Left to right: Parker, McCombs(top), Bitney (bottom), Herndon, McEntire

While much of the mid-90’s musical era was saturated with grunge-wannabes, Chicago’s Tortoise gained much attention for issuing album after album of exciting and intriguing instrumental progressive/experimental rock music. Tortoise’s influences are countless with their music spanning multiple genres such as punk, jazz, Krautrock, avant-garde, and even electronica. The group’s current lineup, of which is all multi-instrumentalists, consists of Dan Bitney, John McEntire, Jeff Parker, Doug McCombs, and John Herndon.

Tortoise formed in Chicago in 1990 and have since released six studio albums on Chicago imprint Thrill Jockey. Their newest effort, Beacons Of Ancestorship, was released on June 23 and has already garnered much critical acclaim. Additionally, Tortoise is performing at Pitchfork Music Festival on Friday July 17 as part of the ticket buyer-voted set list series “Write The Night.”

We caught up with Tortoise drummer/sequencer/whatever-ist John Herndon before their U.S. tour kicks off at Los Angeles’ Troubadour tomorrow night to discuss the five-year gap between albums, synthesizers, Pitchfork Music Festival, and the label “experimental rock.” Complete interview following the jump:

LoudLoop: So you guys are in California now? Are you guys rehearsing for the tour that starts Friday in LA?

JH: We actually played Morning Becomes Eclectic yesterday on KCRW. Today we have an Amoeba in-store, and then we play the Troubadour on Friday.

LoudLoop: What’s Morning Eclectic?

JH: KCRW has a program, it’s a Santa Monica college radio station and they have a program in the morning called Morning Becomes Eclectic. It’s a pretty big show. You can stream it on the Internet and they film it too so you can watch and hear or just listen. But yeah, it was fun and great to play the tunes live.

LoudLoop: Can you talk a little bit about the Tortoise releases before Beacons – The covers album with Bonnie “Prince” Billy, the Tortoise Box Set and the Bumps album, which showcases all three of the band’s drummers? And what have you been up to during the five-year gap between 2004’s It’s All Around You and Tortoise’s newest release Beacons Of Ancestorship?

JH: Well we did a covers album with Bonnie “Prince” Billy [The Brave and The Bold], and that was a fun project to do. The Box Set [Lazarus Taxon] was fun to get together. It was interesting trying to hunt down some live footage of the band – Turns out this guy in Canada had a bunch of stuff. Some of the footage of us playing live is stuff he put together. He kind of edited his own filmmaking stuff into the footage, which was pretty cool to get to put on there. It was kind of unusual. The Bumps record was incredible. To be able to have the opportunity to do it for one of my favorite record labels – Stones Throw. They put out like Madlib records, the J-Dilla Donuts Record, Oh No, Dudley Perkins, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Peanut Butter Wolf, and this guy Egon Alapatt who has done some great drum edit records - Curse Of The Evil Badger is one incredible thing that he did. So just to be able to like connect with the people on that label that I admire so much was a great honor. [Bumps] was just Dan [Bitney], John [McEntire], and I getting together in the studio for a couple of weeks and playing some drums and editing. Some of the material was taken home, and then we added some stuff at the set-ups at our houses. Then we brought it back in [to the studio], edited and mixed it. Man, that was great.

I also recorded another record…I think the first one was recorded before It’s All Around You…or maybe it was after…But anyway; I’m playing on two Exploding Star Orchestra records. The big band is led by clarinetist Rob Mazurek, who is also in Isotope 217, and Dan Bitney, Jeff Parker, and I – all from Tortoise. So [Rob’s] got a band now, and I did a couple records with him. I also made a record with him and a small group for the Delmark label called Sound Is. Delmark is a Chicago institute, really. It’s been a label that has been doing progressive jazz and traditional jazz and traditional and eclectic blues in Chicago since 1960 or something. The guy who owns the Jazz Record Mart runs the label. Their first record was by Roscoe Mitchell, an album called Sound. It was incredible to be able to record for the label. I also recorded a record for Drag City with the singer-songwriter Azita Youssefi. And I recorded a record for Touch And Go, but Touch And Go folded and I don’t know really what is going to happen. But it was the band The For Carnation. That was another covers record that we did, so I don’t know if it’s going to see the light of day or not.

And I did some remixes. I have a five year-old son, and a one year-old son. Got married, got divorced, had babies.

LoudLoop: Wow, that’s a lot in five-year span…

JH: Yeah, I’ve been staying busy. (Laughs)

LoudLoop: Well now I wanted to talk a little bit about the new album Beacons of Ancestorship…Are you the primary drummer on most of the tracks on the album?

JH: No. Definitely not. I do play drums on some. It’s funny – the record opens with me on drums on “High Class Slim.” And then the middle section is Dan Bitney. Then I come back for a bit for just a second and then it’s Dan again. On “Prepare Your Coffin” is [John] McEntire. “Northern Something” is John McEntire and Dan [Bitney] as is “Gigantes.” “Penumbra” is just a beat box that I programmed. “Yinxianghechengqi” – the punk rock jam – that’s me on drums. “The Fall of Seven Diamonds…” has all of us playing drums. Minors is me. “Monument Six One Thousand”, that’s me. And then “Charteroak Foundation” is John McEntire.

LoudLoop: How does recording process of a Tortoise album differ between 2009 and when you were recording albums in the mid-90’s?

JH: Well you know John McEntire has been the engineer on all of our records. All of the records but the first one were recorded at the studio that he owns in Chicago called Soma Electronic Music Studios. The first record was recorded at a studio that he was engineering at called Idful Music. So in that sense, the recording process is pretty similar because it’s John [McEntire] doing his thing. He has a certain way of working. There is like a common thread through out the different records. He’s got a definite method. But with the advancement of Pro-Tools and that kind of thing, we started using Pro-tools a little while ago…several records ago, I guess. Some of the records have been recorded have been recorded entirely on Pro-Tools. Some of the records we would record to tape and then dump to Pro-Tools for editing and that kind of thing. So it’s a very similar method. But sometimes there is a new piece of gear or there will be new ways John will try getting certain drum sounds. Or he’s got a new rack mount synth model that he’ll want to process different instruments on. It’s basically you put mics up and you record the instruments…it’s still pretty straightforward.

LoudLoop: Speaking of synthesizers…it seemed like you guys were very synth-heavy on Beacons, maybe more so than you’ve been in the past. Seems like there was with less emphasis on the vibraphone. Was that a conscious decision?

JH: Actually, I think of anything on this record that we actually set out and talked about doing, that was the one thing that we were sort of all adamant about. We didn’t want to use mallet instruments on the record. Just as a way to sort of flip it. It seems like we’d been using them for a long time and it became like, “Oh Tortoise is a band that uses mallets.” And we kind of wanted to do something different and not use mallets. The synths were a way to fill up that space I guess. Whereas in the past and on other records, a melody may have been played on a mallet instrument. But this time melodies were played on synthesizers.

LoudLoop: Now instrumental music as a genre…there are a lot of instrumental bands out there. Some work and some don’t. Obviously Tortoise succeeds with flying colors, but there are some instrumental bands where the music drags or becomes boring. When you guys write a song, how do you know when it’s time to add more or to pull back?

JH: That’s a good question. I don’t know if I have a real answer. But it’s more like you just know. I guess if nobody else can think of some crap to put on it, then it’s done. (Laughs) But you kind of have to cut the rope and just be like okay it’s done. Be free…go out and be free. Just open the gates and let it run free. There is no real answer other than you just know or it has to be done because the record has to be turned in tomorrow. So you just make a decision. Otherwise you’ll just get into some Chinese Democracy territory and you’ll add a children’s choir and some scratching and some LA metal lead guitar. (Laughs)

LoudLoop: How much improvisation is involved in Tortoise’s writing process?

JH: Well some of the ideas will come from improvisations that we’ll have…like jam sessions or whatever that we’ll record. So we’ll be playing together and record some stuff and go back over the tapes. If something grabs somebody’s ear, maybe they’ll elaborate on the idea and get something more together. But what you hear on the record are never the jam sessions. An idea might come from a jam session, but it’s always more worked out by the time you hear it.

LoudLoop: What do you think about Tortoise being labeled “experimental rock?” I always thought that was an odd label to give bands because unless you’re doing something completely outrageous like making music out of telephones, I don’t see how it’s “experimental.” Do you like that label or do you just think of yourselves as a rock band?

JH: Man, I don’t know. I guess I just kind of change it whenever anybody asks. We were standing in line at the airport, and there were two ladies behind me. We had all of our gear stacked up on some of those carts. It was obvious we had a lot of musical instruments. These two ladies asked, “What’s your band called?” And I said Tortoise. Then they asked, “Well what kind of music do you play?” I was like Uhhhh… Then they were like “Oh, a little bit of everything?” And I said, “Well, we play progressive rock.” But then later I overheard another gentleman asking two of the other guys in the band, “Oh so you guys are in a band?” Yeah. “What’s you band called?” Tortoise. “What kind of music do you play?” They were like uhh… And seriously the guy said, “Oh, a little bit of everything?” (Laughs) Then Jeff Parker said, “Well, we’re kind of experimental jazz rock.” So, I don’t know. Sometimes I just say we’re a rock band because we are really. Sometimes I say progressive rock because we can kind of fall in there. Then sometimes I don’t give a title. I’ll tell someone what instruments we have and that there are no vocals, and see them spinning their wheels and try and invent the sound themselves just from the description of what we have up on stage.

LoudLoop: Lastly, you guys are playing at Pitchfork a week from this Friday, which would be July 17. You guys are doing the “Write the Night” thing where the fans picked the set list. So do you guys know what you’re going to play already? Have they told you the voting outcome?

JH: Yeah. Well I mean they haven’t told us what to play. What they did was they gave us the list of songs voted on from the most popular to the least popular. So it’s essentially 90% of our songs on a list with the most voted on being at the top and the least voted at the bottom. At least one person voted on all of the Tortoise songs. We’re playing the most popular ones because that’s what the people are asking for. It’s some old stuff. The record wasn’t out by the time people were voting. So it’s none of the new material.

LoudLoop: You guys aren’t going to play any songs from the new album?

JH: We probably won’t play any new material. We’re just going to give the people what they want. A lot of the stuff is stuff that has been in rotation in Tortoise shows for a long time, so we didn’t have to relearn it. But there were a couple of songs we had to relearn that we hadn’t played in a long time, which is really fun to do.

LoudLoop: Are you personally looking forward to seeing any of the other bands playing at Pitchfork on that Friday?

JH: Yeah, man. I don’t know that we’re going to get to stay very long because we have to fly to New York that day. We’re going to play and then split basically. I would be psyched to see the Jesus Lizard if get a chance to, but I don’t know if that’s going to happen.

LoudLoop: So you guys are going to play in the U.S. for a couple of weeks then head to Europe before coming back to finish the tour?

JH: Yeah.

LoudLoop: What are the chances of a Chicago club show when you guys get back? It’d be nice to hear some of the new album.

JH: Yeah, we’re planning on it. But I don’t know a date yet.

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Catch Tortoise July 17 at Chicago’s Union Park as part of Pitchfork Music Festival’s “Write the Night: Set Lists by Request” series! For tickets, click here.
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Listen to select tracks from Beacons of Ancestorship:

“Prepare Your Coffin”

“High Class Slim Came Floatin’ In”