On Friday night I went to Cameo Gallery to see Spirit Animal. Spirit Animal blends soul, funk, punk and rock and roll (and I even might have heard a little ska in there) allowing them to play harder cords while still being able to do a funk breakdown. Spirit Animal takes what marries well with each of these genres for a fun sound and an even better live set. After their show, I got a chance to do a quick interview with the lead singer, Steve Cooper, where we talked about their upcoming album The Cost of Living, funding the tour by cooking and whether dub is actually reggae.
LOOSEWORLD: You’ve been doing shows right?
Steve Cooper: This is the fourth show in four nights. We did D.C., we did Manhattan, we did Philly and we did Brooklyn.
LW: I read on your site that you will cook for people to play certain cities.
SC: Yeah, the tour was funded by a kickstarter fundraising effort that offered dinner parties in exchange for tour support, as the main reward. There were other rewards like remixes and music as it was finished, but the prime prize was dinner party, in your house, before we play. So we did a couple of those and we got here.
LW: How did those go?
SC: It was great. I mean one of them was 25 seats and five courses. And the bassist [Paul Michael], that we have on the east coast, he’s actually a wine buyer for a really nice restaurants in D.C., he’s worked in kitchens and stuff, so the line up from the stage was a chef’s line up. It was great; we worked well together and met a lot of cool people.
LW: You guys are touring for your new album that’s about to come out.
SC: Album’s coming, looks like October. It’s in the can. It features 15 musicians including one of the other founding members of Spirit Animal, Computer Jay. He was like an old school LA vintage-synth crazy-beat producer. And all kinds of other guys that are in other cool bands like Ben Harper and the Relentless 7, Robotanists, Breakestra…guys on the east coast. It’s just all over the place. It’s really been inclusive.
LW: Touring outside of LA, how do you like playing on the East coast?
SC: East coast shows, to be honest, are just crushing the LA shows. I don’t know if it’s because we have some history here or what it was, but it just worked out that we had these great opening slots for these really cool bands like Wallpaper, Asa Ransom, Game Rebellion, Dãm-Funk and it’s been a blast. It’s a really good reunion. I went to high school with the kid who’s playing guitar; I live with the kid who’s playing bass…you can’t recreate that kind of solidarity.
LW: After the album comes out, will you guys tour some more?
SC: Yeah. It looks like maybe right back to the east in September. Just trying to throw stuff together, while the clubs remember who we are. Ask them to play again. And then see from there. But yeah, just trying to make sure there’s a lot of activity leading up to the release.
There will be a second season of Feed Your Head, which is my like, sort of reality cooking show, where I like mess things up but also make things really good. And there will be guests on that and it includes some really cool people that are online and off. That will be every Tuesday in September to help build up for the record; more shows and hopefully some sort of awesome break.
At this point the interview was interrupted by this:
SC: That has got to be the worst Trinidadian accent I have ever heard in my life.
LW: Pretty bad.
SC: Stuff white people like…doing black people accents.
LW: Yep, totally OK when they’re talking to you.
SC: [laughs] Reprehensible.
LW: If people are interested, where can they hear Spirit Animal?
SC: Spiritanimal.us. Dot us. Spirit Animal dot us. There’s two free songs on there, our singles “Ants” and “Making it Work”. They’re also on iTunes if you have money. But if you go to Spiritanimal.us they’ll be the first things you can get for free. There’s links to the cooking show. It’s really like a big hub for dummies. Bunch of huge buttons you can just planet of the apes on it and you’ll get something cool.
LW: What are some bands you are listening to now that’s different from the bands you open for/with when you play.
SC: This year, Taman Paula (sp?) Seu Jeorge has been on heavy rotation. I’m listening to lots of old dub. This Trojan record label in London has complied something like 3,200 Jamaican songs. And old dub is basically soul music made by Jamaicans. It’s not even like reggae, to me. It’s so heavy. I’m not sure when it started to get called reggae that could be completely erroneous, please fact check that for me. (Dub was created out of reggae and is considered a subgenre of reggae) I actually got introduced to all this sort of ambient European techno music. I don’t know even if that’s the right word…like Stephan Bodzin and Oliver Huntemann. I have a new roommate who kind of opened my eyes to some of that stuff. It’s really good to email to, which is pretty much how I spend all the time I’m not sweating on people.
spiritanimal.us for more Spirit Animal and check out Steve “Chef” Cooper in the great cooking series Feed Your Head.
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