INTERVIEW WITH MEN

Getting from Long Beach to Filter's Culture Collide Festival was no easy task. I even left early, thinking I would arrive a few minutes early. Long Beach had a marathon going, which was a maze just to get to the freeway. The 710 had construction, but traffic isn't new to LA. Luckily my trusty driver got us there on right on time, amazing. We met with JD and Michael over at Taix, a snazzy French restaurant in Echo Park and had a chat.

OH SNAPS: Since the launch of your album, how do you think the album's been received since it's come out in February?

JD: I think its been received well in terms of reviews and stuff but i think that we've kind of maintained the same standards that we've had before. It didn't really necessarily reach other communities or a larger fan base like we though it would.

OH SNAPS: That was actually our follow up question, if you think you got the more mainstream people.

JD: I mean I think it's been complicated as a queer band, you know, we definitely started with a built-in fan base. It was really awesome to have that and we have continually played for them and written for them  and you know kind of cultivated that scene. But definitely in the industry right now we need to gain more than just this niche crowd. Its like so we've definitely been like working on trying to get there.

OH SNAPS: Have remixes helped?

JD: It's funny you mentioned that because I talked to actually the manager from the band, The Presets, and they were talking about that and how if we've generally asked other queer people to do remixes for us which has actually not helped that much because we are staying in the queer scene. But um, that's something that we've tried to do a little bit of like on the "Simultaneously" remixes.

OH SNAPS: I remember the first time I heard one of your songs, i didn't know the band existed at the time and I heard it on a mix. I thought that this is cool. I like the mix and all that and usually I find the playlist/set list and that's how I first heard of the band.

OH SNAPS: Now this started off as a side project right?

MICHAEL: Yea, we were doing this sort of like more art and music kind of performance called HIRSUTE with Emily Rose and Ginger Brooks Takahashi, and JD and Jo were doing MEN as a DJ project. And then, basically various circumstances lead to the merging of the two groups.

OH SNAPS: Do you guys plan on continuing with this? I don't know how far ahead you are thinking but…

MICHAEL: Yeah, we worked all summer on new music. So, when we get off of this tour in November we're planning on getting back to the studio.

OH SNAPS: So, another album?

MICHAEL: Another album or just another bunch of new songs.

OH SNAPS: At least an EP, that would be tight.

JD: Yeah, we have more songs than we would need for a record. Its more just how we're gonna put that out is the question. I think live, it's been important for us to continue to involve different people and just create a different kind of show every time. But i think, you know, we just hope to get bigger in size, on stage.

OH SNAPS: As in adding more band members?

JD: Yeah, we've been doing three and having different people fill in the third spot. If our finances allowed, I think it would be really cool to have a full band.

OH SNAPS: I found that this album is pretty dance oriented, do you guys think that probably brought more people, a few more different listeners?

JD: I don't know, I think it was weird, we actually wrote the record like three years before it came out. So I think that at that time it was written, the time that we wrote it, it was on point and what everyone was doing. But I think when it came out it was a little bit old news, in terms of the genre. You know? I mean that's how I felt. I was like "well we wrote these songs a few years ago, i feel like we would be doing something different". So I think it's important for us now to get the songs that we are writing now out now instead of waiting. I think the whole world is a little bit less, I mean dance is still happening, but I think that in terms of the fresh new tracks seem a little bit more down temple and I think we saw that on what we wrote this Summer.

OH SNAPS: Since you guys starting touring, from the first time till now, how do you feel about your live performances? Are they improving? You guys had mentioned that you are bring more people in, do you think they are improving or fine tuning your music while you're out there?

JD: I think it's a constant experiment. It's important to us to always have a different show every time. Right now it's almost better or just more interesting or whatever it is. It's still different and I think that's like, I don't know what more interesting means but you know, it's kind of just important to change. I just don't think people want to come back to see a band that's playing exactly the same things that they played six months ago in exactly the same way, you know? So i think that it's been important for us to continue to adapt.

OH SNAPS: Like read the crowd sort of?

JD: Yeah, well not even. Read ourselves. What do we want to do this time? It's an adaptation of the music thats on the record and that's what a live performance should be. This is a new experience.

OH SNAPS: Did you guys do anything different last night (regarding their surprise show at The Smell), for the show besides be real secret about it?

MICHAEL: On this tour we have a live percussionist & drummer which is something we've only tried a couple of times, random shows here and there. In the past it's been two string instruments, a guitar and bass, and JD doing keyboards and vocals and everything but this time it's someone playing bongos, congas and drum kit-ie kind of stuff. Adding a whole other dimension.

JD: It's interesting because then we don't have the other string instruments, so it's been like gaining one thing and losing another and trying to figure out how to make it be as complex as possible with just the three of us. I think that its funny because we actually build our live performance based on how much we can afford to take with us. So we end up like being like, well we need to do a mini-van so we can only have three people and our sound engineer so, what three person thing can we figure out to make it different but still really exciting and cool.

OH SNAPS: Have you guys noticed any backlash while performing live on the issues you guys talking about on the record, like people's negative comments.

JD: No, not really. Nothing live. Sometimes people are like "are you a girl or a boy" but I don't even think that's a mean question.

MICHAEL: I feel typically the opposite. Like people don't really understand who we are right away, If you are at a show and you are not a MEN fan. You're like, "What is this?". But I feel like we do a good job on getting people psyched on the music. Maybe they're not completely aware of the content but I think they have some idea of what's happening, but generally it's been positive.

JD: It's kind of the answer to your first question. The people who come to our shows are our fans and they stand for everything we stand for and I think that's awesome. We're lucky enough to not have douchebags at our show, but, we're also like "Do we want douchebags to come to our show?" There's nothing better than a total football player meathead straight guy coming to your show and being like "That was fucken awesome!" It feels more of like a positive change.

MICHAEL: Like that guy who came up to us in Germany to the merch table and he's like, "I am a VERY heterosexual but I think this is very important music that you guys are doing."

OH SNAPS: I haven't read this anywhere, maybe I'm not researching hard enough or something. How did the name come about and did you guys have any other name options?

JD: Like Michael said this is the combination of two projects. We used MEN over the other one (HIRSUTE) because we had already done a bunch of press as MEN and it was less confusing. It kind of turned out to be more confusing because MEN is really hard to Google and also there's like a couple other bands called it. The idea for it came because Jo and I were DJing and we were flying and we were talking about feminism and she was like "I have this new philosophy, which is, what would a man do in this situation?" It's kind of, just like confidence. As a woman a lot of times we apologize for things that aren't our fault or take responsibility for things that aren't our fault. If someone at a club is telling us that we're not going to get your guarantee even though you're contracted to, instead of like saying "oh, okay, sorry we didn't bring enough people" you say, "no actually, it's your fault that there's not enough people here and you made a mistake so pay us our full thing". So someone asked us that day for a name and we were like MEN.

OH SNAPS: I have to ask the random silly question. Tacos or Pizza?

MICHAEL: Pizza, I'm a New Yorker.

JD: If the question was burritos or pizza…

OH SNAPS: Oh burritos, okay. Tacos/Burritos, same thing.

JD: I think I would rather have a burrito, but it has to be a good burrito. Which in New York is hard to find. So if I'm in LA, definitely a burrito. You don't understand, burritos and tacos in New York are disgusting.

Check out photos from Filter's Culture Collide Festival here.

At the end of the day, MEN gave a great performance. Fans loved their new live act, since a few of them had seen them perform previously at Coachella. I'm looking forward to seeing something come out next year. You can catch the rest of their tour below.

October 22 Webster Hall, New York, NY **

October 23 Paradise, Boston, MA **

October 24, 9:30 Club, Washington, DC **

October 26, 40 Watt, Athens, GA **

October 28, House of Blues, Dallas, TX **

October 29, House of Blues, Houston, TX **

October 30, La Zona Rosa, Austin, TX **

** indicates support dates with CSS