Q&A: Yellow
Ostrich
Yellow Ostrich began as Alex Schaaf’s passion project. While
studying music at Lawrence University Appleton , Wisconsin Brooklyn
and joined forces with Tapper; the duo released “The Mistress” in 2011. Jon
Natchez (bass) came on board in time for 2012’s “Strange
Land
Schaaf spoke to Vita.mn from the band’s tour van.
Q: Yellow Ostrich started a solo project. Has adding
bandmates changed how you write your songs?
A: In terms of arrangements, we have to think about
how it’s going to work best with the people who are doing it. The songwriting
itself still feels the same. It just comes out of nowhere. You can’t think too
much about what the set-up is before trying to write something.
Q: Your music has such a solitary quality to it. Why
do you think that is?
A: The basic structure of the songs still starts with
me. I come up with the lyrics first and send a bare bones idea around and the
guys fill it out and develop the songs further. It’s interesting to have a
bigger band but not necessarily lose that feeling of something smaller and
intimate.
Q: What prompted your move from Wisconsin
to New York and how has the move
affected Yellow Ostrich?
A: I moved to Brooklyn after I
finished college four years ago. Change would have been inevitable. Living in Brooklyn ,
for sure, is different from if I had moved anywhere else. Brooklyn
influences how the band works because there are so many bands, everyone’s doing
stuff, and it’s easier to stay busy and motivated.
Q: When you were in school studying music, is Yellow
Ostrich what you imagined you’d be doing?
A: I didn’t really have a plan. At college, I was
doing piano, performance, theory, and similar classical stuff, but I never
wanted to do that. I knew that I always wanted to have a rock ‘n’ roll band. In
that sense, it’s kind of going how I pictured it. So far, so good.
Q: Your new album was heavily influenced by
astronomy. What about that fascinates you?
A: I got into watching the Carl Sagan show “Cosmos.”
The whole point of the show is trying to make science appealing to the greatest
amount of people possible. I like that it’s about science and that it’s
educational; it’s not too technical but not dumbing it down. Astronomy is
appealing from a songwriting perspective because it’s so huge. It could mean
anything. It’s so all-encompassing.
Q: How do you translate a concept like that into a
sound, as far as instrumentation goes?
A: It wasn’t so direct. We weren’t trying to make it
sound like space. It’s more about the themes in the lyrics. The sound just came
from the four of us working together and trying to come up with something that
all of us were happy with and narrowing down the ideas to make a cohesive
sound.
Q: Do you still have a day job of digitizing home
videos?
A: Yeah, I still have the day job. All of us are
still figuring out how to do the band while also keeping our jobs at home and
making enough to pay Brooklyn rent. Jared’s working from
the van right now, online.
Q: Do you find having a job to be a balancing force
or would you prefer to do music full-time?
A: I think all of us would prefer to do music
full-time but it’s not feasible at the moment. It’s definitely a balance trying
to figure out how to devote as much as possible to the band while not
jeopardizing our jobs. If we didn’t have our jobs, the band wouldn’t be
possible.
Q: Have you had any musical mentors along the way? Or
have you been figuring it out on your own?
A: There’s a lot of other bands in Brooklyn
that we’re friends with. We kind of watch each other and learn different
things. It’s a process of trial and error. There are certain bands that we look
at, like the National, where they’ve been at it for a while. It’s not like they
put out their first song and they were instant worldwide sensations. We just do
it, slog it out for a while, and build our audience.
Originally published on Vita.mn in March 2014.
Originally published on Vita.mn in March 2014.
