Q&A with ON AN ON’s
Nate Eiesland

This week I got the chance speak with ON AN ON frontman Nate Eiesland as he killed time before the group’s concert at The Knitting Factory in Brooklyn. The show was the last of the band’s East Coast tour circuit, which is good news for us Midwesterners. In the course of our phone call, Nate talked about the process behind the album Give In and the poignant difference between influence and inspiration for musicians.

ON AN ON will be playing in Madison at RSR Bar (formerly The Annex) this Thursday night. Definitely show up if you love music as much as these guys do. You’ll be in the right place.

I wanted to start out by talking a little bit about the album Give In. Do you want to give some background about what the inspiration was? What do you feel like this album is about?
“It was definitely an interesting experience making the album. We were forming the band and we had never played most of these songs live in any capacity. A lot of things were in demo form and a lot of things had not even been fleshed out at all or really been thought about, and so they were all mostly skeletons of songs.

“Going into the studio it was really important for us that the driving force of the band was the experimentation and trying to find out about these songs — what were they, on record. It’s the same sort of exploration that happens during live performance, too, though a little bit different because you have to find out within [the studio] context, ‘What are these songs? Where do they really hit?’ And it was fun; it was a blast.

“We went to Toronto and recorded for three weeks and we were pretty much nocturnal because the producer we worked with was really a night owl. We would wake up at 2 PM, hang out, get coffee and do busy work until 4 or 5, start recording, and record until about midnight, take a dinner break, and then go in and work until about 7 or 8 AM. It was pretty wild — we got transported into this place where all we were doing was just exploring and creating this music. It was pretty surreal.” 

Wow, that sounds intense. You all used to be in Scattered Trees together and moved into ON AN ON from that. You didn’t have very long in that transition, right?
“No, it was an interesting thing. For us, being in Scattered Trees, it was something we had done for a long time and we were in the band working hard and when it broke up it was sad but also really exciting for us. We were sort of faced with a decision: do we reform and get new people and keep this band going as a name? But it really becomes a different band. Or, do we just start a new band and really pare down and just make it the three of us?

“Ultimately it was way more exciting and risky to start over. The clean slate was exactly what we were after because we wanted something new. We had so much ambition for making the music that we wanted to make. Basically it’s just a new band and that comes with a lot of great things and a lot of crappy things, but we weighed the costs and the benefits and creatively it was really a clear decision for us.”

And is that where the name ON AN ON came from? Because you were moving forward and on to something new?
“Yeah, to some extent it was. It wasn’t too thought out but I think in hindsight it kind of is that, yeah.”

You said that you went into the studio with skeletons of songs. Do you start songs individually and bring them together to collaborate, or do you start songs with the beginning all together? What’s that process like for you guys?
“Usually it’s a pretty solid idea that we bring to each other and then flesh it out and finish the song together. But a really huge thing for ON AN ON is that there are no rules to the process. We were really tired of that in bands we had been in before and we just decided to really collaborate more and make that a natural part of this band. It’s been really great to be able to do that because the song becomes something that it wouldn’t if was just one person.”

Yeah, and they’re great — I know that I wrote a piece for Jonk Music on “The Hunter” and it’s so intensely a personal song yet also so big, I imagined there had to be a good amount of collaboration considering everything that was going on in it. Now you know every time I’ve read about you guys you’re referenced as a Chicago-based band…”
“I know, that bothers me.”

Really? How come?
“Well, because we are a Chicago-based band but we are also a Minneapolis-based band. We actually have a dual citizenship with those cities. But everyone says Chicago because it’s bigger and it’s almost easier to say that. But the reality of the situation is that Ryne has a place in Chicago so we spend a lot of time in Chicago rehearsing and things like that, but our touring drummer is from Minneapolis and Alissa and I are originally from Minnesota and all of our things are there and we just kind of gypsy. So we don’t have an address necessarily but when we’re off tour we’re in Minneapolis. So it’s really both; we feel like a local band in both cities, which is pretty beneficial for us. But I think when it comes to journalists they tend to just say Chicago. We want to represent Minneapolis, too.”

So maybe a Midwestern-based band?
“Yeah, and that’s what we end up saying — our state is the Midwest.”

And the Midwest has such a personality to it, I think that definitely works. Do you feel like Minneapolis and Chicago have influenced your music at all?
“I don’t think it’s influenced the music as much as our mindset. Chicago is a really tough city to be a band in. There’s not this infrastructure to climb up as a band. But it’s also a really important music city in the U.S., so it has this validity to it and this weight to it. And so I think we’ve spent a lot of time making music in Chicago in other bands and it’s made us really grounded and really appreciative of when things happen. And then, Minneapolis is super well-known for its support of local music. The Current is the radio station there that comes to mind; it has just this huge support for local music. Its history is such that if you’re doing something that matters it will get pushed along. It’s a really good combination and I think we’re really fortunate to have lived in those cities.”

As someone who writes about music, I often try to listen and see whether or not I can guess a band’s musical influences — though it’s definitely a more interesting question to ask of the artists themselves. Do you have any musicians or artists that you feel has influenced your music, either now or in the past?
“I really think that we try to not wear any influences. Not that we’re outside of it, but it is for sure that we are really influenced by everything. But musically, I think it’s not our style to say ‘we really love this band and this band, so let’s try to make something that sounds like them put together.’ That’s just not our process at all, and that’s why I think there is a lot of variance in the record from song to song. That’s OK with us. That may not be comfortable for some people but for us, that is the kind of music we want to make.

“But, you know I think personally as a musician, Leonard Cohen is a huge influence. Just his songwriting. I remember wearing out ‘Never mind’ as a 9-year-old on a trip to Michigan — like, I actually wore out the cassette tape. I just played it over and over and over. And let’s see, in high school Jeff Buckley was really important to me. I don’t know if that comes out; maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t, but I think the goal is never to wear an influence on our sleeve. It’s more to respect those that have come before us. The important thing is to be inspired by certain acts.

“Inspiration is much more important to me than influence. And I think I am much less interested in the influence a band has on me or the music I make and much more interested in exploring the inspiration that comes from listening to music that just connects to you — that’s where the magic happens.”