You know what’s hard? Getting off your ass and starting a band and trying desperately to do something new. You know what else is hard? Trying to tell twin brothers apart using context clues from a taped interview. I sat down recently with three quarters of Atlanta dub fans The Selmanaires to talk about their recent tour and new album. What follows is my best guesses as to precisely who said what, with apologies to Herb and Jason Harris.

Dry Ink: You guys just returned from your largest tour to date. Other than kicking people in the neck, do you have any other tour horror stories?

Tommy Chung: Mostly just van related. Our van is pretty much held together by duct tape.

Jason or Herb Harris?: At this hotel in Toronto the roof caved in on Jared while he was sleeping. Probably one of the dive-iest places I’ve ever stayed in. I was itchy all night long.

Tommy: I did hospitalize a guy in Cleveland by giving him a high five.

DI: Knocked his thumb out of whack?

Tommy: Dislocated his shoulder.

At this point I whip out the quotes I’ve read about the band online.

DI: “Front man Herb Harris sounds like he forgot his testicles at home, with a high pitched whisper he emits.”

Tommy: That’s not right!

DI: I’m just reading something that I found online. All three of you have microphones, so there doesn’t seem to be a clear front man. Is there a single member that you guys consider the lead vocalist?

Jason: We all sort of take part in the songwriting. And we all sing, contribute harmonies, and such, so there really isn’t a front person.

DI: Certain words and phrases are almost always used when people write about the group: musicianship, groove, funk, Asian (or Korean), twins, bass and percussion… Do you guys feel well defined or misrepresented by the labels that have been attached to the band?

Tommy: Some of that stuff is part of our sound, and a part of our identity. We listen to more non-rock music than we actually listen to rock music. Probably more world music, and funk, and R&B and reggae than your average rock band.

Herb: I think a lot of people don’t understand that we are all crate diggers. I think a lot of the average music public doesn’t really know a lot of the reference points that we’re talking about. We’re a strange band.

DI: Very dub heavy at times.

Selmanaires: Yeah!

DI: People always compare you guys to the Talking Heads, and of course David Byrne who was a major force in introducing world music to Western ears.

Jason or Herb?: We love the Talking Heads, they’re definitely an influence.

Tommy: A lot of their influences are our influences too. I think David Byrne was one of the first people from around here into the tropicalia movement. then he started putting out Os Mutantes records and Tom Ze records and stuff like that.

DI: Even though you guys sound nothing like Anna Kramer, Outkast or the Black Lips, people still seem insistent on classifying you as an Atlanta band. Do you have any feelings about that?

Jason or Herb?: it seems like Atlanta - as far as rock is concerned - doesn’t really have a sound. All the banter coming out now sound completely different. Some cities have a distinct sound, but take Deerhunter and the Black Lips - two of the biggest bands right now in Atlanta, they sound nothing alike. I think it’s more about an outlook than the sound… I think that for a long time it was just a dark age in Atlanta music when there was just math rock. I think that we all got kind of sick of it, and started looking for other things, and trying to not be a part of that.

Jason or Herb?: I think just being in the South too, there’s so much musical history. There’s going to be a lot of different influences, and I think that that comes through in a lot of the bands that come out of Atlanta. It’s not necessarily a sound but an outlook. Atlanta doesn’t really have an identity.

DI: What are some of your favorite places to play out?

Selmanaires: The 40 Watt Club (Athens, Ga.), the Earl (Atlanta), Black Cat (Washington D.C.), One Eyed Jacks (New Orleans), the Comet (Cincinnati).

Tommy: We definitely feel more comfortable playing smaller venues.

DI: What’s the largest number of people that you have played in front of so far?

Tommy: One of the show’s on this tour. I think both of the New York shows were sold out (about 500 people).

DI: Air Salesman is your sophomore album, do you feel that this is going to be a lot of people’s introduction to the Selmanaires?

Jason or Herb: Outside of Atlanta, definitely. I feel that we’ve done really well here in Atlanta, and a lot of people know who we are. Outside of Atlanta, I don’t feel that we’ve broken much ground.

Tommy: Aside from a few other places in the southeast, like Nashville and Athens, where we’ve made some fans.

Jason or Herb?: I feel that this will be the first time that a lot of people will hear our music.

Jason or Herb?: We plan to try and to go out west sometime next year but we want to have a reputation, and a booking agent, and some press and money behind us first, because it’s a really long drive.

DI: Have you played with the Coathangers?

Selmanaires: We’ve played with them a lot. As a matter of fact, the female vocals that you’ll hear on our record are the Coathangers. They’re actually pretty good friends of ours. We love them as people, and as a band.

DI: You say that all of you take a part in the songwriting, who mainly wrote the lyrics to the song “In the Direction of Yes”?

Tommy: Jason.

Jason: I wrote the lyrics to that in about 15 to 20 minutes.

DI: Lyrically and thematically that’s one of my favorite songs.

Tommy: Consistently people that I’ve never heard us, or people that I’ve heard us 100 times react really really strongly to that song.

Jason or Herb?: When songwriting, we sort of improvise during practice and then take it (the song) home to give it structure.

Tommy: Jamming on the same thing and then piecing it together, and then doing sort of a collage almost.

DI: Who are you guys loving musically right now.

Tommy: Mostly Georgia bands.

Jason or Herb?: We listen to a lot of Broadcast in the van.

Jason or Herb?: The Black Lips of course. I don’t even think that I’m being biased when I say that they’re probably the best rock and roll band out there right now.

Tommy: The New Sound of Numbers (Athens).

Jason or Herb?: The new Serge Gainsbourg.

Selmanaires: Deerhunter!

Tommy: Other than that we’re all such curmudgeons about music before 1979.

At this point in the interview, I tried to flex my brain with these guys. I thought just because I can read, that I was literary. I asked them what they were currently reading, and was left in the dust somewhere between Murakami and Melville. Tommy went on a tangent about magical realism and how that school of thought has shaped the sound of the Selmanaires, and Jason and Herb made references to ever a thing from Tertium Organum to sculptors that moonlight as poets. I go into smile and nod mode until the conversation drifts to “getting agro on hippies dancing on stage.”

Jason: For the record we’re not a violent band.

DI: Hey! Since Mathis isn’t here, would y’all like to talk shit about him.

Tommy: We knew he would be cool when he didn’t complain once about being trapped in the van with four avid smokers. That’s when we knew he could hang with us.

Jason or Herb: He just fit right in.

DI: Is it a conscious decision to keep your albums so short?

Jason or Herb: If it was up to us we would have done a double album.

Jason or Herb: We just didn’t have the money or the (studio) time to do that much.

DI: Where did you guys record the new album.

Selmanaires: We recorded it at The Living Room which is this great all analog studio. Ed Rawls and Justin McKnight mastered it. All vintage equipment.

Jason or Herb: There were actually two songs that we wanted to put on the album that we just couldn’t give the time to fully realize.

Jason: We didn’t want any filler. It’s a very transitional record. Most of the songs were written before Mathis was in the band, so they don’t really have that scope in mind. So we’re excited about starting on new material with him in mind. We’re expanding our palette as a four piece. It’s definitely a step up.

Herb: I feel that we’re still working towards something. We’re getting closer. It can take along time to find your own sound, what original addition to the musical cannon. We’re still learning, and still growing.

Tommy: I think “Nite Beat” was the only song on this record that was a product of all four of us together. Pretty much every other song was written before Mathis was in the band.

DI: Some bands are for listening to when you go out, and some bands are for listening to alone in your room, you guys seem to straddle that line.

Jason or Herb: We like to go back and forth, because not every night is Saturday night. Music is a social thing, but have to say, that some of my favorite experiences were at home listening to music by myself. You want to touch both bases.