ACL Interview: Empires

Well here it is folks, ACL Festival starts tomorrow and ATH will be signing off about this time tomorrow.  Before you head out the door, check out another interview from festival act Empires.  We’ll of course have a few more interviews coming your way after the weekend with full recap of the events.  Follow the jump for interview.

Drummer Mike Robinson answers all questions.

ATH: Have you guys ever been to Austin before? What do you look forward to doing while here?
We have… We’ve done SXSW a few times and have come through on tours as well. Last time we were here we went to some taco place that was known for their crispy tacos? I can’t remember the name of it, but it was awesome. I’d love to do that again, get some BBQ, Lone Star, and maybe get tattooed at Rock of Ages. I’m a big fan of a few tattooers there. I think we’re going to take a trip down to South Padre in between the weekend of ACL as well… Beach partayyyy.

ATH: Have you guys had a chance to check out the festival lineup? Anyone you might be excited about seeing or hanging out with?
Our friends in The Chain Gang of 1974 are playing the festival as well an after party at Stubbs that we’re doing. I’d also love to see Beck, St. Vincent, The Preatures, Eminem, Spoon, and Interpol. There are a lot of rad bands playing both weekends… It’ll be hard to get to everyone

ATH: I’ve always found your band name to be an interesting one. It says a lot without really saying too much. How did the name come about?
Tom and Sean were brainstorming names and Sean came up with Empire, while Tom came up with Empires (they weren’t together at the time). Then Tom suggested Empires to Sean and that was that. The galactic alignment maybe?

ATH: For anyone who hasn’t heard the new album, “Orphan”, what’s in store for us? Sales pitch!
Lots of danceable/dark-ish/synthy/80s kind of stuff happening on Orphan. It was kind of an unintentional evolution of the band. Sean started working on these songs from a different perspective that wasn’t necessarily his. It was a healthy growth. Things are a lot more focused now and we really tried to hone in on the core of each song and compliment that rather than just adding tracks on top of tracks of guitar, percussion, backing vocals or whatever it may be. The songs stay fresh to us in the live setting and we’ve gotten a lot of really great responses from people who had never heard empires before and from people who have been listening since the beginning.

ATH: Chicago is a great city. What’s the music scene like there right now? Any bands we should really be paying attention to?
Disappears! Favorite band in Chicago.

ATH: It seems like a lot of late night TV performances have been propelling somewhat unknown indie bands into the limelight. You guys played Letterman not too long ago and it seems like you’ve risen in fame big time since. What was that experience like? Nerves like crazy?
Totally. It was so much fun though. And Letterman retiring made it even more special. It went by super fast and watching it on TV that night was surreal. I’ve never gotten so many text messages in my life. We should have collectively counted the messages between us all.

ATH: Describe your sound using only 3 adjectives.
I’m so bad at this… uhhhhh and I think it’ll be very similar to my “sales pitch” above…. Dancey/Rockin&Rollin/Melodic

ATH: Drink of choice for the band on tour?
There’s a few! Red wine/Espolon Blanco + lime/Modelo + lime.

Thanks again for the time amigos.

Empires will be playing on Saturday of both weekends @ 12:30 on the BMI Stage.