Vocalist Cal Shapiro and producer Rob Resnick, otherwise known as the hit music duo Timeflies, will be passing through Madison this Monday, Oct. 13, where they will play a live show at the Orpheum as part of their After Hours tour.
Though the tour spans across the U.S. to include a wide variety of audiences and venues, Madison will be more than just another stop for Timeflies, because they have extensive roots in the city.
Just as the live shows of the After Hours tour are set to take audiences on a chronological ride through Timeflies’ career, from the debut of their first album, The Scotch Tape, to the release of their newest album, the following interview encompasses insight on the duo’s progression over the course of their career. It covers questions regarding the origin of Timeflies and those concerning what fans can expect from the upcoming show.
BH: How did Timeflies begin?
Shapiro: Res was DJing, and we were putting together “joke songs” and slipping them into his DJ set. He would DJ at a party where people would be dancing, and then he would play our song in the middle of a set and see if people continued dancing. They did!
Resnick: We starting jamming out, making music, doing our own stuff and sending it to blogs, and Timeflies was born.
BH: You guys recently released a new album, After Hours. How does the release of After Hours compare to the release of your debut album The Scotch Tape?
Shapiro: The albums are very different. The Scotch Tape was released just as we were graduating college. We knew we wanted to chill, kick it and just make music. So we figured we’d put the music out there and see what happens. Suddenly, it was number 1 on iTunes. Now, three years down the line, we’ve learned so much and we know more about the business. We can come up with cool marketing ideas, we’ve seen our faces on screens in Times Square, we’ve had a tour bus wrapped with our image … we do album promotion. We did an ice cream truck promotion event, where we served ice cream to fans in LA and played them new songs from After Hours before it came out. The release of this album was more involved and we had a lot of fun with it. There was a lot more thought put into it.
After Hours was also the first project during which we collaborated with people. We got to sit in a room with a lot of talented people and put together great music.
BH: What came first: producing and writing original music, or Timeflies Tuesdays, a Youtube series in which you released remixes, covers and freestyles?
Shapiro: Our first album was actually all original music. I think from the beginning it was something that we were both more passionate about. Timeflies Tuesdays was more so a very early marketing idea. Once it started, it got so big so fast, and became its own thing. At first it was just us putting up videos so that people could see us in studio, and the freestyle thing just took off. We thought, “Oh, we can do this every week. It’s a lot of fun.”
BH: Between the albums and the YouTube videos, you guys play a variety of material — covers, remixes and original music. Which do you prefer to create? Which do you prefer to play live?
Shapiro: As writers and producers, the original music remains the thing that we are most passionate about. It’s where we have the most fun. So when it comes to creating and playing live, we enjoy originals the most. There’s nothing more rewarding than writing lyrics and producing a song, then going out on tour and watching everyone sing along.
But we work on originals a lot, so it’s nice to balance them with remixes and other stuff. It’s fun to take a song that everybody already knows and make it your own — give it a new and different context. So when we put on one of our Timeflies Tuesdays and it goes hard, it’s awesome too.
BH: Cal, you tend to freestyle a lot during Timeflies Tuesdays. Do you freestyle during live shows?
Shapiro: Oh, it happens and it’s going to happen.
BH: What’s running through your head as you freestyle?
Shapiro: Nothing [laughs]. I have to keep it really clear and think nothing so that I can do free word association with whatever topic comes my way. I have to think on my toes.
Actually, we’re doing this new thing on tour called Timeflieslive.com. When the show starts, everyone in the venue can log on, and submit whatever topic they want. The topics will show up on a giant screen behind me and I’ll just run through and freestyle all of the topics that pop up. It’s really interactive — the crowd plays a huge part in the show and picks the topics for me, as opposed to Timeflies Tuesdays, when Res just writes them down. We are doing this because we want to make the freestyling that fans see online as live and real as possible.
We actually did a show way back at the Majestic, and Montee Ball was one of the freestyle topics. Turns out, he was at the show and ended up tweeting us back. He was fired up about it. It was a good time.
BH: What is the craziest freestyle topic you’ve ever gotten?
Shapiro: The other night, someone tweeted “Ebola” onto the board using the Timeflieslive. That’s the thing about it, though — people can use this site to propose any topic they want, so you have to be prepared for it to get controversial or crazy up there.
BH: How do you keep up with “Timeflies Tuesdays” while on tour?
Shapiro: We’re sitting here right now, in a hotel room in Cleveland, Ohio, setting up our mobile studio, so that we can try to keep up with it. The answer is, it’s impossible. Unfortunately, we can’t play five shows a week and do something every Tuesday. But we try to release music and Timeflies Tuesdays as often as we can — we are constantly working and recording stuff, and releasing it as soon as we can.
BH: What can audiences expect to see Monday when you play the Orpheum in Madison, Wisconsin?
Shapiro: Wisconsin is more than just another town on this tour. Wisconsin has always had our back. Every time we come back to Madison, it feels like home. So this show is going to be a real homecoming for us.
Resnick: Our merch guy actually went to the University of Wisconsin. We just picked him up in Madison after a show. He hopped in the van way back when in 2012, one night after we played the Majestic, and he hasn’t left since. Prior to that in 2010, before we even sent our stuff out to the blogs, he approached us and was like, “give me some music.” We gave him some demo CDs and he just started giving them out to people. Needless to say, we have some serious roots in Wisconsin, so we are really pumped. Totally fired up to be back with the Badgers!
