Interview with Electric Owl's Andy Herod

Andy Herod of The Electric Owls

So a little over a month ago I went to the Bishop Allen show and was really impressed with opening one-man band The Electric Owls. Helmed by The Comas' former frontman Andy Herod, he detours from that late 90s fuzz rock to a more melodic, lyrically focused psychedelic folk pop sound.

The crowd was a little wary at first, but really got into his set.He released his four song EP, The Magic SHow, back in November. it has two track from his upcoming 2009 release and two other tracks.

Andy was kind enough to submit to a few questions, so here they are.

The Shimmy Shake: Talk a little bit about how you got from The Comas to > here. How did Electric Owls start?

Andy Herod: Electric Owls was born during the year after I left Brooklyn. I fled suddenly and without much of a plan. I couch surfed in North Carolina for a couple months and wrote these songs in friends bathrooms and kitchens when they were at work. Then I drove to California to work construction at a nuclear power plant on the Central Coast for 2 months. I finished up writing a few more songs there and formed a plan to go back to Asheville NC where a friend manages an amazing studio called Echo Mountain and could get me a good deal. So I asked Jason Caperton who had played bass in The Comas but that I knew to be a particularly gifted guitarist, to join me in California and help spice the songs up during a road trip back to the south.

None of this was done with any end in mind other than to have the best time possible. Which we did. But, at some point we involved a record company to get more money to finish and now it looks like I have a new project. Pretty excited though. The theme is really to approach things very differently than I did in The Comas. To let it go where it wants, to have fun, not to stress, concerned only with beauty and fun.

SS: This is definitely a different sound than what you were doing with The Comas. Kind of like psychedelic folk-pop (but maybe that's just me). But it's enjoyable. How did you get there?

AH: As far as the style of the music goes, it was a conscious effort to make it unique sounding and use as many acoustic instruments as possible. There is very little electric guitar on the record. But to make it full and wild we threw on a whole hell of a lot of synths and super effected string patches. This is what will have people using the psychedelic folk pop adjectives which i am totally happy with.

SS: The lyrics though, remain very personal, and very rich. Is the entire album going to sound like this?

Lyrics where very important to me this time around. I had gotten away from that and I put a lot more effort into making sure that SOMETHING was being said whether it was something personal or a story about someone else.

SS: When can we expect the new album to drop?

New album comes out on Vagrant Records first week of April.

Magic Show EP is out now on itunes now.