On the strength of catchy major key tunes and consistent touring and festival sets, Moon Taxi has steadily grown their following over the last nine years.  As they mix straightforward pop structures with some spacey synth-rock sing-alongs, there are few bands more fun or elevating than the Nashville-based quintet.

And in a setting like the sunny, glorious Austin City Limits Festival, which Moon Taxi is playing both weekends this year, the band can showcase their newer tunes in a perfect late-afternoon blissful setting.

L4LM writer Mike Mannon sat down at ACL Fest with guitarist Spencer Thomson and keyboardist Wes Bailey on the very day their fourth studio album, Daybreaker, was released. (Read L4LM’s review here

L4LM: What are your emotions today?  You’ve known your baby for a while, but now the rest of the world gets to hear it for the first time.  How do you feel?  

Wes Bailey:  With Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and all, it’s been really cool to track the response to some of it. So far, it’s been amazing; it’s been exactly what we had hoped people would think of it. It wasn’t intended to be necessarily a “fan record,” but obviously, we hoped people would love it. For the people who have been following us for years and years to say this is our best record is really encouraging.

L4LM: I was talking with the women in Della Mae about their lovely experience with Jacquire King.  He produced your record as well.  Tell me what’s magic about that guy. 

Spencer Thomson: He was awesome; that’s why we approached him. We were interested in working with him because we had really enjoyed the work he’d done in the past.  He let us do our thing with the songs we already had and encouraged us to be ourselves—he wanted to bring out the best of what each of is.  He sees it as his job to do his best to capture that.  

He’s a cool, steady, calm presence, but he maintains a really focused environment in the studio to work in. We took about four weeks from tracking to overdubbing.  It was just an intensely creative period that at the same time was a lot of fun. 

L4LM: You guys are almost ten years in.  Is the writing getting easier at this point? 

WB:  You know, before we were writing more together in a band room.  But now it’s really more one or two of us off on our own checking in and email trading. “Do you have a verse for this?” That kind of thing.  I think it’s easier for us to lay out an initial idea and get it rolling, it’s much harder to get it over the finish line where we are all pleased.  We were really lucky to have the time this time in the studio to hash out the arrangements and even make some lyrical changes on the fly. It was very relaxed.  It was focused and intense like Spencer said, but we were taking our time and making sure we were getting things right. 

I don’t know if it’s getting easier, I guess we’re learning more about our process, and what we each do best. Who’s good at what? Who’s best suited for writing? And who’s better at assessing what it sounds like in the end rather than writing the parts. We really wanted to be all on the same page with each other.

L4LM: It’s a great record to hit “play” on when you are having people over.  You look around a few songs in and people are wandering over to see what it is.  You make music that is accessible without the embarrassment. Does the internal vibe of the band map to that happy, sunny skies feel of your music?  Is Moon Taxi relatively drama-free?

ST: (Laughs) Yeah, we’re all pretty likeable people I think.  We have similar senses of humor; we have a good time with each other.  We want to make friendly, feel good music. There’s enough bad in the world, we’re not trying to make uber-depressing music to soundtrack it. 

We like to create an environment that people really enjoy what we’re doing.  Trevor [Terndrup, frontman] gets up on stage and is smiling through the whole thing, and that’s kind of our thing. We appreciate when you say that. We’re trying to make music that makes people feel good—have a good time—and to make music that different generations can really get into. 

For more Moon Taxi, check out the band’s official website