Hello James from Beach Slang, how are things going?
It’s exciting – you make this thing, then you have to sit on it for a little while. It’s getting kind of cool now it’s close to where we can finally be, ‘Here, we made this thing and now we can share it’. I have to get talked down from the ledge a lot by our manager because I’m real bad at sitting idle – I’m a pretty excitable guy.
This is your second album in as many years, what are your thoughts on the standard two-to-three year turn around for the majority of artists?
Stuff like that two year thing sounds abysmal. You sign up to be a musician and there are two major components to that: you make songs and you play shows. It’s the thing I love to do, so an album a year, for me that’s just kind of the rule – I couldn’t imagine going longer than that, I feel like I’d be bouncing off the walls.
Were there pressures?
I think one of the things we did really right with this record, is that we didn’t succumb to the pressure of following up the first record right. That ‘sophomore slump’ thing they lay on bands, we were sort of able to forget about it and it really was like just how we went in on the first EP or second EP or the first record.
How is the JP situation?
It was a very complicated situation and I’ve been talking to my publicist and my manager, we talk about this and nobody wants any drama or anything – we all wish the guy well. You know, I’m assuming he wishes us well. When he posted the thing about leaving it was a bit misconstrued. This was in the works for a while, it was a wonky cog in terms of chemistry. It just wasn’t working out. We didn’t have much of a recovery period because we were trying to figure it out, so you know, I feel bad saying this, but it feels pretty fantastic right now.
Any news on a replacement?
Right now we’re going to sit tight with the three of us. We do have someone we believe could be permanent, but he’s touring with another band through the fall so we have our friend in on this tour. But the person we believe is going to be our permanent, at the beginning of 2017 he’ll be coming on board. [sc name=”stopper”]