The Deli catches up with Ryan Schaefer,
the "not so experimental" frontman of the Royal Bangs

   It is difficult to believe that the unassuming guy in the green hoodie on the stairs at Mercy Lounge fronts Royal Bangs, a blasty pop-rock band that has already played SXSW and Bonnaroo in their relatively short career to date.  Not only that, but Royal Bangs managed to pique the interest of Spin, Rolling Stone and NME with its first album “We Breed Champions.”  Now, after releasing “Let It Beep” mid-September on Audio Eagle, vocalist/keyboardist/guitarist Ryan Schaefer opts to talk on the freezing balcony about the follow-up.
 
    Knoxville has provided a “good home base” for the band, which has been marking time as such for four years, though Schaefer and drummer Chris Rusk have been playing together for eight. Schaefer describes Knoxville as a cheap city to live in with a decent music scene, and Royal Bangs built up support through playing local nightclub – and Schaefer’s former workplace – the Pilot Light.  In its early years, here and there the band pieced together “We Breed Champions” sans a real studio, purely for the sake of preserving the material, and released it for free.

    “It was more just because we were having fun and just trying to document the songs,” explains Schaefer.  “We didn’t have any expectations for it.”
Schaefer then spent a year in France, from 2006 to 2007, and when he returned, to his surprise, Audio Eagle wanted to release “We Breed Champions.”
From there, it has been an adjustment to touring and now having a lot more buttons to play with during the recording process of “Let It Beep,” a title that won by default as the “least offensive” of those tossed around.

“We spent 10 days sleeping in the studio, working 14 hours a day, and we had access to all kinds of synthesizers” says Schaefer.  “It was a little more calculated; we spent a lot more time writing and talking about arrangements.”As the producer of both Royal Bangs albums, Schaefer likes to get his hands dirty in the finer composition of the music, describing himself as a “total nerd about recording.”

“I guess when you don’t play sports…” he trails off, when asked how he came to teach himself the skills of production.  To hear him talk, he prefers to be in control of the details of the arrangement, though in the recording of “Let It Beep,” an engineer was working with the band.  Schaefer is definitely methodic to a degree in his approach, recounting making a list of everything that had to be done that day during recording sessions.  

  On “Let It Beep,” there are undoubtedly more bells and whistles used in a manner that might bring to mind Beck’s “The Information,” but Schaefer balks at the term experimental. “We definitely had a lot more time and resources to try out,” he says.  “But I’m always uncomfortable with the term ‘experimental,’ especially as it applies to what we do, because I don’t think what we do is super, like, out-there.”

The drilling guitar riffs and relentless percussion from “We Breed Champions” are still present in “Let It Beep,” they just no longer lead the way amidst the clatter and clanking of a ton of well-placed synth.  It would seem that such an emphasis on the keys would make Royal Bangs just sound like noise, but the instrumentation is layered too meticulously for that.  The recording of “My Car is Haunted,” during which Schaefer overdubbed in one studio while an engineer worked in another, relays the pains Royal Bangs take in achieving its musical texture.

    “Chris spent the whole day banging on fire extinguishers to come up with all the percussion,” says Schaefer.  “And we wouldn’t have been able to do that if we’d been working in one studio.”
It seems like the band treats the studio like a laboratory, concocting chipper, boisterous layers of percussive knocking and clanging.  And the song titles, many of which are a clever play on words, seem suited to the music, though most were stamped temporarily on the songs as an afterthought. “A lot of the songs were written in France, and I would make a demo of them first on the computer and e-mail it to the other guys,” says Schaefer.  “There were no words, so I’d just come up with some bullshit title and send it, and then we’d always think, ‘Oh yeah, we’re gonna change the name of that later,’ and then we don’t and we end up with stupid song titles.”

    In terms of live performance, sheer sonic intensity is captivating enough to draw an audience’s eyes to the stage.  The resonating jumble of keys and borderline-dance edge make it seem erratic, but songs can still be followed because of the rhythm set by Henry Gibson on bass and Rusk, who looks pretty happy about something behind his drum set.  And it’s hard not to be amused by unintentional synchronized head-bobbing onstage.

   Things are leveling out for Royal Bangs as they take on European tour dates in November and plan for an EP in the future, which is currently in the early, talk-about-it stages.  Thus far, though their music is catching on in the U.S., press across the pond might be interpreting Royal Bangs better than America.  Schaefer doesn’t spare the topic of the press much more than a laugh.

    “In the British press, I don’t know who they talk to, or what is different over there, but they more or less say things that I would probably agree with as far as influences,” Schaefer says. “But over here there’s tons of smaller blogs, and they just come up with the weirdest shit, and usually it’s pretty complimentary, but they’ll compare it to stuff that none of us listen to,” he says, and starts to crack up.  “It’s whatever.  As long as they like it, I don’t care what they compare it to.”