Bethany Tomkins: Mouth Movements make their move
With the release of a CD eight months in the making, Knoxville band Mouth Movements is ready to take over the airwaves and venue stages nationwide. As they prepare to kick off a U.S. tour, I decided to get the skinny from bandmember Steve on what got this band together in the first place, and set them in motion for the path they're about to follow.
Bethany: Tell me a little about recording the new CD.
Steve: It was a blast and a struggle at the same time. There was a conflict in time schedules, and when we could all get together, we usually ended up tracking overnight into the next morning, so it was a little exhausting. We could never get together often enough, and at one point we actually scrapped most of the record to track it all over again. Turns out, that was the best move we could've made.
Bethany: Where did you record the album?
Steve: We recorded with Jeremiah Nave in Elizabethton, TN and had the album mastered by Alan Douches at West West Side Mastering in NY. Jeremiah had done our demos and was also a fan of the band, so he was willing to make sure our album was a good representation of us, no matter how long it took. Alan Douches, well, he's almost lengendary and has done mastering on almost all of our favorite albums over the last decade, so we definitely wanted him to be a part of this record.
Bethany: Did you come into the studio with all of your material prepared, or did you find yourselves working up a lot of new stuff once you got into the studio?
Bethany: This summer tour you're about to start - is this your first big tour as a band?
Steve: Technically, this is the first tour of this length for Mouth Movements, although Travis, David, and myself were all playing music together in a previous band and doing two month national tours two or three times per year.
Bethany: I understand Mouth Movements began as a three-piece. How did you meet Joe, and decide to add him to the group?
Steve: We met Joe around the time we came together to start writing for the new album. He was always a part of the band, before he was officially in it. When we started recording the album, we tracked 2 or 3 different guitars on every song, and felt if we added another guitar to the live show, it would greatly help us out. Joe is a great guitarist and a great guy, so we felt he fit the bill.
Bethany: What importance, if any, does image hold for Mouth Movements?
Steve: We care a great deal about image in terms of merchandise, fliers, CD artwork, etc. As far as image in a sense of how you look on stage or in magazines, we could care less. We play music because we love making music and presenting it to new places and new faces, not because we want to look like rock idols.
Bethany: Are there any bands or songs in particular that convinced Mouth Movements to should get together and rock?
Steve: We've always worked well together musically. I think individually, our songwriting stay consistent with everyone else in the group. Of course, we take influences from other groups in terms of the type of music we make. It tends to get pounded into your head when you listed to bands/artists so often, and then you go and create a similar sound. In that sense, I think we take some influence from groups or artists such as Ken Andrews/Failure, Hum, Cave In, and Shiner.
The Mouth Movements CD Release party is taking place this Thursday, May 31 at Blue Cats in the Old City. Live performances include Mouth Movements along with local bands Gamenight and Generation of Vipers. For more info, check out the Mouth Movements MySpace or the Blue Cats website at BlueCatsLive.com.
