Orlando-based Summerbirds in the
Cellar have been impressing audiences across the southeast with their
effusively raucous and synth-kissed rock and roll for the better part of three
years. They were recently picked by R.E.M. to open their showcase at
Tell me a little about Summerbirds in the Cellar.
We’ve been playing together for
quite a while now. I’ve been playing with Brad [Register], the singer, for
about six years. I don’t know, I feel like this is the best product I’ve ever
had. We’ve been, like, three different incarnations, and I’m pretty happy with
the setup now, yeah, and the direction it’s heading. Yeah, I think we’ve got a
good thing going.
Have you guys played a festival as big as SXSW before?
No, we have not. Me and Brad
have done some big support tours with our other band, Now It’s Overhead, but
we’ve never done anything this big with the Summerbirds before.
Are you worried?
I’m not worried. We’ve played
comparable-sized venues, and opened for quite a few larger acts. Not to mention
we became friends with the R.E.M. guys when we were living in
So you guys aren’t trying to psyche yourselves up to it?
You know, we obviously are, it’s
definitely exciting, but hey, we’ve got a few tricks up our sleeves, special
little things that we’re going to try to add to the shows that we haven’t done
before. We’re maybe a little anxious. It’s just one of those things where you
just want to get it over with at some point, you know? We’ve been booked for so
long now that we kind of want to play it, just to see how it goes more than
anything.
Are you going to try and take any recordings from this?
NPR is actually doing a live
video feed online of the whole show. The whole show with R.E.M. from start to
finish, so we’ll be on that online feed on… npr.org, I believe. So anybody can
tune in and watch online.
Would you consider the typical NPR listener to be your core audience?
I don’t feel like there is a
typical listener that listens to NPR. That’s the nice thing, they cater to
everyone. I hope that the people who check it out will be into it, at least.
Are there any bands out there that you’re looking forward to seeing, or
anything that you’re planning on doing?
Yeah, we have Thursday off,
that’s the only day we have off. We’re playing Friday and Saturday also, we’re
playing some parties out there. But on Thursday… I’ve been making my list
lately. I’m gonna go see, there’s a band called Psychic Ills, I wanna see
Brother Kite, uh, Spoon’s playing that night, I’m a big fan of Spoon. And, I
don’t know, I just started making my list. But it’s probably going to be more
along the lines of I’ll be walking and be like “Oh that sounds good” and walk
in.
Do you guys fantasize and daydream about what could come from this?
We definitely have got our feet
on the ground for the most part. We’ve been doing this for a while now, and
whether something comes of this or not we’re going to continue to trudge along.
Everything we’ve done so far has been very grassroots, and we tour 200 days out
of the year and record as much as possible. And as far as anything that may
come of such a big event… I mean, we’re meeting up with lots of people who
could potentially help out the band. So, I mean, yeah, either way. Either way
we’ll keep doing what we’re doing. It’s all we know.
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