Fountains of Wayne songwriter Chris Collingwood lets FasterLouder in on the band’s semi obscurity and progress of old friend William Shakespeare.
As the connection clicks on… “Okay you have 20 minutes with Chris from Fountains Of Wayne” I immediately find myself in phone hook up hell with the crackliest line this side of sunny Texas. I push on and try my hardest to decipher the mood and response patterns of the quietly spoken Collingwood and begin by asking him about Out-Of- State Plates; a double disc collection of coveted non-album tracks, new songs, and previously unreleased material from the Fountains Of Wayne back catalogue of nearly a decades worth of material.
“Yeah it’s all the stuff we had lying around and I mean it really has been pissin’ off our US fans who have been downloading and buying the bits and pieces we have done over the years – but that’s the way it goes, they will still hopefully be happy about the official release anyhow.”
So when can the world get to hear a new Fountains Of Wayne record? “Oh steady on! I just can’t seem to write when I have been touring…all this writing that goes on, man it’s tough sometimes,” cries an exhausted Collingwood.
The band’s most recent album was the 2003 release, Welcome Interstate Managers and had received two impressive Grammy nominations for its efforts. Collingwood explains that the release of their most recent collection or retrospective of tunes has given the band the time and space to reflect and play the odd show around America including many corporate gigs – most notably for Nike which has seen the band play alongside Joan Jett amongst others. Each to their own, I suppose.
There are quite a few covers on Out-Of- State Plates, including the likes of Gene Pitney, Jackson Browne and ELO – an obscure bunch of talent, and so I ask Collingwood how were they selected? “These guys have been major influences on our style so we thought it only natural to include our versions on the new release.”
The version of the Max Martin penned (Hit Me) Baby One More Time, performed by Britney Spears way back when appears to have really struck a chord with the band for various reasons. “We decided to not release the cover as our first single off Utopia Parkway but it ended up gettin’ played on Howard Stern’s radio show and gettin’ all kinds of exposure – but we really love the author of the tune, Max Martin for his ability to write hit tunes – I mean I doubt if Britney would even know his name but we certainly do.”
Along with the compilation album, Collingwood is joined by fellow songwriter Adam Schlesinger and the boys set about providing interesting liner notes and stories behind the songs. “There’s a reason behind almost all of the tracks, like Imperia – the documentation of the death of my grandfather who was a pilot shot down in WW2, then lived out his days on safari in Africa and Egypt still with the shrapnel wound in his forehead!” And the others? “Killermont Street which is a great Roddy Frame’s Aztec Camera cover which reminds me of my college days and also the live at the Reading Festival tune (She’s Got A Problem) which I don’t remember at all as I had taken so much E that day – so it all has its significance you see.”
After reading the Washington Post’s latest review of the Out-Of- State Plates album which claimed that the Fountains Of Wayne were ‘languishing in semi-obscurity’ I deemed it only appropriate to probe the matter further with Collingwood. “That’s what they said did they? Oh well, I mean we never really set out or aspired to be a Pavement or a Wilco – we just try and write the complete radio song and go from there so we probably are pretty obscure who knows?”
Another interesting thing to note about Collingwood is his side project – a secretive country band which is a kind of as he calls ‘hometown super group’ and is due to release an album later this year. “Just moved into a new house so I’m sitting up a studio and also continuing on with podcast engineering.” The aforementioned podcast is as Collingwood explains, ”...a painfully long reworking of a Shakespearian biography by my friend Mark Anderson whereby I work with actors and interpret the material in order to relay the message onto the internet and call it Shakespeare-upon-iPod.”
Fountains Of Wayne’s long-awaited Out-Of-State Plates, a special double disc collection of non-album tracks recorded over the span of the band’s career is out now.
