San Franciscan Ryan Auffenberg released a fine solo record a few years back called MARIGOLDS. When I assumed he couldn't top that he released another one this year under the band name Halsted. That record is called LIFE UNDERWATER and is well worth your time. Ryan answered a few questions from us via email and attempted to let us know what makes him tick.
Where did you grow up?
I grew up in St.Louis, Missouri.
What was your first band?
My first band formed for one night only to play my high school’s battle of the bands. We were named Your Mom and covered the Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star”. Suffice it to say, we did not win the battle that day.
Why/when did you move to San Francisco?
I originally moved out to California to attend college just south of San Francisco. After graduation, I attempted living in Chicago for one winter and very quickly decided that California was the place for me. I moved back to San Francisco, started interning at a label out here (Badman Recording Co) and tried to immerse myself in the city’s music scene.
Why did you decide to record under the name Halsted instead of your own name?
For as long as I’ve been a singer/songwriter, I’ve toyed with the idea of adopting a moniker. As we were making this record, it started to feel pretty different stylistically from my previous material. The group of players also started to develop a nice chemistry, so I figured it was a good time to adopt more of a band approach. Halsted is the street I lived on in Chicago when I first started seriously playing music.
Where did the record title, LIFE UNDERWATER, come from?
Life Underwater is named after a song on the record and it touches on what I feel like is one of the central recurring themes on the album. This record was made during a time when I was really starting to take a hard look at what it meant to be a touring musician. For the first few years that I was playing music, I romanticized the whole concept and that was all I cared about doing. But as I got more immersed in the process, the reality of the lifestyle started to set it.
I enjoy touring, but it is very different from what most people would probably consider a normal life. The more time I spent traveling from town to town, I started to feel a little disconnected from the lives that most of my friends were leading.
I also have a bit of a love/hate relationship with pop and music culture in general. I feel like pop culture can be really cannibalistic and I hate how many artists are practically worshipped for a time and then one day deemed “irrelevant” and discarded. I love making music, but I’m a little wary of the culture that surrounds it and try to keep a balance of outside influences in my life.
I think the tension of loving music but coming to the realization that, as a lifestyle, it’s a very risky highwire act inspired a lot of the songs on this album, “Life Underwater” in particular.
A few reviews have mentioned bands like The Eagles and Jackson Browne. Are you a fan of that stuff?
Not really actually. When I was mixing my solo album “Margiolds”, Tim Mooney (the producer) made a comment that it sounded like Joy Division playing the Eagles, which I found contradictory and funny. I put the line up on my MySpace profile when the album came out and a few folks kinda took to it.
I was born in the 80’s, so I missed the boat on the first go around of the Eagles and Jackson Browne, but I do remember Don Henley having a ton of adult contemporary radio hits when I was a kid. Those songs remind me of going to swim practice at my neighborhood pool as a child.
Jeff Lebowski hated the Eagles and I read some pretty hilarious digs that Warren Zevon took at Jackson Browne (and the whole singer/songwriter institution in general) before I ever listened to their songs. So before I had explored their music, I was sort of scared off from taking them seriously. The Eagles do have some undeniably great melodies, but that whole genre feels a little cheesy to me.
What was the funniest or most unusual line in a review of the record?
I purposefully left any comparisons out of our press materials this time around because I was curious how people would react without any cues. I’ve gotten a kick out of seeing who people have compared us to in light of that. We’ve gotten everything from a poppier version of Wilco, Big Star and Paul Westerberg to Fountains of Wayne, Coldplay and the Thrills.
I wanted this album to be an immediate, visceral rock record and regardless of how much people have liked it, it seems like most people get what we were trying to do, which is encouraging.
What do you remember most about making the record?
I mostly remember that I thoroughly enjoyed myself making it. I really genuinely like the folks who were involved as people and as musicians, so the recording felt as much like getting together and hanging out as it did making an album.
We also recorded “Life Underwater” in our drummer / engineer’s home studio, so we weren’t dealing with the pressure of having to cram creativity into strictly booked studio sessions. The album was able to develop organically and we didn’t have to make any compromises to stay within studio time constraints.
What is next for the band or for you as a songwriter?
We’re planning another round of touring as a band this fall. We’ve also been working on some new material, so we may start trying to get some of that recorded in the near future.
I’ve amassed enough gear for a very humble home recording setup as well, so I’d really like to do a home recorded solo album sometime soon in addition to a new band album.
Name a few San Francisco bands we might not have heard of (but need to).
The Morning Benders (though you’ve probably heard of them by now)
n. lannon
Loquat
Sean Hayes
Audrye Sessions
The Ferocious Few
Top 5 band dream bill?
Any assortment of bands in the Top 10 Desert Island discs…
Top 10 desert island discs?
Van Morrison – Astral Weeks
Elliott Smith – Either/Or
Nada Surf – Let Go
Nick Drake – Pink Moon
Radiohead – The Bends
Ryan Adams – Gold
Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
The Smiths – The Queen is Dead
Kings of Convenience – Riot on an Empty Street
Coldplay - Parachutes
What has been your biggest thrill so far a musician?
Having my music played on TV, radio and reviewed favorably has been a kick. I’ve also gotten to meet a fair number of my musical heroes since I started playing, which has been exciting too.
I think the coolest thing though has been getting letters from people expressing their connection to the music. A couple weeks ago, I got a letter from a veteran who said the songs off an EP I put out a while back (The Bright Lights EP) helped him get through his second tour of Iraq in 2008. I have a deep connection with my favorite albums as artifacts from different periods in my life, so the fact that something I created could be that for someone else is pretty great.
