Cymbals get ready to tour with Pains

New York's Cymbals Eat Guitars released its critically acclaimed debut CD, "Why There Are Mountains," earlier this year.

The band — vocalist/guitarist Joseph "Ferocious" D'Agostino, keyboardist Brian Hamilton, bassist/guitarist Neil Berenholz and drummer Matthew Miller — will tour with the Flaming Lips in November. But until then, the band is on tour with The Pains of Being Pure at Heart and will make a stop at Kilby Court Sept. 13.

With the crazy tour schedule, it was hard pinning down one of the guys for a telephone interview. So the Deseret News caught up with D'Agostino via e-mail.

Here's an edited version of the exchange:

Deseret News: First off, where are you guys right now?

D'Agostino: We're all at home in New York, rehearsing and preparing for Thursday night, when we'll be headlining Insound's 10th Anniversary party at Brooklyn Bowl — the last gig we'll have in our hometown until Oct. 3, when we return from supporting The Pains of Being Pure at Heart nationally.

DN: Who were your musical influences that got you guys interested in picking up instruments?

D'Agostino: I grew up on a lot of singer-songwriter stuff, and West Coast soft rock and classic rock — the likes of Jackson Browne, the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Neil Young, etc. I would cite "Late for the Sky" and "For Everyman" by Jackson Browne as two of my primary influences early on. That bell-clear voice, those LYRICS, "It's like you're standing in the window/ of house nobody lives in/ and I'm sitting in a car across the way/ (Eagles harmonies) Let's just sayyyyyy/ it's an early model Chevrolet/ let's just sayyy/ It's a warm and windy day."

All I have to do is think about "For Everyman" and I find myself welling up; that melody, and the David Lindley slide guitar, and the fluttering Hammond organ — the whole thing is just so warm and organic and perfect.

I saw Lindsey Buckingham at Town Hall in New York during my freshman year of college, when he toured for his most recent solo record.

Then of course the first two Weezer records, "Pinkerton" and "Blue," really got me into writing songs of my own. I remember buying the official book of guitar tablature for "Pinkerton," opening up to "Falling for You" and being met with about 30 chords I had no idea how to play, and, like, three that I did.

Beauty part of it is, you could get by mostly on power chords and a few key lead lines. So it was almost doable.