I recently found myself at my kitchen table, anxiously staring at my cell phone in anticipation of a phone call from Tim Nordwind, one of the founding members of OK Go. I had been looking forward to this conversation for weeks. Just as expected, I was greeted by a very friendly and enthusiastic voice, ready to tell me stories and share insight into what it takes to be creative masterminds like OK Go.
OK Go is currently on tour promoting their fourth studio album Hungry Ghosts, which is set to release next month. This will be their first studio album in four years, mainly because OK Go has been busy touring with their previous record and making several videos in between. A handful of their new tracks are already out on their current EP Upside Out. One can get the feeling that this new record will be once again very promising and a step in a new direction.
“It’s very dancy, very much like a party record. In some ways it’s the most modern and futuristic record we’ve ever made. I think most so because a lot of the songs started as songs we had programmed, rather than had jammed out in our rehearsal sessions. A lot of these songs started from synthetic rhythms and beats and then built up from there. It has a very modern sound to it. But there is still a rock band at the core of it. Sonically, a lot of the songs are more processed this time and manipulated; so there’s a sort of surreal and modern take on rock and roll.”
OK Go’s current arena-scale tour production is also a treat. Despite playing several smaller venues, their shows are filled with fun elements. “We’re purposely playing smaller and more intimate venues for our fans. We hadn’t toured in a while and we wanted to make sure to get back and play for the fans who had really been keeping tabs on us so we could reconnect with them. But (laughs) we have designed ourselves in stadium-like shows that we cram into incredibly small places. It’s very multi-media. There are a lot of interactive elements to the show. We make a song sampling the crowd at one point in time. There are optical illusions and there are kabuki streamers, a lot of video, yet still some traditional rock and roll moments as well. We wanted to build a show that has a story to it – not necessarily a narrative story – but there’s an abstract story to it. There’s definitely a beginning, a middle and an end that you can kind of follow along.”
Many know OK Go for their incredibly creative and unique music videos, which have helped earn them considerable fame. It started with “Here It Goes Again,” which shows the band performing a complex routine with the aid of motorized treadmills. Since then, every new video has been seemingly more creative than the previous one and many of them quickly went viral within very short time frames, revolutionizing the concept of music videos and setting the bar very high to top.
“We’re four guys who just enjoy making things, period – whether that’s videos or some kind of art project or writing a story – whatever it is, it’s the process of making things and sharing things that really get us excited and out of bed in the morning. The ideas just come from things we see in life that get us excited – whether it’s some sort of piece of technology, or a science project we’ve heard about, or an idea we get from a story we read. The ideas come from all over the place. But what most people don’t realize is that the concepts don’t become really cool until we actually start playing with them in a room somewhere, or in a warehouse, or wherever these ideas are shot. It’s the process of taking the time to play with the ideas, make mistakes, find out that the mistakes are cooler than the original ideas we had…it’s allowing ourselves to have the time to really play with these ideas that make the final product unique and crazier than anything we could have thought of sitting at a desk and trying to write out a treatment or something like that.”
But it takes more than just great videos to be successful. OK Go put hard work into their careers and wouldn’t be where they are today without it.
“Certainly, once the backyard dance video (to “A Million Ways”) and then the treadmill video (to “Here It Goes Again”) came out, that definitely put us on a new sort of level of recognition. But I really do think it’s a combination of music and video and all the other moves that we’ve made throughout the years that have earned us our success. I don’t think that we could have just started by putting out videos about us dancing on treadmills. I think without having the history we had already built up as a band until that point, I’m not sure the video would have stuck the way that it did. I think a lot of people know us from the videos. But from my sort of insider perspective, it’s hard to give any one thing single credit, because it had to build the way that it built in order for things to turn out the way that they did.”
And OK Go didn’t stop there. In 2010, the band broke ties with Capitol Records and started their own independent label, Paracadute.
“At the time, we just needed a way to distribute our new record, so we started our label simply to do that. Once we started it, we realized it could be a valuable distribution arm to all of our creative projects. The hope is that it can continue to serve as this creative distribution arm that doesn’t have to necessarily be solely for music. In the future, hopefully it will act as a home for apps that we want to make, or books that we want to write, and films that we want to produce. I’d like to keep the door wide open for whatever it is that we feel like making and creating and putting out into the world.”
And whatever that is, if it comes from OK Go, I’m sure it will be intriguing and successful.
You can order OK Go’s new album Hungry Ghosts on https://www.pledgemusic.com/projects/okgo/ The site offers a lot of fun rewards and packages – for example OK Go will make a fake documentary about your life (which in truth has nothing to do with your life), or you can get a pair of hand-decorated Converse Jack Purcells, or for the artists out there: a Google Hangout session to receive feedback on your art project.
Also, make sure to check out the video to their new single “The Writing’s On The Wall” and let your head spin.
