Interview with Washed Out

It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say that Washed Out was one of the biggest buzz bands of 2009. Out of nowhere Washed Out’s EP Life of Leisure was being talked about everywhere. First the blogs carried him, then Twitter and Facebook, and then the big boys like New York Times and Rolling Stone were calling him a rising star. Everyone seemed to get wrapped up in this EP that they forgot there was a person behind this great music. Washed Out is the creation of one man, Ernest Greene, whose eclectic interests and styles came together to make a set of music that could be pop and fun as well as serious and atmospheric. What I love about Greene’s music is that while some bands last year became famous by association I felt, Greene’s music stood on it’s own. While the kid’s in the city are partying to his jams Greene is probably at home in rural Georgia, working on his craft. To be honest I wasn’t sure what to expect going into this interview, I always viewed Washed Out’s music to be a kind of shield, a way for him to keep his privacy. What I found out is that Greene is a very humble and laid back guy that I’d love to have a beer with and just talk music with. This is definitely one of my favorite interviews that I’ve done and I’m thrilled to have it be a part of the next issue of Letter to Jane Magazine.

ERNEST GREENE: Hello, is this Tim?

Ya hello, how are you today?

ERNEST GREENE: Good, it’s kind of raining here, but that’s alright.

It’s raining here too, but I’m in Oregon so that’s not really a surprise. Well I’ll just get to it so you can enjoy your rainy day.

ERNEST GREENE: (laughs) Ok, sounds good.

Are you still unsigned, or are you connected to a label these days?

ERNEST GREENE: I’m still unsigned. I’ve been talking with a handful of labels about the next record and I’ve started working on new material, but I felt like there wasn’t a big hurry, especially when I’m about to go on tour in March. It just makes more sense to wait till after the tour to see where I’m at then.

So there’s new music on the way?

ERNEST GREENE: Ya, I’ve been making new music for the past month I guess. It’s kind of a slow process because this project is still pretty new, and I’m still figuring out what I’m going for and what I’m best at. So nothing right now, but I’m hoping to finish something as soon as possible and get it out as soon as possible. The whole promotional schedule, where let’s say I finish something, and then it takes 3 or 4 months till it gets an official release is really frustrating for me because generally I like to work on new material. Odds are that in 4 or 5 months from now I’ll be working on something entirely different, so that’s frustrating but that’s how it goes.

I’ve seen that happen a lot when I helped produce for an indie label. They’d hold a product for a couple months, and by that time we were all into something extremely different, and yet we’d have to go back and promote this old stuff that we weren’t excited about anymore.

ERNEST GREENE: Ya see I guess I understand when you go by the old school methods of print magazines and big things like that where they take a while, but I feel that now things move so quickly with Twitter and stuff, that it’s not that big of a deal. I mean people will know the record is coming out, and you can always come up with all these different schemes to build up hype for it. My situation is kind of an exception because I never thought it out or had those intentions; it kind of all fell in my lap. I’ve done a couple interviews where people ask me for recommendations about how to promote and sell and I just tell them I have no idea. It’s just complete luck that I am where I’m at right now.

You sure gained a lot fans quick. Is there anyone out there that you know who’s a fan that made you go, “Wow that guy likes me?”

ERNEST GREENE: (laughs) There have been a few, kind of “what the fuck?” moments out there. This is really early on in the beginning when a lot of the attention was going on, someone sent me a link to Ricky Martin’s Twitter page where he had wrote about how he liked one of the songs. It was one of the oddest things, but I guess he’s an avid blog reader or something so that was pretty funny. A friend told me once that Ashton Kutcher also wrote a thing about my music as well. Those are just a few of the odd ones. There are some people that I really look up to that I’ve been in contact with, so that’s been really cool. It’s definitely a surreal feeling. I guess I’m getting more used to it now, but it’s been pretty strange.

(laughs) I never would have guessed you were going to say Ricky Martin.

ERNEST GREENE: Ya I found it pretty odd, but who knows, maybe one day I’ll get to meet him.

I was reading yesterday about Swizz Beats sampling Justice for that track on Blueprint 3.

ERNEST GREENE: Ya I saw that…

So I was wondering if there’s any producer out there that you’d like to sample you?

ERNEST GREENE: Oh wow that’s a good question. There have been a handful of remixes where they did something similar to what he did in that song, where they took small samples and built up around it, but not like any hip hop groups. Most of the time it’s mashups, where it’s just 4 bar loops and they just drop an a cappella on top of it. I don’t know, let’s think about that one… maybe the Neptunes. I love their stuff but they’re really not into sampling.

I definitely love hip-hop, that was a big influence when I starting making music on my computer and sampling.

I thought it was really subtle and clever how he (Swizz Beats) did that song. I forget what the original words were in the Justice song but he cut it up and made it say something completely different. You can definitely see the connection when you put the two side by side.

Ya I know, I never made the connection till I read that article, then it was so obvious. This sort of leads to my question about your drums. It seems like your drums usually get overlooked when people talk about Washed Out, which is a shame because your drums are great. Is that because of your hip-hop background?

ERNEST GREENE: Definetly. You know, some people’s style is to really mix it up and have a lot of little drum fills and make it as complex as they can, but I’ve never really been into that. For the most part the beats have always been really simple, but always very important. I would say until the last couple years it was mostly instrumental stuff, so the beats were even more in the forefront and even more important. With the Washed Out stuff it’s mostly just “kick, snare, kick, snare,” you know, nothing really complex at all, but the sound is really important to me. I compress a lot and that gives it a distinct sound.

What’s your typical setup like? Are you using Reason or something like that?

ERNEST GREENE: Ya I’m using Reason and Cubase, which is a bit of an older program. I use Cubase for tracking vocal and live instruments and also for cutting up any samples I’d use. Then I transport all that into Reason, arrange everything. Then I add in some synths to make some melodies, bass lines, and beats. So ya, most of the work is done in Reason and that’s pretty much it. I have a couple little keyboards that I use on occasion, but mostly I just use the computer.

The beauty of software is that you can move pretty quickly from idea to having at least a rough draft recorded. That’s what I’ve been doing lately, not necessarily writing demos, but coming up with song ideas so that I can move really fast, which is exciting. I’ve definitely gotten used to working in that style and I think it would be really hard to move away to another software program, or even doing it the old school way of micing up instruments. It just takes so long and I’m pretty impatient with all that.

Since it’s so easy to translate your ideas into songs and you’re know for having these really simplified melodies…

ERNEST GREENE: Ya that’s definitely what I go for…

But can you start out simple or is it more of an editing process? I know when I used to make music in Reason I’d get all my ideas out, and end up with like 20 instruments on a track.

ERNEST GREENE: That is exactly what it was like early on when I first started using the program, I was the same way. I believe the virtual mixer on Reason has like 14 different tracks on each mixer and I would have 3 or 4 mixers on each project, which is a lot of tracks. I guess I was never that great at mixing down to where that many tracks would make sense. 3 years ago I was really into that Caribou album Up in Flames. It’s a great album and there’s just so many things going on at once. The guy used like a 1000 tracks on the album, and I was trying to achieve that but it just never worked, it sounded like shit; there was just too much going on. So I kind of figured out that if I limit myself and think more about what’s really essential for the song and how things compliment each other then it makes for a stronger song. I really try to limit myself to just one of those mixers, so like 14 tracks, and in most cases it’s 14 or under. I start with a bass line and a vocal melody and make sure I can get that as strong as possible. It’s all about adding a few layers of texture, and just simple little stuff that will compliment the melody and that’s it.

Would you say you’re a pretty consistent songwriter, or does it come in waves with the occasional drought?

ERNEST GREENE: It definitely comes in waves, and it’s impossible to predict. When I was writing Life of Leisure it came pretty quick, with everything I would sit down to work on would get me pretty excited. I guess now my mindset has changed a little bit. I don’t know if it’s just that I’m in a different situation where there’s a lot expectation and somewhat of a deadline. There’s this feeling that I’ve got to do something fairly quick, so it’s been a bit harder of a process. I also edit myself a lot more to really hold out for something strong, and just brush aside something that’s just not working immediately. In the past I would work a song or at least an idea every day, and then in a week one song would really stand out that was good, and I would work on that. A song a week is pretty good I think.

I would say that’s a very good pace.

ERNEST GREENE: Now that’s slowed down a bit. I have maybe 6 to 8 pretty strong ideas. In some cases though, the hard thing about making an album is that everything has to work together. So one song on one side of the spectrum isn’t going to work well with another song on the other side of spectrum, so I’ve had to edit while thinking in that context.

I read that in the beginning of all this you weren’t interested in performing live, but now it looks like you’re performing live fairly regularly, so what’s changed?

ERNEST GREENE: There were a couple reasons why I wasn’t too excited about playing live in the beginning. One was that I’ve never really performed live before. Any recording project I’ve done has been just myself in my bedroom as kind of a hobby. I have friends who are in bands and I’d always consider about performing live, but the right situation never came along. Songs to me are just better to listen to on some headphones, not just me standing up there by myself. So that was one reason I wasn’t too excited, and then factor in that people expect some kind of professionalism when you reach a certain level, and that was a bit intimidating. The other reason was that I just got married and I wasn’t really psyched about touring for 4-6 months or more. However, I do think it’s great on one level where you’re traveling and seeing the world, which is something that I’ve started to embrace with these tours coming up. I’m really excited to get out and travel and play the shows, but I’ve been up front with all the labels that I’ve talked with that I don’t think I’ll ever be that kind of band. I just felt like I should take advantage of this opportunity and go to Europe or whatever. And the place I’m in right now, yes I just got married, but I don’t have any kids, so there isn’t much holding me back. I’ve had a pretty good amount of time to rehearse and come up with some good stuff for the live shows. I think it will be pretty intense at the beginning because I am still pretty new to it, but after performing every night for 30 days I should hopefully kind of get the hang of it.

Are the live performances changing your writing process at all? When you’re making music do you think “Man, it would be easier live if I made it like this…”

ERNEST GREENE: It really hasn’t changed the way I work. I can usually tell early on when it’s going to be a live song that will work. I’ve really been thinking about this for the tour in March. I’m trying to get away from having the majority of the song happen on the backing track and moving towards building the track on stage with loops and stuff so I’ll be playing more, which I think will be more entertaining and more fun for me. So I’ve definitely thought about when I’m writing about just keeping things really simple. I’m going to try to keep things relatively upbeat because I’m not a big fan of going to see a show and just stand there with my arms crossed. Sometimes that can be cool to have those heady atmospheric parts, but my favorite stuff has a little bit of both.

Ya I know what you mean I went to a hip-hop show not too long ago, and it was nothing but arms crossed all serious and mean muggin and it just looked like no one enjoyed anything.

ERNEST GREENE: (laughs) Ya you might as well just be sitting in your house smoking a joint with a really great sound system. I’m sure that would be much more entertaining if you’re going to be like that.

Since you have a background in so many different genres, if you wanted to do more of a rock album would you keep it under the Washed Out name or would that be a different side project?

ERNEST GREENE: Ya actually before I was doing the Washed Out stuff I was doing more of a rock thing called Lee Weather. So I had about 5 or 6 songs and I wanted to try to make something out of it, but it never really worked out. I’m thinking about doing a small run of 7” because I have a little online store, and all of this stuff has been pretty small numbers so it’s all sold out rather quickly. Also, it’s going to be awhile till this next record comes out so I’ve been thinking I’m going to do something with those tracks. There’s been some interest with a few labels that have heard some of it, but I think I might just go ahead and do it myself, it’s just easier that way. Anyways the sound and vocals are pretty similar to Washed Out where there’s a lot reverb and vocal harmonies, but it sounds like a rock band with the drums, guitar, and bass; that’s at the heart of it. It’s really fun when I get burned out working with synths; it’s fun to work with something completely different, it’s refreshing. I’ve written maybe two new Lee Weather songs this past month that just came about at random. Generally they work out really good when I’m not trying to write a hit but just playing around.

I’ve heard you describe yourself as a pretty stubborn person when it comes to making music, has that changed at all?

ERNEST GREENE: I’ve reached out a little bit to people; that’s another thing I want work on for the new album. I want to mix things up a bit. I don’t want the same vocal sound on every song, or ya know, a copy of one song on five other songs. I’ve reached out to a couple of musicians and sent them some songs. I’m trying to work it where someone could sing a melody or sing a part of a song, and I think it might work out but it’s really hard. In most cases these people are busy doing their own thing, and some people don’t have the means to just sit down and record a vocal part. I hope it works out, but I really don’t know how it would work. I am really stubborn in most situations where I’ve sat down with someone else and tried to write a song; it’s just been a disaster. It might be something like I haven’t sat down with the right people or something, but in most situations it just seems like nothing gets done. It will be like one person will be playing a riff, and then they won’t budge from that, and then another person is playing a different riff, and it just doesn’t work. I don’t if you’re familiar with Toro Y Moi?

Oh ya I think he’s really going to blow up this year.

ERNEST GREENE: Ya, we’re really good friends, I used to live in Colombia where he still lives, and we had a little project for a week. Someone asked us to do a show only a week in advance so we sat down and wrote 8 or 9 songs, and even that was really frustrating and he’s a great musician. He can come up with a hundred different ideas for whatever you’re playing, but ya even that was frustrating for me. I don’t know, I guess I should be more flexible, but we’ll see how that will work in the future. Maybe I’ll bring some more people in.

You still live a fairly rural lifestyle and you’re not tied down to any label or deadline. Do you view those things as ways to keep the control over your music?

ERNEST GREENE: Ya, I got married in October, and before that we didn’t really have any plans about where we wanted to be. I guess the music was taking off at that point but we really weren’t sure where we’d be 6 months down the road. I was living in a really small town called Perry Georgia, which is about 20 minutes from where I’m living now in Macon. It’s a little bit larger but it’s still a pretty small place, and we did that for a couple reasons. One of them was that I kind of wanted to be away from all the hype and the hoopla. I think moving to someplace like New York would be just too much to deal with and I wouldn’t get any work done. That’s kind of just the way I’ve always been, I’m pretty shy, and I’m a bit of a homebody. I would rather just like to stay at home and do my own thing, and work on my little projects. We’ve considered about moving to Athens Georgia which isn’t very far from here, and it’s a college town, so there’s a lot more going on with music. It would be a lot easier to do a couple one off shows there, but it still would be a situation where it would be relatively small and I could get things done. I feel that with the tour I can get all of my craziness out of me and it’s nice to do that and then come home.

I think that’s a benefit to you personally. I mean let’s take where I’m from, Portland. Every band that comes from here has that “Portland” label on them, or someone will say they’ve got that New York sound, etc. With you being away from that, you can just be you.

ERNEST GREENE: Yes! I mean I’m sure there are certain things where that helps, such as getting inspiration or bouncing off ideas people. The hardest thing for me is that this is rural Georgia, not that progressive. People for the most part just want to listen to southern rock, something like the Allman Brothers, and that’s pretty much par for the course. I would love to get a band together and try to make that work, but I honestly don’t think I could find three other people that would be interested or had the freedom to do that. But I have friends in Atlanta, and I can just drive down there for the weekend and meet with people. I’ve had a couple business meetings up there, and it’s nice to come back here and be anonymous. It’s kind of a little haven, and that’s pretty cool.

What do you like to do outside of music? I know you are a photographer as well.

ERNEST GREENE: Ya I carry a small digital camera around, and it’s kind of just whenever the inspiration strikes sort of thing. For me, it’s more about trying to capture random things that happen; it’s more of a diary for me. I love looking at pictures. I would definitely say that I look at pictures online more than I listen to new music. I have a handful of blogs that I read. Honestly, it’s been a really boring month lately because I’ve just been in my bedroom working on music stuff, so I haven’t been out and about. That’s another thing I like about photography is that it works best when you’re around other people or actively engaging life, whereas music for me is being held up in a room. Other than that my wife and I watch tons of TV on the computer. We just finished Mad Men and Breaking Bad, and that’s about it, it’s a pretty boring life (laughs).

That doesn’t sound too bad to me.

(Washed Out is a musician from Georgia, to learn more about Washed Out and Ernest Greene, visit: http://ernestgreene.blogspot.com and http://www.myspace.com/thebabeinthewoods)