So how are sales doing on the new album?

Pretty good, actually. Without giving you a specific figure because I don’t really cant think of one off the top of my head. I think we’re on like the third pressing, and it’s doing good. The copies that we keep with us on the road are selling pretty regularly. I don’t know, about 15 CDs a night or whatever. Even when we play Chicago we still manage to sell a few CDs, and it’s like one show a month or whatever, but new fans are getting turned on to us. It seems like people are spreading the word.

Would you say a band your size makes more money touring or selling records?

We’re only just kind of starting the tour, but I’d say that the revenue come from that and if anything the money that we make from CD sales so far just goes to buy more CDs for us to sell. They’re not really comparable. The money that you make on the road is immediate money. Money that you would make from CD sales, cost for production has to be covered, cost for advertising and publicity. You don’t really see a lot of that money until much later if any at all.

Right on. Well I hope you don’t take this the wrong way but I’ve heard you guys described as “a poor man’s Isis.” How do you feel about that?

Isis are a great band. Just being compared to them is already flattering. But as far as the people that say that, I think we sound different and we have different aspirations. The fact that people use Isis as a frame of reference for us all the time I think just means that they don’t have that many other bands to compare us with. I’ve kind of encouraged them to check out music that’s older than 10 years old and maybe they’ll find other things that we sound like.

What scene if any do you guys consider yourself a part of?

The music scene. The people who do music for the sake of music who want to advance the boundaries without resorting to cliché riffs and lyrics and you know…predictable progressions. A lot of the bands on Ipecac, Hydra Head, Southern Lord, really just all over the place. I like to consider ourselves affiliated with musicians who are forward thinking and aren’t just trying to tap into trends and just aspire to that.

So how often do you guys get asked why you don’t have a singer?

All the time. It’s actually a good question because I think we have a lot of songs that would sound great with a singer. Some of them would probably sound awkward with one.

Well…why don’t you have a singer?

Well it’s not that we didn’t want to have one from the beginning. We couldn’t find one at first so we just kind of evolved without one. A lot of people saw us play without a singer the first few shows and said there’s not really even that much room for a singer. I write the songs for Pelican and I never write with a singer in mind and I think it would be hard for all of us to craft songs with a singer’s role in mind. So far we haven’t used one but I consider vocals a great instrument and I would be totally happy to add that in the future. What for will it take? I don’t know yet.

Do you think that it’s likely that Pelican will release something with a vocalist?

It’s not even a yes or no question. It’s like…maybe. We just don’t know at this point. I wouldn’t turn it down if it was the right person. I’m not saying that it would be a singer that would sing on all songs or someone who would have a permanent fixture in the band. It may be someone who lends vocals. In the same sense we’d have someone come in and sing on one of the tracks on the full length. It would be just like an added instrument.

That’d be pretty incredible to hear. So does the name Pelican have much of a story behind it?

You know what…we all have our different stories behind the name Pelican. Some of us take it more seriously than others. I think it’s an animal that has a lot of fabulous characteristics. It’s majestic, looms wide over the ocean, seems to have a lot of freedom, it’s an animal people ascribe certain characteristics to it but don’t really know. It sort of remains mysterious and that’s kind of what I want our band to be like too.

Fill in the blank. Without the existence of the band __________, Pelican would not sound the way they do today.

I would say Earth or Godflesh.

Why is that?

They’re just so massive. In sound and in amplitude. Mostly that they were able to introduce a heavy style of music that revolved around very simplistic riffs. Really stripping music down to the bare essentials rather than cramming a hundred notes in 5 seconds. It’s a really different approach. It’s not overloading the mind with a ton and ton of notes and beats. It’s just really restraining yourself and just building on repetition.

What do you guys do for a living?

A variety of things. Manage a health food store, managing a coffee store, moving people, university communications, um…carpentry work. Tons of shit…

Jeez, all over the place.

Yeah, it’s everywhere.

Are you down to do a few word associations?

Yeah, hopefully I’ll be decent at it.

Ok, here we go. Aaron Turner.

Creative

George W. Bush

Piss-ant

Cave In

Brethren

Slayer

Godly

Straight Edge

Misunderstood

Dead to Fall

(laughing) I don’t even know who they are… uh… unaware!

Al Capone

Gangster

Trustkill Records

Racetraitor

Canada

Maple Syrup

Jacob Bannon

Shit…throat! (laughing)

Norah Jones

Singer?

Soilent Green

Punishing

Alright man, that does it. Thanks a lot for the interview.

Hey, man, thank you guys.

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