What Made Milwaukee Famous isn’t the beer or the cheese or The Miller Park Stadium or even the Jerry Lee Lewis song they’re named after– it’s frontman Michael Kingcaid (vocals/guitar/keyboards), Jason Davis (guitar/vocals), Drew Patrizi (keyboards/vocals/guitar), John Farmer (bass/vocals), and Jeremy Bruch (drums/vocals). Only one year after their self-released album, Never Trying To Catch Up (2004), the Austin natives opened for Franz Ferdinand on the PBS series Austin City Limits, making them one of the only unsigned bands ever to play for the show. Creating quite a bit of a buzz, WMMF continued riding the wave with performances at the ACL Festival, South by Southwest and Lollapalooza.
In 2006, the band signed with Barsuk Records which re-released their debut album with additional mixes and in 2008 their long-awaited sophomore CD, What Doesn’t Kill Us went above and beyond any expectations. An amazingly brave sonic experiment – from grungy guitars and piercing vocals on “Blood, Sweat and Fears” to the post-wave Ramonesque “The Right Place” to Kingcaid’s ethereal, edgy vocals that eventually snowball into powerful crescendos on “Cheap Wine” and “Self-Destruct.” What Doesn’t Kill Us will definitely make them stronger, especially on tracks such as “Middle of the Night” and “The Other Side”, which proves the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Truth be told, What Made Milwaukee Famous wasn’t Wisconsin, it was actually Texas. But that’s a whole other story and Michael Kingcaid was happy to share it…
What Doesn’t Kill Us was long-awaited. What did you want to achieve with this album?
Well, we’re part of the indie-circuit but I didn’t want to limit us to just being an indie band because to do this for a living in this day and age with high gas prices, the internet and all the buzz bands that come out and all the competition – you have to shoot big to have longevity and actually have people hear your music. Otherwise, you’re gonna remain an obscurity and be that band that a handful of people love but nobody else has heard of. So, with this CD we wanted to be as accessible as possible and the way we went about that was by focusing a lot more on the songs.
How does it compare to Never Trying To Catch Up?
With the first album we didn’t really know each other so we all threw our little things on there. At times it sounded a bit like a melting pot. This CD is more cohesive and everything is in its right place. It feels leaner to me. There’s not as much fluff. The primary focus was making the songs as strong as possible and actually using an arrangement for the instruments that lends itself best to each song. It’s kinda organic… some people would knock that, but I see nothing wrong with accessibility. It worked for many, many artists before us.
What’s the difference between your first and second CD production-wise?
We recorded and produced the first CD ourselves right in my backyard. It kind of helps when you’re not hemorrhaging money, but it can be a detriment too because you can spend two days trying to get a guitar sound…just because you can, ya know? Chris Michaels produced What Kills Us. He was friends with our manager and he had been working with Sparklehorse. So having him manning the boards and taking care of the technical side was a relief this time around. It works better to have less time to record because it raises the bar for your performance. You have to get it right.
You’re often compared to Spoon…thoughts on it?
Well, I’ve definitely been in love with Spoon since ‘94 or ‘95. And Jim Eno (drummer for Spoon) contributed to the mixing of this CD. He was real easy to work with and we were on the same page. People definitely say “Sultan” sounds like Spoon and I think it’s because it was on the heels of the single that they released at the same time called “Underdog” — which happens to have a lot of acoustic guitar and horns and ours does, as well. We’ve also been getting a lot of Billy Joel comparisons, which is great…especially with that song.
Tell me the story behind “Sultan”…
I actually wrote the song because I have a friend who works for Fox in the licensing department and they had a TV show they needed a theme song for. It was a show about people racing across the US – I think it was called “Drive”. The pilot aired and it got cancelled. A little advice…if you really want a hit song, not that I’m saying it’s a hit, but I think it’s pretty catchy, try writing a song and fitting everything you need in there and nothing more in 40 seconds. Jason and I did 3 different versions of the song for the show. The first was like Sammy Hagar meets Soundgarden (laughs). It was kinda cool and I thought I had a beat on the vibe but they said it was too metal. So we went back to the drawing board and did this pensive number, which I had been playing and couldn’t do anything with for the last 6 years or longer. It’s always nice to make something out of a song you’ve been sitting on for a long time. They said, ‘Well, that’s a little too depressing’, so then I came up with that melody and guitar line and it really popped. We submitted it and it came down between a Gavin Rossdale song and mine. Naturally, he got it cuz he’s Gavin Rossdale…and he probably brought another gold-plated stroller (laughs).
Ho
w did you get Lance Armstrong on the “Sultan” video?
Apparently, he’s a fan of our music. But I guess it’s more of the connection that our management company handles him as well. It made sense also with the fencing video to have a world-class athlete make a guest appearance.
Are you the primary songwriter?
Yeah, but we collaborate on some songs. Sometimes it’s good for me to feed off the dynamic of getting in there and jamming into a song. But I’m pretty meticulous. Of course if I hit a wall, I’ll branch out and see whatever the band has to get me past that wall, but I’m overly scrutinous about my lyrics and I don’t want to put out anything that I’m not absolutely proud of. I don’t just crank ‘em out. There were about 5 or 6 songs on this album that I really wanted represented as I had them in my head. That’s always the problem especially with me being a hack guitar player (laughs)…getting an idea in my head then transferring it to my fingers, then to tape and then to get people to hear it the way I hear it. It’s an arduous process.
It’s such a thriving music scene in Austin. Do you feel that it’s been productive living there?
Oh, yeah. I know NY and LA are obvious meccas for music, but Austin really is the lifeblood of the music industry. There’s so much great music here and great bands in every genre that exists. You can hear amazing music any night of the week. It’s so inspirational…when you go see a great show, you either want to quit because those bands are so great or some shows make you go home and say, “ I think I can do something like that or better” and it’s fodder…music is definitely food for us.
How did it feel to play Austin City Limits as the first unsigned band in your hometown, no less?
Looking back on it we probably don’t remember half of it because it was such a whirlwind weekend. We were on a ‘do-it-yourself’ tour and we were heading to Dallas. We had to cancel it because they called and told us that Arcade Fire cancelled their taping at ACL and Drew had given their producer our CD. With all the other scheduling, they didn’t have time to get a big band, so they had to find something quick and they liked us.
Since then you’ve played on the same billing with Arcade Fire?
On that same tour, they called us back two days later and said they got us on the bill at a sold-out show with Arcade Fire and Black Keys — which was totally awesome. Then they called us back again and said they had a cancellation at the festival. So we cut our tour short, came back into town and played that show Friday night and did sound check for the taping Saturday morning. We never had time for it to sink in. It all happened in one weekend — from total obscurity of just a few people knowing who we were to doing a taping…and then 2-3 months later getting emails from Hawaii and Europe. It was really something. I grew up watching ACL and I always wanted to do this for a living. But I never thought of it as a realistic option, so it’s amazing.
It sounds like it all fell into place so easily with Barsuk Records too…
We played in 2003 at South by Southwest Festival and that’s when we met Josh [Rosenfeld] and we talked to him for about a year before we put the record out. We spoke to a couple of other labels, but when we recorded the first album and self released it, we definitely sent it to Barsuk. We made a list of all the labels that we loved and we probably gave away 1,000 CD’s just to get the word out. Barsuk was automatically on our top five list because they have a small roster of greatness — John Vanderslice, The Long Winters, Death Cab For Cutie…all those indie, seminal artists that we’ve been listening to and totally admire for their great songwriting. It was amazing that it came to fruition because they’re a great label and they really care about what they’re putting out. I think that’s why they keep their roster so small.
I know your name comes from a Jerry Lee Lewis song…Are you a big fan of his?
I am totally a big fan. I remember one Christmas I absolutely loved the movie “Great Balls of Fire” and it didn’t come out on video for Christmas, so my parents dubbed a copy of the movie that they rented at Blockbuster and gave it to me. I was so stoked! It’s kinda weird…it doesn’t seem like Jerry Lee Lewis would be someone I would latch on to at the age of 12 when I’m a poser-skateboarder (laughs) but he just had such energy. I hadn’t seen much real footage of him and I guess I also owe it to Dennis Quaid for portraying him so well.
Has the name paid off?
As far as the band name goes, it’s totally served its purpose – I’ll stand by saying it’s one of the best band names in the world because all you want out of a name is to get somebody’s attention and its totally done that. Whether people question us if we’re from Wisconsin or “say cheese’ or Laverne and Shirley…All the great band names are taken and you can’t really find just a word or phrase that will embody what you sound like as a band…especially for us because we don’t want to sound like one thing for too long. We made a list of names four pages long and we voted on them. That one got the most votes the most times. It’s funny though – for some reason we still don’t do that well in Milwaukee and I think it’s because we’re posers (laughs). We had one good show out of three…
One’s better than none…
Yeah, I guess it’s hard for me to ever be totally happy. But I’m actually very happy. We’ve been so lucky with all the things we’ve had fall in our lap. It’s my blessing and curse that I’m always looking for the next thing to happen.
And what is the next thing?
We just got off headlining our first tour. We went up to Lollapalooza and back. That was pretty short. Now we’re out with a band Wild Sweet Orange for about a month– their album just came out the end of July. We’re heading up to the East Coast and Southeast in the fall.
For more info see: www.myspace.com/whatmademilwaukeefamous
Joanne Schenker lives in New York and is a contributing writer for Glide and music columnist for Canvas Magazine. She can be reached at joanne.schenker@canvasli.com.
