Just a month after the release of Apple's Acre, Portland's (from Idaho, by way of Chicago) Nurses are hitting up the Duke Coffeehouse as an early stop on their epically long tour (that includes a stop at Local 506 in November). Here's the full version of the interview with Nurses' vocalist/guitarist Aaron Chapman that ran in today's recess. Nurses, along with the Brunettes and Throw Me the Statue, are playing the Duke Coffeehouse this Saturday, Sept. 5. Tickets are $10 (free to Duke students). Doors are at 8:30 p.m. and the show starts at 9 p.m.
Your tour is remarkably long. Have you ever toured this long before?
No. The longest we’ve ever toured before is about a month.
How have things been since the record came out?
Excellent. We haven’t been on tour yet so we’ll see how things are outside of Portland, but things are great here. We had a record release show that was pretty awesome. We had a lot of our favorite bands in town and artists and such. So we collaborated and that was really fun.
Do you think moving to Portland has had any effect on the album or your music, given the artistic community there?
Yeah. I mean, our record was completed early on here, so I don’t think we had too much time to get assimilated into the Portland culture, I guess. Definitely now, having spent a lot of time here, there’s a lot of bands and artists that we really look up to. It really just motivates you. It’s just kind of a cool feeling to be around. But lots of ambitious and just really talented people—it’s really encouraging and motivating for sure.
You made Apple’s Acre in your attic. Do you think that affected the sound and making of the album or is it a sort of mythology that people have played up?
It influenced what we’re doing. Most of the songs were already written, but the way we chose to record definitely was inspired by our surroundings. It was an attic in an old Victorian house we kind of converted into this crazy kind of like magical tent universe. I think that being there definitely got us into a certain head space, so in a sense it definitely influenced the record. But like I said, the songs themselves were already written, but the way we played them was definitely influenced by our surroundings.
Were you living at the house?
Yeah. Both John and I lived in the attic. There was actually one other guy that lived up there. So yeah, we basically lived and worked in the attic all day pretty much.
Did you ever get claustrophobic?
We ended up moving out because the house was kind of crazy. There were 12 people living there. It was a party house. We definitely did retreat to the attic. At the time we were doing it, it was awesome. I think it was perfect. But we did reach a threshold. You couldn’t really stand up except for at the very center of the attic. So everywhere else, you just kind of had crouch down or crawl at certain points so there’s only so long you can live like that, you know what I mean? But it was awesome. I loved it.
You recorded the album with GarageBand. What was it like having all the creative control?
Anything we had recorded prior had been with someone who was an engineer or inside the studio. I had never recorded anything before, so that was a lot of the creative process through the necessity of figuring things. But it allowed us to be really spontaneous and record things really quickly. Whenever we had an idea, we could record whenever we wanted to, pretty much. It’s very portable. It just gave us a lot of freedom. I think between having the freedom to just be spontaneous with ideas and just record instantly and, like I said, the limitations or lack of expertise in recording, kind of, I think forced us to be creative in how we record the song. But it ended up being a really awesome catalyst for creativity.
Do you think you will continue with the DIY approach or work with engineers and producers?
We have been recording more ourselves in the meantime, and I think we’re kind of open to either way. When I fantasize about the ideal recording situation if somebody were to produce it, there are obviously people I’d like to work with…like if somebody really awesome wanted to work on something with us. We’re really happy being able to do it ourselves though. Unless something really awesome comes along, I’m sure we’ll just keep doing it that way for the immediate future.
Do you think Garageband has opened doors for other bands?
Yeah, I hope so. I hope people would be encouraged to do that rather than saving up money forever to make a record. There are so many things that go into it. In my mind, working with Garageband sort of seemed like, oh it’s the software that comes with the computer so I kind of assumed it wasn’t an acceptable way to make a record at first. Then when we started messing around with it and we were like, wait a second, we like this as much as anything else. So I would hope people know that they can and would be encouraged to do things themselves. With music being free and people downloading so much stuff, it makes sense to forget about huge budgets and make a record themselves instead of waiting around saving up money, expecting that they have to make a proper studio album or whatever. A lot of the stuff that we really like is kind of more do-it-yourself, lo-fi stuff. It sounds awesome. I hope that people do [it themselves] instead of just not making a record.
What are some of the bands you like and that you think influenced Nurses?
I have kind of mixed feelings about influence because we definitely don’t intentionally reference anything or consciously referenced anything, like we want this to sound like this. But I think anytime you listen to music or anytime you’re exposed to anything, you can’t help but have some influence on you. Things that I would say we’re into, like I said we don’t necessarily play them or reference them, but we’re into this band called Family Father, and we listen to Parks and the American Anthology of Folk Music. And another thing that I’m into musically is certain soundtracks and Japanese movie cartoons.
Do you become more aware of those “influences” after you’ve written the songs?
It’s very similar with writing songs and production—a lot of it was just doing whatever we felt or we were excited about. But I think the songwriting was all just a really natural process that we spent a lot of time on that we just kind of let happen. The production—I remember we reference kind of more visual things. That was one thing we were more aware of. We would kind of vision a picture or a landscape, and try and communicate that to one another. I think that’s mainly what we referenced when recorded.
Do you hope that people who listen to the album pick up on those visuals?
Yeah. I think, for me, our record is very visual. I can’t help but think of certain visuals and things when I listen to it. I don’t expect anyone to envision the exact same thing, but a lot of the songs have certain color schemes that I think or certain kind of landscapes. I hope that people pick up on them, maybe because I think they’re cool.
Can you tell me a little about the album art?
A friend of ours in town was interested in it after the album was completed, so we gave her the record and she sort of interpreted it visually. It was perfect—exactly what we wanted. It was exactly what we wanted.
It suits the sound of the album really well.
Yeah. The name of the artists is Aidan Koch. She’s really good. She’s a super talented friend of ours.
Will you be doing any recording or a lot of writing during the tour?
We’ve still been writing a lot. We recorded a demo and have been messing around. As far as on tour—we’re going to try this, I don’t know if we’ll be able to do it—we’re going to try and make a tape. Just a kind of one-off, spontaneous cassette tape on our drive whenever we can. I think we’re going to try alternative versions of songs and experiment just to have fun things to give away or sell at shows. As far as recording, we’ll be doing that. We might be working on some songs on the road. It’s hard to get set up, but we might do some stuff.
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