Earlier this year, I reached out on a whim to hopefully interview Geese prior to their show in Dallas at Club Dada that I was attending. I was a huge fan of their album 3D Country (as seen on my top 100 list), so as 2024 kicks off, I want to take a moment to revisit the interview.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity and was aired November 13th on The Zach Show.
Zachary: So first, I wanted to ask how touring this album has been so far as a band. What has it felt being able to bring this album to life?
Gus Green: The response for it’s been really good and it’s been good to actually see that growth in a tangible way going out on the road just in how people react to it and show. I think we’re also just always getting better at playing the songs after we record them and play them a lot. We’re pretty locked in and it’s sounding good and running smoothly.
Zachary: I know you guys are going on tour with Greta Van Fleet coming up here next year. What does that feel like to be able to be put on such a big stage like that?
Gus: We’ve done large stages before with those Jack White dates a couple years ago because I think we work best in a smaller setting, but only because we’ve only really done it like that before, so it’s gonna be fun to scale up.
Zachary: When you guys are traveling like you guys are currently, what kind of music do you each individually listen to when you’re on tour? What is in your personal playlists going between shows?
Cameron Winter: My personal playlist has been listening to a lot of live albums recently. I’ve been listening to a Patti Smith live album. I’ve really been enjoying that sort of stuff
Gus: I dug back in the catalog a bit to go listen to some Nina Simone, and that’s great. I’ve never really listened to that before, and a really good Dead Kennedys podcast that took like six hours to get through in the van the other day. That was good.
Zachary: I feel it’s the right time to get into Nina Simone with autumn. I feel she is perfect autumn weather music. I’ve been doing the same.
Gus: It’s great. Really good vocal music.
Zachary: Jumping straight into the album, how do you feel you’ve tackled 3D Country specifically versus Projector as a band creating songs and as personal growth as a band?
Gus: We left a lot on the cutting room floor. We only wrote 10 songs for Projector and then nine ended up on the record, so there was a lot more time and thought put into this one. We just wanted to do a lot more because we have the ability to do a lot more, so there’s like a whole everything but the kitchen sink kind of mentality.
Zachary: Do you have any artists or sounds you feel you were pulling inspiration from?
Cameron: The Beatles, mostly. We were inspired by how they didn’t really care about the variety. They were just worried about making the song good.
We were inspired by the Dead Kennedys podcast… [laughing]
Zachary: I got to school at Texas Tech here in Lubbock, Texas, and the city is very deeply rooted with the love of country music and jumpstarting careers of country artists, so I was going to have to ask since I feel there is a lot of Alt-Country influence on the album, what do you feel led to that direction? Was it a natural shift towards going into a more cowboy-inspired album or an idea you wanted to try out?
Cameron: The cowboy stuff on the cover was probably a bad idea because when we were making it, we didn’t think of it as an Alt-Country record. I don’t think any of us were like “Oh, this is our Country album.” It was just that we didn’t want to use the same sort of Post-Punk sounds we felt everyone else was using, and we were getting into older music at the time, so we just ended up with something that sounded more classic. Not that Alt-Country didn’t have any influence on it. I love Lucinda Williams a lot and her production style, and Sturgill Simpson is great, but I still don’t think of it as a Country album even though it has Country in the title and a cowboy hat on the cover. If I were to re-release the album, I would not put a cowboy on the cover, probably just for clarity’s sake.
Zachary: When I was first listening to the album, I was on a long drive looking at flatland and the barrenness, and I was curious, where do you feel like an ideal listening spot for this album is? Where do you envision a perfect spot to hear this album for the first time?
Gus: Mars, in 2050.
Cameron: Dallas, Texas tonight in 2023.
Zachary: Do you mean Mars post-colonization after people have tried to figure out if they can live there?
Gus: Yes. Mars has terraformed and been colonized then been ran into ruin, and is now back to normal Mars again.
Zachary: Then someone goes “Hey, check this out!”
Gus: They are in the Martian caves and stuff, and they’re like “Hey man, go start a fire while I put on this sick rock record.”
Cameron: Someone hands you half of the wired earbud and says “Hey, listen to this and you cook the three-eyed martian over the fire.”
Gus: They listen to it on the half earbud and they’re like “Wow this sounds terrible.”
Zachary: Especially on the SkullCandy earbud he got for $6 at Target.
Cameron: The guy says, “Isn’t this that band Geese that died in that horrible rocket accident in 2030?”
Gus: 2030 Warped Tour to Mars.
Zachary: There’s a lot of Mars happening in your band.
Cameron: We have big ambitions. We’re shooting for the moon.
Zachary: That’s your next big tour idea. First band to do a full tour on the moon. Different craters get a different show.
Gus: That’s right. We beat Grimes there.
Zachary: I feel like this album is really fun. It shows how much fun you guys have as a band. Was making the album as fun as it sounds?
Gus: No, not always. It was definitely fun, but for anything, if you’re scaling up and shooting for a specific thing, it can be difficult to reach there. The process is not always enjoyable, but the conclusion is.
Cameron: If you’re Stevie Wonder and a musical genius, making the music is probably as fun as the music sounds, but with us, when you kind of suck and you have to try a million different things before anything sounds good, it takes a while and it’s discouraging sometimes, but it gets there.
Zachary: Now you have one of the best albums of the year, so look at you guys go. I know originally with the title track 3D Country, you had a nine-minute extended version that you released on 4D Country. What led you guys to also releasing those extra songs as well and giving some more songs a home on a project?
Gus: I wanted them to get out somehow and if not on the main record, then I’d prefer for it to be in the same time period and not like 10 years from now.
Zachary: Yeah, like the post-Warped Tour on Mars super deluxe that get’s released.
Gus: Yeah, it’ll be on the super deluxe.
Cameron: We wanted to just squeeze as much money out of Geese fans as possible. Try and ring them for all that they’re worth.
Gus: I wasn’t gonna tell him that… But it’s true.
Zachary: I respect it, personally. That’s the way to do it.
Gus: Geese gotta eat. Can’t live off of the crumbs of park goers forever. I need a full sandwich.
Zachary: I got just one more for you guys. Here at the radio station, we have our KTXT signature question. We ask this to every single artist we interview, and it’s a little bit of a thinker. If you had the opportunity to soundtrack any movie that already exists or a director’s style of movie, what movie would that be or what director would that be?
Cameron: Avatar 5.
Gus: Something that already exists…
Zachary: Avatar 2.
Gus: I bet that Avatar 5 does already exist.
Cameron: They’re already making it.
Gus: Just haven’t put it out yet..
Cameron: We’d like to announce that we’re doing the soundtrack for Avatar 5 in a very lucrative deal with James Cameron himself.
Gus: That would be actually awesome/
Cameron: That would be pretty cool.
I don’t watch many movies.
Gus: Well it’s a thinker, so I’m gonna have to think on it for a second.
Cameron: What’s people in Dallas’s favorite movie that, if I chose, might cause them to go to our show?
Zachary: It depends on what population of Dallas you’re talking… The people that are going to go to a Geese show?
Cameron: The people that would buy the most merch.
Zachary: You got to think something like Big Four accounting firms level…
Cameron: Glengarry Glen Ross. I’d love to score that movie. Always Be Geesing.
Gus: Citizen Kane.
Cameron: Good pick. I’ve heard that’s a good one.
Zachary: Me too.
Cameron: Maybe we could do…
Gus: Harry Potter 4.
Cameron: Just Harry Potter 4. They get real weird on the soundtrack
Gus: Harry Potter 4 is sort of like the weird experimental one, right?
Zachary: Is that Goblet of Fire?
Cameron: “DID YOU PUT YOUR NAME IN THE GOBLET OF FIRE?”
Gus: Dumbledore said softly.
Cameron: That’s the one where Ron convinces him to drop acid with him or something like that.
Zachary: You score just that scene specifically. An acid trip scored by Geese.
Gus: The score is just going to be me picking a song by Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, and slowing it down and speeding it up, putting those two tracks over each other.
Zachary: Kind of chipmunk style
Gus: It’s like Vaporwave-nightcore. With House Trap music.
Zachary: That’d be the pure rawest craziest album or soundtrack of all time.
Gus: I’m gonna go make it in the van on the way to Dallas after this.
Cameron: Hear that prospective directors or existing directors? Geese can score your movie with an inch of its life. Give us a chance.
Zachary: Do you like your movie? Not anymore.
Cameron: [Laughs] Geese likes your movie. We are movie… pirates.
Gus: That’s what I want to score. I want to score the opening to One Piece. It’ll be One Piece, but it’s just Geese’s guitarist’s voice.
Cameron: We’ll make inspiring anime theme songs to all sorts of different movies. That’s the Citizen Kane.
Gus: I mean, One Piece is pretty much the Citizen Kane of anime.
Zachary: I think Citizen Kane is the One Piece of black and white movies, so…
Cameron: I think we’re losing the Texan upper class here as we keep talking. That’s not what I want. We gotta move off of anime. Back onto stocks.
Zachary: Back into banking.
Gus: American Psycho.
Zachary: Well, of course. Thank you guys so much for taking time.
Gus: Thanks for having us.
Zachary: Your album is my favorite album of the year. I go back and listen to it over and over thinking “This is the greatest album to ever exist”
Cameron: Awww.
Zachary: I’m not saying that to make you guys say “Awe shucks”, so I need to humble you guys. I can’t let you guys get an ego.
Gus: Too late.
Zachary: I’m just gonna say… Sufjan better.
Cameron: Everyone loves Sufjan. Dammit.
Gus: That freaking Suf-jan.
Cameron: I could be sad too, you know, if I really put my mind to it.
Gus: I can pick up an acoustic guitar too, you know.
Cameron: No, that album is really good.
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