We pride ourselves on being a touring band. We work very hard to give a great and unique performance.
— John Gourley
Mental health is personal for our whole band. As touring musicians, self-care can quickly become make it or break it on the road.
We lived out in the middle of nowhere - the most random places - because of my father's work. We spent a lot of time in the car on long drives, just to get anywhere. We listened to oldies rock on the car radio, and the most-played group on oldies rock radio is the Beatles.
As an artist, you can't expect a producer to just bring you a record. If you walk in and say, 'I want Kanye West's 'Power,' it just doesn't work that way.
I like the challenge of writing music without being the coolest guy or band in the room.
You can't just be a rock star by rehashing things you've seen or done before. Bring something new, which is what hip-hop does best.
Great musicians need great producers. The Beatles had George Martin.
We have an amazing job. We get to travel around the world and experience different cultures and just learn so many things.
We should be able to write songs for a new album every six months. If you think about it, it's not a crazy amount of writing.
I think we're pretty spiritual people, the band in general. We're not a bunch of hippies or anything like that, but we like to work together and work with people. We believe that positive energy is pretty necessary in life, although it's not always easy to maintain.
Portugal. The Man, to me, doesn't have any real ties. We try to change things up with every album, really progress, and let things happen.
Music is something that you really have to want to do it, and there has to be a reason behind it.
We've always done what we do, and we go out and try and get better with each record we make.
To be an artist that is fully original, it doesn't exist.
Growing up, I just always doodled, which is the worst word for it. I would just draw things in class, get yelled at by my teachers, get my drawings taken away. That stuff happened all the time.
My dad just left high school in '69, went to Woodstock, and after half a year of college for architecture, just took off for Alaska. He bought a van and went straight into the mountains and built a cabin.
My dad just decided that he wanted to race sled dogs, and when he did that, he took us out of Wasilla, and we never really went back.
I've never been to a beach party before. We have gravel-pit parties in Alaska.
The reason I got into music was obviously because of bands like The Beatles and Pink Floyd, things like that.
When I was in high school and first starting to drive by myself, I listened to Wu Tang in the car, and I recognized their soul and R&B roots.
There's something about Detroit, man: there's a serious vibe there. It could be that blue-collar, working-class-mentality person who lives out there. There's just something about it. It reminds me of Alaska. Texas has the same thing. Detroit is a little heavier than both.
You can never predict a hit.
When I talk to my mom and dad, and I'm in Paris, I'm like, 'Can you believe it?' It's ridiculous. I have a serious love for what we do. It's not something we take for granted.
You can never really know what a record's going to be.
Portugal is like Ziggy Stardust. The period is there, so you know that it's not the country, it's Portugal. The 'Man' states, 'He's the man.'
It's funny, because I had no intention of being in a band because I was so shy. But I loved playing music and loved writing songs. I always thought I'd be in the background and, if I did get into a band, be a backup musician.
I went to so many sleepovers where these parents were reading the 'Book of Revelation' before bed and things like that. I would listen to that stuff, and I would sit there and say to myself, 'If God is so great and so good, why is there this list of rules?' Like, you go to hell if you don't believe in him and hold him up above everyone else.
I would watch 'Sesame Street' and see neighborhoods and kids with other kids to play with, and I just didn't have that. You know, we were on a lake. We just didn't have that stuff.
My dad builds houses, and, for the earlier portion of my life anyway, we moved around quite a bit. It took us to some just really amazing places.
I'm just not into the shady side of the music industry. Give credit where credit's due.
We started playing music because of the Wu-Tang Clan.
If you don't have negative experiences, you have no way to gauge the positive ones, and you have no way to deal with it.
Being robbed is a really great way of editing your belongings.
Poor Ron Paul. He means well. He really does. But there's something about him. I don't know what it is. From falling victim to Sacha Baron Cohen's Bruno to that old-man shuffle, he just seems like kind of a... like kind of a sissy.
Weird Al was something that kids would listen to. It's funny, super funny, smart. It's just kind of jokey. I remember hearing 'Smells Like Nirvana' before hearing 'Smells Like Teen Spirit.' That's how it really worked. I think it's just such a cool thing how he introduced us to so many cool bands. Even Queen - 'Another One Rides the Bus.'
My dad would come to pick me up from high school in a beaver-skin cap, big gloves, his parka and everything. It was so funny to see him show up - his beard all frozen from being out with the dogs.
It's OK to fail once in awhile.
Whether it be tour posters, album packaging, videos, stage design, etc., the visual aspect of music is very important to us.
I want to share music that we grew up with for this generation, the music my parents shared with me.
I feel like every album we make, that's our debut album.
We're just nerds that play music. Because we get played on the radio and have a Vitaminwater ad with Aaron Paul dancing on a treadmill, people are going to say we sold out. I don't write music for that. I write music for me.
The whole band is from Alaska. It's like growing up anywhere else.
I bought a book with guitar tabs and forced myself to learn. I would go to school and then come home and sit in my room for hours figuring out the songs.
It's really hard to escape where you were brought up. Not that I would ever want to escape it.
The Alaskan summers are one of the most amazing things you can see.
It's silly to me to not be positive about rock advancing and growing. Really, we just want rock n' roll to be mainstream.
Money messes up everything. It ruins art. The second you start putting price tags on this stuff, it's... Art isn't for just the wealthy. It's for everybody to enjoy.
Basically, great directors know how to combine music with the scenes that they are working on.
We tour, we do the distance from friends and family, not really knowing how to connect with people on the same level. I've understood now, as much as we tour, we live day-to-day, so our lives are much different than the people who stay at home and go home every night.
That's really important in a producer - a producer that can step up and play a keyboard, play a bass, play a guitar, and help you with things instead of just saying, 'I think this could be better.'
