At the end of June, we featured Eytan And The Embassy's "Everything Changes" as our Song Of The Day. Today, we're spending Seven Questions In Heaven with front man Eytan Oren.
Describe your music for our readers who may not be familiar with you.
It's a mashup of indie, pop, and soul music. We get inspiration from a lot of '60s and '70s music but I'd say it also sounds pretty modern.
Who are your musical influences and idols?
Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Brian Wilson, Otis Redding, Radiohead, The National, Springsteen, The Strokes, Amy Winehouse, Elliott Smith, and T. Rex are a few of our favorites.
What was the first album, cassette, or CD you bought with your own money?
Probably something super embarrassing like C+C Music Factory. You know those cool kids with an older sister in college that gets them into Pavement and Dinosaur Jr. when they're seven? I wasn't one of those kids. I was into terrible Top 40 music but also the classic rock that my parents listened to.
Lets's talk about the video for "Everything Changes." What made you decide to dress like eighteen different people? How many takes did it take to get it right and how long was the shoot? Were there musicians that you wanted to impersonate but couldn't for one reason or another? Did you think the video would receive so much buzz?
We wanted to pay tribute to artists we admire that changed the course of pop and rock music history. And we wanted to do it a fun way that tied into the message of the song, which is that everyone should embrace reinvention as a positive thing. Eighteen was the maximum number we thought we could pull off in four minutes though in retrospect we probably could have done a couple more. It took a full day of rehearsal and thirty takes the next day to get it right, but it was a few months of prep work going into that final weekend.
There were a couple of last-minute changes: we changed Hendrix to Bob Dylan on the day of the shoot and changed Paul McCartney to John Lennon. It would have been fun to get in Freddie Mercury and we were considering Daft Punk but ended up going with Deadmau5.
We hoped people would like the video enough to share it with friends but it happened a lot quicker and on a bigger magnitude than we imagined.
Has the video for "Everything Changes" changed anything for you? Have you seen an increase in album sales or more people coming to your shows?
We have seen a dramatic increase in iTunes sales and a new energy at the shows as well. The most interesting part has been how international the response can be when a video takes off online. We've gotten messages from people in countries we've never been to like Brazil, Japan, Spain, Italy, and Mexico. It's been a very exciting month and we're very thankful for all the support people have shown us.
Tell us about inBloom, the app you created with OK Go's Andy Ross. How's it going? How many cities does it cover now? Do you have plans for another app?
inBloom is a location-based iPhone app that find the nearest sustainable and eco-friendly businesses, in particular restaurants, farmers' markets, eco hotels, biodiesel stops, etc. It started as a way for musicians on tour to find alternatives to fast food and it evolved into an app that could be useful for anyone. We have listings for NYC, Los Angeles, and Austin with more cities on the way. I don't have plans for any other apps but we do new features in the works for inBloom. Hopefully starting later this year, bands will be able to use the app to incentivize and reward fans that reduce carbon emissions by taking mass transit to concerts.
Finally, you're the opening act of a music festival. You can get any five artists, living or dead, to perform on the bill with you. Which five do you choose and what song do you all perform as the final jam?
Radiohead (circa 1997), Bob Dylan (circa 1966), James Brown, The Beatles, and Beethoven (conducting the Eroica symphony). I'll go with Chuck Berry's "Roll Over Beethoven" for our final jam.
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