The Orange Peels

The Orange Peels

As the mastermind behind California pop-rockers THE ORANGE PEELS, guitarist-songwriter ALLEN CLAPP works magic within classic formulas, sorting and transporting pre-assigned designs into unforeseen regions populated in bracing ocean-sprayed melodies atop beautiful six-string maneuvers and electric kinetic harmonies. With Clapp and his musical companions touring the Midwest with alt-rock troubadour MATTHEW SWEET promoting their sixth studio album, the refreshingly fetching, “Begin the Begone,” MAXIMUM INK had the opportunity to toss Allen a few questions in anticipation of The Orange Peels landing in Madison for the very first-time, July 12th at the High Noon Saloon.

MAXIMUM INK: What originally drew you to your particular musical style?

ALLEN CLAPP: I suppose the framework for my idealized version of a pop group came out of the bands in the mid-1980s who were navigating this massive push forward in technology while still being influenced by the melodic dominance 60s and 70s radio. Bands like the Three O’Clock, Camper van Beethoven, XTC, and REM definitely had a foot in both realities, and sort of became templates for how you could put a band together that could evolve and still hold on to your melodic roots. The other thing is, as a child of the 70s, I’ll always remember listening to Top-40 radio on my transistor radio and the feeling of freedom that gave me. I guess it’s a combination of music that frees you somehow, along with being able to evolve.

MI: As a songwriter/pop artist is there a life-long search for hooks, rhymes or harmonies?

AC: Oh, sure! And I’m grateful when those things just fall out of the sky into my path. I’m not very intentional about trying to make those kinds of things happen, and I realize that if I tried harder on that front, I might write more songs. I’ve always had people try to get me into these exercises where you write a song a day, or force yourself to do something creative every day, and I just don’t actually come up with anything good under those circumstances. I have to wait for hooks, rhymes and harmonies to find me, and you never really know when that’s gonna happen, unfortunately.

MI: What is your holy grail in song-writing, the most elusive element in the process for you?

AC: Lyrics take me forever to write. A melody can just hit me on the head and be written in a few moments, but the lyrics always keep me guessing. In the case of our last two albums, we’ve written most of the music together at the house—just stuff that came up in the moment that we crafted into verses, choruses, and bridges—and then I sit with the music for a while until some idea springs to life. On, “Begin the Begone,” I remember having the words to, “Satellite Song,” “Wintergreen,” and, “9,” come rather quickly, while others like, “New Moon,” “Fleeing the Scene,” and, “Embers,” weren’t finished until early last fall. Sometimes it helps to see the direction an album is taking. Late last summer, I already could tell the kind of album this was going to be, so it kind of gave me permission to fill in some of the blanks with these ideas of starting over, escaping some past situation or coming to some sort of realization.

MI: The new album came together after a near fatal car accident, did your survival bring on a life re-evaluation? What surprised you the most in its aftermath?

AC: Yeah, there was a pretty major life re-evaluation in the months following that accident. There are a lot of things we’d been wanting to change, but life’s momentum was just kind of keeping us in our old patterns. Jill and I had been talking about moving to the Santa Cruz Mountains for years, and we’d also been thinking about trying to disengage from our careers a little bit so we could spend more time on creative endeavors. Getting out of Silicon Valley was a way to do both. So we sold our place in Sunnyvale and bought a hexagonal house in Boulder Creek on a couple acres. At the time, I couldn’t believe we were actually doing it, and then when we had to actually put our house on the market and move all our stuff, it was pretty overwhelming. I think surviving the accident kind of empowered us to get through it.

MI: Do you or the band have any superstitions when it comes to touring or recording?

AC: I don’t think we’re that superstitious as a band, but there are a few things we tend to do and not do in the studio and on tour. One of our guiding principles lately has been based on this funny little quote from Led Zeppelin at the beginning of, “Black Country Woman,”—they’re recording outside, and an airplane starts flying overhead. Engineer Eddie Kramer asks Jimmy Page, “Shall we roll it, Jimmy?” Robert Plant says: “Nah, leave it.” We all love that little bit of chatter before the song, and it sort of sums up the way we approach recording and playing live. The main thing for us is getting the feeling right, which is way different than getting every tiny, microscopic bit of the sound right. I’ve seen bands get so micro during soundcheck that I just want to leave the building, and it rarely helps the performance. Same with the studio. We’re trying to get a feeling that translates to the listener, and sometimes that means re-cutting something, or rethinking a mix or arrangement, but we don’t want to control it so much that all the immediacy is lost.

MI: How do your listening patterns change when you tour from when you are doing a record?

AC: When I’m mixing a record, I tend to listen to stuff I know really well because I’m trying to see how our recordings stack up. Also, I tend to not want to know what’s going on too much in the music world when we’re in that creative process. I want our records to stand on their own, whenever or wherever someone hears them. If it’s really cool at the moment to be getting a certain kind of drum sound, or using some effect on the vocals, I just don’t want to know. So I kind of shut myself away from that stuff when we’re in the studio. When we’re on the road, I end up hearing a lot of new stuff that people are sharing with us. You have a lot of time in the van, so it’s a great time to catch up and branch out.

MI: Have you ever played Madison or Milwaukee before?

AC: We played Milwaukee on our last tour, in between Chicago and Minneapolis shows. Our friend Brian Kirk (the man behind US indiepop juggernaut The Bus Stop Label) manages a record store there, and we played there with Jim Ruiz Set.

MI: If you could transplant one idea or thing from California to all the places you’ve toured what would it be?

AC: Well, since it’s usually summer when we’re playing the Midwest, I’d change the weather a little, if I could. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, and every evening in the summer, a nice fog rolls in off the Pacific Ocean, and cools everything down. Probably ain’t gonna happen, but it’s a nice idea!

Contact Maximum Ink music magazine

• Contact: Webmaster(at)maximumink.com
• (608) 245-0781
• No Longer Accepting Unsolicited Packages
  Please email Webmaster or call for more info