Almost exactly one month before Copeland announced their breakout, Tanya Gelman sat down with Aaron Marsh of Copeland about their albums, smooth jazz, and the state of music.
So it’s been almost a year since “You Are My Sunshine” was released. How has the last year been since you’ve had a new record to tour on?
It’s been… it’s been good. A little slow. We’ve had a little bit of a problem getting on support tours…not sure if it’s the way the industry is going, or, you know, I’m not sure exactly what to blame it on, but we haven’t had a whole lot of luck getting on any support tours. We’ve headlined a few times which was really fun.
That album was the first one released on Tooth & Nail, how has that label been treating you?
They’re great. We couldn’t really ask for more. They’ve been just super enthusiastic the whole time, during the whole record making process. They just wanted us to make the record that we wanted to make, and they didn’t force anything out of us. They were just cool the whole time. They never told us “no” to anything we asked for, so we can’t really complain.
So you guys put out a DVD for “You Are My Sunshine.” How was it having cameras while you guys were going through the whole music making process?
Well, we taped most of it ourselves, so it wasn’t intrusive at all. It was just if we felt like documenting something that we were doing, we’d pick it up, or set it up on a tripod. So it wasn’t like we had someone in our face the whole time.
You’ve done a bunch of collaborations, with Lydia, Anberlin to name a few. Is there one person you want to collaborate with?
Oh gosh, there are tons.
Okay, how about three?
Okay, three people I’d like to collaborate with. Maybe… Chris Martin. I know that’s probably an obvious one, but he would be amazing, that would kind of be a dream come true. The Cardigans, I really like The Cardigans a lot. I mean, those are just some of my favorite bands. Hmm… let’s see. I’ll do a really off-the-wall one. It would be fun to do something with Outkast.
Two records were just released on vinyl. Do you have any plans on releasing any more? Or did you have any say on releasing those vinyl?
We didn’t really know that the “Beneath Medicine Tree” vinyl was coming out until it was already up for pre-order. We don’t really have a lot of say in that. I know that the same guy who released that is trying to do “In Motion” as well, so that would be cool. And “Eat, Sleep, Repeat” is kind of locked up. It’s owned by Columbia and they won’t let us do anything with it, it might be a lost cause.
What made you decide to released “The Grey Man EP” pretty soon after “You Are My Sunshine” rather than just making it a little longer of an album?
Well, we wanted it to feel like a companion EP, and also, those songs that were on that were kind of hidden in the DVD content, and one of them was used as an online-promotion kind of thing. So it was like, people kind of had it, oh, and they were also on the vinyl, so people kind of had it, but they didn’t have them in proper digital format, so we thought we’d just go ahead and release it as a companion EP. So, it didn’t really feel like a proper release just because it was all content that was floating around out there, it just wasn’t assembled.
What’s one thing that fans don’t know about you?
Fans don’t know about me, umm… I like to watch Forensic Files on TV. I watch them pretty, like, if there is a Forensic Files marathon on, I will watch, for hours and hours at a time.
What did you grow up listening to?
Growing up listening to music, my parents really liked 70s-folk kind of stuff, the James Taylors, the Carly Simons..while that’s not stuff that I listen to a whole lot anymore, that was kind of my introduction.
What do you listen to now?
Lets see, I listen to… this is going to sound really pretentious and weird but, I listen to a lot of Scandinavian-pop music. Like The Cardigans, Emiliana Torrini, Bjork…it’s all Scandinavian. It’s all Sweden, Iceland, Norway, Denmark.
Sigur Ros?
Yep, love them. But it’s not that I focus on… it’s not that an artist has to be Scandinavian for me to like it, I just like the style that comes out of there, I guess.
What instrument do you wish you could play?
Bassoon.
Would you rather snore the sound of a dial-up modem or be allergic to smooth jazz?
I feel like I am already allergic to smooth jazz. [TG]