The Alchemist :

Julian Saporiti of The Young Republic in conversation with Ben Easton (WRVU-FM)

5:00 PM, Tuesday, May 20th, 2009

Front Porch, Sky Mountain Studio, Nashville, TN

Ben Easton: Do you think this new EP is a manifesto for where The Young Republic is right now as a band?

Julian Saporiti: Yeah, I think so. The three songs here that are also on the new album [Balletesque] are a good indication of what we're doing musically in terms of composition and our range. The two additional tracks, SHINE ON HARVEST MOON and the reworking of BALLETESQUE -- are more of what we do when we're playing for fun and not trying to make some grandiose artistic piece of work.

BE: Besides the material, though, this EP in particular seems to be sort of a split between songs that revolve around personal narrative--songs from experience-- and songs that tell fictional stories. How intentional is this balance?

JS: Anytime we write, there's a little bit of personal stuff. Our former bandmates and the big shift in YR personnel we had in the last couple of years, that's been in the songwriting in some way or another. But it might just be an impetus for a song-- one of the colors we use. You can start writing a song about something, and then it can just take a fictional turn. If you take a look at our songwriting, everything is rooted in the first-person, but hopefully people don't infer that this is like a diary entry for us. It's supposed to be fictional.

BE: In a song like THE ALCHEMIST, the lyrics are more of a fictional account, you can definitely hear the turmoil and the real-life aspect coming through in the chords and the music.

JS: Definitely. I think turmoil and isolation are very real notions that all people go through. That's what I think THE ALCHEMIST is about, more than anything. Turmoil is an eternal notion, but it's especially prevalent for people our age. Maybe moving out of a city or moving to another city, dealing with young relationships or the transplant of going to college in a new place. So yes, THE ALCHEMIST is real, but its also storytelling. The song is the centerpiece of the upcoming album, certainly this EP, and essentially everything we've done so far as a band. This is what we're about, this is what we're doing.

BE: It seems like you guys are working to balance older sounds--traditional folk and country, for example--with innovation and rock n roll.

JS: It's just sort of how we've all always been. Though we are a rock n roll band, I still fancy what we do as part of the American folk music tradition, in a really, really warped way. If you just play THE ALCHEMIST on an acoustic guitar, it's just a folk song. It's long, it has tons of verses, it tells a whole story from start to finish, just like those old endless Appalachian songs. If you're going to play rock n roll, you've got to go back to where it started-- Sun Records, Chess. The basis for a lot of bands' music these days are groups like the Pixies. They're a great band, but if that's it, there's not going to be a wide enough palate to make sustainable music. You might write a few cool songs, or have a cool act for a little bit, but you really have to go farther back. That's what we do, just in a few styles of music--even in classical, which obviously goes beyond this century. Kristin plays all these fiddle tunes, which go back hundreds of years to Ireland and England. Bob and Chris listen to jazz a lot, which has its own history and tradition. We try to combine all those elements. We don't try to make something new: we just try to make something good out of what we like. We're just making American music, but hopefully a little different than just the stuff we're building off of.

BE: Where have you guys been playing around town?

JS: We've played all the typical rock clubs--on a couple of tours we came through and played the Basement and the End. We've played the Mercy Lounge. Unfortunately, the way the rock clubs work is they don't want you to play more than once a month. We're the sort of band that wants to play five times a week, three hours a night. If we can play a whole set of 60s covers or jazz, that would be awesome too. We don't really feel too connected because a lot of clubs will turn us down without hearing the music. In Nashville there's a thousand different bands, so if you don't bring enough drinkers to the bar, it's a hard sell. In other cities, there's a knowledge of who the top bands are in town. In Nashville, there's no real consensus. There isn't much of an infrastructure.

BE: Do you have a greater respect for the honky-tonk players on Broadway, then? They're the guys who are playing regular three-hour sets every night.

JS: That's who we love to see. We go to see the Don Kelly Band at Robert's Western World at least once a week. Their guitar player, J.D. Simo, rocks our socks off. Playing shows like that--flexing our musical muscles--is what we like to do. We'd be wasting our degrees if we weren't writing the actual notes down on paper, studying Booker T and the Band, listening to their rhythms and their grooves, and trying to replicate that. The stuff that appeals to us are the older guys who can really play their instruments.

BE: Do you and the band think that being from Nashville plays a large part in being so rooted in your influences?

JS: Growing up here, I think I have a certain musical personality that many Nashville musicians find after living here for a long time. A lot of local rock bands totally shy away from the traditional country and folk stuff because they think its really lame. They're trying to shy away from the city they live in, and that's why a lot of those people get out. When they go to school, they don't come back. I've always appreciated growing up here. I like things like WSM and the Grand Ole Opry. The honky-tonks and the session players, old Middle Tennessee music like Sam and Kirk McGee. I don't even mind the whole country music establishment these days. The whole Nashville sound in the 60s or 70s, Roy Acuff and all that jazz (or country)--that's stuff I really appreciate. I feel lucky to live here. Its sort of like if you're born in New Orleans: even if you're not a musician, you still can sort of identify with the music and the identity of the people who make music there.

BE: You guys have set down roots at your studio, Sky Mountain. Has the scenery of where you guys record and create here had an impact on your music? Is it stimulating?

JS: We're lucky to be in the middle of these beautiful hills of West Nashville. Just green and blue, a hundred different birds as far as you can see. Deer, foxes, turtles, rabbits, squirrels, coyotes. All that stuff. It's like recording in the middle of one of the Warner parks. If you're trying to make music that feels natural and organic, it's good to be in a place that's so green. You can come outside for a breath of fresh air and see 50 trees that are all 60 feet tall, right in front of you. A canopy above your head. And having your own gear anywhere is a blessing. We spent four years at music school squatting with a digital recorder box in abandoned basements of apartment buildings and practice rooms and percussion closets. We had a little box and a couple of microphones. Here, it's allowed us to have a nice big room with a bunch of pianos and guitars and drum kits. We can set up and just practice cutting records together, being a real band. Cutting it live instead of doing it piecemeal, guerilla-style.

BE: Mojo Magazine recently described your music as sounding like if the Pixies made country music. This seems more like a hook and a journalistic quip, though. How would you characterize your music more appropriately?

JS: I think of things in a more classical vein of categorization, in a more nationalistic way. I would say its modern American music--modern American folk music, modern American rock n roll. We're not people living in the 60s. We want to make music of the exact time that we're from. Music that's fresh, and representative of exactly who we are.