Spiraling’s Tom Brislin (lead vocals), Marty O’Kane (guitar), Bob Hart (bass), and Paul Wells (drums) sit down with Cityzen before their 2/5/04 show at the Mercury Lounge to talk about the tour with Ok Go, appearances on “Law & Order,” and exciting encounters with the NYPD.

Cityzen: How did you guys all meet and what inspired you to create a band together?

Tom: Well I started this idea of just a recording project when I was a teenager, and eventually it morphed into an actual band that would play live shows. It took many different combinations of musicians to get together. I met Bob Hart, our bass player, at a jam session when he was still primarily a guitarist; eventually he started playing more bass. We were basically the core of You Were Spiraling for a few years. I went to school with Paul Wells, our drummer. He didn’t want to play rock – he was “Mr. Jazz.” I hadn’t seen him for a couple of years and we were doing a gig – actually pretty close to here, at the Luna Lounge – and I saw him walking on the street and invited him to come check out the band. We started playing together shortly after that. I met Marty O’Kane, our guitarist, at a party in Jersey that was thrown by a local promoter.

Cityzen: What led to the end of You Were Spiraling?

Tom: Well the music was changing, and the people in the band were changing – Paul had actually just joined You Were Spiraling right before we switched it over to Spiraling – and we were just going to start totally new, get a clean slate, and give it a new name.

Cityzen: Different sound in Spiraling than previously?

Tom: A little bit. It’s subtle, but I think the music is more pop-rock songs, whereas we were bouncing around in a lot of different directions with You Were Spiraling. Not totally different, we still kept a lot of the music the same.

Cityzen: How did you guys meet and end up touring with They Might Be Giants?

Bob: A lot of it has to do with our management – we share the same management company. And John Flansburgh, one of the singers of TMBG, used to have a CD-of-the-month club called the “Hello CD Club,” and he released one of our CDs. From there, we had been playing some shows with them occasionally, and it just led up to them taking us on tour with them.

Cityzen: What are some of the artists you grew up listening to that you think have influenced Spiraling’s music?

Tom: It’s weird because I grew up and my sisters and my brother played a lot of 70s rock on vinyl – bands like Led Zeppelin and Yes, things like that – it was just the music in my head as a kid. But the music I discovered for myself was the 80s new wave – Duran Duran, The Police, The Cars. I don’t think any of these influences are inherent in the music, but they were inspirations.

Cityzen: You toured with Ok Go last year around this time, what do you think makes Ok Go a strong band to tour with again?

Marty: Well one of the great things about touring with Ok Go, first of all – and this is something we have been really fortunate with – is that we find that Ok Go fans and TMBG fans are just in general very good music fans. They’re very open to encountering new bands. I think there are a lot of people that, for lack of a better term, “geek out” on discovering new bands. What’s more, the great thing about touring with Ok Go is that they have a really good relationship with their fans. Like us, they really like making a personal connection with the fans after the show, meeting them afterwards and actually getting to know them. And that’s something really gratifying to see. I think it’s that kind of personal connection that’s endeared them to so many people, and that’s why they have such a strong following.

Cityzen: As a band and musically, how do you think you’ve grown in your live show since the Ok Go tour last year?

Tom: I guess when you play everyday, things are bound to get tighter as a band. We manage to not strangle each other on the road, crammed into a van – yet (laughs). And we’ve written many new songs along the way.

Cityzen: Transmitter was released in September 2002; do you have any plans for a follow-up release in the near future?

Tom: We hope so, definitely. We’re demo-ing a lot of new songs. Actually, a lot of the songs on Transmitter were You Were Spiraling songs that were never quite completed during that period. So even in the process of recording Transmitter, I had written a lot of new songs. In 2003, I just for some reason wrote a lot of songs. We’ve been doing that juggling act of going out and playing a tour, then coming back and demo-ing like crazy, and somehow finding a way to pay the electric bills (laughs).

Cityzen: So when you’re not on tour, do you guys have part-time jobs, or other interests?

Marty: Well pretty much everyone in the band does some sort of other freelancing work. Like Paul and Bob are both pretty sought-after session players with a lot of the “cats” around New York. We all do a little bit of teaching. I actually tutor people to prepare them for standardized tests, like the SATs. Tom also writes for Keyboard Magazine, and he has a book available as well. (http://www.tombrislin.com for more information)

Cityzen: Tom, I heard you “guest starred” on the TV show “Law & Order” at some point.

Tom: I was an extra, but you could say “guest-starred” (laughs).

Cityzen: How did you get the “part”?

Tom: Well actually, I was talking to a friend of mine who worked on the show, and I wanted to be the dead body on “Law & Order,” but she said that I couldn’t because I had to be a member of the Screen Actors Guild in order to be the dead body. But she said I could be alive and just be in the courtroom, so we went down to the show and they gave me a badge that said “press” and a notepad, and my job was to act like I was taking notes. They sat me right behind Angie Harmon, so I had some quality 2-seconds of screen time (laughs). Apparently, if you had a wide screened TV, I was on the show a lot! (laughs)

Cityzen: What’s your favorite local venue to play?

Paul: Well they’re all pretty good. (The Mercury Lounge) is really nice. We just played a place called Pianos for the first time that was really nice. We’re playing there again later this month actually (February 28th, 2004). Very cool place. There’s a place we play in New Brunswick a lot called the Court Tavern. It’s fun because it’s kind of a home turf place – it’s really one of the only places in New Brunswick to play. We always get a lot of our hometown fans to come out and it’s always a fun time there, so that one is always good.

Tom: On this tour, we played Detroit at the Magic Stick, which was a really fun show.

Paul: We played a place in St. Louis called The Pageant about a year and a half ago, and that place was probably the nicest venue we’ve played. It wasn’t a very big place, but it was a very brand new venue built specifically for bands to play.

Cityzen: There’s a venue like that around here – have you guys ever been to Crash Mansion?

All: No.

Cityzen: Oh it was great, completely brand new and really nice – unusual for a concert venue.

Cityzen: What song do you wish you wrote?

Tom: I have a long list, but I think the top two would be “Strawberry Fields Forever” (by The Beatles), and “Black Hole Sun” (by Soundgarden). I mean that was the first thing I thought the very first time I heard Black Hole Sun was I really wish I wrote this. Anyone want to chime in?

Marty: White Christmas would be cool – we wouldn’t have to worry about much right now (laughs).

Paul: Happy Birthday…

Bob: I wish I copyrighted that song (laughs).Cityzen: What are you guys currently listening to?

Marty: Well there are the old standbys; we’re always listening to the stuff that has influenced us, like the Beatles. We’re checking out The Flaming Lips a lot.

Tom: All kinds of stuff…The Police.

Marty: Yeah over the tour we’ve listened to The Police, The Monkees, and The Flaming Lips.

Cityzen: How’s the tour going?

Paul: It was really, really cold in Chicago. We had a good show, good crowd and everything, but it was just so cold. I mean it was cold everywhere – I guess it was cold back here too.

Tom: It was a special brand of cold.

Paul: We were there (Chicago) around this time last year, and it was so cold that none of us could imagine anything colder. While we were there last week, it was even colder than that. The morning we left, it was maybe around 11 or 12 in the morning, and I saw a sign that said -7, and that was when the sun was at its warmest.

Tom: All the shows have been great.

Marty: Yeah the shows have been fantastic. We had an especially good time in Detroit, so I guess I can understand why Kiss wrote that song about it (“Detroit Rock City”) – it was pretty cool, we had a good time.

Cityzen: Any crazy experiences so far, or in the past even?

Marty: Well we had a crazy non-tour-related experience in NY. We were flyering – right around NYU (laughs) – around Tower Records. We were putting up some posters, and some undercover officers descended upon us while we were putting one up. In New Jersey, this sort of thing is legal, so we didn’t think we were doing anything wrong. We were just like “Oh, we’re really sorry, we’ll just take down the two or three posters we put up.” But they told us that they had to take us “downtown” – I was like wow you only hear that sort of thing on TV. I thought that was really weird. So they put us in handcuffs and everything.

Bob: They confiscated our scotch tape.

Marty: Yeah they confiscated our scotch tape! Not only that, but first of all, when we got to the precinct, they made us take off our shoelaces and belts when they put us in the jail cell so we wouldn’t hang ourselves. But then the really funny and surreal thing was that, through the bars of the jail cell, I saw they were putting our posters and tape in these really important-looking evidence bags, like they were going to use them against us in the “trial of the century” (laughs).

Cityzen: Ok, so did you guys have to pay bail to get out?

Tom: No, we just had to fill out paperwork. It just so happened that they were filling out paperwork on the other side of a bunch of bars (laughs). We even went to court about a month later, and it was all dropped.

Marty: And we ended up not even having to pay a fine. We were exonerated.

Tom: Yeah it was basically just a waste of everyone’s time.

Cityzen: And I thought Jersey cops were bad…

Tom: Yeah, it all comes down to what they’re told is the thing to do. And apparently it’s more important that 3rd street looks beautiful than other things…

Marty: But as far as the press is concerned, we are supporters of law enforcement, and law-abiding citizens (everyone laughs).

Cityzen: Any closing remarks?

Marty: (chants) Go USA!