Augustana’s rock star moment

Nearly every musician strives to reach rock star status, but there are a few rites of passage before getting there: thrashing a Motel 8 while touring, having that first groupie follow you from concert to concert, or having an undergarment tossed suggestively on stage. For the band Augustana, their journey to rock stardom includes not only their omnipresent hit song “Boston,” but also a peculiar security guard and one ginormous over-the-shoulder-boulder-holder. Lead singer Dan Layus explains.

Congrats on the new album, “Can’t Love, Can’t Hurt.” It seems like the album is pretty deep. Would you consider it to be one of those albums people can put in their cars and cry to on an emotional day?
[Laughs] Uh, possibly. You know if it connects deep to someone I guess it could. We put a lot of time into the songwriting and wanted to keep it very real sounding. Kind of how it would sound at a live show, I guess.

Are there any certain routines you guys do before you go on? Like chug a beer or anything rock-starry like that?
[Laughs] Yeah, you know, we shotgun beer. No, um, we do keg stands.

Wow, you guys are real rock stars.
[Laughs] Exactly. No really, we keep it pretty mellow. We might have a sip of whiskey or something before a show to kind of loosen up and help the nerves a little bit. And then before that we just gather around and play some songs acoustic and do four or five singing parts together. We do old traditional bluegrass and cover songs just to help us get in the mood.

Have you ever had a really crazy crowd? Like stuff thrown at you or people jumping up onstage or anything?
Not really. The craziest thing that has happened: [laughs] this is our rock star story right here, it is really lame. We were playing in Spokane and we got a bra thrown on stage on the last song. And it is a fairly large bra and [it] lands on Chris’ guitar or my guitar or something…and I throw it on Chris and we start laughing while we’re in the middle of a song. And we were like, “Wow, that’s the first time we have ever had a bra thrown up at us.” We were so excited that we were like big rock stars or something. After the show, somebody tells us that it was the security guard and somebody threw it up at the Hinder show the night before.

Oh man, really? So it wasn’t even for you guys?
[Laughs] Yeah, the security guard threw the bra that was left over at the Hinder show the night before and we lost all our confidence after that. Maybe we’re not in the major leagues just yet.

Well speaking of which, it seems like success definitely happened overnight for you guys. Once “Boston” came out, it just became this huge hit. How’d you handle that?
Well it is funny, because it might come across like it was an overnight thing but we have put [in] probably three and a half, four years breaking that song and breaking that record and getting ourselves out there. It may seem like a song just takes off out of nowhere, and in some cases it does, but in our case we really had to do a lot of work.

Totally random question: where do you want to travel that you have never been before?
We’re going to Rome next week. We’re doing a conference out there for Sony, playing two songs. [Laughs] We’re going all the way to Rome to play two songs, pretty crazy. It is a big international Sony conference and we’ve never been out there before so we’re really excited about that. Get some good Italian food.

So you’re doing like a 15-hour plane ride for two songs?
Yeah, serious ride.

Well that’s good, but is there anybody in the band that is scared of flying?
Yeah, I would say Justin, our drummer, is always pretty stressed out on planes. One time we had this flight into West Virginia and it was so cold and stormy and we were on this prop plane landing in the mountains in West Virginia. We had never been on a prop plane before and he was just freaking out since the turbulence was unreal and he was puking. We pretty much fly on average two times a week, sometimes three, and right now the schedule we’re on, every other day we’re on a flight.

So does Augustana have their own private jet yet or what?
[Laughs] I am not out of a one bedroom apartment yet, so we definitely don’t have a private jet, I can tell you that much.

Bummer.
We’re trying to get the two-bedroom right now.