In 2005 We Are Scientists used their first South by Southwest festival appearance to spawn their superstardom. Writer Sophia Varoumas gets to the bottom of how these guys have dealt with the fanfare, catered it to their interests in film, and why they've waved so long to major record labels.
Some say to be true renegade you must walk alone. Chris Cain and Keith Murray of We Are Scientists walked alongside each other to go rogue and became a South by Southwest fairytale-come-true in 2005. From there, their joint-career flourished into an interesting array of works in the Arts and Entertainment industry. They've been financially living off of their music from the big-wig record label, Virgin Records, until now, and have worked in television, mainly on MTV UK doing a comedic skit show called Steve Wants His Money.
Imagine the dream of becoming a star and traveling to Austin, Texas - to be seen and heard by all the suits of the industry, united with their metal briefcases, promising to open it up and reveal the Pulp Fiction glow. "Buy a ticket, take the ride," Hunter S. Thompson once said, and We Are Scientists were chosen and sought after by different labels in a vast pit of music execs playing tug of war for their next breakthrough band five years ago. They're revisiting South By Southwest for the third time this March. Now, after accomplishing some of their goals, these guys, specifically Chris Cain, is exhaling a big sigh of relief, taking some time to coast on their success.
Growing up in Utah, Cain did not start out as an avid music lover. "I pretty much listened to the radio. I remember the first concert I went to was with my older sister." Cain's sister was six years older, and she would take him along to concerts. He recalls going to see Def Leopard on their "Hysteria" tour when he was 12. He saw Bon Jovi on the "Slippery When Wet" tour soon after. Much of Cain's musical tastes were directly influenced by his teenage sister's musical tastes, he explains. "By that time," Cain says, "I got really into U2 Joshua Tree and earlier stuff. Then in high school, I pretty much just followed the crowd into the world of Grunge. I was a big Pearl Jam fan and followed [their] shows."
From the fall of 2000 into summer of 2001, Keith Murray, the one-time drummer-turned-lead singer of the band was doing some extra work in Hollywood for Paramount, according to Cain. "I was teaching out of a suburb in LA to Chinese and Korean kids in reading and writing, to get them to where they were supposed to be for their grade." Both were not making much money, working very hard, and "not really making much of our existences," according to Cain. At that point, they had already gone to school. "We were kind of tired of LA - kind of tired of California," says Cain. There wasn't much going on to keep them on the west coast. So Cain and Murray moved to New York.
"Keith's grandfather had a house that we could stay in when we touched down" Cain says, "and not really have to pay rent or anything." Cain stayed there for about six weeks, while Murray stayed for two years, as did their drummer of the time, Michael Tapper. "I couldn't handle Bensonhurst," exhausts Cain, "which is toward Coney Island." In hindsight, Cain feels lucky to have even had the house, which was richly resourceful, in terms of transitioning into life in New York. "Obviously it is incredibly expensive to live [in New York] and until you have a job that is giving you a decent check, it's tough to make rent. If you have to show up and start paying rent immediately without a job, you could be in trouble," Cain says.
Eventually the guys were on their feet. That's when We Are Scientists made records, including their latest, entitled Barbara. In 2005 they released With Love and Squalor and Brain Trust Mastery came in 2008. Cain and Murray also worked on video shorts that became fairly popular on MTV in the UK.
Traveling overseas seemed to be a working experiment. If you can make it where the Beatles had hoards of beautiful little British women throwing themselves, screaming and crying for you and your music, they say, it may be worth a shot, especially with tracks like "Nobody Move", a sexy song with groin grasping appeal. The track got them booked with Late Night with David Letterman when With Love and Squalor came out.
We Are Scientists fell in love with making videos, and have one in post-production for their first single off Barbara, called "Rules Don't Stop." "We shot [the video] entirely in front of a green screen, with these two sort of video and software dorks from Williamsburg, who call themselves Labour," says Cain. We Are Scientists were introduced to Labour by the guy who's doing their current album artwork. He'd also worked on the artwork for Brain Trust Mastery. Cain goes on to say, "They're really intuitive to Adobe after-effects and all kinds of post-production wizardry. But they use it in a really sort of opposite-George Lucas way." Cain is looking forward to viewing the last video they shot because "we all tossed around a lot of great ideas and I'd really like to work with Labour again and I'd really like to work with Akiva Schaffer."
There aren't just two main members of the group. Keith Murray and Chris Cain play live alongside touring members Andy Burroughs and Danny Allen (who will be sharing drumming duties over the next year.) This seems to be an up-and-coming trend in how bands utilize their members. These fellows of We Are Scientists are clearly dynamic, well-versed gentlemen with the right sense of humor for today's impressionable youth. Their music is busy, full of melody and oozing with potential longevity and growth. Quite simply: they're talented. This is just the beginning. They present theatrics in their independently produced and self-released music videos - while ultimately still having done their fair share of pounding the entertainment pavement. They can humorously walk with their homie - being a herd of harmless Pomeranian pups; cradle them in their armpits, such as during a cute duel scene in the desert, in their video "Chick Lit." In the short, Murray and Cain play two cowboys herding their animals on a plain, and charming enough to do so, while singing the lyrics, "I've asked you nicely once, but I won't do that again."
When revealing some tidbits on the video, Cain says that at one point he'll be playing his bass though his arms will then stretch across the screen; a man with 12-foot arms. Murray will be doing the same thing with the guitar. "We will be doing a couple back flips each, and at one point at least one of us will have chocolate chip cookies for eyes." Fans can find it on YouTube March 1.
As with any fairly real hobby, anything else you do is going to be colored by it. Cain and Murray share a sort of compulsive, maybe even reliance to literature and reading, he explains. "Certainly the language that we use with each other when we talk about ideas or steeped-in references to books that we have in common, so I'd say the videos and Keith's lyrics and really anything you see from the band is colored by that," says Cain. Also, a love of film is probably even less lofty in its actual taste than their reading habits. "Movies - we'll see just about anything, especially when we're on the road. It's the best way to pass the time when you're in a foreign city - go to the movie theatre, sit in a dark cave and ignore your surroundings, than get the latest dispatch from San Fernando Valley, rather then going to see porn at a cheap shady club."
Though We Are Scientists are rotated on MTV 2 and MTV in the UK and Europe, Cain tends to find MTV far less watchable when it's not playing music videos than when it is. "I suppose you could class me as one of the disappointed MTV viewers who have not appreciated the trend of the more reality programming. I think as MTV was initially conceived was pretty great," Cain expresses.
In December of 2008 We Are Scientists told British TV show, Soccer AM, that they were in the works of producing a TV series. In October of 2009, after being "commissioned it to play in the UK, and may have played on MTV Europe," according to Cain, "Steve Wants His Money was released by the band." The short series is about We Are Scientists owing Steve, an American man, Steve, money. As a result the duo run away to England where they attempt to sell off their ideas to musicians, journalists, DJs and promoters.
Though the show is not aired in the States, Viacom companies have acted as a sort of teleconference where they just go over properties (like TV shows) that are in development or properties that have already been created. Viacom discussed syndication possibilities, and as Cain tells it, "I think that each territory, to a certain degree, can pick and choose if they want to use stuff from other territories." So, seeing Steve Wants His Money may become a part of American MTV syndication. At some point. When We Are Scientists wanted to create a short in August 2009, they had spoken with a few companies about doing something.
MTV got in touch with them via the production company they'd been working with, and according to Cain's recollection of MTV's proposition, "They asked, 'If you guys would be interested in doing a series of shorts for us, what would you be doing for, let's say 25 cents?'" Cain blurts out in a grandmotherly voice, "Better some cheap shorts than no shorts." The first short aired on October 4, 2009. Once they agreed to the show it was written in about ten days. The guys flew overseas, shot it in four days, and then it was edited over the course of a week. After that, Murray and Cain had to turn it in. "I think the end result is funny, but the budget constraints ended up limiting the editing process. The first edit ended up becoming the final edit, which wasn't ideal at all."
Though Cain thinks the edit was funny, the budget constraints ended up really limiting the editing process. "Not at the expense that I wish it weren't out there. I mean I'm happy for people to see it, but there were a number of lines that got cut in order make time," says Cain. They were essentially told the shorts they were hired to do were going to be up to five minutes long, and after editing, ended at three minutes, thirty seconds to Cain's dismay. "They basically said to us, 'Here's a way that you actually follow the logic of what's happening' even though we lost about two minutes of dialogue. I would have reconstructed that in different ways."
Chris Cain stated he has just completed a new video short unrelated to We Are Scientists, as well. A guy who's shot with the band before was directing for an acquaintance of theirs. "The director asked me to do it," he says. Allana Glazer, who is in her early twenties, acted in her video concept with Cain, which as he explains it, is "basically a kind of behind-the-scenes video at the American Apparel shoot." Glazer plays the American Apparel model and Cain plays Dove Charney, the owner and photographer for American Apparel. The twist is that, "She is a chick with a dick as it was, and it kind of builds." Cain found the shoot a fun experience. He loved the wardrobe he got to wear, which included gold lamiae and shiny short-shorts. "They very handsomely highlighted the cock piece with the varying, typical American Apparel types of poses and outfits," says Cain.
"We sculpted the dick out of a novelty object that I wore in my pants, for lack of a more precise word, called it piece of ass. We just used this fleshy mound." (Yes, a mound of flesh-colored wiggly rubber.) "I didn't even know what it was supposed to be - I think it's something you pick up at Spencer's Gifts at the mall," Chris says. You never see it, as the mound is covered by the American Apparel clothing. "It's like an American Apparel ad but I do touch it through the lamiae at one point which was pretty top notch."
Cain reflects back on his work over the last decade and states he really enjoys working for himself. "That's probably the best sea changes, in my adult life, but certainly when this band became self sufficient financially, and quitting our jobs doing those other things to gradually become more and more of our own project." According to Cain, they "left EMI in November and are putting out their third record, Barbara, themselves. "It's all compounding to the degree in which we're making our daily choices. It's a lot of work but it's tremendously satisfying," he says, breathing out deeply.
With SXSW only a few weeks away, the band gets to revisit the music conference that got them signed. They've done the festival twice before, the first time being in 2005, and again the following year. "We had the fairytale South by Southwest experience. We played a really good show and we had already sent out the record to a couple of labels," says Cain. "There was enough interest to get people to the show but basically after that, I think that the South by Southwest environment is very stressful for label people who get kind of swept away by bands." He says that SXSW essentially becomes a competition. "It's where people are bidding against one another for your attention. That was kind of the experience we had at that first festival and in the week or two that followed we ended up signing to Virgin. That was excellent. It will be great to go back there."
In terms of what to expect in their performance this year - we can certainly expect to hear additional songs. "It's going to be different from our last tour in that we have contracted back down to a three piece," says Cain. "We no longer have a keyboardist/second guitarist on stage." Fans can expect the show to be much more raw than the way that it was during the first album cycle. "The drummer is going to be with us at South by Southwest which is relatively new for us; a guy named Danny Allen, whose band, Youth Group, is on hiatus." He will be sharing the live drum duties with Andy Burroughs, the Brit who was formally in Rage the Light. "Between the two of them, one or the other will be at the We Are Scientists shows for the next year or so," says Cain. "Danny is going to be the guy at South by Southwest. He's a great dude, although they're both fantastic drummers. We're quite lucky to have managed to get two different really good drummers. Many bands cannot find even one."
After performing the music conference Cain plans on heading back to New York to be with his four-year-old son. When the touring kicks in, Cain is gone for weeks at a time, and tries to make up for that while he's home. "His age being what it is, he doesn't really have a full daily schedule so he's always up to hang. I spend a lot of time with that dude."
His name is Dashiell, and, according to his father, his namesake is one of the inventors of the mystery genre, as we currently know, Dashiell Hammett, "who is also a very fascinating and adorable dude," says Cain. "The only other Dashiell I know of is the kid in The Incredibles, Dash." In the credits, [of the Disney presents a Pixar film] he's referenced to as Dashiell (Robert "Dash" Parr). Finally, according to Cain, "there is that artist Dashiell Snow who killed himself last year. Snow probably would not have ever come to anyone's attention had he not killed himself. "So, unfortunately for me, now there's another Dashiell, and he was a highly fucked-up heroin abusing suicidal scam artist. I don't want that affiliation for my kid."
Contrary to Cain's worries, he tells Origivation that his son is super into music. "Dash has a little electronic drum kit, and an electric guitar, and a keyboard. He has my cast off Mac laptop from a few years ago and can actually use Garage Band." Cain goes on to brag that Dash has a fairly large catalog of music. With a little mic set up, little Dashiell records his own music track with his little preschool friends. Cain explains that he's got many of his son's recordings. "They're very cool documents of his youth, I think. Beyond that, he is a normal four-year-old. He likes to dance... I don't know - he has these weird little obsessions that don't make any sense."
So, when life gives Chris Cain lemons what does he do? "I myself love to take the lemons. I don't have any problem being into lemons at all. Just slice one of them and put it in a glass of water - it's the simplest way to enjoy a lemon and life."
