Blind Pilot - Interview

When I first heard the name Blind Pilot, I thought of Stone Temple Pilots and Blind Melon, what I actually got was some truly brilliant American Indie Folk. There‘s something tremendously warm and rich about their material that it‘s no surprise their first release, 3 Rounds and a Sound fared so well in the Digital albums charts. And whilst most bands get over excited at the prospect of touring, dreaming of executive oversized tour buses (ultimately ending up in a dodgy Ford Transit), Blind Pilot opted instead to do their tour on bicycle...

Bethany is intrigued, we send her in, sans bicycle, to speak to Israel Nebeker...

What originally inspired the distinctive name ‘Blind Pilot', and were there any other notable names that were considered?

Blind Pilot was the name we gave ourselves when the band was simply a side project for Ryan and me back in 2007. Later, when we were releasing our first album, we tried on different names but we kept coming back to Blind Pilot. The name came from a few elements surrounding our first tour and recording our first home-made EP. With the bike tour and all, we didn‘t know if what we were trying was really going to work, but we were sort of stepping out blindly to try.

When you were young, what first inspired you musically?

My grandmother‘s piano was a big inspiration. She was very patient and sweet when teaching me the basics of reading and playing music. I was too young to hold onto much, but it was a good introduction to what music can mean in terms of connection and the intangible way it permeates through our important memories.

You released your debut album ‘3 Rounds and a Sound' back in 2008. How did it feel to finally get your release out?

When we released 3 Rounds and a Sound it felt great, as though we‘d really accomplished something we didn‘t know before that we could. And then directly after, it came with a strong desire to get back in the studio and do it again, and better. It feels exactly the same this time. I can‘t wait for our second album to be released in September. And now, I guess because we‘ve learned so much from recording this album, I‘m already excited and eager about beginning the process of the next one to come.

This summer you‘re playing both the Wireless and Hop Farm Festivals in the UK. Do you prefer playing festivals and how does it differ from playing your own gigs and tours?

There are just so many settings that are fun to play music in and as a band I think we enjoy them all. Festivals are exciting. There‘s this feeling of being right in the middle of so many amazing people making amazing music. But I couldn‘t do that all the time. It‘s fun to feel like you‘re part of that massive movement or scene but I always crave the connection that comes from moments when everyone in the room is together in the pulses of a song. It‘s harder to get that at a festival.

How does it feel to take your music ‘across the pond' and find you have fans across the world?

It‘s incredible. I don‘t think I‘ll ever get over the impact it has on me to see our music travel beyond where we‘ve been. It‘s strange in the best way when we‘re traveling far from home and we meet people that have never seen us but that know our songs.

Cycling from show to show on a tour sounded brilliant! What else do you think makes Blind Pilot unusual or different compared to other indie folk artists?

We‘re really not trying to be different from or similar to other indie folk artists. We‘re just trying to be ourselves and do that as well as we can. The bike tour and anything we‘ve done in an original way has come from a pretty organic process of simply doing what we love to do as a group.

There was a great moment where you stayed in a Bedouin camp, and ended up playing Leonard Coen’s ‘Hallelujah’ to a small group of children out in the desert. Do you feel that that sort of shared experience, that passion in music, is missing from a lot of singer/songwriters in modern “chart music"?

Intent always comes through. If you want to be a chart-topper and that is most important, it‘s going to come through the music as the biggest statement. And yeah, of course you‘re not going to get a song like Hallelujah from that. I‘m drawn to the songs that hit you in a subtle, personal level, but obviously there‘s a place for music that was meant to be “chart music". There‘s a lot of people that love it and there‘s nothing wrong with that. The irony of Leonard Coen‘s utterly intimate song becoming iconic and universal is what I spend most of my song-writing time trying not to think about. It would be my life‘s dream to write a song like his but I don‘t think you do it by trying to write a song that even kids in a Bedouin camp will know.

If you could tour with any other artist in the world, who would it be and why?

Oh man, that‘s really hard to choose just one! I‘m sure mine wouldn‘t be the same as our other members of the band. We‘ve already gotten to tour with some of my long-time musical heroes like Laura Veirs and The Decemberists. For me it‘d be equally incredible to tour with The Arcade Fire or Joanna Newsom.

How would you say your material has evolved since your first album?

The first album was written with only guitar and drums in mind because that was the band in the beginning. Getting to tour and play as six people has been the most fun part of the process for me, and that element of many layers of instruments is the biggest contrast to the first album. I like the stark, understated sound of our beginning but it‘s very fun to write songs for a six person band now.

What can fans expect from Blind Pilot in the future?

We‘ll see. Like I said, our new album‘s coming out in the fall, and we‘ll be doing lots of touring shortly after. I‘m excited to see what happens myself.

If you would like to find out more about Blind Pilot you can visit their website here: www.blindpilotmusic.com

Interview by Bethany Taylor.