Mother Falcon Interview: SXSW 2010

Austin, TX-based band Mother Falcon is best described as an ensemble group of musicians playing pop music in an orchestral way. Calling it orchestral pop is too easy. Mother Falcon is a different breed of rock band. They may not have the traditional electric guitar, drum kit, electric bass and keyboards on stage. At times they may sound like Sufjan Stevens and other times like Beethoven. That's what this collective of college-age band members bring to the stage at every gig. Hailed as the "Best Local Show" and "Best New Local Act" by the Austin Chronicle's 2009 Music Critic's poll, Mother Falcon is poised to impress the SXSW crowd.

Describe your sound in your own words.

Nick Gregg: We're comprised of classical instruments so with that I think that really lends itself to the timeless elements of music that, I guess, people everywhere can love. And we take inspiration from mainly all kinds of music; anything from like Beethoven to Sufjan [Stevens] to Shostakovich, from Beirut to Ravel.

Yun Du: In a nutshell, its string-based music with pop sensibilities. We kind of combine the old with the new.

What other musical influences does the band draw their inspiration from?

Gregg: It really ranges from hip-hop, to rap, to like, electronic music. Even like Eastern European folk.

How did the band form and who were the core members of the band?

Gregg: It started in my senior year in high school. Now I'm a sophomore at UT. It was just three of us, three cellos, every day after school orchestra. Sorta tired of a daily routine and started to create our music. The band started forming a community of musicians who just wanted to jam or have a more loose or more active space in the music itself.

Du: It started with three cellists in a practice room; tired of a routine, they started jamming. And just kinda grew from there. They started writing actual songs, started playing a few shows. And then they started tracking other people, like myself, who played classical instruments and don't really have an outlet for playing more like modern oriented. So three people grew to five grew to 10 now we're at like 12 to 15 playing at any given show.

Gregg: One from Cornell and one from Princeton flying down and our bassoon player from Northwestern coming down. They're all over the nation.

So you guys are like a collective, basically, of classically trained musical students that come in. If they happen to come in to Austin, they have a chance to perform with you guys?

Gregg: Yeah. We're not all classical. It's just that place to explore and escape to whatever.

Du: Like most of the people we either met through high school or through college. And the people we met through high school, some of them graduated and went their separate ways like Princeton, Cornell. Those are people who fly back in and come join us.

So how do you guys keep track of all of the rotating talent that comes in and out?

Du: We're all friends. Eventually it comes down the grapevine when people are coming into town ... for each show we try and pin down whose gonna be in town.

Gregg: There's the four and the core group living in Austin currently, about 7 or 8 of us. Two cellists live in San Antonio and they make a commute every time. Believe it or not, the greatest medium of communication is probably Facebook. [They] check [it] probably more frequently than their cell phones.

How did you come up with your band name?

Gregg: It was lunch time senior year and the band -- it used to be a rock band before it was this, for like two weeks -- but we tried to come up with a name and I heard about a version of the movie '300' that they tried to make into a children's version; so [he'll say] "Go to heck" and "Welcome to Caketown" or whatever. And they had tried to do the same family adaptation to the 'Die Hard' film with Bruce Willis. And they altered his line from "Yipee ki-yay motherf---er" to "Yipee ki-yay mother falcon."

(Later, Yun e-mailed Spinner.com to clarify Nick's answer.)

Yun : Nick was talking about censorship of popular movies. When 'Die Hard' was aired on TV, Bruce Willis's line of "Yipee ki-yay motherf---er" was changed to "Yipee ki-yay mother falcon."

What's in your festival survival kit?

Gregg: Cell phone, change of black clothes and a red tie.

Du: Oh, yes we have a kit. It has a lot of cords in it.

Gregg: What else?

Yun: There are batteries.

Gregg: A lot of us are under age. But some people like to carry beer with them.

Yun: Nail file for Claire.

Gregg: Cookies. Cookies are always good.

What is your musical guilty pleasure?

Gregg: I keep hearing that one song, 'Let the Bodies Hit the Floor' by Drowning Pool. That song ... man, it can pump you up.

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

Gregg: I guess crazy is like having half the members you thought weren't going to come, come right before the show started.

With half or most of you still in college, how does college life fit in with the band rehearsals?

Gregg: We try not to. We have a bad relationship. There's a lot of adapting involved, like me and the trumpet player are both in architecture and architecture loves to be the center of attention. But sometimes I have to push her away.

Yun: A lot of gelling of schedule ... when am I going to get this project done.

Gregg: What's cool about that is that our sound constantly evolves.

Yun: Another one of the residual benefits of being in school is that our attention is cross-divided between so many subjects. So as a result our music is not only influenced by what we listen to but also the subject matter that we're learning.

Amanda N. Nanawa is a contributor from Seed.com. Learn how you can contribute here.