Spiral Beach

One Friday afternoon, I met up with Daniel Woodhead of Spiral Beach under the “giant beatle thinger” at Sonic Boom. The band was set to have an in-store performance that evening before their show with Two Hours Traffic at Lee’s Palace, across the street. We looked for the quietest area of the store, which ended up being the Gospel section, where Daniel told me about their on-going tour, the new album, a brief history of Bollywood music, Skunt, and everything that fell in between.

Singing Lamb: You’ve been touring for quite some time now. How is life on the road?

Daniel Woodhead: It’s good! This is kind of the end of the first part of the Canadian tour. And we’re gonna go down to New York next week and then Montreal after that. And we get to go to Europe in November, which is going to be amazing.

Do you have any favourite stops?

Daniel: We really like playing in New York. It’s definitely one of the most exciting places to be. But I think, on this tour, Saskatoon was really amazing.

Really?

Daniel: Yeah, it was definitely the best show – the highlight. And Kingston was also really good… All over – it’s always really random. Sometimes we go somewhere that we’ve been, like six times, and there’d be nobody there. And then we go somewhere we’ve never been to before, and it’d be packed and amazing.

Any interesting tour-related stories?

Daniel: Oh, yeah. We drove out of the way, seven hours north in BC. To Prince George, which was horrendous. We had two days to get to Victoria from Edmonton, driving through the mountains. We must have taken the wrong fork and gone north for seven hours. So then, by the time we got to Victoria, we’d missed all the ferries except the last one. We got there literally as it was pulling out. We just drove the entire day to get to this ferry, and we missed it by about 5 minutes.

Were you able to get to your show on time?

Daniel: Yeah, luckily that was still the driving day. We actually didn’t play until the next day. It was just really frustrating.

Let’s talk about the new album. How is it different from your previous releases?

Daniel: We recorded it kind of in the opposite way. The last one we recorded all live and basically really, really fast… in a barn, which is not the normal place to record an album, obviously. For this one, we took our time. We did a lot of layering and kind of collage-style, where we just record a whole lot of stuff and put it together afterwards. So some of the songs are like mini stacks of different layers of keyboards. There’s definitely a different style. And also, it was very spaced out. We had three months to work on it.

What’s the story behind the name?

Daniel: “The Only Really Thing”? It’s just something I say a lot, by accident. I get things mixed up, and I’ll say, “Well, the only really thing with that is…” And everybody’s just like, “What?” There’s a line between confusing and interesting, and I think that’s where we live. We just kind of summed up a lot of the non-sense that is in our heads.

Yeah, when I first read it, I was wondering about the double adverbs. I thought it was a typo.

Daniel: Yeah, exactly. Well, I’m glad you got it right. A lot of people say “The Only Real Thing”, and I’m just like, What do you mean?

I read on your Twitter that you had a secret release party in Toronto on last week (Oct 9th).-

Daniel: Yeah, that was craziness by itself! We drove from Chicago that day. It took eleven hours or something… I was trying to set up the party via text message. We had a keg of beer that somebody had to pick up – all the things that come with running a big party… By the time we got there, it was 11 or so, and it was basically all set up. The first band had gone on and everything was set to go. And then we played the entire album all the way through, which we’ve never done before. And it was at a really cool space, too.

Where was it?

Daniel: My friend Bo plays in a band called La Casa Muerte. He has this amazing loft space with a stage and a soundboard. It’s as good as The Boat or something like that. We played there a couple of times. We did, I think, during NxNE with Japanther and DD/MM/YYYY, who are two of my favourite bands. And that was amazing – there were people hanging from the rafters; it was intense.

Was it a spontaneous thing?

Daniel: Yeah! We literally didn’t know we were playing until that day. We were just gonna have a party when we got back, so we could all see our friends.

So, it was private?

Daniel: Yeah, it was kind of a private thing. Although it ended up being totally full of people we don’t know, as they usually are. If you tell people there’s beer and bands, they’ll just come, y’know?

Spiral Beach has a very distinct sound. Where do you get your influence from?

Daniel: We listen to everything. Like everything in this store around us. This is actually where I buy my CDs all the time… but on the new album, anyway, we kind of took this whole Bollywood thing to the max and tried to sonically make an obvious connection. It just meshes really well with what we do… like that all over the place, colourful kind of fun-ness.

What got you into Bollywood music in the first place?

Daniel: Well, originally, our friend got a bunch of these compilation records in New York City at a specialty shop. It’s pretty hard to find the original records. Most of them aren’t released in North America at all. They’re all film soundtracks. I just thought it was an interesting thing that it’s almost like a secret, kind of like hidden music… like Asha Bhosle, who is the Queen of Bollywood – she has supposedly recorded more songs than anybody in history. These people are kind of legendary, but nobody knows who they are here. And partly, we want to draw attention to that, to show that this music’s amazing. But as far as the sound of it, I think that kind of warm analogue, really echoed, kind of psychedelic sound that a lot of those artists are basically copying… I guess like Pink Floyd and all those psychedelic bands from the 60s. But then, they were doing it in this weird, off-kilter way because they probably heard the records on static-y AM radio. Every few weeks, they might hear a song like that, so the influence kind of seeped in. And we’re taking it back. So it’s like, West-East-West – going back and forth.

Your shows have always been so theatrical and visually-engaging. Why is that so important to Spiral Beach?

Daniel: It’s just more fun to do that way! It seems like such an obvious thing, but so many bands just set up and play and then leave – and that’s kind of it.

Do you also put up the same extravagant shows on tour? Complete with all those props?

Daniel: We try to! There’s different levels, obviously. There’s been a couple of times we’ve taken our friend, Trevor, who does projections for the band at most of the Toronto shows. So, we’ve tried taking that on the road – sometimes it works, sometimes it’s kind of a hassle, mostly because of the timing. If you only have twenty minutes to set up and soundcheck, and then the other band has to play, there’s just not enough time to set up a room full of glowing stuff. But for those shows, like the loft party last week, we can definitely make it into our own world.

Do you ever consider changing that, perhaps doing a completely stripped down show?

Daniel: We have, occassionally. Sometimes, we’ll do something totally different. We have a secret alter-ego band, too, called Skunt, which is the absolute opposite of Spiral Beach. We just play our songs in a stripped down setting. We’ve done that a couple of times. We played with Fucked Up as Skunt, and it was the dirtiest-sounding show ever.

I remember at Rolly’s Garage you were Swirling Shores!

Daniel: Yeah, exactly! Swirling Shores is really funny. You don’t want to be “the local band”, so we try to make sure every time we play in Toronto, it’s kind of like, “We’re back!” Tonight at Lee’s Palace would be the first regular club show we’ve done since April and only the second one for this year.

What’s your favourite venue to play at?

Daniel: In Toronto? Probably the Centre of Gravity Theatre, where we did the big all-night party a couple of years ago.

Are you going to do anything like that soon?

Daniel: I want to, for sure. We’re on the road until December, so I think maybe when we get back, we might put something together there. We’ll see. It’s also a little out of the way. I wish there was a space similar to that in the west end. Getting everybody out to the east feels like a journey… which is part of what makes it so much fun.

If you were a singing animal, what would you be?

Daniel: I always thought the animal I relate to most would be a fox. But that’s just me… for maybe being a little bit stuck up or something… So if I was to be a cool singing animal, I’d definitely be a fox. But if I was to be an actual singing animal, I’d be… maybe I’d just be a seagull. There you
go!

***

For more Spiral Beach,

MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/spiralbeach

Spiral Beach will be holding three upcoming shows – all acoustic! These will all be fundraisers to help raise money for the band’s trip to Europe next month! For more information on the shows, go here.