EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH THE NICO BLUES

HypeTune.com: How did you choose the title to your new album and what is the significance of the name?

The Nico Blues: The new album’s title (Blame the Boredom, Blame the Basements) is actually a lyric from a Lifter Puller song. They’re a great Minneapolis band that was a precursor to the now-famous band, The Hold Steady. Our drummer, Skylar, suggested it. In fact, it was his only suggestion. The rest of us had hundreds of names thrown around, and he only brought one to the table, which ended up being perfect. Our album was conceived in our basement, rehearsed there, and recorded there. It just made sense to us, because we spent so much of our time and energy in that basement.

HypeTune.com: What about the name of the band? Where did that originate and how did the band form?

The Nico Blues: The band name is another homage, this time to Blind Melon. We credit a lot of our inspiration to their short-lived career. Nico Blue is what Shannon Hoon, their singer, named his daughter. We love the name, and thought it worked well. She is alive and well, somewhere out there. If she googles her name, she’ll probably be pretty shocked to see there is a band named after her…hope she digs it.

HypeTune.com: How much more satisfying is it to engineer, produce, and mix your own album in your own studio? Why do you guys do it?

The Nico Blues: It’s tremendously satisfying to have complete control over your sound and songs. It’s every artist’s dream to maintain all of that control. However, it comes with a price. We put a huge amount of responsibility on ourselves to produce the best sound and not create a “basement demo”, but a real album that people can listen to and respect the recording quality. We owe a large amount of the sound to Skylar, our drummer and mixing engineer. We all work endlessly to get our tones and create an overall sound, but Skylar does the mix and brings the songs to that next level. We do it because we can really work at our own pace and create the album we want, without worrying about some studio’s hourly rate.

HypeTune.com: What are the bands future plans?

The Nico Blues: We have been playing about 4 shows a week all through July and August, with our fall filling up fast. So, a lot of gigging and promoting. Also, we hope (fingers crossed) to hop back in the studio sometime this fall or winter, and hammer out some new tunes we have written. Not a full length album, but just a few tracks for anyone who cares to listen. Expect them to have a completely different vibe from BTB, BTB…because we never like to repeat ourselves.

Just for fun:

HypeTune.com: If another band covered one of your songs, which band would you want it to be?

The Nico Blues: This is tough. I’d love to hear Built To Spill cover our song “An Hour in a Half” (off our first EP)…just because they are another band with three guitarists who really blend together well. That song in particular has a cool arrangement for three guitarists, and I think they could do some cool stuff with it.

HypeTune.com: If you could have any guest artist play on your next record, who would you choose?

The Nico Blues: Another tough one…there are so many musicians that we respect and look to for inspiration. It’d be an amazing experience to have Chris Owens from the group Girls do some vocal or guitar work with us on the next album. He’s an amazing melody writer, and would make a great addition if we wanted to do some 3 part vocal harmonies. Also, I’d give J. Mascis from Dinosaur Jr a whole track to just rip guitar solos all day. That’d be incredible.