The Local Natives have been hitting it hard. Everywhere you look, they have already been. It’s almost like tracking a famously elusive ghost. Their fans are wild and ready and quickly scoop up every ticket available and their festival stops have become something of legend. When not traipsing around the planet…wait, they are always doing that. Last years Hummingbird was released to a hail of wonderful press. The long awaited release has them currently on the road with Kings of Leon and shortly, on their way to Knoxville for a sold out show at The Bijou Theater on April 18, 2014. Recently we caught up with Taylor to discuss hair care, middle school and the ways of the road.
To look out across a sea of screaming fans, sold out show after sold out show, must be breath taking. For Local Natives, these moments can sometimes be harrowing, each day bringing a new twist.
“Two thing come into my mind. Both are sort of negative experiences. We were playing a show in Hamburg, Germany where we barely fit our gear on stage. This one couple, who were so close that I could probably touch them, were making out so hard core and pornographically the whole show, that it was kind of jarring. It was like alright, they feel comfortable in this environment, somehow. It was a very striking thing to see from the stage. The second is a lot more recent. We just played in Mexico City, the last show of 2013, at the end of December. At the end of the set, I went into the audience for the last song. As I was coming back, to come over the barricade on to the stage, it felt like somebody had grabbed my foot. I thought they were just f***ing with me and were going to pull me back in to the audience. As I looked back, my boot was caught in this girls super frizzy hair. I had all these security guards hold it up and sort of cut her hair. It was during the most intense moment of the set. I asked if she was okay and she said, yeah I’m okay and smiled. Immediately after the show, I had someone go check on her but she was already gone.”
“Who Knows, Who Cares” carefully and beautifully captures what I remember of long summer days, in the months when cold squeezes the life from the trees and sends us scurrying from place to place in an attempt to hold on to warmth. It is a patchwork of everything that the best part of the year offers. “I wrote that song out of a time of what summer feels like when you’re a kid, growing up in school. Summer is an open possibility. You don’t have to go to school everyday. It feels like an endless thing. I had just graduated from college. Me, Ryan and Kelcey have all been playing together since high school, for well over ten years now. This is the time when we were writing Gorilla Manor. We’d moved into a house together, just after graduating. It came from that openness right before… All of my friends from college were going into super serious jobs and having the awesome career paths lined up for them and my decision with my band mates was to move into a house and make a record. It was a really liberating time for us as a band where we felt completely in it. Everybody was committed. We were going to do everything we could to make that happen. It’s not an easy thing, to make that risk and make that jump and sacrifice. Doing it together, and living in that house, captured the essence of that.”
Life in the public eye can offer some very unexpected requests.”We just got an email from a girl. I don’t know how, but Atlanta is three for three, just absolutely the craziest audiences and the most fun audiences to play for. The shows are in the top five most memorable in the US every time. Anyway, this girl emailed us from Atlanta. She said that the last time she was at our show her and her husband conceived on that night and that they were going to name their kid after Kelcey (Aver). I think his name goes easily boy or girl and they didn’t know if it would be boy or girl. They wanted us to send a video breaking the news to the husband. It was a really intense knowledge, to be a part of that whole thing for that couple. I thought that was pretty awesome. I couldn’t believe she was that open with us.”
Not everyone who makes it in music has that defining moment where they realize, this is it, this is what I am meant to do. “I remember when it was exactly. Ryan and I met on the first day of seventh grade. We picked up guitar together in eighth grade. These were in the days of Kazah. You would download a music video from the internet. It would maybe take two days. At The Drive-in was our favorite band. We would download these live videos. They were the most insane, ballsy, energy exploding mania. Thats when both of us were like, ok this is what we want to do. We want to be in a band. It was pretty shortly after that, we had our first show, which was in a cul-de-sac in front of Ryan’s house. (Laughing) There were parents and kids. It was pretty goofy. That was, I think, a spark.”
Sometimes you just know.“I remember, writing Gorilla Manor. Our oldest song, by far, that has survived, is “Sun Hands.” “Sun Hands” is really old. That was 2005 or 2006 that we wrote that. It survived all the way through to Gorilla Manor, which came out in 2009. I remember writing that in the garage. You get that kind of buzzing feeling, that you are now always looking for. That was probably the first time we felt that.”
Ahh memories. Looking back and seeing them stack up is both thrilling and sometimes overwhelming. “There are so, so many. The one that popped into my mind, probably because I am home, at my house in LA and it feels really nice to be home after being on the road for pretty much a year straight. Coachella was always the festival that we went to growing up. We went probably six times, at least. It was our dream. If we could just play Coachella, then we would feel like we made it as a band. Our first time playing was in 2010 in one of the tents. It was one of those moments.”
“You play a 200 cap room and it’s full and it’s crazy. Then you go to a 500 cap room, but after you do it five times you get used to it. You acclimate. You get used to it. It is human nature. But this was the first time that we had played for more than 5,000 people. It was one of these experiences where the show really felt about 90 seconds to me. It whirred by without me being there. It just buzzed right by me. That was just really amazing. We came back last year… Was it last year? That’s crazy!, and did it again. We played on that outdoor stage at sunset. I have seen so many incredible bands play that exact same slot, as a fan. That is one thing that I think of as a pinch yourself moment for us.”
