I find this a charming little article on how a band feels about touring, etc. (and the impact of having a song or two on The O.C.).
A Night Out With | Matt Pond PA
No Rest for the Rockers
By MELENA Z. RYZIK
Published: November 27, 2005
The New York Times
MATT POND groaned. "I hurt," he said, slumping over in his chair at a bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
On a recent Saturday night, Mr. Pond, the 32-year-old singer-songwriter-guitarist of Matt Pond PA, gathered his band mates at Daddy's, a neighborhood dive they had left a mere 14 hours before. The group had been out the night before celebrating the end of their American tour and, back home in Brooklyn, had stayed out until 6 a.m. Now they were back at Daddy's, nursing hangovers and drinking Bloody Marys.
"We're waking up," Mr. Pond said.
He formed the band when he lived in Philadelphia (hence the PA) but wound up recasting after moving to New York three years ago. "What's cool about this group is that we're all friends and we all get along," Mr. Pond said.
Especially after spending six weeks together, covering 20,000 miles, lumped into one increasingly smelly van and sharing two hotel rooms among five musicians, plus a sound guy.
"We'd gamble for beds," said Brian Pearl, 28, the guitarist and keyboardist.
Dana Feder, 29, a cellist who is the newest member of the band, said, "I think touring brings out the juvenile in all of us."
And so was born the band drink, the Four-Minute Mile (Ketel One vodka, seltzer, fresh lime and lemon juice: "lots of vitamin C," said Dan Crowell, 27, the drummer). The name comes from an (apocryphal) prediction Daniel Mitha, the bassist, made about what he would do the morning after downing several of them.
"It makes you feel like you can do anything," Mr. Crowell said. He went off to order a few.
"We're trying to drink better and better liquor," Mr. Pond said. The new top-shelf lifestyle could have come about because the band's music has been featured several times on the television show "The O.C.," whose creator, Josh Schwartz, is like the Shiva of contemporary music, restoring rock star dreams and destroying indie credibility because indie bands view an appearance in "The O.C." as tantamount to a sellout. Though some fans cried sellout, the band's layered orchestral-pop sound was used to great effect on a cover of Oasis's hit "Champagne Supernova," a song Mr. Pond's group was happy to record for TV but refuses to play live, despite requests at their shows.
"We're not a cover band," Mr. Pond said. He draped himself over Mr. Crowell. "I wish there were bars I could lay down in," he said.
A discussion about which song to play on the jukebox, which runs to Tammy Wynette and Hawaiian steel guitar, perked him up. "The Kinks," Mr. Pond said. Mr. Pearl suggested something from Bob Dylan's "Basement Tapes," and Mr. Pond began humming "Tears of Rage."
The evening stretched out; so did the bar tab.
"We stay out too late for the sake of staying out too often," Mr. Pearl said. "But I'm coming around."
"I'm going for it," Mr. Pond said. "I feel like I'm doing it for some kind of cause. Sobriety eradication."
Around midnight they were again lumped into the van for the short ride to another bar, Sweet Ups, where they happily discussed the lack of shows on the horizon. (Or the very near horizon; the group will be back on the road in February in support of its latest album, "Several Arrows Later.")
"I'm so excited to be out," Mr. Pond said, well into his fourth or fifth round of drinks. "I feel great."
