A couple weeks ago Harmonium Music posted excerpts of an interview with Robert Schneider of The Apples in Stereo. (Part 1 of that interview is here. Part 2 is here.) The author of the interview, Seán O’Donnell, sent the rest of it over to Optical Atlas so it wouldn't be lost to the ether. Enjoy!

Seán O'Donnell: If I’m correct, this is, I think, one of the first times the four founding members of Elephant Six have been on the same album maybe since Black Foliage. Is that correct?

Robert Schneider: Let me think about that. Yeah, I guess that that’s correct. Yeah, I guess so, I guess so. With this record, that would be just me wanting to get a really good feeling on the record. I wanted to make a record that really felt like something, you know? It wasn’t just production, and it wasn’t just pop, but that really had a lot of feeling on it. And at the same time, in the recent years, a lot of my friends have started playing more together again and stuff, and it just was important for me to just get a lot of my friends. Basically what I did was I traveled to all of my different friends’ studios and had them all…. Well, Jeff (Magnum) actually came in the studio in Brooklyn … and played drums on Hilarie’s two songs. And also he came out to Kentucky and did a little recording with me where he did quality control on my vocal tracks. He sang with the whole, when we had a large crowd of people in a room singing the background vocal, he might be in the crowd, but mainly he came in also to my friend Otto’s studio in Kentucky and kind of, not even produced the vocal tracks, but a few of the songs where I really wanted it to have a lot of fire, he made sure that I got the right take and so on. It was like, “Robert, you can do this part a little better,” or, “Robert, you really should do that part the same way again,” or whatever. And that was cool. Jeff has great taste and he has a great ear for production and for vocals and, you know, and for hearing stuff that sounds pure or sounds cool or whatever. And he’s got a very discerning ear, very critical. … And Bill Doss, I went down to his studio in Athens, Georgia, a couple of times. I recorded with him, and he did a lot of the vocal arranging on the record with me. And that was a blast — we’d stay up all night just singing harmonies and stuff for like a whole week at a time. And Will Hart would come in and record with us, too. And I had a lot of other friends, too. My brother-in-law, Craig Morris, who is in the Ideal Free Distribution and also is in my band Thee American Revolution — we have a band together — he did a lot of playing on it, and also a lot of engineering. I did a lot of overdubs at his studio in Kentucky. And I went to my friend’s Pete’s studio in Brooklyn, and he overdubbed some horns onto “Beautiful Machine.” I basically, while we were recording the record, we didn’t have a record deal. We had a lot of people who wanted to put out the record, but what I mean is we weren’t contractually bound to turn it in at any given time. So I had the luxury with this record of having enough time to develop everything I wanted to do. I had the luxury of being dissatisfied with songs and do something about it instead of just having to finish it or leave it off the album, which, in the past, is what happened. Like, there were great songs that I was dissatisfied with that they weren’t quite there, but it was time to finish the record and I had to leave a song off or put it on. So there were songs like “You Said That Last Night,” that I thought was one of the hits of Tone Soul Evolution, but when it came time for the record, it just didn’t have the punch that I had wanted it to have, and I didn’t have time to really examine what the problem was. I just ended up mixing it and putting it on the record, and I’ve never been happy with the song. And, at the time, it was one of my favorites. And I always regretted that. Tone Soul Evolution probably has more regrets than any other record because we recorded it at another studio, or at least the vocals were recorded at another studio, and so we weren’t totally in control. And at the same time, I hadn’t learned enough about production to let somebody else do engineering and feel in control. Like, when I was working with Bryce, everything I wanted I knew exactly how to tell him, I could tell him in one sentence, I didn’t have to feel around or wonder what was going on or stuff. And at the same time, he was ready to hear me. He respected me and he loved my production style and he wanted to have it sound the way I wanted it to sound, and so it was a real good relationship because I knew exactly what to say, I felt confident being the boss. And at the same time, I also felt confident letting him do what he was talented at instead of second-guessing him. So it was good in that way. Tone Soul Evolution, it wasn’t. We recording with this guy, Mike Deming, who had recorded with The Lilys, who were one of my favorite bands, and at the time we were very close friends with the band. And I loved his production on the Lilys, but on the Lilys, he was the producer. He did what I do. He did all of the production. He was kind of the mastermind of the sound. And you can’t really have two masterminds. You have to have one person who really is in control and really has a vision, and that one person has to know how to use the talents of other people. … And at the time I didn’t have all of those skills. Like, as a producer I was just learning how to do it. I was a home recording guy. And, in fact, recording Tone Soul Evolution turned me off for 10 years from wanting to record in another studio. So this record, it’s not because Mike Deming necessarily did a bad job, but it’s just sort of like the album suffered from the lack of one person being in control.

SO: How have the new members changed or added to the Apples’ sound, and has there been any difficulty in the transition?

RS: Well, now there hasn’t been difficulty. It definitely has been a change. About a year ago, Bill Doss, who is one of my oldest and best friends — we’ve been friends since I was just starting high school, and he was in my first band with me, ever … Fat Planet. Actually, at the time that we started the band, it wasn’t called anything. We kind of had a high school band for a few years, but it turned into a band called Fat Planet when we finally nailed down a few members and we played some shows. We played at a zoo and at a high school prom and we played at a laundromat slash arcade a few times. But anyway … he started playing in our band live about a year ago — last spring, in 2006. And that was amazing. We had recorded lots of the record, and we had such a fun time playing together, I asked him if he’d like to play with our band, and he was into it. And so that’s been really fun. That adds a good vibe, just having one of my oldest friends, my first musical partner ever in my current band. Then Hilarie quit the band in August of last year, 2006, for just personal reasons on her part. And that was, you know, it was surprising. We’ve always had the same drummer — she’s been the drummer in our band since we started our band. At first, I couldn’t think of anybody (to replace her), ’cause the thing about Hilarie is that she’s an extremely loud drummer, and she’s also not a fancy drummer, which is to my taste. I don’t like drummery sounding drummers that do lots of extra stuff. And she’s very good at really playing a meaningful backbeat. You know, putting fills where you really want to hear fills, but never anywhere else. And most drummers aren’t like that. Also, she plays very loudly, and that’s really important to the sound of our band — that it be loud and heavy, because I love to hear loud cymbals and drums and stuff like that, and it’s a major feature of rock music to me. I mean, it’s a major feature of rock music, period.

And so having Bill join the band, that was amazing. … Here I had one of my favorite people. I learned to sing harmonies with this guy. Like, we learned to play pop music together and record together, and we learned to sing together. And now he’s playing in my band, so that was really awesome. And with Hilarie quitting, there was this question. We can’t exactly replace her because her playing style is so distinctive and it’s distinctive to the sound of band. So we’re going to have to find somebody else who’s just as distinctive and also has the same taste. Most drummers are not the kind of drummers I’d want to play in the Apples. Most drummers are too drummery. … There’s a little bit of a primitive bent to our band sound. Not the recordings, necessarily, but the way that we play together, there’s a little bit of a primitive ethic. Primitive-ish ethic, I think is better.

So sometime after, I had made a list, and I couldn’t think of anybody who was really a perfect fit for drums. Now, my friend John Ferguson had played drums in Ulysses, my other band. And he’s really great because he’s not a drummer, he’s a multi-instrumentalist, so his drumming — he’s mainly a singer and keyboard player and guitarist and songwriter — so his drumming is very raw, and I like that about Ulysses. But he wasn’t available to play in the Apples, for one thing. And he was the only drummer I could think of immediately. And also, he’s not a very loud drummer. It’s not that he’s not a loud drummer, he’s an excellent drummer and he’s pretty raw, but, you know, Ulysses is a more moody band, and as far as for the volume level that the Apples play and stuff, I don’t think that it’s really his taste in drumming. Beyond that, I know a lot of great drummers, but there’s always something. There’s some strike in the column against them, you know. … There was nobody that seemed to be a perfect fit that I could, in my mind, say, “Yes, this is the new drummer. This is the person.”

And then I was sitting with my wife one day — we were on a road trip — and she was like, “Hey, doesn’t that guy from the Deathray Davies, haven’t you guys talked about playing together? Doesn’t he play drums?” And I realized, all of the sudden, in an instant, that John Dufilho, the lead singer of the Deathray Davies, and I had been talking for years about trying to record together. And, in fact, we had done a little bit of recording together. And that he was a drummer. Now, the Deathray Davies is a heavy pop band. They’re loud and rock out like the Apples. They’re also very pop-py. And he likes exactly the same kind of music I like. And he was familiar with the Apples back catalog, at least somewhat. And he’s not a drummery drummer. He’s a songwriter/producer, and that’s the perfect kind of drummer for the Apples, you know? And so at that moment, I picked up my cell phone and I text messaged John Hill, the guitar player in the Apples, who is very good friends with John Dufilho. And I asked John Hill if he thought John Dufilho could work as our drummer. Well, as I was text messaging John Hill, my phone rang, and I ignored the call because I was in the middle of the text message and I would have lost my text message if I answered the phone, and it was a strange number. And then after I got done and John Hill text messaged me back and said he sounds great. And I looked, and it turned out it was John Dufilho who had called me. At the exact same moment that I had just thought that he’d be a good drummer for the band and that I had text messaged John Hill to see if we should ask him to join the band, he called me completely randomly — and we only talk like once a year — and he was calling because he had heard that same day that Hilarie had quit the band. And you know, like I said, we had talked in the past about playing together. And in his mind, he thought that this might be a good time to do it. And in my mind I just thought the same things, and so I called him and it was just too much of a coincidence. I operate largely on things like coincidences and synchronicities and stuff, as far as making decisions go. Or, at the very least, if there’s a synchronicity’s involved, it really strengthens the argument for a particular decision. ‘Cause it’s kind of like when you’re in the groove and you’re doing things right, it seems like those kind of things come up more often, and it’s almost like a sign that this is the way to go. And so he called me at the moment I was thinking of him and text messaging John Hill … even if he didn’t play drums, even if he turned out to be the worst, fanciest, most over-drumming drummer in the world, I probably would have had him play in the band just based on the synchronicity. Never mind the fact that he’s a loud-assed drummer with perfect taste, and he’s a great songwriter in a band I love — one of my favorite pop bands — and he’s a great guy who’s already our friend. It’s not like we’re pulling in some random musician to join the band. … And basically we just decided that day that John was going to play in our band. So, it’s definitely different, but he has the same taste in drumming that I have and that Hilarie has. His drum style’s different, he’s a different drummer. He plays a little more like Ringo. He has a little swing between his beats, I can’t describe it. But his drumming style is a little more like Ringo, whereas I feel like Hilarie’s is a little more like Bonham. ... Hilarie’s is heavier and more solid. John’s also very solid, but it has a little swing to it that’s a little more poppy. Hilarie’s is also a little more punk rock, maybe, even though John learned to play drums in a hardcore band and then he played in a band that sounds like the Beatles. So basically his two drumming styles … are exactly the styles the Apples play in. We’re basically, live, we started our band being a punk rock band that sounds like the Beatles. It was pretty perfect, and even though it was a change, it was a change that really has worked well for our band. He’s a good singer, and at the same time at that moment I decided that if our sound was going to change, I might as well try to change it in ways that I’d been thinking about in the past. And with the Apples, one thing that has marked our live show is just that we are really loud and sloppy and feedbacky and we sound like a train wreck rolling down a mountain and slamming into, you know, maybe like a sugar factory. But it’s still the train that’s rolling down the mountain; there’s still the train that’s rolling down the mountain. There’s always a large element of fuzz and chaos to our live show, and I love that about the Apples. But we had never really tried live to transfer any of the production elements from the records. And for years, I was satisfied with that. But when Hilarie quite the band, it made me think, “How am I going to change the band for the better?” If we’re going to change, how were we going to change for the better? And I decided that we needed to try to pull more of the production elements. Because all of the songs on the records have all of these background vocal parts and instrumental hooks. These are parts that are very important to the song when you listen to them on the records, that are completely absent from it live. And so, having Bill Doss join the band definitely did fill in some of that with background vocals, percussion and some keyboard parts. But I decided to ask John Ferguson, who was the drummer in Ulysses and is another one of my favorite musical partners of all time to join us playing live on keyboards and singing. He’s one of the best singers I know: He and Bill Doss singing together, you know, it sounds incredible. When you throw John Dufilho’s background vocals in and then me singing, we have the possibility to do some dense harmonies as well as rock out like a train wreck. ’Cause what I want it to sound like is a train wreck with a barbershop quartet on board, and you know, maybe driving through the landscape of “Yellow Submarine.” … And now we have a slightly different sound, which gives me ideas for writing new songs and stuff like that that are a little bit different, given our different sound, so that’s been real nice. At the same time, I’m real happy with Hilarie’s drumming on the record and stuff — it sounded real good — and she quit the band on really good terms. We’re all still really good friends and she and her band, the High Water Marks, that she’s the guitar player and lead singer in and she wrote the songs, it’s something that she’s got other that she’s pursuing in her life. … So far, everything’s worked out real well for the better for everybody, including Hilarie.

SO: Is there any plan to still perform any of Hilarie’s songs now that she’s gone?

RS: Well, on background vocals, John Ferguson has a very high range, a falsetto, and he’s got very good pitch, so he pulls off a lot of Hilarie’s background vocal parts live. But as far as playing her songs goes, I think that we probably aren’t going to play them because we don’t really have a girl to sing lead vocals on them. Those are great songs that’s a chunk of our back catalogue that’s like, you know, it sucks that we can’t play them because they’re great songs that we love playing live. You know, at the same time, they’re her songs, and she’s the only one who can really sing them like she meant to, I believe. But I can’t say that we’ll never perform them again, and maybe in the future we’ll have Hil come up and sing at some show like at the end of "Spinal Tap” … but I guess we will be cutting them out of the set for the time being. And like I said, they’re great songs, so that kind of sucks. But we have a lot of songs, and now we can pull of songs we couldn’t do before, because there are certain songs that really depend on the overdubs. It just doesn’t sound great when you’re slamming them out like a fuzz rock song, and now we can pull of more of those songs that we couldn’t play live before. … There’s a lot of songs that have opened up to being more performable.

SO: What are some of those songs?

RS: Well, for instance, on the new record, “Same Old Drag”; “Go,” is a song on Discovery of a World Inside a Moone that we played live, but it was missing a lot of parts and background vocals. Basically it was almost a different song. All of the songs like “The Rainbow,” all of the Apples songs that have a lot of that have really prominent background vocals, generally the background vocals would either coming off sounding really sloppy or we just wouldn’t even be able to pull the off live. And so they’d be gone from the song: “Seems So.” Like literally 50 percent of our recorded songs we haven’t been able to play live, and at least, like half of that batch we can now start playing. So that’s pretty cool. It’s just a bunch of fun. You know, I’m playing a lot of my favorite musicians and best friends. ’Cause my band mates are my best friends, already, and then I’ve got Bill Doss in my band. John Ferguson is one of my best friends, and John Dufilho, he’s a very close friend and a musician I’ve admired for years. It’s just awesome; it just sounds really good. Sometimes I’m on stage when we’re playing live, and I’ve got the drums right behind me, the bass amp right behind me, the two keyboards are on the left and the right of the bass amp, and then on either side of those are the two guitar amps, and I’m in the middle of this stereo spectrum of our band live, and it sounds like a production. And sometimes I’ll lose track while I’m singing because it sounds so good. I almost want to stop for a second just to make sure we’re not lip synching. And it’s a pretty awesome feeling.