How did we get here?: A Cool Hand

As A Cool Hand prepares to play at Mike n’ Molly’s tonight at 9:30 p.m., I spoke with frontman Justin Tanaka, vocalist and guitarist, on how the band formed and their recent Oct. 14 release Long Live the Night. Tanaka was running around with the band as they prepare their Halloween costumes, featuring Adam Howarter, bassist, as Jesus (due to his huge beard and long hair which they “are capitalizing on”), Tanaka as Clark Kent and drummer Charlie McCarthy will ironically be Ringo Star. The band is still in debates over what guitarist Mike Altergott should dress as.MJ: What would you describe as the genre of your recent album?JT: It is multiple genres. Since it’s our first album and we are a relatively new band, we were trying to experiment with different things. Almost every song is a different genre.MJ: What other musical influences does the band have?JT: That’s one of the things I really like about our group is that we have a very diverse musical background. We like Radiohead, The Strokes and Arctic Monkeys. Two of us have a a lot of funk and jazz background.MJ: What was the process like for putting together your first album?JT: All the original songs were written by me initially. The concept that brought the album together was that they were mostly singer songwriter songs. While working together we were able to deconstruct them and put them back together with the band. It really was a collaborative effort, I wouldn’t say that I wrote the songs by any measure, they wrote them. That’s really important especially because the lyrics are so important to the melody, at least we found that as a good starting point.MJ: What was the most difficult part of the process of putting the album together?JT: I would say it was because we were paying for studio time for all of it, so that kind of restricted us. Especially with guitar and vocals and things like that, I think if we had more time to spin off things and let it digest a little bit and get our own feedback, then we maybe could have developed more. There is a limit for what you can do, so what we laid down is pretty much what we did. I’d like to do it again, and I think actually we will do more self recording and kinda save money and make sure that we can kind of direct it more.MJ: What inspired the album title?JT: The album name was actually picked by Mike, who is our multi-instrumentalist, and he grabbed it from one of the hooks from the first, the title track “Night Life.” When I first started out and people wanted to hear our originals, they always asked for us to play “Long Live the Night,” so that kind of had to be enforced.MJ: Now that Jack no longer lives near Champaign-Urbana, is it harder to work together as a band?JT:Its not really, because Jack only lives an hour and a half away. So he’s here every weekend anyways, and Mike is working full time, but he’s still in Champaign. So although it's kind of restrictive because he can’t do anything in the afternoon (he’s working a 9 to 5,) but he’s still here. I think because Jack has to travel, we are very efficient with our practices because we know we have a time constraints. So when we were all here, maybe we took it for granted that we had so much time. I think maybe we were less productive than we are now.MJ: What is your favorite part about the Champaign-Urbana music scene?JT: My favorite part is how everyone is such a community, and not just the bands who are really great at putting shows together and working together, but also the crowds. I know just, especially we were playing downtown, I’m pretty sure there were a lot of people that were at our last Cowboy Monkey show that none of us knew or brought there. People were just coming off the street, and that’s just really great. It’s not like a big city where you have a lot of competition when it comes to bands. If you're doing something I think it's a little bit, maybe easier but maybe better in a way of just getting noticed and kind of making a name for yourself and building that community aspect of it.A Cool Hand’s Upcoming Shows include:

• Friday, Nov. 1: A three-hour set at White Horse from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m.
• Saturday, Nov. 2: They are playing with Chicago-based band Hemmingbirds and The Fruit Flies at Mike n’ Molly’s at 9:30 p.m.
• Thursday, Nov. 7: “Rock the Night for Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and Medical Relief for Children” benefit concert at The Canopy Club at 7:30 p.m.