Tilly and the Wall - interview

Posted in MUSIC by thawking on Aug 27, 09:00AM

They’re perhaps best known as the band with the tap dancer for a percussionist, and they’re the flagship act on Conor Oberst’s label Team Love Records. Omaha-based five-piece Tilly and the Wall – the name comes from a children’s book – are back with a new album, one that doesn’t have an official title, but is generally referred to as “o”. Tom Hawking speaks with dancer Jamie Presnall about the new album, fighting for pop music, and just how you go about recording a tap dancer, anyway.

So, the new album – no title… Why? Or why not?

Well, we didn’t ever really find one we all liked. We just felt like it was time to have a Tilly And The Wall album, no title. There is a symbol, that’s a kinda oval shape. The reason we chose that symbol was that the first 20,000 CDs released have original pieces of art inside of them. We commissioned 20 artists to do editions of around 1,000 each. So the oval is the shape of the frame, and the artwork goes inside of it. It was a way to draw attention to the artists and the artwork.

That was something I wanted to ask you about. I understand you also got fans to contribute?

Yeah, we did. We had a couple of fans who we’d met over the years who we know are artists, so we asked them to do some of the artwork. We were really lucky –we also got to work with people who we’ve always wanted to work with for years, and we finally had the platform to do it. We were blown away when we saw the artwork – people put in so much time, and did such a great job. And hopefully the artists can get more work because of it.

All five of you write songs – have you split songwriting duties again with this record?

Yes, like always. How is usually works is that the songwriter will bring the song to practice – they’ll either have a really strong idea of how they want it to sound and give the rest of us direction, or they’ll come with a really simple idea, like just the lyrics or guitar part, and say “I don’t have any idea, just do what you want”. That’s how it’s always been with us.

There’s a real kinda exuberance in your music – it’s pop music, don’t you think? It’s a shame “pop” has become kinda a dirty word these days.

Well, I love pop music! I mean, I grew up dancing to pop music, and I’ve alwys been a fighter for pop music (laughs). I understand what you’re saying – people call our music silly, or simple or whatever. The words that bother me are those that are obviously intended to be derogatory – “twee”, or whatever. People have always judged us – some people were really judgemental about the tap dancing, often before they actually hear our music! But I really can’t spend any time worrying about it. I think you should just embrace what you are.

How do you go about recording the taps? They sound cool – I hear you got like whole tap troupes this time?

Well, for this album we worked with Mike Mogis for the first time – he recorded and produced this record, and he had lots of ideas we’d never tried before. He’s, like, the ideal person for us to work with. We’ve always wanted to record with him, but to be honest, we haven’t been able to afford him! [laughs] So yeah, he came up with all sorts of crazy stuff. Generally I’ve had mics on the surface I’m tapping on, and under the floor to get the low end. But Mike had mics inside, you know, a bass drum, he had mics in the wall… Each song has a different sound. I just told him how I wanted the percussion to sound like, and let him do his thing. He always came up with something that sounded amazing.

You performed a song on Sesame Street recently – was it fun?

Oh, man – it was AWESOME! We green-screened it, so it was funny doing it – we did all this stuff with no-one around. We had to point to imaginary things – they’re going to animate it, and I can’t wait to see it. I was really stoked with it. I’ve always wanted to do it – before the band , I taught pre-kindergarten. Between us, Derek [Presnall, Tilly and the Wall guitarist and Jamie’s husband] and I have 13 nieces and nephews, and they’re all really young. We told them we were going to do this, and they all think we’re, like, super-famous now!

"o" is out now on Dew Process.