 |
|
| Interviews: Ash |
Velocity Boy Archie Moore (Heartworms/Velocity Girl): 5 September 1995 This story originally appeared in the Diamondback on the date above. When I can get a transcript of the actual interview up, I will. As far as side projects go, Velocity Girl guitarist Archie Moore could hardly have picked a better scenario. While members of the campus's best-known alumni band finish writing songs for their third album, guitarist Archie Moore has been devoting his precious spare time to the Heartworms, a folksier pop group that consists mainly of Moore and his roommate, Trisha Roy. The duo released their first album, Space Escapade, on Darla Records this summer. "Trish and I bought some recording equipment together, and in order to test it out, we just recorded a few covers, including a Blondie cover and a Beach Boys cover, both of which appear on the album (Space Escapade)," Moore said last month after a show at Washington's Black Cat club. "We just liked the way the stuff came out, and we invited some of our friends to play with us, just to record a single or something for our friends who run the label Darla. We discovered we had a bunch of tunes, so we went ahead and recorded a whole album, and Darla was happy to put it out." Another bonus for the group was the band's living arrangements, which meant that Moore and Roy could work on the songs at their leisure and then head down to the basement to record them. "Most of the writing with the Heartworms is done with us banging on electric guitars that aren't plugged in upstairs in the living room of our house," Moore explained. "Velocity Girl is sort of a 'plug in, turn up and jam really loud' kind of process. This is a more folksy songwriting or something. "I think we have an advantage over other bands because we had such a relaxed atmosphere. We could do things at our leisure. We were just having fun and could do whatever we wanted." Despite releasing its debut album and two 7-inch singles this summer, the band's live schedule has been sporadic. Moore and Roy have only played four public shows: Two sponsored by Chickfactor zine - one at the Black Cat and one in New York, the GO! indie-rock flea market and a show with Glo-Worm at the Black Cat. Moore said the band has also performed at "a couple" parties, on a cable-access show called "Slumber Party," and at an in-store at GO! Compact Discs. Along the way, they also recorded a few songs at WMUC studios. "It took us this long to be ready to play out live, but we had no reason to be ready before this," Moore said. "We just took our time and practiced. We still haven't practiced a lot, but we're hoping to play a bunch of live shows and get tighter and tighter." The most incredible thing about the Heartworms, though, is that Roy is a relative newcomer to her instrument. "Trish only picked up the guitar less than two years ago," Moore said. "She learned to play by doing the Heartworms stuff - she'd just make up parts and we'd turn them into songs. We've been playing together for a year and a half, and Trish has been messing around with a guitar for a few months more than that." This may be part of the reason that Space Escapade ripples with a fresh, exciting feeling. From the driving acoustic strum-a-thon of the album opening "Thanks For The Headache" to the toe-tapping shuffle of "Blues For A Heartworm" and the warm, fuzzy beauty of the guitars and Roy's vocals on "Sunday Girl," the album's a real winner. And Moore's already planning for record number two. "As soon as the writing (for the new Velocity Girl album) is done, and possibly even before we begin recording the album, the Heartworms are going to start recording our second album," he said. "Hopefully it's going to be put out on a bigger label this time. We love the folks at Darla, but we we're interested in seeing how big we can take this. "But we still want to do all the recording at home," he added. Although he's been grabbing attention as a singer and guitarist in both bands, Moore was less prominent during his time on campus. "I was one of those medicore students who didn't have much going on in the way of campus life," he said sheepishly. "But I was involved with (the student concert-organizning group) Glass Onion, and we brought the Unsane once, and there were like 20 people in the audience. It was cool because we had them all to ourselves, but it was kind of sad for them, because they drove down from New York and probably were paid $100 or something like that. "That sort of noisy rock, or even indie rock, wasn't as popular on campus as it is now, so there weren't very many people who would come out to a show like that. So we had a bunch of shows like that where the people on the concert committee would invite their favorite bands to come to campus. Nobody would come to see them, but you'd still get them to play for you." This lack of interest eventually paid off for Moore and his fledgeling band. "Actually, one of the shows I booked was an early Velocity Girl show. Some conflict of interest," he laughed. Still, the band was gaining steam. "By the time I graduated, we'd had a single out and several compilation tracks. [Vocalist] Sarah [Shannon] and [drummer] Jim [Spellman] didn't graduate until at least a year after that, so they were at Maryland a while while Velocity Girl was going. "At that point, Velocity Girl was a complete hobby for all of us. We'd play maybe once a month at D.C. Space or the 9:30 club or something. Maybe once a year we'd be able to save up enough money to put out a single or something like that. We had no idea we'd ever be putting out an album or anything like that. We were just doing it to have fun." Velocity Girl inked a contract with Seattle's famed Sub Pop label and released the acclaimed Copecetic LP nine months later. Looking back on his school days, though, Moore said the band members were far more talented with their instruments than with slide rules or world atlases. "I think we were all slacker type students who got by without studing too hard," he said. "We were average students - we didn't crack the books perhaps as much as we should have. Actually, there was a guy named Bernie Brindel who was the original bass player for the band. He was a great student. He left the band to go to grad school at Ohio State. He's still there now, I think, teaching. Jim and Kelly are very well read, but I dont think either one of them was a great student either." When he wasn't arranging concerts or not cracking books, Moore worked as a DJ at campus radio station WMUC. At first, his show didn't show any signs of the indie stardom that was to come. "When I was a freshman, my show was rather embarrassing," he said. "I'm sure it was mostly Japan and synth-pop stuff or weird new-wave rock like Echo and the Bunnyman, the Smiths and the Cure. Later on, my show was mostly noisy indie-pop, stuff from Scotland and England, like My Bloody Valentine." Ironically, that band would the one Velocity Girl was most often compared to after the 1993 release of Copecetic, the band's Sub Pop debut. The slushy guitar vortex and buried vocals on that lo-fi sounding album contrasted sharply with the slickly produced, radio-friendly sound of last year's Simpatico!. With Fred Maher, who previously produced Matthew Sweet's Girlfriend, behind the boards, Moore hopes the upcoming album will bridge the contrasting sounds of Copecetic and Simpatico!. "We all liked both records, but Simpatico! was the first record that was done the way most bands record an album, with some kind of production aesthetic," Moore explained. "I guess a lot of the people that are our fans, especially early on, subscribed to a lo-fi indie aesthetic. Simpatico!'s actually the kind of album we wanted to make for our first album, but we just couldn't afford a producer. "What I think is funnier is that people were expecting us to put out a record like Simpatico! for our first album, and we put out a noisy, garagey album. A lot of people liked that, and were disappointed when we put out a more standard, polished sort of record. But I guess whether those people like it or not, we're headed more in that direction. We did get a lot of weird reactions to the last record, but we sold more of that record than we did of the first one, so I think we won a lot of people over." This quest for the perfect sound is inspired by a desire to conquer the airwaves. "I really liked the sound of records on the radio, and that's the production aesthetic we're going to go for," he said. "I really like that limited, compressed sound that booms out of the speakers." No matter what the record sounds like, Moore said the music itself will be different than its predecessors. "It's gonna have a heavier guitar sound a lot of dirty guitars but it'll have more of a pop-rock sound with more straight-forward songs," he said of the unrecorded tunes. "Sort of like a heavier guitar version of Simpatico!, or sort of a cross between the first two records with a nicer production sound." This album should also feature more of Moore's laid-back vocal stylings, which figured prominantly on more than a few Simpatico! tunes. "I'm gonna sing on this album at least as much as on Simpatico!," he said. "It'll be mostly background, but I'm singing lead on some songs. Sarah and I do a lot of harmonizing for entire songs, that sort of thing." In fact, one new song premiered at the group's Washington Free Clinic benefit at WUST Radio Music Hall featured Moore and Shannon trading off verses, much in the style of Simpatico!'s "Sorry Again." "Yeah, that song's going to be on the album," Moore said. "We're going to be doing a lot of that sort of thing." The biggest change for Moore, it seems, has to do with the top of his head. Gone are the shaggy blonde locks with black roots just poking through. Instead, he's now sporting a short, dark crop cut. "My hair's blue-back right now, and I just made the joke [at the Indie-Rock Flea Market] that it was the original color growing in after all these years of bleaching it dirty blonde. I cut it short to stay cool in the summer, although dyeing it black kind of defeats that purpose. It's just a change." And fans of Velocity Girl shouldn't worry about any changes - Moore doesn't foresee see any problems balancing his bands. "There probably won't be (any conflicts between Velocity Girl and Heartworms) because Velocity Girl is pretty much my career right now, so I have to put it first as far as time constraints go," he said. "Heartworms I only do when I feel I have time off and can relax. I really don't ever want Heartworms to be a high pressure situation with deadlines and things like that." |