FEATURE: The Archive
The Archive is a New York quartet currently putting the finishing touches on their debut album. Virginia native John Epperly met the rest of the band on Craigslist seven months ago, and they already share a close bond that most groups spend years trying to cement. Contributing writer Ryan Orvis spoke with John about fusing Appalachian folk melodies with psychedelic rock, and searching for the timeless Fleetwood Mac sound in the studio. The Archive plays Saturday, May 28 at the Mercury Lounge.
RO: How did the band come together?
John Epperly: I put an ad on Craigslist, thinking it was going to be a few months of weeding people out. As soon as I put the ad up, I found one from a guitar player and drummer looking for a band. That was John MacDonald and Tim Perzan. The bass player, Dan Bombach, was a roommate. He wanted to play, was in Brooklyn, and had the right heart for it. He turned out to be a great bass player.
RO: So John and Tim were already working together?
JE: They were in a band previous to this called Worst Case Ontario. They did some decent tours, and did South By Southwest. When they showed up I was a bit skeptical, then we started talking. We seemed to agree on everything, which was kind of weird. I asked them, “Well, you guys can play, right?” And they were like, “yeah, we can play!” Then we just kind of went forth.
RO: Was there a concept for what kind of sound you wanted to have, or was it based around songs you had already written?
JE: In the past I’ve had tons of songs written. Different phases of writing, from Zappa type stuff to singer-songwriter, folky, Gillian Welch, Ryan Adams type stuff. I was in a couple three-piece rock ‘n’ roll bands, probably an after effect of grunge.
That ended with the last project, and I took some time to figure out what I was thinking about doing. I watched U2’s “With or Without You” video, and it seemed like everything I wanted to do all together. The whole song is four chords, it doesn’t change. It’s got a great vocal, so it’s not hipster in that way. There’s a delayed guitar, kind of spacey and psychedelic. A straight kind of rhythm – It’s like, “oh yeah, that’s it.”
I wrote a couple of tunes, and then I was at a point where I made the decision to put something together. I love Appalachian folk melodies, and I also love Sonic Youth and spacey noise with weird guitars. So that was a bit of the concept: psychedelic, but not tie dye psychedelic. In the way that Gillian Welch is psychedelic. Churchy. Church is trippy, you know.
RO: So you guys are working on an album?
JE: Yeah, I went to school to be an engineer, so I have a little home studio. I work as a carpenter for my day job, and I happened to get into the business of building studios. That gave us the hookup to get a discounted rate at Mavericks Studio. We pay for an engineer, Bobby Lurie, who owns the studio and is in The Billy Nayer Show. We’ve been becoming friends over the last couple of years, and now we’ve really hit it off. He’s taken an interest in us, enough for us to have a real studio with a tape machine and all that. It’s coming together. What I envisioned, and the engineer that we used, and the room that was there to get this actual “band in the room” sound. It really clicked. We’re finishing up the vocals now.
Bobby’s been sending out emails trying to find the right mixing engineer. We’ve got a couple guys interested that I never would have imagined we’d be anywhere close to working with on a first record with no budget. This guy’s definitely hooking us up. He doesn’t really seek any publicity, he just loves music. He engineered and produced. He was just being paid to engineer, and then he totally got into the songs. It was a really nice organic thing.
We wanted to make a record that sounded like it was either 1976 or 77. I love Rumours, and that real analog sound. So we kind of did that as much as possible. It was pretty cool. Something I’d only dreamed about doing, but it actually happened. That’s coming through in the songs, and I think that’s why he’s excited enough to put his name on the line and ask some of these big engineers if they’d mind mixing it for a discounted rate.
It’s been a whirlwind, with everything coming together and working perfectly with this group. We get along, and we hang out like a real band. Not many bands that I know really do that. I think that comes through in the music. We all sacrifice whatever, no egos. For me, it just feels fucking awesome. That’s why we’re all psyched enough to even talk about it.
RO: So what’s the plan from here?
JE: We’d love to go and play Europe. The ideal thing is to get someone behind this that might help us get onto a nice indie label; a small label that can do some press things and set up some shows around here with some buzz. It doesn’t matter how good you are until you’ve got a little bit of buzz behind it. Play some shows in New York, do some West Coast dates, and then go to Europe. That’s the wish list. I feel like playing on the West Coast would be good for us. There’s something about California. They dig their psych thing. It’s psychedelic disguised a bit; just enough.