On July 17th, the Texas Gentlemen will return with their new album ‘Floor It!’ on New West Records. Imogen chatted to Nik from the group to hear about the new record, the evolution of their music and more.
How have you been? It must be nice to have the record to focus on at this time…
I’m good, I’m having a wonderful morning so far. You definitely have to keep yourself busy, don’t you? I have a little studio at my house, so I’ve actually spent the time at home, working on a new side project, Afrobeats kind of inspired thing.
That does lend into the fact that The Texas Gentlemen do have so many eclectic influences in your music, I feel like it’s even evolved since TX Jelly. Did you feel like there had been a big change from that project to this one?
Yeah, obviously considering the way that evolution works, it can go in both directions. You can either get better or you can get stuck in a rut. Luckily, we found that after recording the last record, we had a new perspective I guess, whereas before we didn’t have any contemplation or collective thought really (laughs). It was more like ‘hey, what’s going on? You’ve got a song? Sweet, get in there…’ This was more contemplated for certain, they’re just different. We did decide that we wanted to have a more succinct voice and that required Daniel and I to write all the music, and it felt like a move forward for sure and a more thoughtful way.
With the first record, it was off the heels of you guys being a studio band for so long. I can imagine getting out on the road in your own right and having that experience touring for a live audience and seeing their response to the music, probably changed the direction that you guys went in.
Yeah, and we realised that we didn’t necessarily cover all the particulars that we wanted to on the first record. Even though it was an eclectic album, we had come to the realisation that it may have been too all over the place, for Daniel and I’s taste. We wanted to do something that represented us as musicians in a more succinct way, rather than just being this band that’s like ‘everybody, come on down and play with us and we’ll figure it out later!’
This was more a concerted approach to how we want to write and how we want to sound and how we’re perceived – that’s something we’re thinking about more now than we did. I think we definitely have a more thoughtful approach throughout. I do enjoy the other record, I can’t say that I’ve listened to it, but I’ve always kind of done that, once I’ve finished something, I kind of put it down and move on. With this record, it’s something that I enjoy listening to, so that’s another thing to count, we wanted to make a record that we wanted to hear, rather than whatever we spat out.
There’s just a big difference between the approach. We still operate on the grounds that we don’t like to do a lot of takes, not that we don’t like to but I think you can start to choke out the vibe, once you perfect everything. It’s just more involved. We’ve brought in the horn and string section, performed and arranged by David Pearce and his orchestra – that was a huge game changer. When I heard the strings on ‘Easy Street,’ I just remember being like ‘wow, I can’t believe that that’s us’, because I’d never recorded an album that had strings and horns arranged and performed in such a professional way. I think I had to take a lap around the studio and get myself together, I had to turn into a three year old child for a moment.
That’s the way it should be though, if you’re not as excited as that about your own music, how can you expect anyone else to be?
Right, you’ve got to sell something with honesty, but you’re still selling something. You’re right, you have to be excited about it yourself and that has to be a genuine feeling. We’re definitely not going through the motions at all with this group and I really appreciate that.
You also recorded part of the record at the legendary Fame Studios, what did it mean for you guys to record the record there?
We actually bounced around about five different studios over the span of about a year, only two of those studios did we actually keep material from – Echo Lab and Fame, and a bit of stuff from Austin Jenkins. Everywhere we went we did live tracking, where everyone in the band is playing at the same time, we wanted to find a room like Fame that had that room sound. We cut a lot of songs at different studios, but we ended up completely redoing them as we had the ideal sound in mind.
Luckily you recorded the video for ‘Bare Maximum’ before all this happened, how much fun was that to bring to life? You really use your imagination in that video…
Yeah, from sweating blood to playing a horn instrument that I don’t know how to play. That was a concept that Barbara Creamer, who’s a film and video guru, had the idea to do the different colours, then Rhett did a ton of conceptual stuff too. They shot it so quickly and so masterfully, I was very impressed and pleased with the results.
‘Train to Avesta’ was one of my favourite tracks on the record, so what was the particular thought process behind that one?
Well I had a sweetheart in Sweden and I totally fell in love with her, we had this very short relationship because it’s hard to have a long distance relationship like that, I remember when I was leaving Sweden and there was this train going from where we were near Gottland and it was a long train ride. I remember having that longing feeling and realising that things were changing and I couldn’t do anything about it, I wrote a little bit on the train I think and she inspired that tune. That is one of my favourite songs too, because it has taken on different forms – when I wrote it it was a waltz, more in a country style that I didn’t necessarily like.
What do you hope fans take away from this record?
Proof of evolution I guess, there’s a lot of new sounds, it’s more of a congealed kind of sound to me that has more of a collective vibe throughout the album, even though it is still pretty eclectic. I think it shows a little bit of growth in the performances and arrangements, just a little more thought out. We took a little more time to craft the songs and it was definitely a more thoughtful record, which is how we’re going to do it from here on out.
Floor It is available to pre-order now, ahead of its release on July 17th.
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