Portland’s Hockey skates into the Rock and Roll Hotel tonight with The Postelles. Delivering danceable rock tunes with unabashed enthusiasm and without pretense, they’re on a national tour to show the U.S. what Europe’s been on for a while now: these guys are a good time and a great soundtrack for your whiskey bent St. Patrick’s Day. Between 2008 and now, they’ve enjoyed raves across the pond and parlayed their catchy tracks into festival appearances, an iTunes single of the week, and even a JC Penny commercial. We caught up with founding member and bassist Jeremy Reynolds, aka Jerm, to discuss their tour, recording, SXSW tips and what is up with that misleading name.
BYT: You go by Jerm?
Jerm: Yea, everyone calls me Jerm, it’s Jeremy but they all call me Jerm for whatever reason, ‘cause I’m always sick I guess. Sorry about the noise, just trying to get out of the club.
BYT: That’s OK, where are you guys, Switzerland?
Jerm: Uh, we’re in Belforte which is on the Swiss border with France, on the French side. It’s crazy here, really cool.
BYT: I was gonna ask, it sounds like you guys gained a lot more momentum in Europe first, yea?
Jerm: Yea, oddly enough. I think it’s a strange story for a band, sort of modern, I don’t know if it has to do with the internet. People aren’t localized the way that they used to be so you become popular wherever people take an interest and that could be a lot further than anyplace close to where you’re from.
BYT: Yea, you can see where the people are who are looking at your website and say oh, that’s where we should tour.
Jerm: Yea, it’s odd, it’s word of mouth but it’s not local word of mouth so I think everything is a little stranger along with the way music is passed around, people hear about bands, everything about exchanging it. Our story is perhaps more indicative of the new technological paradigm I suppose.
BYT: What speaks to that technology, it seems like you have a pretty close connection with the fans as far as the Ning site and everything. The border’s been blurred as far as accessibility.
Jerm: Definitely, it’s cool and it’s been really amazing for us as far as just having the experience of going around the world really and playing music. Being in Europe, the UK – more or less just hanging around the UK for most of last year and making a name for ourselves that way, slowly playing everything from tiny pubs to the Roundhouse in East London, this really famous giant building where Zeppelin used to play, The Clash, I mean that was opening for somebody there but we’ve played across the spectrum in all of the UK.
BYT: So you were one of the founding members with Ben, you were from Southern California – did you grow up making music together?
Jerm: I grew up in San Diego and Ben grew up in New York City and then we met in Redlands, California at the school there. We started playing and it was just a drum machine, bass, and singing. Just real clubby, real electronic, and we were just going on our own momentum as far as confidence went and eventually we just didn’t wanna be, like, “The Beastie Boys with a bass,” you know? We decided - mostly just ‘cause we wanted to write all kinds of different styles of music and all kinds of songs - we decided to find a drummer and guitarist and eventually a keyboard player so we could do pop. We could do rock and roll, we could do some dance but really fill it out. That was the biggest change for us. We did the two-piece thing for four years or something.
BYT: Yea I was reading about that, were you guys doing gigs at school or up and down California?
Jerm: I mean we tried for a year and a half. We’d go down to the city and hand our demo out to people, and clubs, and they’d say, “Look, to be honest, this going right in the trash.” You gotta know someone, you can’t just walk in the door with a blank disc and your name written on it, so… It took us a while to break in but right after we graduated we started living in L.A. for about a year and just playing around, up and down California, we spent a little time in the bay area, did some recording up there, kind of had a former life as a 2-piece under the same name. Then we moved to Spokane, Washington.
BYT: You can release those tracks in the box set.
Jerm: Yea (laughing,) maybe so, uh, they’re a little lewd, a little strange, us trying to find ourselves.
BYT: You should break one of those out! DC is a pretty serious city but people like to have fun too.
Jerm: Yea, maybe so! We got a lot of friends from Redlands that live in DC, so, they’re tellin me they’re gonna bring everybody and their mother out to the show, that it’s gonna be crazy, they’ve been pumping people up there for a couple of years. It’s gonna be our first time there but I hope it will be good, I got a couple of very social friends there who I think work on Capitol Hill or something? That’s a terrifying thought because they’re completely out of their minds. They’re promising me it’s gonna go off and I think it’s St. Patrick’s Day?
BYT: Oh, if it’s the 17th, I think it might very well be.
Jerm: If that’s the case, it’s over (laughing.)
BYT: Yea, I mean I know people on H Street who are taking off work and partying around 3PM that day, and there’re tons of new restaurants and bars over there where you’re playing.
Jerm: Oh yea? OK!
BYT: I wanted to talk about how you added people to the group so you could play all different styles. Is that something that led you to decide to produce it yourself? Obviously you had the first label that you didn’t end up doing a record with, you had the producer lined up (Talking Heads' Jerry Harrison) But was this a control issue?
Jerm: I think, conceptually, we were attracted to the idea of being able to do it exactly how we wanted to do it but I think the other side is we were totally off the map. We were nowhere, we didn’t have management, we didn’t have a label, we didn’t have anything. It was like, well, what do you do in that position when you wanna make something happen but you don’t have any of the resources that bands on a major label would have like access to producers, studios, all that stuff. Rather than just wait for that to happen which we had already experienced, that sort of purgatory of trying to make a record and prove yourself when you’re suddenly dealing with a label, it can get pretty hairy. We just said let’s go into the basement in our house, scrape together a little money, buy a microphone, buy a compressor, and make it happen. Do something we’re really proud of and see where we can go from there. That’s the only thing we could’ve done at that point. It was more of a necessity, really. I think it would have been cool to find a producer but we were way, way out there. That was the vision - OK let’s make a record that can really go someplace and hopefully we’ll find somebody to put it out. At least we’ve got a record that we’re proud of and we actually self released the original version of the record with nine songs.
BYT: OK, so not the EP?
Jerm: Well, I guess it’s been known as an EP but it was really nine songs, seven of which ended up on the record, six at least? They ended up exactly as they were, other than being mixed and mastered I suppose. So most of the record is straight from our basement and a time where we didn’t expect anybody to hear it.
BYT: How did they hear it? You mentioned some touring.
Jerm: Yea, those tours were crazy, like playing Albequerque at one in the morning in the middle of the summer. We did have a friend, a girl named Heather Peggs, who’s a promoter and works for different labels in L.A. We had met her when we lived there so, when we did the record ourselves, we just thought let’s throw it out to anyone we knows who works in music and it happened to be that Heather was working as an A & R consultant at Capitol. She brought the record in and the new VP of A & R, Stephen Melrose, had seen us in 2005 when we were Redwood students playing in L.A. or had just graduated. He remembered us from then, I think he had come up to talk to us and was a manager but we had a manager at that time, but it was an interesting coincidence that we popped up on his radar again. He said he really liked the record and we ended up signing, as crazy as that is.
BYT: I know, everything falling into place. As far as the Portland connection, how did you end up there? Is the music scene supportive for a band?
Jerm: Yea, the music scene in Portland is great. Not that we have a ton of experience with it but the shows we’ve done in Portland have been really cool, we have a lot of friends there. We actually ended up there because our drummer Anthony’s good friend, Pete who’s one of our roommates, had moved there from Spokane where they all went to school together and was working for Pink Martini as their publicist. He said look, I know people in Portland that work in music, I know bookers, promoters, I’ll try and get you guys connected so why don’t you move down here. We were in Spokane at the time and it was like yea, duh, we were looking to get out and find a city with a good music scene. The personal connection brought us to Portland since any other city we’d have to start at zero and this guy Pete was saying he’d help us out, and he did! He helped us get booked in our first shows, passed our cd to people, and actually Dave Allen from Gang of Four has a blog, Pampelmoose, and he was one of the first people to come out and say, “this band is cool” which blew me away. I think probably the first person, and that was the winter/spring of 2008. I mean it could have been Jacksonville, Florida, it could have been Austin, it could have been Detroit. It was just about being mercenaries to the dream of trying to make it happen with our music and just making every decision based upon that. Like moving to Spokane from L.A. was mental but we did it because we had a connection with someone there that could be in the band, or could introduce us to people who would eventually be in the band which is what happened. It’s a strange story but that’s kinda the way things went.
BYT: Were you guys Hockey at the time? Why are you Hockey?
Jerm: Why are you Hockey, that’s a great question (laughing.) We picked that name back when we were in school together because, we thought, wouldn’t it be funny if you did something you really shouldn’t do as a band name and we came up with something that was totally wrong. That had the ring of strangeness and wrongness, just something funny more than anything. In retrospect it’s totally bizarre, misleading, and hard to find on the internet and I’m not exactly sure what it all means for us. It was some kind of cosmic moment between Ben and I when he said, “Hockey.” It just made sense to us and it’s reflective of a strange sense of humor probably, or else it’s just nuts.
BYT: Well it’s lasted so long, and you’re married to it now so it’s cool that it’s something born out of your time in school.
Jerm: Yea, from back in the day.
BYT: It seems like in your music, with the videos I’ve seen, and at Bonnaroo, you guys are having a lot of fun onstage together.
Jerm: Yea, definitely! Being able to be on tour and playing live is IT for me. I much prefer it to being in the studio, I mean that’s where all the hard work is, the monotony. Being on tour is meeting new people every night, playing for new audiences, being in different countries, it’s such a blast. I think we’re immensely lucky to be doing what we’re doing at this point and hoping to keep it going.
BYT: One last question. A lot of people from BYT are heading down to Austin, BYT’s putting on a showcase at SXSW for all DC bands.
Jerm: Oh, cool!
BYT: I know you guys were there, any top tips for SXSW? Recommendations?
Jerm: You should see an outside show, it’s warm by the time March rolls around and it’s really cool to be on a courtyard or on the roof of a building, by a pool. Oh - also have a drink outside! On a balcony, that’s another thing really great about it. And East Austin is really cool. It’s where the Levi Fort is,
It’s over the freeway from the main part of 6th Street but it’s got a real old Latino vibe over there. There’s a really good vegan Mexican place, it’s just a real neighborhood with a cool feeling.
BYT: Thanks so much for taking the time, we’ll get the article up and the link to you and your publicist. I won’t be here, sorry to miss it, but good luck with the show and rest of the tour.
Jerm: Well thanks a lot, thanks for taking the time as well, it’s cool.
BYT: Take care man.
Jerm: Absolutely, talk to you soon.
Hockey takes the stage at 10PM tonight at RnR Hotel down on H St. NE. Follow their touring exploits on Myspace or Twitter.
God loves a cheerful giver.
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