It seems diners at Leo’s aren’t the only ones having a hard time finding something to fit their tastes. Architecture in Helsinki trombonist Gus Franklin laments that trying to find gluten-free vegan offerings at the Pennsylvania Interstate IHOP is an equally frustrating venture.
“Negotiating road houses is the funnest part of the tour,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of dietary specifications in the van.” The band is making their third overseas tour in support of their critically-acclaimed new album, In Case We Die, and will be stopping in D.C. at the Black Cat on Friday night.
But with eight Australians crammed into a tour bus for seven weeks, dining could become the least of their worries. Franklin recalled a particular night the band had to spend sleeping in the bus.
“We got about a block away from the venue, some of the tires blew away, and we realized at that moment that the band had not packed any tire change supplies,” he said.
When I caught up with the band, they were rolling up the interstate toward Boston. “The tour bus is getting pretty smelly; it has been about two and half weeks,” Franklin admitted. After wrapping up the U.S. leg and kissing the tour bus good-bye, the band heads over to Iceland for three days, then to Europe for a couple of weeks and finally back to Australia after a festival in Hong-Kong.
The majority of the eight members of the Australian-based group met in art school. When asked about his college experience, Franklin replied, “I always get confused about college and university, being that in Australia, college is this place that you live on campus, and it’s like really yuck-like fraternities. We all went to university, I think. It was fun, but we weren’t like frat brothers and sisters or anything. For the most part we all passed.”
As far as parallel lives go, Franklin seemed pretty sure that even if he weren’t playing in AiH, he’d be playing in some other band.
Franklin plays trombone on the group’s recordings, but in concert, it’s another story.
“We pretty much all swap around and play everything when we play live,” he said. And the baby voices on “The Owls Go?”
“It’s actually a couple of kids that were there when we were recording the album. There’s not any digital trickery involved like a child filter or something.” Franklin was also quick to divulge the band’s own preferences for road music.
“I’ll just give you a short list of what we’ve been listening to today: the Go-Betweens, Animal Collective, the Alan Parsons Project, Fleetwood Mac-plus there’s 3 or 4 iPods in the van, so we just kind of schizophrenically flip through them.”
Getting used to driving on the right-hand side of the road is another matter, though. “I wouldn’t say we’re well-weathered on the road-there’s been a couple of hairy incidents, but we’re getting used to it. We’ve got a tour manager now who’s from Philadelphia. He knows the right side of the road.”
Architecture in Helsinki will play at the Black Cat, located at 1811 14th St. N.W., with Dr. Dog and Exit Clov this Friday, Oct. 7. Doors open at 9:30; tickets are $10.
