John Fernandes

It’s been a while since we’ve heard from John Fernandes – his two main projects, the Olivia Tremor Control and Circulatory System, haven’t released anything since 1998 and 2001 respectively. But Fernandes has been keeping busy: in addition to his family and job at Wuxtry Records in Athens, Georgia, he’s also (like just about everyone in Athens, apparently) involved with several bands including the aforementioned two. He also operates Cloud Recordings, a record label he runs with bandmate Will Hart.

For those wondering, Circulatory System has a new record nearly completed. Fernandes says the band just needs to make a few overdubs and other minor production decisions, as well as whittling down the substantial amount of recorded material, and he expects the album to be out in the fall. We talked to Fernandes about the upcoming album and about what else he’s been up to for the last seven years or so.

So what does this new record sound like?
The first record came out in 2001, so since then, we’ve done a lot of tours where we’ve played some of the new songs. We’ve done a whole bunch of different versions of the new songs, as well as lots of other stuff. So there was a lot of stuff to dig from. At first, we were concentrating on full band versions of all the songs we were playing live, but now we’ve been reaching back into the vaults of takes that go back even further, so the record’s got a very different sound where the tracks are from all different places, but they all seem to mesh together.

Is it the same lineup as it was last time around?
Fernandes: Yeah, pretty much. Derek Almstead is playing with us now. I don’t think he was playing with us on the first record, but he did some of the tours.

How has the music changed since then?
It’s just gotten a little bit deeper. People ask why it’s taken so long. We planned on finishing the record – we did a tour with the Sea & Cake in probably 2003 or something like that, and right after that we were planning on finishing the new songs and putting out a record right away, but now it’s been a bunch of years since then. It’s just that we all work other jobs and so it’s finding time to record between other things, and a lot of us are in other bands, too. So we have to find time to do things between that stuff. Also, Will [Hart] was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and so he was dealing with that at first. Now he’s taking shots and feeling a lot better because of them. There’s a lot of different reasons. We work on it for a couple weeks, and then put it away for another year or two, and then pull it out again. It’s not like we’ve been working on it constantly for all these years since the first one. Just intermittently. But it’s kind of nice that way, because you kind of get a break for something, and then listen back to it and reinterpret things. Yeah, this is a very studied record.  

That sort of delayed, deliberate creative process – how does that affect the final product?
Just that we’re more picky about what we want to use and don’t want to use. Only the things that stand the test of time are making it on there, and there’s a lot of stuff to choose from.



What else have you been up to in that span of time?
Let’s see. I played on the Dark Meat record, a record called Universal Indians that just got reissued by Vice Records that originally came out on Cloud Recordings. And then I played on the last Elf Power record – not the last one, but the one before that, Back to the Web. I did some tours with them. We worked a little with this band the New Sound of Numbers and put out a record on our label. I’ve been recording some with this band called Mouser, and I’m about to do some recordings with a singer down called Madeline. And just lots and lots of shows. Oh, and also I’ve been playing with a band called Supercluster, which is members of Pylon and Bob Hay & the Jolly Beggars and Casper & the Cookies and a whole bunch of different bands. We just put out an EP and we’re about to finish a full-length. Around town, it seems like every couple of nights I’m playing a show. Sometimes I’ll have a couple of shows in one night. I haven’t been going on tour as much because I have kids and can’t go out of town, but I play locally as much as possible.  

How do you balance all of those different projects?
It seems like every night I’m going through a different practice. I just try to do a little something different with all the bands, and they all teach me a little something different, so it helps me get better by adapting to a lot of different situations. I feel like I just get to be a better player by playing with a bunch of different people.

Are you going to put the new Circulatory System album out on Cloud Recordings?
We were going to send it to like, Drag City and Merge, and see if either of them were interested, and if not, we might do it on Cloud Recordings, because they might already have full release schedules for the fall. We were kind of late getting to people. We might do it on Cloud Recordings if that’s the case. We were just thinking of having another label that could watch after things when we go out on tour, if we do comprehensive touring and stuff for the new album. We’re thinking about touring for the new record. We were talking about touring with Julian [Koster] of the Music Tapes. He wants to put it together in the fall. He’s put out a couple of records on Merge, and he wants to do a tour in the fall where it’s kind of like an Elephant 6 variety show, where everybody plays on each other’s bands and plays a couple songs from a lot of different people. You know, have Robert Schneider [from Apples in Stereo] involved and play some Music Tapes songs, play some Olivia Tremor Control songs, play some Circulatory System songs. Just kind of vary it up. And then we would probably do some solo Circulatory System tours as well, but I’m not positive about that.  

As far as the Olivia Tremor Control is concerned, where do you guys stand with that? I mean, if a Circulatory System record can come out seven years after the last one, is there any hope for another Olivia Tremor Control album?
Actually, every Sunday night, we’ve been getting together and doing recordings. We haven’t really been playing live lately, besides the reunion shows we played a couple of years ago. But we’ve been getting together just for the fun of it, when Bill [Doss] is not on Apples [in Stereo] tours or when Eric [Harris] is not on Elf Power tours. We have been working on a suite of new stuff, but I’m not sure what we’re going to do with that at this point.

Just about the whole Elephant 6 thing in general – what is the state of that right now? Obviously a lot of you guys are still pretty active and you’re still collaborating, but as far as that name is concerned, what’s going on?
That’s why I’m kind of excited about the tour that we might do in the fall, because it might kind of be a revitalization. We used to do tours like this a lot in the old day with Olivia and Apples and Neutral Milk Hotel toured together, and we’re going to try to bring back that spirit, so that’s kind of exciting.   



What kind of stuff do you have in mind with that?
Just playing a lot of new things and old things and mixing it all together.

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