Audio The B-52's
"Funplex"

The ubiquity of their hits on rock radio might make it seem as if The B-52s never went away, but it's been 16 years since the fun-loving band released a studio album.

They never broke up, kept touring all the while, and finally found the energy and the inspiration to make a new record, the appropriately titled Funplex, which hits stores March 25.

Although singers Fred Schneider and Kate Pierson have long been the face of the band, drummer-turned-guitarist Keith Strickland is the musical mastermind behind the group.

Strickland spoke to MP3.com about finding inspiration in musical descendants of the B-52s, the songwriting process, and taking Funplexon the road on the True Colors tour with Cyndi Lauper.

Hey, Keith. How are you? Hey, I think whoever's calling has been calling the wrong number. Oh, OK, you have a second to talk now? Yeah, you ready? Yeah, absolutely, that sounds great. OK, great. Thank you for taking the time to talk to us, first off. Certainly. No. Thank you. So, it seems like your fans should get some sort of gold star for patience. Sixteen years is a long time to wait for a new album. I totally agree with you. Our fans have been very generous and very patient. But why now? It's been 16 years but it also doesn't feel like you've gone away. You have continued to play live dates. Why was now the right time to put together a new studio album? I'm not quite sure why it worked this time. We actually had gone into the studio to try to write before, during those years and it just was not happening. We weren't on the same page. The energy wasn't there. We weren't clicking and so we abandoned the idea.

After [1992's] Good Stuff, personally, I was still feeling a lot of pressure to write another album that was that successful or that would be as successful. And, it's a mistake to think like that. It's crazy making.

So that frame of mind began causing a lot of anxiety and restlessness and so I dropped out for a while and Cindy [Wilson] had left the band and so it just wasn't the same anymore. So we all took a break. We had planned to take a break after Good Stuff. But it lasted much longer than we anticipated it would. And, I personally had to find my way back to the source--this sort of lightness outside of everything.

But I continued to write and try new things that would not have necessarily worked with the B-52s. Each of us did that in our own way during that period. So it was a period of growth. It was important that we do that, even we didn't really plan it out this way. I would imagine that having each of you kind of go off and write solo and maybe do some solo stuff would, in some way, help in the process of getting back to the place where you all feel comfortable doing this again. It does. Cindy returned to the band in '96, '97 and we started performing together regularly again, which we've been doing ever since.

But this time, around 2002, we started sort of having very casual discussions about a new album and we all felt the need for new material. And we thought, "Well, if we're going to keep doing this, we should put out a new album." And so I started writing music in 2003, and that's when we all started, really. OK, what was the process like? Was it consistent? Or was it a bit sporadic? I know that you all don't live in the same city anymore, so you have to set aside time. So was it kind of a bit piecemeal for a while? In a way. The way we do it, it's in two parts really. I write the music at home in Key West, Florida. So I was writing the music there and then I would have everything on a hard drive and we would do one song at a time. So I would have the song on a hard drive. I would fly up to Atlanta to meet Fred, Kate, and Cindy and there we would go into a studio, where they would write their vocals and their lyrics and their melodies.

And so we would do that in between strings of live dates--two or three times a month. In between, I would go home and I would usually spend about two weeks per song on the music and then I would meet them. And then they decided to try and write their lyrics and their melodies within three, four days max, which was very quick compared to the way we used to do it. We found that that works just as well. There were a few sessions that we had to return to on our next writing session. But that worked out really well.

But yeah, it was kind of sporadic, and then there were some business delays or some legal delays, if you will, and we couldn't write for a little while. We had to wait until some things were resolved before we could continue. So it sounds like, despite the fact that you do all the music, it still remains something of a pretty democratic process, in terms of the final product. Yes, it is. It's very democratic. For the arrangement process in particular, we all sit there and we decide how is this going to be finally arranged and what works. When they're writing their lyrics and their melodies, I'm there to assist in guiding through the music, in a sense, because what I have is already arranged. It's basically an instrumental piece of music with an intro, verse section, chorus.

But as they start writing and their part begins to take shape, then sometimes I rearrange the music around to fit what they're doing. So that's where we really collaborate with each other. That's where my collaboration with them comes in and then we arrange it all together. We do the final vocal arrangement together, and I'm primarily fitting the music to work with the vocal arrangement. Got it, yeah, OK. But yeah, everything we do is completely democratic. That's the way it's supposed to be. So it seems safe to say that the circumstances surrounding your recording and your activity as a band, earlier in your career--the crazy festive atmosphere of Athens and New York in the '80s--is quite a bit different from all of your lives right now.

I'm curious how you go about trying to recreate that energy. The new album very much feels like the classic B-52s sound. But I would imagine that when it's coming out of Athens in the late '70s and early '80s, it would flow a bit easier. How do you go about recreating that energy? As far as the music's concerned, I was listening to a lot more electronic dance music, and at the same time, listening to a lot of rock and roll, old and new stuff. I don't know. I still keep my ears to the ground. I'm still willing to take chances and allow other influences to come in.

But I noticed around six or seven years ago that there was sort of a new wave of rock and roll bands that I found very inspiring. I just heard this energy there. I could totally relate to it. I'm still a fan. I'm still a fan of rock and roll. I'm still a fan of new music.

So I think that's a lot of it. You just get turned on by it and that energy is still there. With this album, part of the inspiration for the music was listening to those two genres. So I thought I should try putting these two sounds together, with our own sound.

That was sort of the pivotal moment for me. It's a simple idea, but for some reason, I could imagine a particular sound and I wanted it to be more rock and more electronic--leaner, more focused and up tempo and danceable. I also felt that if we are to release a new album after 16 years, then we've got to give it our all and do what we do best. And I've always felt that what we do best is really high energy, up tempo, shameless dance floor party music. Absolutely. No muss, no fuss. You know what works, let's do it and that was everybody's attitude once we got into the studio.

We were really on the same page, we were very focused and also what happens with us, when we're all working together, we are just in our own universe and it's kind of a timeless universe really. It's just what we've always done, because we didn't start out doing this as a career move. We didn't really know that this is what we were going to be doing for last 31 years of our lives. It started out as friends, yeah. When we first started, we realized that we have this chemistry. There's something really interesting that happens when we all get together and we write. And it's still that way. There have been times when it just wasn't clicking. But we don't struggle with that. We would just abandon the idea.

We've never forced it. The albums that have worked best is when there's just this extra energy there when you go into the studio the first time to begin writing that record. And you can feel it right away. You just know if it's going to work or not.

But there are moments during the process where it's a struggle and tedious and it gets tense. Everybody's, like, "I want that part in there, it's my favorite part." But that's part of the process. But above and beyond that, you can tell when you're onto something. Right, exactly. It is interesting in terms of the arch of things, that musical descendants and bands that draw an influence from you guys, would in some ways, inspire you to kind of update the sound for this record. Which bands are you talking about? There are obvious folks that have clearly listened to your music, people like LCD Sound System and the Rapture. Because I had moved to Key West, I was going out a lot more. I used to live on a mountain top, kind of reclusive and then I moved to Key West. And so then I started going out and listening to music in a social atmosphere, in a club. And it's dance music and I thought, well, this is what we do, this is where you would hear our music now. And so I felt inspired by that. By that moment, yeah, OK. That makes sense, yeah. I was inspired by having our music that people would hear our music in a club and they would be dancing to it. And there were bands that I felt there was a sensibility in their sound that was similar to ours. Junior Senior is one. Scissor Sisters, even though they don't--their sound is very different from us. I think they have a very similar sensibility. Absolutely, sure. There's a kind of irreverence and humor involved. All of a sudden, there are all of these bands now that I identify with in some way. There might be some little thing in their music that I can relate has a sense of familiarity in it.

It was very exciting to hear that and it kind of brought me back--not in a nostalgic way. But it brought me back, in a sense, to what I call "the source." To that thing that is what you really like doing in your music.

I'm still a fan of rock and roll music and music in general and so I listen. I have to keep my ears to the ground and listen to what's going on. But yeah, a lot of the dance music aesthetics have filtered into our sound. But I still feel like we still sound distinctively like the B-52s. Absolutely. Despite the fact that this is your first new studio record in 16 years, you guys have continued to play live dates, since the late '90s or so. And so I would imagine that you all are chomping at the bit to take this new record on tour. Are you going to do the True Colors tour? Yes, yes we are. So that'll be this summer? Yes, in June. Yeah, we're doing that. We actually went to Europe last summer and we had just finished recording the album and we wanted to do the new songs. So we actually learned about six of them and put those into the set and we went to Europe and did a few festivals. And it was really exciting. It was a very young audience. They were coming to us.

But yeah, we're really looking forward to touring more on this album. We're doing seven of the new songs. We've been doing them for a while now. But we're going to go into rehearsal and we have some ideas. We're going to sort of take the show up a few notches and sort of do some new things with some of the older songs and work it all into this seamless, shameless dance floor extravaganza. That's probably a good idea, mostly for you guys. Since I would imagine that you may have played some of those songs once or twice before life. [laughs] Yeah, I don't think we've ever done a performance without playing "Rock Lobster." I would imagine that would be the case. We did it on our very first performance and we're still doing it. I think the fans would chase you back on stage one way or the other if you didn't. Yes, exactly I know, we couldn't get away with it. Well, congrats on the new record. It was worth the wait. It's good stuff and we look forward to seeing it live. Thank you. Thanks again for taking the time to talk to us. Certainly.