Holy Rolling Empire Interview: SXSW 2010

Holy Rolling Empire should be poster boys for the phrase "Doing it right." Working over the years under different names and incarnations of their present lineup, HRE has steadily built a fan base that is solid and garnered notice not for its hype, but for its consistency. Spinner recently caught up with HRE's Ian Carstensen as they prepared for SXSW.

This is your first time at SXSW?

This is our first time on an official showcase. We've gone out there and done parties at SXSW before. One was an official party and that was the best response. Seems people take it a little more seriously. Just the amount of people contacting us and the amount of replies is noticeable. I'm also pretty excited about the workshops and conference panels and attending those. We've worked really hard this year, and been out on the road most of the year. It's nice to see a little progress and a jump like that.

How did the band come together?

Except for me, everybody went to middle and high school together and were all in various music projects together. That was how they stared playing together, we had another band but ended that and started HRE in 2007 as a fresh start, signed a deal with a little indie label and that was our first record 'Gigantis.'

How did you get the name Holy Rolling Empire?

It was just kind of a play on words. We were in kind of a bind to find a name, we were starting over from scratch and had to change our name. So we were looking at a textbook and Holy Roman Empire stuck out. We were joking and wrote it out Holy Rolling Empire and it looked cool. I actually hate telling people the name because they're like, "What? Holy Roman Empire." "No, no, Holy Rolling."

Describe your sound in your own words.

What we get the most is like four genres: indie, pop, psychedelic and rock. We take influences from everywhere, but we all listen to '70s psych rock, and just rock and pop. We listen to a lot of Paul Simon, listen to lot of Led Zepplin and Yes, and we all listen to a lot of pop musc, hip-hop, Beck and stuff like that. We're big fans of well-produced pop music and big fans of interesting organic music to find a happy medium and high energy.

Do you have any musical guilty pleasures?

I'm a fan of well done music in general. Not speaking for anyone else I personally like to listen to Third Eye Blind. I listen to them a lot, but that's just because I did as a kid, brings a lot of memories back, from the '90s. It's not where I'm going musically, or anything though. I don't feel guilty about liking a lot of Britney Spears songs, or Beyonce songs because they're very well produced. There's a really awesome art behind that.

Do you have any vices?

Yeah, there's drinking, gambling, smoking. It's not out of control ... anymore. When we were younger we were doing it, we had some problems, and some injuries. People know when we come to town that we're going to try and find a party. We've toned it down, we don't drink in the van anymore. We take it a little bit easier, but we're still down to have a good time.

How do you expect to survive the craziness that is SXSW?

We're all really focused on this, it's something we're taking very seriously, I'm going to a lot of panels and workshops during the day, and I know everyone else is too. We're going to be handing out 2,000 Drop Cards; we're going to be talking to people and meeting some people. We're definitely going to see some shows and have some fun, but we're going to take the experience in. We worked really hard to get to this point and we take our music very seriously.

Beatles or Stones?

I would have to go with Beatles on this one, for me personally. I'm pretty sure everyone listens to the Beatles more than the Stones. I can't pull anything specifically out, I can't put a specific finger on it. They kind of set the standard for chord progression, and the tempo and what's cool; it's still cool to like the Beatles all these years later. I mean, look at the Gray Album that Dangermouse did.


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