“The Smile at the End of the Slope”(Free Download)- Talking Shop with Whale Belly’s Todd Bogin

Playing with all the pitchy twang that comes to mind when thinking of folk music, the surprisingly urban Brooknlynites Whale Belly are a band we imagine provoking a lot of befuddled faces in the clubs and bars of New York City. Harnessing the lighthearted emotiveness of Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band (We know what you’re thinking, “Wait, Conor Oberst can be lighthearted?”) Big group choruses chock full of call and response reign supreme in the bands album The Smile at the End of the Slope, where the band maintains an unheard of Midwestern charm mixed in with their NYC street smarts that keeps them from being jaded, but gives enough insight on city life. Pairing their plucky style with their own reflections of the Big Apple with lines like “Sick of your Manhattan/ And anyway its gone out of style” in “R-Train to Brooklyn” and “The City”, Whale Belly has created a musical parallel universe between the concrete jungle and places built on simple hospitality. What does this parallel mean? We hope that it melts the frigid heart of the New Yorker stereotype with its warm acoustics and carefree vocals. We also hope it gives unsuspecting small town dwellers a little glimpse into city life that isn’t dripping with sarcasm they don’t understand. For fans of John Butler Trio and River City Extension, Whale Belly’s The Smile at the End of the Slope is sure to be a big hit, and those who are unfamiliar with this friendly, hoot n’ hollering good time in their music, will find themselves introduced to a new favorite.

The Smile at the End of the Slope is available for FREE through Whale Belly’s website- Click here to download

Whale Belly’s Todd Bogin was kind enough to indulge us with a little conversation and answer all our questions about the band’s beginning, influences, and plans for the upcoming year.

Reviewsic: What is the back-story on how the band came to be what it is today?
Todd Bogin: I started playing in New York a few years back under many different aliases, and in different bands. About two years ago, I played an average to slightly bellow average bass in my friend Maggie Doucet’s great band. Eric Fisher, our bassist, playedway above average guitar in the same band, now I play average guitar in our band and he plays amazing bass in it. Around that time I started playing with Josh Henderson, our violinist who was friends with the violinist in Maggie’s band. I’ve been friends with Nick Smeraski, the drummer and producer for 3 years and we used to jam once in a while, usually very abstract stuff. I always thought Nick was the most amazing

engineer and producer and had such an amazing musical mind and wanted him to produce an album of mine but the timing was never right and I could never get him out to one of my shows. He finally came out in like July of 2009, after like 2 years of asking and after I dropped him some demos I was working on that turned out to be some of the songs on the album. He saw me play with Josh, and we must have done well because we started the discussion of doing the album that night, which turned into this 10-song, 23-different musicians thingy. Nick and I met once a week for 6 months before we even recorded one note with a giant booklet of ideas and what the album should sound like, be like, etc. All while keeping an open mind for how it may sound or what will change during the recording process. I think I have over 40 pages of notes saved in a Google Doc. We had such a small budget. I couldn’t pay any musicians; I painted all 23 players a painting and pretty much asked/begged/bartered for them to be on it, some turned me down but most were more than happy to accept. People really came through and gave me hope in humanity and just nice people, and they were all so talented, they all could have demanded a whole lot of money. With our limited funds we realized we could only afford 2.5 days in big studios to do the very important things that you can only do inbig studios (drums, bass, guitars, lead vocals, violins, cellos, pianos, etc). We had to be so prepared and had absolutely no time to waste. We did a day and a half at the amazing Seizure’s Palace in Gowanus, which is the coolest studio you’ll ever see and it’s recorded to analog and one 20 hour day at Headgear Studios in Williamsburg that started at 10am and ended at 6 am, with me and Nick passing out after I laid down the last guitar solo to “Poor Man’s Dance,” that I still can’t remember what I played. A lot of overdubs with vocals and other background instruments were done at Nick’s home studio over a few month period and that’s where Nick mixed the whole thing. It officially turned into this full on band during the recording, with Nick now the official drummer. I had major issues coming up with a band name.

During the span of the recording(which was from Dec ‘09 through May 2010) my girlfriend told me all my band name ideas were awful and that I need to call it Whale Belly, because it’s a take on Led Belly, I love blues, and because we started as just a few members and were able to suck in tons of people to perform on the album, the belly of a whale is a perfect analogy. I do all the artwork for the band and the only thing I vow is that you’ll never see any pictures with our logo that have a whale on them. That’s how we formed, organically you could say and grounded in friendship. The songs on the album range from being written 2.5 years ago to right before the recording and were all just demos I did into Garage Band, mostly as just acoustic pieces that Nick and Josh, and few other very talented folks were able to help me turn it into what it is now. I think overall from 2007- December of 2009, I had over 500 demos recorded that we choice songs from. Given that, 450 of those are awful.

Reviewsic: What are your top three musical influences?

Todd Bogin: Van Morrison, Sam Cooke and The Beatles. But that changes everyday.

Reviewsic: Is there any instrument you don’t play, but wish you did?

Todd Bogin: Violin, Cello, flute, trumpet, Wash Board, Spoons and the Theremin.

Reviewsic: What are the last three albums or bands you listened to?

Todd Bogin: The House FloorWarship, Arcade FireThe Suburbs,

SpiritualizedLadies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space

Reviewsic: If you could work with one person in the music industry (musician, label, producer etc), who would it be and why?

Todd Bogin: It be really cool to see how Neil Young or Paul McCartney or

Bruce Springsteen work, but I totally have to say Jay-Z. That would just be bad ass. He’s probably the coolest dude ever to exist. I would just love to pretend I’m friends with him; I’d be so cool I could start wearing sunglasses on the subway. Plus I would really love to see how he lives. Also everything he sings on is always a giant hit. The only other person who can claim the mantel of the coolest dude alive is probably Bob Dylan but he seems sorta crotchety and would probably not take me on his private jet or go to a Yankees game with me and he’s not married to Beyonce. Also I would ask Jay-Z if he would let me play for one minute with the Nets against the Chicago Bulls, Nets aren’t going anywhere, it won’t ruin their season. I would be god awful, but I think being a pro athlete is the greatest thing ever. My dream job after astronaut is 3rd basemen for the Cubs, best one since Santo. But I can’t field or hit if my life depended on it and I’m afraid of fastballs.

Reviewsic: What is the most memorable concert you’ve ever attended?

Todd Bogin: I go to a lot of concerts in New York of some bands that people don’t really talk about, and I’ve seen most of the classics live. I just saw the Arcade Fire at Madison Square Garden and it was amazing. Seen Dylan and U2. But there’s a whole lot of local bands that are amazing like Kites of Saturn, The House Floor, Jeff Taylor, The Building (who all happen to be on this album!); all of them are great. This new band we just did a show with named Ishmael are amazing and they’re all like 18 year old kids from Weslyan (where playing there soon). Every time I see those bands I get inspired more so than seeing Bono run around a giant stage pretending he’s a modern day Jesus under a giant projection screen claiming we all need to help Africa before he goes backstage to his catered meal.

Reviewsic: Who are three of your favorite local bands?

Todd Bogin: Kites of Saturn: Absolutely insane musicianship that’s very Zappa like. Nick’s mixing their soon to be out debut album.

The House Floor: This band is the best band I’ve seen in Brooklyn, luckily I see them a lot because we always play shows together. Their album Warshipis absolutely brilliant and they’re the nicest guys and good friends of mine. I’ve been listening to some demos of their new stuff and it’s so amazing, just mind blowing. Also, Alex the lead singer is working on a solo album called Peaceful Heart under the name All Fox, it is so damn good. I play one of the songs at home called “Wild Horse.”

Mala Strana: This is Jared Hiller’s, who plays on our album and helped with some cello arrangements, band. Really cool. Utilizing electronics with natural instruments, creating a very futuristic sound with Comic Book like asthetics.

Reviewsic: If you could book a tour with any 3 bands, past or present, who would they be and why?

Todd Bogin: The Rolling Stones circa late-60s through early-70s. That just had to be amazing besides the whole Hell’s Angels killing that dude incident.  Led Zeppelin circa 1971 because I would love to witness the shark incident. Enchantment Under the Sea: Hill Valley High School Prom in 1954, one year before Marty McFly played there. I’d bust out some oldies that aren’t quite written yet for that time. Do some theatrical guitar playing and have Marvin Berry call his cousin Chuck about me, then I’d go on tour with Chuck and do my best to meet Bo Diddley, all one year before Marty McFly would have a chance to do the same thing. Then in 1985 it would be me who would be saving the clock tower and cruising in the Delorean.The only issue with that is it may mess up the space-time continuum and it may be a double-alternate 1985 that I arrive at where my nemesis owns the police, so I would have to tread carefully. And watch out for any mysterious old men handing someone a 20th Century Sports Almanac in 1954.

Reviewsic: Tell us about the The Smile at the End of the Slope – is there a particular concept behind it? What do you hope listeners take away from it?

Todd Bogin: The title was in my head for about 2 years before we recorded the album and when there was probably only 1 song written. I’ve lived for the last few years in South Brooklyn, a tiny forgotten neighborhood known as South Slope/Greenwood Heights. It’s right by Greenwood Cemetery and has this intense industrial look to it that I feel really influenced this album. It’s sort of an outsider Brooklyn neighborhood which is why I love it. There’s tons of hip 20-somethings and the rent is like half of what folks pay in Williamsburg. It’s an underdog neighborhood that once people experience they love, sort of like Chicago. The songs are sort of about characters and people I know in the area.

The overall concept is an album about being human. There are not any love songs or boy meets girls songs on the album but there are songs that mention love or talk about the comedy of love. And a lot of the songs that may be interpreted as being from a personal event are actually based on stories I’ve heard from folks around the neighborhood. Two songs are based onwritings my friends made. I would love people to take from it a sense of realness. It’s not this political statement or religious statement or statement against society or this piece made to fit a trend or make us seem cool. It’s more or less a placement of all of those things, not judged or used to spread a message or idea. More or less stories about how we live nowadays, our mindsets, our interactions with each other, all done honestly and non- judgemental. Musically, the album is performed by musicians who I like to say are musician’s musicians. We’re sort of a bunch of nerds who all play multiple instruments and work really hard on the arrangements, instrumentations and our performance and have no idea how to use MIDI or drum machines. I think the music really shows an honest raw energetic explosion of musicianship. Mainly, I want people to take honesty and enjoyment from this. I want them to think about some of the lyrics but get the music and melodies stuck in their heads. This isn’t an album made to try and change the world, more or less archive the world we are living in. The last thing this world needs is another band with an obvious political motive. I want people to take from this what they want out of music: I hope we put enough in it where people of many different ideas can attach to it for one reason or another.

Reviewsic: How would you compare yourselves as musicians at this point as opposed to when you first began playing together?

Todd Bogin: We all came to this from playing for years in other bands and playing countless live shows and playing on countless albums. So from the beginning there was a musical proficiency, but likeall good teams, we have totally gelled and have gotten to really play well with each other. We have way more fun playing together now that we are used to each other’s playing and now that we’re playing in front of more people and at nicer venues.

Most of all we’re all great friends who just really enjoy playing together, we just have so much fun playing live and I think that shows and I think the recording shows that too. Our sound is definitely expanding and we’re taking way more risks and evolving greatly. Even the songs on the album all sound way more expansive live and the new stuff we’re working on is crazy and really out there in terms of progressions, it’s not so verse chorus. I think we all trust each other as musicians. I realize I play with some absolutely amazing players who are way more talented musically than me. Besides writing the songs, I really just sing and strum a few chords on the guitar and know my role. We’re definitely at the point when we all trust each other’s musicianship and I’m just excited to see where we take that. It’s so much fun for me to play with guys as talented as they are.

Reviewsic: What are some of your favorite cities and/or venues to play?

Todd Bogin: I was born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago, so I just have to go with Chicago. Also because I can stay at my parents place and get free food and watch cable TV even though my dad will still make me mow the lawn or snow blow the driveway. Aside from that, North Carolina has always been fun for me. I also have to have allegiance to Brooklyn only because I live there. DC, because my brother is there. Austin TX is awesome, too. Nashville is cool. I think if I could be anything I’d be awandering America troubadour during the Dust Bowl era andjust travel the country seeing every city and crating a different identity for myself in each one. I sort of love everywhere I go in America and in the world, even if it’s for its awfulness.

Reviewsic: What are the best and worst band moments so far in your career?

Todd Bogin: The worst with Whale Belly would have to be a show we played back in May. I ate a chicken pesto sandwich like 5 hours before our set and got the worst food poisoning of my life. Though I was throwing up before and after the set, I still pulled it off. We played great actually, although I don’t think I moved one inch on stage the entire show. I slept for 2 solid days after. I got inspiration to not give up from Michael Jordan’s game in the NBA finals against the Jazz when he had the flu yet still scored 38 points.

Best will have to be this album, the early response we’ve gotten has been great and I wholeheartedly believe in it so much, it feels great. I’m sure with some of the gigs we have coming up there will be many more memories made. It’s just such a pleasure to be able to record and write and play music, especially with such talented people who are your friends. It’s all gravy to me except for the times that gravy gives you food poisoning.

Reviewsic: What are a few items essential to your “tour survival kit”?

Todd Bogin: Sketch pad to design my next round of paintings, Chicago Blackhawks Stanley Cup Champions t-shirt, Cubs hat, running shoes and shorts to go jogging, computer, iPod, praying someone has a phone with GPS, books and magazines. Pretzel M&Ms, Coach Ditka t-shirt, toothbrush, colorful socks with robots on them.

Tags: Free Music, Interview, New Music