Not often does a band with almost 20 years of history and a well established presence take such a long break in between recordings, but that was very much the story for Chicago based Tortoise.  Although they have toured here and there, the band just recently release their first album in five years this past June 23.  Beacons of Ancestorship is the band’s sixth official full-length album and has been long awaited by fans and music industry affiliates.

Tortoise, formed in 1990, has thoroughly confused the world with their almost impossible to categorize and exceptionally unique sound.  According to member, Dan Bitney, it can be hard for the band to even classify themselves.  Attempts at stamping a genre on their music aside, it is pretty unanimous that Tortoise is one of today’s more innovative and musically revolutionalizing projects.  With the launch of a new album and the power of the press on their side, the band is out on the road, performing songs off the new disc across the United States and overseas.

I spoke to Dan Bitney from the smoker’s parking lot at the Holiday Inn, Santa Monica, as he stared at the ocean, contemplated a cold swim, and simultaneously chatted about the band’s five-year recording gap and current tour.

So you guys are going to play Los Angeles on Saturday?  Is this the first show of your tour?
Dan: We’ve already done a little four-day thing in New York, and we got to go to Greece a couple weeks ago.  But as far as this run of shows, yes it will be the first.

How was Greece?
Dan: Really nice but they lost some of our gear when we went over there so we couldn’t play a couple of the new tunes.  It was a bummer.  You know it’s such a funny situation with the airline now where they charge you for baggage and then they can just lose it.  It’s like, if we have to pay for you to take it, there should be some guarantee that we’re gonna get it.

Did you get it back?
Dan: We got it back a week later.  Nobody knew where it was.  And we have this rockstar travel agent and he found it and got it for us.  I have no idea where it was.

You seem to have a strong presence in Europe.
Dan: We used to license our stuff to a German label in the mid 90’s and we’ve always kind of really done well in Europe.  We get the same amount of people pretty much in any major city that we go to, but there was just tons of press for the first couple of records over there.   We were perceived as geniuses there for a while.

You guys just released your first full-length album in 5 years.  Why so long in between albums?
Dan: I just think we’re just bad planners.  We’re still getting all the offers basically to play all the time.  Last summer was really good but we were like international commuters.  We were going to Europe every weekend for like 2 ½ months.  Everybody is really busy too.  Some people have kids now, and my wife went thru grad school.  But yeah, it’s really just kinda like bad communication and planning was what it really attributed to.  Not any of the tours are really that big.  It’s becoming a liability actually.  You did consider it your livelihood and now it’s kinda like I don’t really see how I can afford to be in this band basically (Laughs).  I’m sure I’ll feel better.  It’s not that late in the year and I’m sure some nice stuff will still pop in.

I’ve heard a lot about the new album and have heard some of the songs and it’s really great.  In your opinion, how does it differ from your previous albums?
Dan: When Tortoise started, it had this real kind of minimalist double bass kind of thing and there was kind of the unwritten rule of no guitar.  Throughout the history, guitars came back in and we really started to get more aggressive, which kind of came from playing live so much.  Then with Standards and It’s all Around You, our last two records, we kinda saw we had to make a bigger step this time, have new elements and stuff.  I used to think that some ideas weren’t really suited for Tortoise and I think now my parameters are super different in that respect.  I’d say it’s more aggressive, more immediate.  It’s not genre specific.  You can’t really tell somebody what type of music we play.  There is more of a hip-hop kind of element now and more kinda dance music in a sense.  Like a song like “Northern Something” has elements of dance hall.  You always kind of like want to mask what type of genre it is with just weirdness.  Which I mean, is kind of our forte I guess.

You guys play a lot of instruments.  Who plays the most in the band?
Dan: Sometimes I feel like I’m jumping around the most.  I think I probably play the most actually.  But if you ask me what instrument I play, I wouldn’t even know what to tell you.  My concept for the next record though, was that everybody would have to pick one instrument and commit to it for the whole album.

What’s the most unique instrument that you guys use live?
Dan: Probably the thing that gets the most attention is basically a midi controller that we have. We got it because we used to travel with a marimba and it was such a pain in the ass to get the mics on it to get it sounding good because it’s kind of a quiet instrument and doesn’t really work in the rock setting.  So, we ended up getting what’s basically a midi controller that is laid out like a marimba basically and it’s got weird lights flashing on it.  People love the lights.  That’s the piece they lost in Greece too and they don’t even make it anymore and it costs like $3,000.  That’s probably the weirdest one.  People are always like what is that?

Can you tell me a little bit about some of the side projects that everyone has going on?  Were some people focusing on those in between the album release time and everything?
Dan: John McEntire has a recording studio in Chicago.  That’s where we record all our stuff.  So he’s kinda running business and he also plays in the band The Sea and Cake.  Doug McCombs, has got a new record with this guitarist David Daniel.  He used to have a project called Brokeback, him and another bassist Noel Kupersmith.  Jeff Parker, I mean he plays with so many people.  He’s more tapped into what I would describe as the jazz world but a little more underground I guess.  He’ll be the one that is playing four nights a week in Chicago or going to Norway for a tour with somebody.  John Herndon is really similar.  Both play with this guy Ken Vandermark, this saxophonist from Chicago, in Powerhouse Sound.  So they’ve been doing a bunch of shows with him.  I did a project with the other two drummers, John McEntire and John Herndon, that came out on Stones Throw last year called Bump that was basically just drumbeats.

So you guys are very involved in the Chicago music scene then?
Dan: Totally.  Which is great.  They are funny gigs.  Like there is this one Tuesday nights at this bar called Rodan.  It’s not really my gig, but I get on it once and a while.  There are all these people there and if they are Tortoise fans, it really freaks them out that there is no admission charge.  You’ll have these people from wherever like Australia and Germany or something and it’s always a thing that makes people jealous of Chicago basically because they’ll come from somewhere like LA or New York and they’ll be like “That would have just cost like $20 in New York.”  Chicago really still has that vibe where you can just kinda hear about something and somebody doing something else.

You guys have been together about 20 years now and have had a few members come and go.  How has this affected the band?  Have any of the new members influenced your sound or brought any new elements in?
Dan: Everybody brings something totally different.  Initially when it started, I wasn’t really even in the band.  I went and saw their first show, and their second show I played saxophone on like three songs.  And then one of the original base players left.  We got Dave Pajo and he kind of filled in that position.  And at some point Jeff Parker came and they were both in the band and then Dave left.  So it’s really been the same lineup for a while.  But you know, the main thing about it is it’s not one person’s vision. It’s really a collective. There’s not really a leader.  And that’s the saving grace I think.  If there was a leader, I don’t think any of us would have lasted.  That’s the strength of this band, that it’s not one person’s vision.  It’s a group.

What’s the story behind the name Tortoise?
Dan: Initially they wanted it to be called Mosquito, but then right when they were going to start making their first album, Steve Shelly, the drummer from Sonic Youth, had a group called Mosquito.  So they switched it.

Is there a big difference in what you guys do in the studio vs. trying to recreate the songs live?
Dan:  It’s a real challenge.  We use the studio a lot with overdubs and layering instruments and you never really stop yourself from experimenting.  You never really say “ Oh there’s no way we’re gonna play this live.”  You have to put that out of your mind because you really want to take the songs as far as you can basically.  So that does create a situation where later on we have to kind of figure out how to play the songs.  I might have to play drums on a song that I didn’t play drums on or somebody else might have to play a synth part that I played because I have to play like two other things.  It definitely gets a little tricky but generally you just kind of try to figure out what the most important elements are and you try to do that.  But you know, we have samplers too so you can cheat a little bit.   But we’ve definitely had songs that we just really couldn’t play live.  You know, they are just too weird.

In terms of your songwriting process for this album, were you guys sitting on a bunch of material that you hadn’t done anything with or was it all brand new writing?
Dan: Yeah, that’s where the time helped.  Everybody had a lot of demos.  People could kind of make stuff on their computers and bring it in and we could learn how to play it and start recording it and change the song form.  I brought in a couple of tunes that were my ideas that I brought to the Bump project that didn’t get on there.  I had these drum ideas which ended up being the drum parts for “Northern Something” and “Gigantes.”  You kind of bring in ideas but really what you hope for is that somebody is gonna elevate it; that at some moment somebody is gonna have a great idea.  There is a problem with just having something formulated.  Too formulated can be a problem where people are just trying to imitate what you did in your demo.  It’s better if you just have a little idea and that everybody works together to have it become more realized.  I’ve had problems where my demos just sounded like a band and it’s not like anybody kinda changed the idea, they were just trying to replicate it and then it wasn’t really that good.

Interview by Nicole Jones