Shabooty Interview Series: Chester French

Chester French – The Harvard alum retro-pop duo of D.A. Wallach (Right) and Max Drummey (Left), are taking the music world by storm by way of Pharrell’s Star Trak. Now, doing an interview with yours truely was the best thing they could have done. The music business is muddled with uptight beta-male artists and protective publicists, whom do a great job at clouding any attempt to get to know the artist. Call me in. Whether or not Boston University realizes it, their alum Howard Stern teaches his own course at the HStern School of Interviewing. When you ask softball questions: “What is the meaning of ‘so and so song, you get softball answers, “the song’s about Cats and Dogs” replied Max – to the interviewer previous to myself. I have a polarizing effect – you either love me or hate me – but I’ll be damned if you don’t love Chester French along with me. You know sure, they don’t wear animal masks like Animal Collective and sure one of them was married to a chick named Peaches (that wasn’t in the Mushroom Kingdom), but I am going to put it to you this way: DA+MAX=CF, are some real dudes. Get familiar.

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Shabooty: Would you classify yourself a hipster?
Chester French (D.A.): Fuck no. No, we’re not hipsters… we’re straight shooters.

Have you heard the latest buzz word: “Beta Male” (used to describe the newest crop of artists)? What do you think of that classification?
Bullshit ’cause we’re alpha males. We just put out a free album called Jacques Jams, Vol. 1: Endurance, all about pumping iron… if that didn’t tell peeps all about us, I dunno what could.

Does being from the “Ivy League” hurt your street credibility?
We met freshman year [at Harvard] in the dining hall. No – the only thing that hurts credibility is bad music in our opinion. We don’t focus on image and all that too much. Our primary goal is to make good songs, do good live shows, and work hard. We hope that’s the basis at which people judge us. You can come from an Ivy League school still can make stupid songs – we make smarter songs that are interesting… it’s all connected to where we come from and what we’re into.

Are you friends with hip-hop rapper/producer El-P? How did his Jimmy Choos Remix come about?
We don’t know him very well. We emailed with him & he destroyed this [Jimmy Choos] remix he did, which we love. We like all kinds of music. There are a lot of people that listen to us, that don’t think we’d be fans of… like [El-P's] Company Flow. It was fun to pull that out of the arsenal.

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Chester French – Jimmy Choos – El-P Remix

Are you into any other Def Jux music/artists? Cage? Aesop Rock?
I think they’re cool. I haven’t kept up with Cage’s catalog. I like when people are themselves in songs. Sometimes I can’t listen to a lot of it, because it’s the same thing, “Imma kill your Mom and feed her, her heart.” I think those guys are really creative. I like the music usually.

When’s the debut album, “Love The Future” coming out?
Next Tuesday [April, 21st]. We released Jacques Jams (mix tape) this past week. It’s meant to be a free album that anyone can go to chesterfrench.com and get. They can get our real album which is out Tuesday, which people will discover at same time. If you’re into us, you can pass around the free album as a tool to tell others know what we’re doing, and get them interested.

It’s interesting that Asher Roth is releasing his album the same week.
Yeah, we’re both under SRC/Universal – we’re gonna do a double [album] release party.

Is there Pharrell Williams/Neptunes production on the album?
We produced and wrote and engineered the whole thing – one of the reasons he was cool to let us do our own thing.

Max, any advice on marriage?
No…

How did you get hooked up with DJ Clinton Sparks?
Met him last year when living in LA – he emailed us – he wanted to link up – we got along super well. Clinton’s one of our greatest champions. He’s an awesome guy – really generous with the project (doing the free album). He’s amazing.

What’s the story behind the clown make-up picture?
We wore it to the photo shoot shoot for album cover – but they made us take it off.

Did you see the ‘Fish Sticks’ episode of South Park (making fun of Kanye West)?
We haven’t seen it, yet. We think South Park’s funny.

Of the two of you, who does more of the production?
We’re both involved …Max plays everything, and we both engineer. I’m engineering him and vice-versa. It’s a good collaboration.

Are you friends with Harvard alum and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg?
He’s dope. He changed the world. He’s mentioned us in interviews & has been very supportive. He came to one of our shows during school [at Harvard].

D.A., you being from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, you must have acquired your taste for beer early?
I didn’t get into beer until Junior year of college.

Of the artists featured on the mix tape and the album – who was the most exciting to collaborate with?
When we lived in LA, [we did a song with] Pharrell, and JD rapped on it. That was especially cool, just because they both tried to sign us. We went with Pharrell, but JD’s been a cool guy, a class act. We asked one time. He said, “of course I’d get on the mix tape.”  It’s great to have both of those guys be a part of the project. We also did something with Mickey Factz and Janelle Monae. We’ve been friends with Janelle before any one of us got signed. We wanted to collaborate for a long time.

Do you ever listen to the Howard Stern Show?
Used to… now he’s on Sirius, right? I wish, he’s fucking hilarious.

Would you ever do the Howard Stern Show?
Absolutely, in a second.

In the Lindsay Lohan/Samantha Ronson break up, have you chosen sides yet?
No, I didn’t know they even broke up – Did they?

You studied African-American studies at Harvard?
Yup, it was great. It was interesting because it was multidisciplinary, so I was able to do history, philosophy, science, whatever… long as it had to do with black people.

Have you met Jimmy Choo [the shoe designer]?
No – I think it’s a woman named Tamara Mellon that runs the [shoe] company now.

Last question – How do you think being signed with Pharrell verses being signed with Kanye West, changed the sound of the final product?
The album wouldn’t be any different. There may be different pressures, maybe to fit in to [Kanye's] crew. He and his artists work very closely. [I get the] vibe that they shop at the same places and go everywhere together.
[Star Trak's] dope, super fun. One thing we benefited from Star Trak is complete autonomy to make whatever music we wanted to make. Pharrell has been very encouraging [to build our] own personality, doing our own thing. It’s a gift and curse – amazing to have an artist like Pharrell to give you the opportunity to be that person’s step-child… but we’ve def done our own thing.

Top Photo by: Francesco Carrozzini, edited by: Shabooty.

Check out the official video for Chester French’s first music video “She Loves Everybody.” To become a Chester French VIP visit http://www.chesterfrench.com.

Permalink Posted in: celebs, concert, defjux, el-p, hip-hop, howard stern, interview, lindsay lohan, los angeles, music, shabooty, shabooty exclusive Comments(11) April 15, 2009