HT Interview: Marc Brownstein on the Road to Camp Bisco

HT: The Disco Biscuits have been pretty innovative in terms of letting fans help choose setlists and things like that. We were curious, if you’re looking through a thousand or however many submissions you might get, what kind of ideas stick out or what ultimately piques your interest and gets chosen?

MB: Some people don’t understand about tempos or keys, so the ones that ultimately get picked are from musicians. I feel like they have to be musicians or at least have a heightened sense of time and key. They have a really strong ear and can tell that this song would go really well into this that song. That’s the type of thing we’re looking for. You know, where the keys work, where the tempos build, and the creative usage of the catalog. If something pops out, we’ll definitely grab it and use it.

HT: Do you guys tend to play most of your songs in the same key. So, when you’re thinking about segues, do you have to change the key of the original song or do they tend to stay in the key they were written in?

MB: In the middle of a song, we might start modulating the parts to get to a new song. For instance, to get to G, we might modulate to C and then jump up to the five or something like that. So yeah, we often think about the keys and the tempos, but that said, we’re the Disco Biscuits, we can get from anywhere to anywhere [laughs]. We could probably get from any key and tempo to any other key and tempo. It just might take a couple steps, but we’ll get there.

HT: Obviously, without giving away any big surprises or anything, are there certain songs that are really clicking or things you’re especially excited about for Camp Bisco?

MB: Yeah, it’s like I said to my friend when we were on New Years Run or Mexico or whatever it was, and I said, “What should we play?” He said, “At this point, just play a Disco Biscuits song. Nobody cares, we just want you to play songs. Nobody cares; just play some shows.

So that’s what it’s like right now. I get to look at the catalog and be like “holy crap, we haven’t played any of these songs in six months or seven months.” Everything is game. Nothing is overplayed. That’s ultimately what you have to worry about is what have you been playing too much; what have people seen a lot of; what hasn’t been played? When you don’t play shows, you don’t have to worry about that. That whole thing is out the window. It doesn’t matter, Rainbow Song, Crickets, Basis, it doesn’t matter. We could play Basis or Crickets or we could not, it doesn’t matter. Everything we play is rare right now.

HT: I know a lot of people are kind of asking what the future hold for you guys right now; is this what we could expect to see from the Disco Biscuits, where you really focus on Conspirator and then get together with the Disco Biscuits for some big events and some shorter tours, or do even know at this point?

MB: No, honestly I really don’t know. I have no idea. I wish I could give you some more information on that, but I just don’t know. There is no way of knowing. That’s a question that could never be answered. Life changes so rapidly. You look at what happens with other bands. They have plans to be together and tour all the time, but then someone gets sick, or someone gets arrested, or someone becomes a heroin addict, or someone goes to jail, or somebody dies. No too be super dark, but that’s life. Sometimes it’s futile to put forth the five year plan. Things change so fast. If somebody gets pregnant, somebody gets married, somebody has twins… At the age we’re at, it’s really hard to know.

I can tell you that as far as Conspirator, we’re all on the same page. Everyone wants to tour. Everyone wants to play shows. When everybody is on the same page with the Biscuits, we’ll do that too. It’s bound to happen at some point. That’s why I don’t want to say: “Well, we’ll probably play ten shows a year and Conspirator will tour.” I don’t know [laughs].

I’m open to it all, you know? IF the Biscuits are open to a 30 show tour, then let’s go do it. It’s not happening between now and New Years though. That I can tell you for sure.

HT: Just one last question, I know you have a plane to catch in a few minutes, but with respect to HeadCount, is there anything you want to say as the election season gears up.

MB: As part of HeadCount, this is what we made it for. The whole point of the thing is when you come around to four year election cycle. We want to get 100,000 voters registered this year. The funding is starting to come together. You get around those four year cycles and the the funders start to come out of the woodwork a little bit.

For me, what’s really existing is with the funding, you never know during ‘09, ‘10, ‘11, it gets scary with the voter registration groups when the funding comes once every for years. How do you keep it operating? Right now, we’re starting to see a lot of people coming out to support what we’re doing, and that’s really exciting as the co-founder and co-chair. It gives a bit of justification to all the hard work we’ve put into it. We’re everywhere now. Headcount was in Michigan, in Buffalo, everywhere I go, so it’s fantastic.

The Disco Biscuits’ Road to Camp Bisco starts on Thursday at the 9:30 Club.