Four Questions with Lucas Jensen of Venice is Sinking

Four Questions with Lucas Jensen of Venice is Sinking, a band from Athens, Georgia who will be appearing at Secret Stages. They are scheduled to appear Friday night, May 13th at 9:00 PM at Rogue Tavern.

• Lame question, but I have to ask: How do you describe your music? Hmm.  This is a tough question, actually.  It's hard to step outside of your own music and say, "This is what we sound like."  We get a lot of comparisons to Low and Mercury Rev and Everybody has to have an elevator pitch, right?  Ours is "orchestral indie pop with ambient and Americana flourishes."  Okay, so, wow, that sounds banal.  Maybe tell everybody we sound like Katy Perry jamming with Robert Fripp at Dr. John's house.  That's a total lie, but I'd totally go to that show.

• How have you been dealing with the “digital revolution” and its effect on music and art? Has it helped or hurt you? We're of two minds about it.  Being able to connect with your fans and self-promote and communicate with folks all over the world...well, that's invaluable.  We can get music out there to people way more efficiently than before.  But all of this comes at a price.  First off, we spend sooooo much time online managing all of the social media, and not enough time, you know, writing and making music.  It's just a fact that people are buying less music.  We sell considerably less physical merchandise than we did before, both on tour or through stores and online retailers.  Heck, we sell less digital files, too.  Lets face it: the reality of the marketplace is such that if you buy music, you're doing it for charity, because you're a super-fan, because you bought vinyl and are some kind of audiophile, or you just don't know any better.  But the model that artists deserve compensation for their work has been completely destabilized and that's distressing because, at first, it seemed like the semi-collapse of the music industry might be freeing for artists.  Instead, it seems that independent artists are still bearing the brunt of this.  When your record is on 20 Mediafare download links four months before release, you know you're not going to sell a lot of copies.

• What are your plans for this year? We've been touring and playing around a bunch, but now we are finally hunkering down to write and record songs for what will hopefully be Album #4 and possibly some EPs.  When we have made records in the past we've sat down to make an album in one fell swoop.  We're thinking of recording a lot of songs and carving them up for different purposes.  Also, we are a band that has recorded largely analog on tape.  It's going to be exciting to finally join the 21st century and do some digital recording!  Have you ever heard of Autotune?  Expect oceans and oceans of Autotune on the next album.

• What do you hope to accomplish by performing at Secret Stages? Sadly, we haven't played Birmingham in a while, which is a shame because we've encountered such great people and music fans there.  We are excited to come back and play with all of these amazing bands for this great event.  Despite the problems with the music industry, at the end of the day it's still about putting your music out there for new ears, and we hope to do that at Secret Stages.