The New Orleans-based band World Leader Pretend has been performing around the city for years. But these days, when they perform at Tipitina’s on a Friday night, they play as a band with a major record deal.
The band consists of four members, including drummer Arthur Mintz, bassist Alex Smith, guitarist Matt Martin and lead singer Keith Ferguson. Two of the band’s four members, Martin and Ferguson attended Loyola, but dropped out to pursue their album.Now that they are back in New Orleans, fresh off of their yearlong tour, Ferguson has decided to finish his degree where he started. Before the band’s set at Loyola’s “Battle of the Bands” on April 7, Ferguson had enough time to sit down with The Maroon for a Q&A session.
MAROON: “So Keith, you never graduated from Loyola?”KEITH FERGUSON: “No, I quit school because I got the double-major label record. It was like, hmmm … money or school?”
M: And when was this?KF: Aw, God. That must’ve been, like, two years ago. It was during the 2003-04 winter break, between semesters.
M: How did you guys get signed? I know that you guys were with Renaissance Records here in New Orleans for a while.KF: They went bankrupt. Well, actually we left them right before they went bankrupt because they didn’t want us to make another record, and we wanted to make another record. So we went to the bank and took out a $40,000 loan and signed off everything we owned and made a record. It’s called ‘”Punches.” Then we found this lawyer, named Reed Hunter, who’s now our lawyer. He’s like the greatest human being alive, and he basically discovered us. He fell in love with our record and decided it was the greatest record in the past five years and we were like, “Huh?” Then we made the whole record ourselves and he said, ‘Let me see what I can do with this.’ Then a month later, there were nine major labels that were trying to sign us.
M: So when did you guys sign with your present record label, Warner Brothers?KF: In like September or October of 2004.
M: And you’ve been on tour since then?KF: We stopped touring Thanksgiving Day (2005). Our last performance was at Tipitina’s. And we were on tour since, I guess, September of the previous year. So it was over a year.
M: Tell me about your tour, how did it go?KF: I mean it was up and down, all over the place always. Before the record came out, the first five or six months, or however long it was just kind of … well I mean it was fun, but it was playing to nobody, you know, like, 10 or 20 people a night everywhere we went pretty much, other than maybe New York, Atlanta and here, or Chicago because we already had a major following there. But everywhere else, there was just nobody. And then later on, further down the line, it got better towards the end of touring. Obviously, we didn’t become the biggest band in the world or sell a million records or anything like that. In certain cities like Chicago, we do really well. We sell out in Chicago and in New York.
M: What was the best place you guys got to go while on tour?KF: Well the European stint was kind of the “party” because we had a tour bus. We had a massive tour bus with liquor dispensers, big flat screen TVs, DVD players and all this stuff, so we were like ‘Wahoo!’ We just drove across Europe in it and opened for R.E.M. and all these people. It was awesome.
M:I know that you guys stopped touring Thanksgiving Day of 2005, so were you here for the storm?KF: Actually we had a week break from touring the week it happened and I had somehow, by miracle of God luck, booked a ticket to Chicago for that break. A lot of my friends live in Chicago and I had booked the ticket like two months before that. The day I got on the plane was the Saturday before the storm hit. It was that night where you couldn’t get a flight out and I literally got on a plane that day not thinking anything. It was one of those flights with three stops and so I got into Chicago way later that night. I looked at my cell phone when I got off the plane and I had like 18 voice messages or something and was like, ‘What’s going on?’ I said, God that’s just luck.
M: You’re from here originally, right?KF: Well it’s weird. I grew up in a small town right outside New Orleans called Matthews, Louisiana. It’s like a sugar cane field, basically. That’s where I grew up. My family is from Boston. I went to high school in Houma and moved back here for college. Matt’s from here, Arthur’s from here, Andy’s from Chicago, Alex is from London.
M: What’s it like being back in New Orleans after the storm and being on tour forever?KF: The crazy thing is that I’ve now been everywhere in the United States of America. Like every single city, which is insane to me because I have so much perspective on everything and it makes you realize how incredible this city is. There’s no argument, it’s one of the three coolest places in the Unites States of America, hands down. If not number one or number two. It rivals New York. When you’re here, it always seems like the grass is greener on the other side and you feel like you want to travel and go to all of these other places. And then you see America and you’re like, “Oh God, this is so boring.” It’s all strip malls and car dealerships. It’s such a vortex.
M: And you guys have such a wide fan base here, it must be 10 times better for you.KF: Yeah, you know … it’s hit or miss. It’s a different place now. It’s a different city now. It’s really dark-it’s got this dark cloud over it and it’s interesting because the minute you leave the city you just feel like this entire weight has been lifted off your shoulders. When I go visit my parents in Houma, it’s like the sun came out or something.
M: Have you guys done anything in the community to help out?KF: Our bass player, Alex has been fixing people’s roofs. Matt had to fix his parents’ roof and then he got bit by a spider and had to have surgery. He got bit by a brown recluse and he had to get a big chunk of his leg taken out.
M: Uh-oh. That’s not good. Well, now that you are back in the city, and assuming Matt’s doctors have let him drink again, where do you guys like to hang out?KF: Tipitina’s and One-Eyed Jack’s are the cool places (to play). I’m usually either at Circle Bar, Mimi’s or sometimes I go to that cigar bar, Dos Jefes on Tchoupitoulas because it’s really quiet and nice. If you want to just talk to your friends and drink wine, it’s a cool place to go.
M: Since you guys have been back to New Orleans, have you had a different response since your tour?KF: I think if anything, people actually like us now in New Orleans, because for the longest time we were the ‘devil’ and people wanted to hurt us. Then at some point people listened to us and weren’t just like, ‘That’s the band that got signed by the major label’ and were like, oh wait, they’re kind of good maybe. I don’t know. I could be wrong. We kind of suck, though.
M: Is this your first time back on campus?KF: No, I came to register the other day. I’m going to try to get my degree over the summer. Yeah, you want me to write record reviews for The Maroon? I’ll totally do it. I don’t have anything to do.
M: Well, we might give you a call then. But back to the album, what has been the best response you have received in ‘”Punches” reviews?KF: They have been so polarized and across the board. Some people are like, ‘This is complete garbage’ and some people are like ‘This is a masterpiece.’ It’s really all over the place.
M: Speaking of your album ‘Punches,’ you guys have a song entitled ‘Grammarian’ on it. Well, we at The Maroon pride ourselves on being pretty decent grammarians, so we feel the need to put you to the test. What is wrong with the following sentence?
(I handed a paper with this sentence on it: ‘Can you catch misteaks gooder then most people?’)
KF: Oh Jesus. I haven’t been in college in two years. I haven’t used my brain. OK, well first of all ‘misteaks’ is misspelled and you can’t say ‘gooder then.’
(Keith then changed the sentence to: ‘Can you catch mistakes better than most people?’)
KF: Is that it?
M: That’s it! Very good. This is actually our ad for a new copy editor. So we were wondering, would you like to give up the band and come be The Maroon’s copy editor next semester?KF: I’ll do whatever you want.
M: Well, on your website, wlpband.com, you guys seem to have a really wide fan base. Where’s the most random place you have a lot of fans?KF: Greenville, S.C. It’s just such an odd place. The places where we have fan bases tend to be New York, Chicago or New Orleans. It’s the one little random isolated odd place on the map that, for some reason, a lot of kids show up when we play there.
M: I know that the band has a Myspace page, but did you know that you have a Loyola Facebook group too? It has 16 members.KF: Yes! That means there’ll be at least 16 people at all of our shows here. Wow, I had no idea. That’s awesome.
M: The band is named after the R.E.M. song, ‘World Leader Pretend.’ Are you really R.E.M. fans?KF: Well, Matt and I are; and Arthur is too, to a degree. Alex hates them. And I don’t know that Andy really likes them either. All I know is that I grew up listening to them.
M: In your reviews, you guys have been compared to anyone from U2 to Radiohead. If you were trying to describe your sound to someone who had never heard you before, who would you say you sound like?KF: See, the problem with us is that we have that weird chameleon thing where we just morph into different genres. Our first album sounds nothing like our second record and the one we’re working on now sounds nothing like ‘Punches’ at all. It’s kind of like Beck or Bowie. I mean that’s what I’d like to be. That’s what I like about music, is people who just continually reinvent themselves as something completely different.
M: What were your feelings on being featured on MTV’s ‘You Hear it First?’KF: It was weird. I could go on a huge rant about major labels and how they work and how absurd it all is, but whatever … yeah Warner Brothers! But no, it was cool. It was interesting. I remember our manager calling us and telling us in the middle of the night that we were going to be on MTV. We had a show that night it first aired. I remember we finally got in at five or six in the morning. We’d been driving all night from Atlanta or Birmingham and we got to the hotel and went straight to bed to go to sleep. But I have this weird neurosis thing where I can’t go to bed unless I have some kind of distraction. So I turn on the TV and it was on MTV already and the first thing that comes on is like … ‘Oh look, there’s me!’ It was very, very bizarre. It’s publicity. Whatever works.
M: If you were to describe your new album, how would you describe it?KF: Cowboys on acid. No, cowboys and Indians on acid.
M: On a more serious note, The Maroon has a tradition of asking the same last question to all artists it interviews. Boxers or man thong?KF: Boxers. I’ve never worn a man thong. Should I have? If I did, it would be neon pink.
Nicole Wroten can be reached at [email protected].
