Sasquatch Interviews and Portraits

The Sasquatch artists pictured below were asked to answer these two questions:

1.If you were to choose a fictional character in any medium (literature,film,tv etc..) to best liken yourself to, who would it be and why?

2.If you were to create an image or paint a picture to best describe your music to someone unfamiliar with it, what would it be?

Check out their answers and a gallery of their portraits (photographed by Josh Darr) below.

Sharon Van Etten

1. Woody Allen wrote this book of short stories called Without Feathers..one of the stories centered around a character who created this box that would let you enter any fictional world you’d choose.

2.There is a self portrait of the German painter Paula Modersohn-Becker (who was also the muse of Rainer Maria Rilke), impressionistic swift brush strokes, hopeful but intense with foliage flourishing around her in a field.

Pepper Rabbit

1. Xander Singh: Aladdin…we have the same skin tone, but if there were someone else I’d choose Han Solo…but I look more like Aladdin. Also, my parents called me Eeyore growing up (laughs).

Luc Laurent: I don’t know…maybe the kid for Catcher in the Rye or Ryan Gosling from The Notebook. I’m totally joking…I have no idea.

2. Laurent: Maybe a parade.

Singh: Yeah, with a lot of color and unsettling at times with a loud siren and somewhere in the background a sad kid.

Dan Mangan

1. Wow…one of my favorite characters and is kind of topical I named the last album after him…Bokonon a false idol in Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle. I’ve also been told I look like Grover, but I don’t remember what his personality was like.

2. Something to do with a bird eating it’s own nest and then regurgitating it for its young.

J Mascis

1. (pause) Jack Bauer (grins).

2. Maybe a crab.

Peter Silberman (The Antlers)

1. Arnold from Hey Arnold!. I’ve been watching a lot of those episodes recently, and for me as a person I think we have a similar attitude and disposition, kind of calm and easygoing.
(Before asking the question, I reminded Peter I asked him this same question a couple years prior. He asked what his answer was then. I told him I’d look it up and see. Turns out it was “Maybe Kevin Arnold from The Wonder Years. I don’t necessarily know how similar we are, but I just think he’s a really interesting character. I noticed recently that he barely says anything unless his older self is narrating, but his facial expressions speak louder than anything else.”)

2. Honestly, the cover of our record [Burst Apart] is the best description visually.

The Globes

1. Kyle Musselwhite: I feel similar to Doug Quaid, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character from Total Recall, awakening in this consciousness…something comes out a piece of us, and I think we’re turning into kids.

Erik Walters: So you’re saying we’ve done this before?

2. Marcus Ourada: It would be pretty abstract as fuck.

Walters: Like a Where’s Waldo painting, a lot of stuff going on where you have to look deeper to uncover the hidden truth.

Musselwhite: The album cover really captures it nicely, the atmospheric moments of our music that is…the juxtaposition of the figures and the abstractions around them.

Ourada: The album just fell into place like a jigsaw puzzle.

Other Lives

1. Jesse Tabish: How about Underdog, the dog with the cape? Final answer.

2. Jenny Hsu: A picture with lots of lines, shapes and pattern and in three dimensions.

Dave Monks (Tokyo Police Club)

1. I’d probably be like Ed Harris’ character, Virgil “Bud” Brigman from The Abyss; because I’m a deep man and an amazing texter.

2. I think our music is very much like a painting a kid would create on MS Paint. It’s kind of discreet. Simple ideas spelled out in clear ways, consisting of distinct parts as opposed to a big swirly mess. Basically Van Gogh vs. Seurat.

Washed Out (Ernest Greene)

1. First thing that comes to mind is Indiana Jones, especially with the adventuring aspect of touring…although not sure what the prize is we’re advancing towards. But that seems to be the best answer.

2. I would say the obvious answer is the cover from the previous album, blown out 35mm ’70s beach photos, but we’re switching things up a bit with this new record.

City & Colour (Dallas Green)

1. Clark Griswald in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation because he means well but tends to fuck up a lot of things.

2. I’ve never thought about that. I would paint a picture of the ocean or the sea on fire.

The Drums

1. Jonathan Pierce: As a band or an indiviual? I’ll be Air Bud.

Jacob Graham: I’m gonna say Frosty the Snowman. I’m saying it for his bravery, of course.

2. Graham: Maybe a dead cat.

Pierce: That’s actually a good answer…a decapitated cat head, from my campus.

White Arrows

1. JP Caballero: Andy’s debotched Russian nobleman, Svidrigailov from Crime and Punishment..that’s what I wanna be when I grow up.

Mickey Church: I think I’d be Tarzan. I just wanna live with animals…Silver Surfer would be amazing. Actually he’s badass.

2. MC: It would be like a 20 foot wave, the Grim Reaper surfing with a sickle and a shark midway up the wave unsure if it’s gonna eat the Grim Reaper.

Givers

1. Tiffany Lamson: We’re definitely not gonna pick one for the band.

Josh LeBlanc: I’m gonna say what popped in my head. It’s kind of goofy: Forrest Gump. He always uses passion in everything he does. He goes full force without letting the world around him affect his decision.

Taylor Guarisco: I’d go with Peter Pan. In many ways I relate to his approach. He chooses to live in Neverland, which to me is a metaphor for heaven on earth —something I feel we can all eventually see is here around us now if we choose to focus on doing what we love. When Peter Pan thinks happy thoughts, he can fly. In many ways I think we are no different — except our flight path is on the ground doing what we love.

Kirby Campbell: Luke Skywalker. Luke set out to save the galaxy by using The Force for all that is good. I idolized him as a young kid, and today I try to aim all of my actions towards goodness in a similar way. Every show we play, I hope to release the crowd from their worries and provide a reminder that those worldly worries are fleeting, while letting go of your thoughts completely and living in the moment is a much brighter way to live. In the aspect of our recordings, I’d like for people to be able to bring that release home with them and learn to incorporate that into their daily lives….All in all, let go of your ego.

Lamson: One of my hometown friends used to always call me Punky Brewster. I think it was for her sheer bright, vivacious outlook on life. I would hope to have that quality. She had a sense of strong will and believed she could accomplish anything, move past any problems. She was orphaned yet had this most powerful enthusiasm and positivity about life which I look up to. Overall, her attitude of brightness is something I’d love to tap into all the time. Punky power!

2. LeBlanc: That’s funny, we were just going through the same thing with our album artwork.
Lamson: If youwere to create your own dreamscape, that’s more or less whatever dream you’d want to become a reality.
LeBlanc: It is really in the mind of the element. We’ve never delved into the visual aspect because it gives someone a preconception and we don’t wanna be in that position early on.

Noah and the Whale

1. Charlie Fink: Cool Hand Luke.
Tom Hobden: Owen Wilson’s character from “The Life Aquatic” Ned Plimpton

2. Fink: I’m an Edward Hopper fan..paintings that come to mind are “Night Windows” “Nighthawk’s” and “Morning Sun”
Hobden: There’s an Ashcan painter, George Bellows. He has a painting, “The Big Dory”

Foster the People

1.Mark Foster: Probably Huckleberry Finn. He’s mischievous and always up for an adventure. He’s a wanderlust and always finds himself in a pinch but seems to get out of it.

2. It’d be like some kind of monster eating brightly colored flowers…like a field of flowers, a kid drawing with lots of color with black over it, then carve the image out with the colors showing through.

White Denim

1.James Petralli: Fletch. I’ve always wanted to have the same kind of sense of humor and this unknowingness of myself.

Joshua Block: For the band I was thinking The Wild Bunch, but they all die. But I don’t think we’ll die in the end unless we go down to Mexico and get into a huge fight with the army.

2. Block: I was gonna say a boat with wheels, like a huge line of boats painted impressionist-style.

Steve Terebecki: I was going to say poor watercolor paintings of a hot tub.