Portugal The Man

It’s an unseasonably cold October evening in Toronto, and I can clearly make out my breath and the whisps of smoke trailing from the end of Zach Carothers’ cigarette. I’m standing with the Portugal. The Man bassist outside the Horseshoe Tavern, while we wait for the opening band inside to finish their sound check. If you’ve never heard of Portugal. The Man, they are a Portland-based garage rock band, who incorporate elements of everything from Zepplin-esque blues to gritty soul into their music. The band consists of John Gourley, Jason Sechrist, Ryan Neighbors, and Carothers, and they have a work ethic that puts most bands to shame. Portugal. The Man are touring in support of their newest studio album, The Satanic Satanist, which is their fourth album in the past four years. The best word to describe their live show could only be psychedelic: a combination of a multi-coloured light show and a powerful stage presence, with Gourley’s vocals resembling an apocalyptic southern Pentecostal preacher at times. Carothers was kind enough to talk to me about everything from recording the new album, to growing up in Alaska, to how David Bowie influenced the band’s name, and more.

The Singing Lamb: You guys have put out four full-length albums in the past four years. So first off, what’s your secret to your productivity?

Zach Carothers: I don’t know, it doesn’t really seem that crazy to us. We all came from pretty hardworking families and it just seems like that’s our job and that’s what we should do. And as far as an album a year goes, a year is a pretty long time. We always put it into perspective – John’s parents own a construction company in Alaska and they build like twelve houses a year and those are houses, bottom up, plumbing, electrical, everything. I’ve built houses and I’ve recorded albums, and building houses takes longer and is harder work. So it really doesn’t seem that crazy to us. We just have a good group of dudes – John’s a really good songwriter, and he writes very fast, and we’re very spontaneous about jamming along with stuff right off the bat, so we’ve gotten used to it.

Your newest album, The Satanic Satanist, was actually leaked online early and I know you guys have had problems with that in the past. I was wondering how does that feel and what do you guys do to make the best of the situation?

Zach: Well actually we don’t get that frustrated with it. We’re pumped that people are out looking for it and people want to hear it. And so it doesn’t really affect a band like us, it affects bigger bands. Its just harder to keep numbers and keep track of all that stuff, and we’re fine with downloading, we’re fine with people taking our album for free. We just wanted to let people know – and we wrote a blog about this on our website – if you do love a band, and you want them to be around, then buy their records. If you’re just trying us out though, you’ve never heard us and you are like, “Oh, I’m going to give this a taste”, then by all means download it. I download. But if I love somebody I’ll totally buy it.

With the new album – to me anyways – it seems a lot more soulful and upbeat then some of your previous work, especially say Church Mouth. Was that a conscious decision when you guys set out to make it sound different than the previous albums or was it something that came as you guys were recording?

Zach: We always set out to make our albums different than the one before just because we’re fans of that. There’s just so much music in the world and you can take inspiration from so many different places, bands that put out the same record twice just really weirds me out. So we definitely wanted to go more structured, pop-oriented, but also its our most experimental record in many ways in terms of synths and recording techniques.

You are from Alaska originally. What was that like growing up, and then moving to Portland, Oregon? Are you guys all living in Portland now?

Zach: Yeah, we all live in Portland. None of us have homes or anything but we all crash there, we’re on tour so much. But yeah, growing up in Alaska was awesome. It was great as far as nature goes and family and everything, but as far as getting inspiration for music, we had oldies radio, top 40 and stuff like that. We didn’t have the Internet until I was seventeen, so I didn’t know about a lot of music. Moving down to Portland really opened my eyes when it came to film and art and underground music.

It’s regarded in so many circles as being one of the music meccas of America. Is it all they say it is?

Zach: It’s pretty awesome. They’re very supportive of artists and so its really nice to live in a place where if I walk down the street and they’re like “Hey, what do you do?”, and I’m like “Oh, I’m a musician”, they’re not like “Oh you lazy piece of shit, get a real job”. It’s cool, everybody’s cool with it.

So explain how David Bowie influenced the band name.

Zach: First of all, we liked the idea of solo projects. We loved how a name like James Brown is just so bad-ass and you kind of picture it in lights. And we also had a lot of respect for people like David Bowie that has a name like that, but he still created a fictional character. He created Ziggy Stardust, and was like, “I can do whatever I want and not be blamed for it, because its not me.” We just thought that was a really cool thing. Same with Sergeant Pepper. So we liked that whole idea a lot and decided to create a character but we knew we weren’t just one guy, we were a band, so we wanted this one name to represent our whole group of musicians. So we chose a country – one name for a group of people with one voice and their place in the world.

So have you ever considered dropping the period for clarity’s sake?

Zach: It’s tough, we can’t really now because we’ve gone too far. It was supposed to clarify things in the beginning but I think it just confused people. Our manager hates it and wanted us to get rid of it, it’s harder to search on the Internet and stuff like that. But well, we did it, we’re stuck with it, we’ll keep it around.

In 2008, you guys launched your own imprint label, Approaching AIRballoons, through Equal Vision. What was the decision behind that?

Zach: At first, before we had a deal with Equal Vision, we put out stuff on our own and we realized we just didn’t have the time or the manpower to do it. We can’t employ people at a label and we were all working really hard. We still paid for our own recordings, and paid for the packaging, and its just a way for us to get out of something. The label we’re on, say we want to put out an EP just after we put out a record, and the label says, “No, we don’t want to do that”. So we have a clause in our contract that says we can put it out on our own.

On your last tour, “The Gold Tour”, you had a Canadian band open for you guys. Tell us about Wintersleep?

Zach: Wintersleep were awesome dudes. They are incredibly talented, they all have amazing voices and they were really fun to hang out with. We’d seen them once and we just wanted to have them around.

Explain the influence behind the “Do You” video.

Zach: Basically we set out to make a sci-fi, satanic Western and thats pretty much what it looks like. It was a lot of fun and Ryan Rothermel came up with a lot of the ideas for the props, and we got to come in and build all those things ourselves. We went in like two days earlier; showed up at 8 like a construction crew, and sawed acrylic and put everything together. It was a lot of fun and the people we worked with were just amazing on it. It kind of has a whole story about being reborn and space drifts and just weird stuff. Which is kind of hard to get from the video, but things kind of change with the making of the video, we add a lot of extra footage and chop it down to how long the song is.

Censored Colors, The Satanic Satanist and The Majestic Majority have been the titles of the last three albums. Was the alliteration done on purpose?

Zach: Yeah. We definitely always think about our album titles, they come way before anything else. We decide what the album is going to be called and we write the album around the title. That’s why Church Mouth just sounds like a Southern soul, dirty rock and roll record. The Satanic Satanist we thought was just a nice contrast to a fairly mellow, mid-tempo pop record with really colorful artwork. Also the lyrics kind of are written to match the album titles as well.

Do you guys have a title for the next album already?

Zach: Yeah, we think so, but we’re not allowed to say it yet. Our manager never lets us tell anybody until its for sure, because we’ve always had to change stuff at the last moment. Censored Colors was just going to be Colors at first, but then someone else put out an album called Colors. The original title for Satanist was going to be The Satanic Satanist of the Majestic Majesty but then we were listening to some old Rolling Stones, and they have an album called Their Satanic Majesties Request, so we’re like “Shit, we can’t have something with ‘satanic’ and ‘majesty’ in it”. We have a lot of album titles floating around that may or may not be used in the future, but its fun.

So will we see this album in the new year?

Zach: Yeah, actually its done. We’re not sure if were going to put it out as a real record, we want to find some interesting way to release it, it won’t be advertised like the new Portugal. The Man record but it will be ten songs, it will be a long EP, or two EPs, or a bunch of 7 inches. And then we go into record a real new album in January so we’ll have two records next year.

So its pretty much back to the studio after this tour?

Zach: Yeah, we’ve got two weeks off at Christmas, and then back in the studio. We tend to keep pretty busy.

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For more Portugal. The Man,

Website: http://portugaltheman.net/