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Download: Henry Clay People “Andy Sings!”

The Henry Clay People sing about working part time, but they’ve been carrying a full-time schedule all of 2009, with national tours opening for Airborne Toxic Event, Ben Harper and Airborne Toxic Event again. Brothers Joey and Andy Siara sat down with Scott Schultz at Two Boots Pizza the night before leaving for their tour with Harper last spring, and Schultz promptly broke the cassette with the recording. He held onto the spool for six months and finally got it repaired on time for their set tonight opening for Mission Of Burma. The brothers discuss the tight-knit Silverlake scene, whether Tom Petty is a Los Angeles artist, which Mott The Hoople album is best and more.

You’ve toured with Ben Harper and Airborne Toxic Event—do you feel you’re finally battle-tested now?
Joey Siara (guitar/vocals): Absolutely. For example, we now know how to pack for the road. I went to TJ Maxx and I bought 4 pairs of socks, 3 pairs of underwear and 3 T-shirts, and I feel like that’s going to take me pretty far. Where last time, I brought 3 weeks worth of actual clothes. I’ll probably bring around 5 shirts—last time I brought ten. I basically cut everything in half.
Have you begun to hit certain clubs and cities for a second time?
Joey Siara: Actually just one—the Paradise in Boston, but it’s a good one. I’m really excited about that. It reminds me of the Troubadour. Boston people know how to have a good time at rock shows.
They know how to seperate the wheat from the chaff.
Joey Siara: That’s because of all that college education pays off.
Can you describe the process of going from local band to national touring band?
Joey Siara: If anything it makes us more excited when we play at home. Like when we played our Spaceland residency in March—we were so excited to be home. I remember being in Washington, D.C., and going, ‘Man, I can’t wait to play at Spaceland.’ We’ve never felt like we were getting bigger. It more made us miss our home and realize that we’ve made a good home for us here. This is where our friends and family are—we’ve developed our little comfort zone here over the last few years and it’s allowed us to go on the road opening for bigger bands. That’s taken us way out of our comfort zone. We go to different places with new different people, and I feel we’ve had to change a little bit because they’re not here to see us. But then again, we’ve had a ton of shows here where the crowd wasn’t there to see us. But still we play Spaceland and Echo twenty times each, and even if the audience isn’t there to see us, we still feel comfortable.
What was your first ‘holy shit!’ moment?
Joey Siara: I would say the second that the curtains went up at our set at the Henry Fonda Theater. We were backstage, and we could hear the music go off, and then we heard the people screaming, ‘YEAHHH!’ None of us ever experienced anything like that. And then we looked out and saw an ocean of people—1,200 people with flashes and cell phones. It was surreal. That was a point where I felt like, ‘If I die tomorrow, this will do for me.’ We kind of went out with an idea that we have no expectations at all. We assume that nothing good will ever happen to the band. People tell us that that philosophy is really pessimistic and cynical, but it isn’t cynical—just anytime anything good hapens for the band, it’s just gravy.
Did you play in bands in high school?
Joey Siara: No. The first band we played in, I was a sophomore in college. I played in shitty high school punk bands, and then I got to college and I wasn’t in a band anymore, and I felt weird not being in a band. I got almost depressed about not being in a band. I was bummed about not being in a band, so I ended up starting a band with my brother Andy and Eric, who used to be in all my high school bands, and we started this punk band, and I started hanging out with Matt [from the Soft Pack] who used to live in my house my sophomore year in college. It just felt at that point … I felt I had a sense of direction. It’s like the opposite of the cliche, ‘You’re in a rock ‘n’ roll band, so you don’t have any direction.’ I was in college and doing what I was supposed to be doing, and I didn’t have any direction. And then I started a rock ‘n’ roll band and found direction.
You were a history major in college—were you thinking of teaching?
Joey Siara: That was the track I was on. I had this idea of being a high school history teacher.
Andy, how did you start playing with Joey? Did you pick up his guitars while he was off at college?
Andy Siara (lead guitar): He gave me his first guitar as my first guitar when I was in 6th grade. He kind of taught me a little bit, and over time, I played by myself. I think I was a junior in high school when Joey and I started jamming together, and it developed from there.
Joey Siara: In college, we kind of started the band. I was in Santa Barbara.
Andy Siara: I was still in high school in Irvine.
Joey Siara: The bass player and drummer were in San Diego, so we were scattered among Santa Barbara, Orange County, and San Diego—so it was kind of tough putting the band together. Honestly, we didn’t really play that much at that point. It was totally, totally, totally, totally just a hobby.
Andy Siara: Is it just a hobby for us?
Joey Siara: Well it is always a hobby for us, but once we all moved closer to L.A. I had moved to Glendale from San Diego. So we moved to Glendale and decided to play shows, and really as many shows as we could. And there was no sense of ‘this is what we want to do with our lives.’ It was just, ‘What else are we going to do that’s better try to play in a band and put on shows?’
On your first CD, you sounded very Pavement 101. On the EP, the band started fleshing out the songs and developing a blue collar rock ‘n’ roll sound. Now on the new CD For Cheap or For Free, you have an almost major-label sound—very dense and anthemic. Can you take us through that transition?
Joey Siara: I think that one of the reasons is I feel, ‘Yeah, I can write a bunch of cutesy tongue-in-cheek lyrics and whatever, but at the end of the day I get kind of tired of that.’ You have to write about what you know about, and also I have a lot of cool guitar parts, and it’s hard and taxing on the brain, and it’s a lot easier to say, ‘I’m going to play three chords really loud.’ Also, at that time we were playing a lot live, and we realized that a lot of those hard guitar parts—those indie rock, noodling guitar parts—it’s hard to play that stuff live and try to do a show.
How do you write the songs?
Joey Siara: I play three chords together over and over, then I usually jam with Andy.
[THERE IS A METH HEAD FREAKING OUT ON THE SIDEWALK IN FRONT OF US WHO DROWNS OUT AND INTERRUPTS THE ANSWER.]
You guys sing about being broke a lot, but lyrics and titles like ‘Living in Debt’ and ‘Working Part Time’ seem to celebrate the silver linings of difficult times—
Meth Head: Yeah—chaka, bra! Yeah—pzza! Yeah bra, so fucking cool, BRA! Whooo! Bra! Fuck bra! CHAKRA! Fuck me! Yeah bra!
—if you had the choice of financial security or writing one all-time classic that you never make any money off, which would you choose?
Joey Siara: All-time classic song.
What’s the age seperation between the two of you?
Joey Siara: Three-and-a-half years. We’re the only Siara brothers. So if we die in a van accident, my parents’ name won’t live on.
Who is your favorite rock ‘n’ roll brother team?
Joey Siara: I’m going to go with Ray and Dave Davies. They could butt heads creatively but they made some of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll songs ever. There are some rock ‘n’ roll brothers that are interesting to watch, but I don’t know if they produced anything as amazing and great as Ray and Dave Davies with the Kinks.
I don’t see you two as fighting brothers.
Joey Siara: We do, but only when it matters.
Andy Siara: There was one time when we played the Knitting Factory—Alterknit Lounge. I hate that room more than any room. I almost hit Joey in the face. Jordan from Marvelous Toy thought I was joking, but I was really pissed. Joey was being a dick. He told me I was playing way too loud or something like that.
Joey Siara: I was telling you to play your guitar right. I leaned over and said, ‘Play your guitar right.’
Andy Siara: I’d have to say the Fogerty Brothers. Because I kind of see that path happening for Joey and I.
Don’t sign away your song rights, Joey! I know you guys like Tom Petty, and his influence is clear songs like ‘Living In Debt.’ Do you consider him a Los Angeles musician?
Andy Siara: Not really.
Even though he lived here for 30 years?
Joey Siara: I think I do. Southern California has always had a great music scene with a bunch of great shit and a bunch of bad shit, and I always categorized Tom Petty’s music as part of the good shit, so yeah, I consider him a California artist.
Andy, why don’t you consider him an L.A. artist?
Andy Siara: Because I never see him around.
I saw him last year play at the Troubadour with Mudcrutch.
Andy Siara: You did? Wow! When I see him at the Echo and Spaceland, I’ll consider him one of us.
Joey Siara: Actually you did see Benmont [Tench]—his keyboard player—at Spaceland!
Andy Siara: I saw the keyboard player watching Whispertown 2000 during the Le Switch residency. Afterward I followed him into the bathroom. I wanted to say, ‘hi.’ I didn’t even mention our band. I just said, ‘I’m a really big fan of all your shit.’
Joey Siara: And he said it to him in the bathroom, so he literally thought he meant ‘all your shit!’ But the thing is, you grow up listening to Tom Petty. I was eight years old listening to ‘American Girl,’ but I had no idea what it was about. My dad was listening to it, and by driving in my dad’s car, I was listening to it. You have no idea and you don’t care where he’s coming from. The songs are just in your head. By the time you get to an age where you recognize a talent, you can’t really pin him to a place. I think he’s just timeless rock and roll to me.
If you could jump back in time, but you had to be in a band with your brother and write your own songs, where and when would you go?
Joey Siara: I’m pretty geeky about timelining music, so I would say between 1970 and 1975. Most of my favorite records come from then. You have bands like the Faces. You’ve got the whole glam thing going on. You’ve got great Neil Young records coming out. There’s a lot of great music all over the map. And it’s post-’60s revolution and people start to explore the idea of what music can be. The Stooges also had great music coming out then.
So now that you’ve accepted a ride in the time machine to the early ‘70s, what is your CD going to sound like?
Joey Siara: Mott by Mott the Hoople.
Andy Siara: I think The Hoople is better than Mott.
Joey Siara: I think Mott’s a better record actually. The Hoople has better songs.
I’ve been trying to find a copy of Ian Hunter’s Diary of a Rock and Roll Star, but it’s out of print and the Downtown Library’s copy was stolen.
Joey Siara: Go on Amazon.com and you can get it for five bucks! The best thing about that book is you realize that Ian Hunter is more concerned with finding cool guitars at pawn shops than he is about any of the rock ‘n’ roll excess. Being in a relationship, he talks about how to get rid of groupies and not being interested in any of that. And he still talks about going out to haggle with pawn shop owners, and for me that was like, ‘That’s my kind of rock ‘n’ roll star.’
That sounds like you guys. I know you’re both in long-term relationships, and I see you in the audience at a lot of other bands’ shows eyeballing their pedals or checking out the bands’ equipment.
Joey Siara: We’re definitely geeks, and it’s about the music and being geeky over music, not a lifestyle.
Now that you have Midwestern-based management, does that mean that you’re looking at a year of non-stop touring?
Andy Siara: We’ll play local whenever possible, but the fact is we have to be on the road as much as possible.
Joey Siara: Shit comes last minute—like the Ben Harper tour, we found out about the day before. That’s not how it works out usually, but we don’t have a plan right now. We have a few festivals and we try to get out and play.
What are your goals for the next year? Do you hope to tour Europe?
Joey Siara: I don’t expect anything good to happen to the band. Right now, I’m waiting for something, and if nothing happens, I’ll go back to whatever job. But if something good happens, we’re ready. I’m ready to tour for all of next year and travel the world if that’s what the world wants me to do.
When you had your Spaceland residency you debuted one new song each week. Of those four new songs, how many do you consider keepers?
Joey Siara: I think we’ll keep all four of those. I mean, some we may keep in a different form after I figure out how to make them better. But I think all of them hit the bases that I look for in a new song.
Over the last 21 months, you’ve had a residency at both the Echo and Spaceland. What were your goals going into both of those residencies? And do you feel you accomplished your goals?
Joey Siara: The Echo residency we were just giddy to have a residency. We were just excited to be accepted by a scene we didn’t think would ever be into us. At Spaceland, when we reutrned to L.A. we felt it was a homecoming celebration. We’d been playing less and less in L.A., and after 6 weeks of touring, we were so excited to be coming home that we all looked at it like a coming home party for four weeks.
One of your songs is titled ‘This Ain’t a Scene,’ yet at Henry Clay People shows, I see a lot of the same people and usually members of several closely associated bands—and I always see one or both of you guys at their shows. Can you describe your particular segment of the Silverlake-Echo Park scene?
Joey Siara: When I say ‘it ain’t a scene,’ I mean human beings are social creatures and we need some sort of network. We want to relate with people. We need to. The music scene here is a common ground, but the reality is there are bands who are friends with us who don’t particularly like our music and vice versa. But there’s just some sort of human connection that you make where I feel we become good friends. What I feel like is if our bands never existed, but our paths were to cross in some weird way, we’d still be friends. That’s what I like best about this scene.
OK—this is where you do your shout-outs!
Joey Siara: I have to say Le Switch are still my favorites.
I like the song ‘Switch Kids’ that you wrote about them.
Joey Siara: Les Blanks. I think they are rock ‘n’ roll. I love Downtown/Union.
Andy Siara: The World Record. Codpiece from Long Beach.
Joey Siara: Adeline and the Philistines. She writes amazing songs, and more people need to realize that she writes the amazing songs that she does. Parson Redheads. Marvelous Toy. Those are our favorites.
Do either of you guys collect vinyl?
Joey Siara: I do. I’m more of a collector in general. I’m not a rare vinyl collector. I have a pristine version of Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain that has extra vinyl with it, and it’s in great shape.
Congratulations on landing the opening set at Lollapalooza. Have either of you ever attended a Lollapalooza as a fan?
Andy Siara: I remember the last year that it was still a traveling thing in ’03 or ‘04—I got a ticket to it at Ventura Fairgrounds, and it was a great fucking lineup. Flaming Lips were on it. Modest Mouse. The Shins. A bunch of other bands. My girlfriend Kim bought me tickets for my birthday, but they canceled it due to poor ticket sales. Then they stopped for a year and then moved it to Chicago permanently.
When you guys wipe out on stage, which you do often, how do you keep playing? Do you ever get a jolt in your body or you blackout and then snap out of it and wonder what song you’re in the middle of playing?
Andy Siara: That’s the job of the drummer and the bass player.
Joey Siara: The guitarists get away with murder, because you can hold onto a chord and not play. We always joke with Mike and John, but it’s really not a joke. Me and Andy are allowed to mess up, but they’re not.
At the end of your shows when you have a bunch of guest musicians onstage it gets really chaotic. Who is calling the shots to keep it from becoming a total clusterfuck?
Andy Siara: You have to have chaos, man.
Joey Siara: It’s kind of a free for all, but it’s a leap of faith. You hope the drums, the bass, and Andy can all hear each other. If it gets too out of hand, somebody will shout a ‘one, two, three four!’ in the microphone and try to get everybody back on track.
How do you end it?
Joey Siara: It ends naturally. The world always finds a way to sort itself out.
What was the first show that you went to as a fan that blew you away?
Joey Siara: I saw At The Drive In when I was in high school at the Glass House in Pomona. At that time, I was 16 years old and I had just bought In/Casino/Out, and I was convinced that they were the best band ever and that show really made me want to be in a rock ‘n’ roll band and go crazy on stage.
Andy Siara: There has been two shows that I’ve been to where I really did not want the band to end. Usually at shows you feel at a certain time that you want it to end, but these two shows I did not want the band to end at all. The Hold Steady at the Troubadour a couple years ago and the Flaming Lips at All Tomorrow’s Parties. I’m not even a Flaming Lips fan. They have a couple of great songs on their records, but they are the most entertaining live band that I’ve ever seen.
You guys do a lot of covers in your sets. How many songs do you actually have in your repertoire? What’s the longest you’ve played? And do you perform at Sweet 16s and weddings?
Joey Siara: Never a sweet sixteen—we almost did, but then we did a tour. We used to be able to do about 40 songs. We don’t really focus on that too much because we’re trying to get our regular songs tight, but I think if we dedicated ourselves to doing covers we could get back up there and do a lot of covers.
Do you ever see yourself recording any covers?
Joey Siara: We were actually talking about recording an album of covers of our personal friends’ bands. There’s a Downtown/Union song I’d want to do and an Adeline and the Philistines song I want to cover. Maybe a Natural Disasters song. A Codpiece. Monolators Le Switch. There’s so many good songs from here, and I think they would be fun to play. They used to do that in San Francisco in the ‘60s and the Greenwich Village folk singers all covered each other’s songs. They would show each other how much they loved them by playing one of their songs. And I would only cover songs that I really enjoy and are fun to play. We’ve performed local covers live before. We’ve covered Le Switch’s ‘The Country Song’ and one of Adeline’s—‘Where the Bees Don’t Bite.’
Would you guys do a beer commercial if it was offered to you?
Joey Siara: It depends what kind of beer.
What kind of beer would be acceptable?
Joey Siara: Bud Light. I’m a wimp.
Do you ever hear from historians of the War of 1812, since Henry Clay was responsible for that war? And have you been invited to play Kentucky?
Joey Siara: I’d love to play Kentucky. We hear from people who are not really into bands but check us out for historical purposes and read about us. We did an interview with someone from Clay, NY, because that town was named for Henry Clay. There are a lot of kids who go to Henry Clay High Schools around the country who write the band. We hear from them on Myspace. Even middle schools.
Henry Clay was renowned for his temper and had a bunch of actual duels. If duels were legal today, which one of you would be more likely to have a duel?
Andy Siara: We’d have a duel with each other.
Joey Siara: I am pretty non-confrontational. But if you mess with me, I’ll kill you.
Do you set goals before you go on tour?
Joey Siara: When we did our first tour, we didn’t even have a manager or booking agent, and we were hoping to have a good time and make the best of it. Hopefully, we would gain something from it. We came out of that better than we thought we ever would. Now we go out on this one, and everything is in place, so we get to just go out and play.
How much did it benefit you guys on your first tour opening for a band—Airborne Toxic Event—that you were already friends with?
Joey Siara: It was nice. It helped a lot. Usually when you’re on tour, you’re out of your comfort zone, so to have someone who after the show you can hang out with made it a lot more enjoyable.
Do you play as wildly in your rehearsal space as you do on stage?
Joey Siara: We usually play better in rehearsal. We pad the walls just in case.
Do you have a favorite local show that you recall after a tough road gig? What do you miss most about L.A. while you’re on the road?
Joey Siara: I usually just dwell on the shitty gigs.
How long have you been working at the Gene Autry museum? And will you ever cover one of his songs?
Joey Siara: I’ve been working there for two-and-a-half years. I don’t see us covering any of his songs. Maybe ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ at a Christmas show some time.

THE HENRY CLAY PEOPLE WITH MISSION OF BURMA ON SUN., NOV. 15, AT PART TIME PUNKS AT THE ECHO, 1822 SUNSET BLVD., ECHO PARK. 9 PM / $18 / 18+. ATTHEECHO.COM. THE HENRY CLAY PEOPLE’S FOR CHEAP OR FOR FREE IS OUT NOW ON AUTUMNTONE. VISIT THE HENRY CLAY PEOPLE AT THEHENRYCLAYPEOPLE.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/THEHENRYCLAYPEOPLE.