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yawn...

-christie-

oh yeah, and how could i forget their recent nuvo cover story?! duh!

from www.nuvo.net/archive/2006...bunch.html

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COVER STORY
The Margot Bunch
Margot & the Nuclear So & So's sign record deal with national label.

Jim Walker

Margot & the Nuclear So & Sos sit around on a couch and chairs in a cluttered 1960s-green living room drinking bottled Pabst Blue Ribbon and smoking, smoking, smoking. In the background, the Beach Boys harmonize out the hi-fi or, later, the Beatles rumble from an eMac in the kitchen decorated with a wallpaper mural of an island sunset. The group engages in overlapping conversations; they sit close to each other, sharing cigarettes, sharing lighters, sharing space.

A couple of them fiddle with an acoustic guitar left lying around. A couple of them argue. A couple of them laugh. Some are quiet. On first glance, this could be any party at any house, anywhere, any time. But its different here. What they talk and laugh and argue about is music. What they do is music. What they breathe, besides smoke, is music. And this is a party that never ends.

Its not like this band, which recently signed with the national label Artemis, is on some kind of non-stop collective coke bender. The party doesnt end here because the people from this party cant ever go home. Theyre already there.

For the most part, all eight people seven men and one woman who make up Margot & the Nuclear So & Sos live in Andy and Chris Frys modest near-Southside home at the end of Parkway Street.
Its like American Bandstand every night, Andy says.

Before Margot went nuclear

Back in early 2004, it was just the two brothers sharing what now must seem like an abundance of space. They had regular jobs and played in a good local band, The Academy, with Andy on guitar and vocals and Chris on drums. Chris girlfriend, local visual artist Stacy Novak, moved in during that time. She had no idea what was about to happen.

Soon, Andy became friends with singer-songwriter Richard Edwards, a local prodigy who started writing and recording songs with the band Archer Avenue as a teen-ager. Archer Avenue had split up and several people, including Muncie-based bass player Tyler Watkins, who had worked as an engineer on Archer Avenue recordings, lined up for an opportunity to work with Richard. I was hoping his band would break up so I could be in another one with him, Tyler says.

So, with Andy on electric guitars, Chris on drums and Tyler on bass, Richard planned to put down some music as a solo artist at Queensize, the local recording studio Andy co-owns. As that process began, other eventual Margot band members began chipping in. Jesse Lee of Pravada brought his cello. Richard contacted his old friend Emily Watkins they went to prom together to help on keyboards. The last piece of the puzzle maybe the one that brought Margots sound together was Hubert Glover, who Jesse brought in, on trumpet. It lends to the orchestral feel of it. Its another sound, Jesse says of the horn. It raises it from being an acoustic rock band with a cello player. Now you have an orchestra pit.

Later, after recording had ended, Casey Tennis, also of Pravada, chipped in on percussion for live shows. He stayed on as did Hubert as a full-fledged member of Margot & the Nuclear So and Sos.

This wasnt even supposed to be a band, Richard says. Then it was.

Getting what they need

Recording sessions came whenever people could get to Queensize between day job responsibilities. It would be a few hours here and there, one or two days a week. By late 2004, they decided to take a chance, quit their jobs and move into Andy and Chris house together. They decided to get serious.

But the choice to live together wasnt about the house becoming a non-stop music-making center. It was an economic decision. Its like an eight-piece band on the budget of a three-piece band, Tyler says. Its a community. We dont make much money off of the band. But if somebody needs something we find a way to get it for them. We all get what we need.

With some drywall and 2-by-4s, Andy turned his downstairs bedroom into three. All of a sudden, Stacy wasnt living with Chris, his brother and a cat or two. She was living with a rock orchestra.

There was a little anxiety at first, says Stacy, who does all of the bands artwork. I thought, Oh gosh. I had been living on my own for five or six years and then this. It was crazy. Now Im sort of holding my breath and hanging in there.

All of the members of Margot, who range in age from Richard at 22 to Andy at 30, were making the same sudden adjustment. Their rooms are no bigger than their beds. Their home is never a solitary place. Its not always easy, Andy says. But its still better than having a job. It would be silly for us to be paying five different rents. And the fact that we can tolerate it is a testament to how close we all are.

Richard agrees. It can be stressful. But, the nice thing is, were all best friends. If I hate somebody one day, I can still hang out with one of the other six.

Nostalgia without sentimentality

While recording sessions continued for the album, eventually called The Dust of Retreat, Margot began playing around town. Their style both recorded and live is hard to pin down. Sometimes they sound a little like something the Rat Pack would dig, sometimes like a jam band, sometimes like an experimental folk act, sometimes like turtleneck-and-tweed-jacket Burt Bacharach easy listening, and then, other times, they just rock heavy guitars, heavy beat.

Every member of Margot brings his or her own influences to the table. Theyre all encouraged to just do what they want. The final product is a mixture of Richards somber but somehow optimistic songwriting and singing and an eclectic carnival of sonic fun.

Probably the best way to explain this bands work is through a link to film. Margot members feel a kinship with the work of Wes Anderson (The Royal Tenenbaums, Rushmore, etc.). Richard named the band, in part, after Margot, the character played by Gwyneth Paltrow in Tenenbaums. He named his old band, Archer Avenue, after the street where the Tenenbaums lived.

Like Andersons movies, Margot feels nostalgic without being too sentimental, a little numb with depression but, ultimately, optimistic. Its an optimism that comes from understanding we arent in control as people, that we cant answer all the questions. In a Wes Anderson movie and in Margots music, everything is hazy on the edges but clear in the middle. Kind of like dreams. Kind of like memories. Kind of like life.

Our music is very cinematic. In just about every song, we focus on stories. We want them to be childrens lullabies but a little more frightening, Jesse says. Wes Anderson has a very childlike, magical approach to things, much like we do. He makes an older style of movie, not so new and loud. They have a magical simplicity. They just look like theyre from a different time. Theyre just beautiful. We try to do that.

Local buzz blooms national

Margots first show, after two practices, happened at the Patio on Dec. 29, 2004. Emily had never played live. Still, Margots debut went over well and the band launched into playing as many shows as possible. In the meantime, Standard Recording Co., then based in Kokomo, released the bands CD. With the help of ongoing buzz surrounding Richard, the band and the new album got lots of good press especially from Indianapolis Star music critic David Linquist, who had once picked Archer Avenues work for album of the year. It was easy to write about us because they could say, Come see a band made of people from Archer Avenue, Pravada and The Academy, Richard says.

With all of the press, the bands connections and a sound that started to really come together, the local buzz soon bloomed into a national one. It was good timing, Casey says. Everybody was willing to make a sacrifice.

Andy points to Richard who wrote all of the songs on the album as the reason for Margot taking off when the 20 other bands the different members were in prior to this one didnt go anywhere. It works because of Richard, Andy says. He was the piece we were all missing.

This was quite a switch for Andy. In The Academy, he was the one who wrote the songs and brought them to the band, as Richard now does with Margot. It was Andy who once stood center stage in his white suit and sang.

Now, instead of freaking out about am I singing this well? it frees me up to do what I do well, and thats it. I really like looking at the overall picture, he says. I thought what I liked about music was writing songs. But I like this so much more. Giving that up wasnt hard at all.

Spotlight on Richard

Record companies like Columbia began flying Richard and Andy out to meet their reps. During that time, a representative from Artemis contacted Margot through its MySpace page. At first, we thought it was bullshit, Richard says. But, already flown to New York by Columbia, they decided to check Artemis out and were glad they did. They were so much cooler. We went from the Sony building, which was kind of like the Death Star, to see Artemis. And it just felt so much better. I dont want to talk shit about major labels, but it is just a different culture, Andy says. At some point it felt like people were just shining a big fucking spotlight on Richard to see what he would do in different situations.

But the ones at Artemis knew Margots music, requesting particular songs. It just felt right. After going to all of the other labels, everything seemed so surreal. They were committal and noncommittal at the same time. At Artemis, they seemed to like what we were doing. They seemed more serious, Andy says.

During the meetings, Andy and Richard got the feeling that the major labels are scrambling to keep up with the independent labels and the changes brought on by new technology. Theyre all terrified, Richard says. And theyre all fighting a huge uphill battle in a flawed system. They just dont know how to resurrect it.

While other labels plodded forward, Artemis reps attended several Margot shows, including another at the Patio when the band opened for Juliette Lewis and the Licks on Nov. 5, 2005. The labels president saw a video of that performance, pretty much sealing the deal. They signed their contract just before playing a live set on WOXY Internet radio in Cincinnati on Nov. 28, 2005. Artemis faxed it over to the office and the band faxed it back. Then they played a set dripping with joy.

I felt more relieved than anything, Jesse says of the moments after the contract was signed. I was just ready to see what this label wanted us to do. I was sitting there thinking, Well, what next?

A surprise to all of us

Next was the whole band traveling to New York to meet the people at their new label which also represents a range of talent from Better than Ezra to Steve Earle, to The Pretenders, to Al Franken, to lots of other, newer acts. After that, Margot did some more touring around the East Coast and Midwest, where people in other states were even singing along with their songs (thanks to MySpace, WOXY and satellite radio).

The band recently returned for a break to tweak the record released by Standard for re-release by Artemis in March. Later this month, theyll head out in their van for a western tour, highlighted by a gig opening for Rufus Wainwright at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, on Jan. 21.
We all like touring, Richard says. Its a little bit of a soulless endeavor. But, when you get to the club, it starts to get good.

With such a large band, in the past Margot has sometimes outnumbered its out-of-town audiences. But they dont mind. And those days are most likely behind them. Who cares? Its better than sitting here. Its still more fun to play a show with two people and drink for free than sit here at home and get drunk and watch The Real World. Our theory is that well keep touring on zero money and, each time we go back, there will be more people, Richard says.

Margot has already started recording its next record at Queensize, where the band invested its first advance from Artemis on top-quality studio equipment. They plan to finish the next record late this year or early in 2007.

With this record, I think were going to try to focus on even more of an orchestral sound, Jesse says. When youre recording, things are pieced together and becoming something on their own. Im curious to see what is pieced together. I think it will be a surprise to all of us.

Nuclear family photograph

During the photo shoot for this story, Andy climbs into a double bed barely squeezed into his tiny room. Hes made it into a sort of loft, complete with storage underneath, an area at the foot of the bed to hang his clothes and a stand that hangs from the ceiling for a small TV. While the photographer snaps pictures, Andy calls in the other band members. First, Tyler arrives, slipping off his shoes. Then Emily and Casey squeeze in. They all yell for the others. In a minute, Jesse, Hubert and Chris pile on top. And last, Richard strolls into the closet-sized room, looking over the situation with a new cigarette in his lips. Emily tells him he cant smoke in there. He says hes going to smoke if he has to get his picture taken with seven other people in a bed. Nobody argues with that. He climbs in next to Chris.

So theres the whole family: Andy typing on his laptop, others asking if hes really answering e-mails (he is). And Richard, at the foot of the bed, half-smiling and smoking and looking away.

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what a great article!
-christie-

here's some more articles on Margot...

this one's from this month's issue of Spin magazine. (thanks to the guy on myspace, jack, that posted this originally) -

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Online Reviews
Margot & the Nuclear So & So's, The Dust of Retreat

By: Alyssa Rashbaum
April 5, 2006
The new Village people -- i.e., the West Village


On their debut album, Margot & the Nuclear So & Sos present the kind of idealistic vision of New York City's Greenwich Village that can only be imagined in earnest by someone living in the Midwest.

Far removed from the boutiques and falafel joints that currently inhabit the neighborhood, the Indiana-bred band presents a vision of what the area might have felt, sounded, and looked like in the 1960s. In this case, the majority of the population was apparently well read, and either devastatingly melancholy/drug-addled or alarmingly optimistic.

To create a sound that broad in its spectrum, Margot founders Richard Edwards and Andy Fry recruited six other musicians: Jesse Lee (cello), Emily Watkins (piano), Hubert Glover (trumpet), Chris Fry (drums), Casey Tennis (drums, assorted other banged-on objects), and Tyler Watkis (electric bass). The resulting debut, The Dust of Retreat, is a chamber pop confection that makes occasional detours into modern rock.

The tracks act as mini-screenplays which unfold into romantic sagas ("Skeleton Key," "Jen Is Bringin' the Drugs" ), or include detours into dialogue ("On a Freezing Chicago Street" ) are highly literate with the exception of the saccharine "Paper Kitten Nightmare" which features Edwards crooning "meow meow meow" -- seriously. On "Quiet as a Mouse," nearly every member of the band gets a turn in the spotlight with string-heavy sections, a horn solo, a piano-driven opening, and a grizzled, guitar-heavy chorus in which Edwards warns, "Wake up, the sun is rising without you."

It's not an album you're likely to hear in any Village venue now, but it's just wistful enough that you can picture that leather-clad kid on Macdougal wearing tweed and quoting Burroughs.

(found here)

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this is more of a technical article, but it has some really great info in it. i'll post this in the musician's forum also. this is from this month's issue of Keyboard Magazine:

Margot & The Nuclear So and Sos show you how to work the cameras to get the word out.

Make iTunes Work for You

By Narasu Rebbapragada | April 2006

Theres no standard music genre with which to describe Margot & The Nuclear So and Sos, an eclectic Midwestern troupe of seven guys and one girl. Theyre currently roaming the U.S. with a kind of alternative folk rock thats soft and muted at times, dark and gritty at others, and often quite energized.

The girl, by the way, is not Margot (there is no Margot). Its Emily Watkins, the 22-year-old Indiana native who lugs a vintage Fender Rhodes around from gig to gig. She and the rest of the band live together, tour together, and make music together all without day jobs. I dont make any money. Were all really poor, says Watkins.

Sounds awfully romantic and old-fashioned, except for the fact that theyre products of the digital millennium. Theyve got a page on MySpace, their own website, and thanks to percussionist Chris Frys background in broadcast television, a healthy set of videos, some of which are optimized to play on the video iPod.

Recently signed to Artemis Records and often on the road, Margot & The Nuclear So and Sos doesnt have the time or money for high-production videos, but heres how they do it on the quick and on the cheap.

Get The Best Camera You Can
The band often shoots with a Panasonic DVX100A miniDV camcorder and sometimes with a Canon XL2. Frys dream camera, however, is the $6,000 Panasonic AG-HVX200 camera, which can record HD video onto 2GB to 8GB P2 flash-memory cards. P2 cards pop out of the camera, so you can transfer video onto a laptop connected to a P2 drive.

Set Up Two Cameras
In order to have multiple camera angles in the video, the band sets up two cameras. One camera, set up in the back of the room and locked down on a tripod, will take stable, non-shaky wide shots of the whole band. The other camera is entrusted to a roadie or friend. I asked him to concentrate of tight shots, says Fry about his cameraperson. You can be roaming around, getting cool angles.

Capture Audio
Each camera gets audio from two stereo room mics. Fry and the band tend to use that audio rather than the audio from the mixing board. Every time we get a board feed, it doesnt sound right, says Fry. Sometimes combining the board mix with a room mic can be a nice compromise.

Edit Video First
Fry imports video onto his 12" 1.5-GHz PowerBook G4 (with 1.25GB of RAM) using his miniDV cameras FireWire connection. He edits video with Apples Final Cut Pro 5 importing footage from each camera onto a separate track in Final Cut Pros timeline. Fry interweaves wide shots from the back camera with tight shots from the handheld camera. If [the camera man] is in the process of moving around, I can use the other camera. says Fry, who also carries around a 500GB LaCie external hard drive. It houses an eventual Margot & the Nuclear So and Sos documentary.

Sync up Audio
In a perfect world, when you start the audio tracks exactly at the same moment, they should stay in sync. In the real world, this doesnt happen. Audio that was synced up at the first song of a performance can be totally out of sync by the third tune. Fry had to re-sync the audio periodically during his video. In Figure 1, note the red tabs on the recorded audio and video track data labeled -6, +6, -10, or +10. This is because the video has gotten out of sync with the audio tracks, he says. In this case, I had to drag the tracks right or left six or ten frames until they synced back up. It helped to watch the drums when re-syncing the tracks.

Use Effects Lightly
There are a lot of challenges in editing live concert footage low light, suboptimal acoustics, shaky camera footage which you can attempt to fix up with Final Cut Pros effects. But Fry keeps effects minimal. For live concerts, he says, I stick to cuts. Im not trying to do special effects other than dissolves or something like that. Fry also uses the Color Corrector effect in Final Cut Pro 5 (Effects > Color Correction > Color Corrector), mostly to match the lighting between the two cameras.

Creating iPod Video
To create iPod videos, Fry places In and Out markers around a selected portion of the video. He goes to File > Export and exports the video Using QuickTime Conversion and the iPod (320x240) format. This creates a 320-by-240-pixel MP4 video which can easily be uploaded to the bands website, and more importantly downloaded into anyones iTunes.

(found here, there's a few photos on the site also)

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just a little update that i saw on the artemis records website (some of the info we already knew... i bolded the new info):

News For May 10 , 2006
Margot & The Nuclear So and So's

Margot & The Nuclear So and Sos ink worldwide deal with Artemis Records! Their debut album The Dust of Retreat is in stores now! The Dust of Retreat was a Paste Pick on CNN's Headline News. The album will be featured on AOL Music, Real and Rhapsody Listening Sessions (check those sites for more information). On the radio front, the band made a dramatic jump on the CMJ Top 200 Charts from #97 to #48 last week. They also debuted at FMBQ Specialty at #4 (right behind The Sounds, Arctic Monkeys and The Editors). MTV News aired a You Hear It First news segment on the band down at SXSW. The band is currently on a full nationwide tour with South and Something For Rockets, check the tour dates page for all the dates and times.

originally found here.