NXNE 2014 Day 4

0:06Hey, it's Matt here for another day of North by North East coverage in Toronto We have some really cool stuff on the show today one the gay 90s an amazing amazing band for song called Letterman We'll show that to you in a bit But we got two interviews one with white horse has Luke to set in Melissa McClellan's band who are just awesome And if you don't know who they are you need to you need to need to need to listen to them They are amazing. We're gonna show you performance. They perform with Jim cutty Last night's we'll get to that in a second, but first went to the height this afternoon to chat with Sarush Alvey He's the co-founder of Vice magazine. He's also a reporter on their HBO show Vice which airs Friday nights at 11 And he's been to some crazy places. He's done He's infiltrated the Taliban and got them to talk about stuff on camera The guy's crazy, but amazing and let's do that. Let's go talk to Sarush How you get access to these things I get with print that it's a little easier

0:54There's no cameras people are a little more open to talking But when you bring cameras and lights in how do you get these people to open up? It's Again with Pakistan specifically because my family's from there and I've been going there my entire life And I can speak enough of the language to get by it gives me an advantage in that country in access but you know it's so like and I The first one of the first things I did was in Pakistan And I never wanted to get pigeonholed as the Pakistan guys So I like forced myself to go to other places like Iraq and Congo and Nigeria or different places But access is like really important and what we didn't know when we first started Which is kind of like the dirty little secret of journalism is the idea of fixers?

1:40You know that you can like get a local to help you and help find the interviews and secure interviews and help set things up so for years we would go to these like complex zones and just buy ourselves and try and figure stuff out and And chase the story which we did now we generally have you have to have someone on the Ground especially in sketchy places that you can trust If you're gonna go embed with the Taliban or something like that Maybe they dig it. I mean with the Taliban specifically they were always like kind of good at press You know it made them a lot bigger than they were They used to have press conferences so they understand that if they're gonna be doing an interview Especially for a Western audience. It's like they it's can be seen as like an opportunity

2:29For them You can't always trust them. That's the risk like you get like you get yourself scared Yes, yes, when are you just no like it happens it happens no I mean there have been a few moments definitely where I was like, okay, this is I'm not gonna make it to the morning Doing a foxhole prayers, you know that was specifically Congo in Afghanistan Pakistan Iran those countries I've been there enough now that I don't really get too nervous you can kind of you just have to like Exercise caution and be smart, but you still have to like push it a bit in order to get good stuff So you just have to find the balance. It's talked about season three and four getting picked up Where do you get your ideas for your own stuff? I mean you were talking about other people pitching stuff for the show every week but for yourself and you're gonna go somewhere

3:18I mean, it's that's a good question And I don't there's there's no science to it or formula or it's really like what story Calls to me in a way like what is and for not if right now You know what's happening in Iraq is definitely on my brain and I've been there twice already So I've been documenting it over the years and I'm like it I'm feeling like I need to go back to Baghdad So that whether it's for vice news or for HBO or whatever I mean when I go, you know again like being platform agnostic I don't really care where things end up as long as they end up somewhere and People will consume it whether it's on our online channels or on HBO So that's how I generally operate as I go out into the field like to get a story and do the best job

4:04I possibly can and then if it ends up on HBO great and if it ends up on vice news, it's like a win-win situation Well, let's talk about devil tell me I don't because I don't think we actually talked about that tomb for even though it's like the hit song So who's is it and how did how did starters it is like is an actual collab? Oh, it's a collaboration. Yeah, and that's a good question because not all our songs are but I wouldn't think so Yeah, that one is you actually started with the guitar hook And he was singing that for years actually like a couple years ahead

4:51I was it was sort of an it was this this anthem that I couldn't she was like an earworm that I couldn't get rid of and it used to I used to it used to run through my head while I was running Ding ding ding cuz I run a lot and I'm running running running and that melody But in my head it was kind of like this gangster rap like You know like kind of creepy snoop dog kind of like vibe and so I thought What I thought was well I'll just I got some buddies who are producers and I got a friend in LA I'm like I'll send in this melody and just say look just take this melody and produce something and we'll split the publishing And then I was I was singing it to Melissa She's like why don't you just play that on the Falcon and we'll make it a white horse tune And then the ball got rolling from that point on and Melissa, you know We both worked on stuff and it became a song We were living in New York City at the time and we were in the Lower East Side and the the Occupy movement was happening just blocks from our

5:41House or from our apartment our tiny tiny little apartment But I think that whole experience being there during that time Definitely seeped into that that song for sure. What has changed from a white horse a white horse performance? Two three years ago and it all started to now because I mean like obviously you've known each other for a very long time But performing on stage together is a different different beast the arc of white horse has a performance ensemble has been interesting because when we first started out We thought okay Well, we'll just be a folk duo because that's the easy thing and then pretty quickly we realized that's not gonna That's not gonna stick and we started using loops And now we're then there was all this this loopy thing and the learning curve of getting the loops organized so that the song sounded like songs and not just like exercises in mathematical pain

6:28We were just having a discussion backstage about how we we tear our hair out Rehearsing white horse because it's not just a typical rehearsal. We're not just going over tunes. We're actually Coming up with the arrangements because we're working with looping a looping pedal and all these different instruments We're really taking the song to a different place than it is recorded and it takes a lot of work to get there But it's so satisfying in the end once we do get there and the payoff once we're on stage has been huge for us just for for how much fun we have and I'll tell you as an audience member the visuals just amazing. Yeah, you know, I guess the payoff The payoff happens. Yes once we're on stage But mostly once we finish the show and walk off stage and go oh my god We got away with that

7:13Yeah That's the payoff because you never know right up to the last beat we're like are we gonna screw this up because you know We you never know well when you talk about three years ago when we started There were so many train wrecks live like we went through every possible mistake that we could ever make This loop messing up and me not stepping on this button at that moment You're not playing that at that moment and it just it's this domino effect and then we just panic so we We definitely put ourselves through the paces and now I think we're at the point where we really got a handle on it and this whole live entity that we have is it's like this whole other instrument that we've learned how to play and We're finally at the point where we're like, okay, we can do this. We're confident We can make this machine work and we can actually be creative with it and have fun with it

8:02Yeah on a good day. It actually means we can relax and And it sort of brings us full circle back to where we started where we thought well We'll just be a folk duo because that's the easy thing Now that we've kind of the learning we've we've tackled the learning curve of the loops and of the now This new version of the this band Whitehorse that that we sort of created in spite of ourselves We've gotten to the point where we can sort of relax on it. So that's good