Gifts From Enola Interview: SXSW 2010

Harrisonburg, Va.'s Gifts From Enola formed in the James Madison University dorms of bassist Nate Dominy and guitarist Andrew Barnes. Deriving its name from the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb, the instrumental band produced two full-lengths and a split with You.May.Die.in.The.Desert, and has toured the States countless times. Equipped with a sound once described as "unrelenting an daunting," Gifts From Enola will play at SXSW prior to a 2010 album release. Spinner chats with Barnes on the band and its tour antics.

Describe your sound in your own words.

I just tell people that it's loud, mostly instrumental rock music -- which isn't mostly descriptive, I don't think. We all kind of hate the word "post-rock," because it's a superpretentious word for a genre and I don't think rock has really died or anything. We do often get lumped into that genre, which bothered us at first, but I understand why genre titles exists in the first place. It kind of help people categorize us in their minds. We're fine with the title, but what we're writing nowadays is different: heavier and straightforward, not so much of the build-up stuff.

How did your band form?

Me and our bass player Nate, we met in our freshman year of college at James Madison University and we all lived on the same floor. We just started demo-ing up some songs because we had similar interests in music. We met CJ at our school, too, and he started adding lead [guitar] lines over the demo we worked on. My good friend from Charlottesville [Virginia], he played drums with us within the first year of the band. We released an album in 2006 called 'Loyal Eyes Betray the Mind,' and that was just all the demos coming together. We started touring, playing some shows, then we switched drummers. Our new and current drummer is Jud Mason, and he has been playing with us for about a year now.

What are your musical influences?

My favorite band in the world is Pinback, but I can't really hear it in our sound. We're kind of all over the place as far as music taste goes, but we can all agree on certain bands like Deftones. We listen to a lot of heavy stuff, electronic and other stuff, all over the place. We all came from different towns and since we moved to college, we all kind of settled in Harrisonburg, which doesn't have that huge of a music scene. There's a lot of diversity in bands, but the scene is kind of ... well, we got there and we didn't have a connection there. I guess people warmed up to us eventually, and we liked some of the bands, but we always kind of done our own thing and never fit into the music scene, really.

How did you come up with your band name?

The Enola Gay is the first plane that dropped the atomic bomb. There's originally a song name I came up with in high school, which was kind of like the imagery of reversing a tragic event. I don't know, it kind of fit with what we were doing so we decided to use it for our band name.

What's your on-the-road diet?

Pretty terrible. We always try to get barbecue in the South; it's always our mission. And when we're out on the West Coast, we try to eat some Mexican food, but we end up eating way too many tacos. I guess this summer we're going to try and eat really cheap, go to grocery stores and buy canned food or something. You really do end up spending way too much money on food without even realizing when you tour. There have been some great venues that hook us up with dinner. There's this bar in Kansas that hooks us up with great pizza. It's really awesome when venues understand that touring is pretty tough and they try to help out bands as much as they can.

What's your biggest vice?

We definitely drink a fair share on tour, and always end up regretting getting super-hammered the next morning. Being dehydrated and having a hangover on the road is pretty terrible, but it happens quite a bit. The recovery process is tough when you have to drive eight hours. We party a good bit but we try to stay responsible.

What's your festival survival kit?

Gallons upon gallons of water is always really nice to have. We drive around a school bus that's completely gutted and we have couches everywhere. So the fact that we can all lay out and sleep relatively comfortably in the bus is pretty nice in situations like that. We're taking a straight trip to Austin for the fest.

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

This is the first thing that comes to mind. We stopped in Mississippi because our bus runs on vegetable oil and the system was encountering some problems. So we stopped in this random redneck town in the state. These two kids came to us, they were probably around 19 or 20, they were super-sketchy and were talking about selling us weed. We were kind of giving them the time of the day, and then the subject came up that someone was going to shoot them so they needed the money right away. They pulled out knives and we fled the scene. It was the fastest run I've ever done in my life.

Beatles or the Stones?

For me, honestly, I'd say Rolling Stones. I kind of grew up on the Rolling Stones and all their classic stuff has kept me interested, and even now I keep going back to listen to it. I still really respect the Beatles, but part of my childhood included immersing myself into the Rolling Stones.


Rika Nurrahmah is a contributor from Seed.com. Learn how you can contribute here.