The guys of Houndmouth are the exact kind of cool you wish you could be. Matt Myers, Zak Appleby and Shane Cody would be performing their Lollapalooza set in just two hours but sat around smoking cigarettes and sharing their college memories, anyway. The band formed in small-town New Albany, Indiana in 2011. Not to forget where they came from, the guys told me their favorite Hoosier memories from Bloomington and IU.
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Emily: I know you guys are from Indiana, so that’s cool.
Zak: Go Hoosiers.
E: What kind of memories do you have in Bloomington or Indiana that you want to share?
Matt: We wrote “My Cousin Greg” in Bloomington. Zak and I, we went to see my cousin Greg in Bloomington who was still in school there. He had this thought – he was like a physics major – him and his buddies would go around and grab, they would get on Craigslist and just go and pick up used organs for free by the trash.
E: Organs?
Z: Yeah. He said sometimes you didn’t even have to get on Craigslist. You could just drive around.
E: I feel like that’s something you don’t see that often, but …
Z: Seriously.
E: Organs.
Z: And he would line his house with them. There’s like no furniture, so he sat on cinder blocks and just like had organs.
E: Wow, that’s amazing. I want to meet Greg. Sounds cool.
Z: He’s awesome. He graduated, though.
E: No more organs? What did he do with all the organs?
Z: He left them in the house. They punched a hole in the wall, too, and that was like their trash can.
E: Do you guys (Shane and Matt) have any memories from Bloomington or anything?
Shane: From Bloomington? Oh, I got one. I went to Indiana State my freshman year of college, and I went to go visit some friends at IU. I had fake front teeth, they got knocked out in junior high, and so I just had a cap on it. I was walking down the staircase in one of the dorms with my friends, and I tripped, and it just popped right off, the little cap, as soon as I got there for the weekend. So I’m just rolling up, no front left tooth like an asshole.
E: Anyone even notice?
S: Well my friends were telling people that I was a hockey player.
E: That’s a good one.
S: Yeah. With my extremely chiseled physique, they all bought it.
Z: You look athletic.
S: They all bought it.
E: Very athletic, very hockey, very Canadian.
S: Much hockey.
Z: Much hockey.
E: Much hockey.
E: And what about you (Zak)? Have you ever been to Bloomington besides shows?
Z: Yeah, quite a few. Actually, it is a show, my most memorable time in Bloomington. Matt and I went to see Dave Rawlings Machine at the Bluebird, and we were literally like elbows on the stage. He finished the set, then played like an hour’s worth of Neil Young songs.
E: You guys just had a show at the Bluebird not that long ago. Do you like playing the Bluebird? How did it go?
Z: Yeah. The Bluebird’s always fun. It’s always rowdy, we like to get rowdy – it works out nice.
E: We like to get rowdy. Do you guys (Shane and Matt) like the Bluebird?
M: Yeah, it’s the best environment. The sound is whatever, but it’s just the classic place.
