Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Assembly of Dust hails from New York and New Hampshire. The band was scheduled to arrive Friday night, which would have left plenty of time before their 3:15 p.m. show Saturday. However, the group’s flight was cancelled and they didn’t get into Lawrence until Saturday morning.
The Kansan caught up with frontman Reid Genauer after the band’s performance on Saturday.
Genauer, 35, lives in Manhattan, N.Y.
Kansan: Are most of your shows on the East Coast?
Genauer: Yes and no. That’s definitely where our core fan base is from, but we play all over.
Kansan: Do you notice any difference between this year’s festival and last year’s?
Genauer: Hard to say. I got here before the set and just had time to knock back a water.
Kansan: Do you have any family?
Genauer: I have a one-year-old son and a wife.
Kansan: How does traveling affect family life?
Genauer: I try to balance it so I’m not gone too much. I definitely enjoy watching the little critter grow. But I’ve been doing this for a lot of years and my wife has been with me for most of them, so she sort of gets it. She’s pretty tolerant.
Kansan: How often do you guys perform?
Genauer: We do probably 70 gigs a year.
Kansan: How did the band come together?
Genauer: All of us were friends, so we knew each other already. I think we all share a similar musical aesthetic, and that’s the point of commonality.
Kansan: Do you notice any differences between the people here and those from other locations at which you play?
Genauer: It’s hard to say. We’re from the Northeast and there’s a little more fervor and intensity in the Northeast. That’s just how people are. In places that are far from home, there tends to be more inquisitive looks from people.
Kansan: What does the immediate future hold for Assembly of Dust?
Genauer: Next week we’re in Maine and then the weekend after that, I forget where we are. But we’ve got a lot more festivals this summer.
Kansan: As for followers, do you recognize people in the crowd?
Genauer: Absolutely. Even from festival to festival, there are people I’ve seen that I know from Massachusetts here, and there are people I’ve seen from California within four feet of where we’re standing. It’s kind of cool. But it’s really cool to come to Kansas and see an audience full of people singing the words back to you. It’s really rewarding.
Kansan: Do you think you’d like to come back next year?
Genauer: Absolutely. This is what it’s all about. Part of the reason that festivals are so great, and this one in particular, is that people are here for the music. They’re going to catch a buzz as well, but primarily it’s music fanatics. It’s really gratifying to play to a lawn full of people who are there to soak it in.
Kansan: How do you determine which songs you’re going to play for a given act?
Genauer: We try to mix it up. It’s almost like what you have for dinner every night. You try to have a balanced night, and so we try to do that with our set list. We try to include slow songs, ballads and more up-tempo tunes, and tunes that have a guitar solo versus a keyboard solo.
— Edited by Joe Caponio
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