We first fell in love with these guys a few months back and had no choice but to review their musical stylings. (Check it out here). Since then, we have become friends... ok, groupies, and got to have dinner with them the other night where we chatted about all things nourishing.
How long have you been playing together?
Cameron: Since August
Where did the name A Hotel Nourishing come from? What does it mean?
Sonny: It doesn't have a giant meaning. The band Sigur Ros has a website where you can look up the lyrics and the translations, I forget what song it's in, but the one verse has the words A Hotel and the next verse says Nourishing. We were looking for band names and I love that band so... I wish there was something better, I really do.
Tell us about the first time you picked up a guitar.
Sonny: I think I was eight and it was one of those awful cheap Brand Names guitars ad I broke the neck of of it. I was raised with music - my dad loves the Allman Brothers, so thats what I grew up on. I would always try to play along with it. I was awful. I didn't get my first real guitar til I was maybe 12. I still have it. It's still our backup guitar
And drum sticks?
Cameron: I was in seventh grade and they were forcing us to choose chorus or play in the band; I thought drums would be really sweet. Then after a year of not touching them, I picked them back up and while listening to Interpol, Blood Brothers, Turn on the Bright Lights, I said, 'There's my drum set'.
How did you train your hands to move so quickly?
Cameron: I started because of this band, The Walkmen, they had this song called Rat. It's straight up sixteenth notes the entire way through the song. The fastest tempo!
Are you always tapping on things?
Cameron: Yeah, actually.
Do you feel like there is a stigma attached to being a drummer? i.e. girls?
Cameron: There's such a douchebag aura to drummers. I almost feel like one now because I have a mohawk, but it's pure comedy.
Do either of you play other instruments?
Sonny: I don't really know how to play anything; I taught myself the guitar. Drums a little bit, piano and I taught myself to play trumpet once, bass, mandolin. Oh and I have a banjo!
Cameron: Since I've been in the band I've learned a few guitar notes. I play the timpani, the big kettle drums and then I learned the other mallet.
Any formal voice training?
Sonny: Chorus and elementary school. I won't get into the aspect of what people have told me that I sound like.
What? Really?
Sonny: Someone in one night said I look like Bill Gates and sounded like Stevie Nicks, all in one swing. It brought me down a peg.
You ever think about wearing a strap for your glasses?
Sonny: Yeah! Lately, very much so. When I first got them, I almost crushed them with my heel when I was playing guitar.
What are the positives about being a 2 man band?
Cameron: I was in a five piece and it was so hard to compromise. It's easy with me and Sonny because we're on the same level with everything. With two people there is barely any compromising. When I played in the five, no one would agree on anything, the process would take so much longer. With us, we say, 'Hey this sounds cool', so we do that. When people see a two man band produce this much sound, they are kind of taken back.
Sonny: Plus it takes about five minutes to set up and I think a lot of venues are happier with us.
The negatives?
Sonny: Sometimes we arent as loud as we'd like. And on the low end, there's no bass but sometimes i can make up for that. Other than that, I enjoy it. Gives me more room to jump around.
How long did you practice before you started to book shows?
Sonny: A few months. At our first show we only had seven songs and that is what's on the EP
Cameron: It was pretty fast actually.
Have you experimented with other genres of music?
Cameron: When we did first start, it was closer to straight up indie
Sonny: It was more like Interpol and Broken Social Scene. That genre of song writing and at that time, we did have a bass player. It just didn't work out.
Cameron: Progressively, it turned into a more math rock, experimental type thing. I was into Tara Metals and battle, but we wanted to incorporate both of us into it so we added some Indie that we agreed on like My Morning Jacket and let it go from there.
What do fans say is their favorite song?
Sonny: A Liberator Knocks and For All Your Debts, Public and Private, sometimes Remember, Be Careful.
You've gained recognition quickly, how does that feel?
Cameron: It's fantastic because normally I show people the bands that influence us and when they listen, they look unsure or think it's terrible. But when we get up on stage in front of them, we play and they respond to it, its a great thing. We're doing what we like to do and people respond to it.
If you could play with / open for any band, who would it be?
Sonny: I'd have to go Radiohead, but there's a thousand. I love the guys from My Morning Jacket.
Cameron: We are already in the works with one of them - Tara Mellows. Battles would be good. Actually, Interpol. Turn on the Bright Lights changed my life.
You play shows every week, is that hard to do? Would you like to play every night?
Sonny: I love it; the fact that each week we can say, 'want to come see us? We're playing Friday.' But finding parking, loading in and out in the winter, that sort of sucks. When we get up on stage, I feel better about everything.
Do you do a lot of self-promotion?
Sonny: We're trying. We are working with the guys from Whaleplane. They're out of Fredonia, helping us get t-shirts made.
Do you plan on "touring" outside of WNY?
Sonny: We are going on tour with Rebecca Ryskalczyk from the end of May through June. Matt Burne, whose in charge of Whaleplane, and he planned it out so we stay East Coast - Chicago, Philly, Cleveland, Georgia, Florida, New Orleans.
What do you reference for inspiration, other than music?
Sonny: I love movies. I think films and current events, the world, shitty people.
Cameron: If you ever stop and listen, you find a really odd beat or rhythm with everything. You can stand on a bottom floor and listen to people waling above you, it has a weird beat to it, something you can work out with it.
Do you ever feel that by immersing yourself in the work of other musicians, you run the risk of copying them?
Sonny: There is defiantly a lot of things I've written where I feel like I've ripped someone off and I won't play it then. Or there are a bunch of songs I wrote before we started, and I've had to change them because they sounded like an optimistic Radiohead
Who writes the lyrics and do you both have to agree on them?
Sonny: I do. Usually during practice you cant even hear it so, I could talk about raping ghosts and he would never know it.
Cameron: Of course you have a few band with lyrics you really enjoy, but then you have ones like Animal Collective that have obscure lyrics that don't make sense at all. I don't what he sings about.
Do you ever listen to your own CD recreationally?
Sonny: After we recorded the EP I did a bunch of times
Cameron: Me too. I would listen then listen to the CD of my old band it was funny to me, the difference.
Sonny: It's definately soething I made that I will always listen to regardless of us.
Lightening Round!
PBR or Labatt?
Sonny: PBR
Cameron: I don't really drink
Neitzches or Soundlab?
Sonny: Soundlab
Cameron: Soundlab
Foosball or Bubble Hockey?
Sonny: Foosball
Cameron: Foosball
Meat and potatoes or vegetables?
Sonny: Meat and potatoes
Cameron: Meat inside of potatoes
Movie theater or home videos?
Sonny: Home videos
Cameron: Movie theater
