Dryvetyme Onlyne

In light of my recent review of this Portland, OR-based band’s exciting brand of indie-pop, I decided to conduct an interview with them, specifically Jake Carey, the lead vocalist. What follows is a delightfully quirky bit of call-and-response between Jake and myself. Enjoy!

APN: How did the band get started? Tell me the story of how you all got together and started making music.

Jake Carey (JC): One sunny September afternoon, a scrubjay landed on my right shoulder. He looked me in the eyes directly and with his tiny, pointy little beak he spoke: “I think you should start a musical group with the three people closest to you.” I thought this was an excellent idea! The thing was – I was standing in line outside of the Unemployment Office in downtown Portland. So, I picked the two people in front of me and the one person behind me. And that, they say, is where the magic begun.

APN: Get On With It does have a very ’80s retro feel, but you don’t wallow in your influences too heavily. How did your sound originally come about when the band first started playing together?

JC: We tried very hard to relive the lives of people whose bands don’t exist anymore or who are dead. That way, if we steal something from them, they can’t say anything about it because they are dead. Also, our van only plays cassettes, so we spent a lot of time listening to tapes of The Clash we found at The Bins.

APN: How has your sound changed over the years & what’s been behind those changes?

JC: ADD

APN: What drives Caves to keep making music? What keeps you going with every song & every show?

JC: We really like making music and playing shows. If I could record during the first half of the day and perform the second half, I don’t think I would need much more. Stick me in a zoo with a studio and a stage and throw some bananas at me once in a while and I am good to go. Oh and maybe a break or two to ride motorcycles.

APN: Who would you say have been the key musical influences for the band as a whole?

JC: At my job, there is a DJ that comes in at ten and plays records all night. I have learned most of what I know from them. And Queen – if we could be Queen, then I would be cool with dying young.

APN: Besides hyping up your record, what can we look forward to seeing from Caves in the rest of 2008 and into 2009?

JC: If I told you it wouldn’t be an exciting surprise would it?

APN: Name the last book you each have read, last movie watched, and the last album you listened to completely.

JC: Tim (West on bass) reads about a book a day and Dave (Benedetti on guitar) and Brian (Morris on drums) hardly read at all, so I will only speak for myself. I read three Murakami novels in a row because his books are like candy to me. I couldn’t get enough – Kafka on the Shore, Norwegian Wood, and Wind Up Bird Chronicle. Those books made me anti-social. It is not the most recent movie I’ve seen, but The Fall comes to mind immediately. I also thought WALL-E was a genius little film, though I guess it is ironic to call it a film, since I doubt an inch of celluloid was used (and P.S. – Disney is evil), but it was quite a good little piece of social satire. TTC’s 3615 is a great album.