Rolling Stone's Jon Weigell caught up with Portugal The Man ahead of a July 27th Radio City Music Hall show.
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MusicTranscript
00:00 [Music]
00:07 Thanks for joining me today, I really appreciate it.
00:09 I was just talking to some of your team earlier and they said it's been kind of a whirlwind since you started at Bonnaroo.
00:14 Like Red Rocks you were at a few days ago.
00:16 What's the tour been like and are you excited to play tonight at Radio City?
00:19 I am excited to play.
00:21 We've been practicing a lot.
00:22 Yeah, that is not something I'm known for.
00:25 I do not do that.
00:27 Red Rocks was so intense.
00:30 We played with a 60-piece orchestra.
00:32 We played with the Colorado Symphony.
00:33 Oh my god.
00:34 Showed up at rehearsals.
00:36 The conductor was like, "Yo dude, you gotta come in here."
00:39 He was like telling me where I come in on the songs.
00:42 Totally did not think about the fact that they were practicing to the album.
00:45 Wow.
00:46 Which I've never done.
00:47 I've never looked at it.
00:48 I just go, we play live and we just go, "Well, I feel like singing right now."
00:52 What's the set listing like on this tour for you guys?
00:54 Is it more difficult than ever given just the wide selection of material?
00:59 The last record was so funny because we went from 100 songs to one song with one album.
01:04 It just wiped everything out.
01:06 Being removed from it, we have time to make these sets that really flow.
01:11 Is there less pressure on your headline tour to kind of, should I say, play the hits, I guess?
01:17 We were requested at every single festival.
01:20 We were at every single festival playing.
01:25 Those festival sets are so restrictive.
01:28 You end up showing up there and you go, there's like eight songs in our catalog that we felt like we had to play.
01:36 I think stepping away from it, you just kind of realize the live setting to me is about what it feels like in that room that night.
01:45 You write the set when you show up and you kind of look at the way it feels and you should have some leeway to move around if you feel like.
01:53 I want to go and feel like I was taken on a journey.
01:58 That's hopefully what we intend to do.
02:01 I'm sure you do.
02:03 I was wondering, what are some of your favorite fan responses to new songs that you've been playing on tour?
02:08 It's a pretty emotional record.
02:12 I mean, we wrote, our daughter was recently diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disease and we had written some of these songs around that.
02:22 I mean, that's one of the beautiful things about music to me is you don't know if people are going to feel that feeling that you had while you were writing it.
02:32 We've had a lot of people writing us talking about times of fantasy or anxiety and those emotions.
02:40 That's a really special thing.
02:42 That's me, man.
02:44 That's why I play music.
02:45 I play music because music helped me feel like I was a part of something when I was living in the woods.
02:52 My parents were dog sled mushers.
02:54 I lived in Alaska in a cabin.
02:56 I always loved listening to Motown and just all these radio, the Beatles, and I would be like, "This is so cool. I live in a cabin in the woods."
03:08 And I'm listening to the same music that people have heard all over the world.
03:14 Is there a song that elicited a certain reaction from fans that you were like, "Oh, wow. Y'all really wanted this or y'all missed this a lot?"
03:22 It's been cool seeing people want to hear old stuff and want to hear different parts of our career.
03:28 There are no rules anymore.
03:30 There's no rules to things being like, "Just play that one song. Nobody cares."
03:37 There's so many songs in the world.
03:39 There's so many good things.
03:41 Let's go to a show and have a good time and maybe we don't even hit it.
03:46 "Times of Fantasy" I think is one of those tracks that really exemplifies the album.
03:51 And I know that your daughter Frances does appear on that song specifically.
03:57 Tell me about that, one of your best collaborations of all time with her.
04:01 Singing with her in the studio is the funniest thing.
04:06 Oh, my God.
04:07 I love the way she hears things.
04:09 She's in the studio with us while we were making "Ghost Town" and it gets to the chorus and she's hearing "Ghost Town" and we're talking about a literal ghost town.
04:18 She's thinking ghosts and she starts howling in the bridge of the song.
04:22 She's going, "Howl."
04:24 It just became a part of the song.
04:26 That song to me is the most fun I've had in the studio.
04:29 Just watching Frances, she's just riffing, dude.
04:33 She's just in it.
04:34 And of course, the album's namesake, Chris Black, a friend of the band.
04:39 Could you tell me a little bit about Chris and when you decided to go full forward, name the album after him and give him the recognition that he very much deserves?
04:49 So Chris was our MC, like people call him our hype man.
04:54 He was just our nerdy friend, Chris, who came on stage and he would make us laugh.
05:01 And when he passed, so he passed in 2019, it was weird.
05:07 It broke this friend group.
05:09 I didn't know how to process that until we started finishing this record.
05:14 I started realizing so much of this music that we make is about the people around us.
05:20 I guess that's the greater meaning behind the album is it's Chris Black changed my life, but it's really about the people who change our lives.
05:29 One of my favorite things, just putting out this record has been seeing people sharing that, talking about people that changed their lives on their socials and just tagging them and seeing folks pop up and be like, "Whoa, I didn't know I made that kind of impact on you."
05:46 That's been really cool.
05:47 This record, you came in with a lot of collaborations.
05:50 And the one that kind of stuck out most to me was on chant with Edgar Winter.
05:54 And I was like, "Yo, how did y'all work with Edgar Winter on this song? Tell me about that."
05:59 Edgar Winter's part is so great because the song to me was about just personal growth.
06:05 His song "Dying to Live" is one of the first songs he wrote.
06:08 So he wrote this song as a kid who was struggling with things.
06:12 And he's now my father's age.
06:16 He's my dad.
06:18 To hear him sing that song in a song that meant so much to me about his struggles, singing it now as somebody who made it through all of those struggles, I think is really, really beautiful.
06:31 And to also have him say, "Hey, John, you mind if I play some synthesizers on that and some saxophone and just shred?"
06:40 He was like, "I really like this hardcore part. Can I play on that?"
06:45 He did all that stuff just so naturally.
06:48 Edgar Winter, dude, he is Frankenstein.
06:52 Around the time Woodstock came out, y'all were everywhere all the time.
06:57 After you did come out with Woodstock, were you at that moment thinking about new music?
07:03 Or was it just all about what you had just released and all about what was going on right then?
07:09 I wanted to make new music right away.
07:11 I think it was difficult finding the right person to be in the studio with.
07:16 Because you would walk in the studios with people and they'd be like, "Okay, let's write a song."
07:20 And it wouldn't be "Feel It Still."
07:23 And they'd be like, "Well, we gotta write that song."
07:26 Write it again.
07:28 That's why ending up with Jeff Basker was so incredible for me.
07:35 He's just such an incredible musician.
07:38 Just the way he plays.
07:41 I love being in the studio with somebody who's like...
07:44 You try some stuff.
07:46 I've always loved competition.
07:49 I like being competitive.
07:50 You're competitive?
07:52 I grew up playing hockey, man.
07:54 So going into a studio with somebody and being like, "I think I have something for this."
08:00 When they jump out and they really blow you away with, "That's pretty good, but I think I got this."
08:07 Danger Mouse did that a lot.
08:09 And it's so fun.
08:11 It's so fun walking in and being like, "I think I have something for this."
08:15 And he plays it and you go, "I'm gonna try to beat that."
08:21 Well, John, thank you so much for sitting down to talk with me.
08:23 It's been a genuine pleasure.
08:25 And good luck tonight, Radio City.
08:26 I like ending on that note. That's good.
08:28 (whooshing) (slicing)