After sweating our way through introductions in the brutal Kansas humidity, guitarist Joseph McCaffrey and drummer Michael Fleischmann of New York rock group Nightmare of You sat down to speak with us about the challenges of DIY-record releases in a digital era and the importance of being a touring musician even when it means struggling through 112 degree Midwest weather when your lead singer is sick.
Bethany, PopWreckoning: Let's start with the new album that comes out in August. What are you guys going for on this album?
Joesph McCaffrey, Nightmare of You: I think it is a natural progression of the sound of the band since its conception about five years ago. It is along the same lines of our releases, but probably more than ever it sounds like our band as opposed to a young band who is wearing its influences on its sleeves. It is more of a comfortable sound that is a part of all of us.
PW: This is your [Michael Fleischmann] first album with Nightmare of You, is that right?
Michael Fleischmann: Yep.
PW: What was that process like getting to working with them on an album finally?
MF: It was a very collaborative effort. It was really easygoing. We took our time with it. We went to the studio and we knew what we wanted to do. We knew exactly what we wanted, so we went for it and we got it.
PW: Why did the album get pushed back to August?
JM: Very simple answer. We ended up working with a distributor known as R-E-D, Red, through Sony, and they do street dates and to meet their deadlines with one-sheets and blah blah blah blah blah, a lot of boring business stuff, long story short, that date was the one most readily available for us through that distributor.
Joshua, PopWreckoning: Do you know if you're working with Lauren or Allison?
MF: I'm going to say Allison.
JM: I'm going to say Allison.
Joshua: That's exciting.
MF: We're not really sure though.
Joshua: It was more curiosity than anything.
PW: With pushing the album release date back, you guys do run into the issue where you have a completed album and then music leaks.
JM: Yeah, it already leaked. It leaked on my birthday.
MF: Happy birthday.
JM: Yeah, right? Fuck me.
PW: What are your thoughts on album leaks?
JM: It is inevitable. It is a double-edged sword. We are flattered that people want to hear our music and anxious to get their hands on it as soon as possible. That's cool. With any bit of positive feedback we get back, we appreciate it. We just hope that people recognize that we are just legitimately very independent via our band and that we pay for our recordings ourselves. If we don't sell albums, we're not going to be able to make that money back and we're not going to be able to make new albums. We've been a band long enough to understand where we fit in—in the music industry and the world. We don't have any delusions of grandeur or we don't expect to have solid gold records and crazy sold out tours around the world. We're just trying to keep doing what we do. It is a pretty modest venture, but with that being said, every dollar that we spend making shirts and filling up our gas tank and making recordings, we work very hard for. We appreciate the people that listen to our music and we only hope that those people are in the position to keep supporting and help the band.
PW: You guys are very D-I-Y. You have your own label—the Bevonshire label. How do you think major labels are and if they even still have a role in the industry?
JM: Oh, they certainly do. The major labels are still very much alive. They might be scrambling and trying to reinvent their business model, as they should. Look at their losses. I know for a fact they're restructuring their organizations. A band at our level, we were able to work it out. We had a game plan. What do you want to do? We want to tour and make records and play music. That's a very basic way of looking at it. Then you can delve deeper and say, what are the plans surrounding that like for the release of the album? We want to do radio promotion and a marketing campaign. We want to hire a publicist and get distribution. You have all these things that come into play. That was a cool thing about this album's process. We did sort of delve into all those areas like a record label would service on album with. It was a great learning experience.
MF: Yeah. Great learning experience. Learned a lot.
JM: It was very cool. It was not the first album that I ever put out, especially on my own. I've managed a band that has been in a major label system, we've been in a major label system, Mike's old band was under the Island/Def Jam umbrella and Nightmare of You used to be under the WEA/Warner Brothers umbrella. We got to see, first hand, the roles of particular people, be it the radio promotion or the A&R or the product manager or the publicist or this and that. We got to say oh this is the stoke of this, we can do it ourselves. Ultimately it ends up with each of us wearing a few different hats and having to share responsibility. I think we're doing a good job covering our bases this time around. Like I said, it is a learning experience. We've seen where we had success and where we haven't and sometimes we nailed it. Hopefully, we'll be in a position to keep going and make another record and do it even better next time.
PW: Is Bevonshire just Nightmare of You or do you guys…?
JM: Bevonshire Label is just Nightmare of You. I have another company right now that's Bevonshire Management. Giant Panda Gorilla Death Squad is a band that I manage. They're a great reggae band from Rochester.
PW: Cool. Let's go back to the album. What's the significance of the album title Infomaniac?
JM: Infomaniac is an idea that we kind of had along the way that just as coming from a perspective of social awareness and consciousness in that the day and age we live in and the day and age that we're living, working, playing music and such, we grew up in a sort of technological age at the sort of advent of a new era. DVDs, internet, computers: it's a hi-tech society where everyone is interested in consuming these gadgets and simply having them. Now things have changed, in addition to having these gadgets, people are so obsessed with using them just to absorb information. Not necessarily useful or helpful information. Just general information with all the blogs and things like twitter and this and that. I think a lot of people have become so obsessed with knowing tidbits of celebrity lives and knowing everything that is going on: what this person did, what that person did and just almost being a maniac about consuming this information that's available from the technology that was provided by a previous age. We see this as an age of information and in this age of information, there's the infomaniac. You're an infomaniac.
MF: I'm an infomaniac?
JM: You are. Who is always on the website trying to figure out the next newsfeed?
MF: What? No, that's more, no.
JM: Who is getting the next RSS?
MF: No. That's more like Perez Hilton followers.
JM: It isn't a very heavy thing. The album content isn't about that per se. There are songs that hint on the topic. It was just a sort of like I said, being our own sort of social consciousness given the time and place of releasing the album.
PW: That's a much better explanation than the only thing I found online for the word infomaniac. I googled and it came up with a Lego Island Video Game character.
JM: Haha, no. Definitely not it.
Joshua: Who did we ask a similar question to talking about the digital connection with the fans.
PW: The Used?
Joshua: Was it the Used? We asked them if in the age of the internet and given the state of the industry, if it is almost a requirement now to be on the internet and connect with your fans?
JM: No. I think that music is bigger than the internet.
MF: You have to hope that it is.
JM: I see examples of it that are reassuring. I look at a band like Wilco.
MF: Wilco is a perfect example.
JM: Here is a band who has built a career out of quality music with many albums and quality releases together and they just created from a grassroots, an organic place: a great musical career. I don't think that they've ever sat on MySpace or Facebook and spent time talking to people. They probably spent 99.9% of their energy focused on the music that they make. I think it has rubbed off on people over the course of time. That is something that we admire. If we are ever lucky enough to end up in the situation that they're in where they've created their own true, real, sincere, music-base then that would be really rad. There are a lot of bands who exist solely off the internet buzz and internet world.
MF: I think you have to split it.
JM: I'm not in a position to say whether it is good or bad. You have to look at it for what it is.
MF: It has helped a lot of people get to the next level, but it is like Joe said. There is true music and it is so right in front of your face.
JM: You could be a band that could have never been heard before the internet, but in this day and age you might have a chance of thousands of people hearing it and that is great. At the same time, you have an over saturation of where do I click next? So you click on that and maybe it is…it is the universe. It is the balance of the universe and we'll never really find ourselves at the center of it, but we can always continue to try and get there.
Joshua: That was a way better answer than the Used gave.
PW: True. The Used was like, "We know how to twitter." You know, I must admit, I first came across your band because of some demos on MySpace. So I for one lucked out clicking random links.
JM: Alright, fair enough.
MF: He can't knock.
JM: Like I said, I'm not in a position to say it is good or bad or right and wrong. It is a bit of all of it. We can only hope that for our particular situation or music as a whole that we fall in the side of the right and not the wrong.
PW: I often feel that out here in the Midwest, I don't have much of a choice, but to find my music online to keep up.
JM: But then we're here and we're from New York and we're talking in the flesh.
PW: True.
JM: You have to respect bands that get in the van and tour because the summer in the Midwest in 2009, that's not easy for anybody. It's not easy for people to come out and see our shows and it is not easy for us to come out and play these shows. If you like music like we like music and he likes music, you have to respect the people that are out there completely working because it is work. We're doing it because we love it, but not every band is out there doing it right now. A lot of bands are taking a lot of time off and thinking about things. The second you stop selling records, people might stop making music, but that's not where it is going for us.
Joshua: We are glad you're here because we get skipped over a lot.
MF: This is a really cool town. I had never been to Lawrence before.
PW: Yeah, I think you guys have always played downtown KC a few times.
Joshua: I've seen you once before in KC.
JM: I thought we played Lawrence before at a little café or coffee shop or something. Maybe not. It looks familiar and it feels familiar.
Joshua: Didn't you say they played Mainstreet?
PW: Yeah, you played Mainstreet Café in Downtown KC.
JM: Mainstreet. Yeah.
PW: Yeah that was headlining, then the other time I remember is opening at the Uptown for A.F.I.
Joshua: I was at that show! So I have seen you.
MF: What was the other one? Mainstreet? I wasn't around then.
JM: No.
PW: The little Christian venue.
JM: We played there and we stayed there.
MF: Oh yes!
JM: Those people were sweet.
MF: They were so nice.
JM: Creepy little den.
PW: They had just moved when you guys played there. You were one of the first shows at the new place.
JM: That's when we were figuring out if this was Kansas City, Kansas or Kansas City, Missouri.
Joshua: And if you were there you could throw rocks to either side.
MF: Exactly.
JM: We had a good laugh.
Joshua: They have been working on remodeling that venue, still, since you've been there.
MF: It was interesting.
JM: They had all these couches. Three bands just crashed on all these couches.
MF: It was pretty cool.
PW: You guys did a cover of a Cheap Trick song that you had up on MySpace. Is there a plan to do anything with that?
JM: That was actually years ago. And it was really cool and we had so much fun. I'm trying to remember the basis of our doing it. Somebody approached us. It was for a movie or a compilation, and I don't know if it ever ended up getting used, but somebody came to us and said get in the studio and record this son and we just did it. It was written really cool. We love the song and we love how it came out. Actually, I feel really horrible for not remembering the gentleman's name from Cheap Trick. Anyways, we put that song up on our MySpace for a real short minute and this Long Island newspaper called "Newsday" wrote a piece on it and said how cool it was yadda yadda yadda. Long story short, the daughter of the guitar player heard the song and a bunch of people contacted him and contacted her and they approved. Cheap Trick gave us the seal of approval on our cover, so that felt good. Anytime that you cover a band's song, you would hope that they would like it.
PW: Nice. I guess for a final question, I know you guys have no problems saying your thoughts on other bands on stage and kind of going off what we were talking about earlier, is there an act you are just surprised is making it in mainstream or on the radio?
JM: What radio? I haven't heard a radio in a long time to be honest.
MF: Kanye West. If he went away, I'd be happy. I don't like that guy.
Joshua: You and I should form a Kanye West union because everybody else does love him.
JM: I'm not going to wish ill will on anybody. I'm just going to say that we're on tour, our album hits stores Aug. 4, and we love everybody and we'd love people to just enjoy our music and if they don't, that's cool too. I'm not going to bash anybody.
MF: Come on. Just a little Kanye. Maybe he'll fight back.
JM: If you don't like something, don't listen to it.
PW: Is it is his music or him as a person? Like the Fray covered "Heartless" and I like that, but I'm still not the biggest Kanye fan.
MF: I don't like his attitude. He is too cocky. Oh my, that's a future career right there: Dog walker.
Girl with two dogs walks by.
Joshua: You're going to be a dog walker if the music doesn't work out?
MF: Marry her. Live in Lawrence. Get the dogs.
Joshua: You could hang out with Straylight Run. Well part of Straylight Run. John lives here.
MF: Does he really?
PW: Yeah, he's in the venue.
JM: No he's not. I got to go say hi to him. He's my homeboy. I don't even know he was here. Thanks guys.
PW: Thanks.
Nightmare of You: website | myspace | @ the Bottleneck
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