Chattanooga Times Free Press music reporter Casey Phillips spoke with Northern Lights lead singer Jonathan Tyler about Texas as a musical proving ground, putting the fun back into rock’n’roll and old lawn mowers.
CP: You guys are down in Texas right now, right? Are you just lazing around?
JT: Not really, honestly, because we don’t have much time once we get home. When I do get home for a week out of the month, I have to do all the catching up on real world stuff like bills and my house and stuff like that.
CP: Don’t say that or you’ll ruin people’s images of rock stars never having to mow the lawn.
JT: (Laughs.) Right. Well, that’s not how I do it. I mow the lawn.
CP: Do you have a riding or push mower?
JT: I have a push mower. It’s old, an old Honda that’s barley working. I’m going to run it into the ground.
CP: I can’t imagine you see much of the northern lights all the way down in Dallas, so where did the name for the backing band come from? Is it supposed to be ironic?
JT: Well, it’s kind of something we don’t ever really answer. It didn’t come from the northern lights, the aurora borealis. It’s kind of our little secret.
CP: Listening to the music on your Myspace page, the chorus of “Pardon Me” – “It’s been far too long since rock’n’roll turned you on” – really struck me. Based on what I’ve read about you, that line seems to encapsulate the spirit of your music. Do you feel like your music has reinvigorated the genre, brought the sex back to rock’n’roll?
JT: Ah, well, it’s more of an attitude, you know, a spirit to the music we’re trying to bring back rather than a sound or style. We’re trying to have fun and make music that people can actually know what we’re talking about and connect to. A lot of stuff out right now we don’t really like. I can’t name more than four or five bands I like that are out nowadays.
Our music is a simple thing. It’s about songwriting people understand and not about hidden messages. It’s about having a good time and rhythm and blues, not just the rock side but also the rhythm side, the groove. Back when people used to go out on a Friday or Saturday night to hear live music instead of going to ultra lounges. It was a completely different scene then than nowadays. We don’t go to ultra-loungues where they play house and trance music and everything is neon and it’s called Glow or Ice or something like that. (Laughs.) It seems like that’s the trend nowadays. You can say we’re trying to go a little old school with it.
CP: You say you set out to make music that’s fun. Now that you’re three years in, do you feel like you’re able to make your music consistently fun?
JT: Yeah, oh yeah. I think our shows are a different kind of experience. I go to shows a lot, and there are a lot of different shows that I see. With a lot of rock bands nowadays, it’s like you just stand there and watch them or there are other shows where it’s a huge production like you’re going to see a Vegas show or something. That’s fine, but what we’re trying to do is different than that. We want it to feel like a backyard party where you’re drinking beers and letting loose.
It’s a different feel than what everyone else is doing. Some country artists get crazy and rowdy like we do, but we’re not into country much. I’m not downing any of these other styles, I’m just trying to say that what we do is different than all those things, so it’s hard to compare.
CP: Right. The obvious comparisons to your music aren’t modern, they’re artists like Aerosmith and Stevie Ray Vaughn.
JT: Yeah, we like The Faces and Humble Pie and the Allman Brothers and The Rolling Stones and … I could keep going on and on. There just aren’t a lot of bands like that now because it’s evolved and that whole attitude has been lost over the last 20 or 30 years.
CP: When you’re up on stage, what do you put into the show to make your show defy the modern rock norm and return to the genre’s fun roots?
JT: Well, we love what we’re doing, so it’s fun every time for us. Sometimes, we have nights where I’ll have to kind of get my head in the right place, but most of the time, I love the songs we’re playing. We wrote them all, and we love what we’re doing, so it’s not so much a job. We’ll go up and play and feed off the crowd’s energy and sometimes try to get the crowd into a certain place with us. It kind of depends on the night. Most of the time, it’s not something contrived. We just go up and play our songs and love what we’re playing, so it’s easy.
CP: Is there a song off “Pardon Me” that really gets the crowd pumped up?
JT: It’s just different. If there’s a crowd that doesn’t know us, if it’s the first time they’re seeing us, sometimes it takes four or five songs before they know what’s going on and stop staring at us. For crowds that have heard us multiple times, it’s almost like they know before we ever take the stage what they’re getting.
But I would say that “Gypsy Woman” is a crowd favorite and “Pardon Me” is also doing really well. “Hot Sake” is a crowd favorite as well.
CP: It seems like a lot of modern bands have a goal of getting the crowd to stare at their shoes and shuffle to the music. What is a sign to you that the music is resonating with the audience?
JT: To me, when I look around, I like it when things are out of control. I like it when you see guys hitting on girls and you see people dancing and when people are laughing. I like seeing people taking shots. I like seeing people having a good time. That’s the sign.
I don’t care what they’re doing, necessarily. It doesn’t matter if you drink or don’t drink. I just like seeing people let their guard down and having a good time. That’s the goal. It’s about however you do that as a person. That’s what we want.
Our shows should be more like, “It’s Friday night, and I’m going out to have a good time.” It facilitates that for them, whereas a lot of shows you go to, it’s like you go to the show and go to the bar afterwards to have a good time. At the show, you just sit there and watch. There’s just a different attitude.
When Chuck Berry was touring around, he’d go to a place on a Friday night, and people would go crazy. Guys were there meeting their future wives at the show, you know? It’s a totally different spirit than what most of the music you hear nowadays has. That’s what I keep preaching. It’s not such a difficult concept. We’re not trying to change the world. We’re just trying to have a good time and make music about enjoying life.
CP: So not trying to change the world, just the weekend?
JT: That’s a big statement there, such a broad idea. We put a lot of time and energy into our music. We take a long time writing and thinking and making the music good and deep and working on the lyrics and working on the structure of the songs and recordings. We take that seriously, but we take it seriously so that when we play a live show, we can get into the head space we want to be in.
Nothing against Radiohead, but we’re not Radiohead. We’re not trying to be the biggest artistic act. We don’t want everyone to leave the show saying, “Man, those guys are the artsiest.” We want them to say, “Man, we had a great time, and we’d love to go hear those guys again.” We want them to remember the night as being a good time.
CP: Where do you draw inspiration for your songs?
JT: Any sort of pressing emotions and life experiences. There are happy songs and then there are sad songs. There all different types of emotional places. I just try to connect to strong emotional feelings I have. I feel like, if I connect to those feeligns, I’m going to connect to other people in the room who have experienced the same thing.
CP: You mentioned “Gypsy Woman” earlier as a crowd favorite. Where were you, emotionally, when you wrote that one?
JT: I had just ended this really long relationship. It was one of those ones where it was really nasty at the end; it didn’t go down in a nice way. It was an aggressive emotion. I was trying to speak my mind about something I felt like nobody else was seeing except for me. I wrote the song, and it was really simple; it probably only took only a couple of hours to write. You never know which ones are going to connect with people. That one just happened to do that.
CP: Do you judge a song’s success on how the audience reacts to it or are there songs you think are strong songs that don’t get much in the way of audience response?
JT: There are two ways to look at that. There’s the business way to look at it where if people like it a lot, then you succeed on the business side. Then, there’s the personal level, I have personal favorites and personal goals that I try to reach that may not mean much to anyone else, but they mean a lot to me. I have songs that I won’t ever put out that I have just for myself that I love but don’t really feel like sharing.
I don’t forget that we’re living in a world where we have to make careers, so if we write a song and people like it, of course we’re going to play it at shows and get it on the radio. We’re not going to stop that because that’s what’s keeping our careers going, but at the same time, we’re going to keep writing songs that we like.
Sometimes, specific ones will connect more than others. You never know which ones it’s going to be. You just write what you write, and if certain ones connect, you just need to be thankful for it and keep going. That’s kind of the attitude we’ve taken since the beginning.
CP: Have there been any recent songs that surprised you by doing better than you expected?
JT: (Laughs.) Yeah. The new song “Hot Sake.” We wrote that in like an hour’s time. It was such a light-hearted song. We just threw it together, and we’ve had an overwhelming response about it since we put out the record. It’s one where I was like, “OK, then. Cool.” I didn’t think people would take it seriously. (Laughs.)
CP: You’re originally from Birmingham, Ala., but now you’re a Texan. It seems like bands that come from the Lone Star state inevitably find that the spirit of the state makes its way into their music. Is it the same with you?
JT: Of course. We’ve played with a bunch of country acts when we started out, and that’s what Texas is kind of known for. Being a rock band, people just stared at us. You have to be really confident to play in front of an average Texas audience.
Just being from the South, in general, we’re raised around music of a certain tradition of songwriting and country or blues influence, a certain soul roots aspect of the South. It’s all around you when you’re growing up here. I think it’s definitely influenced our music.
CP: Coming from that intense Texas training ground, do you feel like it’s made playing live in other places easier by comparison?
JT: It’s hard to say because we haven’t played in other places nearly as many times as we’ve played in Texas. We’ve played in Texas hundreds and hundreds of times. Each place is a little bit different, but I would Texas is rowdier than any other place I’ve been.
CP: In your three years together, you guys have opened for some huge names like AC/DC, The Black Crowes, Deep Purple and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Who’s a band you’d love to set the stage for?
JT: I’ve already said to my manager that we’d love to open for the Rolling Stones, that would be ultimate to me. Also, Chuck Berry, who’s still going. We’ve played with Buddy Guy before, and he’s one of those guys we really like, but The Rolling Stones are probably the top for me.
CP: What about bands of the past?
JT: The Doors.
CP: I think I read that your drummer is really into Keith Moon. Are you all fans of The Who or is it just him?
JT: Oh yeah, we love The Who. I like a lot of the stuff they’ve done. I like how they’re challenging, lyrically. They talk about a lot of things I really like, politically, things that most people don’t say. They have an aggression towards certain things with songs like “Baba O’Reilly,” “Who Are You?” and “My Generation,” all these songs that are in your face. “Who Are You?” That song is sweet. We’re big Who fans.
CP: “Pardon Me” just came out last month, but are you guys considering the next project yet?
JT: Yeah, I’ve been thinking about maybe doing an EP in the next three or four months. I haven’t talked to anyone about it yet. We have a record deal that allows us to do pretty much anything we want to do.
I’m also thinking about doing a DVD movie, something like The Rolling Stones’ “—-sucker Blues.” Something like that, where it’s just a documentary, not something we promote on a massive scale, but something that we can sell on a small level.
But yeah, I’ve already started thinking about the next record. After we finished “Pardon Me,” it was time to start thinking about the next one.
CP: Do you have any plans as far as different direction you’d like to take the next project, stylistically?
JT: If we do an EP like I want, I want to explore more drone. We have a song called “Devil’s Basement” on the record that’s different than all the others. It’s got a drone behind it. I want to mix the psychedelic drone of The Velvet Underground with blues, heavily mix it with blues and try and get a little psychedelic.
I don’t think we’d do that for an entire LP. I don’t like being exclusive and not allowing for different types of songs. I like putting out all types of songs. I don’t want an entire album where everything sounds the same, but if we do an EP or something special like that, I think it’s OK to go down a different path for a little while and then come back. Just something for the fans, not necessarily anything for commercial use.