TheMusic.FM recently had the chance to catch up with Zachary Scott Carothers of Portugal. The Man before the band’s sold out CMJ show at New York’s Bowery Ballroom. The band has been blowing up thanks in part to the wonderful album The Satanic Satanist. So, settle down and enjoy.
So tell me a little about Portugal. The Man as a band.
Zachary Scott Carothers: Portugal started when the band that Johnny (John Baldwin Gourley) and I were in broke up about four or five years ago and pretty much we were playing together for awhile. So pretty much the day that ended, Johnny and I decided to started Portugal and went back to Wasilla, Alaska and rounded up a couple of other boys from there and started writing music I guess.
And from there you moved your headquarters to Portland, Oregon?
ZSC: Yeah, pretty much right after we started we knew there was no way we would be able to do anything in Alaska. It is so secluded and far away from everything else that it’s pretty impossible to get anything done. So, we moved pretty quickly down to Portland, playing shows and going out on tour right away.
Right now the big thing here is CMJ and you have a sold out show at the Bowery Ballroom on Friday. What has been your experience with these types of events?
ZSC: We played by South by Southwest but never CMJ but I hear it’s very cool but unfortunately we are going to be pretty busy those couple of days. Otherwise, I know there are a lot of good bands and cool stuff going that we would like to check out. But it’s pretty exciting, for sure.
Because you are in Philadelphia the day before (11/22) and have a show in England on the 25th, right?
ZSC: Yeah we get the day after the show off and have to fly out the next morning to the UK.
So no plans to catch any bands?
ZSC: Ha-ha, no. We always have so much business to take care of in New York. New York and L.A. are always very busy towns for us. We are running a million errands trying to get stuff ready, all the last minute stuff beforehand that we forgot to do before going to Europe. That always happens, but the day before we fly out tends to be pretty hectic.
Considering you are from Alaska and more recently Portland, how do big cities fit in to your personalities and sensibilities?
ZSC: It doesn’t mess with me too much at all; we are used being in a different town every night. There are obviously differences, like parking and stuff like that. The East coast tends to be a little more compact than the west, but we are used to it by now.
Do you have a go-to spot when you are in New York?
ZSC: We always go to Brooklyn if we can or have the night off or if we are going out after the show. We have a good friend of ours who lives over in Williamsburg. Generally we go over there and hit up the Union Pool, which is a really cool bar.
Let’s talk about the latest album, The Satanic Satanist. What was the mentality going in on this album?
ZSC: We knew we wanted to put more focus onto the song writing and structure; it definitely was a more focused album in general. We trimmed the fat on a lot of things. So the songs are shorter and straightforward as far as our back catalog is concerned, I guess. We had that vibe and we felt pretty prepared for this record.
It was the first time we were recording with someone we didn’t know personally that wasn’t a friend of ours. So normally we would go into the studio with no material or very little material and start writing it in the studio but going in with a big name (Paul Q. Kolderie who produced records for Radiohead and Lemonheads), we actually did some pre-production. We went with our buddies in Portland and kind of wrote a couple of songs and worked on them a little bit for a few weeks before going in and it was really very helpful.
More of the interview after the jump.
So it was a conscious decision to try and tighten things up. Now is that something you saw as the next step for the band?
ZSC: You never really know where we are headed, we like to try and do different things. We’ve been talking about that for a long time, we wanted to do that but it’s just really hard. Like 5 years ago, if you asked me, I would say “Oh, anyone could write a 3 minute pop song” and that is definitely not true. It is way harder to write that 3:30 pop song than write a seven-minute jam. You just have to compact so much more stuff and make it feel like it has gone on longer than it has and has a substance to it. It’s hard to pack all that in such a short amount of time, it definitely was a challenge. We never have done that before. I don’t know if that’s the direction we’ll go, but it is something we always wanted to do.
What is in store now? After the tour, any plans on recording some new material?
ZSC: We have another record done already. I don’t know when it will be released or how it will be released, we are thinking about doing something weird with it, we’re just not sure yet. There is another that just gone done being mastered that was recording mostly by John right after The Satanic Satanist. We are also going into the studio again around January or February to do another full length, so hopefully there will be two more albums next year, that’s what we are going for.
Does working on your own sort of label imprint help what you do what you want to do?
ZSC: It’s not so much a label, well, technically it is. It is just pretty much for us, so we can put out our own music or that it is easier for us. We don’t have a staff or office and I doubt we’ll sign any other bands or anything like that. It’s just kind of a way for us to put our music on our own.
Although you have been around for awhile as a band, only recently has there been a dramatic shift in your popularity, be it in press or sold out shows. Do you have a sense of when that started and possible factors?
ZSC: Things have been going really well for us in the last six months and we just had a lot of lucky breaks and I guess the hard work has been paying off. First of all, the press for the new record was just really awesome. A lot of good reviews in important places, it’s something people have been taking notice of. Also, all of the festivals this summer helped for sure. I think that has increased the attendance of our shows a lot, helped the word of mouth in general.
In the states we did Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, and Outside Lands and at every single show there’s somebody that says they have never heard of us before and saw us at Bonnaroo or Lollapalooza or something. Those kinds of things really help a band and we did a bunch of things over in Europe as well, so we’re pretty excited to go back over there and see what’s happening over there as well.
How have the larger crowds and larger venues affected your live performance?
ZSC: We haven’t been playing bigger venues, in a lot of ways we have gone done in size. Instead of playing larger all age venues, we started to play smaller, and more cool, and respected venues I guess. A lot of “over 21” shows at cool bars and stuff like that; we tried a lot of that stuff this year.
Like your shows before Bowery Ballroom in the summer at Southpaw.
ZSC: Yeah, it’s pretty cool when we do the bigger venues it definitely helps. We added stuff for our light show which is really fun and added some banners and stuff like that. It definitely has given us some more leeway to start experimenting with live stage setups. I’m sure we’ll continue to do more of that sort of stuff in the future.
A lot of your music and appearance tends to focus on imagery. Have you thought of becoming more theatrical in your performances?
ZSC: Oh yeah. It all comes down to what we can afford. We obviously don’t have a very big budget for those sorts of thing. That and what we can actually fit into the venue and how many people it takes to run it. We can only fit so many people in our van and we’re packed right now. If we wanted to do some video thing that went along with the song or something, we have to have a guy running that. We don’t have the room to fit him, physically without making it extremely uncomfortable for everyone.
We’re definitely limited right now but I’m sure if we ever get lucky enough to have the means, yeah I can definitely see us doing some fun stuff for sure. We have a lot of ideas.
What new music has been grabbing your attention?
ZSC: Not a lot of new music, although plenty of new-ish music. I really like the new Grizzly Bear record, it’s pretty amazing. The new Flaming Lips album is also awesome but I haven’t had a chance to listen to them all. I go in and out of phases where I listen to a lot of music and I’ll go six months without listening to anything at all. When I drive, it is usually talk radio or nothing. I’m kind of weird like that. It’s nice when I get kind of jaded and don’t listen to stuff very much and then I get the chance to, and it’ll randomly happen, where I listen to a song I’ve always loved and kind of fall in love with Rock ‘n’ Roll all over again. It’s a pretty nice feeling for sure.
What are some other sources that you use as a creative outlet?
ZSC: We’re all big movie and book fans. More movies lately, not really having the time to read, oddly enough, we are in the van a lot it feels like there is always something to do. Personally, sometimes there is too much on my mind and, that’s a problem with books and music, I can’t focus on anything. I’ll try to listen to a new album and before I know it, the song is over and I didn’t hear any of it.
We all love movies. I just saw Where the Wild Things Are with a couple of the guys and it was pretty awesome.
