Originally from Milwaukee now living in New York, French Horn Rebellion are brothers Robert and David Perlick-Molinari. Robert is a classically trained horn player and was first chair in the Northwestern University Symphony Orchestra. Older brother David became a recording engineer/producer in New York and ended up engineering and producing MGMT's Time to Pretend EP. Now the brothers are touring the world with the likes of Cut Copy and Hot Chip and are currently opening for Yelle. The duo is playing the Commodore on Friday May 13th in support of their debut album The Infinite Music of The French Horn Rebellion.
I caught up with Robert Perlick-Molinari of French Horn Rebellion somewhere in the flats of Nebraska.
TE - You were recently back in Wisconsin, was that where your mother introduced you on stage for Mother's Day?
RPM - No that was in Chicago actually. They came to the Chicago show, it was Mother's Day. You know, last Sunday? So she went up to the mic. Our booking agent really wanted her to do it. He's a buddy of ours and he's like "You should do it Mrs. Perlick c'mon, it'll be cool." So our mom wrote this little thing about how everybody should be looking after their mothers. It was pretty funny. She loved it though.
TE - Has your mom always been pretty supportive of your music?
RPM - She doesn't really want us to do it. She wanted us to be, you know, like, the next President of the United States. She's one of those kinds of moms. So, I was always in Boy Scouts. I was actually an eagle Scout and Order of the Arrow and everything. My oldest brother, not David, but my oldest brother, is a lawyer in Milwaukee. He does drunk driving defences.
TE - Doesn't your family have some ties to beer in Milwaukee?
RPM - Actually we do. My family has been in it for four generations. I'm actually named after the guy that started the company. It's this company that makes beer taps.
(brother David, muffled from the from seat) - Not just beer taps.
RPM - Not just beer taps but also refrigeration equipment. It started out as a brass company that made little cogs. I guess are Grandpa started making beer taps, cause he's awesome. My parents and aunts and uncles and cousins are all helping out with the company. We're actually supposed to do that. Make beer taps. The weird thing is our mom wanted us to do other things. She didn't want us to be in Milwaukee making beer taps. She's sort of a prohibitionist and stuff. She wanted us to be like professionals or something. Like politicians or blah, blah, blah. You know… poor mom.
TE - So your mom's a prohibitionist and your oldest brother defends drunk drivers?
RPM - (Laughs) Yeah, it's pretty funny! And then the whole family has been making beer taps for like two generations. It's kind of a weird family history I guess. You know good old Milwaukee. Everybody knows someone who's dealing with beer there I guess.
TE - Did your mom get stage fright before introducing you?
RPM - Actually, this is really funny cause, my mom is a professor, she teaches journalism in Milwaukee at Marquette University. She loves the attention. She was just loving it! She didn't get nervous at all. She was like, born for the stage.
TE - What about you guys? Do you get stage fright.
RPM - Uh m. I think the last time I got stage fright was in Hong Kong or something. I'm not sure. We played in front of a lot of people in Hong Kong. We were playing with MGMT and there was like three thousand people there. It was a lot of people so I got a little nervous for that. I used to get so nervous when I would play French horn. - I wanted to be a classical horn player. I played in an orchestra and stuff. - I used to get really nervous because there is all this stigma against horn players missing notes. "Oh this horn player, he screwed up. He missed a note. He's terrible. He messed up the most beautiful horn solo. That guy is not going to sleep tonight." You know. Now, when I go to the orchestra I actually get nervous in the audience while watching the horn players. I get nervous for them. "Don't miss a note. If you miss a note everything is going to be ruined."
TE - Do you play the French horn anymore?
RPM - I play it during the live show but nothing delicate. I have two horn solos in our live show right now and it's not like they're epic, or written by Beethoven or Stravinski or something. I wrote it, so it's not as big of a deal if I mess up. But, I think if I ever have to play in an orchestra again I think I may have to take some kind of beta blocker or something. - It's a pill. - Classical musicians are a weird breed. They take drugs too but, they take different kinds of drugs. I was always really against beta blockers. "I'm not going to use beta blockers I'm going to do this au naturelle. I'm going to play in front of thousands of people and I don't need any drugs to calm me down." - They take sedatives so they don't get nervous, basically.
I was actually just reading an article about this in The Guardian written by the oboe player of The London Philharmonic Orchestra. He went through the history of classical musicians and drug use. It's become somewhat of a tradition in Europe to have beers before the performance.
I found it interesting because now classical music is so associated with, well sort of like that movie Black Swan, how her mom keeps her in this world of ballet performance and perpetual childhood. I think a lot of classical musicians go through that. I used to date a girl who was a flute player and she definitely had that going on. She was in the conservatory and had so many Hello Kitty, pink, stuff around her at all times. She had to work out twice a day and she couldn't eat anything to salty or otherwise she'd get nervous and dried out for concerts. It's nuts.
TE - When you were back in Wisconsin you were excited to find local meat and cheese at the gas station. Do you try and sample the local foods when you're touring?
RPM - Dude, meat and cheese! My insides feel sticky… in a good way. I swear I've gained ten pounds in the last three days. Yeah. We made a new rule never to eat at fast food restaurants. We have phones that have data service, except for in Nebraska, so we use Yelp! to search for really good restaurants and we just go there.
TE - I found an old resume of yours online that has branding, online marketing, and graphic design listed under the Skills heading.
RPM - Oh shit, are you serious? That's so old. I thought I had deleted that once I didn't need to try and find jobs anymore.
TE - Have you done any of the graphic design for your albums?
RPM - Not really for the album but more for the singles that we've done. "This Moment" single and "Up All Night" single. We did the artwork for those ourselves. We came up with the graphic idea for our website but a web designer buddy of ours carried it out.
I actually have a really funny story to do with online marketing stuff. I was the most unsuccessful viral marketer of all time. Seriously, I worked for this company that doesn't exist anymore. They ran into the ground. I single hardly ran them into the ground. No, I didn't do that, I was just kidding but… the idea behind the company was that you buy and sell reservations for "your team" going to the Super Bowl. So this company would buy, every year, two or three hundred tickets to the Super Bowl. So if you're a Packers fan then you could pay fifty bucks to reserve your face value ticket. Then if your team goes you get your ticket but if they don't you lose your fifty bucks. Then very first French Horn Rebellion tour was funded by me going to college campuses and handing out flyers about this stupid website. The funny thing is that right after I left, - because I did such a bad job they fired me, - the company folded cause they didn't have tickets. All these people had bought reservations thinking that they were going to the Super Bowl and they didn't get any tickets.
TE - So I shouldn't hire you for any marketing?
RPM - Dude, I would highly not recommend that. You can tell how bad I am at viral marketing by FHR's slow and steady rise. We've been the least viral band. We just keep working and doing shows. Changing our show, making new fun music and re-mixes. It hasn't been a viral thing where everybody is passing it along and all of a sudden it's huge. It's been a very slow build.
TE - Do you prefer touring or spending time in the studio?
RPM - I like to be in the studio when I'm touring and I like to be touring when I'm in the studio. Touring can be tiring. We've been touring since the end of February with only a few days off.
TE - It looks like your touring till the end of May with almost no days off until after the Official CD Release Show in NY?
RPM - Yeah, it's going to be awesome. I'm really looking forward to that one.
TE - Does that show mark the release of the physical copies?
RPM - I think to get a physical copy in the U.S. you have to get it from Europe, imported. We don't have a label in the U.S. so we just have digital distribution so you can get it online. You can also get it at shows. We have a lot of copies with us.
TE - You're playing the Commodore Ballroom this Friday in Vancouver?
RPM - I'm super excited to go to Vancouver, cause I've never actually been there. This is a new thing for us going to the Pacific Northwest man. Yeah and we have some extra days to check stuff out. We have a couple hours to check stuff out. I just go to trip advisor and look for the top ten things to do. Usually I get through the top two and that's it. I think it's exciting to check out somewhere new. Being from Milwaukee we go to the east coast and everybody is really high strung. I like the west, I don't know about Vancouver but everybody is really mellow, I like that.
TE - How are you guys enjoying touring with Yelle?
RPM - Dude, they're amazing! They're really, really cool. They're so nice. The nicest headliners we've ever played with. It's a really cool thing because they wanted us. They asked for us to play with them. Which is cool. In the past we've had a lot of offers to play opening slots for tours like this but it's always been sort of through an industry person. Like our press person or booking agent or something like that but this one was actually from a really good friend of mine in New York named Captain Kirk he's a DJ. He's really good friends with the DJ for Yelle so when they asked Capt' Kirk about bands in NY and they were there, we played a show with them and they liked the show and they wanted to go on tour. It was cool. It was really organic and it's much nicer that way, I think.
TE - You guys got to open for MGMT, who David has worked closely with, in Hong Kong, wasn't that organic too?
RPM - No actually. Those guys are just so on another level of success. They didn't even know we were going to play with them in Hong Kong until we were in the hotel lobby and Ben was like "What the fuck are you guys doing here?" They had no idea we were going to be there. I was like "Dude were playing with you." It was a cool experience. they had never played in Hong Kong either so we were all kind of giddy and having a good time. It would be fun to do some more touring with them but I think their show is a little different from our show. I think their show is a little more psychedelic and smoke and acid and hallucinate. You know what i mean? Our show is more dance-y. You've got to have water with you cause you're going to sweat all your liquids out.
TE - Your live show is just the two of you?
RPM - Yeah, but when were in NY we play with are good friend Paul and David's fiance Deedra. Hopefully, someday, we could bring them on the road with us. We have to make tough choices and right now. We only have the budget to bring one person on the road with us. We have a tour manager/lighting designer. The lights are important because a lot of the places we're playing with Yelle are a little bit bigger. Luckily, Yelle is an electronic act too so the sound systems in the clubs are pretty good and so you can get by without a drummer. Although it's better to have a drummer.
TE - The Commodore is one of the best venues for live music in town so you shouldn't have any problems.
RPM - Yeah, nice. All the shows so far have been pretty good. It's been amazing. It's even surpassed the expectations of Yelle as well. Like seventy-five percent of the shows have been selling out. I don't think anybody expected that. Usually with us, whenever we're associated with anything, things usually go much worse then planned. The fact that things are going better than planned is a nice change of pace. I don't know how much we're contributing to people coming out. There might be a couple of people.
TE - Your fan base is pretty committed though?
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RPM - We have really funny fans that come to our shows. They're amazing! I think our music videos are a little bit quirky. Where we're acting like people on the street, having a good time, hitting on girls, doing weird things and I think we attract a lot of kind of weird, quirky people as well. Which is amazing. That's probably why we get along with them so well. For example, we showed up in Toledo and there was like nobody there. It was a show we did without Yelle. There were only about ten people that came to the show. Here is the make up of the ten people: five of them were half of the University of Michigan wrestling team. They had driven two hours from Michigan to come see us in Toledo. That's half the crowd. Then there was about four locals who were really excited to see us. I think they were Med students or something. There were about three other people there, who were the promoters who had successfully managed to bring zero people to the show. Then, it was so funny, the most affectionate, in tune with his emotions, jock, guy I had ever met, his name was Jedi Jake Scott Maddingly, he was this wrestler guy, he was like "Awe, I love you guys so much man, you guys are unreal." This huge wrestler guy confessing his love and devotion. We have a very wide variety of fans who come to our shows. - We usually get a very fun section of people that come by. - Yeah so, in Toledo we had a one hundred percent dance ratio. Everyone there was dancing.
TE - I'm stoked to see your live show.
RPM - Sweet man! It should be fun. We're just opening so we try and get everybody warmed up and stuff.
TE - Right on guys. Thanks so much for taking the time to chat with me and I'll see you guys on Friday.
RPM - Cool man, awesome! We can hag out a little bit. Wicked!
TE - Thanks again.
RPM - No problem man. Cool I'll see you in Vancouver. Thanks so much!
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