The Carrots

[Okay, so this is obviously OLD.. and the photo is properly thieved from here.]

The Carrots are a super-ace band from Austin, Texas in the U!S!of!A! They are made up of girls and boys and they play brilliant 60's-style motown-y type stuff. Perhaps unsurprisingly they put out records on the ultra-cool label and sponsors of this year's Indietracks festival, Elefant Records.

The questions preceded by "PAG" were donated by Peter who co-hosts the Atta Girl all female-vocals clubnight (http://www.attagrrl.co.uk/)

These questions were kindly answered via the profoundly passé yet ultimately usefull medium of MySpace by The Carrots' Bass player, one Christopher Lyons, thanks Chris!

Bite Yr Lip: I NEED to know, how many of you are really really in the band? and is it the same number of people that are usually on stage?

Chris: Oh, brother! Currently there are only four people who are really, really in the band: Veronica, Shelley, Chef and Chris. We have a “band friend” who has been playing guitar with us on all of our latest recordings but probably wouldn’t consider himself to be really in the band. His name is Jason and he wrote “I Tried to Call You” which we have covered for a long time. The original line-up was Veronica, Chef, Chris, Stephanie, Erin and Jennifer. Erin left last summer to concentrate on her other bands. Stephanie moved to Los Angeles but still went on tour with us last year. Jennifer just quit because she is moving to New York and is also going to concentrate on her other band. We picked up Shelley to replace Erin and we also temporarily had a girl named Lace replacing Stephanie, but she has also moved on. It is so confusing. On stage there has been almost every combination of the above people.

BYL: From seeing the tour documentary on myspace/vimeo it looks like you got to play some unusual places with different styled bands. Are gigs on the US DIY scene usually eclectic? How were you received by crowds when playing after noisy punk bands?

C: Yeah, since we are pretty much unknown our shows turned out to be pretty strange at times. We played with all kinds of bands. Surprisingly, the more punk or hardcore the show the more people liked us. The crusty punks are skeptical of us at first but by the third song they are dancing. I think it’s just the novelty of it that is appealing. When we play with bands that are more similar to us the reaction is usually less positive. That can happen in bigger U.S. cities. People are less jaded at weird shows in small towns.

BYL: How is it being based in Austin? I mean, it's famous for music but does that make it harder to do stuff with all the other try-hards and industry people clambering about the place, or is it actually quite nice?

C: Austin is a great town, overall. There are aspects to it like you described but the alternative is to not have a thriving music scene and not have any opportunities whatsoever. I lived here when this town was like that. It was impossible to get a show at a club and there were no labels or places to record or anything at all for a young band. Now that stuff exists, which is great. Of course, there are also thousands of shitty bands now. Maybe there were always this many bad bands but I feel like when it was harder to be a band in town only the better quality bands persevered. Austin used to be completely isolated. Bands hardly toured here because it was so out of the way. That and the lack of internet back in the day produced a unique mutant strain of music with a lot of regional character. Now bands here sound just like bands everywhere else. Including us! Ack.

BYL: Are you excited about coming to the uk? It usually rains but that’s not allowed at indietracks so dress appropriately! have any of you been? are you planning to be proper tourists and get yr photo taken with a bobby?

C: We are excited about coming to the UK but we aren’t coming this summer! As I mentioned before, our keyboard player Jennifer has just left the band and we are not going to be able to tour without her just yet. We are instead just trying to finish up a record instead. Veronica will be in the UK this summer along with former members Erin and Stephanie in their other band, Finally Punk. Look out for them and go to their shows. Give them small paintings and poems of your own creation to bring back to us.

BYL: Are you planning to play anywhere else in the UK?

C: We would like to play Nottingham Forest, Buckingham Palace, Stonehenge, The White Cliffs of Dover, London Bridge (if it hasn’t fallen down) and a Moor.

BYL: What’s on yr little root veg stereos right about now?

C: I like the Strange Boys (also from Austin) and the Vivian Girls.

PAG: Where did the name come from?

C: We had a vote. Originally we just informally called ourselves “girl-group.” As in, hey do you want to be in a girl-group band with me? What time are we having girl-group practice? This went on for a long time until we realized that was an impractical name and we had to actually think of one. I think we all wrote potential band names on a sheet of paper until we had like 50 or so and then just started passing it around crossing names off. When it got down to around ten we voted. I remember one candidate that just lost was “Snow Girls.” I’ve forgotten the rest. The Carrots just seemed like a cute word when written and it fit in with other girl-group type names like “The Cookies” or “The Chiffons.” C’s are big.

PAG: You're obviously influenced by many a 60s girl group. me and my friend are always arguing about who the greatest 60s girl group were, what do you think?

C: I’d say the big three for us are the Shangri-La’s, the Ronettes and the Crystals. We started out covering all of those bands. Who’s your favorite?

PAG: It's a bit obvious, but I would say the Shangri-Las, I've always loved a bit of melodrama.

PAG: how did the deal with elefant come about? as far as i know there are currently no other american acts on the label.

C: Just like this interview, actually, from a Myspace message. They just wrote us out of the blue and we had nothing else going on so we took them up on their offer. They have been pretty great to us in terms of just letting us do our thing but it is also difficult due to the language barrier and the distance. It can take a long time to communicate.

PAG: Do you know of any other 60s girl group influenced bands about at the moment? i just discovered the pepper pots, a spanish girl group playing 60s inspired ska, they're a bit special.

C: I’d like to hear them because I love old ska. That sounds great. Unfortunately, I think there is a girl-group revival of sorts happening . I only say unfortunately because they are probably all better than us! I don’t even think we sound like a girl-group anymore. More like some dreadful indie-pop nightmare. I don’t think anyone in the band even likes how we sound but that is just the sound that comes out when we all get together. I would much rather sound like “Skinhead Moonstomp” or something. Oh, well.


If you find yrself on the interwebs, lost at a crossroads, i can highly recomend heading towards the Carrots' tour diary on Vimeo.com.