Keith from ‘We Are Scientists’ Talks to CC about Myspace, Touring, and Advice Columns

Recently, Keith Murray, from We Are Scientists [if you don't know this band you should sincerely check them out], chatted with me for a bit while waiting in a long European buffet line about his band’s emerging presence and much more.

E: You’re in the middle of a really big tour right now. Do you think that touring plays a bigger role these days in being a band than when you started the band?

K: Um, I mean, I think perhaps, proportionally, no. I don’t think anything’s really changed about touring for us and I’m not sure that the fruits of the touring labor are necessarily more substantive. It does seem like the selling of records has become definitionally less…of a factor in measuring how well you’re doing. I feel like touring is probably about as important as it ever was and the space that…the big gaping chasm that’s been left by diminishing album sales has sorta filtered itself into other things. Like, I feel like, weirdly, licensing now is playing a much bigger role than it used to. And online presence, in general, is sorta replacing sales. I feel like touring is a rock that is not changing.

E: Speaking of online presences, I’m interested in knowing what you think about Myspace since it started getting big in the middle of your career with We Are Scientists.

K: I feel like…and I’m sure there are examples that can contradict what I’m about to say…but in my experience, Myspace seems…..sort of like the free release thing that Radiohead did with In Rainbows…it works really well once people know what they’re looking for. But I’ve never experienced a situation where I was trolling around Myspace and discovered a band. That seems like a reach for me.

I know there are bands like Arctic Myspace who don’t personally hold Myspace in any way responsible for their success, but for some reason, the press usually do attribute it to it. Myspace…makes things like email lists seem ridiculously archaic. So it is a fantastic tool to have. I’m not sure what the level of discovery is that it facilitates, though.

E: I feel like another important part of online presence is being able to step out and try new things. I noticed you guys have an advice column on your site. What prompted you to do that?

K: You know, one funny facet about our band is that Chris and I have been friends since we were in college together. Which was a long time before we formed the band. And we were always sorta co-conspirators in a lot of different projects that we were convinced were gonna take off to be our cash count and it just turned out that We Are Scientists actually did work out.

There was a period when we wanted to write screenplays, a period when we wanted to publish a magazine, and stuff like that. I think now that We Are Scientists are making people pay some attention in a way they may not have before…it just seemed like it would be a betrayal of that part of ourselves that wanted to do something like…crappy websites with weird fiction/humor pieces…as we were saying…a web presence is important. I feel like most band websites don’t warrant more than the occasional research and I think we would have felt like were wasting the opportunity had we not at least tried to force-feed things that we like on our website.

E. As far as having band member changes…did you ever feel like you were losing momentum because of that?

K: The most recent…when our drummer left….his presence was sort of the crippling thing. We were all wanting to do different things. The minute he decided that he wanted to do something else, we got really energized again to follow the vision we had that he wasn’t necessarily sharing. So for us, it was great…having more fun. It’s just working out a little better now than it was before. If it had been a sudden shock, that might have been a different story. But this was something we had been talking about for a while and it really made sense. So, in this case, it was definitely not a negative for us.

E: Do you guys have any bands you’re listening to and supporting right now that are smaller and not getting a lot of press?

K: We’ve sorta been big components of Oxford Collapse for a while now. They’re a Brooklyn band and we’ve done a few tours with them. They’re fantastic. I’ve also really been into a woman called Lady Hawke from London.

E: What’s next for the band?

K: European festivals…we’re going through this summer. I think hopefully we’re going to try to do a tour of the states in September and then we’re doing a tour with R.E.M. in October. That’s sort of all that is mapped out.