Interview: Rooney

I sat down with Ned Brower (drums) and Matt Winter (bass) at Irving Plaza (alright, The Fillmore) last night on the first night of their current tour. We spoke about their band name, "The O.C.," their second LP, and near-death experiences in Japanese planes.

Now that I've got your names spelled correctly...what's Robert going by these days?

Ned: He's going by Schwartzman -- his birthright.

Side note: Robert is the brother of Jason Schwartzman (Rushmore), son of Talia Shire, and nephew of Francis Ford Coppola. And, oh yeah, he's Rooney's lead singer and lyricist.

Because he was going by Carmine, right?

Ned: He's back to Schwartzman. It's like Frank Black and Black Francis.

Oh, so are you guys ready to put out your Greatest Hits, too?

Ned: Yeah, we've got the package together. [Laughs]

So this is the first show of the tour with the Hush Sound?

Matt: Yes. We've got about ten dates with them.

What are the plans after that?

Matt: We're headed over to the UK right afterwards to do a bunch of press stuff. Then we've got a European tour that starts in the beginning of next month that lasts for the entire month -- which we're very excited about.

Do you have a support act lined up?

Ned: I don't know who's playing with us. We left it up to our agents over there since we don't know all of the bands over there.

So, you guys made a few EPs and played your hometown of L.A. a bunch before Universal picked you up. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Ned: We were sort of a band when we were still in high school. Well, I was out, but the other four guys were still in high school. We would just play all the time in L.A. and Orange County...South California. And we built up a pretty big following and by the time we were finishing up school requirements, the labels were coming to our shows which were already full houses in L.A. at the big clubs. So, we pretty much got signed right from there. But, we were already together a couple years when we got signed playing pretty hard...like on the weekends.

Matt: From the beginning we were really focused on recording EPs and demos and stuff for the fans to have. So, the first set of demos we did on our own and then we did record some with friends.

Did you meet in high school? Did you go to the same high school?

Matt: Robert and I went to the same high school. Louie [Stephens] and Taylor [Locke] went to the same high school. Both of those schools were small private schools from the West Side of Los Angeles, so we all kind of knew each other. And Ned was just a friend of the band.

So, can you tell me about how you landed "The O.C"? Was it because of the Schwartzman connection? Because Jason's band did the theme song?

Ned: No, they're kind of unrelated. The guy who did the show is this guy named Josh Schwartz, who's a pretty young producer and he's really into music. So, because it took place in Southern California, I think he initially tried to focus on those kinds of acts. And I think for Phantom Planet, they had the song that just fit the thing that was completely independent...They offered for us to do the show before it was really a big hit -- when it was brand new. So, we decided to do it, because we had nothing else to do and we thought we'd just give it a try.

I mean, they wrote this whole episode around the band. So we were like, "Alright. He seems to be into it." They licensed some songs...It ended up being a huge deal which we didn't really expect. We were just there for a day and people still talk about it five years later. It had a pretty substantial impact.

Matt: When we taped it, I remember asking our manager at the time, "What is the audience of this show? Do people watch this?" And he was like, "Not yet, but they're starting to."

Did you watch the show?

Ned: We watched our episode.

No, did you watch the show?

Matt: Well, after we taped ours, just to get in the spirit, I caught a few episodes before ours before it aired. I thought it was pretty amusing. I liked it.

Favorite episode?

Ned: Ours.

Matt: The Rooney episode. [Laughs]

Are you guys all film buffs, because your band was initially named after Ed Rooney [the principal from Ferris Bueller's Day Off]?

Ned: We're all pretty into movies. I think being from L.A....it's a pretty big part of the culture. Some of us have worked in television a little bit and have family members in the business. We see a lot of movies and we definitely talk about them a lot and give our own critiques. It's definitely an interest that we all share.

So, why did you drop the "Ed"?

Matt: We did get it from Ferris Bueller's Day Off, but we didn't want to be tied to that movie for the rest of our lives. And we thought it was a little silly to have a two-named band name.

Ned: And by the time we thought about changing it, it was too late...we decided. So we just scrapped the "Ed" part...Now, it's been so long that I don't even think about that connection anymore, I just think of our band. It's just so interwoven with our lives.

So there's no war with Save Ferris?

Ned: No, but maybe we should tour with them.

I wanted to ask you about the recorded difficulties with Calling the World. What happened?

Ned: We got off the road in 2004 or '05...

Matt: We got off the road in July of '04.

Ned: So Robert writes a lot of material all the time and we had a lot of material we were playing on the road and people were enjoying it. I think it was different than what we had on the first record. It was still poppy, but it was more riff-oriented. I think we were listening to a lot of Black Sabbath and people were hearing things that they don't expect to hear in our music. So we pretty much rushed into the studio because we didn't want to take a lot of time and we wanted to turn out a second record pretty quickly. We had a lot of material and we chose a producer that's cool and has made a lot of cool records, but it wasn't a great fit and the label didn't like the work that we did with him.

Who was that?

Ned: His name is Tony Hoffer. He's actually an L.A. guy, but he does tons of English bands. He's had a lot of success over there. So, it was a very rootsy, "live in the studio" kind of record. So, they basically shelved that. It just didn't feel right; it didn't have the energy of those songs live. Then, we took another year of producer meetings and we were kind of cornered into working with another guy, Howard Benson. We made another record -- I like both of those records; I think we all find stuff on there that we like, but this one was more overproduced. It was in the other direction -- too slick -- and it didn't have the "Rooney character" that we wanted.

By that point, the label people that were running the show were fired. We got a new manager and everything and started working for fun on our fourth -- but second release -- called Calling the World. Everyone loved it and it just took a hard left turn in a positive direction at that point. It really happened and now it's out and I'd say it's the best of any of our work to date.

Are there any songs from the second and third album out?

Matt: We re-cut some of the songs that had been written before...I think two songs made it through all three versions of our second record.

Which ones?

Both: "Paralyzed" and "Tell Me Soon."

Matt: But even those aside, there are still two other full records: ten or eleven song albums.

Are those ever going to see the light of day?

Matt: Well, we released three of them as B-sides, bonus tracks for this album. Those were from the Tony Hoffer sessions.

Ned: I would hope in the future they come out in their entirety. It just wasn't where we wanted to take our next step forward, but when we finished Calling the World with John Fields, we definitely felt proud.

You were talking about Black Sabbath, and I know you guys like The Doors and The Beatles...can you talk about your influences?

Matt: Our individual tastes vary, but the underlying theme is a lot of classic, pop rock. Beatles, Queen, Kinks, even a bunch of 80s stuff, Billy Idol.

Ned: Big, classic records, before stuff was subdivided into a million different genres -- just catchy music that appealed to a wider audience. And that's where we are in terms of songwriting and musicianship. And that covers everything from 50s doo-wop to Sabbath to more modern Nirvanas or whatever.

And that's your goal, to appeal to a wider audience?

Ned: Yeah, well, we're not in the "emo" thing and we're not a "pop-punk" band. It's just a fucking rock and roll band.

Matt: The goal isn't to sound like older music. That happens -- everyone sounds like something before them to a certain extent. The goal is to sound unique.

But you want to appeal to a wide audience?

Matt: We want to appeal to everyone on the planet. We don't want to be selective and have only the hipsters listen to our record. We're excited when we see young kids and old people...it means you're connecting.

Is there going to be a second single? Is it "I Should've Been After You"?

Ned: That's what the sticker on the package said. We don't really deal with that anymore.

Are you guys taking a break from new material?

Matt: We're in month two of "not making a record" mode in the past three years, so we're pretty much just enjoying playing live shows.

Have you enjoyed touring with one band over another?

Ned: Everybody's different and cool. We have a good relationship with the Sounds and The Redwalls from Chicago. Even Kelly Clarkson's band were some cool guys. We just were hanging out with The Polyphonic Spree in Japan. We might do a tour together in the fall.

Oh yeah, I heard you had a flight scare in Japan.

Matt: We took of from Tokyo less than 48 hours ago and as we were lifting off the ground there were three loud bangs. Flames shot out of the right engine and I guess nobody noticed this besides one or two passengers. I'm sure the pilots knew right away that something was wrong. So, we went up and then one passenger announced to everyone around him that he saw explosions from the engine and the they were letting gas out of the engine -- everybody though that was smoke. There was some pretty serious panic and we had to do an emergency landing.

Did you go back to the airport?

Matt: Yeah, we had to circle for 40 minutes to let off gas, because we were too heavy to land. Then, when we landed with just one functional engine, it was a very rocky landing -- which was scary in and of itself -- and there were emergency vehicles lining the runway. Just waiting for a bad thing to happen.

Ned: Yeah, we used the inflatable slide.

Really?

Ned: No.