The Disco Biscuits are currently featured on the cover of Relix. While the July Relix cover story tackles a number of issues such as guitarist Jon Gutwillig’s recent wrist injury, the band’s crossover potential and the four musicians’ relationship off the stage, the interviews also touched on a number of other topics.

In anticipation of Camp Bisco, which will take place in Mariaville, NY from July 15-17, Relix.com and Jambands.com will roll out additional interviews not included in the Relix cover story. First up is an interview keyboardist Aron Magner gave in early May. For some context, when this interview took place Gutwillig had just taken off his cast and was about to pick up his guitar for the first time since injuring his wrist in March.

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You wrote Planet Anthem’s successful single, “On Time.” Though very different than the usual Biscuits song, “On Time” has actually received a bit of mainstream attention. When did you start working on that particular song?

I guess it was summer of ‘08 and at the time I was listening to a lot of new disco, and a lot of Chromeo. It was also a period of time, for whatever reason, that it was just me in the studio. It was kind of like designated vacation time so it was me in there and songwriter and producer Harry [Zelnick], and I wanted to do something dancey. Harry and I put down a cool little riff and then we put in a little bit of drums. It needed something more so I put Harry in the vocal booth with a snare drum so he could tap out a few more rhythms and then we had something solid. I spent the next day by myself just walking around the studio listening to it and dancing to it, and I am not a good dancer. I mean, the whole reason I play music for a living is because I’m not a good dancer. I can’t go out to the club and impress the girls with my dancing skills so I impress the girls with my music skills [laughter]. So I would dance around the studio and listen to it. And Harry was like, ‘Dude you need to come up with more bass lines, that one’s good but you’re not quite there yet,’ and I just kept on pumping more and more bass lines into it. Finally, came up with two different sections that I saved on the computer as “Funky Sex.”

Then I brought it to a Conspirator show, and played it for Marc [Brownstein] at our hotel after the show. I plugged it in and he is like “Yeah, whatever dude, it needs like an ARP [synthesizer] on it,” and I was like, “What? Listen to how funky it is, what do you mean it needs a fucking ARP on it.” And that was kind of the divide. So I went back to work on it, got another section in and the bass line, and I realized in that other section was pretty much a Chromeo song I’d involuntary stolen – I was listening to that much Chromeo that a put down a Chromeo bass line. So I had to end up changing that.

Anyway, I got to a point where I knew that the song was dope enough but didn’t know what to do with it. Harry suggested that we ship it off to this [Philadelphia rapper] Tu Phace who I didn’t even know at the time. Two or three weeks later he sent it back to me while I was in Colorado with a note that said, “I don’t know if you guys are gonna like this.” I listened to it on the speaker of my iPhone and I was like, “This is sick!” I hooked it into a stereo at this birthday party on a boat and it was an immediate dance party. I thought it was an immediate hit but everybody in the band was really against it. They were like, ‘Well if you want to make it a song, you gotta like have us play on it.” I mean, I guess in defense, it is a little bit of a departure from the sound of the Disco Biscuits – it’s a little weird hearing, whether it’s Tu Phace or somebody else, sing over what – we never really bring in singers or guest vocalists. So there was a point where I was going to drop it or use it for a side project. But I am glad I convinced everyone to put it on the album.

Was the goal of Planet Anthem to have a crossover hit?

It’s funny because our manager said to me the other day, “I’m just still working on how to get your fans to go into a record store and buy your CD” and I was like, “What record store? Where the hell is there a record store in 2010?” Where do you even buy records these days? I don’t even know the name of any record stores any more.”

The Disco Biscuits recently spent time in the studio working on another batch of songs. Are these tracks intended for a new album?

I mean the goal was definitely to keep the follow-up going. For us it’s kind of like a – you know we set aside time, obviously, to be in the studio but you can never force art, force creativity and there was this period of time in January where we went in and worked on some tracks for another Disco Biscuits album. We had a really fun New Year’s show, a great Caribbean Holidaze, and a chance to breathe because we only had four shows at the end of January. So we had all this time and Planet Anthem was done but not out yet and all of a sudden we started working on new songs again and it was that same vibe that it was that we were able to capture again that it was when we first started the album three years ago.

We have two control rooms in our studio and both were firing at full cylinders. I was working with Harry on electro stuff and Marc was working with [band songwriter and producer Alex Chiger] on hip hop stuff. When we would get sick of working on those tracks we would switch. It was so fun and refreshing ‘cause you’re sitting there working on a track for hours and after a while you lose a little bit of perspective. So it’s nice to be able to have somebody that hasn’t been listening to it for the last five hours in a row.

We wrote a lot of tracks in January, almost too many. They are not completed though, which is big problem with the Biscuits. We’re so good at starting things and not so great at finishing them, which is why we have to bring people in – whether it was Harry and Alex or whether it was even Tom Hamilton who is a really good finisher as well. It was almost difficult figuring out where the jam sections were going to go ‘cause the songs tell a story in the four and a half minutes or whatever duration the song is, you know, and it’s complete from there without having to insert a jam.

Looking ahead, do you think the next batch of Disco Biscuits’ songs will sound more like Planet Anthem or traditional Disco Biscuits material?

I didn’t really think about it until now but this is the difference: we’re using the computer as our initial palette of creativity these days. I think that’s what’s pushing these songs in that more electronic or different sounding than Biscuits, you know? Our entire career, our palette for writing songs was our instruments. Jon would come up with a guitar part, I would figure out what I wanted to do on the keyboards, and we’d come up with the song that way. And for the first time in our careers, we’re writing songs on the computer first – not even with our instruments and then we have to learn how to play them live.

I didn’t really put that together until now and I would be curious, and I think I’m going to do this, for the next song that I write, I’m going to start it on the piano, where it belongs. And I think I’ll get a lot more melodic content, a lot more progressions out of it. It’s so fun when you’re working on a computer because you have all these sounds and you can make a really cool song just by staying in the key of A or whatever.

You did a good job not playing any new songs live until the album came out. Was it hard to have all this new material in your pocket and not play it live?

That was exuded with the patience of Sting having sex for like twelve hours. [laughter] It took a lot of patience to not play those songs live. All we wanted to do, especially after recording them, was play them live. “Fish Out of Water,” “Big Wrecking Ball” and “Camouflage Soul” were especially hard not to play because we actually played those songs as a live band in the studio. They weren’t even put together through some crazy process like “On Time.” It took a lot of will power and it was one of the reasons we released the album in EP form because we also wanted to begin playing these songs before the album dropped, and we pushed it back enough that we owed it to our fans to get something out there. There was some sort of respect that we had to hand back to the fans for being so patient with us.”

How have you found that the songs fit into the live canon and the fan response to them?

It is interesting because the fans that have some sort of personal contact with us – whether they’re fans that are somehow backstage or know us through Facebook or whatever – tend to be the positive ones. The negative comments always seem to be the people who are able to hide on the Internet. But I know, being a fan of any band, you play new material and everybody just wants to hear the old material that was, once upon a time, new material. But I think “On Time” got a pretty good reception at first, with the exception of the people who were like “it’s too pop-y for me.” But all you have to do is insert a jam into it and all the people like it.”

You released several videos for songs on Planet Anthem. Do you plan to release additional videos in the coming months?

Yes, for “Widgets” and I believe “Fish Out of Water.” They will basically continue the story from the “On Time” video and the robot in that video. You always need to push yourself and push the boundaries and all that stuff, just from the business model you have to try different things. And especially like the state of affairs of this industry. So, I mean, the whole like Damon Dash connection is a really interesting development for us. It’s a different way of presenting our music. He made that Blakroc album with the Black Keys and had these different rappers play over their music. We’re planning on combining world famous rap artists with the Disco Biscuits. It almost feels like the first Jammys where you have these unlikely pairing of musicians and somehow make it work. In a way, it is beautiful. Travis Tritt and the Disco Biscuits are as polar fucking opposite as you would think, but now we’re playing down the jams.

What have your collaborations with Damon and his crew been like?

The idea is just to do as many collaborations as possible right now. They have been doing remixes for us, and we are remixing some of their songs. So they would send us the a cappellas for that so we’ve got like, three like Mos Def tracks and it’s just Mos Def and we’ve got that and we’re building our own stuff underneath it. So we’re doing remixes of their album as well. That’s the concept of one of these projects as well, to do remixes of each other’s stuff. And then there’s also like Discorok thing, which is to like fuse together the Disco Biscuits and their rappers and that type of stuff. So there’s a lot going on.

Talib Kweli is coming into the studio on Tuesday of next and we start the next phase of that project. We’ve been working on, you know, remix songs for them and, you know, getting the band doing shows again. And then of course all the mayhem of the last month, you know, this is the first time in a few months that we’ve picked back up on that and that will start the next process. And by the end of next week even we’ll have a much better idea as to how that whole Blakroc thing is progressing. You know, by the end of next week, we’ll have a much better idea as to what’s going on with Jon’s arm, you know. By Red Rocks, we’ll have a much better idea of did he learn to love the guitar again, or, you know, can he not play the guitar again. You know, it’s pretty crazy how this story’s going to develop over the next few months. That’s one thing about my band that you know, there’s always some sort of drama. Whether it’s drama or whatever, there’s always something with this band.

Hip hop has become so much a part of mainstream music now that influences every genre.

I read in an interview actually where someone asked Jon about the jamband genre and he said there is no such thing as a genre anymore and it’s so true. As an artist you can put out anything and not have to stay true to the form you once were. You can go hip hop, you can go electro, you can go pop-y, you can go rock. Everything is genre bending at this point and there’s no need for anybody to really classify it anymore it seems. It’s the DJ ADD generation. When was the last time you sat through more than like 45 seconds of a song?

That being said, do you believe the Disco Biscuits can play any style of music? If you made an album of completely different types of songs would it still be the Disco Biscuits? Or is “the Disco Biscuits” basically any music the four of you make together?

I don’t know. I mean it kind of seems like more and more the way that we’re writing music now, even though this past album was a very collective feel, it feels that now like more and more it’s like find your partner or whoever’s in the studio at the time and start working on some tracks. Maybe Jon and I will work on something on a Tuesday or maybe Harry and I will work on something just the two of us if nobody is there. That seems like the way it’s been – at least so far and there hasn’t been anything that’s been on the schedule as to Biscuits’ band time to go into the studio.

I would like to make an album of us on all of our instruments playing and not relying so heavily on the computer. I mean, I love what the computer has been able to do for us. I like the work flow of writing the actual song on the computer. I like all of the technological aspects of being able to dial up whatever tones and being able to sit with it in the driver’s seat and do whatever I want. It’s just like me controlling the computer to do whatever I want it to do, but in a sense, and I didn’t really think about it until you said that, I do miss the aspect of four musicians in a room with earphones on and playing our instruments and creating a sound collectively. Like I said, “Fish,” “Big Wrecking Ball” and “Camouflage Soul,” were written in a more traditional way and then overdubbed heavily.

But the next time that we were in the studio at the same time wasn’t until we made the song “Vacation” in London together and then we recorded some songs for NPR together. But it has been a while since the four of us were in a traditional studio together.

Did you first meet Damon through Harry and Alex?

No, completely separate. I think the deal is that a few producers or assistants that worked for Damon had heard of the Disco Biscuits. He happened to be in a room with Raekwon at the time and heard the name. Raekwon said, “Disco Biscuits, that’s what I call my weed.” Damon who works off that type of vibe and energy and our management got a phone call and like “Hey, Damon Dash wants to meet with you guys.” We kind of thought it was a joke at first, then followed it up, and next thing we knew, our manager is having some meetings with Damon Dash.

Damon’s such a good guy. He’s like, “Why don’t you guys come over and see what I’m building over here’ ‘cause he just moved into this huge office that has studios in it, meeting rooms, production facilities….” You know, he’s got people doing web design, and people doing video editing. He’s doing it all basically in house, which is really cool. So it’s like a haven of very young creative artists in their various fields all under one roof. And he also has a similar open door policy, like our studio in Philly does, so anytime we’re here we go and either hang out or start to work on track or catch the vibe and that’s kind of what’s going on there. We’ve done six remixes of their songs, and they’ve done four remixes of our songs. We’ll see where it goes. It’s interesting to say the least, what’s going to come of it. But the ‘You and I’ remix, it’s fuckin’ awesome.

Switching subjects, the Disco Biscuits will celebrate its 15th anniversary this summer. Do you plan to do anything to celebrate?

This July 4 marks our 15th year. We won’t be doing anything on July 4th weekend. We tried but through all our personal schedules it didn’t work out to do a show, so we’re kind of going to use Camp Bisco as our 15th year anniversary. It would be cool to do some sort of retrospective. Most marriages don’t last as long as 15 years, let alone a band.

I was talking to Jamie Shields from The New Deal about this. The chances of a band becoming successful, in terms of gaining an audience, especially a national or international audience, is so slim out of how many musicians and incredibly talented musicians as well, but how many people in general who play instruments with some sort of fervor. The chances that a band gains fans is so slim and then on top of that, the chances that a band who has some sort of success can actually get along to the point where you could work on that success and start to build something from it, is that much slimmer that we should actually count our lucky stars, you know. We’ve been able to find people in each of out projects, whether it’s Jamie talking about The New Deal and how they’ve been able to be resilient enough with each other that would allow each other to adapt to the different facets of their life that they’re growing into yet still come together as the New Deal, or whether it’s the Biscuits doing the same thing, but, you know, the main facet of our lives has always been the Biscuits.

This last tour was crazy to say the least. I’m really proud of the band for what we were able to accomplish, the band and obviously Tommy and Chris. That was some difficult material. At first we wanted to just go for the easy material and they were both like, “Let me bite off the hard stuff like ‘Little Shimmy.’” That was the stuff that was interesting to them when they first started seeing this band. But it was hard for them to not only learn the songs but our process of improvisation and the whole concept of how we peak and invert songs. So in a sense it was refreshing but it was also weird to have someone else playing guitar and our guitarist playing keyboard with his left hand.

But it was cute – Tommy and Chris had never been on a tour bus, and when we got to the first city and they woke up, they didn’t realize the bus expanded. Tommy is also a very close friend of mine, as well as one of the musicians in this world that I respect and admire and revere the most. So [it was] wonderful playing with him.

Did you ever consider not playing?

I think the shows needed to happen. Obviously it wasn’t ideal, but with the album out and the tour so close I think it was something that needed to happen. I’m proud of us for what we were able to accomplish knowing that. An interesting tour to say the least.

In hindsight, now that we look at it, maybe postponing the Wellmont show to next week wasn’t the best day to postpone it to because we’re still kind of in the situation where we’re bringing out the other guitar players. I would hope that be the end of next week on would be well enough to at least play part of the shows. I would suspect that his muscles would tire rather quickly, but I would think that with every passing day, that kind of gets better and better and better and we kind of like to see what happens from there. It could go a couple different ways, obviously. I’m sure there’s emotions that are involved with him as well that run deep and are probably fearful that like, you know, is it possible I could have fucked up my wrist, you know. And I would think that on the same token it’s totally possible in another month, when it’s fully recovered, that it will be like this crazy stage of this spring was just a crazy stage of this spring and then we just move forward.