different moods throughout the night and that does take a little bit of timing.
B: When I saw you last time, I want to say it was in September in Denver, you guys did “This Too Shall Pass” and you did a kind of marching band thing almost. Later the video came out and you did a marching band thing in that. Do you guys plan out your videos that far in advance that you’re already thinking in terms of things like that or do they just come to you and you think, “Oh, this would be a cool idea.”
TN: Normally speaking, the ideas for our videos come a little bit in advance of the actual production of our videos. Yeah, in regards to the Notre Dame marching band, we saw them a year before and saw them perform “Here It Goes Again” for halftime at a football game. So we saw them do that and we were like, “Oh, we should do something together.” Then, it went from there. We planned a general plan with the Notre Dame marching band for about four months or so and then went to South Bend, Indiana to meet with them and do the video. What was nice was once we got to South Bend, once we met the band and once we could see first hand sort of what we were doing with even the idea we had spent a full months planning out, it changed a little bit now that we could see what it was like to be with them. We sort of realized all these different things that we could do once we got there. Some of what happens in our videos is very spontaneous and things you couldn’t plan out until you are actually experiencing whatever it is that we are doing, but most of the time we go through several stages of planning. A lot of what we are doing is setting up a sort of structured set so that when we are doing it we can be sort of spontaneous. How do you set up a strong enough structure so that you can play within it once you’re actually doing it?
B: Right now you guys are working on, or at least wrapping up, a second video for “This Too Shall Pass.” Why two videos for that song?
TN: The second video is for the studio version of “This Too Shall Pass,” which is on the record versus the Notre Dame marching version, which is a live version that we recorded with the Notre Dame band, so it is a different arrangement. We had this idea of “This Too Shall Pass” and we had two good ideas that we felt fit the song. Also, we saw it as an opportunity to make a different arrangement of the song, which seemed fun. The video we are shooting, we just got done shooting it last night [Friday], is for the album version of “This Too Shall Pass.”
B: When can people expect to see this video?
TN: I think by the beginning of March, hopefully. We literally wrapped up at about 4 in the morning and then when straight to the airport for Kansas City. We haven’t watched any of the takes, really. We just shot and shot and shot and shot. Hopefully, we’ll be getting it put together and have it out be the end of February/early March.
B: Great. You guys seem to be a very fan first band. Like this girl in France made a YouTube video and was like, “Why no contest for France,” and within a day you guys responded and were like, “Here’s your contest.” Why do you believe it is so important to interact with your fans that quickly and that closely? And obviously, you guys use YouTube, but are you big advocates of other social media tools?
TN: We’re not a group of marketers. We’re a rock band and we enjoy making things and seeing things that people make. However it is that we see it, whether Twitter, MySpace or Facebook; however it is that they make it, social networking is fine, but what I care about is what I’m actually watching. We get excited when we see awesome things that people make and the video that girl made is just great. It’s really clever and fun and really well done. It seemed like she had spent a bit of time making it and it was a labor of love type project. Yeah, we appreciated the spirit in which she made that video. What’s nice is that we do have these social media networks where we can put things up and share them with fans and fans can put things up and share them with us. We have this nice sort of back and forth dialogue with them through all these different social networking platforms. At the end of the day, mostly what we care about is what’s being produced and that sort of creative output. When we see something that we like, we respond because it is fun. It’s fun to talk to people whose work you admire. We ended up meeting her in Paris. She came to the show.
B: Great. Ok, just two more for fun questions. It was announced in the past week that you’re playing Bonnaroo as well some other fests. What would you put in a festival survival kit?
TN: Most festivals are in the Summer or months when it gets hot, so definitely some sunscreen. Definitely lots of water. I think a map of the ground that you’re on because festivals are always super confusing and I always get lost. I would also invent a machine that would allow me to be in two places at once because at almost every festival, there are at least two to three bands playing at the same time and I want to see them all. I may work on a machine that would allow me to be in two places at once and if I invent it, I’ll put it in the festival kit.
B: Excellent. For a final question, since the Oscars are coming up and you are so video savvy, who is your pick for best picture?
TN: “Inglourious Basterds.” Quentin Tarantino. I thought that was a really great film and very compelling. It sort of played out…I like Tarantino’s film because they always have a theatrical sense where there can be a seventeen minute scene where it’s really nothing, but dialogue and he is sort of a master of dialogue and building tension and release… at the moment of highest tension, there’s always a sort of amazing release. I thought that was a great film.
B: Alright. Well I’ll let you get dinner and rest up before the show tonight. I look forward to seeing you guys perform.
TN: Cool. Thank you.
