Mates of State’s Kori Gardner talks writing new album, soundtracking ‘Rumperbutts’

Mates of State has taken its longest break between albums in almost a decade. It’s been three years since the husband-wife, organ-drums duo released their last LP, 2011’s excellent Mountaintops. Despite having to balance the responsibilities of parenthood and touring, keyboardist Kori Gardner and drummer Jason Hammel have squeezed in enough time to soundtrack, and star in, a movie and perfect the songwriting for their upcoming eighth album. The duo scheduled in a last minute tour of the Southeast to road test some of their latest tunes, which lands them at Eddie’s Attic tonight (July 25). Gardner stopped to talk about the limits of being a “couples” band, the challenges they faced soundtracking a movie, and the new freedom they’ve found writing for their upcoming album.

On Mountaintops, the added strings and horns played a much more prominent role. When you started out, did you imagine Mates of State becoming bigger than just piano and drums?

Kori Gardner: Definitely, we don’t want to ever do the same thing. There’s always going to be elements that are the same in a record. But we’ve always made a concerted effort to play on different keyboards and add more layers. We always try to make it a point to play with different sounds.

Is it just you and Jason on this tour?

Yeah, we’ve been doing a few different mixes. On the last few tours we’ve done some acoustic shows where we’ve had cellos and horns and I played on piano and now it’s just the two of us. When you tour a bunch you don’t want to do the same thing ever so we’ve just been trying to change it up.

? ? ?
What challenges do you face playing with a full band as opposed to a duo?

One thing I have to do is back off. There have been times when someone says that someone’s playing too much and they’re like “yeah, it’s probably you.” If there’s someone else that can play the part on a cooler instrument then I have to play more simply. It’s a relief in some ways because we haven’t done a duo show in a while. As a duo, I feel like a mistake I make is my mistake whereas when you’re playing with five people when I lay off my left hand the music is still full. You don’t have to worry about it. It’s more vulnerable to play with two people. But with more people I have to let everybody breathe.

It’s been three years since Mountaintops, how have you and Jason evolved musically since then?

For one thing it’s taken us a long time to write this time around, which is why there’s not a record out right now. We’ve also gotten involved with different things. One thing we made is Rumperbutts. We wrote a song for a director for this short film and then he came to us to write a score, which we’ve always wanted to do. Then he asked us to be in the movie, and then we were like “we’re not ready for that but it sounds fun.” That took over our paths for basically a couple years. Even though it was a small budget indie film it takes a lot of time. We didn’t want to phone it in and we wanted to dedicate everything to that. That was a different process because he would give us lyrics that fit a scene and tell us what mood he wanted and we would have to write to that. Our process turned upside down for awhile.

How did the transition from playing music to acting influence the songwriting of your new album?

It made us confident that we could crank out something for someone else and that we could make a pop song pretty quickly to fit someone else’s ramifications. We mainly learned that that’s not Mates of State. What we feel is that we want to make something that’s really personal even if relates or doesn’t relate to other people. I think that we like to be more empathetic when we write for someone else but it’s not our true selves. That’s the biggest thing about writing for ourselves versus writing for a movie.

When people tell the Mates of State story, how uncomfortable is it having your children in the spotlight?

It’s funny because you can look back to when we started and immediately people were like “oh they’re a couple. That’s their thing.” We weren’t gonna hide anything. We’re very much about being honest and I love bands that are about being honest. That’s how we always were. As far as the kids, they’re just another extension. You can’t control what people spin. It pigeonholes you a little bit because they think they can figure out your music because of it or they can assume that all our songs are about that. That’s the only negative thing. It’d be nice if it was always about the music but people always want a story. I will say the best thing about that is that at least once a night someone will come up and say “we’re a couple and we fell in love with your music. You’re a part of our relationship.” That’s cool! I feel like we’re relating to people.

What details can you share about your upcoming album?

We’re so not sure what it’s going to sound like. We’ve written so many songs and decided not to use them. We’re okay with taking our time and making sure we love everything. We’ve done enough records now where people are like “we know what we’re gonna get from you guys.” We want to put out what we love but we don’t want to make the same record. Some songs are very dancey, synth-heavy, repetitive sounding songs and there’s some complex structures that are based around a piano. It could really run the gamut on what it sounds like when we finish it.

With Tony Lucca and Russell Howard. $15-$20. 9:45 p.m. Eddie’s Attic. 515 N. McDonough St. 404-377-4976. www.eddiesattic.com/