Pop goes Lafayette

It was announced last month that Lafayette’s own Givers will be joining this year’s Voodoo Experience in October.

Before coming to City Park, the afrobeat and celtic-inspired indie pop band will make a couple of lengthy treks through Europe and embark on yet another national tour here in the states.

Outside of the hip-hop realm, South Louisiana hasn’t seen a musical act with this kind of immediately apparent growth potential in ages, and fans and critics around the world are quickly taking note of the band’s highly danceable and exuberant debut album In Light. I caught a nice chunk of their set in the Miller Lounge at June’s Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival and thoroughly enjoyed the quick glimpse of the band despite the poor sight angles and sound of the tiny venue.

Having recently signed to Glassnote Records, perhaps the Givers’ In Light could round out a trio of slow-growing commercial sensations for the star-making label following Phoenix’s Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix and Mumford & Son’s Sigh No More. Regardless of where this band goes, it appears that South Louisiana’s indie cred continues to grow with bands like Givers and the Generationals.

Givers will be in the area playing a show on Saturday, July 30 at Spanish Moon in Baton Rouge. Continue on for Live Music Blog NOLA’s interview with Taylor Guarisco:

Yes, the whole band is from Lafayette. As for the abridged version – we came up through high school and college together and were always friends and played in a bunch of different bands together. One night we got asked to play a gig to fill in for a band that had cancelled and we just made up a bunch of music together. The chemistry felt really, really good and we decided to keep making music together.

Yeah, everyone is still Lafayette-bound; whenever we’re off the road, Lafayette is home.

They just kind of heard our stuff, liked it and eventually reached out to us and we went to meet up with them in Austin. We started talking there and really took our time. The whole record label stuff was very foreign to us, but we talked for a really long time with them before making our decision and eventually deciding to go with them, and it’s been great so far.

We only got to stick around for that afternoon; we did get a chance to see Arcade Fire, which was great. That was pretty much about it. Between the show and doing press we were pretty busy and didn’t get to stick around too long.

It’s in Rock Island, Illinois; it’s great up there. It’s very cool, funky, modern – nothing crazy, but it has a bunch of cool instruments for you to choose from and play around with. They just keep it really simple and tasteful; it’s just a nice place altogether. It’s more down to earth than you would imagine.

Yeah, I’ve been down to Voodoo – the year the Red Hot Chili Peppers played I was there; that was awesome. We are excited for sure to be playing there.

In the van, we love the old school stuff and we all listen to the Red Hot Chili Peppers–a lot of ’90s stuff. As for new stuff, the new Bon Iver album is amazing, and this band Pepper Rabbit we toured with has some really awesome stuff.

Hell, yeah, high-five right?

I’m all about it. Frusciante was a beast and one of my favorites and he’ll never be replaced. But if they have more songs inside them to record as a band, then so be it and I’m happy for them and I want to hear them. That guy Josh Klinghoffer, he toured with them the last time (as a second guitarist for the Stadium Arcadium tour), doing some job training for him that not everybody realizes, so that’s cool.

We’ll just be touring a ton in the short term. We are leaving for our first trip to Europe and then going back there two weeks after we get back. Then we’ll get back here for a few full national tours. Basically, just a lot of touring on the horizon (laughs).

{call breaks up again — Lafayette needs some new cell towers}

We’ll be playing on the 30th in Baton Rouge. As far as New Orleans dates, I’m not sure if we’ll make it before Voodoo.

We played Tipitina’s a long time ago; we’ve played Blue Nile and One Eyed Jack’s. There are a bunch of awesome venues there. No matter where we play we know it’ll be cool.