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You might as well get used to the odd name, because you’re going to be hearing a lot about Portugal. The Man very soon.  They’ve played more than 1000 gigs, some of them at high-profile festivals, over the past four years. The press loves them. And their new album, The Satanic Satanist, their fourth in as many years, may well be a defining sound of summer 2009.

When not in the studio, the band spends most of their time crammed up in a van, moving from town to town. But while the road has broken many bands, John Baldwin Gourley, who plays guitar and sings (winning Alternative Press’s Best Vocalist award in 2009), ain’t complaining. “Once you get used to the restrictions of space and of having less around you, living in a van is “not so far out there “

Portugal. The Man – People Say

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But the van is not home. Nor20is Portland, where he lives when not on tour. For Gourley, home was, is and always will be Alaska, where his parents fled to from the east in the 1970s in search of a better life and where he grew up.

“Everything about me, including the music, comes from there,” he says. “The song structures come from oldies radio, which was the only thing we had to listen to there. Now [the music industry treats songs] like a science to a point where no soul and substance comes out in the music. But we’re using the structure and bringing substance back to it by writing about things that we know about.”

They also add sounds, textures and tweaks to that structure that the record is much different than the no-frills soul album they thought they were making. “We have so much fun and get way too excited in the studio. We couldn’t have made the stripped down Motown record if we tried because every time we saw some drum machines and synthesizers, we were not about to not use them.”

Now that the album’s done, he’s excited to get back on the road. But  ask why, exactly, he’s excited and he goes blank. “I can’t say what it is. Music is such an escape, and bands like The Beatles changed the world in ways that are taken for granted. And it’s not what it was. But people still need it, need it, need it.

“I can’t say I agree with everything going on in music right now,” he continues. “But for me, it comes down with doing something you love. We love it, and it’s important to me if only for the sake of continuing the music” and the traditions surrounding it.

For that reason alone, getting to play Bonnaroo was especially validating. “I’m glad we had 1000 shows under our belt when we hit the stage at Bonnaroo [this June],” he says. “We had the confidence but, playing the sunset slot the first night, we were nervous because we knew that 95% of the people there had never heard of us. But they watched and gave us amazing respect,” he says. And, thus, the beat goes on.

Words by Neil Feineman

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