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 The men of Cake know how to write a song. Their approach to songwriting and performing is honest and unique, creating a snazzy brand of hip pop that is cool and understated. Before hitting the road in support of their fourth studio album titled Comfort Eagle, band member Vince DiFiore spoke with NY Rock's Jeanne Fury. Notice how Vince asks Jeanne the first question and then tells her about Cake's tour schedule. She didn't even have to ask. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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VINCE: | Where are you calling from? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NYROCK: |
New York. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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VINCE: | Oh, I'm in Sacramento. We're about to start a tour. We're leaving on the 30th [of August] for Portland and then we're doing Portland and Seattle-the Bumbershoot festival-and Vancouver down to Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago and a couple of shows in Texas and Phoenix. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NYROCK: |
Are you guys excited? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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VINCE: | Yeah, we're excited. We've done some smaller shows. We'd call up a couple of bars the day of and say, "Hey can we come down and set up and just play for your usual crowd" and we might call up some friends and have them come out but, you know, we wanted to play to a small room. We did things like that, and then we did some big radio festivals – one in Seattle and one in Atlanta – but this is our first theater tour of our own for this record. So yeah, it's pretty exciting. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NYROCK: |
What was the main difference between writing Comfort Eagle and writing your past albums? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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VINCE: | Um, you know, it was really similar. It's the same process. John [McCrea] is our primary songwriter so he has ideas for words and melody and then we all collaborate on arrangement. It's just sort of a process of getting better at the same thing. We've always produced our albums so we're getting better at communicating with engineers, knowing what our options are in the studio. We're all becoming better musicians and a little bit more confident and fierce in the studio. You realize you only have one chance on an album and you end up hearing it a lot once you record it so all the lessons learned came in. Really we did the same process but just a little bit better with this one. I think we've done that with each album. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NYROCK: |
What were some of the albums that you were listening to when you were writing Comfort Eagle? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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VINCE: | I was listening to Kid A. It's really funny; that's about it for me. I don't know what everyone else was listening to. You end up listening to your own music so much. You listen to the last recording and you have to get that stuff in your head to be inspired to write parts and also to have production ideas. So we mostly listen to our own music during the making of the album, to keep my head into it. But I had a cassette of Kid A in my car about half way through the album. That was a good thing for me 'cause I used to vibe pretty heavily on Brian Eno's ambient albums so it was a breath of fresh air for me. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NYROCK: |
What do you think about the present state of rock 'n' roll? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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VINCE: |
I'm not sure what it's about, really. I mean, you look back, of course, hindsight is 20/20, so you can look back at the '60s and say, "Oh, that was all about protest" and the '50s were about having sock-hops. Maybe when people look back at rock music in the '90s, it'll have to do with people becoming sort of in control of their lives. It seems that a lot of themes in modern rock are about harnessing feelings, crushing and wanting to obliterate those feelings or definitely managing those feelings. Maybe that's what rock is all about now, sort of having a say in what happens in your emotional life or something like that. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NYROCK: |
Is it difficult to stay smooth when everyone in the business seems to be cashing in on being tortured outcasts? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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VINCE: | Yeah. You know, we just do what we do. We don't have much of a following. People who like the songs and like the music, they come out and they're entertained, and we're just trying to be entertainers and do the best we can at that. I guess if you try your hardest and if you persevere and there's something to your music, there's some sort of niche out in the world where people go to concerts and people buy records. You stick to it and you have something worthwhile to offer and you don't really have to be a part of a scene or be a part of a certain emotional movement. And I think that shows right now. There's a lot of different styles of singing. It seems like the younger people, younger guys – I certainly went in for this too when I was younger – they go for like the, you know, screaming music. And I guess I still do now. There's something that rock 'n' roll has always been about release, but it's not really so much our style. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NYROCK: |
So what exactly is a "Comfort Eagle?" | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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VINCE: | Well, people have said it sounded like a camper or it sounded like a mattress, but really, I don't know exactly what it means. John's the one who came up with that and he's never stated literally where that came from. Although, I do know that someone was playing piano once and there was a sculpture of an eagle, like a Maltese falcon, on top of the piano that the guy was playing, and it seemed like a comfort eagle. I've heard there's something called a "comfort swan" which you put in a pond if you want to attract other water fowl, and they won't be scared away because the swan makes it look safe for other birds to land. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NYROCK: |
Tell me something about your fans. You said you don't have a huge following, but what about the people who show up and listen to your music; what are they mostly like? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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VINCE: | I don't know. I think that's a pretty cool thing about our shows. There isn't any particular type of person and I think there's a lot of different tastes in the music and, yeah, so I don't really know. Maybe I should start to ask the people at our shows. That might interest me actually. September 2001 Send this page to a friend • Mailing list • Current stories • Classifieds
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