Interview and photos by Scott Preston
Cincy Groove: I had the chance to catch your peformance at Nelsons Ledges this past October.
Roger McNamee: That was so much fun. But man was it cold there. There were some great costumes. I think there is a decent shot we will be back there this year. The ekoostik hookah guys were so nice to us. They have actually invited us to do some more things with them.
Cincy Groove: What did the members in Moonalice want to accomplish when you got together?
Roger McNamee: There are alot of old bands playing old music, there are a lot of new bands playing new music. But what there aren't very many of, is new bands of old guys playing the old stuff in new ways. Because if you like the old sound , theres just not that much of it around. We have played 25-30 more gigs since October of 07, and when you are at that early stage, I mean I think we are at 50 gigs total. Those first 50 gigs, you are twice as good as the one before. This is the period when people look back and say "Holy shit, I saw them when they were first getting started and man did they suck lol".
Cincy Groove: I also noticed on your last tour you had different concert posters for every show.
Roger McNamee: Thats partly a San Francisco thing and mostly a
Moonalice thing. We have a guy named Chris Shaw, one of the greatest SF poster artists and we have known him for a long time. When we were the Flying Other Brothers he did a lot of stuff for us. He has this collective of poster artists, that includes himself, David Stinger and a bunch of other guys. We decided from the very beginning that posters were going to be a part of our thing. When we came up with the name moonalice, Chris was a part of that. Because we wanted to make sure that whatever name we picked was graphically interesting. For the kind of music we play the art really matters. We just decided we were going to do that from the very beginning. Cincy Groove: Is Moonalice working on a studio album?
Roger McNamee: We have recorded a lot of music and T Bone Burnett is the producer. He is the guy who did "Oh Brother Where Art Thou?" and "Walk the Line". He has won a shit load of Grammys. He had album of the year when he went up against U2 in 2000. I think we have recorded 22 or 23 songs and we have 3 or 4 versions of most of them. So we were thinking we would skip the album and go straight to the retrospective lol. We will just do a box set. We have put 3 or 4 of the songs up on the website. You can download them in cd quality if you want. Recording really matters because it gives you the chance to really think about what you are doing. But it no longer drives the business. I think for about the last 40 years the business was really about recordings. That part of the business has just gotten flushed. The important thing is if your us , is that people listen to the music, like it, and if they like it come and see the band. Thats why right now all the music is free. We have the 4 or 5 studio songs and 3 full shows up on the site right now.
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