From their article jumbling punctuation to their formation in Wasilla, Alaska, Portugal. The Man is a band that easily stands out.  Through strong internet promotion (including a regularly updated blog) and charmingly innovative music, they delivered their fourth studio album, The Satanic Satanist last July 21, along with an acoustic version titled The Majestic MajestyGlide spoke with lead singer John Gourley about his band’s new albums and recent festival appearances.

You recently played Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza, what’s the festival experience been like?

Um, its been really great. Its actually just been a lot of fun for us, you know. We’ve been on tour for basically three years straight before playing any of these festivals and you really don’t get to see a lot of music outside of the bands you tour with. So, it was a really cool experience. Even if we didn’t do it we would have the options to go see bands and the option to go see a lot of the bands that are playing and are relevant in music today.

Did you get to see any other bands?

Yeah, we did. We just played Outside Lands and we actually spent a full day hanging out at the festival without anything to do, which is kind of a rare event for a band, I think. Normally at festivals we would have so much work to do that nobody really knows about. I watched M.I.A. yesterday, which was so good. I mean, the sound was awful, the set wasn’t the best thing, but she is just so much fun to watch. I could just watch her dance all day long and be so content. Just because it’s so much fun, she’s just happy and cool.

Are there any other performances that got to you?

Yeah, I watched Heartless Bastards for the first time and it was really really good. Very rock and roll. Very cool. Who else did I see? My parents were down here for Outside Lands, which is why I actually got to go out and see some bands. I told everybody, "I’m hanging out with my parents, this is what I’m doing!" but my mom had been staying up on the festivals because we played over in Europe as well as Outside Lands, Lollapalooza and Bonnaroo, so my mom had been keeping track of all these new bands and she came down with her own list, ya know, "I want to see Bats for Lashes". Bat for Lashes was the main thing that she wanted to see. And she absolutely loved it. I missed Bats for Lashes, but from everything my mom said it was great. But, we watched that and we saw Mars Volta. I had never seen them before. Really good, really really crazy. My parents were just laughing like crazy the whole time because it was just like an event, you know.        

How do you go about choosing your live material?

Well, I think lately we’ve actually practiced, which I think helps a lot. We’ve been on tour for so long, and we’ve played a thousand shows at this point and it’s one of those things that starts to come naturally and if it doesn’t you really have to sit down and look at what you’re doing. It starts to come naturally, realizing what works into which song. We kind of jam stuff out, I think that’s the best way to do it is to just jam and see what just works and what doesn’t. You have to keep a constant movement to a set, whether it’s two songs or two covers or two jams, there has to be a constant movement, at least within our band. We sometimes have to adjust songs that might sound different on the record, we’ll bring them out live and do something new with it just for the sake of the flow and just for the sake of doing something new and fun. I think it’s cool to do that stuff, it’s fun to do that.
 
 You’ve come out with an album each year since 2006, how do you stay so creatively tuned?
 
 I feel that I always need to point out that it is a year (laughing). You know, it’s funny, I feel like musicians have the most relaxed life ever because an album a year is such a big deal, everybody always asks about the "album a year," but it’s a year, you know, how many stories do you have to write in a year. You look at a lyrics sheet and it’s not half of what you have to write down for this interview, you know.

 But it’s also in the middle of touring and all that, so you must get pretty busy?

I guess there is a lot going on. But you also see a lot and you play every single day. You know, I always go back to this just because it’s what I know but, my dad builds houses, you know. He doesn’t build one house a year, he builds many houses in a year and people live in those houses, they grow old in those houses, the raise families in those houses. It’s just, it’s what we do. It’s very relaxed, I always feel like we should be doing more than we do just because it’s fun and it is what we do, and for the sake of progress and learning and knowing ourselves better and what we do better.

What has the evolution of your albums represented to you?

We have the best time with this stuff. It’s so much fun to go into the studio every time and just throw something out there. And we don’t just throw it out there, I guess, we just decide when we get to the studio we’ll talk to the producer or whoever is working with us and we’ll say, "What kind of album do we want to make?" So, we just kind of go along those lines and we just let things happen. I think it’s been a really fun way to make music and it’s a really great representation of ourselves and each point in our lives. It’s so great doing an album a year, if we do more it would be even more fun for us because we would see the transitions happening. But, yeah, it’s just that, like a week, or two weeks, or six weeks in our lives that happens every year and we just decide what we’re going to do and just have fun with it.

Do you think the whole process of writing an album starts right after your past album? Are you already planning stuff for your next album?

Yeah, we’ve actually written about ten songs done towards the next album. Yeah, we’re always working on stuff. It’s part of playing music. I always get very confusedand its been two years since their album came out and they’re supposed to be working on something new and they don’t have anything written. That always freaks me out, I’m just like, "Have you been thinking about anything? Do you have an idea?" "No, no" and these are bands that write in their practice space. I think we have, like I said, after playing a thousand shows, we have a really great luxury of knowing each other very very well. And the fact that we jam, we get used to doing things on the spot, so we have a really cool advantage in that. But it is good to be thinking about, we’re always thinking about it, we’ll always talk about what covers we should do and what songs we should play on the next tour.

And it helps you stay creative throughout that time.

Yeah, definitely, and we always do different versions, we’ll change things up from night to night. The lead lines,  I don’t know where, well, I know where this comes from, we’re not exactly schooled musicians, so we just kinda go for it. You know, the lead lines are different from night to night, the basic melody stays there, but we just try to keep it going, not stay too straight.
 
What’s the story behind your new acoustic album "The Majestic Majesty"?

We recently, for the last two albums and part of "Church Mouth", we started doing these acoustic videos with our buddy out in Chicago. It’s really fun making these acoustic videos. We go out to these random spots and he does the video and everything. It just got us thinking about it more and more, you know, we really need to make a studio version of this and it was something that was fun to make. I think it’s good to do, it’s really good for a band to be taken out the rock element and strip it back and be able to play it acoustic. This is something, by the way, that is not my idea at all. Our manager and my dad have always said this to us, they’ve always said, "Can you play it acoustic?"

But, you’re happy with their idea?

Yeah, it’s good to do. I don’t know if I’m giving you way too much information.

Are you sick of the Alaska references every time someone writes about your band?

Oh, no, not at all. It’s where we come from. It seems like such an exotic place, I think, to everybody on the outside but it’s so much like everywhere else. It’s just, it’s where we come from, you know.  I feel like a lot of Hoodies don’t get enough credit for what they are. It is strange that, I think it’s amazing that Zack and I, and the whole original band, grew up in such a small place. I can’t believe I found like-minded people that wanted to play music together anyway, let alone to get out of the state and try to do something with it. I think it’s a very great place to grow up and it’s again, like anywhere else. I think when you grow up in a small place, just like if you grew up in a small town in Montana, you begin to take it for granted and you lose track of how beautiful it is and what it gave you.

What’s coming up in your immediate future?

We’re going on tour. We leave for tour in two weeks. That’s really fun for me to say because we’re just ending a tour today, but in two weeks we head out on our headline tour and it should be really cool. We’re going out with some good bands and people that we really like and then, like three or four weeks in the U.S. and then two months over in Europe, which should be a lot of fun. It always blows my mind going over there because you never really sit, so you’re constantly changing language and having to read all these crazy signs. Coming back, coming back this last time, it was the longest we’ve been there, we were over there for a month and a half and it was the funniest adjustment. Just flying into New York and all of a sudden being able to read and understand everything. I felt like I was talking really slow to all my friends, like, "Let’s go get some food". It was very cool.
 

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