At this point, you probably know the Recess Monkey back story. At least I hope you do, because you won’t learn that the trio are early childhood educators at a progressive Seattle school or that they’re managed by a monkey named MayMo. You also won’t read a word about their John Vanderslice fetish.
A couple of months ago Drew Holloway, Jack Forman and Daron Henry wasted spent an hour of their precious Spring Break holiday talking to me about spandex, Transformers, jumping the shark, and Guns-n-Roses’ Chinese Democracy. Oh, and a bit about their new album “Flying!”, due June 21st. Below is sorta what transpired.
Handy dandy guide to understanding who said what: bassist Jack Forman (JF), guitarist and chief songwriter Drew Holloway (DH), drummer and the voice of MayMo Daron Henry (DH2)
- On their ability to sustain the prolific one-album-per-year pace they’ve maintained for the past 7 years: JF: “Field Trip” (or maybe “The Final Funktier”) was the first record that almost didn’t get made because we were asking that question “do we need to put out a new record?”. I remember Drew asking “This has been a great run, we made a ton of records but is this something we want to keep up?” The answer from all three of us was a total resounding YES.” Plus, “Drew’s head would probably explode if we didn’t make an album every year.
- On the primary question they ask themselves when making a new album: DH: “Is it different?” JF: “Every time that we approach a new record it’s ‘what can we do that we haven’t done before?'”
- On artistic growth: JF: “There are so many songs [on “Flying!”] that represent growth. Looking back on us two and three records ago these are things we couldn’t have conceived of.
- On letting go and jumping the shark: JF: “We want people to listen to our records of course, and we want them to be great and loved and speak to kids on many different levels, but first and foremost it’s about the three of us being in a room together and making songs that really resonate with us. And that letting go process, it’s kinda frightening getting the CDs back from the manufacturer, it’s hard to know what people are going to think. That fear is definitely a real thing every time we make a record…are we jumping the shark? [laughs]. DH: “I have an enormous sense of relief…because I don’t have to write songs for another few days [laughter].
- On the Recess Monkey brand: DH2: “I think we’re really aware that at this point in our career we do have kind of a ‘Recess Monkey brand’ so that when people put on our discs or see our stuff they expect something…and there’s a fine line of wanting to make sure people aren’t like ‘well this doesn’t sound like them’ or ‘this isn’t them at all’. There’s that line as well as for us as artists always trying to do something fresh and new which makes it interesting for us and makes it interesting for our fans…that fine line of wanting to do things that are still in the spirit of Recess Monkey but still brand new and fresh.”
- On what comes first, words or melody?: DH2: “Spandex comes first.”
- On making numerous musical styles work on a single record and making albums that don’t suck: DH2: “I have no idea how it works” [much laughter]. DH: “The fact that we’re putting it all together pretty quickly in terms of turning it around every year helps to keep it as a snapshot.”
- On making records records faster than Axel Rose: JF: “How many different ways can you record that one song? There’s a point where it just needs to be what it is right now. I think about Axel Rose/Guns-n-Roses and “Chinese Democracy”, how many years did that take to make – 13 years – and how many 100’s of hours of singles were there recorded for that record? Our idea is we would have made 13 Chinese Democracy’s in that time! Chinese Democracy #1, #9… At some point you have to be confident in who are you right now and feel okay about sharing that.”
- On knowing when to throw in the towel: JF: “When we start chasing after other songs in new songs. When we start saying “we should totally recreate the feeling we had in ‘x’ in this new song”. That’s when it’s going to feel like we’re chasing after something where the inspiration isn’t there but that hasn’t happened a single time.”
- On keeping their day jobs so they never run out of song ideas: JF: “That’s a great point because over summer vacation we always think of songs to write about and they always invariably end up being about either traffic or weather…or how good this food tastes”.
- On superheroes: JF: “I was a big time He-Man fan and I was a big Transformers guy too…and there was this toy called MASK that was totally cool – just cars and trucks that would turn into other cars and trucks!” DH: “I had bits and pieces of a comic book collection growing up. I was really into Spiderman and also really into the Fantastic Four for awhile. I also had a huge Conan the Barbarian collection for some reason but I was never a big superhero guy, I was strictly more Star Wars and Transformers.” DH2: “I had a dream last night where Arnold Schwarzenegger played a father figure and he didn’t have his accent!”
Despite the album not being available for another week, Recess Monkey is already 3 videos into “Flying!”. The most recent is for “Super Stuffies”, a song that incorporates both indie rocker John Vanderslice and Edward R. Murrow. Enjoy it, then check out the rest of the videos on the Recess Monkey YouTube page.
“Flying!” features the best Recess Monkey song ever as well as a star-studded cast of guest appearances by Chris Ballew (aka Caspar Babypants), Molly Ledford (Lunch Money), Chris Wiser (Sugar Free Allstars), Justin Lansing (Okee Dokee Brothers), Tom Baisden (The Not-Its!), Dean Jones, Johnny Bregar, and Tor Hyams (who also produced the album).