The first thing I wanted to get started with, looking back at your history as a band, I don’t want to use the word cliche, but there are so many iconic rock ’n’ roll things about your band.

Skip: Yes!

Starting with, you and your brother grew up in a church

Skip: [laughs]

And you think about how so much great music came out of a church atmosphere. Your father was the music director of the Wilkesboro Baptist Church, correct?

Skip: Actually the Hinshaw Street Baptist Church for a while, but he did spend some time at the Wilkesboro Baptist Church.

Where is he now?

Skip: He’s retired. He was a band director for 20 years, he was a high school principal, and assistant principal for, like, 10 years, then he retired from education. Now he is an Internet jazz DJ for one of the biggest Internet radio stations in the world, radioiojazz. It’s the biggest station that’s not connected to
like, Virgin Radio or anything like that. It’s fantastic, and he’s their jazz guy.

How did that atmosphere growing up influence you and how you play?

Skip: I think that when you are associated at a young age with music that is invested with

meaning, that has a very heavy meaning to it, it makes music a different thing for you. Music is allowed to be a very profound thing as opposed to being just something that your mom keeps on in the mini van and listens to Wilson Philips when you’re going to soccer practice. I guess having that at a young age is a fantastic foundation. I’m not surprised at all that so much rock ’n’ roll has come out of church groups. I think Bono had the best quote about rock ’n’ roll, I think he said, "what are you rebelling against now with rock ’n’ roll?" and I think he said, "you’re rebelling against the apathy in yourself." I think that was a pretty accurate way to say where the spirit of rock ’n’ roll is now.

The second thing is that you got screwed over by a record label.

Skip: [laughs] That is a rock ’n’ roll cliche.

Let’s run down your history:

1. Baltimore Ravens player Trevor Pryce heard it.

Skip: Fantastic. Love that guy.

What did you think when you got his e-mail?

Skip: I really thought he was like a white guy, a third-string kicker who was into CMJ reports or something and was like, "I’m going to start my own record label" or something. That was interesting enough because we didn’t know anything about, you know, we’d done everything ourselves up to that point and we still did afterward on Trevor’s label for a long time. The reason we loved him was because he was a musician and he had a lot of instincts like we had. He’s a fantastic musician. He was doing his first record label and we were on our first record label so we kind of learned a lot together.

2. So then you recorded Says Pop, and your contract was sold to Hollywood Records. What was the biggest lesson you learned out of that?

Skip: You should probably have a great sense of humor if you’re going into the music business and you should keep separate your creative life from your business life, which is hard to do. It’s boring to hear people talk about it. It’s the most important thing because otherwise, there was a time when we were on Hollywood where it wasn’t as interesting to write songs because we thought we’d never get out of the contract and we thought everything we recorded would be owned by them. “If they’re not putting out a record that we’ve already finished, why would they put out anything else?” It’s hard to stay afloat when you’re going through something like that but I think it made us a lot stronger. I feel like we found our creative root in that way. It was a fantastic experience in that way, even though on its own it was just extremely boring.

3. Eventually you were picked up by V2. How did you approach dealing with a big label again?

Skip: Well, V2, they’re actually an independent label, and we met with the president, who’s Andy Gershon, fantastic guy, and Jeff Woody was another guy there that we just love and Scott Graves. They were the three that we met, and they were most excited about having our vision and our art come out however we like it. And you can tell when you talk to people if you’ve talked to a lot of music people throughout the years, you can tell if people mean what they say, kinda. We were just really very comfortable with them. They liked Chris Stamey too, and Chris is like family for us. It’s a lot more of a family atmosphere than having like a foreign label owned by, I mean it’s owned by Disney, who has to pay attention to all their stock holders.

But even though they’re an independent, they’re a larger independent. Do you worry that you might get screwed again?

Skip: Well, we definitely see where you stand. I understand that any independent label, as much as they might love your art or art in general, they have to make money and that’s how they stay afloat. Going into it with that understanding and liking the people you work with changes the way that you approach your own, I mean, this business is rough. All business is rough. You can’t get mad at a wolf for acting like a wolf, know what I mean? So, if you’re in the music business you know what it’s like.

You guys are kind of like a Partridge Family in a way, you’re brothers, you’re married ...

Skip: We’ve got a redhead in the band!

So are you Danny Bonaduce?

Skip: I hope so! That’s what we’re shooting for.

How do you deal with each other? You guys are, I would imagine, together all the time. Don’t you ever want to kill each other?

Skip: We’re our own best friends. Creatively we listen to the same records and we turn each other on to different music. The four of us here and Jeff, we all get along a lot. A lot of bands like to keep their separate space when they’re traveling. I don’t know, we all sort of act like brothers and sisters. We’re best friends.

How do you deal with childcare? You guys have a baby!

Skip: Yeah, that’s fantastic. Last fall we travelled all the way across the country and we would either have friends in the towns where we played who could watch him for the two hours while we did our show. It’s an organic thing. Every show is different. Tonight we have hired out a babysitter so we can play Cat’s Cradle.

Timshel: Skip’s parents come with us too. They’re very excited grandparents. It’s fun for them. They love to travel. They’ve just gotten their passports.

Skip: Yeah, they’re ready for us to go international right now. They’re like, "Yeah, we’re
ready! Take us to France! Take us to Norway! We’ll watch that baby!" It’s definitely more like an old country band from the ’40s or ’50s. We like bands that have really teased out hair and do weirdo rock ’n’ roll habits and things. If anybody’s looking for that in us they’re going to be so disappointed.

Timshel is such a cool name. What is the origin of it?

Timshel: It’s in East of Eden by John Steinbeck, and it’s a Hebrew word. It means the ability to overcome evil.

How did you end up in the band?

Timshel: These guys were playing togehter as they were growing up. But we actually formed when we got married. We got married in ’98.

Skip: She’s had more musical training than we’ve had by a long shot. We wanted her for selfish reasons.

Timshel: When I graduated they told me that the best way to use my degree was to join a rock ’n’ roll band.

So you’ve got a music degree?

Timshel: No, I’m being sarcastic; I’ve got an English degree.

So, I was wrong. I thought you guys were in a band, and touring together and then realized your love for each other.

Timshel: Oh, no, no, no. We got married first. We really encouraged each other. We were married and at the time we were in school, and Skip was like, "I want to be a songwriter," so I said, "you can take a semester off to write songs. So he wrote a whole bunch of songs and recorded the album, and I was there with them and got involved that way.

So how does The Wee Hours Revue differ from Says Pop?

Skip: We recorded the first one in our basement in 2002, and mixed it and did everything on this kind of crappy computer environment. Even though we had some nice gear and got some really exciting sounds that we loved, we had a bad monitor. It’s all very dorky studio talk to get in the technical end of it. We did this stuff, and when we got the first copy of Says Pop back, it wasn’t exactly like we wanted it, but we were like, “Ah, whatever.” It’s never exactly how you want it. Then when we got our contract sold to Hollywood, even before that Chris Stamey had contacted us, he came to one of our shows, and said, "If anybody wants you to re-issue the record, I’ll work with you." So we immediately hit it off with Chris. So when Hollywood wanted us to re-do the record, our A&R guy, who is a music geek, I mean that in the best way, we said, "Do you mind if we work with Chris?" And he was like, "Have you ever seen that man play electric guitar?" I was like, "No, I haven’t," and he said, "It’s a revelation!" So he was very excited about us working with Chris. We went in and went through every track of that record with Chris, and took things that were very poorly digitally recorded, like acoustic guitar tracks, and we would re-dub that guitar. We kept all the grit and the fun, or what we thought of as grit and fun, off the original Says Pop and re-did stuff that we would have liked to have re-done anyway. When we did it we thought it was going to come out like, in a month or two months, because we were like, "Hey, we’ve been touring, we’ve got the momentum, let’s do it." Then we got caught up in that major label world. The fact is, it’s coming out now, and we’re such different people, but it’s still very exciting.

At this point, these songs are several years old, and you’re having to tour behind them as if they’re brand new songs. Are you tired of playing them at this point?

Skip: Thank goodness not yet. That’s where the whole family live band thing comes in. Because we have fun playing music with each other and we can make different stuff interesting. A lot of times we’ll vary it from the record, sometimes we try to get it just like the record because we haven’t played it that way in two years.

Logan: We’re not good enough musicians to get bored with it. I imagine you’d have to be a jazz musician to get bored playing rock ’n’ roll. For us, it’s like brand new every night.

Timshel: Said by the best musician in the band! Logan is really the best musician in this band.

Logan: Well, then we’re in trouble.

What’s the concept album you’re working on?

Skip: We have a couple of songs tonight that we’re going to stick in the show. It’s called "Love Songs for an Empty Room." We just started writing all these songs during that down time with Hollywood. That’s kind of our habit, is to write. Timshel and I went to England earlier this year and spent some time, about six weeks, in a manor house in East Yorkshire. We actually stayed in the stable, it was like a writers-in-residence program. It was a dear friend of ours from college and her sister and husband kind of owned this place. So I was looking at all these songs we’d written and I was kind of writing some new stuff. And I just saw this stuff kind of fall into place, and I thought, “My gosh, I’ve got kind of a concept, or at least a song cycle.” They’re very connected songs about empty rooms from totally different angles. An empty room meaning every possible meaning you can come up with. Figurative, or literal or whatever. That’s something that’s actually a complete thing that we started recording a few weeks ago. We’re working them out live too, so we’re just having fun with it. Since everyone’s hearing our other record for the first time now, we’re just taking our sweet time. There’s no pressure to arrange the songs we’ve written quickly so we’re letting them have a sort of organic, nice development.

You also have a collaboration with Timshel’s brother, called The Sparrows. So, who are The Sparrows?

Skip: The Sparrows are basically anybody that backs up Keegan DeWitt.

It’s like you guys are The Band and he’s Bob Dylan.

Skip: We wouldn’t want to take him away from the world and stick him under our smelly blanket.

Is this the first time you’ve played Chapel Hill since the record has come out?

Skip and Timshel: Yes.

What’s this show going to be like for you guys?

Skip: We played the night after the record came out. It’s going to be fantastic. We’re just going to have a good time. We love The Whigs, who we are playing with. We’ve got their record too, so we can’t wait to see them play. We’ve played a lot of bills with a lot of different bands. When you want to have a good time, and you like the evening, the whole event ... When you’re in a band, you go to a show, it’s an all-day thing, loading in. It’s a whole experience. We’re having a great time now. We’re very excited to play in front of a bunch of people who are hopefully excited to see us.