An interview with The Bosch’s Andrew Raff

Get Bosched with Andrew Raff
By Jon Chattman

Actor Conrad Bain was a delight as Mr. Drummond, the wealthy white man who adopted two African American children on the acclaimed 1970s sitcom Diff’rent Strokes. On an unrelated note, the Brooklyn-based group quartet The Bosch recently released a new EP entitled Hurry Up. Where is the connection between Bain and The Bosch? How about thinking about the man and the band all bring a giant smile to my face, and make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside?
We’ll focus on Bain another day, however. The Bosch, a band consisting of Matt Harrison on guitar and vocals, Holt Richardson on drums and vocals, Andrew Raff on sax and keyboards, and Valerie Sauve on bass and vocals, is a raucous pop group that’s worthy of all the buzz they’ve been getting lately.

We recently chatted with Raff and asked him about the band’s success (their first album Buy One, Get One, was played on countless college radio stations), and what Hurry Up means to them. Without further delay, here’s Raff. Call us, Conrad.

How would you describe your sound?
Phenome-awesometastic. There’s some garage, punk, new wave and alternative influences in there. The Who, The Clash, Elvis Costello and Cake are some of the
artists who we all enjoy to a large degree, and there’s some influence from Ween, the Violent Femmes, XTC, Arcade Fire, Bill Haley, and well, I could keep dropping names until naming everything in all of our record collections and iTunes or WMP libraries. But this is why I’m a musician and not a music journalist.

What was the writing process of making the recent EP?
We tend to work on songs in a couple of different ways. Some songs Matt or I will bring in more or less fully formed and refine those as we go along. Sometimes a fully-formed song will go in a slightly different direction and end up being looser and more fun that
originally conceived (ie. “Brooklyn Cars.”) Others, like “Counting,” arise more organically as a process of collaborating in the rehearsal space from a drum beat or a riff. The newer EP that we just finished recording was a similar process - with some songs coming in fully formed, others developing more organically.

How’d you come up with the title Hurry Up? Does it mean anything?
Matt was at an event at the Apollo Theater where he met former President Clinton and asked if he could get a photograph with the Big Dog. Clinton replied “Hurry Up.” When we were thinking about titles, that was in the mix with some, er, less elegant ideas, such as “Return to Neckbeard Mountain.” Since most of our songs are short and fast, “hurry up” is also sort of the musical ethos of the band, and so a good title for the EP.

Bubba’s an inspiration still. Is there any pressure to put out radio-friendly music?
As an independent artist, getting played on commercial radio is a near impossibility. There’s probably more pressure to put out blog-friendly or podcast-friendly music, since that’s where the buzz is these days.

Do you ever get sick of touring?
We’ve only toured in short bursts: long weekends, mainly. So it’s still like going on vacation for us. Actually, it literally is our vacation since we’re generally using vacation days from our day jobs to do so.

What do you make of Radiohead’s In Rainbows - do you think it’ll change the industry for good?
For artists who are well-known and have sizable fan bases, In Rainbows shows that you can go outside of the major label ecosystem and make a living (and earn critical praise.) It is the latest example of a trend that has been happening over the last few years, where established artists have come to the realization that the labels need them more
than they need a label. But even Radiohead is releasing “In Rainbows” on CD through the ATO label (which is not a major label.) The industry has been changing because of the Internet over the last decade. [It] will continue to change as artists and labels continue to figure out how to convert making music into a way to earn a living.

Visit The Bosch at www.boschcast.com or www.myspace.com/thebosch