Mark -Actually, up until now it's always been a year, but we decided to take a more time off and spend a little more time on the record, which I think is good. We didn't want to get to a point where people were just sort of expecting an album every year.
I would imagine you'd also want to take time for your personal life. Was it a planned vacation?
Mark -That's always the plan; to go our separate ways. People just took more time [this time]. A couple of the guys are homeowners and people were just happy to have some time off. We took our time recording too. We were able to listen to stuff a lot more and discuss a lot as far as the record goes [and because of that] I don't think there are any weak songs on the record. We're lucky [in] that we're not on a label that pushes us to crank stuff out either. We don't sell so many records that we can really afford to take too much time off.
What do you owe your longevity to?
Mark -I think that since everyone lives in different places, that probably helps a little bit. It's hard for me to imagine that it's been 10 years. I generally think of myself having a pretty good concept of time passing, but in this case I don't. We get together, a record comes out, and then we get together and do stuff for a few months. Then we go home and we might do something together for a month, then go home for six months. Then we start doing stuff again and have another break. It doesn't seem like that much time. It seems like two or three years ago to me. We also get along with each other. That helps, and I'm sure the public interest in our band has kept us going too. A lot of people are interested and there is sort of a feeling of responsibility to keep producing and also taking advantage of [Stephen Malkmus'] songwriting ability. He's always working on stuff and we always have a lot of really good songs and it's fun to record them and play them. I think as long as Steve's doing that and he's willing to do it with a band, I for one will be happy to go along with it. It's very fun for me. It's very rarely a difficult thing in a negative way. Sometimes it's difficult to work out songs, but it's more of a challenge.
How much longer do you see yourselves doing this?
Mark -People have asked us that since the beginning, and the answer is still, "I don't know." If it feels the way it does now, we could go on doing it for a really long time. But there might be a time when somebody might not be interested in doing it and it might not be fun doing it without a certain band member. In that case, we could stop and just go on and do something else. We never really actually plan anything out more than six-months ahead. That's the way it's been since the beginning.
It sounds really healthy to keep it day-by-day.
Mark -In some ways. I like it. I have friends that work nine-to-five jobs and get promoted every once in awhile or whatever, and I kind of like the way that sounds, actually. They like the way my job sounds. With the day-by-day thing, in a way it's cool, but at the same time I don't know what I'm gonna be doing in six months. But I'm not really worried about it.
How much of a grind is touring? Is it something you guys really enjoy doing, you know, seeing the fans and the country?
Mark -I do. I like to travel. It's not really the way I like to travel. When I'm not on tour I travel at least a few times a year and can spend more time in places that I like so it's kind of odd [on tour] just going in and leaving a town. But, yeah, I think everyone sort of likes to travel. We're a little bit better at organizing tours so that they're not such a grind. Like the summer is pretty well organized... it's not gonna be too crazy. It's kind of fun doing this kind of thing where you're in a position to do two shows in one town and in others we'll do three shows. In San Francisco we'll probably do four shows. That's gonna be later in the summer.
So you don't feel as rushed as you did five years ago?
Mark -We were just letting people organize the tours and just saying "yes" to everything, and this time, now, we're sort of making suggestions and things are working out in a way that makes it a lot easier on everyone.
Read our Pavement reviews:
Major Leagues EP
Wowee Zowee
Terror Twilight
Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
Slanted and Enchanted
