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Arts & Entertainment

OK Go Band Member Chats with 'Patch'

OK Go performs free at O'Fallon's Heritage and Freedom Fest on July Fourth.

In the middle of a European tour taking them to the United Kingdom, Italy, Austria and Spain, the band OK Go is flying back to the United States to play the Heritage and Freedom Fest in O’Fallon on the Fourth of July.

OK Go’s Tim Nordwind took time out of the tour promoting OK Go's new live album, 180/365 to talk to Patch about playing the Fourth of July, making music videos and creating an independent label.

Patch: Other than cash, what brings OK Go to Missouri for a free Fourth of July concert when you're usually a headliner for some pretty big audiences?

Nordwind: To be honest, we were given the offer to play, and it seemed like a fun show to do. The Fourth of July is a fun night to play. It’s pretty plain and simple. If there’s a fun show to play, we generally do it.

Patch: Your performances are known for being as interesting as your videos. Do you have any special performance shenanigans we can look forward to?

Nordwind: We’re actually spending some of this week making some new surprises for our shows. I can’t really tell you what that is, but I promise people who have seen us before will see some different stuff this time around.

Patch: Most big, outdoor Fourth of July concerts in the Midwest focus on country music and people who dress in American flags. It's nice to see a small town like O'Fallon bring in a band like OK Go. What's your take on patriotism?

Nordwind: I hadn’t really thought about it. The Fourth of July to me more or less represents a night to shoot off a bunch of fireworks. I suppose the patriotism part of it has somewhat been lost on me through the years. I love it because it’s an excuse to go sit in a field and watch things explode. That’s my relationship to the Fourth of July. To me it’s a night of pageantry and explosions.

Patch: Do you have a special set list for the Fourth of July? Any songs you consider especially explosive, inspiring or independent?

Nordwind: Again, I think we have a lot of songs that work well with fireworks. I think our music is highly celebratory music, so I think it works well in the context of something like the Fourth of July. That’s the part of the Fourth of July that we really relate to. Not to say that we’re not patriotic or anything like that, but when asked about the Fourth, that’s the part we really love, the showmanship of the Fourth.

Patch: As a band, how do you make time for all your social media interactions?

Norwind: We’re really just a bunch of people who like to make things. We spend a lot of time making big projects and small projects and medium-sized projects, and each of them seem to have their place in the world. We make a lot of different things.

Sometimes we make something and we really like it, but not everyone’s going to get it, but it's still worth it to put out in some form, whether it’s something we just share on Facebook or Twitter. Sometimes we make these bigger projects we distribute it in other ways. We put it on YouTube, or we release it through our label and get it in stores or things like that. We really just enjoy making things and spending a large amount of our time making videos and songs and other things that aren’t completely related to music but fall under the relative umbrella of things we like to do. It’s not about finding the time necessarily because we’re pretty much always making things.

Patch: Does making time for social media eat into your creative time?

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Norwind: Luckily, it’s something I think comes naturally during the day for some of us, not for everyone in the band. We also have a small staff who help us to do the technical work of just putting it all online. We tend to spend the majority of our time making things. We have people who help us upload it to the stites, but sometimes we do it ourselves. It depends on exactly how busy we are.

The social media stuff, some of it has become just part of life. It’s funny how technology has like kind of made socializing a very sort of specific thing. I have some friends I only text message with, some I only communicate with on Facebook, some I only speak on the phone to, some I only communicate with via email. There’re all these different ways, but now all most all communication has to do with technology in some way. Social media just is.

Patch: Why did the band decide to start its own label?

Norwind: We had been on a major label for about 10 years. We had a fine relationship with our label, but toward the end, it just sort of seemed we were headed in different directions. Major labels bread and butter is selling a physical product, a CD, and they’ve gotten into now selling mp3s and stuff like that, but they have a very specific thing they’re trying to make money off of, and everything else around the master recording they’re trying to sell is just considered marketing and promotions.

A lot of the things they consider marketing and promotions we consider major projects that have their own value, like music videos. We think things should be distributed according to whatever’s appropriate to their timely existence. We were sort of at odds with our label when it came to discussions of what are we making, who are we distributing it to and what should have value. At some point we agreed to go our separate ways. Our label is our distribution arm for all of our creative ideas. Sometimes we think only 500 people will like a thing, and sometimes a million will like it. We’re enjoying the freedom to make and distribute things however they will fit.

Patch: How's that working out?

Norwind: It’s working out well. It’s definitely a hussle. We’re our own bosses now for sure. There’s a lot we’ve taken on a lot more on the business side of things. It’s much more of a business education than I ever thought we’d be getting. I feel like we somehow stepped into a master’s program in business. That said, I really love the creative freedom it allows us. I don’t think any other way would allow us to do the things we do.

Patch: Do you ever come up with music video ideas without any specific song in mind?

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Norwind: That’s pretty much how all our videos are made. We’ve never heard a song and asked what will go well with it, what do you see in your mind? Our songs are made separately from our visual ideas, so generally speaking, we’ll make a record, and then it’ll be time to sort of turn our attention to videos and things like that.

When it comes to videos, we’re lucky enough to be in a position where we get to make these three-minute short films that we can also feature our music with. If you had the choice to do it yourself or let someone else do it, I think most people would have fun making their own little film. For us that’s certainly the case. We like to make all sorts of different things, video being one of them. We really enjoy being able to have creative control.

Patch: So, some nights you sit around brainstorming cool video ideas?

Norwind: That’s exactly how we come up with all our music videos!

Usually we’ll come up with an idea, then listen to our record with that visual idea in mind and see how the two come together. More or less what we’re shooting for is some kind of multidimensional visual response. If the song and idea come together to make something bigger than the sum of its parts, then we feel like we got something.

Patch: Do you think OK Go's music videos fueled the resurgence of music videos as art? After all, there was a lot of dead space between MTV turning into a reality programming network and the rise of YouTube.

Norwind: It’s hard thing to really say. I think there’s sort of a new interesting era of music videos coming up right now that has to do with the fact that MTV no longer plays music videos. No one has to cater to that specific bullseye you have to hit.

In the days when videos were marketing and promotions only and labels were making them more or less as a comercial for the record you had this specific goal you had to hit. You had to please the labels and make sure that the video looked like a commercial, and then you had to appease Viacom or the network which only wanted things that would appeal to the advertisers that bought time on their network.

If you weren’t making videos to appeal to the 15-35 demographic who drank energy drinks and used Noxema then you were out of luck, even if your song appealed to them. If your video didn’t, then your song wouldn’t get on MTV. So you had a lot of videos that looked the same. What’s great now is that people don’t necessarily have to abide by those narrow rules anymore.

What you’re seeing is a whole new generation of videos based on artistic merits alone. I think that’s great. I think that the videos that we started making five, six, seven years ago in our backyard and continuing on to crazy Rube Goldberg machines and time lapse in Los Angeles all were made simply because we thought they were cool ideas. I’m seeing a lot more videos made in that spirit, which I think is great. I think that’s how art should be made. It’s nice to see that happen.

Patch: How long does it take to complete one of your music videos as opposed to a less complicated video?

Norwind: Our videos take a lot more time because we pretty much do the production ourselves. Most bands hire out production companies to do the two or three weeks or prep work, and then they come in at the last minute, but we are often involved in the prep work. The Rube Goldberg video took six months of prep and two days of shooting. The "White Knuckles" video was four weeks of prep time and two weeks of shooting. The backyard dancing video was one week of choreography and one afternoon of shooting. It's kind of all over the map. Each concept is its own different thing. Some things cost $5, and some cost hundreds of thousands. It’s dependent on the idea.

For us, it’s never a question of how much are we going to spend. It’s based around what’s a good idea. Once we have the idea, then it’s a question of OK, how much does that good idea cost? We like to dream big. Sometimes big dreams only cost $5.

Patch: What's your favorite track on the new album?

Norwind: Right now, one of my favorite tracks is “All is not lost.” Coincidentally, we have a new video coming out for it, but that’s not why I say that. I like that one a lot. It’s basically a song about trying to stay hopeful in a time that seems hopeless, so it’s kind of it has an interesting intention in that way because it’s a happy/sad song, both happy and sad at the same time.

We just made a video for it with a modern dance group from New York, and hopefully that will come out in the middle of July. It’s maybe the most beautiful video we’ve ever made. It’s different for us.

Patch: What's your favorite song not by OK Go?

Norwind: I’ll tell you what’s been blowing my mind lately. There is this podcast called Sixteen Funky Corners It’s just great wonderfully curated collections of old funk and soul from the '60s and '70s, and there’s a song called "Iron Leg" by a band called Mickey and the Soul Generation. It’s just awesome.

It starts out with this sound, I don’t know if it’s feedback or one guitar chord, that last for 20 seconds. It’s almost too long. Then it’s almost a heavy funk groove that kicks in. It’s just awesome. It’s such a good feeling. It’s a great song to wake up to.

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