100 Musicians Answer the Same 10 Questions

Part Forty-Two: Ponies in the Surf

instigated by dave heaton

It should be no surprise that at the very first musician interviewed in this series mentioned Ponies in the Surf – the brother-sister duo of Camille and Alex McGregor - as a band everyone should hear….because, well, everyone should hear them. Because what they're doing right now stands out among their peers, because they have their own unique style, one rooted not just in gentle indie-pop but in folk music of the world, in old styles of music, in who knows what else. Their songs are smart and romantic and timeless-sounding. Their album Ponies on Fire (Asaurus) is a great example of what they do, but so is any other release with their name on it. For more information check out their website and MySpace.

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What aspect of making music excites you the most right now?

Camille: Right now everything is about recordings, and it does excite us quite a bit to be doing it, but it's also just the stage we happen to be at... since we're pretty simple-minded and can't handle too many big thoughts all at once, we've tapered back a lot of live performances, and to a lesser extent, songwriting, until we're happy with the record.

Alex: Plus records travel fast and far these days, so in the space of like two hours your songs can wind up in the hands of some teenager in Italy or something like that, and the magic of this newfangled technology means the performer doesn't have to leave his house as much.

What aspect of making music gets you the most discouraged?

Alex: Amplification.

Camille: Clubs with no decorum or smarts.

What are you up to right now, music-wise? (Current or upcoming recordings, tours, extravaganzas, experiments, top-secret projects, etc).

Alex: Well, the recordings we mentioned back there, they're very special to us, in the sense that we're recording with our friend Andrew Churchman on drums, and he and I have played other stuff together quite a bit, but we never played a whole set of Ponies in the Surf songs. I admire Andrew's style quite a bit on the drums, and in the Pants Yell! too, more and more really. So it's already been very special to me, because I pictured this happening a couple of years ago, but I finally motivated because PantsYell are moving away from Boston to New York (and for their first foray ever into lame-ness I will be dropping their exclamation point from now on). Plus we're excited to be doing things in a pseudo-professional manner (for us, at least), in a nice studio and everything, hopefully the release will be on vinyl -- the one true format -- too.

Camille: Oh, and to keep this paragraph totally in a Massachusetts rock nerd-out angle, we must mention Mr. Tim Shea is the producer/engineer on these songs, and he's a great easy-going guy who recorded Soltero records, Reports, Carlisle Sound, pretty much defined that "Memorial Drive" sound everyone is talking about!

What's the most unusual place you've ever played a show or made a recording? How did the qualities of that place affect the show/recording?

Camille: It's not unusual, but when we played at a church the acoustics were amazing.

Alex: Also no unusual thing, but we like playing at parties. There's always something nice about playing where someone lives, for people that are mostly friends and such, and not having to schlepp to some club in different cars.

In what ways does the place where you live (or places where you have lived), affect the music you create, or your taste in music?

Camille: We're total Boston music nerds, we have pretty much the best college radio in the world, I think, and we grew up on that.

Alex: And it's not as if it's a coincidence that all of our favorite acts of the past 20 years like Jonathan Richman and Galaxie 500, etc. are from within Route 128, is it?

Camille: We're very into our scene, as you can see, but it does have some good history! We also grew up in Colombia (you know, South America) and that's probably defined us the most... not really living where we should have can be a defining trait, you know?

Alex: Plus the 'latin' way of thinking about and listening to music is a little different... it's more part of the rituals, and less of an "Individual Superstar" or "Jingoistic Sell-out" type of thing.

When was the last time you wrote a song? What can you tell us about it?

Camille: We wrote one on the porch together a couple of weeks ago. It's about falling in with the bad crowd.

As you create more music, do you find yourself getting more or less interested in seeking out and listening to new music made by other people...and why do you think that is?

Alex: Nah, I don't get less interested in listening to other people at all, but as you get more serious about music in general and practice more you listen differently... with the ears of the musician, you know? I might lose patience listening to someone who plays worse than me, but not because they play in a different way or are less technically proficiently or anything, it doesn't matter to me if someone's been playing guitar for only a year or makes mistakes or whatever -- what bothers me is when you can just tell that somebody is lazy and never practices for what they're doing and they're just up there wasting everyone's time not really concentrating intensely just yodeling their little head off about nothing and just doing a silly fashion show up there and generally showing no respect for music.

Camille: Loud bothers me, when music is SO LOUD but for no reason. There are a few loud bands out there that actually use their volume, like for white noise frequencies and stuff like that, and people like Oneida or Mission Of Burma really know how to use noise as an active ingredient. But most of these loud kids out there are serving no purpose other than creating an unsafe and uncomfortable experience for your eardrums. I mean, I'll sacrifice my hearing to see the Who, but to hear some college jock whine about some teenage girl with his amps cranked to 10, no thanks.

Lately what musical periods or styles do you find yourself most drawn to as a listener? (Old or new music? Music like yours or different from yours?)

Alex: My girlfriend's Motown collection and most things with a string section...or a trumpet for that matter.

Name a band or musician, past or present, who you flat-out LOVE and think more people should be listening to. What's one of your all-time favorite recordings by this band/musician?

Alex: Mose Allison. Pretty much anything where he sings is good, his Best-Ofs are all well put-together. He played piano and sung like a bouncing ball, that's how I hear him, like in old cartoons where you follow the bouncing ball. . .

Camille: Really, is there a better song than "Summer Feeling" by Jonathan Richman (the I, Jonathan version)?

What's the saddest song you've ever heard?

Camille: "Strange Fruit"...the good version, or anything by Elliott Smith. C'mon, you know it's so true.

Alex: You know that song "I'm glad to be an American, cuz at least I know I'm free..." That is the saddest piece of shit lie of a song ever!

Photo above taken by Karen Rusten.

To check out the rest of the Q&As, click here.