A Conversation with Fountains of Wayne’s Adam Schlesinger & Chris Collingwood – HuffPost 8.1.11
Mike Ragogna: Hey, Fountains of Wayne. Adam, Chris, how are you?
Adam Schlesinger: Doing well, man.
Chris Collingwood: Great, Mike.
MR: Can you tell us a little about the process that went into the creation of your new album Sky Full Of Holes?
AS: Well, Chris and I are the two writers of the band and we really don’t talk too much in advance about what we want the record to be, except in the most general terms. I think we wanted this record to have more of an open sound – we put a little bit more effort into giving it some acoustic textures, but lyrically, we didn’t really talk about what we were going for. We each just wrote a bunch of songs over the period of a couple years and this album is what we ended up with. I think, in general, the difference between my writing style and Chris’ is that mine is a little more narrative whereas his are written in a more impressionistic and fractured way. He said to me that he intentionally doesn’t want to make his songs too easy to figure out.
CC: I think if anything is different for this album, it would probably be that we toured for about a year with about half of the material that’s on this record. These are song that we played live before we ever recorded them, which is different from our previous records. Every other time we went into the studio, we tried to get tape rolling before we lost interest in the song. But this time, the arrangements had a lot of time to change and grow on tour. Songs like, “A Road Song,” “The Summer Place,” or “Cold Comfort Flowers” were a part of this whole new process.
MR: Adam, you wrote, “Richie And Ruben.” What’s going on in that one?
AS: Well, that song is mostly just about two dopes. (laughs) It’s two guys with a bunch of cockamamie schemes. They’re just characters, but they are loosely based on several people I’ve met in my life.
MR: Chris, whatever song you sing, there seems to be such an ownership of the material even if you’re not the one who wrote it.
CC: Well, when Adam is writing, he says he treats each one of his musical projects like a separate entity, and when he’s writing something for the band, he’s definitely got my presentation in mind, you know? He’s definitely thinking about what would be right for me. He’s more of a versatile writer than I am – he contributes to a bunch of different projects. I usually only write the songs I write for this.
MR: You wrote, “Someone’s Gonna Break Your Heart,” can you go into it?
CC: Well, I don’t think every song has to have an identifiable story or characters. That one in particular was written over a long period of time – not that it took that long to write, it was more like I just kept coming back and throwing different details into it. It’s more of a collage of ideas, you know? I always thought the tag line of that song could have been anything, really. You know that Bob Dylan song, “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go”? He puts a nice little sideways hook at the end of this barrage of images, and I think that’s kinda what I was going for.
MR: What was the process like in the studio?
AS: Well, we tend to work in little spurts here and there – we don’t go in and just make an album in six to eight weeks like some other bands tend to do. We would go in for a couple of days and try to bang out a couple of songs. One of us will usually bring something in to play for the guys on acoustic guitar or piano, then the four of us together will work on some kind of arrangement. I would say about 90% of the time, everyone is on the same page and it comes together pretty quickly. But the other 10% of the time we end up in some giant fights.
MR: Will you be touring for this album?
AS: Yeah, we’ve actually just started. We’re going to be touring on and off for the rest of the year at least.
MR: Are you doing any special promotional things for the tour through Facebook or Twitter?
AS: We probably are, but quite honestly, I can’t say for sure. My advice would be to continue to check our Facebook and Twitter pages as well as our website. Brian, our drummer, is a little bit more involved with that. We do have a Twitter account that’s relatively new, but we’re just getting into that.
MR: Having been in this industry for a little while now, what are your thoughts about the state of music and pop right now?
AS: Well, I think now it’s become so much easier and cheaper to make and distribute a record – there are a million more choices of how to do it than when I was a kid. When I was a kid, just putting out a record was an incredible feat, and if you ever got to the point where your band was recording something and releasing it in a real way, it was huge. Now, all it takes is just recording something on your laptop and then just posting it on the Internet and you’re done. I think the result of all of this is just that there are tons more choices for people, which is, for the most part, a good thing. I guess it’s a bad thing in the sense that there’s a lot more crappy music now as well. (laughs)
MR: Yeah, things have changed dramatically between the release of this album and the release of your hit, “Stacy’s Mom.”
AS: I feel like that was at the end of the period when a music video could really help a song break out, because that song was broken in large part because of that video. I don’t even really think that happens now. The video era is kind of over, or it’s gone back to the early days of MTV when it was about making the cheapest video that you could make because no one’s gonna really see it anyway. (laughs)
MR: True. (laughs) But you guys have had some pretty great videos including the video for, “Mexican Wine.” How did you guys feel about the controversy surrounding that one?
AS: I think what happened was that “Stacy’s Mom” kind of snuck in under the wire when MTV was a little looser. Then that whole thing happened with Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction at the Super Bowl and after that, it got a lot more conservative so it was a little bit harder to get some stuff on the air.
MR: Speaking of videos, are you guys going to be doing any videos for this album?
CC: Yeah, we’ve got a couple underway already. We’re kind of in the editing process for the video of “Someone’s Gonna Break Your Heart.” We’ll see how that one turns out. And we’re actually doing a video for, “A Road Song” while we’re touring.
MR: How do you think you guys have changed and evolved as a band since your first album?
CC: We didn’t really have a record deal or any money when we made that first record. We just went and recorded the whole thing in a week and then took another week to mix it. The whole thing didn’t cost very much by today’s standards for a record. Actually, nowadays, you could probably do it for way cheaper from your house. (laughs) But, I think that album was just a snapshot of a drunken moment in time for us – 1996. I think since then, we’ve been trying to explore new ideas and maintain what made it interesting for us in the first place, but trying out new takes on the same stories. I don’t know – I hope with each new record we just get to try new things and hopefully it won’t get boring.
MR: If you had to choose a favorite song on this album, which one would it be?
AS: That’s a tough one. I think I would have to say it would be, “A Road Song.” It’s kind of a ballad and I like that song a lot.
CC: The song that I wrote on this album that I would say that I’m most proud of is, “Cemetery Guns.” It’s more direct and lyrical than a lot of the stuff we’ve done in the past – not even a hint of irony in that song. I like the fact that that song is different from anything that we’ve really done as a band.
MR: Chris, can you go into its topic a little?
CC: Well, some journalist, years ago–maybe on the eve of one of those invasions in Iraq–asked me if we felt the need to comment on the violence in the world through our work. That question was kind of like a light bulb going off in my head. I never had, before that, but afterward, I thought, “Why not?” The song is set at a military funeral and I just built up a story around that.
MR: That’s great. To what degree are you guys looking at what’s going on in the news and using those topics in your music?
CC: As a band, I don’t think we’ve ever specifically sought to address those sorts of things. I am a very political person in my day-to-day life, not so much as an activist, but as a person yelling at my own television.
MR: Yeah. You guys also do some incredible covers of pop songs, including a pretty awesome version of Britney Spears’, “…Baby One More Time.” How do you choose that material?
AS: We just find something we like, really. It used to be that we would put out a single and the record company would ask us to put out a couple of tracks with it and we’re always a little bit short of material, so we end up just putting out a bunch of covers. That Britney Spears song was just something that we heard on the radio and we all thought that we could do a really cool version of it. We didn’t even know who Britney Spears was at the time. (laughs) The record company heard it and all of a sudden wanted it to be our single, but we decided we didn’t want that to happen.
MR: Adam, can you tell us a little about music that you’ve had featured in television and film, including your little adventure with Josie And The Pussycats. How did that all happen?
AS: Well, Josie And The Pussycats came from the same people who did That Thing You Do, which is something else I worked on. At first, they called me looking for some songs for the movie, so I wrote some stuff. Then they called me later on in the process and asked if I wanted to produce some tracks on the album. It was with some really cool people – there were lots of people that I was already fans of working on that album.
MR: Nice. I was saving up the That Thing You Do question because it’s one of my favorite movies.
AS: I first heard about the movie through a music publishing company that I had just been signed to. It was back in 1996 and the first Fountains Of Wayne record was just coming out. They told me that Tom Hanks was doing a movie about this band, kind of like The Beatles, in 1964, and so I just took a shot at getting involved with it with a friend of mine. I recorded a demo with Mike Viola singing and my friend Andy Chase engineering and I sent it in. Miraculously, they liked the song and decided to use it. The movie came out at around the same time as the first Fountains Of Wayne record, so there was a little bit of confusion about what we had to do with the movie. There was, of course, no real connection other than the fact that I worked on the music for the movie.
MR: What advice do you guys have for new artists?
CC: I have no idea, really. I mean, the way our career played out seemed like a series of accidents. Honestly, I wouldn’t advise anybody to get into this industry now. (laughs) There’s no money in it. Doing what your mom told you and going to law school is the best option. (laughs) I honestly just don’t know. Try getting one of your songs in an iPod commercial and you’ll pretty much be guaranteed a long career.
AS: Yeah, that’s a really tough question, especially right now because the industry is so different from when we started. One simple lesson I’ve learned is that no one really cares as much about what you’re doing as you do. So, if you’re really psyched about what you’re working on, you have to get up every day and make something happen every day. I think most artists I know that are successful are able to switch hats from being an artist to being something of a businessman as well. There’s always at least one guy in the band who has a business man’s personality.
MR: Well, guys, congratulations on all your success and the new album, Sky Full Of Holes. Catch you on Facebook and Twitter.
AS: Thanks, Mike.
CC: Glad to be here, man.
Transcribed by Evan Tyrone Martin