Of Montreal: the European success story
Of Montreal
A continued conversation (first part here) with Jamey Huggins of the glamtastic American band, Of Montreal: this week read about the band’s almost overnight success in Europe, opening for Franz Ferdinand, and life on the Of Montreal tour bus.
MG: of Montreal just played over in Europe—how was the response different over there?
JH: Uh, well, it’s a weird thing, you know? Like, in England it’s such a hard thing to get an audience. And then suddenly, the last time we were there, or the time before this last time, we were really struggling for some press. And we played a show for like 200 people or something, did a couple of interviews, and then the last time we were there, we sold out this like 1,500 theatre and had to turn away like 300 people who were trying to get in. It was like overnight we were suddenly like legitimate in London after we’d been playing there for years at these really small clubs. And then like, the Franz Ferdinand concert, we opened for them and did that.
MG: How did that show go?
JH: It was kind of a nightmare, actually. Nothing to do with them, you know, they’re absolutely great. They were really kind and everything, the band, but we had to go on in this really small space. And for of Montreal to do an opening set for anyone, it’s kind of tricky. So we played like six or seven songs, and we had a major technical meltdown where our in-ear monitoring died, so no one could hear what they were singing, we couldn’t hear each other. We fixed it after a couple of songs. But still, it was great. And then we went to France and had a fantastic show in Paris. For some reason Paris loves the new of Montreal stuff. We sold more copies of Hissing Fauna and Skeletal Lamping in France than all of the rest of Europe combined.
MG: Why do you think that is?
JH: Well, I don’t know, the French like electro. And those records are very much, like, beat-driven. Um, but also I think we have a really great press team there. We just happened to get lucky with some really great, super enthusiastic, super influential people. And I guess, they told us this one story about this really popular TV host who has, like, several million viewers, and does this show, and apparently she made some little statement where she held up Hissing Fauna on her show and said “This is the best record of the year, and if everyone watching the show doesn’t go out and buy this tomorrow I’m gonna stab my hand with this…” She had like a knife, and was holding up the record with this knife, and was stressing how emphatic she was that France needed to listen to this strange American band.
MG: I guess it worked, then.
JH: Well, I’m sure that’s part of it. But it’s weird, cause in France, they play us on like regular radio, you know? More of like the Clear Channel rock station or something. So it’s like weirdly somehow more legitimate or something. They don’t have the sense that we’re like an indie band.
MG: So will there be more crazy costumes tonight? Any family members making cameos again?
JH: Yeah, you know, it’s always a revolving cast, depending on who can do it. I mean, if we had our way, we’d have them all every night. People have been kind of trading off, taking legs of the tour. So like we had Nina [Barnes, Kevin’s wife] in New York, and we even had Alabee [Kevin’s daughter] on stage. … Continue Reading
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