Interview with Christian Lewis (Guitarist of Evaline)
Interview with Christian Lewis (guitarist of Evaline)
This Californian 6 piece has been making waves over recent years, having slowly growing a following, the band have just released their debut album ‘Woven Material‘ as yet unsigned, they insist at the level they’re at they get all the support a label would give them from their management. On Sunday 26th June, the day before their ‘Woven Material’ came out, I spoke to guitarist Christian Lewis about the bands origin, the recording and touring among other things.
Check out the interview below. You can also check out my review of ‘Woven Material’ here. You can buy the album from: Evaline’s site, or at iTunes, Amazon
So for people who don’t know you guys could you tell how and when Evaline got formed?
Christian Lewis(CL): It’s been kind of a long process, Dominic, Steve and myself (Christian) have been friends since childhood and we just started jamming and playing together and then decided to get more serious. A few years into that we found Perry our singer, and our drummer Greg Petersen and Dan(Petersen) joined the band a few years later, and it’s just been one of those kind of things where it’s only been a serious deal in the last five years.
If you can remember what was the first album you ever owned and loved?
CL: The first album was on cassette, I think was Michael Jackson, I can’t remember what it was exactly. It might have been ‘Bad’.
Who would you say are your musical heroes?
CL: I think personally and maybe collectively have ‘The Smashing Pumpkins’, ‘Nirvana’, was a huge one and lets see more around the 90’s ‘Bush’ was a huge influence on me starting getting into music.
So ‘Woven Materials’ is coming out tomorrow, but how does it feel this close to release?
CL: It’s so exciting; it was actually a pretty amazing experience coz we got to see the album and hold it in our hands for the first time with our producer Dan Austin. He came out to the show, so it’s been growing with excitement. We got to hold it, see it, be with our producer, we haven’t seen him for over a year, and it just so happened on that night we were all together. Everybody is just so excited; it’s still a bit surreal. It’s just a really good feeling.
How long did it take to put together and when did you actually finish it?
CL: Actually we finished recording it at the end of 2009, and then it took awhile for the mixing and after everything happened we wanted to wait till a late spring / early summer release. So it kept getting pushed back and pushed back which turned out being a good thing because we ended up rerecording a few tracks, both our singles. So the timing has been good to make a stronger campaign, a stronger release.
What was it like working with Dan Austin, who’s worked with some great acts such as ‘The Doves’ and ‘Biffy Clyro’.
CL: Yeah, he’s great. He’s an insanely hard worker, and an amazing person and we had a lot of fun getting to know him, it’s like a big family really. Seeing him the other night was awesome he brought his parents out to the show and we got to meet them. It was just a really good experience; we miss him a lot when we don’t get to see him.
What was the writing process like for the album?
CL: It was long. Mainly how we write, and we’ve always done it this way, we just get in a room together and kept having ideas and jam it out. Build things up, write a song, tear it down, and replace parts, whatever. We just go in there every day, put 8 hours and sometimes walk out with less than we started with. Just constantly changing, rearranging, and trying to make things better, trying to make everything perfect. We did that on our own, so finally when Dan Austin came in we got to sit back and let someone take the reins. We have all this material, and have him go ‘right, that’s it’, or ‘that’s it’ helped us so much.
I know you’re not supposed to, but do you have any favourite tracks on the album?
CL: Yeah, I think one of my favourite tracks is ‘Beneath the Fire’ the first track. I really like ‘There There’ actually, our single. I enjoy that listening and playing it. It’s one of my favourite tracks to play live.
I know quite a lot of you guys are into your ‘Post Rock’, so were you ever tempted to put on a full on instrumental post rock song on there?
CL: That’s what’s funny, actually ‘Beneath the Fire’ was meant to be instrumental. It was before we went into the studio we recorded all the instruments and it was going to stay that way. One day we came back and Perry (our singer) was just doing vocals on it. It was one of those things, it was just so incredible and everybody was just so floored by it. We just kept adding to it, to the song it is now. But initially it was just going to be an instrumental track.
So you’ve just come back from a series of shows in Europe, but what can you tell me about your recent shows like ‘Hurricane Festival’, ‘Download’ and ‘Hard Rock Calling’?
CL: Yeah ‘Hard Rock Calling’, we did that yesterday and that was crazy, such a good show. I don’t think it could have gone better really, I mean we had a great crowed, played well, had management and everybody from London, had that big family atmosphere going on.
The shows in Europe went well. Germany it rained both festivals we played which kind of put a little harsh spin on everything. They were still good, just crazy raining sideways. Having to cover up our gear the best we could. The kids still came out in the rain, which is awesome, the Germans are crazy.
So you’re playing two shows in London in the coming week at ‘The Lexington’ supporting Planes (Steve Forrest’s side project) and ‘The Bull & Gate’ so how are you feeling about playing your first shows with your album out?
CL: Yeah it’s feeling good, just playing shows trying to stay relevant and we’ve had the record forever we’ve been sitting on it and now we finally have something to promote and release, it really helps so much to keep the momentum. ‘If you come to this show you can check out our CD here’ you know it helps so much, and is really excited.
And it must be nice supporting Steve (Forrest) and his new project (Planes) too.
CL: Yes it is it’s amazing. We’ve been hanging out with him a lot. I stayed with him for a few days and he was at the show yesterday too (Hard Rock Calling). Yeah it’s going to be fun.
What would you say has been your most memorable show to date?
CL: I think the one we all commonly agree on is when we were in the States. We were on our way to Baltimore to do a gig, and we got caught in traffic, there was this huge accident and the helicopters came in and everything, it was bad.
We basically were speeding down a one way street, the wrong way parked our van, got our gear and went straight on stage, checked our instruments and just started playing. It was a big crowed, and was just one of those moments where I think we were just sitting in a van all day and cooped up. The crowed was so good it was just one of the memorable shows with tones of energy and good vibes.
How do shows in the States differ from those in Europe and the UK?
CL: That’s the thing; the States is so big, so you get different varieties. LA and London have a little more of an ‘impress me’ vibe to get the media. But it seems like in Europe and England we like the music scene a lot better here, we feel like the kids understand the music more. In America if you’re not Pop or some sort of heavy metal, there’s not like a spot for us and don’t know what to make of us.
While you’re over here, do you get homesick much?
CL: Not especially, where we come from is pretty boring. I think the only thing we get homesick about is the food like in California we get great Mexican food, and you don’t really get that anywhere else; I think that’s about it. But we love it here in England and Europe. London’s like our second home basically, we spend a lot of time here.
What would you say your highlights of the last 12 months have been?
CL: Well we did ‘South by Southwest’, and the festivals we’ve been doing here, and we were in Thailand & Singapore playing some gigs over there. I just think all of the shows we’ve been playing have been highlights. Everything’s going really well, we’re playing a show at the Roundhouse with ‘My Chemical Romance’ for the iTunes festival, haven’t done that yet but that’s going to be an honour and a big deal. There seems to be a lot of things of exciting things to come, so things are going to keep growing.
So there’s an argument going on in the ‘industry’ about whether the album format is becoming less and less relevant, both in the physical format sense and also in the sense of the number of tracks on albums compared to that of a EP or even to just Singles. So what’s your take on that?
CL: It’s one of those things; it’s hard for me because I get both ends of it where as I do enjoy just downloading things on iTunes and putting it on my iPod and you know have it all on your iPod everywhere. But when you’ve worked so hard on something, like we’ve worked so hard on this album and if we didn’t get to have something physical to look at and hold in our hands we would have been so disappointed. We would love people to have that same feeling, when you put so much of yourself into it that you just want that physical thing with the artwork. I don’t think fully understand the amount of effort that’s put into it.
I know, personally for me there’s nothing better than coming back from a record shop with an album in your hands and just waiting to put it in your CD player or Vinyl player.
CL: Yeah just sit there and flick through the booklet, it’s always fun.
Evaline Christian Lewis, Greg Petersen, Dominic Di Ciano, Richard Perry, Daniel Petersen & Steven Pedersen
