The Airborne Toxic Event: The _Heeb_ Interview

Named for a line in the Don DeLillo book White Noise L.A. band The Airborne Toxic Event suddenly found itself this year with a shit-hot full-length album recorded and a song in regular play on a major radio station, but without a label or a manager. Heeb caught up with the band before a recent show in San Francisco, on a day when the future seemed entirely vague. Since then, they have appeared on The Late Show with Carson Daly, which we all know is a precursor to mega stardom, signed with Majordomo, and announced the July 15th release of their first full-length album.

Lead singer Mikel Jollett started A.T.E. (sorry guys, but you need a mod acronym) a few years back as a reaction to a confluence of shitty events including a break-up, an illness, and his mom getting diagnosed with cancer. Needing a creative outlet Jollett picked up a guitar, penned some songs and teamed up with drummer Daren Taylor,eventually adding bassist Noah Harmon, viola/keyboard player/tambourine queen Anna Bulbrook, and guitarist/keyboard player Steven Chen.

The band is of course jazzed about signing to a label, releasing their album, quitting their day jobs and touring this summer. It’s a nice ending to the "band in limbo" moment we captured a couple of weeks ago, but people show their character best when things aren’t all roses and optimism and these guys (and gal) proved to be genuninely good eggs, exhibiting such traits as honesty, integrity, and passion that we don’t get to see too often in, well, pretty much anyone. Also, they’re really fucking good. Go see them live.

So, this is a little weird because I already sorta know all the basic band questions.

Mikel Jollett- What, didn’t you prepare questions? What is this Westervelt? I can’t believe you!

Steven Chen – So unprofessional!

Mikel – You guys know we used to work with Amy right?

Steven – Yeah, in fact I just finished editing two of your pieces – good job by the way, they were good.

Noah Harmon – Ask about what we’ve been going through since we were added to major radio play

Yeah that’s good – how have things changed since you got major radio play? Also I know you guys have been getting a lot of press and you have a fancy new manager too right?

Mikel – No, no manager

I thought you were working with Cold Play’s manager?

Mikel – Yeah, that was like an annulled marriage.

Noah – We went to Vegas, we all had some drinks, Elvis presided.

Mikel -The whole thing was all very amicable – some people you vibe with, some you don’t and we were like I don’t think this is gonna work, and they were like I’m so relieved you said that.

Okay, what has happened since January, when you were last here in San Francisco?

Steven – We were added to KROQ and Indie 103.1 – two major rock stations in LA -plus Live 105 in San Francisco. Aaron, who does Pop Scene where we’re palying tonight, is a DJ at Live 105 and when we played last time, "Sometime Around Midnight" was still a brand new song and he said what the hell is that song? I want to play that tomorrow. So we recorded it, sent it to him, and he played it. He’s been a big supporter of the band.

Anna Bulbrook: He really went crazy for that song and pushed us to get it to him.

Steven : It’s been kind of a different reality since then – we did a month long residency at Spaceland, then Detroit Bar in the OC then went to New York and SF and did a sold out show in LA at the Troubador, then we went to South by Southwest. And we’re finishing up our first full-length album.

Daren Taylor: Wow, that was very thorough. Sort of like a professor speaking.

Steven – Well, I just wanted to catch her up

It’s okay, it’s good to know that, but how has life actually changed for you guys with all this happening?

Mikel – All our friends think we’re like rich or about to get really huge, at least the ones in L.A. ‘cause we’re in L.A., but nothing’s really changed that much because we haven’t signed to a record deal or anything. What did happen is that immediately our phone just started ringing off the hook. All the major labels were calling and we spent like two months being wined and dined.

Noah – We got some free lunches

Mikel – Yeah, we didn’t pay for a lot of meals there for awhile. And we were meeting all these different people and heads of labels and you know some old school music industry people that you hear spoken about in hushed tones. So that was really interesting and cool, and it sorta felt like we were strapped on a rocket ship headed for Mars, um, and that’s pretty much it. And then we were like what are we gonna do with this album we’re working on, you know? ‘Cause we didn’t have a manager, we didn’t have a label or anything and all of a sudden one of the largest radio stations in the world is playing our song all the time and we were just this local band so that was kinda cool.

Are you looking for a manager now?

Mikel – Not really, we’ve sorta been talking to a few managers but we’re figuring out our label situation first and how we’re gonna put this record out. Everything’s been falling apart in the music industry and suddenly we have this record we want to put out.

Noah – It puts us in a precarious spot.

Mikel – Yeah, we’ve got some big decisions to make – are we gonna go with an indie label or a major label? We’re gonna announce our whole thing in 5 days.

Note – Since announcing its signing with Majordomo, Steven had this to say, "Given the state of the record industry, we were apprehensive about getting into bed with a major label, and we felt that, as something halfway between a major and an indie, Majordomo had the right combination of major label resources and progressive thinking that would allow us to keep doing what we were doing—on our terms—and on a larger scale… It’s made up of people who’ve worked at both indies and majors and was started by the folks who started Rhino, so they’ve got a ton of experience among them. Very nice people, too."

And Mikel told another blog "Our theory is that the indie vs. major label shit doesn’t matter. In this day and age, distribution channels are open. We made it onto KROQ and Indie 103.1, and we did it unsigned. We just wanted a partnership with people who think the same way, who are interested in putting out good music and not concerned with being too indie or too major. And we know if we get dropped off the radio, they’re not going to give up on us. They’re going to keep pushing for us. They believe in our live show, they believe in the record. That’s why it made sense to sign with them: it’s the kind of deal that doesn’t make us feel dirty at all. We feel great about it."

Now back to the interview already in progress…

What has the whole process of finding a label been like?

Mikel – The label thing has been a total education.There’s all these weird rules and clauses in the music industry and we don’t really know about that stuff. We know about playing shows and writing songs.

Noah – If you listen to people you think you need a publicist, a radio person a street team a this a that and we’re like uh….what?

Mikel – It’s a really weird time but I think it’s actually brought us all closer together. None of us know how any of thus will play out. We’ve had the top people in the music industry telling us ‘You’re gonna be fucking rock stars and we’re gonna give you all this money,’ and we’re like ‘Yeah!’ And then we wake up the next morning and hey, that guy didn’t call us back.

Anna – Yeah three weeks go by and we’re like, what happened? I thought he really liked us.

Noah – I mean, I shook his hand and looked into his eyes!

Mikel – There are some situations that have come up where we could’ve taken some fucking money but we want to have long careers and in the longrun you lose so much money and if you’re willing to stick it out and work and struggle for now it means we can have an honest living down the road…

Noah – Yeah, but let me translate for Mikel “fucking money” means people that want us to do something we don’t want or are just dangling a carrot.

Mikel – And we realized that that’s not the kind of stuff we want and we didn’t want to go that route. It’s not the kind of band we are. And also these days in music if you’re a band and the industry is sort of crumbling all around you, every single thing points to create your own thing. Trust the people you work with, own everything you do, do the honest thing, which is: convert fans, play shows, sell albums, shake hands, and control your music. Handing your stuff over to someone for a check just doesn’t work anymore.

Noah – Yeah if you don’t want Fergie to guest appear on your album then you have to be in a position where you can say no.

Anna – Lovely girl, nothing against Fergie. Great figure. Fergie you have wonderful abdominal muscles.

Noah – There are situations where you are going to be involved with people who are looking to put out music as a product and it’s simply as a product and they’re looking at what you’ve done in the past that has been successful for said company.

Daren – How much money are you gonna make us?

Noah – Right and to sign on to something like that as a band, you’re gonna be expected to meet benchmarks for record sales and they’re gonna say you need to work with this person, you need to sound like this, your image needs to be like this.

Steven – Coming into this from the outside you can look at it and not having done any of it you can say oh well this would make sense and I’m a smart person and obviously you’d do this and that. But when you go into it they’ve got all this fairy dust and they couch things in this crazy language and before you know it you’re like oh yeah, that sounds good.

Noah – I mean we were nodding along to a bit of it, I can’t say we were totally immune to it. People say a lot of stuff and it’s hard to separate reality from promises and, you know, people have jobs and people work for record companies.

Daren – Not only that but after all this song and dance stuff where they tell you what to do and the way you should look, there’s nothing stopping them from saying well, we’re gonna put this on the shelf for a couple of years. And then you’re screwed. Because they don’t want to do anything and you can’t do anything. You can’t record again, you’ve just got to wait for it.

Mikel – We had this little bubble and then we let some other people in the bubble and we were like, ugh, these people suck and we closed the bubble. There’s five people in this band and five people make the music for this band and make the decisions for this band and it’s an artistic project that’s very much the product of five very strong-willed people and we want things to be a certain way. It was really foreign to us to have someone say okay, steven’s the shy one, you’ll be the…

Anna – Hey Mikel you wanna be famous? We’ll make you the blind guy

Mikel – And Daren can wear a lot of guyliner. And only chaps for some reason.

Daren – I’ll be girl and Anna can be the boy.

Noah – Anna’s the metrosexual boy – that’s her thing.

Mikel – it was really weird but it really helped us in the end; it was sort of a crucible and it made us think okay, what are we? And we didn’t really know until we went through it but now it’s totally clear.

Noah – It was a great learning experience because at the end of the day regardless of who you’re dealing with or what sort of esteem is attached to their name, at the end of the day there are five people who get to decide what happens for this group. And we kinda think everyone should operate that way. You need to do your own thing and it’s not good to get bullied by someone’s whim.

Daren – You see those dollar signs and you’re like ‘yes!’ and it’s hard to say no, but it’s really important.

How do your songs generally come together?

Mikel – Generally I’ll write a song and I’ll bring it to the band and we’ll figure out how we’ll play it. For some songs on the record Noah and I have weirdly become a songwriting team.

Anna – Weirdly?

Mikel – Well, would you have thought like 9 months ago that we’d be writing songs together?

Noah shakes his head no

Mikel – But we’ve found out that we actually work really well together as a songwriting team so some of the songs on the album we consider to have written together. So anyway, a song is written and then…

Daren – We sorta fill in the gaps. The meat is Mikel and then we’re like the spices and parsley.

Mikel – It’s a collaborative effort – we all come from really different backgrounds which is awesome. Noah has a jazz background, Anna has a symphonic background, Daren was in punk and indie bands forever, Steven’s also more like indie. Everyone has different perspectives and there’s really a healthy respect for making stuff we think is good. We want to make music we think is good with no particular genre to it.

Daren – Pleasing to the ear, make ya want to dance

It does make you want to dance

Daren – Yeah! See there you go.

Noah – That’s what we want. We want the crowd to be involved. We really do want it to be an event. Something to take home with you.

Has the attention you’ve gotten gone to anyone’s head?

Mikel – That’s actually a decent question – but no because we’re still broke. I’ve got like $200 in my bank account.

Steven – Well aside from it going to people’s heads, we have been feeling a lot of support and I don’t know, the whole LA music community gathering around this scene and I feel like people are excited about the band and you can feel it more and more as we play more shows and that’s been exciting.

Noah – Yeah, and our friends who are in bands are especially supportive and really excited for us and then new fans we meet have already put us on a different level than we personally think that we’re at. It seems like a lot of people we’re meeting think we’re way bigger than we are and then when they see us bringing our car up to the back they’re like woah.

Anna – Yeah, hey, why are you setting up your own gear? Well, that’s because that’s what you do and we’ll be doing it for a long time.

Mikel – People ask – where’s your roadies?

Anna – Where’s your van?

Noah – And then they see us Flintstones start our car with our feet out the bottom

What’s the most difficult part then, the no money thing, the waiting game?

Anna – I think it’s having to adjust your expectations all the time. We have big aspirations and we’re willing to work to achieve them and in the process, you know, small things happen and it’s easy to get really excited but ultimately success is a confluence of a lot of incremental steps so you can’t get too wild about any up or down because you’re moving in the right direction even if it’s sort of in a zig-zag. So there’s been some really exhilarating moments and getting to experience that is really amazing but you have to come down from that and remember that it’s just all part of the process. I think that’s the hardest part but I think we’re doing it.

Noah – Well said!

Mikel – Totally, the last few months in particular

Daren (laughing) – I completely disagree.

Steven – The hardest part for me is knowing which part of my genius to draw from.

Anna – Ahem, if I may continue, I think the other thing that’s really weird right now, especially this day of this week, is that we’re in the middle of a netherworld between ups and downs and we just don’t know, we really don’t know what’s going to happen, so it’s really hard to have expectations or make plans or just like in some ways deal with the basic things about life – do you want to move your house or do you want to end a relationship you’re in or start another one or whatever it is, there’s a lot of that kind of stuff and we’re in limbo, and it’s hard.

Mikel – Yeah, you wonder, am I being practical? I mean I’m gonna be gone for almost two years and I need to figure out how that’s gonna work with my family and friends. Or then, is it really more practical to take things one day at a time because you never know?

Noah – Yeah, am I gonna move out of my apartment and move in with my folks for a coupla weeks before we tour or am I gonna end up going on tour for only a month and end up living with my folks for the next fucking year?

Anna – We’ve all been trying to make ourselves as mobile as possible but there’s only so much you can do and we don’t have a tour schedule for the next six months in our hand so we can’t really have any expectations for what’s next.

Noah – The check has not cleared yet.

Are you feeling more and more like people know who you are at shows though?

Mikel – Definitely

Anna – The first time that we played and the whole crowd sang along to "Sometime Around Midnight" was pretty wild. I was like wow, where’s that reverb coming from?

Steven – It’s actually a lot of pressure when people know your songs ‘cause then you’re like ‘shit I hope I don’t fuck this up because people will totally know. They know the parts and they know when you’re supposed to do stuff.

Noah – With that being said, I mean we stand behind our live show. Please, come see us. We like nothing more than to have you out, especially if you hate us.

Daren – Oh yeah, definitely, we’ll make a believer out of you.

Have you gotten tired of any of your songs?

Mikel – Not really. I get tired of hearing ‘em. But not of playing them. Like once you’ve done a video for a song and then recorded it you’ve heard it so many times it’s just like ugh. But playing it is always fun. Particularly in new settings and for new people.

Darren – Because they love hearing you; the audience love hearing you and that give you the incentive and adrenaline to play.

Noah – And different rooms sound different. One night one song will just not be as hot and then a song that you don’t feel like is a big hit people will just respond to it . There will be some kind of energy out on a specific night and a song will just pop and people will be going wild. And that’s really exciting.

Do you guys still get nervous going on stage?

Darren – Oh, always.

Anna – It totally depends on the night.

Darren – The time we went to England, the first time we played, I don’t know about these guys but I was hitting these padded walls just trying to get out all the nervous energy I had. I started playing drums when I was 15 and it never changes. Never. Even now, like tonight I know before we go on I’ll be like okay ten minutes to go, I’ll be tapping my foot, getting nervous. I can’t explain it I don’t even know why it’s just the way it is.

Anna – It feels good to get a little ramped up before you play but I feel like it’s sort of like riding a bike – the more you do it the better you get at it and so what’s a little frightening at first becomes almost like second nature.

Steven – There’s always one point in the first song where we all look at each other and we know it’s all good and we can relax. And then you get to have more fun, you’re not just doing the song, you get to sort of play around with it and interact with people on the stage differently. It’s fun.

Have you ever had anyone boo or heckle you, or not like your shows?

Mikel – I mean I don’t know if every single person liked it in the crowd, but I think with our set people seem to like that we’re not really interested in being affected. We try to bring the audience with us and we don’t want there to be distance between us and the audience. We consider ourselves very much servants of the audience. It comes off when people are sort of strutting around stage and we don’t really want any part of that.

Noah – What a lot of bands who start getting a bit of success and feeling like they’re hot shit forget is that you’re literally nothing without an audience. You can be the coolest guys on the block but if everyone thinks you’re a dick and doesn’t go to your show, you got nothing. They’re not your fans so much as you are their band.

What do you think?