HOH interview — Portugal. The Man

By Shannon McGregor

Portugal. The Man aimed high from the get go, choosing an enigmatic name calling to mind David Bowie’s idea of “bigger than life fame.” Or at least that’s what Wikipedia says. Truth be told, its declarative nomenclature slides off your radar once you listen to the music. These Wasilla, Alaska natives don’t say, “You betcha!” but they do fuse a solid indie sensibility with more varied influences from soul, rock, blues and hip-hop. Drift spoke with bassist Zach Carothers ahead of their Harvest of Hope Fest appearance.

Drift: You grew up in Wasilla, Alaska with John (Gourley). What’s it like to be from a town now famous as Sarah Palin’s home?
Zach Carothers: It’s definitely weird. You grow up your whole life with no one knowing where it is that you’re from. If you tell someone you’re from Wasilla, Alaska, they used to be like, “Where?” Now I tell people I’m from Wasilla, and they say, “Oh….. OH!”

D: On your current tour, you’re playing with fellow Alaskans Port O’Brien. Your music is pretty different – how’d you end up paired together?
ZC: When we announced that we were going on tour, a bunch of bands submitted. As we were looking through the list, Port O’Brien caught our eye because we know they’re a hard-working band. Every time we go out on tour, I always see posters for Port O’Brien. It seems like they’re always doing something – we admire that because we like to work really hard too. We appreciate their work ethic, and we also thought it would help draw some crowds at the shows – get some people out there who might not be into us yet, but like them and vice versa.

D: How’s the songwriting process work for the band?
ZC: John, our singer, is our songwriter as well. He comes up with a skeleton of a song, and then we all just build off that. He’ll lay down an acoustic track, and we’ll all talk about what the song feels like and where it’s headed. Then I’ll lay down bass; from there, our drummer Jason gets the idea of where it’s going, and he’ll play along with me. From there, our keyboardist starts layering in sounds, and it takes off from there. John makes an outline, and we color it in.

D: Your music sounds timeless, like it’s straight from the ’70s. What are some influences y’all draw on as a band?
ZC: We all really like The Beatles a lot, old soul and classic rock. Anything from Neil Young to Sam Cooke – we listen to a lot of music in the van. We all have different influences, so when we’re all in the van, we pick up on that from one another. If we’re not on the road, we’ll send each other tracks if we hear something. But our basics are The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Wu-Tang and Rage Against the Machine.

D: Your next album, American Ghetto, was released March 2. What can we expect from it?
ZC: It’s a bit different and a bit weird because it’s got a lot of samples and loops. It’s got an electronic feel to it, but with actual songs. Right after we finished Satanist, John flew back in and started writing for American Ghetto. It’s mostly him – after the tour, we got together and tracked a bunch of stuff, but most of it was all him. Sometimes it was us, but we didn’t mean for it to be. He would take a piece of some bass line I’d been fiddling around with and loop it around and build a song around it. It’s going to be different, but it’s a really cool sounding record.

D: You played Bonaroo last year. What was that like? How do you rate the festival circuit against playing indoor shows?
ZC: That’s a tough question because they’re both so amazing. I really like the festivals because I love the whole party vibe. Everybody there loves music – people are drunk or on drugs, but everybody’s having a good time. It’s totally electric – Bonaroo especially. It was our first open-air festival, and everything worked out perfectly for us. We were really excited to get there, so we drove overnight … and we were the first band to get there – completely the kids who showed up to the party waaay too early. We were the first band to play at nightfall the first night. It was a really crazy experience. But it’s also really fun to play smaller club shows where everyone is there just to see you. That’s a really awesome feeling as well.

D: Any particular reason why you decided to play the Harvest of Hope Fest this year?
ZC: The lineup looks awesome, we haven’t been to Florida in a long time, and we think it’s a really cool opportunity.