Indie duo Mates reveal their "Crushes"

NEW YORK (Billboard) - Husband-and-wife indie rock duo Jason Hammel and Kori Gardner, better known as Mates of State, are taking a break from their original compositions to release "Crushes: The Covers Mixtape."

The album, to be released Tuesday (June 15) on Barsuk, was recorded at their home in Stratford, Connecticut, and includes the band's take on songs by Girls, Belle & Sebastian, Tom Waits, Nick Cave and Fleetwood Mac.

Before they hit the road for the Crushes tour, beginning on the record's street date in Northampton, Massachusetts, Hammel spoke to Billboard about creating the album, the stigma of doing covers and touring with their two young daughters.

Billboard: Why did you decide to do a covers album, and how did you choose the songs to remake?

Jason Hammel: We're obviously big music fans, and often we'd hear a song and say we totally need to cover that and somehow be a part of that song. We've been talking about it for years and kept an ongoing list. Finally we said, "OK, we don't have enough Mates material yet for a new album, but we want to play and record, so let's do it." It was harder than I thought to choose -- we both really had to be into the song, and we both have our own personal taste. Once we agreed on a certain number, we started arranging. Sometimes we would do the song justice, and sometimes it just sounded awful.

Billboard: What songs did you consider that didn't make the cut?

Hammel: We tried to do "Throw It All Away" by Genesis, because it's a song we always do at our friends' karaoke parties, but it just sounded awful. We also wanted to do a song by the Anniversary, who are friends of ours from Lawrence (Kansas), and I think that didn't work out because it brought up all these memories of bad blood, even though it was a long time ago. In general we tried to do songs that are really great, and sometimes with classic songs, you just can't improve upon them.

Billboard: Obviously not all the songs were originally written as duets, or with typical instrumentation. What was one of your biggest interpretation challenges?

Hammel: I think the weirdest one was the Fleetwood Mac song ("Second Hand News"). We started the song with like a stoner reggae beat, and we thought, "This is either really terrible or really good." Also, I think it might be the first Fleetwood Mac song a lot of people ever heard, as the first song on "Rumours." So we thought people might hate this one, but decided we didn't care. If people have to be stoned to enjoy this one, so be it.

Billboard: You're offering the album for sale on your website for $5. How did you keep costs down?

Hammel: We recorded it ourselves at home, so that helped a lot. But we had Peter Katis, who recorded our last album, mix it, so we knew it would sound good. Also, anytime someone says they're doing a covers album, people are like, "Wah wah." So we thought, "Let's try to keep the price down." People think if you do a covers album it means you're not inspired to do your own music, and it was almost the opposite. We just wanted people to have it. Maybe offering it really cheap is the way to get them to say, "Eh, I'll give it a shot, even though I hate covers albums as a rule."

Billboard: You have two young children together, and you're going out on tour next month. Do you bring them with you?

Hammel: They both come. Maggie is 5, so she's just one of the bros now -- she gets her own bunk and it's pretty easy to hang out with her. June is 2, so she has to have change every three minutes. One of the ways we deal with that is by having a bus. If we were in vans, it's kind of a nightmare for a kid to be driving for five or six hours in a car. So we just kind of bit the bullet -- obviously it costs more to have a bus, but it helps keep everyone sane, including the kids.

Billboard: Are you writing original material for a later release?

Hammel: We have about 10 or 11 new songs written, and we have spent a bunch of time recording too. So I'd say we're about 70 percent done with the next Mates album. We'll do this tour, and then come back at the end of July and finish up that record, and it will probably come out in the new year.

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