The Pistola Press

One of the most buzzed about bands at the end of 2009 was Real Estate. They put out a fantastic record in the summer which was very well received by the critics.. Lucky for us, the band will be playing a show before they head over to Europe for a few weeks. Tickets are still available for the show. Lead singer Martin Courtney dropped by earlier this week for a quick interview to talk about growing up in New Jersey, the recording process of their debut album and more. Interview, link to tickets and MP3 download below.

Download: Real Estate – Beach Comber

Tickets for the show can be found HERE.

Real Estate - photo by Oren Loloi

The Pistola: So you’re from New Jersey. What part of Jersey are you guys from?

Martin: Me, Matt(Mondanile) and (Alex)Bleeker were all from Richmond, New Jersey, which is in Bergen County. It’s like 20 minutes northwest of New York City.  Our drummer, Etienne(Duguay), is actually originally from Massachusetts. We met him a couple years ago but Me, Matt and Bleeker grew up together.

TP: Did you guys grow up playing in bands and stuff like that?

Martin: Yeah, there were a lot of different bands in high school between us and all our friends. So we played together in a lot of different stuff and separately. This is the first band that we’re all in together in a really long time. We played in a band together when we were like.. 15 or 16. That’s the last time we all played together.

TP: How old are you now?

Martin:How old are we?

TP: Yeah.

Martin: Uh… I’m 24. Matt’s 25. Bleeker is… 23. Etienne’s 24.

TP: That’s cool. Being so close to NYC, would you go in to the city for shows?

Martin: Definitely. We did that a lot. I used to, kind of, steal my parents car and tell them I was going to Bleeker’s house then go to New York, go see shows and stuff. That was right when I first got my license when I was like 17. Even before then… I remember when we all went and saw Weezer or something when we were all freshman in high school. We got Matt’s parents to drive us in. That was the thing to do especially like senior year of high school. We would just go to a ton of shows cause there was nothing really to do in our town.

TP: You were probably just a train ride away too.

Martin: Yeah, exactly. It was easiest enough to get there. It was a good resource to go there all the time.

TP: Do you live in the city or are you still in Jersey?

Martin: I live in Jersey City so I’m right across the river from Manhattan. Matt and Bleeker still live in the area where we grew up. Etienne lives in Brooklyn. We’re all pretty close together, but we don’t live that close.

TP: Right. That’s sweet. When you recorded your debut record, was it recorded in a studio or was it recorded on your own? It has such a raw feel to it. It’s really great and adds character to your music.

Martin: It was all recorded by ourselves. Not in a studio. Most of it was recorded at our friend’s house, he has like a 16 track reel to reel that we used. Some of it was recorded at my house or apartment on a 4 track, some it was recorded on an 8 track. Once, the first track, “Beach Comber” was recorded digitally by Jarvis, the drummer from Wood. He does a really good job. It’s all home recorded, mostly analog.

TP: For your next record, I don’t even know if you thought about it yet, but do you think you’ll use the same method or go into a studio?

Martin: I’m not really sure. I mean as of right now, I don’t see us being able to go into the studio. We might record in a studio. It’s really expensive, you know? We might go for it but I don’t know. I want it to sound good. Even the way that we recorded the first record, we were trying to get it to sound as good as possible. We don’t necessarily want it to sound lo-fi but we do want it to sound homemade.

TP: Yeah, you definitely have that distinct sound. I’m sure a lot of bands or artists go for that kind of feel and don’t get it from the studio. Since everything is so polished in the studio.

Martina: Yeah. It would have to be a good situation; it would have to be a good studio. We would have to see eye to eye with whoever ran it. We might end up just recording with Jarvis again. He’s a really good producer and he does a good job. And it’s free.(laughs) Or relatively free. It’s better to record with your friends, I think.

TP: Free things are always good. Friends know what you’re going for, they’re more familiar with you.

Martin: Yeah, exactly. And being under the gun in terms of time and we have a lot of freedom to basically do whatever we want. I feel like being in the studio we would have to be really on our shit, we would have to know exactly what we want to do.

TP: So you’re heading over to Europe soon. Have you ever travelled over there or played there?

Martin: I’ve done some travel. I spent some time in Spain and France. I lived for a couple months in France when I was in college. That kind of thing. But we’ve never toured over there or anything so we’re all really, really excited about that.

We’re getting that whole thing together Even today, we were trying to figure everything out. We’re leaving in two and half weeks and we still don’t know exactly what we’re doing. We’re all trying to figure it out last minute. We just got our tickets and everything. But yeah, we’re psyched. The fact that we get to go over there and play music.

TP: Are you just playing England or other countries as well?

Martin: We’re doing England and a lot of mainland Europe too. Like most of Western Europe except for Spain. We’re actually gonna go back to Spain in May for the Primavera Festival. Supposedly, it’s amazing so I’m really psyched about that.

TP: How did Saturday’s show with The Extraordinaires come about?

Martin: We’re friends with those dudes. Bleeker, our bass player, has known Jay(Purdy) from The Extraordinaires for a long time through college and stuff. They’ve known eachother for a while. We’ve been meaning to play with them and they asked us to play the show so what the hell?

TP: So do you have any New Years resolutions?

Martin: (laughs) Umm…. (long pause).. not really. No. (laughs).. keep writing songs and try to make a good second record. That’s my biggest thing right now in my head. To just, we need to make our second record really good.

TP: That’s a good one. So would you rather get eaten by a grizzly bear or a great white shark?

Martin: (laughs) Umm.. probably. Shit, that’s tough. I would probably say a shark because you could just drown instead of getting ripped apart. That seems a little bit less painful. (laughs)