Cosmic Cantina, Chapel Hill, NC
March 9, 2003
Interview by Brian Howe
Photos by Janet Turley

The French Kicks is singer Nick Stumpf, guitarist Matt Stinchcomb, keyboardist and guitarist Josh Wise, bassist Lawrence Stumpf and new drummer Hugh McIntosh. They are a Brooklyn band on hot ticket Star Time International Records, also home to The Walkmen and The Natural History. On their latest release, One Time Bells, The French Kicks manage to blend genres as dissimilar as post-punk, soul, garage rock and new wave into an original sound that distills all these influences into succinct, virulently infectious pop.

I met up with the French Kicks after their soundcheck at the Cat’s Cradle on their tour with Idlewild. We headed to the Cosmic Cantina for burritos and beer, which was jammed with drunken college kids, who made such a racket that it’s a rock and roll miracle the interview made it onto the tape at all. We quickly settled in amid an array of plates and bottles: me, the French Kicks, and some dude from a not-to-be-named college campus newspaper who had some pretty big balls to turn on his tape recorder and stealthily slide it over when he saw me getting the goods. Needless to say, he was swiftly rebuked and sheepishly withdrew. I suppose he’s yet to reach the part of his journalism school curriculum when they cover ethics. No Trustafarian in a blue Oxford cloth dress shirt is gonna stick his byline on my interview. Ahem. Now, on with the show.

I understand you’ve all been friends since high school, is that true?
Nick: Most of us. We met Josh [Wise] later. Everybody else is from D.C. except Josh. We met him in New York.

I’ve found that it can be really hard to maintain friendships from high school, since people change so much through their teens and 20s. Have you found it difficult to sustain these relationships along the way?
Nick: No, not at all. I think all my best friends are friends I made in high school.

This next question is kind of obsolete since you aren’t drumming and singing any more, but the drummer/singer tandem thing is pretty rare and hard to pull off. Was there a specific reason you decided to go that route?
Nick: It was an accident pretty much and it wasn’t really planned. When we started everybody was writing songs and we’d trade off singing on a lot of tracks.
Hugh, how did you get involved with the French Kicks?
Hugh: I had known them for a long time, and I was in New York when Nick decided not to play drums.
Nick, what led to that decision?
Nick: Mostly just to be able to sing better. It was hard to sing and play drums at the same time. I was out of breath all the time. It was also pretty limiting in terms of stage presentation. I don’t regret doing it, but to be able to move around as a singer is really important.

Do you find that you’re getting comfortable moving around the stage, now that you’re free to do so? Was it awkward at all at first?
Nick: Of course. It didn’t feel natural at first, but it’s getting there.

When you guys were just starting out, did you have any specific goals in mind for the French Kicks or did you just want to play music?
Nick: I think from the beginning we really wanted to see how far we could take it.

Do you feel like you’ve come pretty far in achieving those goals, and have they changed along the way?
Nick: We didn’t have many specific goals. One was not having a day job.

Have you made it there yet?
Matt: Yep, none of us have day jobs now. Another goal was touring Europe, and so far we’ve been to the UK.

If I’m not mistaken you were popular in the UK before here. Is that true?
Nick: We hear that too, it’s weird. When we went over there we definitely got some really good press. But I don’t think it can be said that we were a bigger deal there than here , but maybe slightly.

A lot of your press seems to stress that you don’t sound anything like The Strokes or The White Stripes. Why do you think people always feel the need to mention those bands if you don’t sound like them?
Nick: Those are the bands that sort of broke through in our generation, and we’re from the same area so there are going to be some similarities.

It’s uncanny though, how it reoccurs from review to review. Everyone writes, “People will say they sound like The Strokes or The White Stripes, but they actually sound like this.” It makes me wonder if these people saying you sound like The White Stripes even exist, or if they’re just bogeymen created by critics who feel the need to make this connection without taking responsibility.
Nick: They say that about everybody, especially in the last year.
Matt: You can’t get away from it. You could be reading, like, a ballet review and they start talking about The White Stripes.

How do you guys feel about our current “rock revival?” Have you felt any negative effects from it, or any boost for your career?
Nick: It’s done both. You have the annoyance of reading about it all the time, whether it’s relevant or not. But I think we’ve been helped by it in some ways.

I asked Ted Leo about it, and he mentioned that it could be helping if only by boosting show attendance and getting people more interested in music.
Matt: Personally, I think The Strokes and White Stripes are great. It would be really annoying if they were terrible. But it’s great to see some good music getting all this attention.

What music are you getting off on these days, old or new?
Both: We’ve been listening to a lot of hip-hop.

Have you heard of Petey Pablo? He’s our local NC pseudo-commercial rap star, but I haven’t heard anything about him in a while.
Matt: Oh really?

He sings that song, “North Carolina, come on and raise up . . .” And something about swinging your shirt ‘round your head like a helicopter.
Nick: Oh yeah, I’ve heard that song. Stadium rap, kind of.

Yeah, stadium rap, Petey Pablo. That’s our man. Are you guys working on a new record yet?
Nick: We have four or five new songs we’re playing live. We’re probably going to record in the Fall.

You doing it with Star Time again?
Nick: Yeah.

How are the new songs shaping up compared to the old ones?
Matt: We’re getting more back into guitars. The previous records had a bit more going on, but the new one is going to have a lot more simple guitar stuff. I think all this isn’t the result of us sitting down and saying, let’s do more guitar oriented stuff. There does seem to be some sort of specific sound emerging though.

How do you feel about payola and restrictions on broadcast law? Do you feel any effect from it, in the fact that maybe your record label couldn’t afford to pay corporate radio to play your music?
Nick: It’s definitely well known that it costs money to get your songs on the radio.

True, but I’m afraid it’s not as well known as it should be. I don’t think most people understand that when all of a sudden MC Bobo has a single in rotation twenty times a day, it isn’t necessarily because MC Bobo is the cream of the crop. It’s more likely that a label paid a shitload of money to put that song in rotation and “break” it.
Matt: That’s part of the machine now too. The world we’re in now, everybody knows that commercial radio costs like $100,000, and college costs a certain amount, and you can see the imbalance. It’s ridiculous, of course, but it’s always sort of been this way, although it’s worse now than ever before.

In theory, the people own the airwaves. They’re ours. But in reality, they aren’t ours. Do you think a situation where all kinds of small bands could get music broadcast on the radio could exist?
Nick: I think you’re seeing that happening on the Internet right now. And that’s why the major labels are freaking out. They’re trying to figure out exactly how they’re going to make money in this new situation given the fact that this is how people are listening to music more and more, and how they’re coming to own music.

The Internet does seem to be the new frontier of musical choice, but it’s going to get to the point where it’s just as corporately controlled as the radio if the current trends continue.
Nick: I just got a satellite radio, and that actually seems pretty interesting. It’s like cable television because there’s so much variety and they can get away with more. There’s no censorship.

And that’s the important thing, isn’t it? To have a variety of choices available.
Nick: Yeah, definitely.

What are the responsibilities of the artist in regard to their politics? Should they bring them to bear on their art, or should art escape or transcend politics?
Matt: I feel really weird about the idea of talking about the war on stage. I don’t know exactly why, I just feel like –

Like it’s too frivolous of a context for it, perhaps?
Matt: A lot of the most incisive art, politically, makes you think about it without explicitly mentioning it. I don’t think it is as effective sometimes to use your art as a platform for an issue. It automatically pigeonholes you and seems like talking down to the audience. I think it’s great when people who have media attention can use that to help people, but I don’t think necessarily the context is always appropriate. It is entertainment. It’s not the place to air out that stuff. The way you lead your musical or artistic career is a political statement in and of itself. We make decisions very carefully about the people we work with, the way we do things, the way we treat people. That, to me, is the political aspect of our music.

That’s a really great point. It’s easy to get on stage and say, “You should do this or that,” but it’s much harder to lead by example.
Matt: You’re going to find an array of different views, not only within our band but within the audience, and you’re going to find different degrees of belief. There are things that we agree upon, and that makes a statement. We don’t think of it as a political act, but there it is.