Q&A with T0W3RS

One of the many bands playing Phuzz Phest is Chapel Hill’s T0W3RS. Staff writer Lucian Crockett talked to Derek Torres about the band’s upcoming plans.

T0W3RS plays Phuzz Phest at 7:15 p.m. at Ziggy’s Friday night, opening for Echo Crush. Torres plays again with Lilac Shadows at 9 p.m. at The Garage.

Diversions: Who are you most excited about seeing at the festival?

Derek Torres: Airstrip and Gross Ghost. I’m really stoked on them. And then Naked Gods from Boone. They have a lot of what I liked about the Black Keys before they were huge.

And then Philip from Estrangers who set the whole thing up, we’re playing with him on Friday night with Lilac Shadows, which will be a lot of fun.

I just love festivals in general. They bring the best crowds.
Dive: Have you played a festival before?

DT: Yes, Hopscotch with Soft Company.

Dive: Have you attended any music festivals as a fan?

DT: I went to Bonnaroo ‘06 through ‘09, Pitchfork, All Points West and Phish’s Coventry.

A highlight that I’m willing to put on record would be Bonnaroo 2009 when I saw Animal Collective intro Yeah Yeah Yeahs, a little bit of TV on the Radio, dashed over to see the Rev. Al Green, ate pizza, watched Rev. Al Green, ran back, caught the end of TV on the Radio, saw David Byrne, then saw Phish and then saw Girl Talk.

It was definitely one of my most euphoric festival moments.

Dive: What plans do you have for your next album release?

DT: Vinyl, digital, cassette and singles. I want to put out random cassette singles.

I want to do something weird, like hide them in record stores, with a song from the album and two songs I recorded just for the single. I just want to keep myself busy.

We have the machine to make tapes, so we can make them whenever we want.

Dive: What’s the deal with cassette tape?

DT: As an aesthetic, tapes are for punk rock. They’re unique. No tape’s the same. Like vinyl, they’re all the same, but cassette tapes are made individually. They have to be played and recorded. They take time, but we have a speed dubber so it doesn’t take that long.

There’s artwork, there’s physical copies and it’s cheap as hell. And they come with a digital download. A lot of people who buy vinyl don’t even have record players, they just want something physical to put up on their wall.

So when you’re at a show and you buy a full length cassette tape for $3, we’re making $2 off of it, which is about as much as you make off of vinyl when you sell it for $12.

It has a digital download, it fits in your back pocket and we’re getting the record into someone’s hands. You can burn a CD and put it in a jewel case and print a picture, you can sell that, but how interesting is that?

We sell more tapes than anything else. I think tapes sound cool for particular kinds of music and it’s a neat aesthetic.

Sometimes I’ll even run recorded tracks I have onto cassette tape and then bounce them into the computer to mix them because I like the aesthetic. But I don’t like them as the medium to listen to because we proved a long time ago that that was wrong. Most of the time, a cassette is awful.

I like the idea that I can just hand someone my cassette and not feel bad about taking a one dollar hit.