15 years ago, husband and wife Jason Hammel and Kori Gardner began making music together under the moniker Mates of State, fueled by drum and organ pop duos on their 2001 release My Solo Project. What ensued in the following decade and a half are seven full-length albums, chronicling their journey from minimalistic San Francisco indie pop to 2011’s orchestral swell filled, alt pop masterpiece Mountaintops.
Since then, Mates of State have been working on a variety of creative endeavors, most notably starring in and writing the soundtrack for indie film Rumperbutts. I was fortunate enough to be able to speak with Jason Hammel about how this affected their creative process, how the industry has changed, and just how hard acting really is.
StageBuddy: One thing that has always struck me about your performance, whether on an album or live, is your persistent, unflinching energy and passion each time. Is that ever hard to maintain time after time having done so for 15 years?
Jason Hammel: No, because it’s not a put on. I think it’s pretty obvious that we both love to play music. No matter what you’re dealing with during your day, that’s the one hour that you’re always 100% glad to be doing it. I can’t think of a time with Mates of State that I’ve thought, “I just don’t want to do this.” Every single time it is actually, “I cannot wait to play this song.”
On all of your albums, there is a committed musical aesthetic you carry throughout the work, with each album more unique than the previous. Does this come about in the songwriting or in the recording process?
We always write songs in batches, which then end up becoming albums. Those batches are usually all written within a one year time frame, so they usually thematically thread together since we write about personal stuff. Albums come out then as days of the week as in, “this track is Monday, this is Tuesday, this is Wednesday, etc.” Since we write everything together, it’s naturally so closely knit.
Having had more than your usual time between 2011’s Mountaintops and your upcoming 2015 release, with some different creative pursuits in between, how does that affect your usual creative process?
I’m glad to report that today is the last day of mixing for these songs and we are really excited about them. With each record we try to push into new territory, but with this one it took us a long time to figure out where we wanted to go. We had written probably 30 different songs, but just weren’t that excited about them. It felt as if they were just stock Mates of State songs. There were the typical harmonies and quirky parts, but it wasn’t really exciting us. We finally decided to change up our process quite a bit and found this new excitement for songwriting. Even with presenting them, we’re going to try to do it differently from before, when it has been just us on stage behind our instruments. Now, we might even be playing to some backing tracks and that sort of thing if we can work it out sometime before next week. We have wanted for a while now to come out from behind our instruments as we feel we are kind of trapped back there. It would be so great to be able to grab a mic and jump in front of the stage to concentrate on an actual vocal performance. Vocals are a very important aspect to our band, but we’ve never been able to just sing, having to also play our instruments at the same time.
That makes a lot of sense considering where your albums have taken you over the years, starting with only drums and organs, progressing to such expansive works. Do you feel like you’re still pushing those boundaries to explore new territories?
Definitely. Over the last three years since Mountaintops, we’ve been working production jobs a lot more too, which involves a lot of different mic-ings, different instruments, different electronics, etc. We’re getting much more comfortable behind the controls, and I think it will really show in these songs. In this sense, we were definitely able to reach a new territory on the upcoming record. The goal is to always be growing. Every time you learn something, you use that to step you up to the next thing. When we first started out as a band, we didn’t know a whole lot really. (Laughs) We just knew that we loved to play music and write songs. The goal ever since that first day has been to write a song better than the one before.
Having been a band since ’99, you guys have seen an incredible transformation in the music industry. From booking tours without cell phones to employing the technology you have now, how has that affected the group?
It’s all about survival now, because there is so much competition and no one is paying for music. Even when you’re booking a tour, you used to be able to book it a month or two in advance. Now though, you have to do it 6-9 months in advance because there are so many bands competing for those nights at the clubs. It’s expensive to tour now too, because of gas, but also because no one is buying music. You have to look for other ways to do it, but we’re not sour grapes about it. We’ve gone through a lot of changes in the industry, so it’s all about finding new ways to adapt.
I think a really telling example of that is the notion that a band was considered a sell-out if they had their song on a commercial, even 15 years ago. Now though, it seems the opposite and people get excited to hear your music being used for advertising and such.
I think that really has to do with the globalization of art and everything now. Before, it was like, “this is my band and no one can touch them, and how do they even know them when they go to different record stores than I do?” Now though, people get the feeling that when this happens the band has actually punched through and made it to a larger sphere. Everyone now is tapped into a global vein instead of his or her own niche. We’re all in the same animal here.
As you’ve come across different obstacles and identities over the years, I know you’ve had natural doubts and fears, just as any artist would. As you grow as a band though, does this translate into confidence and comfort when you approach a new work?
Hell no, quite the opposite actually. We’re just trying to find something that excites us, because if it can have that effect on us, we believe it will translate to people who like our band. If it doesn’t excite us, then we’re in deep shit because they’re not going to care either. We actually had writer’s block for a year, but luckily we were making a movie and did the soundtrack for it. We were keeping busy, but in the back of our minds we were thinking, “oh shit, we can’t think of any good songs to write or how we want to approach them.” We were a bit worried because we have never had that problem before. I read a lot about writer’s block and what people have done before to get past it, all of which is essentially to just keep showing up. You just have keep going into the studio and keep writing stuff. Eventually, you will always come up with something, but you have to keep showing up.
Do you feel that doing other creative projects during that time helped?
Definitely, and we actually want to make another movie too. That was the first time we had ever done something like that, and though it is a lot of work, it is incredibly creative. We are the two lead actors in it, and we feel like we did pretty well but we know we can do better. We worked with a different writer and director so it was his movie, but we want to write a movie ourselves to make it exactly how we want it.
How did the acting classes you took affect the music that followed?
Acting is fucking hard. What it really is, from the little that I know, is about letting down your guard. That’s really difficult to do in front of a camera and crew, to be that vulnerable. That ties into songwriting because you can only write good songs when you let down that guard. The only way people can really see you as honest is to open up about what is going on in your head, which a lot of times is not pretty. That’s what is compelling for people though, and it’s the same for acting. It’s no wonder that some of the best actors are out of the mind, because they show you they have a lot going on emotionally.
Having had so much success as a band over the last 15 years, is it ever difficult to tap into that really emotional mindset?
No, that would be an impossibility. I feel like there’s a never ending tap of creativity, not to say you can always view it with a clear mind and clear eyes though. The trick to being a lifelong artist is finding that crack that hasn’t been explored yet. You can’t be who you once were, so you have to not be afraid of who you are now. That can be really painful to your psyche to admit that you are not the person you were 15 years ago, especially when so many people want you to be that. It’s like a tiny death in a way, because once you get past that former self it is like a rebirth. You have to find new ways to grow or else you’ll be boring, and who wants to be boring or who they were 15 years ago? I certainly don’t. It’s hard to say that I am a drastically different person than who I was a year ago or even six months ago, but even if you are, then embrace it. You have to explore that, look deep into those new crevices, and see what you find.
