The Modern Skirts: Before the tour

Going across the pond with R.E.M and a sneak peek into the upcoming album

In just a few, short years the Modern Skirts have gone from playing Athens' house parties to international stages with R.E.M. I had the chance to catch up with the guys Friday at their Loft show before they cross the pond and got the scoop on their upcoming album and tour. The Skirts not only have amazing chemistry on stage but have the kind of personal group dynamic needed to tour, write and play together night after night. Let's hope they don't "move to Pasadena" (a crowd favorite I must say) so we can continue enjoying them close to home.

Did you approach your sophomore album differently than your first?
Jo Jo - When we went in to this record we said that we didn’t want to do the same record again. One of the big things was that we were hands-on with the little stuff - like how things were recorded and how the ended up sounding. Where as the last album we had a producer and we put a lot of that in his hands because we weren’t experienced yet. But we had experience this time and did it exactly how we wanted to do it - so it came out a lot differently.

What did you learn from working in the studio with Mike Mills (of R.E.M)?
Jay - I think Mike taught us more than anything to go into the vocal booth – in my case the vocal both –and let the “mistakes” or “mishaps” be nuances as opposed to over thinking things. Because if you over think things and try to get things perfect a) your never going to get them perfect and b) in that process you’re gonna suck the soul out of the song itself.

I heard a story about a Michael Stipe and Chris Martin encounter at one of your shows in Athens. What happened that night? Jay - All right…this is setting the record straight. The Chris Martin aspect isn’t true at all. What that stemmed from was the night we were opening for Pylon at Nuci’s Space in Athens, Michael Stipe came to see Pylon – maybe he caught our last song. He was there and as a band it was our first Michael Stipe experience – being in the same room. Our manager or someone told me I should give him a CD so I walked up to him and said, “Mr. Stipe, I really like your music. Here is the CD of the band I’m in, I hope you like it,” and he said, “Modern Skirts – I’ve heard some good things about your band,” and I said, “I’ve heard good things about yours.” But that very night Chris Martin was in town, supposedly with Gweneth Paltrow, and they were riding around in a limo that a friend of ours drives – but he wasn’t at the show.

How did you find out that you were going to be touring in Europe with R.E.M?
John – It was actually a funny thing - we were tricked kind of. We had to go to a meeting to sign papers really early before we were leaving for a show – and Troy (our manager) was like, “You gotta come sign this before you leave…”

Jo Jo – And that meant we had to get up an hour earlier. We were on the phone with each other saying, “Damn it Troy! We don’t want to do this. We’re about to leave on a tour – we’re exhausted…”

John – Yeah, and then he handed us each individual envelopes with our names on them in Sharpies. And our manager was really excited and wanted us to open them at the same time. We’re all thinking – what are you doing Troy? Inside was an email between him and the European booking agent for R.E.M saying that we were going to open up for R.E.M. in Amsterdam and three or four other huge shows. It was one of those moments when you get a Christmas present – when you didn’t think your parents were rich enough – so you just stare at it and you’re like “OHHH!” and it doesn’t really hit you at first.