Some Press
The other day in Santa Fe, I had a chance to sit outside the Santa Fe Baking Company and experience the debaucherous, honest and intelligent levity of Ego vs. Id co-frontman Nate Cook via cell phone. Boulder’s Ego vs. Id, a hard-rocking & hard-working band that’s sort of like Wilco with testosterone, are playing the fabulous Fox Theater in Boulder next Wednesday and have been working on their first full-length album since, I dunno, the beginning of time. Anyway, here’s the article from today’s Boulder Weekly:
Local rockers Ego vs Id challenge the Boulder music scene
by Adam Perry
Boulder Weekly, 6/18/09
Vol. I and Vol. II, the first two EPs by local indie-Americana rockers Ego vs Id, sent sparks through the Boulder and Denver music scenes, but haven’t brought the band national attention. With the fall 2009 release of the young group’s debut full-length, 23-year-old co-frontman Nate Cook & Co. hope to reveal the great potential so apparent on their self-released EPs and at many local shows. Cook spoke with Boulder Weekly by phone last week about the recording process, the band’s new drummer and more.
Boulder Weekly: How’s the album coming?
Nate Cook: Really well. It’s slow going, but what we’re trying to do takes time.
BW: And you started recording in January?
NC: We started February 8th, and where we’re at now… it’s gonna sound ridiculous, but we’ve got basically three songs completely done. So you do the math on that. We’ll see how much longer it takes. We’re shooting for October or November, so we’re hoping to be wrapping in July or August. This album’s a fucking monster. I don’t wanna suck my own dick yet or count my own chickens or some other idiom that applies, but I’m telling you this is a beast. You hear the word “revival” thrown around a lot [in this area]. You have the folk revivalists and the alt-country revivalists… and I guess what we’ve started to realize is that we don’t fit into the revivalist thing, because what we do comes naturally to us. It’s just what we love. And we have more of a pop sensibility than some of the stringent revivalist people, [so] our goal is to make something new. We’re really excited about it, and it’s really not something I’ve heard come out of Boulder or Denver.
BW: So what’s the state of the Boulder scene?
NC: It’s kinda been stagnant if you ask me. There’s not a whole lot of new shit going on. Last night I went to that Troubadours show at the b.side lounge and was there for maybe half an hour before I left. They’ve got some good stuff, [but] it’s definitely not my thing.
There’s some cats up there who can write, but… I went to a Troubadours show years ago, and it was the exact same shit I heard last night. No one’s doing anything new; it’s the same fuckin’ bands, the same fuckin’ songs done in the exact same way. Everyone sounds like they wanna be Iron and Wine and they wanna be some bastardized version of Gram Parsons. But people are doing their thing, and there are lots of people going to see live music. That’s really something new, I’d say. That’s a good sign of people really reinvigorating their interest.
BW: How has the new drummer affected the band?
NC: Brian [Dillon] is the shit, basically. He’s been around a long time, and we were really, really lucky to get our hands on him. He’s super busy — kind of a pro, I guess. But he really liked our material and fit like a glove personality-wise in the band, too. Our former drummer [Rich] is fantastic, and I really liked playing with him, but Brian live adds an element that launches the material further.
BW: How has the competition and friendship between you and [co-frontman] Robbie [Stiefel] evolved?
NC: Robbie and I have problems, and that’s inherent in what we do. [We’re] two songwriters with two different styles of songwriting arranging — when we first started it was brutal. We’d get in horrible fights and wouldn’t talk for a long time. Nowadays, it’s still kinda rough, but we’ve been together so long now that it’s almost like getting in a fight with your brother. We just keep going. That relationship, to be honest, is probably a lot of the reason why we’ve done so well, because he pushes me. We’re both in a constant struggle to put out better material than the other one, and it advances us as artists.
BW: Why not change the name of the band to Nate vs Robbie instead of Ego vs Id?
NC: [Laughs] Yeah, totally. We never actually designed it to be that way, because I had the name Ego vs Id before I met Robbie, but it ended up being the exact right name for the band. Sometimes I’m the needy little bitch, and sometimes he’s the overbearing and pious one, and sometimes we switch it.
BW: When I visited Ego vs Id in the studio recently, there was a guy with a video camera doing a documentary. What’s the status of that?
NC: When I get a few drinks in me and there’s a camera around, I kinda start hamming it up a little bit. I was challenging people to an arm-wrestling match in the buff, so to speak… and I think it made him uncomfortable, and really the rest of the band uncomfortable, so he stopped coming around. If he’s gonna get scared the first time I get naked and challenge him to an arm-wrestling match, he’s probably not right for our band.
A Freudian cage match
Ego Vs. Id is the best rock band that you haven't heard of in Boulder
by Arjuna Orland
The classic line from Frank Zappa's 200 Motels goes "in this business, you either gotta play the blues or sing with a high voice."
Apparently Nate Cook, co-frontman of Boulder's own ragged rockers Ego Vs. Id doesn't know or doesn't really care, because his wavering, child-like (and sometimes even rather feminine) vocal stylings somehow ride that line between bluesy and poppy, or simply between emotional and assertive. Which is also interesting considering Ego Vs. Id's identity (both in concert and on record) as two pretty different bands: one led by the alternately soft and growling voice of Cook, building sweet semi-narcissist lamentations of cityscapes and eventual angst; and one similarly fronted by the more traditional saloon-rock singer/guitarist Robert Stiefel, who (holding a Telecaster and dressed in flannel shirt, jeans and bandana) appears more E Street Band than grunge, indie or even Big Pink-y.
But the influence of Springsteen (along with others) is a considerable reason why Americana is back in a big way: Dr. Dog is gracing the covers of national music rags with their Band-meets-Steely Dan soul straight outta Philly; Denton, Texas's Midlake is touring the world with their visions of love, loss and science in the 1800s; and Seattle's mystic-singing Fleet Foxes are one-upping Midlake's psych-folky emerald time-warp by doing it in near adolescence. But more important — at least on our home-front — is Ego Vs. Id.
When local music hero Andy Schneidkraut kindly played me an unmastered advance copy of EVI's new EP back in July, it hit me that after six months living in the shadow of the Flatirons I'd finally found a local band to love. A fluffy pillow of fairly rocking alt-country, if you will. And it's true: Ego Vs. Id's brand new EP Volume II is an impressive and natural continuation of their promising debut Volume I. Volume II is a profound improvement as well: the modern-style Americana (with a twist of lovability and world-weariness) is alive and punching on these fresh tracks, but there are also a few intricate and lonely ballads of epic proportions. And the guitar and drum sounds are suddenly more all-pro than Guitar Center.
"Different studio," Cook told me recently. "Some famous producer once said that trying to record at home with 'pro gear' is comparable to giving a regular Joe a scalpel and letting him perform surgery. I agree with that to a point. There's something to be said for entering a place where people do it for a living. The gear is outrageous, and the world you enter into is completely removed from that of the living."
The band recorded Vol. I in drummer Jesse Pomet's basement in October 2007, and Vol. II at Boulder's Immersive Studios this June. And speaking of "pro," Ego Vs. Id has been playing some seriously prominent venues lately, including the Bluebird Theater and Hi-Dive in Denver. Which says a lot when you learn that the band's two frontmen met while the 22-year-old Cook was working at a 7-11 and doing weekly sets at a dive bar near Cañon City. The history of the band is a little more confusing than that, what with Pomet and Stiefel having made music together for about a decade and a half before Ego Vs. Id was formed (they played their first show last year), but the band's vision is pretty clear, according to Cook:
"We really wanted to put together a rock 'n' roll band, which it didn't seem many people were doing. Jesse and Robbie come from influences like The Band, Zeppelin and some newer stuff like Wilco and the Black Keys. Robbie writes from a Dylan sort of place. Rich is into all kinds of stuff. I'm more into the arcane end of music, but as far as the more mainstream, I dig the Pixies, Tom Waits and the Butthole Surfers. As far as [a spiritual vision] goes, I can't speak for anyone else, but if I believed in a god I'd be pretty pissed off at him. I enjoy the characters of the Bible, and write about them quite a bit, but I like to imagine them in inappropriate positions or fucking each other over. It just seems more likely and relevant."
Cook is also pretty adamant about this whole music thing not being just a hobby: "The truth is, we aren't fucking around. We rehearse 20-30 hours a week and bust ass on every other aspect we can think of. This is what we want to do, and as far as I'm concerned, what we're supposed to do. We are really striving to be a great band, and to encapsulate all of our visions into our music. It's all so varied, but we hope to continue that and mold it into a collage of sorts. I think people will see how far we fly across the spectrum when our discography is flushed out a little bit more."
True, the first two EPs don't exactly come off as diverse musically (they go from slow, sad and poetic rock to cutting, quick rock), but the end result is a comprehensive American rock sound that makes sense. "All-American Love" is a powerful, slow-burning rocker that wishes to "burn Seattle in the spring," and the ballads on Vol. I are just as creative musically and romantically biting lyrically as the new stuff, but a little too drawn-out and weepy at times. "Lenny Bruce," for example, is reminiscent of Wilco's "Kingpin" out of the gate, then embodies a glowing Band-esque coda that could be sweeter if shorter. In contrast, Vol. II is successfully succinct (even if one of the best songs, "Bed of Steel," clocks in at over nine minutes) and all the songs immediately impress.
And in concert, Ego Vs. Id appears truly at home. On the surface, Cook looks like he could easily be fronting a Minor Threat cover band — both with his slow-build of a growl (which creeps up naturally out of a tender moan) and his combination shaved head and wifebeater — but he's got soul. And it takes a special type of band to appear lost in the total joy of performance, duck-walking and howling while playing their early set as a sparse crowd filed into the Bluebird last week. Hopefully the audience will be having as much fun as the band at The b.side Lounge when the group headlines there Thursday, Sept 25.
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BOULDER, Colo. — The members of local band Ego vs Id is looking forward to playing Thursday night's b.side lounge show with Cameron McGill, the Magic Mice and Jen Korte.
They're hoping to draw more fans into their multi-flavored rock mix -- and play before a larger Boulder audience.
Robbie Stiefel is the band's vocalist/guitarist, and he says the group is definitely ready to take things to the next level.
Q: How long did you wait for this band combination to come along?
A: I moved here from back east. I lived in Colorado for seven years before this band came together. I sat in with people at local gigs, but I was always waiting for 'that' band.
Ego vs Id was 2 years old on March 15 and we got to play that anniversary at the b.side.
Q: How would you describe the band's musical mix -- and what makes this band special?
A: Our music is rooted in classic elements like rock, blues and country. When we put them together, it's something you can't put your finger on, but we call ourselves a rock band.
What sets us apart from other bands is our songwriting and the delivery of the songs. We explore all the typical themes -- God, sex, death and fear of those things.
These things aren't original, but good songs always come back to the same thing.
You have a good song if you can reduce it to something simple -- something that people can connect to. That's what we try to do with our music.
Q: How easy has it been to crack the local music scene?
A: We've been playing the Bluebird, hi-dive and Larimer Lounge circuit in Denver.
We've also been playing the b.side in Boulder and we got to open for the Black Angels at the Fox. We also played Club 156 on campus this year.
As far as our career goes, the sky's the limit. We'd like Ego vs Id to have a sustainable career.
Q: How did Nick Forster help the band's new CD?
A: We're pretty prolific about songwriting, so we have lots of new songs for our new CD.
Nick Forster from "etown" helped us out on it by lending us some vintage instruments to make the new record. Those vintage sounds are unparalleled.
It was kind of him to do that. Nick's one of the few guys that would lend out these kinds of instruments and that was really amazing.
It's been a long journey for the band and this CD is really the labor of all our growth. It really captures the band's sound.
Q: What's a live Ego vs Id show like?
A: Our live shows are very intense.
We sound different in every room we play, but you can expect a nice, down-home rock show at the b.side to compliment this band line-up.
Right now, our aim is to get the record out and get our ducks lined up for the fall.
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It’s always interesting to see a band for the first time and dissect its influences as they reveal themselves within their music. I had heard a
lot about Ego vs. Id via various musical characters within the ....Denver.... music scene and decided to check them out.
The band is comprised of four members, three of which (Nathaniel Cook, Jesse Pomet and Robert Siefel) take turns playing, guitar, bass, ..rhodes.. keyboard and singing lead vocals along with drummer/vocalist (Rich Bosisio). Two of these lads grew up on the East Coast in ....Maryland...., one from ....Texas.... and one from ....New York..... They came together in ....Colorado....about a year and a half ago to create a band that mixes rock, delta
blues, country rock, tejon and pop-infused rock rhythms. These guys area very versatile band with immense harmonies and mature, vivid song
arrangements.....
....
When asked about their influences, the vast array of musical rudiments include: Woody Guthrie, Otis Redding, Queen, Beck, Modest Mouse, Tom Waits and Robert Johnson. They say that “sometimes you risk pleasing everyone to touch on everything just to piss off others.” Singing styles of each singer remind me of old favorites Jim Morrison, Tom Petty, The Cult and the Black Crowes.....
.. ..
The
Name of the band “EGO VS ID” in essence means the elicited fight
between the two halves of the human mind as ID stands in opposition to
the EGO. The ID is basically by definition the unconscious, unorganized
part of our personality that contains basic drive. The Ego is the part
of Id that has been modified by the external world. This is a perfect
description of the bands music; it drives on with almost seemingly
separate directions yet the same path that comes together as much as it
fights to stay independent.....
.. ..
After
contemplating the name with the styles of music I decided to pose some
questions to the Egoists to unravel the architects of the madness. When
asked about the things they like best about the Colorado Music scene,
they told me it was first and foremost the great bands and musicians
they get to share the stage with like American Relay and Foma. “There
really is a kinship between the bands that have to undergo the same
hardships in an insular kind of world to get noticed. It’s easy to get cynical about it.” I then decided to have some fun with the guys and ask off the wall questions to truly reveal the ID.....
.. ..
CMB: What musician or band if any, if given the chance would they erase from history? ....
Ego vs Id: Creed. ....
.. ..
CMB: If you could get away with taking out a famous musician? ....
Ego vs Id: Jack Johnson. ....
.. ..
CMB: If you could impregnate a musician?....
Ego vs Id: Mylie Cryus. ....
.. ..
CMB: If you could afford to either have a Midget or Acrobat accompany your performances? ....
Ego vs Id: Midgets, they are soooo awesome!....
.. ..
CMB: If you could torture Osama Bin Laden with one Infidel, western godless song over and over…what would it be? ....
Ego vs Id: Anything by Darius Rucker’s latest Country album. ....
.. ..
So basically honesty without worries of social restraint and not cowering to the model of pop-emo-indie zombie-ism. There
are other stories I cannot share due to its graphic nature that make up
the fundamental makeup of the over indulgence of synaptic cross wiring
which is Ego Vs. Id.
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