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Originally Seattle based, and called Horses (named after the Palace Brothers song), one name change and several ongoing line-up changes later Band Of Horses have in relatively short terms managed to turn out two stunning albums on Sub Pop! garnering critical praise, generating blogosphere buzz and in indie-band terms, fared very well commercially.

Now with a settled line-up of three years, a deal with Columbia Records and a roundly praised third album (including 4 stars in Q Magazine) they are poised for success on a scale as large as their widescreen country pop-rock found on Infinite Arms.

One sunny June morning, at a hotel in Kensington, Q caught up with the surprisingly humble and relaxed bunch at the centre of it all...

Q: Ben, How did Band Of Horses get started?

Ben Bridwell: In 2004 I was in a band that broke up. I started writing songs in the practice space that we had and ended up meeting up with a couple of guys to help me out with them.Once we made the first record it was kind of apparent that we needed to get some other dudes in there {laughs}. I don't think any of us were prepared with that kind of pressure being in the studio and actually having to do it correctly, so pretty soon I got Creighton and his friend Rob in the band.

Q: Was that because things took off quickly?

BB: Yeah, yeah, it definitely took off out of nowhere, I mean we didn't expect anything. It immediately became apparent that it was not the most cohesive group of dudes. Our line-up now is: Ryan Monroe (Keyboards), Tyler Ramsey (guitar), Creighton Barrett (drums), Bill Reynolds (bass) and me Ben (sing/guitar "and stuff").

Q: This is the longest you've had a solid line-up, has it made a difference to the band?

BB: Yeah, Tyler is the newest and he's been here for 3 years, but yeah it makes it easy. Once we finally got the right puzzle pieces in place, it was obvious that the core five of us are the most bangin' Band of Horses configuration that I've been a part of and it was really obvious that this was exactly what needed to happen and we got to the place where it was solidified.

Q: [To the rest of the band] How did you guys all first hear Band of Horses then, apart from Creighton, were you all friends before?

Tyler Ramsay: They came through Asheville, North Carolina where I live and played at a club down the street and I saw them there. That was a year before I knew any of them, then Bill and I both met in Echo Mountain studio in Asheville when they were recording Cease To Begin. That's how the all newest members of the band ended up hanging out and joining.

What did you think when you first heard Band of Horses?

Tyler: I loved it, I thought the show that I saw was great, it was packed too which is good in Asheville.

Bill Reynolds : My first feeling was Christ what a good vocalist, who is this guy?

Ben: He gets paid to say that!

Bill: {laughing} No I don't...

Ryan Monroe: In Seattle when it was happening there, the band I was playing in played a show with the first incarnation of Horses and Ben was one of my best friends.

It was crazy in Seattle because it such a music town and everyone's working hard to get their band out there and do what they're doing and they kind of shut down the entire music system. It was like - shit - it's Horses!

When everyone heard it they thought it was so good - I'm not even kissing ass - it was a really different thing, in the Seattle music scene especially. Someone playing music and hearing [the sound of] Ben's voice, I've been in bands with Ben before and it was crazy, he was never singing. He started playing bass a bit in [previous band] Carissa's Wierd, and began singing when I started playing drums - you could hear it and it was like wow, where is that coming from? You could tell something different was happening from the get-go.

Q: Was the sound as defined as it is now?

Ryan: To me the band's always been Ben's voice, in a way, it was the carrier, even at that point you could tell there was something there for sure.

Ben: It was a bit sketchier though.

Ryan: It was, but in the Seattle music seen at the time it was really a breath of fresh air to hear it. It was really cool.

Q: Is it right to say combined with your voice you used an old plate reverb to get the on-record vocal sound?

Ben: Um, I'm not sure what Phil [Ek, the producer] was using on this first two records, I never really paid attention I was usually so stressed out about the fact that I had to sing it. I didn't really look at the nuts and bolts of the operation, but Bill, you probably dealt a lot with this new record.

Bill: One day we were trying to decide how we were going to try to mix the record and we went into Studio 3 in LA and found these reverb chambers and we were like "Holy shit these things sound great", so with some of the songs we pumped Ben's vocals through and got like a chamber sound, so that was some of the sound and I think Sardy [Dave Sardy, mixing engineer] used a bunch of crazy spring reverbs.

Q: Is the sound a sound you arrived at from an evolution of your previous bands or did you just go into the studio and start recording and producing and having to think about it and then define it?

Ben: For the first record?

Q: Yeah

Ben: That was mostly producer Phil Ek, honestly, he really guided the sound. From what I was going for on stage, I had a vocal processor, I had a lot of delays and reverbs. So I was kind of honing it in but he really did craft and push along the epic guitar tones that I couldn't even attempt to fathom. He was more of a band member at that point than the other guys that were in the band, he really did craft that whole sound for us and pushed us on down this road.

Q: Has his role changed over the three albums?

Ben: With the third one, we started with him but then kind of ended up taking the reigns ourselves, but it's always been the same. Phil works in a very particular way and he get results by doing that and he stresses that this is a document that you'll have to live with for the rest of your live and may even surpass your life, therefore it should be taken with all necessary precautions, and he's right you know, you shouldn't settle for second best when you're making a record.

With this record, we could even have settled for third best and it would be cool, because we took it ourselves. This one was a bit freer for us but we did put a lot of pressure on ourselves without having it feel so... I don't know... so immediately necessary to try and perfect things. It ended up being alot more freeing because warts and all could show up and we knew it would be fine.

Q: More of a Neil Young type thing, where you played for the feel without thinking about getting the take just perfect...

Creighton: Absolutely.

Q: Or getting a certain kick sound?

Creighton: Well, kick sounds actually a different story {chuckles}.

Ben: The sounds were good. I think in some of the performances it was like yeah, we were OK with it sounding like five guys in a room together so a lot of stuff on the record ended up getting cut live.

Tyler wrote and sung Evening Kitchen on the record and it's just him on the second take with a guitar and voice at the same time and there you have it, it's on the album and it has that intimate feel I think because it's not trying to be over-perfected.

Q: How does it work recording a song like Evening Kitchen, compared say, to General Specific?

Creighton: I remember Tyler being like, "This is the way I want to do it", but when you hear Evening Kitchen, it makes sense because that's the way he wrote it and it sounds the best and it's the most comfortable way to do it as well y'know. It's kind of like how it has to be done - not being bully-ish about it at all it's just the essence of the song. I think we all knew that was the way to do it, to go for that.

Tyler: We did it a few times live where the whole band would join in at a certain point, which was cool too, that was when we first started playing.

Ben: We also did it electric and tried to do it to a click track and sing on top of it. It never really felt right, [Tyler] you never really felt comfortable with it so we didn't ... it wasn't until probably two years after we started the record.

Tyler: It was the last thing.

Ben: Yeah, but you know General Specific was a totally different thing, we were all stomping and clapping to get that sound in a church on the hard wood. I remember Phil, we must've done it twenty times or something trying to get it right and all in sync. I remember us all being so sore after that, the bottoms of our feets and the palms of our hands were just beat up, so... damn slave driver that Phil is, he, he.

Q: A cold can of beer after to hold and cool it?

Ben: {laughing} probably before, during and after, yeah...

Q: There's the secret to recording then...?

Ben: Absolutely, yeah... {laughs}

Creighton: The secret to any good record!

Q: Not the equipment then. I was gonna ask you about gear. In the studio do you bother about the gear and your amps/equipment etc. too much or do you leave that to the producer?

Ben: Sometimes... sometimes he has an idea, and the studio's we've been in we've been lucky to have alot of different options but usually I think we also kind of know what our sound is and sometimes it just feels more comfortable to use the rig that you're used to, cos you know how to manipulate it and get the best sound that you like, but other times y'know we'd find stuff, especially like some of Tyler's [guitar] tones cos we knew they really need to be out front, we'd make sure that we could try different amps and stuff like that.

Tyler: Yeah, some of it was pretty painstaking, going through a whole array of pedals and amps and stuff, which there were tons to choose from, and finally finding the right one. That was what was cool to watch Phil, the way he worked and just how particular he was about that, it was pretty neat.

Ben: He would definitely let you know if he thought it was wrong {band laughter}.

Q: Instant feeback!

Ben: Oh yeah, absolutely...

Creighton: That was one of my favourite parts about the new record when we were doing it ourselves, was just to be like "Let's try that thing!" y'know like, "no the thing sounds crazy" but y'know lets just try it and mic it or whatever and then you're like, "you're right, it sounds like shit"... or "it sounds awesome!", we went through everything - we had people stealing instruments from North Carolina School of Music and shit {chuckles} bringing us timpanis and stuff... It got to the point where it was hard to not put certain things on every song.

Through Tyler and Bill's friend I got a 50's Ludwig concert bass drum, just a massive beautiful thing. I called it "The thunder drum", it ended up being on almost every track, just stuff like that. I got to use roto-toms... that was the really fun part of it "that thing sounds weird - put it on the record". It was really fun.

Q: Is that the plan for the next one then, find more weird stuff?

Creighton: Absolutely, I think. It's my new favourite thing for sure {laughs}, "How about if we kick the refrigerator? Awesome."

Q: Tom Wait's territory there, you'll be getting out the wooden two by four and hitting things with it.

Creighton: Absolutely.

Q: From the way that you talk about making the record, that you all have a similar level where you feel a song's right, is that because your musical backgrounds, favourite bands and reference points are similar?

Ben: We definitely share alot of the same tastes and our favourite heroes and stuff like that, so yeah. It's definitely a democratic process where we all put our input in, no-ones ever wrong. We're all kind of right y'know, let's just try and find the exact perfect thing that we could find if that exists but, em, yeah I think it's pretty obvious for all of us to try to be tasteful for the sake of the song, and your playing, like a virtuoso if need be.

If you need a guitar solo or something. It'd mostly be other people pushing, say Tyler, or something to like "Hey, lets really dig in with the guitar tone on this" and let it be over the top and that's ok because it's usually a bit reluctant for most people to feel like they're gonna overplay, y'know and distract from the song. It's always obvious, I think we share the same brain when it comes to that sort of stuff.

Q: Who are the influences then that you collectively share?

Bill: The Bible
{laughter}
Ben: The Bible broke up, {more laughter} they never released an album, but they did break up...

Bill: You could start with The Travelling Wilburys and then branch off from there {group laughter}. Then you could start going down the genealogy thing... that's one of them, that's like certain.

Ben: Alot of country, rock'n'roll, blues, soul, I think it spans all kinds of genres and I think we all have a massive amount of respect for music history and contemporary music aswell.

Q: In terms of from The Wilburys and back, there's a line you can trace there from early American country and roots and appalachian music aswell right through. Do you see yourself following in that line then and being a sort of further branch on the country/country-rock line?

Ben: {draws breath} God, I don't know...

Bill: Well it's hard because you get someone like George Harrison and where he comes from, his influences are so Indian and eastern religion, so that's the kind of stuff that actually we were listening to alot of George Harrison while we were making this record, so... I can't say we sit around listening to banjo music all the time, y'know. {band agree}

Ben: Or say Jeff Lynne aswell, I mean we're huge ELO fans and the production of that, which is, his stuff is, damn space-pop... y'know it's like music from outer space, perfect music from outer space, y'know - god! {rest of band laughing} so it's not just an American roots influence, it's also an English influence aswell.

Q: Do you think from your three records then and working the way you have with Phil you're now ready to produce the next record yourself?

Ben: I think so, I mean it sounds awesome. We had so much fun doing this last one, it really opened our eyes up that we could count on each other to do it ourselves but at the same time you also wonder if you've gotta make it sound totally different from the last one and have someone come in and help with that. I think it's just too early to tell right now, it definitely seems like we would like to get into doing that all the time but it seems like you also might be spinning your wheels a bit, em, and you might wanna branch the sound out even more by going bonkers... Jeff Lynne if you're listening? {band laughter}

Q: Pick up the phone...

Ben: {excited} Yeah, yeah,

Q: Email the Q website, and we'll pass it on.

Ben: Yeah {laughs}

Ryan: Yeah {more laughter} "Dear Jeff Lynne... love BOH"

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Interview: Andy Thomson

Part of
Band of Horses Week on Qthemusic.com.

10:11 AM | 15/07/2010