We Are Scientists

It was amazing. It was really cool. We’ve done the tour where nobody knows who you are, you go to a new place, and you have an album out. We’ve done that tour a couple of times in the US and the U.K., and each time it’s gotten much, much better, but as far as tours go, it’s pretty brutal, totally anonymous. I guess the fact that we’re doing pretty well in the U.K. has trickled over to Europe because all the shows are really good. Promoters treat you really, really well in Europe, which is a big difference from the US.

It’s not like promoters are terrible in the US. But they don’t really treat you like someone who’s been sitting in a van all day, crunched over, wanting to die. For whatever reason in Europe, they act like you’re doing a favor by playing a show, whereas in the US they recognize that you’re in a business situation and that we need a place to play as much as they need bands to play. Maybe it is Old World hospitality in Europe but they feed you really good food and the dressing rooms are pretty nice. I could get used to it.

It was crazy and fun. The weirdest part about it is that the stage is way smaller than it looks. I don’t know if the stage has always been set up the same way, but Paul Schaffer’s band is right next to where the visiting band plays. I was literally about three feet from Paul Schaffer while we were playing and he just stood there with his sunglasses on just watching us play the whole time, bobbing his head. It was totally blowing my mind; I kept looking over and laughing because it was so weird that Paul Schaffer was watching us play. Very odd. It’s a lot different than if Paul Schaffer is standing on the stage staring you down, but we were happy he wasn’t establishing his Alpha male status or anything. He’s a man that loves music.

No, not at all. We did sound check at around eleven and played the song to a bunch of union gaffers and stuff like that. Then we left for a few hours and came back at three. Then they usher you up to a dressing room and you sit there for a couple hours. Then while the show’s going on you sit in your dressing room and watch the show on a TV screen. Right before your bit, they say, “Okay, come downstairs.” Then right before you go on, you walk onto the stage, and set up you’re stuff and Dave’s like, “A couple douchebags from Brooklyn, We Are Scientists.” Right after you’re done, they’re like, “All right, get the hell out.”

It was amazing. I loved it. When you’re done Dave Letterman walks up and shakes your hand. He was definitely genuinely warm, “Hey, thank you for coming, thanks for coming.” The guitar player in Paul Schaffer’s band was losing his mind over the fact that we both played Telecasters. It was really weird but they were all really cool.

No, not at all! Everybody has Telecasters. We did have the same exact guitar, so I guess that helped. You can get that guitar anywhere.

In our mid-20’s we were living in New York and we all had jobs but our jobs weren’t really what our lives were about. We never did the band because we thought the band would be something we would get to do full-time but we did it because we were bored after work. All our friends are weird, awesome people who have such potential but nobody’s really doing anything at that age. You maybe have one guy who did something awesome otherwise we’re all lower-educated idiots, sitting around in Williamsburg, not actualizing any of our potential.

I’m sure. I think that’s what was going on when this album was written. It’s certainly not meant to be a concept album or anything like that. I don’t think it plays off that way at all. I get that inspiration inasmuch as it was the context of the album.

I’m from Miami, Florida.

It was a post-collegiate, everybody’s graduated, now what do we do-type decision. We didn’t want to stay in LA because we were just there for four years during college. For a couple of people with degrees we thought we could get jobs and New York City seemed like a pretty awesome place to live.

Mine is the least useful. I have a English literature degree with a minor in media studies. I’ll bet if you walk around Williamsburg and ask every person my age or younger on the street what they got their degree in, it would be lit or media studies. It’ll get you a day job though.

I worked at the Independent Film Channel.

I worked for their theatrical release division. I pretty much read scripts, and went to film screenings, and was like, “This movie sucks! We won’t buy it. This movie’s awesome, maybe we’ll buy it.” The film part of it is almost a vanity project of IFC the channel. It looks good for them to say, “We put out all these cool indie films”, but don’t imagine that they’re really making money off of it.

We can’t. I actually held onto my day job as long as possible. For a while I was going on tour full-time still keeping my day job and emailing in everyday. After a while, I started feeling like I was scamming them. But if you know of any way for me to make a little scratch on the side [laughs].

I don’t even really know anymore. It’s just nice for us because it reminds me of back in the day when literally every single person that would come to our shows was either a friend or a friend of a friend. Whereas now we clearly don’t know that many people.

No, the worst part is that Richard Branson no longer owns Virgin Records. EMI owns Virgin Records.

Shit. I am never going into outer space at this rate.

Including the new one, we have three. Our album came out in the UK. in October, so we’re already on our third MTV single over there. Those are the real videos that cost more than $3000. We also shot a video for every song on the CD, and put it on a DVD that had all those videos. They’re all super cheap; just us with digital handheld cameras. I think we might release a version of the album to specialty stores. At this point, I think we have 15 videos for 12 songs.

We pretty much come up with all the idea for the videos and then we’ll sit down with our director and be like, “Okay, now how are we going to actually turn this into three minutes of something watchable.”

I’ve never been to the website but I hear there are a lot of hot girls on it.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck