Interview: The Beets Are Back (Even Though They Never Really Left)
by Lauren BeckPage 4 of 7
The L: I was listening to an in-studio session you guys did on Newtown Radio where you were playing a lot of songs from Stay Home, but it was from last January. How long have you been working on it?Juan: The album is really old. It was supposed to come out maybe last January, but never did.
The L: Why was that?
Juan: Well, we were just really slow. We recorded it but never mixed it, and then we were going to release it in October ‘cause we were going to go to Europe.
Jose: Yeah, we were talking about doing a record deal with a European label, and they wanted us to put it out then. Then they wanted to do press for it a couple months before and were like, “Push it to January.” But then that whole thing fell through, so we kind of waited for no reason.
The L: So are you writing the third record now?
Jose: The third record is ready to go.
The L: Is that annoying for you, to be sitting on all these songs?
Jose: It’s a little weird. We just had a show, a kind of unofficial record release show at Glasslands, and we played maybe just two songs off Stay Home, ‘cause we don’t even really play those anymore. I mean, normally a band would’ve been playing the whole record.
Juan: We probably did that two years ago.
Jose: We’re trying to catch up to ourselves. Hopefully, our third record will be out by the middle of the year, I hope.
The L: Do you have a title for that one yet?
Juan: I have a lot. I like a lot of titles.
The L: Is there a theme like on these last two — “staying home,” “being cool"…
Jose: Well, that’s the thing. Everybody keeps saying how the record is about staying home, which I guess some of the songs are.
The L: Well, it does say on the album cover, “A collection of 13 new songs about staying home”…
Juan: Our album titles are always “The Beets… something,” like a sentence: The Beets Spit in the Face, The Beets Stay Home, The Beets Do the Locomotion. So we’ll keep with that. I want to do The Beets Hate Weezer, though [Jose] doesn’t want to.
Jose: ‘Cause I like Weezer. I’m thinking about it though. It’s growing on me.
Juan: I hate them. And you talk about cred; that’s a lot of cred. You name your album that, people go wild.
Jose: I understand Juan’s thing though. They look really, really bad. But the music’s mad good.
Juan: I just don’t think it’s rock music.
