Party Business

Throughout history, some bands have consistently existed and thrived in seemingly paradoxical circumstances. Born of a “smoke sesh” between close friends John Baldwin Gourley and Zachary Carothers in 2004, and following the dissolution of their previous outfit Anatomy Of A Ghost, Portugal. The Man is such a band. The band is populated with members whose outwardly chilled and worry-free demeanours belie the fact that they are collectively one of the hardest-working touring acts around, having put out last year’s Evil Friends as well as six other full-length albums (plus a handful of assorted other releases) in their decade together.

And yet, when vocalist/guitarist John Gourley talks of the benefits behind doing sponsored tours, such as his band’s upcoming jaunt to Australia with the assistance of booze giant Corona, it quickly becomes clear that he and his bandmates are business-minded in instances of necessity only – despite their prolific career, they’re totally happy to not be in control of some things.

“We like doing things like this; I think there’s just some really great advantages to doing sponsored tours,” the affable Gourley says. “I mean, they put you in a position where you can play free shows, and play a lot more of Australia than you would normally play. It’s really great; I think it’s great for the music industry, too. I mean, so many bands, like, they survive on touring, and they have to worry about those bullshit ticket prices and, like, ‘How do we pay it off? How do we do this?’ … and cutting the business side out of it is fuckin’ rad! Fuck yeah! Fuck business!”

Given the band’s isolated physical roots in Alaska (and despite their eventual relocation to Portland), those instances of necessity occurred with greater frequency while the band were establishing themselves.

“The reason we were making so many records early on … was just kind of the experience, and making as much music as we could and learning as much about songwriting as we could,” Gourley reflects. “Really, we’re just from Alaska, with no experience in the music industry, so it took a lot of work.

“I mean, I really didn’t play guitar all that well when we started. Everything on our first two records was loops. I would play a part and just loop it. And it was kind of like hip hop production, in that sense, the way we would kind of build up blocks of songs and play to it. Yeah, it just took a lot of work.”

"Cutting the business side out of it is fuckin’ rad! Fuck yeah! Fuck business!"

However, he explains, that all finally eased when Portugal released their watershed 2009 LP, The Satanic Satanist – although he admits that, despite growing considerably in his talent as a guitarist, he has never quite grown out of using the old loop trick.

“I kinda still do that – there’s something you get out of that sound. I mean, like, I’ll loop some things, and play straight through on others … and you need that organic element, but you also get something out of that loop, and there’s just familiarity to it that brings you through songs,” he clarifies. “I think The Satanic Satanist was honestly the first time we had come into something, like, come into our own as a band, and it’s why we signed for Atlantic Records after that, because we actually felt ready to play the late night talk shows, and felt comfortable enough to do the video interviews that we were so terrified to do. We could finally do all that stuff because we felt more confident in the music.

“There was something about it – I don’t know if it was where we were at with music at the time, but we just said, like, ‘Fuck trying to jam all the ideas into this, and let’s sit back and actually just pick the three best parts.’ And you can say whatever the fuck you want about that, but there’s nothing ‘experimental’ and ‘cool’ about not trying. You need to take those steps, you need to feel comfortable with yourself to do it. It took a lot, though. It feels so weird, you know what I mean? You come across a chord progression, and you feel like you know exactly what you should sing, and you don’t expand upon that… sometimes it’s the best thing you could do. Like, you don’t need every melody. Ain’t No Sunshine is two minutes and it’s just the same progression – it’s one of the greatest songs ever. Really finding that, and being comfortable enough to just deliver on it, is a very, very exciting thing.”