Ep 22: Future Islands

by them. And that's as much information as you'll get on that from this podcast, because we don't talk about the new album, even though my conversation this week is with Samuel t Herring, who's the lead singer a few trilents. We just we just don't talk about the album, and that's probably my fault. But we got sidetracked talking about other things and then time run out, and that was that. It got to the end, and I was like, oh, we didn't we didn't do the thing that you were

probably here to do, which was pluggyr new album. But he didn't seem too too bothered by that, and we'd had a great conversation so I didn't I didn't mind too much. But it's out there, it's coming. It's coming on the on the seventh of April. And yet it's called The Far Field. It's the second one for four A d as I say, and it follows the band's fourth record, which was that breakout album called Singles, and that record took the band from a from a touring

punk band essentially to national TV. They had this incredible kind of spike in reach when they went on the David Letterman Show and they performed Seasons and you probably all know this already because it was a viral thing. A lot of people got to see the band that had never seen the band befoil and even knew they existed,

and it did wonderful things for them. And I was really happy for them because few Trilands are one of those bands who have toured and toured and put the graft in, they've put the hours in, and it was nice to see that last year and the year before they really kind of they got that Jews and they were playing bigger shows and they're all over the place. So this next record, I'm sure he's going to just keep them on that track. But we don't talk about

the new record. What we talk about is Sam's love for rap music, growing up in North Carolina, a bit about Baltimore, and some other bits and pieces. We met just around the corner from our office in a hotel that Sam was staying in. It's a nice hotel anyway, but he had one of the posher rooms and he had a full working kitchen in his room, and we kind of hung out there for an hour or so, and he was great fun to talk to, very enthusiastic,

very funny, and just very very likable guy. And yeah, this is the conversation I had with Samuel t Herry, not so much about the band's new music, but about some of his old music and what it's like to be in fewtrels. How are you doing, Sam?

is it's crazy. So we've done like this this might uh yeah, we've done like at least ten interviews a day. We did fourteen in Madrid, which was the first day, which I've never even touched on. Fourteen interviews. It's pretty crazy.

to answer this question. Yeah, and so he'll go through the.

It has its own accents. I mean, for for as far as American cities, you know, there were so many American cities that fell after you know, the assassination of Martin Luther King riding in the in in many cities across the United States like white flight, you know, white people being afraid and going out and starting in the suburbs.

But there's you know what's happening in America now is those those same families that left the suburbs are now coming back into the cities and gentrifying where there was basically waste lands left. You know, all the a lot of a lot of money leaving, leaving urban centers with families tax dollars, and now they're coming back in and pushing people out who have been the people who are kind of left behind. And so Baltimore has has some

of that. But in a place like Detroit, where it's just really an empty city for thirty forty years, it's just been an emptied out, is it still like Detroit? Well, what Detroit's Detroit's experience is experiencing its own turnaround. But the thing about is like for Detroit, when people left, you don't have to drive through Detroit like you to as far as the highway systems like, you don't have you have to go off the off the way to

go through Detroit. Like if you're going from say Pittsburgh to Chicago, or in the in the long run, if things are going from Philadelphia, New York to Chicago, you don't have to go through Detroit, but Baltimore you have to drive through. Like if you're going to go from DC to Philly, or DC to New York, or New York south of d C to the south, you have

to go through Baltimore. So I think in a way, like where some of the Rust Belt cities Buffalo, Buffalo, New York, Erie, Pennsylvania, Detroit, they experienced great losses in

population and have kind of remained that way. Baltimore lost a great amount of its population, but it still remained relevant and still remained a place that was a middle ground that you had to go through, but has a lot of the characteristics of what Manchester had in the in the late seventies early eighties that kind of bred so much artistic creativity because of that kind of somewhat desolate atmosphere. You know, I've felt that way about about

Baltimore for a while. There's that great book Rip It Up and Start Again that kind of speaks about these different the Manchester Akron, Ohio like place in New York City in the fifties, sixties, even the eighties, you know, like the way New York created hip hop from I don't know, burned down, burning buildings, and then this this art form that's kind of taken over all of music has emerged. You know.

thousand and eight. Seeing cyclones just hanging out in the distance and you can see the trails like across the field. It's absolutely beautiful. I mean that's, you know, part of the beauty of America, which is also like part of what we don't see and also what it used to be like before we ruined it with our carbon footprints.

my house where my parents still have a house. The house I grew up in was it's the state port of North Carolina. But it's only about maybe fifteen thousand people, so it's a small, very small city, and there is a lot of tourism. There's there's some of that kind of like there's a little bit of old money and like these kinds of things. Kids can be a little they're just a little bit, I don't know, a little

bit more stuck up there. And we me and my brother, well they're stuck up because to where me and my brother grew up in the town of Newport, which was a town about four thousand and that's it was all basically like farmers people just didn't have as much, so everybody was kind of on the level. Everybody was on level with one another. Everybody knew each other, and there wasn't, I don't know, there just wasn't this kind of infighting.

So we were always, you know, playing sports growing up, being on like all star teams, and we play against Morehead and they would just like look down on us and they would have their nice uniforms and we'd be like bad news bear style, like just like whatever our parents could afford. And but those kinds of things made it, you know, because my dad's the kind of guy that, know,

like would talk to anybody, you know. And I remember walking to him to the post office every day after school to drop off mail or pick up and he'd be like he'd just talk to somebody for forty five minutes, and I'd be standing there like kicking my feet, like can we please go? And then we leave and I'd be like who was that and he'd be like I have no I'd be like, I can't believe you just wasted forty five minutes talk and he's like, I didn't want to be rude. So that's like kind of like

these kinds of things. Also, I don't know, it's like, now I'm that guy.

I remember asking my dad when I was a kid, like are you a good attorney? And he was just like, wow, I'm an honest one. When I would find out later, he was just kind of being like, well, I do my best, but I don't lie, so I lose some

cases to be honest, and that kind of stuff. Just like growing up with a really solid, a really solid moral foundation in a small town where my dad would treat the judge, you know, the judge of the county, like the head judge in the county, the same as he would treat the mechanic who fixed the car, maybe even treat the mechanic better. You know, really treating people

all on the same level. I think is really important to how me and my brother grew up and how I don't know, just how I walk through life and kind of play. I mean, ever since I was a kid, you know, grew up educated my parents. I was really important to them. But you know, by the time it was going off to college, I would just like wear the most ripped up clothes that I that I had

and walk into the bank. And you know, people people treat you differently if you look different, if you look like you don't have you can, people will at times treat you differently and look down upon you. And then you speak to them and they realize, oh, this is an intelligent person. And I would I did that as a kid on purpose or as a younger man, to be like, yeah, I know that you're looking at me a certain way, but I am an intelligent person and I can talk to you on your level, So talk

to me on my level. You know. It's like it's like trying trying to play with that, and in a way that's that's kind of become a part of our art as well, you know, of just being regular, regular guys on stage and regular guys stage, but also pushing pushing the music and the emotions of the music out in a very visceral way, because that's that's the truth of it.

about other people's stories. Like I'm I'm learning I'm in rural North Carolina and all all of a sudden, I'm listening to a keras Ones self titled album and he's talking about you know, when you were at home with your mother, afraid of the Dark, I was sleeping out in Prospect Park, eating one meal every forty eight hours, you know, and like like hearing a real story about an experience that I don't understand, you know, in a way that that because for me, I was like that

gives me more perspective on how other people live and the struggles of other people that are far outside of my community, not only being a kid in the Royal South, but being a white kid, you know, Like I'm I'm learning about the struggle of blacks in America through music and uh and so that. But but the most important

part of that is learning about someone's personal struggle. Like I feel like a lot of times in in music, you don't you aren't always given struggle like you're given, uh, Like a simple song about about I don't know, just like a pretty girl walking down the street, you know, or something like rock and roll can be very universal. It can be fun, but it doesn't always tell truths,

you know. So when I'm when I'm when I was listening to hip hop and getting like a raw story, a story that wasn't good, you know, not not some

sunshine story. I'm hearing about someone's trials and tribulations. That's what spoke to me because also even in that situation of growing up, I felt very isolated, like at the same time, you know, I don't know if I was isolated by my intellect or the way that I felt that I looked, you know, or you know, having my father being attorney in a small town of farmers, like like, not wanting to stand out or feel never wanting to be like seen as an elite or something, just wanting

to be on the level, you know, just wanting to be like everybody else, but also knowing that I wasn't and I was my own person. Like, so when I discovered hip hop, that that allowed me that basically said I could write like I want to try to write.

And so then when I started writing at thirteen, fourteen years old, then I was able to define myself and go into myself in a way I hadn't before, where instead of it being like, you know, I'm a kid and I sometimes I feel sad, like I can say that in a voice that that that has power, you know, Like hip hop was an empowering structure when it was created. It was created out of people that didn't have power looking for that power and looking for their voice, finding

their voice through through their struggle. So and that's the interesting thing that I think a lot of people like they find out that you know, you know hip hop, you're a rapper, or like that's your first art form. I've heard like that doesn't make sense with Future Islands.

But if you look at the way that I perform, if you if you listen to the way that I put my my story out there, you'll see that my art is about with with my best friends, my bandmates, like is about putting my struggle forward and how I feel. But the truth of that what happens is is you share those stories and then you connect with that kid who's alone in his room and doesn't know how to express himself.

experience growing up. But more so for me is just like writing to and from school or to and from my parents' office, and and her listening to the Old East Station, old you know, R and B and soul do wop and these things, and singing along to like Diana Ross and the Supremes and the Temptations and Marvin Gay and Sam Cook and loving these songs, and you know it as far back as I can remember, like back then when I was that seven year old kid who felt like I was different and and wanted a voice,

Like I used to have this crazy idea that I wish that I had been born in the in the forties so that I could have been a singer in the fifties and sixties. Even at that age, I was like, I wish I could sing these soul songs like that was the first. That was like the first music that really spoke to me, spoke to me in a real way, And and that was like closer to because you know, people say like where did you sing? And I was like,

really just singing with my mom. My mom has a great voice, and you know, she will be the first person to tell me that I'm flat, you know, be like you need to work on that a little bit, Sam like, thanks mom.

of what the hell we were doing with our lives. Yeah, we continued forward, and you know, my parents bought the first van for Future Islands. You know, five hundred bucks, best five hundred bucks ever spent. If it wasn't for that van, who knows what would have happened. But we didn't have the money to do it. And our friend who who was in our first band, when he quit, he was the one who had the van.

their van. So for the first two years of Future Islands, we were touring in a in a van that said office pros Supply shop on the side, and we would roll into towns with our gear looking like a business

on the road. I mean. The funny thing is the van after that was an old dog and cat grooming company and there were these decals on the side with like a cartoon dog and a cartoon cat running towards a heart and it said hugs and kisses grooming Palace, and that We took that van around the country a couple of times just to beat up old three window cargo van, you know with the sliding door. My dad

put the seats in himself. Another like six hundred dollars van, you know, and uh yeah, those old vans carried us all over the place and helped us to create our foundation. But a lot of that, like yeah, without my folks, you know, put putting forth in the beginning and believing in it enough, then who knows what would have happened.

fourth record. Yeah, was there ever a time for you guys where you thought maybe this isn't gonna like happen, or like, yeah, when you were quest like what we're doing here? We're in we're in a dog and cat greaming van. We've released three records already, but we're still in the van, you know that kind of thing. Did you have those doubts?

it's hard, it's really it's really hard life. And of course, you know, I'll be on the road for six months and want to go home, but I'll be home for a week and I want to go on the road. You know. So there's and there's that understanding because of because of the longevity of this band because we've been through these steps, like you know, you you come to peace, like you hit that you hit that mark and you say I want to go, and you say, don't worry,

you will. Yeah, it's gotta it's gonna keep going a little bit longer because you know, you know, I can say, well, you know you're gonna get home, You're not gonna know what the hell will do, and you're gonna want to go back on the road. And I actually had a lot of troubles with my voice in twenty fourteen because of the death growling, which is you know, I growl because I'm out of breath because I'm dancing so hard,

and then I lose parts of my voice. So the next show, even if I'm not out of the breath, I'm growling because I can't hit the note. It's basically just a vicious cycle. You know. It's also a tool. You know, it's a tool to shake people out of their boots.

you can hear yourself. And like all those, all those things over the years, you know, drinking, you know, half a fifth a night for drink, a half a fifth of whiskey a night for six minks with thirty with thirty to forty cigarettes, and see if your voice doesn't change while screaming at people. But going back to the old days, you know, injured my voice many times because they just didn't know what I was doing. You know, I really learned how to sing. I'm putting that in

quotes for the people at home. It has really been just through trial and error and just being out there and and uh mixed, you know, figuring it out. But but you know, that style, the style that's more akin to what we do now comes from when we started writing an Evening Air, and I was my voice was really damaged after those first years of touring and moving to Baltimore, and I was really concerned that I would never be able to really sing well again, that it

was beyond repair. And I was actually really I was really sad because of because of this. I was just like, well, you ruined it, and you're so young, and you already ruined this thing that you wanted to make your life. But as we started writing songs again, I started to

discover a new voice. And this is and this is kind of the way it's been ever since with every album, and especially with the Far Field once again being like I've damaged my voice, like all the touring, on singles, the extended sets, the long touring runs, I've developed something on my on my vocal cords called rinka sedema, which is uh, these abnormal growths. It's also called like shark fins. They grow. It's like that, it's what that buzzing is

right on my throat. Like if you listen to old like seven year old men and women who have smoked their whole lives, they have that low thing. They sound like frogs. Yes, that's me. That's the same thing. It's a rink as edema. So I found out about that in twenty fourteen. So basically going into this writing, I was once again like I've ruined my voice again and I don't know what to do about it. I can't do anything about it, like this is this is un

You can't you can't reverse what I have. So once again, as we started writing, I was like, well, I just write in my new voice, you know, and that that's cool too, because if you think about somebody like Tom Waits, who's really grows with his voice every record, you know,

it's it's really cool, it's a signature. And the fact is like when we were in our first band and then into the beginning of Future Islands, like I had an all right, well, I had a really good voice to start when we were eighteen nine year old kids, and by Wave like Home like I had my I had a voice. But by the time we started doing an Evening Air and I'd really messed up and thought I messed up my voice. What happened with that record is I found my own voice.

of no inhibitions there. It's what most people would like to be like at the gig when they're just watching the gig and they're in the crowd of people that'd love to be able to just like let loose and just go for it. But there's something in us, most of us with two self conscious, especially like here in London. Like London crowds are notoriously quite static.

I've definitely met fans or I don't really like to use the term fans, supporters of our band who who are that I'm very like, just the chill, like nice guy off stage. They're like, how are you like this? And not like you are on stage, And I was like, do you want to meet a guy that's like me twenty four hours a day off stage? Like that sounds

like a nightmare. It was like we were joking about an interview yesterday, just like, yeah, if I was like that at home, like making eggs, just like just like ripping across the kitchen, like like do a cartwheel into the bathroom, KI kick out of it. But yeah, these, you know, it's the dancing kind of came along as the stages got bigger. But I mean I've always you know, I was in like a in a improvisational dance group when I was just seventeen years old. It was me,

me and four string instruments. And butsoon wow, and I was the element of the music like I created the music with my well I didn't actually create the music, but they were supposed to follow my movement. So this is it like an experimental art school that I was in when after my junior or at high school. And that was kind of my first foray into dance. So even that early, much more experimental dance. And because I

was I was very driven by performance art. Like going into college, I wanted to I wanted to study conceptional and performance art, which is funny because I flunk terribly out of school though there weren't any programs like that, and you know, I was in a much more technical fine art school. They didn't really have what I wanted

to study. But in a weird way, years later, I would find myself in a band that actually gave me all of that that I wanted, which was to be able to combine you know, my words that I believe deeply in with the my body as the sculpture, you know, like body as art and in my words that meant some wise I could never figure out how to mix my ability to be photo realistic artwork with a pencil against my rapping like you know, this crazy circuitous labyrinthine

probably fucking archaic, full of itself rap shit I was making when I was eighteen, tongue Twisters with the ideas of performance art. I was like, how do you mix the two D with words with the three D and in living motion? And then years later I'd be like, I did it on accident. I'm in a cool band and I get to I get to perform my songs,

and you know, it's about for me. I've always been in the performance for a few drownds is about telling a story to people that can't hear what the hell you're saying because you're you're stuffed into these noisy bars with drunk people, and in the days where you could still smoke inside, you may not even see the stance. Yeah you're lucky, or the band's playing. But it's like, well, how do you tell a story to people that can't

understand what you're saying. You have to show them with your body and with your face, you know, like like and like I say, you know, I hit my chest, not so I feel it, but so you feel it. You know, when I hit my chest you say al. Yeah, I don't say al, because I hit that chest all the time. I hit it and you go, oh shit, So it's it's one of those but it's one of those things about telling a story that you can't hear the word because words are so important to me, They're

everything to me. And then it kind of hurts your feelings when you're like, hey, these people don't know what the fun I say. Yeah.

or Future Islands, you know. But you know, I'm still like, you know, our first EP is still not available because I'm kind of still hard on it there, but there are there are bits and pieces of that first that first record wave like Home, that that bear a lot of heart and performed live, we're really raw and visceral, but you know, we when we when we switched from our first band or Lord and Self Portress, which was much more like Craft Working and Joy Division but more

like New Order inspired to Future Islands. Originally, we we kind of went from being a very like emotional dance band, kind of like we are now maybe a little bit more like europop in a sense, to being a very kind of like a synth punk band. You know, because our our first drummer we started the band with, he didn't know how to play the drums, but he always wanted to play the drums, and he was He was

a really amazing technical metal bassist. But his favorite band was The Faint, and so he was he was like this big metal head in Greenville where we all went to college and started our first bands with, you know, art Lord in the Future Islands, and he was always front row center, and we thought it was so cool that this metal head was like getting down to our music. So eventually, when the band broke up, and he'd always wanted to play drums for art Lord, he loved art Lord,

we started a band with him. So he he bought like a Simmons you know those hexagonal electronic kits, Yeah yeah, and learned to play. But the only way he could keep a beat was if he played like one hundred and sixty five minute, like he couldn't keep a slow beat.

And even if you listen to Wave like Home, you like, if you listen to Beach Foam, that song definitely wavers between like eighty to one hundred and twenty bpm, like it speeds up and slows down in the weirds, which actually works for the song because it's about the sea, you know, so it feels like the ebb and flow of waves. But you're kind of like, dude, you gotta kind of okay, just get it together a little bit. But but Eric, Eric did bring this intensity that I

think would carry on, you know. I think in a way, even with those early struggles with the band and like figuring out this new sound, I think he gave He definitely gave me something because I never performed with a drum kit behind me before. For even if it was electronic, kid, it was like I never performed with this other kind of propulsive thing. It was always like the guys were very chill on stage and I was kind of doing

my thing. But it was electronic drum beats that were just like straightforward and simple, and then and then all of a sudden, we have this force of nature behind you don't know which way the winds are gonna blow, and you're like, oh shit, like he's gone crazy again, and then you know so then it kind of it added this whole extra propulsion to my dimension as a

performer that I hadn't really seen before. And I was tapping into something very different because art Lord was more of a preening like like kind of a very narcissistic but but hurt fellow. You know that the character that I played, but I was and I was also got to be a character with future islands. I had to strip away this mask and this identity and be myself for the first time on stage, like other than rap

battles and stuff like that back in the day. All of a sudden, I was because in art Lord, I would write these sad songs that were about me, but I could say it's not about me, it's about the

art Lord, like I'm not the the isolated figure. I'm not the sad figure because to me, like pop and rock music was always kind of well, it just didn't it never really spoke to me because I didn't feel the heart in it, or maybe I thought like when I first heard like indie rock stuff my friends were listening to in high school when I was just like bumping of like hip hop beats and stuff like like I just found it to be like whining and crying, which is funny because of what I do now, but

which is whining and crying on But but the thing is like I didn't I didn't connect to it because I felt that it was like kind of feeble in it's in its like emotional grasp, like it didn't touch

on all the emotions. And I think with what we try to do, and what I've tried to do in particular, is like really play with the dimensions of like strength and vulnerability, like like how you can be I can be like a man monster on stage, but but show fragility, like like pulling apart oneself, you know, exposing oneself but still being whole and in between, and then the song ends and you smile to the audience that is this the show? Is this? Life is a show?

It looked like you performed that track like you would have performed it in a club exactly as opposed to like in a studio where people once they've done loads of TV, you know, they know where all the cameras are and they adapt it for a TV show. Yeah, you know, but you didn't do that. You just kind of went, this is the song and this is how I do it. Do you think that was like that that's why it kind of had that the impact that it had was because you didn't. You weren't this polished

band that were used to playing on TV. You were like, we're a touring band and we're just happening to be on TV right now, and this is it.

walking past the monitors out towards the people. I'm actually like looking at grandmas who are are like what's happening. You know, they have they're not scared, but they have like kind of like really kind of amazed looks on like what's happening right now? And you know, our friends in the audience. You know, I'm looking out to the people.

And I think that's the big thing about that performance was that it wasn't it wasn't insular to a band like you're watching a band on TV on the stage, Like, but it's it's the connection that we've always had with people, to try to connect with people and look at people in the eyes, like looking past the cameras, you know, because it's because it's not because there's something past behind

the cameras, you know what I mean? Yeah, but but yeah, you know that performance would have been very different if it had been three years prior. Not that it wouldn't have had the same impact, there's no telling, but but the fact that you know, we had at that point, we'd played over seven hundred and fifty almost eight hundred shows like that shows in that performance, And also we aren't the band that was put together and played some shows and now is going to get their TV debut

after putting out their first record. Like we were old road dogs who were getting a chance at at sharing what we what we do, and so you you know, I I mean I was reasoning with myself backstage, like am I going to do the things I do on stage? Are you going to go for the growl? Are you going to hit your chest? You know, like like how

are you going to approach this? And and you know, so there were there were nerves involved and not really being sure and even in the you know, I kind of blacked out on stage and just was in the performance. And that's where you want to be, you know, you

want to be. You want to be in a place where you're not really thinking about if your zipper is up or not you're gonna fall over, and that that was the beauty of his response was that the song ended and in my head, I said, we did it, like we got through it, nobody like and this and I heard that whoa from the side and that's when I was like, oh, like kind of snapped back into it, and he had his great response, which like, like I said, like even after that performance, we walked off and we're like,

I think we did good. I think we did good. That felt pretty good and had no idea of the impact it would have because once again, we were just doing what we do every night. And that's been that's been the most the funniest thing to it about about how that performances has brought such a huge new audience to our band as which is good because it's not like people people found out about us and then come

to a show. Even still expecting that that's actually gonna happen. Yeah, They're like they come to a show like was that real? And then they come to show and see that it's actually even more intense and continues to be intense, you know, like like that three and a half minutes is only a small piece of a larger puzzle, of a bigger show and a range of more emotions, you know, And so so that was cool. We didn't because it took

that long to get that moment. We didn't take any of the any of the accolades for granted, or the the growth for you know. We were just like we felt like we earned it naturally instead of through studio tricks. You know, I didn't. I didn't wear my wig that night. My girdle and my wig is very much me.