The Non Interview: SXSW 2010

Posted on Feb 22nd 2010 1:20AM by Oliver VanDervoort
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Mack Hawkins, Zach Zeller, Tom Bishop and Wil Norton make up the alt-rock band the Non. The Oklahoma City foursome met in high school and officially formed in order to play at a battle of the bands competition four years ago and have been together ever since. Preparing to play the SXSW for the first time t his year, Spinner talked to Wil and Tom about their style of music, secret crushes and one especially crazy night in Ohio.

Describe your sound in your own words.

Wil: I'd have to say we're high energy; while at the same time introspective.

Tom: We're an instrumental band, that's first and foremost. I'd say we're experimental. We're four people who've come together from completely different musical backgrounds.

What do you guys feel are your musical influences?

T: Personally it goes back to everybody coming from different musical backgrounds, which I think is cool. Personally I listen to pop stuff and jazz stuff from decades ago, just because when I grew up that's what my dad was listening to on the stereo. All the classic stuff, like James Brown and of course the offshoots of that.

W: As a group, actually a couple of the most direct influences, for right now at least would have to be Grizzly Bear, and Explosions in the Sky.

How did your band form?

W: We've been playing together in other bands since we were juniors in high school. We've been together three or four years now.

T: We were all just jamming with all other people; it's just what we did. We were around 15 years old and we didn't really call ourselves musicians yet. One day we just decided to call ourselves a band.

How did you come up with your band name?

W: Oh we came up with the name just basically because we felt like the sounds we were making at the time didn't really sound like anybody else and we felt like the Non was just saying, "this is something original."

What is the one thing you've got to have with you on tour?

T: Well, I know it will probably sound cliche, but I'm gonna have to say a toothbrush.

W: Hmm, what do I take? This might sound kind of boring, but probably some homework because we're all still in college.

Who is your musical guilty pleasure?

T: I have two answers. I have one awesome band that I'm not ashamed to admit to and that's Jethro Tull. I listen to a lot of music like Jethro Tull so they're not really a guilty pleasure. But the other one is Aerosmith. I despise Aerosmith for some reason, but every now and then I still have to sit down and listen to a two-disc Aerosmith set. It's not the kind of music I like, honestly, it's not. But for some reason, sometimes I just have to listen to it.

W: I don't know that I feel guilty about any music anymore. I like Devo a lot, that's not much of a guilty pleasure anymore. Britney Spears has put out some decent songs lately, so I guess that.

Beatles or Stones?

W: The Beatles. I do like the Stones, but Beatles win.

T: Beatles absolutely.

Who is your celebrity crush?

W: Man, you've really put me on the spot here. That's a tough question. I don't really like most celebrities. Can I go with no one?

T: I was just talking about this actually with my girlfriend the other day. I don't know if you're familiar with Emily Haines from the band Metric? She plays a couple of different instruments with a couple of different bands and she's my ultimate celebrity rock star crush.

What's the craziest thing you've seen while on tour?

T: It wasn't really something I saw, but something that happened to me. One night we were in Ohio somewhere and we were long boarding on pieces of Styrofoam on our stomachs through a big parking lot at a Wal-Mart that hadn't been opened yet. I was cruising along on this long board at about 15 or 20 miles per hour and I hit this piece of concrete I totally didn't see. The long board stopped immediately and I went flying off and cut up my chin pretty good. People were all worried about it thinking I had to get stitches. The next day I got up and I didn't have any clean clothes but I wanted breakfast, so we went to the local Waffle House and I'm in these bloody clothes and there's a giant gash on my chin.

W: We thought he should have stayed up all night, because we were afraid he had a concussion. It was definitely crazy.

Your songs are instrumental. Was that a conscious choice or just something that came about after a while?

W: I think we started out with just music in our songs and didn't really want to try to mess with that. Really the weird thing is we started playing a lot of shows and people would be like "hey we really like that you don't have vocals." So it's kind of original and it's been something that can separate us from other groups.

T: Yeah, over the years we found people who could have been singers, but we didn't use them. Being just instrumental is just an aspect of how we try and compose and present this material.

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