Day Jobs - Veronica Falls

Welcome to my new column. It's called Day Jobs, and the idea is I talk to bands about whatever it is they do in their downtime. You know, those fleeting moments where beer doesn't pass as currency and you have to actually come up with money for rent and food and stuff.

This week I talked to the London-based quartet Veronica Falls. These cuties write songs about love and heartbreak with pretty, fuzzy sounds that make you just want to coddle them and protect them from all the bad in the world. Even though their interests lie in pleasant things like art, photography, and records, the band has had their fair share of odd and dirty jobs before they were united by their love for 60s music. I sat down with members Roxanne, James, Marion, and Patrick backstage at Music Hall of Williamsburg as they listed off all the bizarre gigs they’ve juggled in the past.

NOISEY: Hey guys! So you’re on a North American/European tour right now. What do you guys do when you’re not on the road?
Roxanne: We’re really busy but we do a bunch of different things. Sometimes I work at a record label, I nanny, I take photographs… James does screen printing.

Did you guys go to art school?
James: Yes, but I studied music there.

I was chatting with the singer of the opening band when I was waiting for you guys earlier. He said you guys were super young – like, too young to have day jobs.
Marion: What?? [Laughs]
Patrick: Too young to work in a shop? No, we’re really not that young.
Roxanne: We’re all in our mid-20s.
Patrick: That’s nice that he thought we were that young

Yeah, I came into this interview expecting all of you guys to be going through puberty!
[Laughs] I think they’re younger than us, actually.

Since we cleared that up, what have you guys been doing before Veronica Falls?
Marion: I used to work at MTV doing some programming and for the sci-fi channel as well but I haven’t done that in a while.
Patrick: I was working part-time at a bar but I quit last year. I was supposed to start a new job a couple weeks ago but it didn’t happen so… nothing [laughs].
Roxanne: We do this and that, like sell things on eBay, a little bit of dancing, you know.

Nice! Would you consider yourselves professional dancers then?
Patrick: You can say that. People usually pay us not to dance.

That’s not a bad gig. What were the worst jobs you’ve had in the past?
Roxanne: When I was a teenager, I worked in a cinema. I used to make popcorn for eight hours a day.

Did you get buff in one arm turning the popcorn thingy?
Yeah, and I used to get really, really hot. But the worst thing about that job was the matinee shows, which were usually empty except for a few middle-aged men there. My boss would ask me to clean up the theaters.

I was actually at the movies last night and the entire row in front of me jumped up because there was a rat!
Oof, gross! See, cinemas are really scary!

Yeah, I had to watch the rest of the movie with my legs propped up.
Patrick: Yuck, I would have left. I think my worst job was when I used to work as a taxi dispatcher when I was 14. I would take calls from old ladies at the supermarket and stuff. But I grew up in a really small town where there wasn’t a lot going on, so most of the calls came from people who were too drunk to leave the house but had to go pick up cigarettes and whiskey and whatever.

Like a day drunk? What were your hours?
I was only 14 so I could only work Saturday day hours.
Marion: It’s hard dealing with difficult customers. When I was 18, I used to work at the bakery counter of a supermarket in Paris. It was in a very posh area so all the customers were really obnoxious. They wanted their bread sliced to perfection. But at least I wasn’t slicing fish!

Any memorable or horrible bosses?
Roxanne: Yes. When I was working at a record shop, I once got dragged out by the crazy owner. There is a chain of record shops in London owned by a crazy tyrant and he dragged me out like this [grabs my arm] because he thought I wasn’t doing any work. I never went back.

Rude! Good for you for quitting. That’s employee harassment.
Yeah, Patrick was there buying records and he witnessed this.
Patrick: I was like where is she going…?

You’ve been awfully quiet, James.
James: Hmm? Oh. When I was 15, I cleaned a school. I was paid for the job so I just did everything as quickly as possible.

Ah, yeah, I kind of know what that’s like. When I was in grade school I had to clean the bathrooms all the time cause I got in so much trouble.
Yeah these schools were really bad. I didn’t even clean the bathrooms. I just decided I wasn’t gonna do it.

What is the oddest gig you guys had to do to make a quick buck, or I guess quick pound in your case?
I once had a very weird job making swords for battle reenactments. These swords had wooden bases with foam blades so people could strike each other.

Was it a specific battle they were reenacting?
No, it was for a company that made these swords for weird hippies who do this sort of thing for fun.

Were you already a skilled sword maker or did you have to go through training?
No, my dad does carpentry so he put me up for the job.
Marion: My weirdest job was working on the Big Brother program. I was paid to watch recordings of these people living together in a house for hours and cut out swear words when they said them.

Wait, what? You would watch people for hours on TV?
Yeah, it was the reality show Big Brother.

Oh I see. I thought you were thrown into an experiment or something about what TV does to your brain.
Well, it was kind of like that [laughs].
Patrick: When I was in college in Glasgow, I taught an evening class to old people about how to use their cameras. It was really fun for the first two weeks but they forgot everything they learned every week. It drove me crazy. It was kind of like groundhog day.

You guys held so many jobs. What would you be doing full-time if you weren’t musicians?
Roxanne: I’d be traveling the world, collecting things, and selling them in a shop I would own.

Sounds like the life. Thanks guys!

@kristenyoonsoo

Check out the rest of Veronica Falls tour dates here.