The Viv Interview
by Zac Garner
Fresh Tracks Music, June 25th, 2004
The ViV Interview
By Zak Garner
Filed date 6/25/2004
ViV talks with Zak Garner about their most recent album "Flawed," the San Francisco music scene, and the growing popularity of their "Viv and a Movie" shows.
Tell me a little bit about Flawed. How do you think it progressed from the band's first album?
I think the main difference is that we got better as songwriters. But also, we took a lot more time to record it and the band has played between two and three hundred live shows since that first album was recorded. With this album we also had a new drummer, Steve Bowman from the Counting Crows who is incredible in the studio. We had a bunch of different people come in and play with us, guys from Camper Van Beethoven to the American Music Club. We had some really famous producers work with us.
You guys used a few different producers on the album and you also did some production yourselves. What were you able to do by yourselves that you didn't think you could have gotten with a producer?
Well there are only two songs done with other producers where they were pretty much in control of the whole sound. I really wanted to produce the rest of the album myself. So we got an engineer that could do all of the sounds that we needed and we found a couple of really great studios in the Bay Area and we just wanted to experiment.
Are you guys always working on new material?
Yeah, actually right now we have what we think is our best song. We were writing it and we did a demo of it while we were recording Flawed. A lot of people told us we should put it on the album but we decided to hold on to it and work on it more. So we have one really incredible song for the next album and then we've got about six or seven other ones in the works.
What do you think makes this song so special?
I really think on our next album we're going to be growing even more into our own voice. I know that sounds cliché, but I think that's what happens after you play with people for a while and go through the ups and downs of being in a band. I wish every band could find their voice and we're really starting to do that and I think that's why that song and this next album are going to be great. Not that these first two albums aren't representative of what the band sounds like, because they are, but I think it’s really where we’re going to go further with what we’re trying to explore.
On a different note, how did the Viv and a Movie thing begin? Did you come up with that or did some other people come to you with the idea?
It was mainly us and one other guy who goes by "Chief." We knew that Train and Charlie Hunter, who are both Bay Area natives, had once a week gigs in the city, and we really wanted to be where they are. For different reasons we love both of those bands and we learned that we had to get a gig that was a weekly gig. The scene in San Francisco had really changed at that point. It was the end of the "dot-com" and everybody was getting fired and everybody was moving away. I think it really killed a lot of the art scene. We were like, "Hey, let's make this kind of different. Let's get some independent films and play them in between our sets. Let's invite some friend and have them sit in with us. And then let's put up some artwork by some artists who we know." And it just blew up. It's been going on for over two years now and it's run by other people than Viv now. Viv only plays on special occasions now because we've kind of grown out of that venue.
Are there any plans to take Viv and a Movie outside of the area?
Right now it's in San Francisco but on August 4th it's going to be in Berkley, which is right over the bridge. They're planning to do around 200 shows all the way across the United States.
So do you still have a role in selecting who is displayed as far as the artists, as well as the short films that are on the bill?
Not any more. When we first started it I booked everything. Now we have a full-time music booker who does all the music for the shows. Then we've got six people who do the film, because the films are the hardest to find. And then we've got two art curators.
Being that the shows are either 18 or 21 plus, do you think the younger crowd is ready for all of the more abstract art and film?
It depends on what you think of younger. If you're thinking high school and junior high, sometimes it's appealing to them and sometimes it's not. If you get into college age and older, yeah, it's really appealing. A lot of times it's run by people who are 20-25 years old.
So the target audience is really that college and above crowd.
For the Viv and a Movie shows, yeah, but for just Viv, we play high schools all over the country. We mostly do high schools and colleges so our audience is like, 13-35.
You're obviously pretty popular on the West Coast, how do you find the audiences out east?
We're doing really well. It took us about a year. We've got a duplicate set of gear in a friend's basement so we just fly out there and rent some minivans and tour around like we live there.
Are you guys going to try to do this as a regular thing now or is it going to be more sporadic?
It was sporadic but now we've got 40 shows booked just for schools in the Northeast, we haven't even booked clubs yet. All of the schools invited us back and we're doing the beginning of the year festivals. At first we'd show up to schools and play to five people. And we'd role through there again and play to 100. Now we show up to schools we've never played and there's 100 people there. So it's going really good.
What's it like to play somewhere for the first time and have five people watching you?
You know, it's really draining sometimes. But, sometimes you just have to play to those five people. We've played to five people before and totally just laid it down. Those have been some of been some of our best shows. Those five people are staunch fans. Those five people would buy like 10 CDs and they leave and unanimously go, "Holy fuck! We just saw a band that kicks ass and there's no one here!" So I think you just have to take the good with the bad. Next month we're opening for Camper Van Beethoven at a 1,200 seat theatre and at the end of the month we're playing for KFOG [radio station], a live concert in the middle of San Jose and that will be 6,000 people, easy.
Have you guys taken much of the Bay Area sound and incorporated it into your music.
Not intentionally, I can't really speak to that. But I know who I love and who I listened to growing up and it was Neil Young, AC/DC, Crosby, Stills and Nash and then I got into U2 and Peter Gabriel. Now I'm into to the Pixies, Cursive, Bright Eyes, Rilo Kiley, bands like that. You know, you're tastes are always evolving. My tastes are completely different from the other guys in the band, and I think that's actually a really good thing.
So that's never really presented any problems when you guys are trying to write new stuff?
I think in the beginning that might have been a problem, in fact it definitely was, but you just have to work through that. There's a whole bunch of unspoken compromises that go on and that's when a band says, "I'm finding my own voice." That's what happens. You shed where you came from and you become who you are now.
Check out ViV's music page here at FTM and check out there webpage, http://www.vivtheband.com.
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