Local Natives are having one heck of a year. They released their second album, Hummingbird, back in January, and have spent the most of the year touring internationally and playing festivals. They’ve made the rounds of the late-night talk shows, visiting Jimmy Fallon in February, David Letterman in June, and Conan O’Brien last week. I spoke with Ryan Hahn (vocals, guitar, keyboard, mandolin) on the eve of their fall U.S. tour with Wild Nothing.
How is the tour officially starting off?
“We have just been on tour all year so we’re kind of connecting it all together, but I guess this is technically the start. Tonight we are playing Oakland, playing The Greek on Friday. We’re from L.A. so we’re trying not to freak out. I think all the guys are pretty stoked.”
You played Madison in 2009 when you were touring with Blind Pilot. Are you excited to come back?
“We’ve been to Madison a couple of times. We actually stayed at [Jonk Music editor] Jon (Kjarsgaard)’s apartment on a previous tour, so we’re familiar with Jonk Music” (laughs) “and we’re looking forward to the show.”
Are you just getting to know Wild Nothing or have you played with them before?
“We’ve played festivals together and I met one of the guys backstage at Lollapalooza, but I haven’t met the whole band. They are a band that I’ve always been a fan of. When we got the opportunity to tour together, we just jumped at it. We’re all big fans of theirs. Today will be like the first day of camp in a lot of ways. I think we’ll all need to hang out. By the end of the tour, hopefully we’ll be the best of friends.”
You are playing with Wild Nothing for most of the tour, but switching to supporting The National for Red Rocks on September 17. Have you played up there before?
“No, no, definitely not. It’s a place you’ve always heard about. It’s so massive. One day we’d love to do that ourselves, but playing with The National up there is going to be awesome.”
Aaron Dessner (from The National) helped you out with the album. The National are described as being very serious and moody. Are they that serious in real life?
“They are definitely more serious than we are. Maybe that is just because they are a little bit older so they are more mature. We have done a bunch of shows together. They have definitely put up with us, and they are definitely down for some good times.”
You released Hummingbird back in January. How have the songs changed after playing them live for almost a year now?
Usually things kind of evolve and take on a different arrangement live, especially they way we write. We don’t write with a live set in mind. We just wanted to put down a record. It’s been really cool. Even now, we’ve been bringing out different elements of the songs, cleaning them up, connecting the dots. It’s been really fun. Certain songs have almost become live staples already, like ‘Colombia’. I don’t think we expected it to have the effect that it’s had in a live show.”
How would you say touring is different now from when you guys started out?
“I feel like when we were starting out, on the first record, it was all just unfolding. You release the record. You play a bunch of festivals. You never know when it’s going to end. We just kept touring. And then we stopped to make the next record. This time we’ve gotten a lot more comfortable with bigger stages. We played a lot of main stages at festivals for the first time. We were a lot more bewildered when we were younger, but we’re a lot more at ease. We’ve been able to grow our production and our stage show.”
You’ve been on tour all year. Is it hard to be away from home?
“Yes, definitely. It is a little strange. We were home yesterday for a few hours. All your friends back home go about with their lives and you pop in and out. It’s pretty bizarre since a few of us in the band got rid of our apartments because we’re gone all year. You come home and crash on someone’s couch. It’s a little hard.”
Do you ever get to check out local bands or is the tour schedule pretty rigid?
“It’s pretty rigid. We really only get to check out other bands when we play festivals.”
Are there any rituals you do to keep yourself sane on tour? Do you ever need to take a break?
“Working on music is actually a kind of therapy. You’d think we’d want to take a break from music, but I think that we we look for time to work on new music. Any time that we’re at a soundcheck or on a bus, or anywhere that we can unplug, we just get to work on music. It feels like a respite from everything else.”
Do you have a formal process where you get the band together?
“It’s a little all over the place. At soundcheck usually we don’t have time to jam together. Every once in a while we do. Other than that, we got these little keyboards that we use on the bus or plane rides. We’ll make music on our laptops and see where that goes. It’s all good for experimenting.”
You went through a lot of changes in the last year with the change in lineup and personal turmoil. Do you feel that writing songs is a way to conquer that, or does performing ever bring back sad memories?
“I think that, oddly enough, even the ‘sadder’ songs that we have are cathartic when we play them live. The whole second record, and even the first record, was a document of a time and place for us — how we were feeling. Having been through those things, we look back on them and playing the songs now feels very celebratory.”
Do you ever have your “Freebird” moment where you get asked to play a song that you don’t want to play?
“We only have two records so I think we’re down to play pretty much any song off those records. Every once in a while, people will ask us to play ‘Cecilia’ which is something that did on YouTube a few years ago. We haven’t played it in years. Every once in a while, someone will blurt it out and try to request it but we just don’t know how to play it anymore. But if that’s the worst we get, that’s OK.”