What Made Milwaukee Famous had the unenviable task of opening this year’s Bonnaroo music festival. While the opening slot might have seemed daunting for other bands, What Made Milwaukee performed like seasoned veterans. Their latest album What Doesn’t Kill Us is one of those sparkling pop records that seems destined to fly under the radar for a very short period of time. The songs they played live at Bonnaroo benefited from an incredible energy that moved even the most apathetic hippies to shuffle their feet.
We got a chance to hang out with What Made Milwaukee Famous’ singer Michael Kingcaid the day after What Made Milwaukee Famous set the tone for what would be an incredible 4 days of music. We talked about their video for “Sultan”, their tour with Louis XIV, and the changing landscape of music
criticism.
Grooveshark: I was in Austin for SXSW and I was amazed at how vibrant and diverse that music scene is. How have you seen that evolve, being a band from there?
WMMF: It’s actually turned really huge in the last two or three years. We unfortunately missed this last SXSW. We love being in town when it’s going on. Half the time, when we’re playing, we don’t get to catch so many bands because we’re doing so much stuff. It’s turned into a huge deal that I didn’t even recognize probably 50% of the people who were playing this year - which is good. I’m glad that’s coming to the forefront. Maybe it’ll come full circle because we have huge artists like REM coming down. There’s still a bunch of bands that people don’t know about that they can go see or they can go see the big acts too.
Grooveshark: We discovered Alejandro Escovedo when we were down there.
WMMF: Yeah, we actually played with him in Philadelphia two or three weeks ago.
Grooveshark: I read an interview with you that was really insightful about how music criticism is changing and how tearing people down is more popular than actually saying that you enjoy a record. I was wondering how you guys feel about that, knowing that a lot of your success is predicated on these same people liking your record. How do you balance that out?
WMMF: We support the ones that support music in general. Pitchfork is my news source. I don’t go to CNN nearly as many times a week as I go to Pitchfork. That’s what I want to know about and they’re amazing at reporting all the stuff I want to hear. I think they are extremely witty. They make me laugh, even when they tear somebody down. My whole thing is that with the state of the music industry right now, I think it’s a policy that’s more aligned with what your mom taught you. If you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything at all– or just talk about the good things that you like. I think they’ve really opened a lot of doors and actually made the blogging thing a source for bands to blow up.
Grooveshark: Yeah, Vampire Weekend, Arcade Fire…
WMMF: They put them on the map, but what sucks is when they do give a record a 0.0 and then other blogs see it and then kind of copycat and just hate for the sake of hate.
Grooveshark: They’re definitely trendsetters. I think that can be good and bad. I mean, My Morning Jacket, they got a 4.7? Initially every major music outlet seemed to love it, now that the Pitchfork review is out they’ve kind of backed off on the praise.
WMMF: All the reviews I’ve read in the past two or three weeks of bands that I really like, I’m like, “Damn, they didn’t even do that to us. SIX IS GREAT!”
Grooveshark: My favorite was their review of the last Jet record where they just had a video of a gorilla pissing into its own mouth.
WMMF: See, you can’t totally hate them! It’s fucking hilarious!
Grooveshark: You guys are on Barsuk which is a really cool independent label and you’re also on the receiving end of a pretty good amount of buzz. Do you think there will ever be a time when you consider moving to a major or are you content to be on a really cool indie with the current state of the music industry being the way it is?
WMMF: We’re not really sure. There are a lot of bands out there just so averse to signing to a major just for what it stands for. It is pretty corporate. On that same token, the whole selling out thing is just so archaic. If you’re going to do this, and this is what we all want to do for a living, you’re going to have to make ends meet. It’s hard if you don’t have any kind of like corporate sponsorship here or there. I think there are tasteful ways to do it. I mean, Jesus, we spent $3,000 in gas just last tour. We spent $4000 on hotels. We’re still getting relatively small guarantees. We break even each tour if we’re lucky. You’ve got to take all that into consideration. As far as majors, they can get you in front of five times as many people as indies. We love our label and they’ve been great to us and they believe in us. They let us put our music out the way we want to put it out. Even this last album — they say it’s their most commercial release to date. A lot of people will scoff at commercial releases and commercial things, but you want to play to as many people as possible.
Grooveshark: I could never understand why people get mad at bands like The Walkmen for licensing “We’ve been Had” to Saturn.
WMMF: That was a great commercial!
Grooveshark: I wonder how many people discovered The Walkmen through that commercial.
WMMF: I saw that and my fist was in the air.
Grooveshark: We’re based in Gainesville, Florida and we have a “major label sellout”, a band called Against Me! I use that term very loosely because they’re great. They were this underground punk band that signed with Warner and now the backlash is insane.
WMMF: I guarantee you that the backlash comes from people between the ages of 16 and 19. The kids that never really had to get in the real world and then try to make ends meat. It’s forgivable in a sense that yeah, they’re kids, but I mean, you have to have a bigger scope. If you have an artist that you like and you want to continue to hear music from them then you have understand that they need to be able to make it happen.
Grooveshark: Yeah, as long as they don’t compromise the integrity of the music or drastically change it.
WMMF: Otherwise they’re going to be at a desk job. You’re not going to hear great music from them at a desk job.
Grooveshark: It’s funny that all the seminal punk bands like The Clash and The Ramones sold a shit ton of records. You can buy a Pink ramones T-shirt, yet they’re still revered as one of the greatest punk bands ever.
WMMF: You can buy a Ramones t-shirt at Spencer gifts.
Grooveshark: I know you mentioned that you toured with Louis XIV and there was ample debauchery. Any particularly hedonistic stories or is just one long horror story?
WMMF: (laughs) I don’t know if I can divulge. I mean, it was nice to hang out with them on the bus and they always had free-flowing bourbon which is my favorite Fountain of Youth. Use that term loosely. There were a lot of girls and that’s always good.
Grooveshark: I just watched the video for “Sultan”. How did you get Lance Armstrong to do that and how many times did you guys accidently stab yourselves during the filming?
WMMF: Everybody tries to get me to lie about this but we didn’t do any of the real fencing scenes. We had the Austin Fencing Academy come in and make us look good and, but we didn’t really get stabbed. I had to take this one fall seven times. I probably had a pretty big bruise on my hip, but it wasn’t that big of a deal. As far as getting him in the video, a friend of a friend.
Listen: “Hellodrama” -What Made Milwaukee Famous
Listen: “Sweet Lady”-What Made Milwaukee Famous
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