Venice is Sinking

Daniel Lawson is nothing if not humble. And he’s a guy who seems genuinely amazed and about how he and his bandmates in Venice Is Sinking ended up where they are. To be a singer/guitarist in a band from Athens, GA — land of 1,000 indie bands — they’ve accomplished a rare feat: standing out by not drawing attention to themselves. They won’t demand your attention or punish your eardrums with over-the-top noise. Instead, they just make heartfelt, great sounding orchestral pop records.

Venice is Sinking’s third full length, Sand and Lines, has a ready-made story built into it. It’s a live record in a non-traditional sense, recorded over five days (mostly nights) with David Barbe (Drive By Truckers, Sugar) in the now-incinerated Georgia Theatre. SO when he sat down with SSv’s Scott Elingburg, Lawson explains how the new record came to be, what it was like to work with David Barbe, and how sometimes being a band is about more than recouping expenses — it’s about doing the right thing.

SSv: So I’ve actually known about you guys since you had your split EP with the band What We Do Is Secret back in 2005.

Daniel: Wow. Really? That was a while ago.

SSv: Yes, and that’s a great release, too, but we should start with the new album, Sand and Lines because there’s a pretty amazing story behind it. You guys recorded the album at the Georgia Theatre, right?

Daniel: Yeah. Basically we were in the middle of recording our second record, AZAR. We had played a couple of shows at the Georgia Theatre and after one show it was around 3 in the morning and we were loading out and the owner [Wilmont “Wil” Greene] was helping us carry stuff to the van and he threw the idea of making a record with us in the Georgia Theatre out there. And it was really late and everyone had had a couple drinks, so we just thought it was late-night, alcohol-influenced talk. [Laughs] We didn’t think a lot about it because we were in the middle of mixing our second record.

Then the next show we played at the Georgia Theatre he brought it up again; only this time he had talked to Dave Barbe and had set aside a date and some times to do it. It was really happening then and we were all a little… not shocked, but definitely surprised and a little bit worried because we were so involved in the recording process of the second record that the idea of making another album that soon kind of freaked us out. And our bass player had left the band so we didn’t have a bass player. But we decided we had to do and it sounded like a great opportunity and a cool experience. So we just made it work.

SSv: You can’t really say, “No thanks, we’re not feeling it” when the owner sets aside some time specifically to record an album…

Daniel: Right, and getting a chance to work with Dave Barbe, well, you just can’t say no to that. And his whole idea for the record –  to record it with one microphone, completely live — definitely was appealing to us at that time. Our second record was so labored over and recorded in the exact opposite fashion, that it seemed pretty exciting to us to make a record as a band with a set time and just knock it out. Because we never recorded that way before.

SSv: What kind of role did Dave Barbe play for you guys? Was he a mentor, audio engineer, a coach, or did he just let the tape roll…

Lucas: I’d say he was probably all those things you described rolled into one. I think he was excited about the project and definitely spent some time figuring out what equipment he wanted to use and figuring out which microphone it was going to be and how it was all going to work. He definitely had to coach us through some things at certain times. He did the mixing, but really that was just making sure we were in the right place on the stage and moving amps a couple of feet or turning Karolyn [Troupe]’s viola part up at one point in the song with his fingers. If we needed that push at one point in the song. He was a big part of it.

SSv: That’s quite a testament to what the owner say in you guys to go and get Dave Barbe. I’m sure there are lot of band who would love to record with him.

Daniel: Oh yeah, definitely. We felt pretty honored and privileged to do it. We had to do it.

SSv: Nervous, too?

Daniel: Yeah, you know Lucas, our drummer had actually made a record with him before in another band. So he worked with Dave before and was pretty familiar with him; the rest of us just knew his work and knew we wanted to work with him.

SSv: How difficult was it — or was it difficult — to record these tracks? Was it kind of like a marathon where you came out the other end exhausted or was it a lot of fun?

Daniel: I think both. You know, all of us either have day jobs or are pursuing Graduate degrees here at the University [of Georgia]. So we would all have to get off work, get done with school around 6PM and get down there and roll tape until we were too tired to do anymore. I think we worked from 6pm to midnight or 6pm to 2am for four days and I guess there was a fifth day where we recorded one song in the afternoon before we had to pack everything up. It was a lot of fun but it was pretty exhausting just to be rolling take after take of these songs.

SSv: Were the songs left over from the AZAR record or were they new songs you were working on? I know there are a couple of cover songs on the record, too.

Daniel: Well, when we found out that the time was set aside to record, we didn’t know if we had enough songs to do an entire record. We pulled a few out that we all liked that we had been playing live for a while that never had a place on previous recordings; songs that just didn’t fit. We had a short list of those and a couple of covers that we had been playing live. The rest of them, Lucas and I spent several nights just trying to get some songs together. Some of the songs felt a little rushed but they all came together well.

SSv: The end product doesn’t feel like a live album. It’s in-between a live album and a studio release. It feels like the next progression from AZAR and a bold move as a band, I think.

Lucas: Yeah, I don’t know about bold, but it was definitely a big departure and change for us. AZAR was so labored over and we spent so much time on it and the recording process was so spread out due to ours and [producer] Scott Solter’s schedules. We spent almost a year on it just going up on weekends and getting as much done as possible. And then to make this record in a week and to do it live instead of piecemeal it really made sense. I don’t think we could have made… I don’t want to say any other record, but I don’t think we would have been as excited about making a record that was any other record. Does that make sense?

SSv: Yeah that makes a lot of sense, actually. You said what I was thinking because it does feel like it’s the right record for a band like yours. It’s a very full sounding record and a good fit for Venice Is Sinking, I think. I’ve seen you live once before and it was sparsely attended but I remember thinking, “this music really fills up the space.” And if it was a packed crowd I probably would have lost something because your music does need space. That’s why I thought the Georgia Theatre was perfect.

Lucas: Yeah, it really was. And the owner actually let us practice there on Sundays. Because they were a club and they weren’t open on Sundays because of… Georgia. [Laughs] We were really familiar with the space going into the record and very comfortable there. It felt like home. I think I said this before, but not to you; the room itself was as much a part of that record as any of the musicians. It acts as another musician.

SSv: And I can hear that on the record. It’s like an unspoken band member. But the Georgia Theatre, unfortunately, was burned in a fire. And you’re donating the proceeds from this record to help rebuild it, is that correct?

Daniel: Yeah, we are. We got the call that morning that the theatre was burning and all of us that could drove down there and just tried to console Wil. It just felt like the right thing to do; to let this record be a document of how that place sounded and to let anything that’s made from it go back into helping rebuild it.

SSv: For a band to give back like that, that’s a pretty big gesture. I think it says a lot about your personalities, that’s it’s not about recouping expenses or making money and then donating to a cause.

Daniel: Sure, but… thanks a lot for saying that. Where we are as a band… I guess it’s a big race to the bottom — the kind of music we play and album sales and everything that kind of goes along with that.

SSv: [Laughs]

Daniel: If we can help out friends that have allowed us to make the record then we will do that.

SSv: I don’t mean to laugh, you just said that in such a deadpan manner — you were completely serious about it being a race to the bottom.

Daniel: Well, I mean, I don’t want to come off as negative about it but in a lot of ways it is! There’s a lot of expense to a band and a lot of things that… I don’t know. With us we’re never in it to be profitable or to be some huge band but we want to make the music we want to be able to.

SSv: And that segues nicely into my next question: so, on Twitter one of your posts confirmed that your music had just leaked. And the post said something to the effect of if you can’t afford our music just contact us, we’ll work something out. And I thought, “You know, that’s the right way to deal with that situation.” Don’t go to some Russian site…

Daniel: And get some strange computer virus…

SSv: Right, just contact the band and we’ll work something out. And that’s proactive — something that record labels have neglected and failed to do.

Daniel: Sure. And I really don’t know what the answer is to the music industry. It’s really hard because I think a lot of people who download music or who have been downloading music since they’ve been buying it or listening to it, that’s a hard thing to break and a hard thing to convince people to pay for something that’s so easily available for free. I don’t know. I would much rather have someone approach us as a fan about not being able to afford our music. Because at the end of the day, we just want people to hear our music.

SSv: And this record is a good place to start, too. AZAR is a great, too. I like both records equally.

Daniel: And I’m really glad to hear that someone likes both records because when we were done neither record was out and we didn’t know which one to put out. We thought, “what should we do?” [Laughs] If people like AZAR are they going to like this one? Because they’re both really different.

SSv: Well, they are but it sounds like two sides of the same coin. It displays your musical ability as a band — that you’re not just a studio band or a live band but you have some flexibility.

Daniel: Well, thanks for saying so. That’s nice to hear.

Tagged as: Athens, Georgia, orchestral pop

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