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Interview: Turbo Fruits

Popping into Baby’s All Right in the early evening, before the mustachioed and leather-draped crowds bustled in to see Nashville natives Turbo Fruits, was a bit like walking into the eye of a storm. The empty venue seems much smaller when one isn’t sardine-ed into a back wall, and the chipping wall paint and creaking floors felt like we were in a space that had once catered to rock classics. It was in the back room that we found a lounging Turbo Fruits pre-hurricane, when Baby’s finally electrifies.

The boys from Turbo Fruits, with their gentlemanly southern drawls and perfectly loose denim shirts, have had a whirlwind year. In anticipation of their latest album No Control, the band collaborated with Patrick Carney of the Black Keys (another Nashville native) to simplify their sound and rock louder than they had in albums previous. No Control is, classically speaking, a rock album. Their influences from bands in arms and Carney’s coaching result in a singularly cohesive record. And while their songs may be chill, the boys absolutely explode on stage, so much so that Jonas took a roundabout into the maddening crowd and gladly accepted a beer from a guy next to him. A breakout feels imminent, but right now Turbo Fruits are quite comfortable relaxing in the seemingly insignificant moments of touring and basking in the smallest delights of superfans, playing hometown haunts, and sweating their balls off in squirrel costumes.

Are you all from Tennessee?

Jonas: I was born in California but then raised in Tennessee ever since I was five. The guitar player Kingsley and the drummer Matt were both born in Tennessee, and Dave is from around there, too.

What do you like about the music scene out there?

Jonas: I guess that I’ve been a part of it for so long. There wasn’t much of a large Rock & Roll scene before. While everyone else was playing football and going to basketball games and cheerleading, a lot of my friends were putting together punk rock shows in pizza places. A lot of people left Nashville to go find something better elsewhere. I started touring when I was 17 and I was traveling a lot, so getting back home was always really nice. I was all about coming back to Nashville and helping it grow. It’s just Nashville’s turn right now.

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Are there any other home-grown Nashville bands that you vouch for?

Jonas: Another band that’s been doing really well for themselves is Jeff the Brotherhood. We went to school together and played in a few bands in the past. We were in a band together called Be Your Own Pet from 2004-2008. That band ended because it was such a mindfuck for us at that age. We played everything — it was crazy. It was awesome, but we definitely took it for granted. Regardless, we we’re getting along really well and we didn’t know what was going on. We’ve been having a lot more fun in a less successful band. But back to Jeff, they’re a homegrown Nashville band. Pujol is a buddy of ours, and we did a lot of touring together. And Natural Child.

What was it like collaborating with Patrick Carney of the Black Keys?

Jonas: It was really fun and simple. He helped us simplify our songs — everything was easy-going and really casual. We were really stoked because it didn’t feel like oh fuck here we go — it was just like let’s have some beers and goof off and have a good time.

Matt: When he came in, we just kind of reworked the nuances. The songs were there, but he did change some things. It’s always different revisiting something after you first hear it.

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Was there something you liked most about his style?

Jonas: Simplicity.

Matt: He stripped everything down and brought in hooks.

Jonas: He has a no-bull-shit-don’t-over-complicate-things philosophy, so we’re big fans of all that. Just simple shit.

Matt: Some of my favorite songs are the same three chords over and over again. I think he took some of the complicated things out and he just redefined other parts.

Kingsley: Everything matured more.

Jonas: He wasn’t scared to make it loud, which is awesome. He’s probably half deaf anyway, so that’s part of the production. He came out to a show we were playing in Nashville and he was like, “You sound good, dude , but I wish it was a lot louder because I couldn’t hear shit.”

Do you have a favorite song or album of theirs?

Kingsley: I love the first record.

Matt: I really like Brothers.

Jonas: It’s all tight — they go right through the heart. They played a lot of small clubs through their career and then they had a crossover moment, which I thought they did a really good job with. It felt natural — made sense.

Matt: It’s natural and workable, and it’s popular because it’s just fucking good. Their sound spans over eight records.

Jonas: I like the longevity of their career and how long it’s taken them to get to this point. It’s fun to think back to what they sounded like in the beginning and how they sound now.

Kingsley: I think that’s why me and Pat have become friends — because they saw a lot of themselves in, us because we’re on our fourth record and their fourth record was pivotal for them. It was easy for him to do whatever — he didn’t ask for anything special like anyone else of his stature would.

Jonas: He’s giving back, is what he’s doing.

Kingsley: It’s not like he needs us for his career — he was just doing it out of the goodness of his heart.

Jonas: The cool thing about Pat is that he doesn’t put himself on a pedestal. He goes out to dive bars and talks with strangers and fans and goofs off. He’s got mad respect from all of us. On a much much smaller scale, that’s kind of how we are [laughs]. We’ve got like 3 or 4 superfans out there. If they come to a show and they’re stuttering because they’re so nervous, we just put an arm around them and say, “Dude, it’s okay man — we’re normal people.”

Kinglsey: They’re like can I buy you a drink? We’re not fucking famous — we’re at a 250 capacity club, thanks for coming, let me buy you a drink.

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So having worked with him, would you say your songwriting has changed? I read that the inspiration for “The Way I Want You” came to you while you were working on your family’s farm. 

Jonas: I happened to be on the farm repaving the driveway. I’m on the tractor, there’s loud music, and I’m singing to myself. Anyway, we tracked the basic idea and revisited it and turned it into a track we all liked, and then we were around it for so long that you lose sight of how beautiful they may be — kind of like a relationship or something like that. Anyway, we reworked it and it almost didn’t make the record.

Dave: It was almost a minute and a half, so it was too short and we all didn’t particularly like it. We reworked it to make it twice as fast and doubled the length.

Jonas: Pat was like, “Fuck this version — the original was way better. We gotta redo it.”

Kingsley: The original version came together faster than any song we’d ever done. He came in and we immediately started playing along. It took like 15 minutes? As far as playing together, not necessarily the lyrics but the composition, it’s like two parts. We just jumped into it and we were like okay that’s fucking done. Other songs we spend weeks playing with it and and questioning whether it’s worth it.

Are there any other experiences or artists that evolved your sound album to album? Other than Pat?

Jonas: For me its going on tour with friends; bands and getting tips from one another. When you get to see another band do their thing, it’s only natural to compliment their sound a little bit. I hope other bands feel the same way about us because we definitely pull from everything.

Kingsley: We toured with Surfer Blood for two months five years ago and it definitely had an effect. Hearing their pop sensibility, you can appreciate how it works.

Dave: We were on tour with Deer Tick and it’s like, “Maybe we should pick the guitar a little bit more rather than just strumming.” You see the way they move to get what they want out of their instrument.

Jonas: My answer for this in interviews is talking about being influenced by friends because so many times in interviews you get asked “which bands are you influenced by,” and all of a sudden you draw a blank and you’re like, “uhhh CCR, Rolling Stones.”

Dave: Everything is an influence to some extent.

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Do you have a favorite gig or city you’ve played?

Jonas: For me Lake Charles, Louisiana hits the spot. It was a random town we had never been to, we were having a lot of problems, our van was breaking down, our computer went bad. We thought we’d miss the show, and all the money from the tour went to renting a van from the airport. We were super bummed out, thinking, “There are gonna be 6 people there,” because that’s a reality for some shows you go to. We get there and there are a bunch of kids on the sidewalk waiting for us to arrive. We pulled up and they’re like “TURBO FRUITS” and we were like “fuck yeah, let’s go have a good time.”

Kingsley: Houston was a good time, right before SXSW. It was an all ages show, which we don’t do very often, and it was sold out. Kids who are under 21 — they buy your shit and aren’t so jaded. They don’t read Pitchfork every morning, they’re not looking to shit on something. I wanna start doing more all ages stuff. They seem to appreciate it.

Jonas: Yeah, when I was a kid I was buying a lot of records because I couldn’t buy booze yet. You lose sight of that after you’ve been gigging for so long.

Matt: I really liked that Riverfront show we did in Nashville. It wasn’t like a big show or anything, but being a kid and having gone to those kind of shows, it feels like a big stage.

Jonas: It’s like a mom and pop show, with their dogs and their kids and people drinking wine.

Matt: Something my dad said to me when we were on tour was, “You never know where you’re at in the process of what you’re doing, so be aware of what’s happening, because people take it for granted and miss it.” And then you’re working some shit job and what you didn’t realize was that the most exciting part of your life has already passed. So, we’re in the middle of a set and I’m fucking up my part just trying to be in the room at the fucking Fillmore. You’re so concerned with how miserable you are on the road because you feel like shit. You’re getting hammered, and it’s moving so fast, but it’s really some of the best shit, in retrospect, because you’re having the most fun even if you don’t realize it.

Jonas: It’s important to take a step back and look around at yourself.

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So, talking about venues you went to as a kid, do you remember the first album you bought?

Jonas: The Men in Black 2 soundtrack.

Matt: Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness and The Downward Spiral.

Kingsley: That was like the first record I ever bought, Melancholy. I was in the 4th grade. I remember going to this kid’s house — he was cooler than me — and he had all these records, like Grateful Dead and Green Day and Nirvana. Before that I was listening to like Garth Brooks and Alanis Morissette.

Matt: I remember I bought a Tool record and it said explicit content, and I was like should I buy this record? Yeah, definitely.

In “Don’t Let Me Break Your Heart Again,” when you’re all in costume looked really fun.

Jonas: One of my best buddies since we were six-years-old is in the film industry and worked with some of the biggest companies but never worked on a music video before and expressed interest in doing one. He was pretty insistent on doing that song because he liked it. So I was cruising around town listening to rough mixes of that album and I started seeing National Geographic images in mind.

Kingsley: It was so dope.

Jonas: Yeah, I had some crazy images in my mind, and at first I was like can we find some stock images on National Geographic, shit from the ’70s — that was the original plan. Then he was like, well what about putting you guys in costumes? He’s down to goof off, but he’s on top of everything all the time. We shot that at my farm and goofed off and we followed his treatment. He put everything together and we were laughing the whole time. It was really uncomfortable and hot and sweaty. Kingsley was starting to get really pissed and was uncomfortable and was like twitching and getting squirrely in the squirrel outfit. It was hilarious for the rest of us because he’d be bitching about something and his tail would flip around and he had these ears on top of his head.

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Interview by Eva Bandurowski // Photos by Cheryl Georgette Arent

Upcoming Tour Dates

4/24 – San Diego, CA @ The Merrow *
4/25 – San Francisco, CA @ Brick + Mortar *
4/28 – Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios *
4/29 – Seattle, WA @ Sunset Tavern *
5/1 – Minneapolis, MN @ Fallout Co-op *
5/2 – Milwaukee, WI @ Cactus Club *
5/3 – Chicago, IL @ Double Door *
5/4 – Detroit, MI @ HopCat *
5/5 – Columbus, OH @ Rumba Cafe *
5/6 – Cleveland, OH @ Happy Dog *
5/7 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Smiling Moose *
5/9 – Boston, MA @ Bill’s Bar 
5/10 – Washington DC @ Rock & Roll Hotel ^
5/11 – Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg ^

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