Catching Up with Astronautalis

If you read my column this week, you know how I feel about Andy Bothwell, A.K.A. Astronautalis, so I'll keep this short and sweet. He's the man, he'll be in Boston at O'Brien's Pub on Sunday, and his new record This Is Our Science is about to top many an end of the year list and (hopefully) propel him to indie hip-hop stardom. Buy the record, go to the show and get onboard with Mr. Bothwell. Thanks to Andy for taking the time to chat with the Clock, and a big thanks to his excellent management team for setting this up. Great dude. Great interview.

BK: Congratulations on the new record, first of all.

AB:Thanks man.

The title has been driving me nuts, what does that mean?

It's sort of about comparing the process of scientific development and discovery, with the process of creative development and discovery and self development and discovery and sort of how all these lines start to blur, kind of, the deeper you get into this thing. When I first started out touring and chasing this sort of silly dream job, it's kind of silly and ephemeral and as you get deeper and deeper and deeper it becomes more calculated, it becomes more controlled and you become more focused and you start to get more serious about things. I've seen, you know, not just in myself but in a lot of friends who are touring musicians and self employed artists and screen printers who are just kind of living outside of a normal business structure and life structure, it just becomes kind of this continual self discovery. There's no set path. So, it's sort of like how a scientist works where they figure something out and they go "OK, where are we gonna go next with this knowledge?" and you take a step and you land on a lily pad, and all of a sudden you have to take this big leap of faith. So it started to really feel like, this my science, this is our science, this is the science of my friends, this is the science of the people around me who are not living regular, normal, run of the mill lives.

Do you feel like that's a pretty good synopsis of the lyrical content too?

Certainly, the main focus. I mean, the title is kind of a thesis for the record.

You're  a little hard to follow sometimes, you're pretty verbose.

Haha, yeah.

Are you a big reader?

Yeah, I come in waves, just like anybody. I'll, like, plow through twenty books in 2 months and then stop dead and play video games for 2 months. Generally, I become topic obsessed or author obsessed. When it's non-fiction I become topic obsessed, and when it's fiction I become author obsessed. I'll just read everything by 1 author and reread it and obsess over it and take notes on it. So it comes in huge bursts for me.

I remember reading that the Four Fists stuff with P.O.S. is based on Fitzgerald.

Yeah, it's this idea that, sort of blossomed with Stef (P.O.S.'s name is Stefan Alexander – Ed.) and Fitzgerald's short stories. Especially Fitzgerald's take on this sort of gilded age of America just before its' imminent collapse, and seeing the collapse before it happened. It's really an easy parallel between what's going on in America today and the sort of collapse that we're seeing right now where we have this incredible, gilded software age and then this huge decline. It's like how everything was going after WWI, before the complete and utter collapse of the Great Depression.

What's the status on that project, is that going to see the light of day?

Yeah, totally. We just work on it when we have time. We don't rush it, and it's not a priority. We worked on it some more and got it like 70% done and close to finishing it and then we both had to start on our own records. Stef is wrapping up his record now, right in time for winter to drop seventy tons of snow on us in Minneapolis, so we'll have nothing but time on our hands to finish this record in the next 5 months or so.

Are you going to be on his next record?

Kind of the same way he's on my record. I do a lot of backing vocals and I wrote a chorus for one thing. I mean, who knows if it'll even end up on the record or not.

You guys play off each other so well.

Yeah, we work really well together. We bounce ideas off each other really well. I'm really excited for that record to come out, because it's a cool process for us.

I saw you guys do "Handmade Handgun" together in Burlington, Vermont. It was unreal.

That's awesome man.

This is a question I like to ask, I always get a really cool answer out of this. What is a record that you were really into when you were growing up that your fans might not expect you to have liked?

Wow, um, the record, and the band, that I think would really surprise people is Blur.

Really?

Yeah, I really like Blur. Especially like 8^th grade, 9^th grade, 10^th grade. All while I was loving and falling in love with rap music, before all that, Blur's Parklife was my favorite record in 8^th grade. It's a really weird record, because it starts off with "Girls & Boys," which is this dance song, and it has all these weird sort of spoken word parts and waltz parts. It's a very strange record. I didn't really realize how weird it was until I started going back and listening to it years and years later with a new perspective but while I was loving fucking super crazy, violent New York gangsta rap I was still listening to Blur all the time and wearing like, winter camo pants with my Blur Parklife t-shirt. It was such a weird place I grew up in. So yeah, I think Blur's Parklife would be the one that was this huge obsession for me in 8^th 9^th and 10^th grade.

How do you feel about illegal downloading? Do you get bummed out on it?

I mean, it's a double-edged sword.  I wouldn't have the career I have if it wasn't for music piracy. I'm not gonna be the fuckin' holier-than-thou music dickhead that says "I don't pirate music" and pretend that when I was making mixtapes…It's weird because we romanticize the time when we made mixtapes, which is music piracy, but we poo-poo people for downloading. I guess I like it because it's quality control. People that buy my records buy my records because it's more like a political vote. Like, "I will vote to support this person, this company, this product, this process because I want to be a part of this and I want to say I contributed my vote to it." So for me, if you make a bad record, that's your fault homie. You're not going to fool anybody into buying your record anymore because everybody gets to hear it for free. So for, it's quality control. I wish more people would buy my records, and that I wouldn't have to rely on selling t-shirts or hope people put my song in a commercial to make a living, but with that being said, it's my responsibility as an artist now to…to complain about it now is stupid. It's a moot point. Because it's done. It's done, there's no turning it back. There's no stopping it, there's no turning it back so complaining about it is a moot point. So you just have to get to the point where you just get the fuck on with it and figure out ways to work around it. And the best way to work around it is to make a good fucking album, and be a nice person, and work your ass off. Then people will be like "Of course I want to give this person $10." If you make a good record, you put on a good show and you're a nice person, people will give you money for what you do. That's the God's honest truth, and the bands that suffer for it are the bands that just didn't get that. So fuck ‘em.

My favorite song on This Is Our Science is "Contrails." Are you a big Tegan & Sara fan?

Yeah, it's funny because I am a really huge Tegan & Sara fan. Particularly of So Jealous, but also of The Con. But So Jealous man, that record meant so much to me. Their ability to write pop songs, their ability to write choruses is just undeniable. The thing that's so crazy about that record is that it's a little longer than I like records to be, but if I were to go through it and cut songs, I wouldn't know which one to cut because every song is catchy, every song is good. A song will come on and I'll be like "I don't know how I feel about this song" and then the chorus will come on and I'll be like "Goddammit I love this song!" They're undeniably catchy songs, without them being trite. They're really interesting, they're very good writers. Then I got asked to play one show with them in Seattle and I was like "Oh my God I'm so pumped!" and then I played the one show and we all just hit it off and then they asked me to go on tour in Europe with them and I was like "Oh my Good Oh my God Oh my God!" and then we became really good friends on tour and they were like "Let's go to Australia together" and I was like "Aaaahhhhh yes!" So we had talked late at night drunk, Sara and I especially, but all of us had talked about working on music together. I was super nervous about it because they're busy people. My manager and my agent were like "Dude, they're so nice and they love you, just ask them" and so one night I got a couple whiskey shots in me and sent out this email, like "I understand you're busy," you know? Selling myself short right off the bat. But then they were both like "Yeah, of course." They're both so supportive and wonderful. Sara unfortunately couldn't get to a studio because of her schedule and we couldn't get it done fast enough but Tegan came through and killed it. But yeah, just from touring and posting about my stuff, to ultimately just including me in everything they can, they've done so, co much for me and for my career. They gave this album instantly so much more attention. I can't say enough nice things about those two girls, they really are an inspiration both artistically and personally and business wise as well.

Speaking of your friends in high places, you know Charlie from It's Always Sunny.

Yeah, I know Charlie and Mary-Elizabeth, his wife, and a couple other cast members. It's sort of a loose connection through this theater school I went to in Dallas called SMU (Souther Methodist University – Ed.). Mary-Elizabeth, Charlie's wife, went to school there too and I've known her forever. A lot of other kind of peripheral cast members and writers are SMU grads, like Artemis, from the show, is an MSU grad, they're all theater kids from this school in Dallas. I met Charlie when he and Mary-Elizabeth and him started dating years and years ago when he was just living in New York, acting around and doing voiceover for the Independent Film Channel and stuff like that. So one day he just said "Hey man, I got this show me and my buddies are making, I think it's gonna be really funny" and I was like "Cool man." And then, you know, boom! It's funny because that whole first season they were being threatened to be cancelled over and over again. And then Danny De Vito came in. He was a huge fan and he was just like "Pimp me out man, make this happen." It was so interesting to talk to him all through that process and he was just like "Oh man, I don't think we're gonna make it" because nobody watched that first season. And then it just blew up. There again, those people ride for me so hard. They're such nice people and they're fans of the music and friends to the death. I owe them so much for just little things, like posting about my music. Charlie hadn't tweeted in like 4 months and the first thing he does is post about my song, and everybody was like "Whoa! What's this?" And you know, they put my posters in there and shit like that. It's just little stuff, but it's stuff that helps and it's really cool that they rock for me.

Did you catch the CMJ imposter? (It was reported by fans on Twitter that a man at this year's CMJ Festival in New York was posing as Astronautalis – Ed.)

No! And I can't figure out what happened! I was so mad. Those 2 girls that tweeted me about it were like "Oh, we didn't look at the club." I was like "What are you doing??" I was so mad. I was like "What kind of detectives are you? How do you just dump this information in my lap and then be like ‘Oh, we're going bowling.'" No! Come on! I'm trying to get to the bottom of this shit! I never figured it out.

I hope no one made money off your name.

I can't actually confirm that it even happened. I was like "What's the club?" and they were like "We don't know." I was like "Did you talk to him?" and she said "Yeah for a second," What?! No! I don't even know if it's true or not. I don't have enough information to say that it's true. No one else could confirm it. It's like, don't give me this information. There's a couple possibilities. One is that they were drunk on a Friday night and misunderstood this person or you know, saw it and were just so drunk they didn't care. Whatever. Or they played it as a joke and didn't realize it would get that out of hand. Maybe they didn't realize that it might matter to me.

It's just so easy to be found fraudulent, I mean your tour dates are all over.

Yeah, I know! I'm clearly not there. I'm currently not there, I'm playing a show somewhere else. Whatever. It's another one for the memoir. It's just so annoying. Goddammit. It's a good funny problem. A funny story.

So what's next for you?

I do this tour, and then I got a couple other little things that I can't totally talk about yet. I'm gonna make another Dancehall Hornsound mixtape with Fisher Price. And I'm working on another mixtape with Stef's DJ Plain Ole Bill. It's a cool mixtape concept, it's gonna be really fun. Then we should be releasing the instrumentals and a cappellas for the album soon, then remix contests, then a remix record, more videos, touring in Europe, stuff stuff stuff.

Thanks for taking the time out to chat with me, man.

My pleasure dude, really and truly. Take care.