Following a series of extensive cross-country tours that have put them in front of big crowds at major festivals like Bonnaroo, Langerado and Wakarusa, Steel Train has been laying “serious tracks.”
The New Jersey based group has managed to carve out a niche by fusing the sounds and styles of the artists with which they grew up by merging indie rock, pop, bluegrass and country. Frontman and vocalist Jack Antonoff has long been the driving force behind the group, but along with childhood friend Scott Irby-Ranniar (keyboards) Evan Winiker (bass), the group has developed a tightly knit stage dynamic that speaks to their comfort as performers, which they’ve been gradually developed on the road.
As carefree as things may have seemed in the world of Steel Train, the group hit a major bump in the road this past fall. Prior to their plans to hit the studio to follow up their freshman release, Twilight Tales from the Prairies of the Sun, drummer Matthias Gruber and guitarist Matthew Goldman both quit the group, leaving a deep void in Steel Train’s lineup.
There was a legitimate degree of uncertainty in Antonoff’s words that spoke to the challenges the group was facing the last time Glide caught up with him. But through it all, he made it clear his sights were set on the future. Now that Steel Train’s confirming the release of a new album in the Summer 2007, it’s fair to say Jack’s sights were set in the right direction.
How do you make sense of the fact that you’re a New York based band but your biggest market is on the west coast?
It’s math. We supported there, so more people came back to see us. There hasn’t been a lot of “luck” when it comes to our band, and I don’t even mean that in a bad way. We go some place, we’ll open for a bigger band, and when we come back, people will know us, you know? That’s our formula.
One show at a time.
Yeah, one show at a time. When we played in Anaheim, we opened at this place called chain reaction and we had four or five sold out shows there, and now when we go there as headliners, we can draw a good four or five hundred people and sell the place out. Whereas in areas like Virginia, we haven’t done anything yet, so as a result we aren’t worth as much there. In a weird way, it’s kind of comforting, because it shows us that if we work hard, it pays off. I like that because people tend to think that the music industry, and art in general for that matter, is all chance and luck and math and I don’t think so. I think if you play as many places as possible, and you perform good music, then people will come back to the shows.
Is it fair to say that Steel Train is in a transitional period? You’re going to be going into the studio to record the group’s second full length album, and there’s been a bit of a lineup change…
This is a huge transitional period. We haven’t stopped working straight for three years. And when that happens, people just get into the rhythm of things. You know what I mean? You don’t have time to think about the future necessarily because you know that in ten days you’ll be leaving for a tour. It’s very weird to have your entire year planned out. We’ve had that type of thing for a long time, and then we embarked on this tour, and we purposely left a lot of time for us to be at home to do some writing. I think we all agreed that the one place we fucked up on Twilight Tales, was not really spending as much time as we should have on it. We treated it more like a tour, and not as much like a record. There wasn’t a lot of time off. And now there is. When you approach a new record, it’s almost like a new beginning, because it’s a chance for us to reevaluate what we want to do artistically, and in our life. In this transitional period, we’ve lost Mathias as our drummer. He’s 30 years old, and the rest of us are like 22. He’s decided to move back to his family, which isn’t something that’s popped out of nowhere, because its been brewing for a very long time, but I think that being in this state right now has given him the opportunity to really do that. I think it’s a really good thing. He’s a great guy, he’s a great drummer, and he’s a good friend of mine, but his heart has never been there like it has been for the rest of us. So I think it will work out better in the end.
Does the group have anyone else in mind to fill Mathias’ shoes?
We’re talking with a whole bunch of people, but we haven’t decided on anything yet. The great thing is that we have a lot of time to figure everything out. We aren’t hitting the road till February. We’ll be home in the studio, so if there was every a time to slow down and rearrange things, it would be now. Everything’s already been changing. The new music we’ve been working on has been totally different. For everyone who’s involved in it, what we’re going through right now is the sort of thing where you either have to wrap your hands around this completely new idea, or you’re not going to be able to be a part of it.
You just mentioned that the new material thhas been sounding a lot different. How do you feel the sound has evolved from what we heard on Twilight?
I think it’s a lot more concise. Not to sound cheesy, but I think it’s a lot more “in your face.” Not even necessarily more aggressive, but on the softer stuff, more to the point. I feel it makes a bigger statement because on Twilight Tales we made a record that I feel people had to dig very deep to really get. That’s not even necessarily a good thing. In a way it was a good thing because the people who became fans from that record really knew it. It wasn’t because of one song they loved, as much as they really got into it. And that’s a big plus for having a noncohesive album. We want to keep the mystery and the depth of the last album, but we also want to have it be the kind of thing where someone can put it on and be like “that’s definitely Steel Train. That’s what they sound like.” We want it to be specific to us, because I think we’ve been searching for a very specific sound for a long time.
So is if fair to say the group’s learned from the last studio experience and maybe even taking those lessons into the studio this time around?
Absolutely. I think if anything, Twilight Tales, which I don’t want to talk bad about, was in many ways a lesson for how not to make a record.
What exactly do you mean by that?
Well we had all of these fairy tale ideas when we were making that record. It’s good to have those magical feelings, and that naivety when making an album, but there also has to be solid ground beneath that. You can’t just go into the studio and be like “We want to have a crazy vibe. We want to live in a ranch. We want to do drugs, and we just want to record whatever happens.” Those are all cool ideas, but there also has to be a thread to run through it all that can hold it together. I think that we’re very conscious of that. We’re very conscious of what we’re good at and what we’re not good at. We’ve literally sat down and talked about what we’re good at and what people really respond to. And by doing that we feel we can better emphasize those strengths on our next record. We really feel like what we came up with is that people respond very well to us when we harmonize, or the big guitar solos. We feel people really dig when we let loose and get really heavy, so that’s what we’re trying to incorporate more of this time around. Anyone who really knows our band knows there’s a big difference between our studio work and our live show. So we want to make them more of the same thing
Last time the group went into the studio, you did a lot of work with Stephen Barncard, who did a lot of work with the Grateful Dead. You managed to incorporate David Grisman into a few tracks. Does Steel Train have any tricks up their sleeves regarding producers or guest appearances on the new album?
There absolutely will be. I don’t want to give anything away just yet but a big part of our band is the “family vibe.” A lot of the friends we’ve made on the road over the last couple of years will definitely be appearing on our next record. As far as producers are concerned, we’re talking with a lot of different people right now. I think we’re looking towards a more modern direction.
How do you feel a Steel Train show differs from one of the smaller venue’s you’ve played on the most recent tour, versus Bonnaroo?
I feel like we’re performing in a completely different way you know? In a smaller place what I absolutely love, even more than a bigger show, is that there’s no bullshit. I can see the faces of everyone in the room, and they can see our faces and our expressions. Everyone’s in it together, and you can’t fool a crowd of 150 people you know? It’s almost, in a weird way, a lot harder to put together a great show in that environment. Whereas at a festival like Bonnaroo, we’re a lot more concerned with rocking out, because it’s so easy to become overly aware of how big of a venue it is. I feel it’s a lot easier to let us be us in a smaller venue, but learning to work around that is something that comes in time. That’s a sign of really a great band, that they can be themselves in front of a hundred thousand people, you know? It’s what people really love about them, that seeing them in a place like that isn’t any different than seeing them in a smaller venue.
What would you like people to be saying about Steel Train in ten years?
That we’re still progressive. Hopefully we’re still going, but what I hope people say is that it’s still as fun as it was ten or twenty years ago.
