Talk to the Invisible Hand

Fresh off the van from Austin after playing at SXSW and just a short week before playing MacRock in Harrisonburg, Charlotteville’s own Adam Smith had time to sit down and talk with me about his project, The Invisible Hand. As a favorite of many local artists and critics, the four-piece rock outfit has become since August “the band to see” in Charlottesville, and is gaining a reputation as a formidable live and touring force.

Dec: Tell me about yourself. You’re from Charlottesville, is that right?

Adam: Yeah, actually moved here when I was ten from Texas. I lived in Fort Worth. I was home schooled and did that all the way until I was 16. Then I graduated and went to Piedmont for a little while and dropped out because I wanted to play music. Pretty much this whole tour was spurred because I really wanted to go to SXSW and we had the opportunity to go, but I was in school and the spring break didn’t align correctly so I just decided to not go to school.
But I’ve been playing music for awhile, I’ve been playing since I was fourteen. I played in a band called Folkskünde, which was pretty popular with high school kids, everybody who went to CHS. We parted ways because everybody went to college or just decided to do different things with their lives. After that I decided to form Truman Sparks. It was me and my friend Malcolm, who had previously been in Folkskünde. But then he left to go to college and I got my friend John Hampton to play, and Jon Bray who now plays in The Invisible Hand, and my friend Ray who used to write for the Dec, actually. That band was active for a long time and I just found out that we’re no longer active.

Dec: Yeah I just saw that on the MySpace last night.

Yeah I saw that a couple nights ago, actually. I was really perplexed by the whole thing. That was John Hampton’s doing, I’m pretty sure. I guess we’re broken up, but if a show comes up I would definitely still play it.

Dec: Were there problems with Truman Sparks? Why has it come to a stop?

The reason it really came to a stop was because there wasn’t any ability to tour. Ray works at Crutchfield, and it’s a pretty cush job, but it is a nine to five, five days a week kind of job. He has to tour on his break time. That was one problem. It just seemed that logistics were never aligned correctly. I was a little bit transient for a while. I moved to Portland, and Philadelphia and because of that there were stops in our creativity. It was a lagging sort of band towards the end. We did create really good things when we were active, but there wasn’t a whole lot of a push. Although we had the ideal, the fantasy of touring, it never became a reality.

Dec: So it wasn’t really any musical or creative differences, just an inability to tour?

I will say that I am definitely going for a more pop song structure now. Truman Sparks would just be sprawling epics that maybe had a theme that repeated, but The Invisible Hand is definitely a concise pop song that will maybe be four minutes long but is usually shorter than that.

Dec: The Invisible Hand came about way before Truman Sparks ever ended, is that right?

Yeah. The Invisible Hand was essentially the moniker I used for any recording I did by myself. That started when I was fifteen, when I got a computer and started recording music. I created three albums without ever touring behind them or playing them live. Just for my own benefit. Some of those songs would turn into Truman Sparks songs, or parts of them. It was more of a sketchpad for songs or bands that I was in. Only recently have I started to push the actual band itself.
It started off as just a two-piece. It was me and a drummer, my friend Parker, who plays with me in this other band called Order. The music was a lot noisier. The songs were still there but they were muddled with a lot of distortion. I was playing guitar through an octave pedal so it was really loud. He essentially quit playing because he needed to find a job. He lived in Cleveland too, so it was just kind of a logistical nightmare. He notified me that he was stopping when I told him I had booked a tour. So I was scrambling to find musicians and I was friends with Adam Brock from The Nice Jenkins. The Nice Jenkins at this point was on a hiatus, there weren’t doing too much, so he was ripe for the picking. Then I got my friend Thomas who plays with me in Order. I got him to play bass. Then Jon Bray, who I’ve played with so many times. Everybody came together and we just had a similar aesthetic, which I was really surprised about. To me, it was a last ditch effort to put a band together for a tour, but it ended up meshing really well. That was in August, and since then it’s been that core group of people. That really is The Invisible Hand right now.

Dec: Had Truman Sparks slowed down by that point?

Yeah. At that point the reality of not being able to tour sort of became more and more apparent. I started doing Invisible Hand a lot more. It just felt like this is more the music that I listen to. I’d rather be doing this, whereas Truman Sparks was more of an experiment. We could play in odd time signatures, we could do crazy things, but really all I want to do is hear a good pop song. I want to hear The Kinks. So, I just started drifting more mentally towards the Invisible Hand, and thinking it was what I wanted to do. Truman Sparks slowly started fading out. We made several attempts to practice or play shows but there were always the schedule conflicts, we could never really work it out.

Dec: Who wrote the majority of the music for Truman Sparks?

It was definitely a collaborative effort.

Dec: How does that compare to The Invisible Hand?

I think I was just in a different state of mind. I was doing a lot more experimenting with odd time signatures and trying to make it musically complex. The Invisible Hand is much more simplified, but it’s still a group effort to arrange. One of the reasons I love playing in a band is to have that musical camaraderie and work ethic to shape the song into something that’s good.

Dec: Is there any reason you are still here in Charlottesville?

When I decided to move I was just a little unsettled being here and I’d been here for awhile and I felt like it was probably time to leave. That was a year ago, and I moved to Philadelphia for a month. As it worked out I started dating a girl living here but then I moved to Philadelphia. So I moved back to Virginia basically to be with this girl. I ended up seeing a lot of good come out of this city. I started working at The Bridge [Progressive Arts Initiative] and that gave me something to do, and really inspired me to want to be in Charlottesville and make something happen here. More than anything, I felt that because Charlottesville is so small and not a whole lot happens here, that it is perfect for something big to happen. To create a really close knit scene and have stuff spawn from there. I think it is still a little immature in its music scene. But now more than ever, its starting to blossom. David [Baker Benson’s D.B.B. Plays Cups], that’s great, and Birdlips. There’s been a lot of other bands popping up—a lot of U.Va. bands, Caninos. A year ago there were no U.Va. bands so it’s really great that that’s happening.

Dec: It seems that the Charlottesville music scene is a great place for a small band to blossom.

Probably the biggest thing that makes Charlottesville so great for music is that it’s just so encouraging of the arts. It really nurtures young people trying to do something. If somebody has an idea, Charlottesville is right there holding them up. It’s a little bit of a reality shock when you go beyond Charlottesville, but for now it’s great.

Dec: What is the Invisible Hand focusing on right now? Are you guys writing and recording or just touring?

We just finished recording a four-song demo. The purpose of this is just to have the full band sound. We just finished that and took it down to Austin, and pretty much just gave away most of our copies of it. We are really focused on playing New York a lot. That’s really what a band needs to do. Once you’ve reached a certain level, you kind of have to play New York in order to take it to the next level. At the same time, we’re trying to record again. We want to do a full-length album by the end of the summer, which is maybe a lofty goal because we don’t even have the songs written.

Dec: The stuff you just recorded, did you go to a studio or do it yourselves?

We did it ourselves. We did it on my computer and I have a few good mics and pre-amps. I think it was a lot better because we could take the time and we did a lot of experimenting.

Dec: Would you go to a studio for the summer LP?

I’m not quite sure. I like the freedom of recording ourselves, but you do miss a certain fidelity. I could care less about fidelity, maybe. I feel like a lot for my favorite bands don’t have that. It’s not for the audiophiles, but at the same time I don’t want to alienate people by making something that sounds horrible.

Dec: What are you listening to right now?

I’m listening to a lot of bands that we’ve played with recently. Real Estate, they’re from New Jersey but somehow it sounds like California. It’s just really relaxed. We played with this band called Sister Suie, which is a pretty interesting band. It’s Canadian Reggae. It’s real weird, but it’s good. Sparks, this band from the 70s that has this real flamboyant front man. It’s sort of operatic like Queen is but a little more nerdy. They have pretty awesome pop songs.

Dec: Would you say you take any inspiration from them?

Definitely a lot of inspiration from Sparks, more and more. It started out being more inspired by Deerhoof or something like that, but then I heard Sparks and I was like, “This is exactly what I’m going for.”

The Invisible Hand is playing on April 4th at MacRock in Harrisonburg. Check out their website myspace.com/adamsmith for more information.