by donald dusinberre imartsyfartsy@gmail.com
What: Pelican
Where: The Chickee Hut stage of the Langerado Music Festival
When: 11:30 pm on Saturday, March 8th
Langerado is coming up soon, and we Floridians will get a chance to see dozens of bands we’ve never seen perform here. Giddy as we are, EU writers have been working hard to speak with as many of them as possible. I spoke recently with Trevor de Brauw, guitarist for the genre-muddying instrumental (post rock) band Pelican.
Their music may frighten you at first, but give them a try with an open mind. Though very heavy, their music has a beauty that reveals another part of itself with each listen. Plus, they’re really nice people and they like R.E.M., too.
EU: Why did you choose Pelican as the name of your band? I promise the questions get better from here.
Trevor: Honestly, there isn’t really a good story behind it. In a lot of ways, I think that the pool of good band name has pretty much been expounded. We were doing a bunch of different bands at the time, and a lot of them were animal themed. We were playing together in a band named Tusk, and I had another side-project called Bionic Rat. Someone came up with the name Pelican. I can kind of see a parallel between the sound of the band and the name, in that pelicans are these large awkward birds that seem kind of timid and not very threatening, but when you see them in action, they have a brutal way of feeding. It just seemed fitting at the time, in a way.
EU: One of the hardest things for me is trying to explain to people what you sound like. I hear “metal” used quite a bit, but I never really got that. I’ve always been sort of averse to that term. It just brings to mind too much of the eighties.
Trevor: There are a whole lot of negative connotations to the term “metal,” and while I don’t feel that we’re necessarily a metal band, we have a lot of interest invested in metal. Sometimes it can hurt us when people write us off as a metal band, but it’s kind of lame because I feel like we’ve got a lot more to offer than just metal. But in the same way, the rebellion, the angry attitude of metal is central to what we’re doing, you know?
EU: The more I listen to your music, the more the sound opens up to different influences and other things I associate sounds with, which makes it even harder to describe what you sound like to other people. I can’t stand saying, “Oh, you have to give it a couple of listens. Give it another try,” but with you guys, it’s sort of necessary. The sound evolves in your own ears.
Trevor: Yeah, well thank you. For me, that’s something central about good music. I feel like good music is something that will stand up to several listens and will offer you more the more you listen to it. When someone says that to us, I take it as a high compliment.
EU: What’s the funniest label you’ve been given? I saw your music described as “trance metal,” which I thought was really funny.
Trevor: (Laughs.) That is kind of funny. I don’t know…I feel like a lot of the labels people give us are funny, certainly when people add sub-categories to metal… It’s this weird thing that’s going on in modern music, where people have this need to label things with sub-categories, and no matter what, they always sound awful, like “post-metal.” I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean.
EU: Coming about as an instrumental group just sort of happened for you, so I wondered if you get a lot of offers from people to sing?
Trevor: I feel like we did right at first, when we first started putting out full-lengths. People would write us and send us mp3s of them singing. It was kind of funny, but it hasn’t really persisted. I think once you have a few records under your belt and you’re established as an instrumental band, a lot of people don’t want to add vocals. I think if we got someone to sing on our records, people would be kind of bummed or something.
EU: I first heard about Pelican a few years ago when I was insatiably downloading music from the Internet. Since then, a lot has happened, and many artists have weighed in on what they think about “stealing” music. Bigger acts like Metallica have complained that the practice takes money right out of their pockets, while smaller acts encourage it as a way to spread the word about them. What about you?
Trevor: Honestly, it’s impossible not to be conflicted about it when you’re a musician trying to make a living off your music, but I just think that the way people are finding out about music and the way people are consuming music is changing with the technology. It’s not within anyone’s ability to reverse it or make it stop, because it’s not going to stop at this point. It’s really the responsibility of artists and labels to try and find a way to make the business model still work. And I guess it’s also up to the consumers, because when we reach the point that no one is buying records and it becomes impossible to make music anymore, that’s going to be a problem for the consumer.
I realize that a lot of people have found out about our music by file sharing and by downloading, and while it’s not easy to make a living as a musician these days, I appreciate that people like our music and they seek it out. The bottom line is that’s the most important thing- that people hear the music and enjoy it.
I’ve seen a shift in the music listening community. I don’t think that people are necessarily spending a lot less money on music, I think it’s just that they’re buying more t-shirts and going to more concerts, and stuff like that.
I think that things are going to work out in the end, it’s just a confusing period for the music industry.
EU: The way I’ve always looked at it was: If I didn’t find you on the Internet, I’d never get a chance to buy your records or see you in concert. Word of mouth isn’t really the way Metallica gains fans, but it is for smaller acts such as yours. Through file sharing, your fan base grows while Metallica’s revenue stream shrinks. Since you’re playing Langerado this March, are you comfortable with your level of visibility?
Trevor: We didn’t start out this band with any goal in mind as far as playing to lots of people. We had the drive to write songs and to play songs, and if we can play some shows then cool. Everything else has been extra, you know? (Laughs.) I didn’t expect that our band would take us to Japan twice, or to Australia, or that we’d go to these far-flung places and people would know our songs and want us to be there. So, yeah, it’s been incredible.
EU: When you have vocals, it’s easier to know what a song is about. But do you hope to steer people toward specific thoughts or feelings by the sound alone? Is that something you work for?
Trevor: I guess to an extent, but I think in general, when we write a batch of songs, we kind of get a few songs in before we start thinking about what the music means, whereas when you’re in a band with vocals you’re sort of taking it song by song. Each song might have a specific meaning, and the music goes with what’s going on in the lyrics. Usually, when we’re writing an album, we get three songs in and we’re like, ‘What do these songs mean? What are we trying to express?’ and the songs we’ve written sort of tell us the meaning. And then we take it from there. Once we have a theme, we keep writing around that idea.
EU: How do you feel about playing at Langerado with such divergent acts as R.E.M., Phil Lesh, and Ani DiFranco?
Trevor: Uh, it’s totally surreal. (Laughs.) I don’t really know what else to say about that. Like I was saying before, our music has given us the opportunity to do all these things that I never thought would happen, that certainly wouldn’t have been on my radar. Playing on a stage with R.E.M. hasn’t really sunk in yet. Ask me again after we do it.
Article Published in the 03-08 Issue of EU Jacksonville
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