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Rising alt-rock band Moon Taxi is currently on a west coast tour in support of their third album Mountains Beaches Cities. GroundSounds caught up with keyboardist Wes Bailey to get to know the band, discuss their new album, and the emerging Nashville music scene.
GS: How did you meet and form the band?
WB: Tommy our bass player and Trevor our singer met in high school in Birmingham, Alabama and started playing music together. They came up to Nashville in 2002 and met Spence and eventually Tyler, the guitar player and drummer, and a year after they acquired Tyler, I met them at a party. So we jammed, had good chemistry, and 2 or 3 months after that I joined the band. The name: the legend goes that it came to Trevor our singer in a dream.
About the album Mountains Beaches Cities, how long did it take to write and record it, and what was your goal for the sound of the album?
As far as the writing and recording, it took less than a year, between 8-9 months, it was relatively quick. We learned how we best recorded and made albums from our last album Cabaret. We liked the sonics of that album and wanted to perpetuate what we discovered our sound to be through that album. We tried to keep it in line with that album, we worked with the same producer and engineer. We also worked with the same mixer, Vance Powell, who is a Grammy winner and has worked with Jack White. He’s been on our team for the past two records. So we kept what worked for us. Our goal was to continue to that energy with more accessibility for our audience.
One of my personal favorites is “Running Wild.” How did that song come together?
We typically record our ideas at Spencer’s, where a lot of our songs musically come together. We had chunks of different ideas that we turned into the music for Running Wild. We had the hook, had the bridge from an older song, and I wrote a lot of the melody and lyrics for that song. I was inspired by an apocalyptic love affair kind of thing. It’s about spending the last night with someone you love or a friend. If things come crashing down—sort of that last hurrah, running through the city. It was kind of inspired by when I saw the movie Melancholia. It’s like an apocalyptic love story.
The video for “The New Black”…how did you come up with the concept for that and where did you film that?
We did most of the filming for that in a buddy of ours’ pool. We dropped a big black tarp behind us and filmed a lot of those close-ups underwater at a friend’s house. The shots of the girl were filmed somewhere in California. That was the director we were working with. He filmed all of that outside of LA.
Do you have a personal favorite song you like to play live?
I really like playing “Mercury.” That one always gets a great response. It’s got this big build and there’s a break in the chorus, and the crowd fills in really well the second time around, it’s really really fun. The last show we did on New Year’s Eve Trevor didn’t even have to sing it at all because the crowd was belting it out, which is really cool. Everybody’s just rages and usually throws their beer up in the air, which is kind of a mess, but it’s exciting at the same time.
You’re about to play Conan and you’ve already played Letterman. Is it strange to appear on these shows and only play one song or do you get to warm up the crowd at all?
It’s so weird. It’s very weird. It’s a bizarre feeling just with a one song time frame. Letterman keeps his studio at like 40 degrees, so we’re just trying to keep our fingers agile. It’s a little stiff. You’re watching it late night, and you’re sitting there drinking a beer, but they film that at like 4:00 in the afternoon, so it’s kind of a day job vibe, nothing like a rock show or that excited feeling. But they make it look great on TV. Even so, it was amazing and we can’t wait for Conan, it’s just an adjustment from what we’re used to.
Let me ask you about Nashville, it’s an excellent place to be a musician. What do you like best about the music scene there?
At our stage now, we’re playing a little bit bigger rooms now. We’ve been playing there for seven years so it was a little tough at the beginning because it had much more of a country feel to it, a lot of honkey tonk. But as we progressed, there’s a lot more opportunity for bands with all sorts of sounds to have their own sort of club and to grow and build a following. That’s what we’ve done at the Exit/In. Every big band has played there and it’s a historic place in Nashville. The club scene in Nasvhille has a lot of opportunity for all different kinds of bands. There are a bunch of labels popping up as well. I had a buddy I went to school with and went to a club one night, he was interning at Dualtone Records and heard The Lumineers the first time, signed them, and did a record label. Those sort of cool things can happen now in Nashville and make it an exciting place.
What are you guys up to once you leave LA?
We’re going up the West Coast to San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle. We’re really excited to meet a lot of people who haven’t seen us before. We’ll go through Colorado and do some skiing, we’ll go to Idaho and Montana, so it’ll be scenic and crazy changes in weather.
What do you guys like to do outside of the music world?
It’s very different for each of us. I personally love to play golf when the weather’s nice. Three of us are married, so we like to hang out with the families and cook. Tommy our bass player goes out seven nights a week, he’s a real social butterfly, lives up to the rock star image for all of us. Our singer Trevor loves to play disc golf and meet new people.
Thanks again for doing this. Anything else that you wanted to mention?
There’s nothing quite yet in the works, but we are definitely looking forward to writing for the next record. We’re kind of entering that phase. So hopefully we’ll have something in the beginning of next year, that’s our goal.
Moon Taxi on Tour:
2/13 Norfolk, VA @ The NorVa
2/14 Asheville, NC @ Thomas Wolfe Auditorium
2/15 Silver Spring, MD @ The Fillmore
2/21 Louisville, KY @ Headliners Music Hall
2/22 Chicago, IL @ Dunn Dunn Fest 2014
4/4 Charleston, SC @ North Charleston PAC
4/7 Augusta, GA @ Jessye Norman Amphitheater
4/14 Fort Lauderdale, FL @ Tortuga Fest (South Beach Park)
4/26 New Orleans, LA @ Civic Theatre
Moon Taxi – “The New Black”
