UTG INTERVIEW: MAIDS @ 80/35

July 17th, 2014

Matthew Leimkuehler

A MAIDS live show isn’t something that’s going to punch you in the gut. It’s not aggressive or overbearing. A MAIDS live show is like an addictive trance. The band sends participants into a transfusive and seductive melting pot of pop hooks and an authentic mixture of electronic and experimental instrumentation. It’s the type of live show that gets even the most awkward dude dancin’. The band is catchy and people gravitate toward that notion, but it’s the interaction from duo Mickey Davis and Danny Heggen that keeps the people fixated at the stage.

This is the energy MAIDS brought at this year’s 80/35 festival in Des Moines, Iowa. The band turned a block of complete strangers into a dance party with the best of friends. Under The Gun Review had the chance to sit down with the duo and talk about the band’s future plans, including a new record in the works. Follow the jump to read the full interview and leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Under The Gun: Hey guys. Thanks for the time today. Why don’t we open it up with you telling me what MAIDS is about.

Danny Heggen (vocals): We got together because the project I was working on at the time released an album and I wanted to do some sort of alternative remix. I had recently connected with Mickey and I sent him the track and said, “Hey would you be interested in doing a remix of this?” The music scene here is really tight-knit so as soon as you get to know somebody, for me it’s always like, “Well, how can I do something with them to get to know them better?” So collaborating on that I was blown away by how he was returning it and taking my original idea and making it something that was his own, but still mine. Coming out of that I was like, “I want to work with that guy again. This was such a good experience.” We just really connected.

Mickey Davis (electronics): For me it was really cool because I’m from here originally but I was living in Minneapolis at the time and I was really trying to find a way to stay connected with what was going on here. It was a surprise when he reached out because we weren’t living in the same town or didn’t see each other every day.

DH: But I knew you were coming back. I wanted to create an excuse to hang out with him when he got back. I wanted him to stay in Des Moines. I moved to Des Moines right after school and got connected with a bunch of musicians around here. If you don’t get really connected really fast with people — people are always what kept me where I am. I wanted to get him tied in and I wanted to work with him first because he’s fantastic and was [probably] going to jump in with somebody else and then I wouldn’t of gotten to work with him [laughs]

MD: Danny was marking his territory on me [laughs].

So yesterday, at 80/35, you played on one of the free stages and had almost the entire block full and mesmerized to your live show. How did that feel?

DH: I’m always very careful to make sure we stop and reflect on these things. My thing is after everything that’s exciting for us is we stop and say, “Well, was that exciting?” [laughs]. If you don’t stop — you’re just in it so much when you’re getting ready, taking stuff off the stage and when you’re performing you’re in your own world and so you have to stop and be like, “Dude, that was awesome!”

MD: Yeah, you can immediately be like, “What’s next?” For me, I don’t even have a mic next to me on stage. I don’t like talking. I like doing my thing. There’s a lot going on and I’m usually very type-a on stage. I don’t usually look up all that much. But I looked up at one point at the middle of the second song and was like, “Whoa! That’s a lot of people.” And that’s cool. We thoroughly enjoy making this music. I hope and I think the reason that people responded so well yesterday is that comes through. We’re always having fun doing what we do. If we can widen the circle and invite more people in to have fun with us — that’s amazing.

DH: I think the other side of it too is how we practice in our practice room and how we perform feels very much the same way. We’re just inviting people to come and listen to us. It’s great to look out and see so many familiar faces. I always kind of joke that most often every song is new to people because we’re always playing to new crowds. So it’s fun to have people who know the songs. We’ve released a few singles now so it’s fun to see people singing along and dancing along. Our first show was last August and we didn’t tell anybody we were working on this project together until like three weeks before. At our release show, nobody had ever heard any of our music. So we came from Mickey doing this ethereal, instrumental light stuff and then I was doing pop-folk and nobody really knew what our sounds were going to sound like together.

I can hear the best of both worlds there.

DH: [Laughs] So it’s kind of funny we ended up on dance pop, right? But calling it ‘Midwest disco.’ Originally that came up when we were asking ourselves, “Well, what do we want out of this project?” Our biggest thing is we want to bring all of our friends together in the same room to experience music. That has always been my greatest thing. Being somewhere, experiencing. Our big goal with all of this was how do we bring all of our friends together to have a really good time? And we starting thinking about that — we thought disco was kind of about that — bringing people together to have a good time. But at the same time, we’re from the Midwest and it’s wholesome. As much as we want to play music we would also sit down and have a cup of coffee with you. For us, it’s this value of connection.

What does it mean to be from the Midwest and represent that nature while still trying to make it as a group?

DH: I told Mickey a couple of weeks ago that I want to create reasons for people to come to Des Moines and see us. I’m totally fine with going anywhere to play music but I want people to come here to experience our music. I want them to eat our food, I want them to meet our people. I want people to experience our show here.

MD: Usually when bands are asked about their influences they list a bunch of other musicians. What influences the music you make is also the art you look at and the people you talk to on any given day. Not just the bands you listen to, but the bands you see live. Not only at a big music festival, but at the bar down the street. All of those things play into the aesthetic you’re trying to create — or the mood. We call it Midwest because the mood is so informed by our daily experiences right in the middle of the country.

I think a lot of who you turn into as a songwriter is influenced by where you come from as a person. Where you call home.

MD: And also I think this from like a marketing standpoint. If you’re a band right now and you’re not from New York — where you’re from is in the first sentence about your band. There are a billion and a half bands from New York or LA but if you’re from somewhere else — like Wilco is always mentioned with Chicago and they’ve really taken that and Chicago is part of their sound. Fugazi with DC, and so on. I certainly feel that about MAIDS. Every review is “you wouldn’t expect this from Des Moines,” and yeah you would because everything we do is shaped from the fact that we live in Des Moines and we have these experiences every day.

DH: I think there’s a sort-of hardworkingness to it, as well. We’re trying to get it to a point where you can’t really see the work that goes into it but we both work 40+ hours a week in different fields. We don’t work music full time…but we still do music full time. We’re on the road, you know? Chicago, Minneapolis. We’re doing a lot of regional things but it’s a whole part of it. We see ourselves as artists and professionals.

MD: That also goes to disco. When you look at extended disco mixes of stuff, these artists will put out a song and then re-work it 18 times. They’re constantly honing their craft and taking this bank of sounds and just drawing from it all the time and just seeing what works and they’re just restless but in the most positive connotation of that word.

DH: And I love a blank slate. Our songwriting process — I write songs on acoustic guitar. The whole purpose of guitar is to create this vocal melody. When I have a vocal melody I cut the guitar out and I send Mickey only my vocal track.

MD: I don’t know what chords he’s playing. I don’t know the feel of it. Sometimes I don’t use the same time signature. The thing that scares me the most is a blank slate. Remixing was always my favorite when I was doing my own stuff because when I just open a blank thing on my computer it’s like, “There’s too much good stuff I wanna put in this.” But if Danny’s like, “Here’s the top of pyramid, you need to fill in the bottom…” that’s just a beautiful thing! And then I send it back to him and he’s usually like, “Increase the tempo and make this dancier,” and then I do and we end up where we end up.

DH: I always ask, “Is there anything you restrained yourself from? Just go back and add it.” I’m really pushing him to have fun and get weird with it, ya know? Do stuff you haven’t done before. Experiment.

MD: Our first EP was very down-tempo and I remember this one song when we were doing a new round of stuff, Danny said…what did you say? Like, “Make this a disco track.”

DH: I think I said, “Make it fucking disco.” No, “total fucking disco.” [laughs].

MD: And the rest is history. And now we’re up there playing 8-and-a-half minute Shins covers with synths and stuff [laughs].

So talking about the writing process. What’s going on with the new record?

DH: So we’ve released “Bandits,” and “Do This Better,” and we’re heading back into the studio early August or late July. We’ll probably throw 4 more tracks on it so we’re probably looking at an EP, as opposed to a full album. That could change. We have a lot of material. We’re just trying to pick the best pieces of everything we have. It’s very much a singles world with this sort of music right now and we’re getting ourselves out there.

MD: Most of our traffic comes through places like Soundcloud where EPs and albums are of lesser importance than periodic singles, remixes, things like that.

DH: An EP for us would allow us to do a couple more videos and get it out there. The longer your album becomes, the longer it takes to get it out.

Where are you going to go to finish the record?

DH: We use a studio here in town called Sonic Factory. Luke and Micah and Brandon from The Envy Corps have been helping us out with production.

MD: It’s been fun working with them. They have a lot of gear, which is amazing. I can just sit there and twiddle knobs for hours. Brandon actually produced Imagine Dragons’ last album and it’s got that pop sparkle that we’re going for right now.

DH: We want this to be friendly. We want this to be something that can be heard.

With your music, it is electronic-driven music but it’s not over the top. It’s not flashy. Is that the idea?

DH: We’re using real instruments and Mickey’s not using any samples. Everything that’s on our tracks, Mickey composes.

MD: All the drums are like old things — I used to have a bunch of keyboards, or access to a bunch of keyboards, so I recorded all the drum sounds off of them and I use a lot of those. All of the synths that we used in the studio are synths that I’ve built on the computer. Any of the instruments are things that we record. I don’t have any sort of moral opposition to samples, especially if you clear them. I think I’m too OCD to use a sample. Of course there’s music that’s like, “Oh, I want to make a synthesizer or I want a synth that sounds like this.” It’s cool to have that benchmark but I’m not just going to use that sound, I’m going to make it myself because then I can tweak what I want with it. In terms of not using super high or low frequencies — I really, really hate calling myself an electronic musician. The world of electronic music is gross. There’s certainly nuances and there’s some really incredible electronic musicians who I listen to every day. But when you meet someone who does it who’s never been on Hype Machine or who doesn’t look at Pitchfork’s top releases and you say, “I make electronic music,” they think of like dubstep. And that whole EDM culture is so hyper masculine and gross and just so not us. I think I say I’m a electronic musician because I use a computer on stage and that’s it. It’s the medium. It’s not the aesthetic or the idea. I’ve resorted to saying we make pop music and then people are like, “Oh, what do you play?” and I’m like, “A computer, I guess?” So it’s electronic music because that word sticks and when people see us they think that.

DH: And that’s why we came up with this ‘Midwest disco’ idea.

So you have a couple cool music videos out. Tell me about your planning for those.

DH: I studied English in college with a focus on writing and I’ve actually published two books, so I focus on writing.

MD: [laughs]

DH: I know, right? I’m slipping that in.

MD: You slip it in at the very end! I feel most people who’ve published two books are like, “Hi, my name’s Danny and I’ve published two books.” Or like, “Oh, uhhh, I can’t go to your thing because I’m publishing books.” [laughs].

DH: “I have a prior engagement.” [laughs] So for a while music and writing were a backburner / frontburner sort of project for me. But now music has become a frontburner. The idea of writing, though, is something very much ingrained in me — telling a story. Lyrically, my goal for every song is to have one piece of solid advice in every song. I feel like a solid pop song is one piece of advice. That’s my theory on pop music. Good pop music. With the music videos, the guys Justin and Eric, the guys who directed our first video, we just sat down and threw out ideas for about two hours. I had this rough idea of what I liked to see. Visually, I don’t know how to make things happen but I like telling a story. For the swimming in the pool for “Bandits,” I was out grabbing drinks with a couple of friends and the water aerobics instructor is a friend I was out to drinks with. I played them the song when it was still a rough demo. [They thought] it had such a solid ’80s vibe. Let’s make a music video where we’re at a pool performing and no one knows we’re there until a certain time. [We’re in] such a small community, and a tight community, that it was like, “How can we get in at a YMCA?” We shot that video in two hours.

MD: And it was during a scheduled water aerobics class. The teacher told them about it ahead of time and they were really excited about it. She actually uses our music during the class. So it was all these old women, basically, who were so stoked that we were there.

DH: They said, “We didn’t know anybody in town who was makin’ music like this.” [laughs]. Which is why we left that last scene in the video. they had such a good time. It was such a positive experience.

MD: And she was telling us now that they sing along to the songs when they come, when they’re doing their water aerobics class.

DH: And for “Do This Better,” this was the first video that creatively we turned over all the aspects for them to write it. That was a fun experience.

MD: Kind of a challenging experience, being like, “I’m okay to give this up to somebody else.”

DH: It was fun to let them take it on.

So what’s the rest of the year look like for you guys?

DH: We really want to get on some more festivals. Our passion is making music. Mickey’s family just moved to Los Angeles so I can see us getting out there to do some shows. The great thing also about this is we can literally travel with backpacks. So it’s great to think about how easy it would be to get out. Release the EP, more shows, some festivals and we always want to do more remixes and help produce things and working with some other people who are doing production.

MD: We’ve been DJing more and more. It’s a fun thing to do. I’m going to be traveling a bit in the next couple of months. I don’t DJ under my own name, I DJ under the MAIDS moniker. We’ve also been working on some more involved merch like limited run tee shirts and things like that.

DH: It’s exciting. No matter what continues to come it’s exciting to know you have somebody that you’re working on it with.