Grunge inspired foursome The Districts have been on the up n’ up following the acclaim and success of their albumA Flourish and Spoil. Before the band set off on their North American and Europe tour bass player Connor Jacobus phoned in for a chat to their to discuss working towards A Flourish and Spoil, choosing music over college and playing at the local burrito store.
This serene illustration of The Districts comes from Sydney artist and illustrator Ilka Brookes.
Happy: You’ve released your sophomore album A Flourish and Spoil, can you give me a quick timeline that led you to this point?
Connor: Well we recorded Telephone in 2012, and we recorded our new album over the last year, so we’ve been pretty busy. Most of the songs on this album are only like a year old, although there’s a couple that are like two years old. We pretty much recorded the album like three times, the first time with one producer, the second time with just ourselves, and the last one we recorded with John Congleton, and that’s basically the total progress from Telephone to where we are now.
Happy: So you guys formed in 2009, how do you think you’ve progressed since then?
Connor: I guess we started out playing a lot of covers, we only had one original song in our first show. Our sound has really matured over time and evolved, like organically, and I guess moving to Philadelphia has really helped with that too, just being like a part of the Philly music scene, and hearing so many different sounds has heled us move forward from where we were in 2009.
Happy: It sounds like you have come a fair way since Telephone then.
Connor: Yeah our sound has changed quite a bit since we released Telephone. It’s a lot heavier and we’re really happy that we’ve started to move in this direction.
Happy: Is it true that you used to play at your local burrito shop?
Connor: (laughs) Yeah there’s this place called Senorita Burrita in Lancaster where we grew up, it’s a pretty small burrito shop but they put on shows, they get pretty crazy sometimes, like with mosh pits and that kind of stuff.
Happy: Have you played in any other venues like the burrito shop?
Connor: I don’t think so, we’re definitely not playing in anything like that on this tour, we’re mostly playing in clubs now. And we’re playing at the Governor’s Ball Festival in New York this year, so hopefully the venues we play in will just keep getting bigger and bigger.
Happy: In 2014 you lost guitarist Mark Larson to college, do any of you guys have any plans to study or is music your main priority?
Connor: Well we were all going to go to college I guess a year ago, but we ended up talking with Fat Possum before we left, and decided to take a year off and see what happened. As of now we don’t have any plans to go to college, we just want to focus on the music.
Happy: If you weren’t in the band, what do you think you’d be doing now?
Connor: I’d probably be in college, I might be studying journalism, or creative writing, or maybe English, I don’t really know actually, but I’d be pretty unhappy (laughs).
Happy: It sounds like you like writing then?
Connor: Yeah I enjoy writing and just being able to be creative
Happy: Can you talk me through the writing and recording process of A Flourish and Spoil?
Connor: Our singer Robbie will come up with the lyrics and the acoustic sounds. He’ll bring it to us and then we’ll just kind of play the parts around it, or sometimes we’ll change parts of the song so that it fits better with the music we’ve added. Pretty much all our songs that we’ve written are done like this, all the songs on A Flourish and Spoil were. Some of the songs on this album were written over the course of a year, and I think there’s like three songs that are a few years old that we didn’t get to include on Telephone.
Happy: You guys have an upcoming tour around North America and Europe, have you ever had any embarrassing moments during a performance?
Connor: Uhh (laughs), when we were playing one show Robbie actually fell off the stage. I think he just didn’t realise how close he was to the edge of it, he sort of took a wrong step and tripped, and fell over the front.
Happy: (laughing) That’s awesome! So what happened with the rest of the show?
Connor: (still laughing) It was our last song so he just kept going with it, it was actually good timing for it to happen.
Happy: I guess that’s an interesting note to end a show on. What do you guys normally do to prepare for a show?
Connor: We don’t really have a routine we go through or anything. We normally just sit in the green room or hang out backstage, we might have a little stretch or something, but we don’t have a pre-show ritual. We’d rather just chill out, I think that’s what helps me focus best.
Happy: So I’ve just got one more question, we always write about what makes us happy at Happy, so we want to know what makes you happy?
Connor: I guess music…obviously is one thing that makes me happy, watching movies too and just chilling out.
Happy: Awesome, well thanks so much for talking with us, can’t wait to see how the tour goes for you guys!
Connor: Cool, thanks, we’re looking forward to it too, think it’ll be good.
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