Travis Johnson and Matt Flegel Are Big Bravo Fans

Travis Johnson fronts the Brooklyn-based band Activity; Matt Flegel fronts the band Preoccupations. The new Activity record, A Thousand Years In Another Way, came out earlier this month on Western Vinyl, so to celebrate, Matt called Travis from the road to catch up about what they’ve both been up to lately. 
— Annie Fell, Editor-in-chief, Talkhouse Music 

Travis Johnson: So where are you right now? 

Matt Flegel: I’m driving through the prairies. 

Travis: The Canadian prairies? 

Matt: Yeah, we’re in Saskatchewan. We drove 15 hours yesterday from Minneapolis to Saskatoon. 

Travis: Fifteen? 

Matt: Yeah, it was pretty cool. 

Travis: Well, I’m in the park where we have our normal coffee get-togethers. So if you hear saxophone in the background, that’s why. It’s lonely without you!

Matt: Aw, man, there’s at least people in McGolrick Park. Saskatchewan is not known for being heavily populated. 

Travis: It’s where my mom was born. 

Matt: In Saskatchewan? Or McGolrick Park?

Travis: [Laughs.] She was born on the slide. No, in Saskatchewan. Surely someone was born in McGolrick Park, but not my mom.

Matt: That’s cool. I had no idea. I mean, half of my family is from Saskatchewan. My dad grew up on a farm in southern Saskatchewan. So we got that going for us. 

Travis: Yeah. I knew there was something I liked about you. How are the dates going so far? 

Matt: Oh, we’re rolling along. You know, it’s a slog getting from A to B, but once we’re there, the shows have been great. We’ve had van trouble, I got sick, but that’s par for the course. People are coming. I think we’re deep enough into it that we’re playing the songs pretty well. 

Travis: Good, good. You told me you were doing six or seven of the new songs?

Matt: Yeah. We’ve kind of been switching it up since my voice has been wrecked from sickness, so we’re doing four or five. Still doing a 70 minute set of me just belching and coughing out whatever I can manage. 

Travis: Right. We’re still learning our new album. And we have shows starting soon, so I hope we get them down. But I think there’s some we’re just never going to learn. 

Matt: Yeah, we’ve got a few of those too, where it’s like, “OK, this is an album track.”

Travis: Yeah. I mean, there’s some that are so electronic that I would feel ridiculous being on stage doing them. I don’t have a Thom Yorke in me.

Matt: You don’t feel just generally ridiculous on stage?

Travis: No, I would like to feel probably two to three times more ridiculous. 

Matt: We have a few of those, too, where I’m not playing bass, I’m just singing, and I feel pretty naked.

Travis: If I could detach the mic and be playing with pedals on the floor the whole time, that would be fine. 

Matt: Or dance like James Brown. 

Travis: [Laughs.] Yeah, and I wouldn’t feel ridiculous doing that whatsoever. That would just be totally normal. 

Matt: Get a chair, get a pack of cigarettes.

Travis: Oh, a chair — I hadn’t even thought of that! That’s really good. 

Matt: I was watching old videos of Psychedelic Furs — there’s this live video where he’s singing “Love My Way” and he straddles the chair backwards and he’s smoking a cigarette and wearing high-waisted pants and a shirt unbuttoned. I’m like, This is the coolest guy I’ve ever seen.

Travis: That’s pretty awesome. And it makes me think, I could probably get away with vaping at a show on stage. You can hear a gurgling sound as I inhale on it into the mic… There were things I was going to ask you, and I made notes at home, and I’m not at home. 

Matt: Well, I wouldn’t worry about it too much. I know anything that you were going to ask me, I probably wouldn’t have anything brilliant to say either way.

Travis: Are you able to watch The Valley at all? Because this season is popping off. 

Matt: No, I should be downloading episodes and watching it. I think I watched the first three. The last one I watched is when Jax called a phone number and someone answered who did not sound like a professional working at a rehab center. They were like, “Yes, we can take you at clinic.” 

Travis: [Laughs.] My favorite thing about that was they were like, “On a scale from 1 to 10, how sad or whatever would you say you are?” And he immediately says, “Nine.” I was like, Nine is jumping out of a window. You are a psychopath and you’re not going to get the treatment you need. Which is jail. 

Matt: Which is absolutely being off the streets. He’s a menace. This is pretty dark, but if I saw a headline that said “Jax Taylor Killed His Entire Family,” I’d be like, Yeah.

Travis: A hundred percent.  

Matt: He shows all the signs of sociopath. And they skirted around the cocaine stuff forever on Vanderpump, but I was surprised that they actually started talking about cocaine openly [on The Valley].

Travis: Right. 

Matt: As if it wasn’t incredibly super obvious… But I hope for the best. I’m not holding my breath that he’s going to come back a changed man. I think he’s a deplorable human. 

Travis: Yeah, he’s legitimately scary. 

Matt: It’s good TV though. 

Travis: Oh, man. It makes me realize why Caroline — that’s my wife — has been watching this stuff for a decade now. I’m like, Why has this not been in my life longer? Tonight there’s going to be this new one, Next Gen NYC, that I’m a little curious about. 

Matt: Yeah. I like watching people that are objectively worse than me, because it makes me feel better about myself and my life and my choices. I’m like, Oh, I’m not this bad. 

Travis: Yeah, there’s that, and there’s also just the incredible amount of self delusion that’s almost impossible to imagine and process when you’re watching these people. They lie to themselves on every level. 

Matt: We saw, just kind of on a whim, Tom Sandoval’s band. There was the cheating scandal— 

Travis: Scandoval.

Matt: Yeah. He was one of the most hated men in the country. And we went and saw him play in his shitty cover band at Irving Plaza or something, and the level of confidence that he had while being the most hated man in America — I appreciated it. I was kind of blown away. If I had 1% of the amount of confidence that he had, it would change my life. 

Travis: I think that’s what you need to do a lot of things that you and I will never do, that amount of self-confidence that enables you to blow through checks and stops.

Matt: Just a little bit, you know? And maybe the solution is cocaine. 

Travis: [Laughs.] OK, we stop getting coffee, but we still meet at the park, and we just do cocaine at, like, 11 in the morning.

Matt: [Laughs.]

Travis: Was the crowd a decent size?

Matt: It was a decent size. You know, no one’s going to see him because he’s a good musician. They’re going to see him because he’s a celebrity. He’s basically pretty good at karaoke, and he’s got a full band behind him. He’s got decent vocal chops, I would say, but he’s the guy at karaoke who you’re like, “OK, bud, we’re all just trying to have fun. You’re taking this way too seriously.” 

Travis: What was the song selection? 

Matt: There were a lot of classic rock ones. I feel like he did Boston, “More Than A Feeling.” But then he would do, like, Outkast, “Hey Ya.” 

Travis: Oh, god. 

Matt: He was doing some top 40 pop stuff. It was an eclectic set. 

Travis: I almost went to see at Brooklyn Steel, Michael Shannon doing R.E.M. Which is like the opposite of what you’re describing, a guy kind of humbly being like, “I love this band, and they’re not around anymore, so I just want to do this thing.” It’s supposedly pretty good, actually. 

Matt: I mean, I love Michael Shannon, the actor. I’ve also heard nothing but good things about him as a person.

Travis: I met him once at Bowery and he was super nice. He was just sitting at the bar and did not mind me being a bit of a fanboy. Which I’m normally not, but he’s in a category of guys where I’m like, “Yeah, sure.” 

Matt: And this is the obligatory celebrity question: Tall guy? 

Travis: Well, he was sitting down. But he seemed like he would be a couple inches taller than you or me, maybe. I’ve been watching lots of Tom Cruise movies recently, and I’m always like, He’s not very tall, but they’ve worked around this very well for his entire career. 

Matt: Oh, yeah. I think notoriously, he makes sure he’s using forced perspective and he’s standing up on crates and wearing platforms. I think he’s probably very self conscious about it. What has been your favorite of the Cruise flicks you’ve been watching?

Travis: Well, Magnolia is one of my faves of all time

Matt: Magnolia is peak Cruise, I would say… Wait, hold on. It’s my birthday today, so everyone’s calling me.

Travis: Oh, what? Happy birthday!

Matt: My mom’s calling. “Uh, I got bigger things going on right now, mom.” 

Travis: What are you, like 26, 27 now? 

Matt: I’m exactly 26-slash-27. Nah, I turned 43.

Travis: That’s a heck of an age. 

Matt: Yeah, I read somewhere that it’s the best age. 

Travis: Yes, wherever you are, that’s always the best age… I saw the new Mission: Impossible in IMAX. Not the best one. 

Matt: I unabashedly love those movies, just as far as pure action spectacles go. They’re relentless and they’re stressful. I appreciate, like, “You want a fucking action movie? Here’s the fucking action.” 

Travis: Yeah. The plot of this one is one of the weaker ones, I will say. It’s got a little bit of a clip show vibe to it. It was a disappointment. But you should still see it. 

Matt: I don’t mind sitting around being disappointed. I’m used to it, as a 43 year old man. 

Travis: Do you have any days off in towns where they would have an IMAX theater? 

Matt: Maybe? I feel like this tour is set up that any day off we have is just a drive day where we have to be in the van for 10 hours. I can just put my iPad really close to my face and pretend.

Travis: I weirdly like going to movies on tour, but it never really happens that often.

Matt: Yeah, if we ever get a chance to, it’s kind of the best day off activity. We always have our classic day off in between Portland and San Fran, where we stay in Mount Shasta, but I don’t think that’s an IMAX theater kind of thing. It’s more like crystals and incense shops. 

Travis: That’s a good idea. I should try and stay there next time I’m doing that drive. 

Matt: It’s the best midpoint. The air is really good there. There’s so many people there — it’s definitely a place that attracts some strange people. But we’ve stayed at the same hotel probably for two decades at this point, Mount Shasta Inn. It’s kind of mountain lodge vibes. They have a bar with a pool table, and then they have suites with a hot tub and a grill and a kitchen. So we always get groceries and try to grill something up, just try to have a day that feels like home, sort of.

Travis: I’m such a miserable and lazy cook that I would just be like, “Does anybody else want to make anything? Or is there a restaurant?” 

Matt: There’s restaurants. But any time there’s the option of a kitchen or we end up staying in an Airbnb — which is less and less these days — I usually take the reins. 

Travis: You’re a cooking guy. 

Matt: I’m a cooking guy. At home, I’m cooking most meals. I miss doing that kind of stuff. At home, if I’ve had a stress day, I get my groceries and I do a little cooking. It’s like my calm down routine. You just zone out, listen to music. 

Travis: Do you have anything else you do on tour? I bring a couple of golf clubs and I have these little rubber fake golf balls, and whenever we’re at a rest stop with a grass field, I’ll just go out and hit balls around. Do you have anything else that you do to feel less insane on tour? I also just like to walk off by myself sometimes…

Matt: Yeah, I do that. I feel like getting out of the venue once you’re done soundchecking always feels good, even if it’s just going to sit at a bar or something. We used to bring a Frisbee along for exercise.

Travis: You know what would be good? An inflatable pool.

Matt: [Laughs.] Get some five gallon jugs of water, load ‘em up in the back. 

Travis: You could do it outside of the venue, in the parking lot.

Matt: It’s not a bad idea… [Muffled shouting.] Ooh! We almost just ran over a coyote. 

Travis: Oh!

Matt: OK, Nothing’s dead. But we should probably end on that note. 

Travis: Perfect. Alright, see you soon when you get back! 

Matt: Ciao! 

(Photo Credit: left, Ebru Yildiz)