David Frankenfeld: I’m living in Duluth, where I’ve been for the last four years since moving from Minneapolis. We could also add Superior, Wisc., to the list as well, because two of our five members reside there, across the bridge. Our drummer, Joseph, lives in St. Paul these days.

DF: We’ve been a band for about two years now. In the past six months we've added two more members to our live show. The core group got started in the most typical way possible when Joseph’s not-too-shy friend approached me at a Hold Steady show with the slurred question, “Hey, you wanna start a band?” The two of them came over a few days later. The not-too-shy friend could not play due to an afternoon of boozing and a lifetime of not practicing, but there was a connection between Joseph, on the drums, and I, on the guitar. I had some tracks recorded at the time, so I passed those along. The other fellows who make up Batteries' live line-up I met through playing drums in another band. One by one, Bryon Gaynor joined in on bass, then eventually Greg Cougar Conley on organ and vocals, and Kyle Alan on second guitars and saxophone. It’s nice—I never envisioned that all the parts I overdubbed on the record would come together live. This makes it very satisfying to perform.

DF: “Dime Jar,” “I got In,” and “Shortwave” were recorded at Sacred Heart Studios, a grand old church on the hillside here in Duluth. Those were tracked nearly three years ago. I played all the instruments on those since we didn’t have the group together at the time. The other eight songs were recorded at Clubhouse Studios, a ratty warehouse on the hillside, last winter. I feel lucky that two vastly different recording atmospheres with different equipment were able to produce something cohesive. The Sacred Heart sessions were a very isolated, new experience for me, standing there in a huge reverb-heavy room singing my parts to an audience of stained glass windows. The Clubhouse sessions were the opposite—lots of friends around, support, feedback—an environment of fun. By then I had a more concrete vision of where the album was headed, so that helped. Those sessions went pretty quickly, whereas the Sacred Heart sessions tended to wander in and out of productivity due to my own inexperience. It shouldn’t have taken as long as it did (three years on and off?) but that’s how it goes.

DF: The old adage rings true. A few of the Grandsuck tunes are up to five or six years old. It was a matter of weeding through a bunch of tunes and figuring out which ones are actually fun and feel good to play. That’s the criteria. As a drummer originally, I tried to present songs to the band that would be fun to play on the drums. After getting familiar with playing with Batteries, some other tunes were written and put together shortly before the recording process began. This batch of songs really spans a long period of time.

DF: On a rare occasion the song will appear all at once. More often than not though, it’s a very non-linear process for me. I’ll come up with a phrase, a melody, or even just a single word that I want to use. It’ll float around on scraps of paper or in my head for a while until the rest of it feels right. I edit like crazy. I’m really interested in listening to the sounds of words, the vowels, and the way different registers of language can come together in a song. These days, once there is something cohesive, I’ll take it to the band and let them chop it to pieces, which is really helpful. Bryon, our bass player, is especially good at figuring out forms, or recognizing redundancies. Usually, I don’t know what the song means to me until well after it’s finished. Riding a bike is great for songwriting. Maybe that's because the rhythm is already internalized, so it becomes a matter of fitting the melody over those legs pumping up and down.

DF: I’ve always been drawn to the singing voices of old men. Son House comes to mind. I prefer old greasy Elvis to young Elvis, and Time Out Of Mind-era Dylan, as far as voices go. Learning Neil Young songs was how I learned to play the guitar and sing as a teen, so that became a way to approach vocals—singing “Down by the River” and destroying the falsetto sections. Other singers with thin, every-man voices also inspire me, such as Lou Reed or Jonathan Richman. On the album, there are plenty of layered vocals and harmonies, something I enjoy in the music of Elliot Smith and the Beatles. These days I’m more inspired by those singers who can really belt it out, like Roy Orbison or Frank Sinatra. I can’t do that, for sure. If I try to sing loudly, I hate the way it sounds. If I can sing, anyone can. It took me forever to produce a sound I was comfortable with.

DF: Drums. I feel very at home on the drums and approach other instruments very much through the mindset of a drummer—the discipline of it, and the way the simple stuff sounds the best.

DF: Jeremy and I used to open a coffee shop together at 5 in the morning, so we’ve seen the color of the crusties in each other’s eyes. We’ve kept in touch over the years and he helped me record some demos of some of the songs that appear on this record. We’ve done some low-key shows together in the past, both in Duluth and the Twin Cities, before his album came out. Aside from that, he’s one of my favorite musicians around. I only know Eric Appelwick from Vicious Vicious from once when he was playing with Kid Dakota here in Duluth. The transmission went out on their car, so they stayed at my apartment that night. Small world. I remember seeing their CD release show several years ago at First Ave. When the opportunity came for them to join the bill, I said, “Yes, please.”