The rules are simple...there's a hat, this hat is filled with many questions ranging from the personal to the off beat. We pass the hat, and artists gets a chance to answer the question they choose from said hat. Fun is had by all.
Nashville's Airpark is the newest project by Michael and Ben Ford. You may have seen their faces around in the past when they played in the incredible Apache Relay. Now they've started on a new project and making waves with a whole new sound via Airpark. We got to sit down with them in Philly before their show at Milkboy.
Their debut EP Early Works, Vol. 1 is out now too and available HERE!
Without further ado, here's our Chat in the Hat with Mike and Ben Ford of Airpark:
---
What is your guilty pleasure song?
Mike - For me it would revolve around childhood for sure. What’s the Vitamin C song that isn’t graduation?
Ben - Kylie Minogue!
Mike - "Nah Nah Nah"? I don’t think that’s it. It’s called "Can’t Get You Out of My Head".
Ben - It’s hard to call anything guilty
Mike - If I like something I try not to feel guilty about it. In terms of a song, if it makes you feel good then it’s good!
If you could invite two people to a dinner party who would they be?
Mike - I feel like having dinner with Jeff Tweedy would be really cool. He seems like a great conversationalist and has a lot of cool insights on creative stuff.
Ben - I’m going John Lennon and Bill Murray. I think it would lead to really cool conversations and it would a nice juxtaposition there.
Mike - I’m going Jeff Tweedy and Nick Cave.
If you could be an animal for the day what would you be?
Mike - Easy, a bird. I’ve always wanted to fly. I have flying dreams all the time. That would be badass.
Ben - Koala cause they’re rare and chill.
What’s the stupidest thing you did in your teens to look cool?
Ben - I threw a party in junior year of high school when our parents were out of town. We somehow got some boxed wine. We had the party, it was pretty relaxed. We had this guy who did the landscaping and I was coming home from school the one day and he came up and said 'I found some box wine in the bushes you might have been hiding from your parents, you might want to get rid of that’ and he totally bailed me out from getting caught.
Mike - I was really into puka shells. It was 1999-2000.
Ben - He already beat my story with his puka shells...
Mike - I thought it would be cool. I was into pushing the envelope, still am, especially back in the day. I bought this giant puka shell neck piece that I thought would be really cool to wear to school. It went from my neck to the bottom of my sternum basically and it was completely ridiculous and no one thought it was cool, everyone just felt embarrassed for me.
What were your first impressions of your bandmates?
Mike - We’re lucky enough to be touring with two friends of ours from Nashville. Mark Sloan, who does a bunch on the keys and the bgv’s and Jeremy Abbott plays drums. I’m trying to remember the first time I met Mark, I think he was filling in on an Apache Relay tour.
Ben - Brett had to unfortunately miss a week of tour and Mark jumped on and it was fantastic. I just remember you playing gypsy jazz versions of Apache tunes in the back of that van.
Mike - My first impression of Mark was that he was a really really good musician. We met up with Jeremy at a coffeeshop in Nashville before he started playing gigs with us and I just remembered him being a sweet dude.
Ben - I remember him being really into photography and photographing beautiful older buildings and we just started talking about that.
