Live for Live Music recently had the opportunity to speak with the Disco Biscuits guitarist Jon ‘The Barber’ Gutwillig, to discuss everything from the Biscuits upcoming New Year’s run of shows in Chicago and New York City (get tickets for the New Year’s run of shows here), as well as some of the guitarist’s other endeavors, which include his involvement with the recently released ‘popumentary’ BadPuss (starring VH1’s Carrie Keagan, Emily Wiest, Sydney Lemmon, and Hannah Sorenson Huff) which documents an all-girl group, riddled with inner turmoil and drug problems, attempt at a comeback. He not only acts in BadPuss, but co-produced and wrote most of the musical score for the film (which premiered at NYU’s Paulson Auditorium this past weekend). Gutwillig has also kept busy with several business ventures, such as Splice, a collaborative music sharing platform for artists which he worked on with the founders of Living Social and GroupMe, and It’sOnMe, an app that allows you to send gifts to friends and family if you are unable to make certain events.
L4LM: How did you get involved with BadPuss? You are co-producer, musical director, and actor?
Barber: The movie was basically conceived by a group of people on tour with the Biscuits. Emily Wiest (writer of BadPuss) and some friends were on tour with the band. Getting a lot of questions from other bands on tour, like “What are you doing here? Are you playing” and it became a running joke as a way to answer the questions. They invented the band on IDentity Fest Tour w/ the Biscuits.
After tour, I went to CO for awhile, Emily called and sent me script, of course I didn’t read it at first. Finally, I received a phone call a few weeks later, as my girlfriend Karli joined the project, and wanted me to sit in during the read-through, as one of the characters was based on me. So, it was during the read-through that it was realized that there was a real movie there, and at that point we began putting the pieces together. It was decided I would write the music for the band; I had been writing music anyways, and put that together with another group of songs, and then used all of that music to write like 10 originals for the score.
L4LM: That’s quite an interesting story of how that all came together.
Barber: Definitely. What started out as a running joke, came together into this script, then into a cast. And the music was so easy to write. There were no rules to writing the music, which was great and much different than what I was used to.
L4LM: How would you describe the music of BadPuss?
Barber: The band is an all-female pop group, and the movie is about them being at the top of their game, broke up, and the movie follows them on the lead-up to the reunion tour. So I wrote songs representing their early years, before they were big, then songs when they were hitting it big; just creating a couple of different eras, if you will, of the band.
L4LM: Can you tell us about Emily Wiest, the writer/director of BadPuss?
Barber: She is a great writer and very creative mind. Emily has written some plays, but BadPuss is definitely her first “public” work, and feature film.
L4LM: You have written your own “rock opera” with the Hot Air Balloon, was it similar putting together a score for a film? How is it different from what you have done with the Biscuits and/or other projects?
Barber: It was totally different. Not only the process, but the fact that I was using so many different musicians. I worked with my friend Zach in LA, Clay Parnell (Brothers Past/Particle), Steve Molitz (Particle), David Butler, and a lot of various musicians.
Overall, it was just a totally different process, but really rewarding.
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L4LM: Can you see yourself doing more scores?
Barber: Yeah, absolutely. It was a lot of fun and different.
L4LM: Can you tell us about your character, DJ BarberShreds?
Barber: I play a fictionalized version of myself, where I was helping them produce the songs they have played over the course of the career. Basically, I am just commenting on the band as they document the various stages of BadPuss’ career.
L4LM: The movie raised money through a Kickstarter campaign?
Barber: Yeah, we couldn’t have made this happen without all of our Kickstarter contributors. They made this happen, and we can’t thank each and every one of them enough.
L4LM: It sounds like you had a great time doing it?
Barber: It was a complete blast.
L4LM: What else do you have going on outside of BadPuss and the Biscuits? Any other projects?
Barber: That’s pretty much it from the musical perspective, but I have been working and collaborating on this music sharing platform called Splice. Splice is similar to GoogleDocs, for music collaboration software. It basically allows musicians, that are not in the same location, to share their Ableton, FL Studio or LogicPro files from anywhere over the world across the internet. One musician could be in Madagascar, while the other is in Los Angeles. (For more info on Splice, click HERE).
L4LM: How did you get involved with Splice?
Barber: Splice was established by co-founders Steve Martocci of GroupMe and Matt Aimonetti of LivingSocial. They were looking for a really good idea to come together on, and Steve asked me off the cuff what I would build, and I basically told him that idea. So both he and Matt thought about it, and came back to me a couple of months later and said, “Let’s do it.”
So, I was all for it. The ability to bring these incredible, musically genius minds working towards making music better and easier, is a win-win for the industry. And the project is just getting more user-friendly and sleeker. I am really proud of it.
L4LM: It must be nice to see an idea like that come into fruition?
Barber: Absolutely. We have had a lot of success with the public so far. Anybody can sign up for it and use it, and it works great. The whole idea behind it is extremely difficult to build, nevertheless build it right; but Steve and Matt were committed and did it. But it is allowing these DJ’s and musicians on the road to be able to collaborate on a minute-to-minute basis in real time. It’s a game-changer.
L4LM: As the Biscuits gear up for their annual New Year’s Eve run, are you excited about going back to Best Buy after last year at The Theater at MSG?
Barber: Yeah, I am happy about that switch back to Best Buy. I love that venue. It is like our New Year’s home, and it will great to be back. I am also really looking forward to playing Chicago; it’s been awhile, and always so much fun to play there. Those fans always show us so much love.
We are really lucky to be able to do what we do with the Biscuits. It’s awesome that we get to do it again, and we really appreciate the fans coming back, which allows us to do some special things.
L4LM: I have been to several of your multi-night runs, and it seems like the band has settled in to that role of playing these two to three night runs at various spots around the country, with several festival appearances, including the Gathering of the Vibes show with Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann of The Grateful Dead. That must have been monumental for you guys.
Barber: That was the bomb. It was amazing to play with those guys, really cool to play with such great musicians such as Mickey and Billy. Also, it was just fun to hang out with them. We were very fortunate to be in that position to collaborate with them; we threw a lot of stuff at them, and they handled it like pros.
L4LM: What’s in store for the Biscuits in 2015?
Well, nothing that I can announce right now, but we definitely have some things brewing.
I also wanted to add one more thing, we also made an application called It’sOnMe. It’s actually in the app store right now. It allows you to send a gift to friends for a celebration (wedding, bachelor/bachelorette party, etc.) that you might not be able to attend. You can get them a bottle of champagne, a steak dinner, or whatever. And they can pick it up wherever you send it to. We have given out close to 300,000 gifts up to this point. It’s really exciting. Even if you just want to send your girlfriend a random gift, you can do that to.
L4LM: Thanks so much, Jon. We appreciate it very much!
*** Since speaking with Gutwillig, the Disco Biscuits announced a 3-night run at Philadelphia’s Electric Factory from February 19th-21st.***