You may remember way back in June when we mentioned Sparrow and the Workshop in our ‘What are we listening to?’ feature. Since then we’ve been keeping a close eye on this trio and recently we caught up with vocalist Jill O’Sullivan for a brief question and answer session…

Crystals Fall consists mainly of remixed tracks from the the first two EP’s. Has the remixing process given any of these songs a new life for you? And if so, have the remixes changed how you approach the songs live?

While we liked the mixes on the EP’s, we wanted to album to sound as good as it could possibly sound at the time, and to also have a sense of continuity to it. I’m not sure if the process gave them a new life for us because the songs were still relatively new at the time. We were excited about them anyway, but hearing the album was definitely a great feeling…In terms of our live performances, we’ve approached parts of Last Chance and Into the Wild slightly differently due to some changes we made to those songs for the album.

Alongside your recorded work you are becoming known as a great act to go and see live. Which came first for the band, recording or gigging?

Gigging. When we started we were just after some live gigs. It wasn’t until a few friends suggested we make a demo of our bands songs and send them to radio stations, etc, that we began recording what we were performing live.

Right now the future looks rosy for Sparrow and the Workshop but you played many many smaller gigs to get to this point (including my home town Preston). In retrospect what, if anything, would you have done differently up to this point?

I’m glad you see a rosy future, that gives us some hope! I don’t think we’d do anything different, some of the smaller gigs were amazing and even if only 10 people were in the audience we’d still have a great time…though, sometimes those tiny pub gigs were harder because maybe there would be 10 people there who didn’t give a damn and we’d be playing into thin air, it can really cut you up….but then again, that was good for us because it gave us strength and thick skin, if nothing else…Well, it was also good practice.

You’re on the road pretty much straight through to October. Are you writing on the road or saving it all up for the short dark days?

I find it hard to write on the road because of motion sickness and lack of time, and we never have anywhere to practice songs (it sounds crazy because we have all our instruments, etc, but soundchecks are usually rushed and we don’t get time to work on stuff)…So I’m gonna say we save it for short dark days, which are in abundance up here in Scotland!

It seems that facial hair is the new black recently and both Gregor and Nick are getting involved with a little facial topiary. Jill, who’s do you prefer and why?

Screw them, I choose mine. I once dressed up as Frida Khalo and groomed myself a pretty impressive lady mustache.

You recently played the Melkweg (just around the corner from the Mixtup office) in Amsterdam with The Brian Jonestown Massacre. How did you find the Dutch crowds? They’re boring right? I think so too…

No, they were great. Really! All of Jonestown’s crowds were great, people came out to have a good time and they showed it. And the Melkweg was an impressive venue. In fact, I accidentally walked into Paul Weller’s dressing room (he was gigging on the other stage) and once I realized I was in the wrong place I stole a couple of pastries and got out fast.

The Brian Jones Town Massacre have a reputation for being a little unpredictable. We’re there any WTF moments on the tour, or have they calmed down a little these days?

They are very rock and roll. We must have seemed like a bunch of old folks groaning about wanting tea and sleep, while they handled their booze and also impressively always looked awake despite the fact that they were in the middle of a three month tour. But I can’t think of any WTF moments, they were all gentleman (and gentlewomen). Anyway, it wouldn’t be very lady-like of me to give away any secrets if there were any…but there weren’t.

If you had to choose which would you prefer: Super-heavy head or anti-gravity hands?

Well, we’d all be in favor on anti-gravity hands. That way we could look like we were constantly dancing and having a good time, instead of being the grumps we are…We’ve already all got super-heavy heads (literally, the circumference of all our heads combined is huge, Nick doesn’t even fit normal hats).

Sparrow and the Workshop’s debut album ‘Crystals Fall’ is out now.

Sparrow are playing a whole host of festivals throughout summer, details are on their MySpace.

The Morning Benders were in town so Arno and Mark headed off a week ago for a chat during the madness which was the world cup. Arno armed with questions and Mark with a camera, we were curious to know what made these guys tick…

Let us start off with something that, as music video lovers, totally hooked us to the Morning Benders. A special video of their song ‘Excuses’ from their album Big Echo…

The Morning Benders started their career in and around the San Francisco area, known for it’s university and its student culture. From small beginnings playing for friends, then supporting bands like the Broken Bells, Grizzly Bear, The Kooks and Death Cab for Cutie, to releasing the album ‘Talking Through Tin Cans‘ in 2008 which was picked as the best indie/alternative album on iTunes. In March this year they released ‘Big Echo‘ which they are currently touring through Europe.

The band consist of Christopher Chu (lead singer/ guitar), Jonathan Chu (guitar / keys), Julian Harmon (drums) and Timothy Or (bass). We were able to sit down for a chat with Christopher in the Apollo Museum Hotel the next morning after the gig.

ARNO: Nice talking to you Christopher. So I heard you had a run in with the local soccer culture?
CHRISTOPHER: Yeah, it was pretty amazing actually. In the main room where The National performed they put a screen up. It was packed full and people just freaked out when they scored. There’s nothing like that in America. Something so country wide that people bond over so much; all becoming friends celebrating and hugging each other.

Actually When I was young I used to play soccer, it was the only sport I really liked. In the states it’s just not such a competitive sport. So the gig was actually moved forward, we like to be flexible and we got to enjoy the game as well.

ARNO: You regularly perform at larger venues than this in the US; how do you look back at playing local gigs when you started out?
CHRISTOPHER: Well, everything feels so different here. Like it’s a new thing here, you can sort of feel that in the air. That’s exciting for me though because I get to do that again. It’s cool to try something that’s new for everyone, because in the states we had been working at this progression for a while. So kinda to get to do that over again, we can try things differently and also see how people from different cultures will respond, you know? The fans react in their own way, it is really fun.

ARNO: You got started by building up your local fan base around San Francisco. How did you go about that as a small band?
CHRISTOPHER: It think, at least this is how it worked for us, you kind of approach things as naturally as possibly. You start playing for your friends and people you know. From there you widen your circle of people who could possibly could play your music to. We then started playing a lot, hitting every venue in the area. Then we would take trips to LA, which was like 6 hours away, from there you would play cities like San Diego and then drive up to the west coast. Just building it up from there that way.

ARNO: So when you say playing for friends, do you mean things like house parties?
CHRISTOPHER: Oh yeah, we played a lot of those. Some of these things I played before it wasn’t even a band. Technically just me and a acoustic guitar playing house shows. We did do a great job telling everyone to pack that party out making it a cool event and we would get shut down pretty fast by the cops. It was always really fun getting people exciting about music in there.

The community, in general, want to support that stuff because it is on the forefront of what people are thinking about; we went to school in Berkeley so everyone had this academic mindset. Although me and my friends were not always thinking about classes as much as we should because we wanted to hang out and just make music.

ARNO: How important is that support of community?
CHRISTOPHER: Well, I do use the word community kind of loosely; the sense of community in Berkeley is kind of strange because it is a college town where a lot of different people from different places come together. All academic but I guess I mean the community that we created around us of culturally like-minded people. I remember shows in San Francisco where I knew everyone there because there were friends of friends of friends.
That’s how it all started.

ARNO: Coming back to larger venues and your success; fame can be quite a beast. Have you started feeling it’s weight yet?
CHRISTOPHER: No, not any way I can speak of yet but in terms of our success and recognition we have had, right now I feel really surprised and grateful for it. So we’re just really happy about it and down with it to talk to anyone who’s excited about our music.

ARNO: Do you like the idea of becoming a household name in the US?
CHRISTOPHER: Well, I don’t know about reaching everyone but our goal is to get our music out to as many ears as possible. At least give people the chance to like or dislike it. Not everyone likes every kind of music, it’s an issue of taste but I do think we are very honest in our music, we have something people can relate too and can enjoy. So we give people the chance if they want it.

ARNO: What kind of bands influenced you guys for your new album ‘Big Echo’?
CHRISTOPHER: There’s a quite a lot. When you listen to this album you do hear all these different sounds from a lot of different places. Some of these albums I remembered listening to distinctly were ‘Thinktank’ by Blur, ‘Lesser Matters’ by Radiodepartment and also the third Big Star album which is called ‘Sister Lover‘.

These last guys have a very cult like following in the US now but they’re actually from the 70’s. A very under appreciated band. Not many people knew about them at the time but then as time passed, bands like REM and Radiohead said they were influenced by them like many other big bands. Definitely check them out. I also listened to Kate Bush’s album ‘Hounds of Love’ a lot. Talking heads is one, which I first noticed. Their own white album so to say.

ARNO: What actually was your first love as an album? I think you mentioned the Beach Boys once.
CHRISTOPHER: Oh yeah, there are certain bands I listened to a lot back when I was growing up. That was indeed the Beach Boys, but also Neil Young, Bob Dylan and the like. Pet Sounds is the obvious favourite of course, but I really got into all their work initially.

These days when I listen to their work, I don’t really listen to Pet Sounds as much. I do listen to the old Smile demos and the second B-side of the Beach Boys Today. There are 5 songs in there that lead into Pet Sounds, it was the last thing they did before doing Pet Sounds. Very interesting; all ballads and kind of a pace of change for the Beach Boys.

ARNO: Cool, I’ll check that out. What I am also curious about is how the process works; how did you go about creating ‘Big Echo’?
CHRISTOPHER: It depends on every song, sometimes I will have the song fully realised because when I write a song I will already have the specific sounds in my head. Sometimes a song is really bare bones; just one lyric and then together we will flesh it out. To get the right mood of the song. I will usually write the base of the song back home, by myself. Then depending on the song to what degree we will collaborate. Some songs then come out completely differently because we work together on it. Or they come out because I already worked it out.

ARNO: Any new bands I should be listening to that I haven’t heard of?
CHRISTOPHER: Yeah, I have been listening to this band from New York called Twin Sister a lot, they are really great. I have made an album with this band called Miniature Tigers, that I produced. It comes out next month in the states.What else?…yeah well, the Gorillaz new album. It’s really good.

ARNO: Something different; you also seem to aim for that internet audience. How do you feel the evolution of the internet; would you ever consider letting go of CD or vinyl?
CHRISTOPHER: For me, it can’t just be the internet. I still grew up listening to records and cd’s, I really like having that; to hold it and carry it with you. It’s the collector in me who likes to have that. I always want to make music for other people like that but at the same time I use the internet a lot to find out about a lot of new bands. I wanna embrace that as well, I think about how we can use both those things to help both sides.

So with every step we try to use the internet that way. Try to connect it back to the album. To encourage people to get the full album and let them listen to it in that form. I want people to listen to it, start to finish, the internet is just not conducive to that. We intentionally put out these two songs ‘Excuses’ and ‘Promises’ online, which are the first two songs of the album. So people at least start at the right place, somewhere they can continue on for the album. Hopefully that’s the right way we can use the internet. We try to associate every piece of video or any content with the band or Big Echo. Like the video on Vimeo we wanted to give a people a similar feeling of nostalgia like Big Echo would give you. Hopefully people want to hear more of where that came from.

ARNO: So any plans for Amsterdam today?
CHRISTOPHER: Well, just a bunch of interviews and things like that. We just don’t have that much time to look around, we are driving to Antwerp for a break before we drive to Paris. Really excited as well to see Paris and we have a couple of days there so…

ARNO: You talked about driving six hours away to another city in the US but here you almost can cross a couple of countries, Europe is quite condensed.
CHRISTOPHER: Yeah, I realised that and what’s funny is that the people who set up our schedule are European and they are in that mindset, so they want us to stop halfway to see Europe. It’s a whole different pacing here. It’s nice. A lot more relaxed.

ARNO: Well, I think you’ll have a great time. Are you just hitting mainland Europe by the way?
CHRISTOPHER: No, we were also in the UK but there they not as friendly as here.
MARK: hey, I’m from the UK…
CHRISTOPHER: It’s more about the culture and the people.
MARK: what?
ARNO: hahaha.
CHRISTOPHER: No no, that’s not what I meant. For new bands they take less time because they deal with so many bands all the time. I’ve been in Manchester and London. There must be less demand there. A lot of new bands come and go there. I heard American bands had similar encounters though. In the UK you must be able to survive on your own.
MARK: Yeah, it is such a big band culture over there, it is like a machine. They have to process so many bands all the time.
ARNO: Well, I am glad we got that settled. Christopher, thanks so much for your time and the interview.
CHRISTOPHER: Yeah, it was a pleasure.

Christopher’s day was lined up with interviews. So while the other guys were getting their fill, Christopher had to squeeze some pancake time in somewhere. Such is the life of an upcoming rock star. European travel and a lack of nutrition.

Special thanks to Rene from Konkurrent Records for arranging this interview.