WAMPIRE

PORTLAND DUO TAKES A DIP IN NOSTALGIA

Driving on a dusty road somewhere in Nebraska, Eric Phipps and Rocky Tinder from the Portland indie group Wampire take time for a phone call. Hoping the call doesn’t get dropped, we chat about their upcoming tour with Smith Westerns, their brand new LP and future plans.

The first full-length record from the band, Curiosity, has an endless summer vibe, dreamlike and drizzled with nostalgia. It makes you want to sway and hang out at the rope swing down by the river. Coincidentally that’s exactly what the guys were going for when they created the album adding interesting elements of new with synths and splashes of old for a definite dream bop pop sound.

“When we started working on the record I was listening to a lot of Misfits, so I wanted to make some stuff that was a little tougher then what we’ve made in the past. We wanted to put touches of the oldies, ’50s-inspired stuff in there too so that comes through on some things. The idea was that the record would be kind of like a summertime record, where kids are going to hang by the river, or something to put on while driving,” Tinder recalls about the band’s inspiration and influences. “We didn’t want it to be immediately attention grabbing, something that you don’t realize you’ve listened to it until it’s over, the experience of the entire thing.”

Arranging artists for studio work and piecing together instrumentals, as well as having the bodies to perform as a five-piece, proved to be a bit stressful for the duo. At the forefront of everything was to produce a body of work that was easily translated into a great live show.

“The sessions in the studio we’re mainly tracking ourselves, Jake Portrait (Unknown Mortal Orchestra) laid down a lot of the bass and drums. We kinda just use the resources available to us to get the right instrumentals. We do a lot of the guitars and synth work ourselves. Our thought was to make a record and then piece together a band afterward. We’ve had quite a few lineup changes in the last couple of months, which was a little stressful. That’s why we try and stick to recording on our own, however I think we’ve found a pretty awesome crew that will carry us on into the new era so to speak,” says Phipps.

The album began construction last year in April with a fresh release this past May and it’s already had a decent dose of positive feedback. Testing it out with some smaller US tours as well as a quick European tour, which seemed to exceed the band’s expectations, piquing their curiosity about this upcoming tour and what to expect.

“We’re having a lot more feedback in Europe, the press that’s coming in, people are excited over there. I expect more people to know the record this time around though. We just did a couple weeks with Starfucker before we went to Europe it was cool to see people who were actually familiar with the tracks,” says Tinder, excitedly. “The majority of the tour is new markets for us so I think we’re expecting a pretty healthy blend of more people who know the record but also just introducing ourselves.”

As far as future plans for Wampire, Tinder and Phipps have already started thinking about the kind of atmosphere they imagine for their second album, however, for now, they just want to get out and play.

“We don’t want to rush, we want to get more shows under our belts on this one,” says Phipps. “The touring process has been really good and we’re discovering how to be more of a live band and get people really excited to be watching us.”

Check out Wampire at the Electric Owl on August 17th.

By Chrystal MacLeod
Photo: Rachel Hubbard