Catching Up with Ludo
By: Brittany Reeber
Austin, Texas, known as the live music capital of the world, was certainly living up to its name during my brief stay this past Labor Day weekend. I had over a dozen live acts to choose from every night, as well as a two-day festival, dedicated to the nocturnal inhabitants of the city, known as Bat Fest. Bands took to the stage all day in honor of Austin’s fruit (no, not blood) eating friends, including the band Ludo, whose sound has snuck in to the brain waves of the population through their eerie and addictive single “Love Me Dead”.
Ludo has been busy touring all year in promotion of their recently released album, You’re Awful, I love you. I got the chance to speak to them before their early evening set.
Me: How has the year been so far for you guys?
Ludo: The year’s been really busy. And great, it’s been great.
Me: What do you think are some of the best things that have happened?
Ludo: We put out our record at the end of February. That was really, really cool. We got to do some TV shows; we played on the tonight show and The Jimmy Kimmel show. We played on half of warped tour for like a month, went out with the Spill canvas, went out with Presidents of the United States of America. We’re about to go out with Relient K. We put out our best record. We’re at Bat Fest. We’re doing an interview here with you.
Me: Haha, woo! So, Presidents of the United States of America, as well as yourselves, put a lot of humor in to their music. How was touring with them?
Ludo: It was great, it was a great fit. They’re super nice. I think we knew it was gonna be a good time but the shows were even better than we originally thought they would be. We got along with them really well. It was a really cool thing. We learned a lot too. We go out with a lot of bands that are our own age, been doing this just as long. But somebody who’s kind of like been through so much in their career already…I think we took a lot from it.
Touring with a band that’s sold 4 million records kind of makes you say ‘Hey, these guys know what they’re doing’.
Me: The single “Love Me Dead”, which is extremely catchy by the way, is really starting to blow up. The video is on MTV all the time. That must be exciting for you guys.
Ludo: We had a really good time doing the video. We changed what song we were doing a video for at the last minute. So we really quickly brain stormed and came up with all the ideas ourselves, then got to shoot it and do exactly what we wanted. And before we knew it, it was on TV, all these bad ideas we had were on television. So it was really cool, and we can’t wait to make another one.
Me: I heard that you had two versions for the video: a regular one and a fan version.
Ludo: We did a video for “Love Me Dead”, before we did that one, called the “toothbrush video”. It was us and then we had fans send in a video of them singing the song and brushing their teeth. We put it all together and it’s pretty fun. You can see it on You Tube. And it’s people just brushing their teeth and singing the song, it’s a little weird.
Me: Haha. That sounds funny. Where did you guys come up with the idea?
Ludo: You don’t get to see people brush their teeth that often, and it’s a totally mundane, normal thing. But it’s also very strange and intimate to actually watch. So it’s slightly creepy and we kind of wanted to just see what that would be like.
Me: A lot of what you guys do is very theatrical, where does that part of you come from?
Ludo: I think it’s just that… we’ll get bored with anything that’s going on way before anyone else does, so I think it’s just to mix it up and keep ourselves interested.
Me: You’re known to have themed concerts, what exactly does that entail?
Ludo: Mostly it’s like holiday stuff. We do a big Christmas show. We do a big Halloween show. We did a show for Cinco de Mayo, where we had people grow mustaches. Whatever we can do to mix it up. We got some other ones we’re planning now. So yeah, we will continue to do the themed shows.
Me: Another thing that ties in with that theatrical aspect is your album, Broken Bride, which was a rock opera. How did you guys come up with that?
Ludo: We started writing a song that was about a guy whose wife died in a car accident, so he builds a time machine to try to go back and save her, but he messes up and ends up hanging out with dinosaurs. So the story just kept going, and we tried to write another song to try and fit the whole story in, but it just kept going. So we kept writing songs, and then we had a rock opera.
Me: You put a lot of humor in to your songs, but do the topics stem from something more serious?
Ludo: I think uh… the humor stuff is more just from observation of things that go on and the more serious songs come from more personal feelings.
Me: Your motto: “To entertain people without making them dumber”.
Ludo: Uh…yeah that sounds about right.
Me: Can you elaborate on this?
Ludo: We think it’s okay for intelligent people to have fun and we also think that it’s okay for people who just like to have fun to stop and think for a minute.
Me: Thank you guys so much!
Ludo: Thank you!
