Portugal.The Man

By Andres Jauregui

Photos by Skylar Reeves

Alaska is the most naturally beautiful, open, quiet place I’ve ever been,” says Portugal. The Man frontman John Baldwin Gourley. “You can step out into the woods and just walk and not find anything. And it’s completely quiet. It’s nice to be laid back like that now and again. I mean, we definitely don’t get a lot of down time on tour.”

It’s a hot Saturday afternoon in central Florida. A few weeks into their first national headlining tour in support of their second full-length album, Church Mouth, Gourley’s Alaska-raised, Portland-based rock trio is a long way from home. The sweltering strip of highway from Jacksonville to Tampa is a far cry from the scene of northern tranquility Gourley describes. “But you know,” he adds, “I don’t really mind being on the road that much. I understand what we’ve gotten into.”

After relocating to Portland and signing to Fearless Records, Portugal. The Man has found its artistic voice in dramatic fashion. While this is the story of an indie rock Iditarod across four-lane highways instead of snowy banks, for Gourley and bassist Zach Carothers, Alaska is never far behind.

“Hiking, fishing, camping. Ice climbing. We did all that stuff [growing up] for sure,” says Carothers. “A lot of crazy stuff happens in places where kids get really bored, but for the most part there wasn’t much to do.”

Feeling stuck in a small, middle-of-nowhere town completely off the musical map is something to which a lot of bands can relate. But for Gourley, the situation was a little more extreme. While Carothers describes his upbringing as fairly conventional, Gourley’s childhood was spent in the more isolated outskirts of Wasilla, where the neighbors talked frequently about guns, Jesus, and the impending apocalypse. Gourley’s parents, former hippies and dog sled racers, raised their son in an off-the-grid house with no phone.

“It wasn’t as intense as it sounds,” he says, “but looking back on it, it’s definitely different. Even very different from how Zach grew up, in town.”

Fortunately for Gourley, an old record player — powered by an electric generator — and his parents’ collection of vintage albums fueled his creativity from an early age. But the numbing cultural vacuum and climate of social conservatism soon grated on him and Carothers. After playing together in bands throughout their high school years, they decided to migrate to the lower 48 in 1999. The creative resources and liberal atmosphere that awaited them in Portland would change their music forever.

“Portland’s the exact opposite from Alaska people-wise,” he says. “It’s probably one of the most free cities in the country. It opened me up to a million new things.”

Exposed to a new community of bands, new genres of music, and the percolating energy of a vibrant scene, Gourley and Carothers soon began work on what would become Portugal. The Man.

“I had been writing so many songs that the band almost had a solo project feel,” Gourley says. “But we wanted to maintain it as a band. We didn’t want to name it ‘John Gourley’ or ‘Zach Carothers.’”

Portugal. The Man began life as an electronic golem, relying heavily on samplers, sequencers and drum machines. They recorded and released their debut, Waiter: You Vultures! on Fearless Records in 2004. It was an ambitious attempt by Carothers and Gourley, trying to fuse the experimental and melodic songwriting of The Beatles with the percussive expressionism of the Wu Tang Clan. But it wasn’t long before the young group felt the urge to augment their sound with a live drummer.

“When we started, we just programmed drum machines and played bass and guitar over that,” Carothers says. “In the studio [for Waiter] we laid out electronic beats for everything, but then we wondered how it would sound if we were to have someone play drums on top of that.”That someone was Jason Sechrist.

“I was in another Portland area band, playing lots of crazy hip-hop and jungle beats,” Sechrist says. “That band booked several weekends in a row playing with Zach and John. And so we started hanging out and they picked up on a liking for my playing, and asked me to drum on the record.”

Adding Sechrist — Portugal. The Man’s only non-Alaskan member — to the mix was a fateful decision. His playing liberated the band from the confines of electronic sequencing and unleashed a freer, more spontaneous band. While on tour for Waiter in Germany, fate stepped in again. In the cradle of electronic music, Portugal found its calling as a rock ‘n’ roll jam band.

“I guess we’d been moving away from the sequencing to begin with,” Carothers says. “We had every sound [in the live performance] that we had on the record — tons of stuff going on, so it sounded really cool. But in order to pull it off, we had to play to a click, and we really didn’t like that. It lacked a lot of feeling. It didn’t have any swing. When we got to Germany, it turned out we had to play for a lot longer than we’d expected to. So we ended up stretching out our songs, kind of jamming. And this kind of old school, soulful rock ‘n’ roll ended up naturally coming out of us.”

Church Mouth, their soulful new album, heralds a paradigm shift in Portugal’s sound and approach. If the complex electronic sequencing on their debut demanded rigidity, then the expansive rock sound of Portugal’s sophomore effort crackles with organic spontaneity.

“I guess we’re de-evolving,” says Carothers. “We still have a lot of fun with electronics. I think a lot of our EPs might still be electronic. But as far as live, and as far as the albums go, it’s a lot more fun to do it yourself, instead of pressing a button on a drum machine.”

True to their wild sides, Gourley and Carothers remain enamored with freedom, jamming, and off-the-cuff impulsiveness. A brief percussion loop on one of the Church Mouth songs began as a recording of Gourley and Carothers banging on steel pipes with wrenches and other tools. But, as if to focus and channel their energy, Sechrist offers a more deliberate, perfectionist perspective. Centered on careful forethought, his approach gives Portugal. The Man the structural support it needs.

“For me, the more time I get to spend with a song in the studio, the better the results I’ll be able to get. That doesn’t mean that the first idea is not the best, or that it’s not good to be spontaneous, but I like to try to figure out a quality part that I’m proud of instead of winging it at the last minute,” says Sechrist. “I’m always thinking of how to translate it live as well. I like it when a band’s live performance sounds as good as its recordings.”

Sechrist’s ethic is not lost on the rest of the band. Although their live performance differs somewhat from their albums thanks to all the jamming, Portugal. The Man manages to hold it down. That’s not to say it’s easy — the band’s friendly tradition of jamming with their tour mates (which often leads to a dozen musicians noodling around onstage) has more than once landed Portugal in a precarious situation. Sometimes, all it takes to rock the boat is a lone virtuoso.

“We were playing with this band, Fall of Troy, and their guitarist, Thomas Erak — who is just amazing — jumped up on stage and ripped this fucking insane lead, and then pointed at me, like ‘your turn!’ My turn to respond to that? I don’t know how it happened — I’m not a ripping guitarist by any means — but somehow it worked out,” Gourley says.

For their first national headlining tour, Portugal. The Man decided it was best to keep things under control. Instead of jamming with whoever was on the bill, their tradition to this point, they decided to bring along Portland three-piece Shepherds of Ontario as a backing band. Before the tour kicked off, both bands retreated to Wasilla for a two-week rehearsal session. Oregon met Alaska, and while Wasilla isn’t exactly the Alaskan bush, it provided a secluded, distraction-free location for the bands to blend their collective talents.

“We had two weeks to teach the guys [from Shepherds of Ontario] about 16 or 17 songs. It was slow going at first, but toward the end, everybody kicked in and really got all their stuff together,” says Carothers.

Portugal’s decision to train a reliable backing band to take on tour is just one manifestation of a blossoming new maturity exhibited by the relatively young group. Sechrist, for one, has noticed a gradual change in Carothers and Gourley, even as songwriters.

“[Zach and John] come from a more punk rock side of things, and I come from more of an indie rock side of things,” Sechrist says. “For me, it generally seems that it just comes out of maturity and growth. There comes a time where ... what’s important is getting really good quality songwriting first, and then bringing all the super radical stuff to the table. Day by day I see the guys get more and more into heartfelt songwriting. John’s been listening to this really old R&B, blues, and soul kind of stuff. Zach’s listening to a lot of quality ballads, Jeff Buckley. I think that after ripping around on your guitar for a few years, things just sort of calm down naturally.”

From the frozen tundra of the North to the sunburned highways of the South and everywhere in between, Portugal. The Man’s saga is being written in mileage and in the knowledge they garner along the way. Their openness to new experiences and sense of adventure asserts their burgeoning identity as a band willing to challenge what they know, all the while preserving an endearing fidelity to their boreal roots.

“For this last album, we wanted to be more organic,” Carothers says. “We’re looking to record again in November, and we write about 80 percent of our music in the studio. So we’re not putting anything out of mind.”

www.portugaltheman.net