You played a show with American Idol’s Gavin Degraw and Carrie Underwood this summer. How did it work playing for such a wide commercial fan base?
I think we have more of an ageless sound, which is one of the great things about when you interact on that level, its about everybody liking it, its not just young kids but grandmas saying, ‘I just love your music,’ you know. They love ‘Wow And Flutter’ and ‘Terrible Things’—but its also kids coming up and saying, ‘I love “Dexter” and I love “Terrible things”’—so it’s all of that. I’ve been pretty lucky, in terms of appealing to a very broad fan base.
I know that you’re an avid reader on the road, what book are you perusing at the moment?
I just finished a great book called The World Without Us by Alan Weisman and it’s about how the world would react if we weren’t here tomorrow. How would it return to the way it was before we got to ruin it? It makes me want to shake people and say ‘Come on, we have to get our CO2 levels down, everybody start recycling and get your asses in gear.’ (laughs)
I read that you converted your tour bus to run on vegetable oil? And that not only do you know the whole fuel system, but you like to get behind the wheel and drive it as well?
I drive it all the time. It’s an old Chevy military bus so yeah, we use to have a bus called Mrs. Garret (laughs) and Mrs. Garret is no longer working so we had to get rid of her and we got this one and I had a whole plan to convert it. This one is called Mr. Belvedere and its a work in progress. But we did take it to Chicago and ran it most of the trip on vegetable oil, so yeah it’s been an ongoing success!
Do you think that your actions will influence others to ‘reactivate’ their conscience and stop shitting all over the planet?
I hope so! That would be great, I would love that. I’ve really been working on sticking to that whole plan of being greener, which was one of my New Year’s revolutions. I got a juicer for Christmas and that’s all I’ve been doing is juicing and making compost from scraps, there’s all kinds of things that you can do and maybe I’m going a little nuts but I don’t care.
For the latest scoop on getting green with April Smith and The Great Picture Show head over to myspace.com/aprilsmithmusic.
