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Photo by Caroline Barry<\/i><\/p>\n
You may know him from such works as \u201cA-Punk,\u201d \u201cDiane Young,\u201d and \u201cOxford Comma,\u201d but this time, he\u2019s gone solo. Chris Tomson, drummer of internationally-famed band Vampire Weekend, took the group\u2019s four-year hiatus as an opportunity to make his own way in the music industry under the name Dams of the West. The solo project\u2019s debut album, Youngish American, is full of Tomson\u2019s perspective on maturity, self-assessment, and retrospection\u2014it\u2019s definitely worth a listen through. Dams of the West opened for Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears at the Middle East Downstairs on February 24.
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Despite Tomson\u2019s opening disclaimer that his voice was unintentionally rough, he performed a great set. The show also served as a release party for the new album. After the show, WTBU DJ Caroline Barry talked to Tomson about influences, growing as a musician, and being on the road.<\/p>\n
Caroline Barry: First of all, I\u2019d like to acknowledge that your album is really, really good.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
Chris Tomson: Thank you!<\/p>\n
CB: What genre would you put Dams of the West in?<\/b><\/p>\n
CT: I don\u2019t know. I guess there was no explicit goal to be in any one or another. So I think it\u2019s generally rock. I would say a smattering of all of the stuff that that means. But it was important to me not to be any one thing or too much of one thing.<\/p>\n
CB: Who are some musical influences that you drew from for the album?<\/b><\/p>\n
CT: Again, and I assure you this is not a cop out answer, there was nothing too specific. I was purposely trying not to overthink it, because when I overthink things, they\u2019re bad in most areas of my life, not just musically. But for sure, I can say all the touchtone stuff\u2014which I\u2019ve subsumed and digested and now is just sort of part of how I think about music\u2014is definitely there, which is The Band which is my favorite band, The Beatles\u2014it\u2019s sort of a boring one, but sure\u2014Elvis Costello, and Reel Big Fish\u2014that\u2019s not a joke. Everything that was important to me, everything\u2014also Phish\u2014and stuff from some of these things ,I actively went towards and some of these things I avoided. Similar to the genre question, when I think something is like, \u201cOh, that sounds exactly like Bowie in the mid-seventies,\u201d that\u2019s also sort of bad. And I think that would have been extra bad if it had been, \u201cOh that sounds like Vampire Weekend.\u201d That would have been extra bad.<\/p>\n
CB: How important has your wife Emily been in the promotion and creation of Dams of the West? Didn\u2019t she direct some of the videos?<\/b><\/p>\n
CT: She\u2019s been part of the whole album, including some emotional maturity in a personal sense that fed into the music sense. We\u2019ve been together for five plus years, but I think we have a deep understanding, which is not always on a creative tip. And we also vibe. But I think that we have both grown to trust ourselves through trusting each other. That\u2019s very corny, but I think that\u2019s her biggest influence more than the videos. I also think that with her video ideas, I think she\u2019s very talented in general, and in all the ways she might approach things. Specifically, when she was thinking of positions to put me in, her understanding of me is far greater than almost anyone, including myself. So I think her ideas were incredibly well-informed.<\/p>\n
CB: So I\u2019ve seen you and [Chris] Baio live and I honestly didn\u2019t know you both had vocal talent as well as musical talents. Do you think there\u2019s a chance that, or do you already know if, you\u2019ll be featured vocally on the next Vampire Weekend album?<\/b><\/p>\n
CT: Unclear. And actually I think\u2014that\u2019s a good sneaky question, trying to get some info about LP4. I can\u2019t speak for Baio, but for myself, I\u2019m still figuring it out. I sort of said it on stage, but I think I\u2019m doing well. I think I\u2019m learning and getting better, but I think it\u2019s still a process for me to figure this stuff out. I\u2019m not saying all, but a lot of things I\u2019ve learned working on the record and doing the shows and stuff, I didn\u2019t know before when we were working on the last album. So when I contribute, I will have a greater context from which I am coming from, but in terms of LP4, that\u2019s all I can say.<\/p>\n
CB: I think it\u2019s interesting that a lot of people would consider you a professional musician based on the success of Vampire Weekend, but you keep saying that you\u2019re still learning.<\/b><\/p>\n
CT: Well I think that\u2019s a dangerous attitude to be like, \u201cI\u2019m there. I\u2019m done.\u201d But I think it would be kind of a bummer if you weren\u2019t picking stuff up. I think that\u2019s what makes it interesting. If you had one idea and did it that way tens of thousands of times, that would get boring probably around the 8,607 time.<\/p>\n
CB: It seems that between the three Vampire Weekend albums and Youngish American, you tend to write music that\u2019s about one stage of your life and maturing. So what do you see in the future? Albums? Kids? More pizza?<\/b><\/p>\n
CT: You know what, I don\u2019t know. I think that it was true of this record and it will be true of whenever another Dams one comes out. I don\u2019t want to go into anything with a preconceived notion of like, \u201cOh, I\u2019m gonna write a record about bananas. It\u2019s gonna be great, man. We\u2019re gonna talk about the peel, have one song about when they\u2019re black inside and such a bummer.\u201d You know what I mean? Actually, that\u2019s not bad\u2026I know I want it to be good and meaningful to me, which will then hopefully translate into it being meaningful for other people\u2014not necessarily in the way it\u2019s meaningful to me. That doesn\u2019t always have to be the same exact meaning. But I couldn\u2019t say, and I actually kind of don\u2019t want to say.
\nCB: How has touring with Dams of the West been different from touring with Vampire Weekend?<\/b><\/p>\n
CT: It\u2019s more similar to touring with Vampire Weekend circa 2007 than circa 2014. There were busses involved, and we\u2019re back in the mini van. I purposely chose to tour with women, because after a decade with dudes I thought that would be an interesting change for me and to learn more.<\/p>\n
CB: Are you actually a lizard king as the \u201cTell The Truth\u201d music video suggests?<\/b><\/p>\n
CT: Much like LP4, I\u2019m not at liberty to say.<\/p>\n
CB: You\u2019ve come a long way from Columbia [University], and you\u2019ve learned a lot, college-wise and life-wise. So what advice would you give to college students who want to pursue music, academically or outside of class?<\/b><\/p>\n
CT: Oh boy. I can say some stuff, but I should give a little preamble. And that would be, I have one very specific, very thin, and very weird set of experiences. I always feel weird doing the advice thing, because it\u2019s like, \u201cI don\u2019t fucking know!\u201d It\u2019s just I joined a band with some buds, and it was good, and people like it. That\u2019s the magic part of it. No, I think that one of the consistent and constant things in Vampire Weekend which, I tried my hardest to continue with Dams of the West, was to make sure everything you do, there\u2019s some care put into it; there\u2019s some thought put into it. And this is not the academic stuff; this is more of the personal stuff. When you go on stage, think about what you\u2019re gonna wear because concerts are a visual medium too. You can make bad choices like wearing Nets jerseys, or you can look cool. But it\u2019s not nothing. When you think about visuals, you think about the guitar part. Say, you really just want a strummer in the background; does that make sense? Or are you just doing that because you\u2019re not thinking about it? I think that at every point and level of the thing you\u2019re doing, just put some thought into it. Make sure that you\u2019re saying what you want to say. If that\u2019s strumming the guitar, strum the goddamn guitar. But I think just don\u2019t leave things unexamined.<\/p>\n
CB: For my last question, what is your favorite Vampire Weekend song?<\/b><\/p>\n
CT: Woah. The next one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Photo by Caroline Barry You may know him from such works as \u201cA-Punk,\u201d \u201cDiane Young,\u201d and \u201cOxford Comma,\u201d but this time, he\u2019s gone solo. Chris Tomson, drummer of internationally-famed band Vampire Weekend, took the group\u2019s four-year hiatus as an opportunity to make his own way in the music industry under the name Dams of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13221,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16],"tags":[33,77,26,78,29,79,25],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":361,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359\/revisions\/361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}