The Incredible Moses Leroy Speaks Out

Part 2 of an interview conducted by WRCU DJ Rich Crandall in March of 2000
Part 1 appeared in the last issue of (Insert Title Here)

In this article... The Incedible Moses Leroy (duh) More Zine Fun Table of Contents Introduction & Credits More Issues Index (all issues) WRCU Home Listen: high speed

Part 1 of the Interview Rich: What is [going to be] the name of your new record? Have you named it yet? Moses: Yeah, it's going to be called "Electric Pocket Radio". R: "Electric Pocket Radio"? And do you have a release date? M: We're looking at the very end of summer, I'm thinking now that it's going to be more in the fall. R: And I read somewhere that you're planning a possible college tour. Maybe this fall? M: I'm sure we will be doing stuff like that, like right now we had a little breakup because my drummer decided to leave the band. R: Oh. M: It's not a big deal. But once the record comes out I'm sure we'll be doing lots of touring and I'm sure we'll make it out to New York. R: Great, yeah if you come to New York we'd love to have you here at Colgate. I guess, speaking of, you said your drummer, what I was interested in, I know on the EP you recorded you did everything, right? You played everything? M: Pretty much yeah. R: But that's changed, you have a backup band now? M: Yeah well, it was getting hard. Like carrying the drum on my back, playing the guitar...no, yeah, for live there's always been a band. R: So it's always been just live? They're not with you... M: Well they recorded in the studio with me too on this new record. R: Are they going to stay with you beyond that record and the tour that follows? M: Well the whole concept when I started the band was I wanted to play with lots of different kinds of people. I love my bass player so hopefully he'll be playing as long as he wants to, and as long as I want him to stay. Now we need a new drummer. But I would like to find, as far as drum and bass, I would like to find two pretty solid players and then maybe have some people rotate in. There are some horns on this record, and there are some strings and it would be cool to find people to do stuff like that, maybe even find a keyboard player because there's a lot of synthesiser work on the record and it's really hard to pull all that stuff and make it sound like the record or even better than the record when you only have three people. R: Exactly. Are you done? Are you in the process of recording right now? M: No, we recorded starting in January in Chicago and finished in late February so it's almost two months - the record's recorded, we're just in the process of mixing and remixing right now and getting the artwork done. Once that's all done it will come out. I'm hoping that it'll come out more towards, if it does come out in summer, than the very very end of summer, because I do want it to have college... R: college play, sure. M: Then obviously if it comes out too early in the summer than there won't be any college. Not like college doesn't exist in the summer, but I don't know what the state of college radio would be in the summer... R: Yeah, it does sort of die out in the summer. going into recording were you expectations different? I guess what I'm trying to say is, stuff that you went into recording thinking, 'yeah this is going to be on the record' - Did that change drastically? Is what's on the record pretty much go on as planned? M: They changed, because the makeup of the studio was that we lived and worked there so we could record at three o'clock in the morning if we wanted to, we were surrounded by all kinds of instruments, crazy instruments, like tons of guitars and all kinds of crazy stuff and it definitely changed the songs because having access to a guitar that I hadn't played before but I decided 'I want that on the songs' so textually it changed the chore of the songs but it gave us the opportunity to have more instruments and more sounds and more layers and stuff. R: How does the writing process work for you as far as inspiration? M: I'm inspired really, by what I hear, so I'm always trying to check out new bands and buy new records, new cds and that's what inspires me. R: They would obviously inspire you more musically, but who would inspire you lyrically? M: Lyrically, I draw a lot for my personal life, like what's going on at the time. Well at the time I was in Chicago, and this girl, who I was madly in love with, decided that being with someone who was going to be doing a lot of the touring, etc, like we were talking about earlier, basically not having much of a life here in California, not having that stability. She decided that's not something she wanted to be a part of. R: I'm sorry man. M: no, that's ok. SO, I mean, The record definitely reflects that, lyrically. Like I think a lot of the songs are really happy, but lyrically they're kind of gloomy. R: I'm looking forward to hearing it, to get my hands on it late in the summer. Speaking again about your influences, it seems as if you have a cool philosophy in that, you just accept them, rather than like other artists will push them away or push them down, you'll say, 'okay, this is what I'm influenced by', and I think that's very strong. But my question is, by doing that, by embracing your influences so closely are you concerned at all that you'll become to much like or compared to another artist? I know that San Diego has penned you as 'the next Beck' or something ridiculous, which I don't mean to say is ridiculous... M: It is completely ridiculous as far as that goes, I always say something to the affect of, we haven't even sold 10,000 copies of a record yet, we're just nobodys. And I don't say that to be negative, but we really are - we haven't even done anything to prove ourselves yet, and for people to compare us to a person like that, he's a star and we have a long long long long way to go before something like that. But as far as sounding like influences and stuff, our influences are so broad, and I don't listen to a song and say, 'this songs has these specific chords I'm going to take these chords' and make something. R: I didn't try to imply that either... M: No no no. I think that the way that I write is the way most musicians write songs the only difference between me and someone else, is that, let's say if I write a song like is slow, like for example "the 4a" I will pursue that song and try and complete it. Versus some people, it's like a lot of bands, if you go to see most live bands, they won't play a slow song. They won't play a song on the acoustic guitar unless they are a folk artist and then all they play is just acoustic guitar the whole show and it's like why not just play everything because most people can't. That's kind of what I like to do. Fin.

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