While the move from The O.C. to The Hills doesn’t seem too far a drive, the path band Rooney took between destinations was quite the winding road. Now an independent band – it shed its major label deal with Geffen Records – Rooney’s quartet of Robert Schwartzman (vocals/guitar), Taylor Locke (guitar/vocals), Ned Brower (drums/vocals) and Louie Stephens (keyboards) has a new single on The Hills several years after its cameo on The O.C. introduced the pop-rock outfit to a fervent fanbase. The Los Angeles band is sporting a new album (Eureka) and a nationwide summer tour which includes a month of dates with Hanson.
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Brower, who aside from drumming and singing is also a model and actor, and in January added a new role: father. He sat down to discuss Rooney as it enters its second decade of existence:
You have an album just coming out and you’re embarking on a nationwide tour. It’s a pretty good time for you guys.
NB: Yeah it’s an exciting time. It’s been a little while since we’ve gotten in the cycle again.
Not to mention you has a son born earlier this year.
NB: That’s also been very interesting but in a different way.
How so?
NB: It changes the way I look at things overall in my life. It’s not completely about me anymore. But you know I’ve been the caretaker in the band anyway. I take care of the van guys, I’m the eldest. People always say “Are you like the dad in the band” and I say “No I’m like a big brother.” But now that I have a real kid I’m definitely not their dad. I’ve got problems of my own.
You’re the only guy in the band with a kid right now.
NB: Yeah, I think they’re a ways behind me in that department.
You know I wonder if bands follow the pathways of what children do when they’re growing up?
NB: I’ll be curious to find out myself. I’m hoping we get out of the terrible twos any day now, we’ve been it for 10 years now.
An interesting aspect about this album is you guys were on your own doing things and I think of all the Rooney albums this one best incorporates all of the members of the band in writing and producing songs. How did that work out?
NB: Over time we all stared writing songs and it’s kind of a tricky adjustment to make for everybody. I started getting interested in songwriting again and we were all in different bands where we were the band leader but we work great as an ensemble and Robert’s a great songwriter but the other guys are capable also. As far as the production goes we just learned a lot about producing all together from all the different producers we’ve worked with. This was a chance to finally take all the knowledge we had accrued and put it together. We were trying out different producers and not really getting the sound that we wanted – it’s always seemed to be too slick or too raw – and with this record we captured a good balance of the two that presents the songs in the best way but we didn’t over tweak things, it’s not tuned to death and time corrected you really hear the performances and I love that about the record because we have really good musicians in the band.
The sound of the album comes off pretty big and I get the sense there was not a lot of relying on computers to do the work.
NB: We learned to use computers to our advantage without using them as a crutch. Modern technology is really cool but you have so many choices sometimes it’s too much so I think some self-imposed limitations is good and just in the mixing we were able to mix the harmonies hotter.
Were there any songs you struggled with?
NB: No, it all came together easier than we thought. We were kind of fighting a little bit and not going great before we started the record. We started to work with John Fields who produced our last record and he’s a great guy and producer but he had become really popular since we made our last album a couple years ago he’s had a huge string of successes in the pop world and was really into that and we were growing more toward wanting to be a band – an ensemble where you can hear the band and that was the polar opposite of the way that he has grown as a producer, so it wasn’t working. We were really struggling internally because I think he wasn’t really helping mediate very well, which I totally understand from his point of view because he’s worked by himself so much and it was hard to deal with all these nifty personalities. Then we worked with a guy named Mitchell Froom and cut a song with him and he had the total opposite effect – he embraced the band and enjoyed working with all five of us and it was a good experience and it brought us together and it set us up on the right trajectory. We then decided to try and make our own record because our demo production was getting really good, The moment with Mitchell Froom was really important – it set us on the right trajectory to get together and make a record. We were worried we thought we were going to kill each other but we have this weird self regulating thing in the studio where we take turns producing each other and Matt and Robert would help produce me when I’m playing drums and I’ll get on the board when Robert would be singing and help bump up his vocals and help him, everyone takes their turn with their own special way and it was great.
And this was all done in what was formerly a garage so Rooney is back to being a garage band again?
NB: Literally. I spent so much time in the garage in the early years – we worked in one for the first three years, but it feels good, it’s not overkill, we have all the equipment that we need and acquired a lot of great gear over the years. We started collecting that stuff early before it became cool, and expensive and now we all keep a studio at home. Sometimes we would pass things around where we would take a drive and do some overdubs at my house and go back and do stuff at Robert’s house.
The story of Rooney is a good one to tell up-and-coming bands. A decade in, and as a first person witness to what has happened to your band, what ’s the best thing you’ve learned after all these years in the business and what would you tell new bands.
NB: We made plenty of mistakes we try and learn from them the thing that’s really hard is to make sure you have a good team around you. You really have to be self reliant. At the end of the day people only care as much as you do about all this stuff and the details. You know we’ve been with these huge companies that have this huge overhead, but none of that matters. What matters is people are watching all the details and outsourcing things is great, But there are other things that you should let other people help you with. We tried to do all the merch ourselves over the years and we finally are working with a good company and they’re really doing cool shit for us. Sometimes you need to let go and sometimes you need to hold on tight.
What we’ve always wanted to do was put out music frequently and then tour for a little while and put out more music and I think that’s important these days but we’ve never been able to do it because there’s been so much politics surrounding the band with the big companies and expectations. But I’m hoping we can keep on that and that can be the key to our future and building our fanbase. In some ways it feels like we’re right back in the beginning now that we’re out on our own. It’s really exciting and a little scary.
