haven’t gone Hollywood. When singer/guitarist Taylor Rice shared a bill with Paul McCartney at last year’s Bonnaroo, they didn’t pal around (“He shut down the backstage,” Rice said). He isn’t getting sprayed with champagne in inflatable party houses. As he tells it, he’s never even been sprayed with champagne by a friend’s band.
While the phrase “Local Natives are coming to town” still reads like a back alley passcode to many music lovers, the band has reached a high-tier in the indie rock world. When Rice got noticed about halfway through our talk on Sunday afternoon by a group of fans, he didn’t flinch. “When we’re in a city when we’re playing a show there, I tend to get recognized a lot.” Now that he’s befriended Johnny Cash’s son and wrapped up an opening tour for Kings of Leon, he should probably get used to it.
Read on as a freshly shaven Rice talks fame, fans, and ahead of their show at the Ogden this Saturday.
How goes the tour?
This tour has been interesting for us. We started it off with Kings of Leon arena tour. Kind of wacky, but fun. The rest of it, we toured back across the country . We’re going to a lot of places we never got to visit before. Itap been different from all the touring we did last year. Itap pretty rare at this point to go to a city or venue that you’ve never been before.
How does an opening gig for Kings of Leon differ from a headlining gig?
So different. When you’re opening for arena shows, you’re kind of sound-checking as they open the doors. With your first couple songs, the arenas a third full, maybe. Itap this weird warm-up, but by the last four songs, people have been streaming in the entire show, all the sudden you’re playing to a huge crowd of people. There’s this competitive impetus to win over the crowd. We’re playing in front of people that have never heard of us before and don’t care and you have to make them stop talking and listen to your music. Itap pretty fun, that situation.
When we switch to playing these theaters, the whole crowd is there, and we’ve been a lot of places we’ve never been, but they know all the songs and are singing along to everything. They’re on your side way before you step on stage.
Do these opening gigs remind you of when you guys were first starting out, having to win crowds over?
Totally, except for the scale. When we were starting out in 2009, or even before “Gorilla Manor” came out, we did a lot of opening slots. For a long time, thatap all we did: open for bands on tour. So we were really comfortable in that setting.
You guys teamed up with Blogotheque for a cover of a newly released Johnny Cash song, “Out Among The Stars.” It sounds completely different from the original.
I think the only thing we kept, other than the lyrics, was the chorus melody. We changed the chords and the first melody and did something totally different with it.
Being a part of that project, it felt like it fell from heaven. How it happened was, Johnny Cash’s son came across this old record his dad made in the 80s. It got shelved, and he and their label wanted to put it out. They had this idea to work with Blogotheque and some bands to cover the songs before it came out. So we got asked by them to cover this never-before-heard Johnny Cash song. We love working with Blogotheque, and it was an awesome, surreal thing to be apart of. Afterwards, John Carter Cash, Johnny’s son, emailed me and thanked me for being apart of the project. He offered to tour us around Johnny Cash’s old studio if we’re ever in Nashville. Our tour ends in Nashville, so we’ll take him up on that.
I’ve always imagined the Blogoteque guys as this little Team Zissou-style group of French videographers.
(Laughs) ±…(Rice is approached by a group of fans asking to take a photo.)
You can! But I’m doing an interview right now. I’ll take a photo with you at the show tonight.
Sorry about that.
That push-broom mustache must be something of a signal flare for Local Native fans.
I’ve actually shaved off the mustache.
And they still recognize you?
Even if I shave my mustache off, itap still sort of there. Itap very persistent. I’m certainly recognized a little bit less.
You have any fun fan run in stories?
You mean like a ran into a fan and we had fun together?
(Laughs) Or anything story-worthy.
I’ve had some weird ones, but the vast majority of the time, everyone’s super nice. Like those fans, they wanted to take a photo and I said I was doing an interview and they felt really bad and left. We don’t have to deal with Tom Hanks-level stuff. One year I went to Coachella just to watch and it got kind of bad. I had to run across the field.
Indie rock fame is no joke. I saw Future Islands last night, and the lead singer was absolutely swarmed when he popped out to the bar before the show.
I love those guys. That Future Islands record [“Singles”] is awesome. Their Letterman performance, sometimes we’ll watch that before a show to get pumped up. I really want to see them live.
You’ve been doing music professionally for five years now. Does it ever become more work than fun?
I would say no. Touring is hard, but itap also a lot of fun. Right now, we’ve toured a lot, but everybody’s so eager to get back home and work on new music for our next record. The other things around the music can turn into a job, but the actual shows and music keeps us going.
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Dylan Owens is Reverb’s all-purpose news blogger and album reviewer. You can read more from him in Relix magazine and the comment sections of WORLDSTARHIPHOP.
