For part two of this series, go here.

Neon Indian recently added two new members, former Denton musicians (and College Station residents) Ed Priesner and Josh McWhirter, to its touring lineup. These two have been hard to keep up with over the years, as they both performed in shoegaze-heavy noise rock act Fra Pandolf, which yielded the once rather active DIY venue, The Fra House, which is now defunct. After Fra Pandolf, Priesner and McWhirter kept busy with bands such as Shiny Around The Edges and Last Men, the latter of which had a reputation as an almost stylistically pure yet fierce hardcore act. The two were also an integral part of the developmental stages of Paperstain Records.

As the two moved on from Denton they parted ways to a hotel resort in Alaska (Priesner) and Chicago (McWhirter) before eventually reuniting in New York. They are currently musically reunited as a duo that sees the two moving further away from their noisy roots for which they were locally known, in the sample-heavy pop project, Sudden Laughter. You can catch them as part of Neon Indian’s current touring lineup. Tonight they’ll make an appearance on The Jimmy Fallon Show, the band’s second time overall to do so and ahead of their Granada performance later this month.

I spoke with McWhirter by phone recently ahead of his first TV appearance and international tour and asked him about his local and national musical lineage, as well as playing guitar on on Neon Indian’s new album, Era Extraña. McWhirter will be playing bass and guitar for Neon Indian’s live act, among other onstage duties. My interview with Priesner will appear on FrontRow tomorrow.

FrontRow: We’ll start with one of your favorite subjects: College Station. In the beginning, how much of a shock or a change was it just to move to Denton from College Station?

Josh McWhirter: It was definitely quite a bit of a change. In College Station, aside from a few bands that we sort of could relate to a little bit—and especially in high school when you start to listen to different stuff and explore more underground bands—at some point, you kind of felt like you hit a wall with it. Because there aren’t a lot of bands that are doing more interesting, experimental stuff there. I remember initially wanting to move to Austin for a little while. But life and certain circumstances led us to Denton, which seemed like a similar vibe. There were musicians there that were into similar things and we became more involved in the local music scene than we had anticipated when we first moved there, which was awesome.

I’m really glad that in ended up that way obviously, because we met so many great people. It was definitely a shock; College Station is not my kind of place at all. Obviously it’s an uber-conservative town. We didn’t know people with similar interests. So [moving] was a shock, but it was a good shock.

FR: So you then hopped from Denton, to Chicago, to New York. Correct?

JM: Yeah, totally. I moved to Chicago in June of 2009. I lived there for a little over a year before I moved to New York.

FR: Was Chicago not necessarily what you thought it would be, musically? Or did you like it?

JM: Even though I was drawn to Chicago—it’s a cool city, it has a lot of great, music, art, and food—I didn’t go there for any major reason having to do with the city. It was just basically I had an opportunity to move someplace. Specifically in Chicago, I had some friends that were running this place called The Mopery, which I’m sure you have heard much about from Colin [Cameron]. But I lived there for the first three months in Chicago, and I basically was staying in this warehouse with nine other people. Which, was an intense situation for sure. A lot of fun, and it was definitely crazy.

I had an opportunity to move into a place that had a built-in set of friends. I knew many people who had moved from Texas to Chicago, and a lot of them had been there a year or two before I even got there and established themselves a little bit with the local music crowd, specifically with noise music. That was a lot of what was going on, specifically at The Mopery. Like [Mike] Forbes and his free jazz. A lot of people making harsh noise music, but it wasn’t totally limited to that. There were many different kinds of shows that went through The Mopery. But it was definitely a noise and experimental-leaning venue.

At that point I had just graduated from UNT. Right before then, Last Men had broken up. Ed [Priesner] had just moved to Alaska, and it was a weird time basically. I felt very lost at that moment, and Chicago was this “thing to do.” It was cool for a time. I liked living there. I had a cool job and a lot of good friends.

FR: Ed Priesner moving to Alaska isn’t what ended Last Men, was it? Or were you all just tired of it?

JM: I really loved being in that band. I really still love Cory [Hager] and Lucas [Dayton], and everybody who was involved in it. I think everything went really slowly with that band. Which was partly because of the circumstances concerning people’s lives. For example, I was going to school, and Lucas was in school, and everyone was juggling something. Specifically at that moment, I know that Ed was feeling restless. When he went to Alaska and came back, I think he realized that the pace [the band] was going at, was a little slow. Which it really was. It would just take us forever to write songs, honestly. They were always good songs, but it would take us forever. Because we, frankly, were all at a point in our lives where there wasn’t much of a fire under our ass to get s*** done. It was pretty stagnant, basically. At some point we all realized that we weren’t going to take it somewhere more and be a lot more serious about it. It wasn’t really something that was going to work.

FR: In both Denton and Chicago, you were involved in DIY spaces that had a big impact on your life. How did The Fra House differ from The Mopery?

JM: In many way. What I think is funny is that the general “crazy vibe” was present with both of those things. That’s not necessarily something that comes with me, or follows me around. But both situations were “houses,” but The Fra House was a house. The Mopery was a giant, windowless warehouse. That place looked intense. It’s like living in a factory, basically.

With The Fra House, we fell into doing the shows almost by accident. When we first moved into the place, we were 19 or something. Obviously it was cool, because we were getting this giant house and we were just like, “This is awesome! We can throw parties!” Or whatever f****** weird stuff 19-year-old kids want to do. At some point we got contacted by Lars [Larsen] or Aaron Marshall, someone from The Undoing of David Wright. They had some house show canceled, that was supposed to have gone on somewhere else in town. The show was Undoing of David Wright and this band called Skullening, I don’t know if you remember them…

FR: Yes, from San Antonio.

JM:  Basically they just asked us because they knew we moved to a giant f****** house. It was a perfect space for that kind of thing. It ended up being a lot of fun, and a lot of people came out. We realized it was a perfect space for that kind of thing and it evolved from there. It was a crazy time for sure. After living there for the second year, I moved out, because it started to get a little too crazy. But it was a lot of fun and I feel like The Mopery had a similar kind of vibe.

The Mopery had much more of a “name,” and was a much bigger place, so they had higher profile shows. With The Fra House it was always more Denton, which has a local scene, but we did try to have touring bands come through as much as possible.

FR: So did you start your Sudden Laughter project when you were in Chicago?

JM: Yeah, it was in 2010, after an incredibly brutal Chicago winter. My first Chicago winter and my last, basically. That’s when I realized I couldn’t live in Chicago. It was a terrible, depressing time for me. I started recording under the name “Limits.” I was doing it under the impression that I would start putting out random tapes in Chicago. Because obviously I knew a lot of people who were doing that kind of thing, like my friend Brett [Naucke] that runs a full tape label. At some point I realized I wanted to do more than a “one-man/bedroom” sort of thing. Initially, I was just excited about the fact that I would be able to make new music and just do it by myself and have it be more of a recording project, where I could incorporate all kinds of weird sounds. Especially at that time, because I was starting to get into a lot of different kinds of music, specifically a lot of hip hop. Which inspired me to use samples in music, which is a prevalent part of Sudden Laughter. We use weird samples and sound loops and we just like having these elements of the songs that don’t quite sound like any specific instrument. That was really refreshing, because in every other band I’ve been in, it felt like more of a specific genre exercise. Especially, Last Men. Which was all about trying to do so much within a certain instrument lineup and with certain sounds.

I had a lot of friends who were doing music in Chicago and were part of this weird noisy scene. But even as much as I loved that, and I love all of those people, and as many awesome bands as I had gotten to know, and even be a part of—I actually played in this noise rock band for a minute called Lechuguillas—I then quit. Because I realized that, I, aesthetically, wasn’t drawn to loud, crazy music all the time anymore. That’s still a huge factor in the project I make right now. I’m just kind burned out on the harsh, angry vibe of music that was floating around. Not in a bad way, I still like and listen to a lot of it. I had just been doing that for a while, and wanted to do something else altogether.

But with this project, I didn’t want there to be any sort of limitations whatsoever. Also, at the time a lot of circumstances were leading me toward leaving Chicago. I wasn’t that happy at that moment and was falling into a routine that I knew wasn’t for me. What ended up happening, which ties into Ed and I joining Neon Indian, is that we had been talking about collaborating via email on a long-distance sort of thing.

Over the course of the year that I lived in Chicago, Neon Indian would come to town and these are all super-old friends of mine. It was awesome to reconnect with them in a new city and we always had a really great time. Then when they came into town for the Pitchfork Music Festival in 2010, we made it into an entire awesome weekend where everybody is just hanging out. I had mentioned to them casually that I was thinking of moving to New York. A few months later, I got an email from Alan that said, “Hey, we’re about to go on tour with Prefuse 73 and we need a tech.” So I jumped at the chance, and the tour ended in New York. I used working on the tour as an excuse to move. I gave away a lot of my s***, moved out, went on the road, and ended up in New York. It was unusual how all of that went down. But it was cool, because obviously it led to a lot of what ended up happening in the past year- Ed and I working on Sudden Laughter ostensibly, and working with Alan on this new Neon Indian record. Which kind of started a few months after I moved here.

FR: So how did it go from you being a guitar tech to you being in the studio with Dave Fridmann?

JM: It was weird. They had hired me on because I was just a guy, and I there wasn’t much that was holding me down at that moment. Initially, it was “Hey, come on the road! Come hang out with us. You’ll just do a lot of driving!” I remember being as helpful as I could on the tour and I remember that making not just an impact on the band, and my friends, but also with management. I ended up working with them even when we got back to New York. What we all just really discovered is that it was a good time. There was obviously just a good chemistry between me and the band and everybody. We became close, because, aside from Ed, these were my only friends in New York City.

Then Alan went to Helsinki for a month-and-a-half or so, and he started writing a lot for this new record. He started sending me stuff that he was working on, because obviously he was completely alone, halfway across the world. He was definitely having these moments of “I’m getting a lot of work done, but I’m also going stir crazy.” So he started sending me stuff, just to have another person to field ideas. That ended up turning into him being interested in having me do a little bit of guitar and post-production work whenever he got back. Becauase, as much as he got done in Helsinki, there was still quite a bit of work to do. Obviously the record needed to be mixed and everything.

At that point, while he was writing that record, he was really getting heavily into bands like My Bloody Valentine and The Jesus and Mary Chain. Obviously a lot of shoegaze, and that was starting to creep into the way he was writing songs. When I was in Fra Pandolf, that’s very much what I was going for, and that was very much a formative experience for me as a guitar player and me as a musician. A lot of post punk. A lot of shoegaze. Very lush. He knew that was something I could do well, because that’s just how I play guitar. I remember him sending me almost-demo versions of songs and thinking, “God, you could add guitar over this and it would sound really great.”

We ended up, in February [2011], doing his second session with Dave Fridmann. We ended up working it out so I could go there for two weeks. I went up there with the impression that I really didn’t know how much I was going to be contributing to this record. He showed me a couple of songs that I thought could definitely use some guitar on them. The first record, Psychic Chasms, has these little guitar flourishes on it, but I feel like the more we started actually working at Fridmann’s studio, the more we realized, “Wow, this dynamic is actually working really well.” That led to me playing on half the record. Obviously there are still songs that are very electronic-oriented. But the surprising new turn for this record is that there are a few songs that are very “My Bloody Valentine-esque.” Just very heavy, dense kinds of songs.

And Fridmann, who has been around for a long time, and actually knows guys like Kevin Shields, has made records that I grew up listening to. It was a very amazing and humbling experience, especially because Dave Fridmann is such an incredibly nice, down-to-earth guy. Just brilliant at what he does. And even a good producer, which is a very interesting new thing to be a part of.

It’s kind of funny. For someone whose first record was made on one synth and Ableton? Alan has become quite the expert on recording and nice studio equipment. Obviously he’s the kind of person that wants to be involved every step of the way with everything. He has recording chops down for sure.

FR: So, how are you feeling ahead of your TV debut?

JM: Oh s***. It’s been so weird. We were originally supposed to do that on the 29th of August. That was the weekend of Tropical Storm Irene. For the Fallon performance it’s going to be a production. We’re working with projections and lighting props. It’s going to look really f****** crazy. I wouldn’t call it pressure, but what’s funny about that, is that it’s going to be our second gig. Possibly third. It’s a TV performance, and on top of that, it’s an unusual performance. It’s definitely going to more involved than just us performing. There’s an aspect of that, that is definitely weird: “S***, we’re gonna be on TV.” I get freaked out about it, but ultimately, I’m really not. It’s more like, “Let’s just do it and make it good.” We have a job and we just have to do it, and that involves playing with this band live on television.

I feel like there is a lot more complexity to this show than there was prior, and it’s very much more live. I will say that’s one of the reasons Alan took us on board. He needed extra bodies to make this stuff happen. After playing on the new record, I feel like it would be awkward for me to sit here and watch someone else play the guitar parts. He was shy about asking us, because he knew were trying to work on Sudden Laughter, but it was like, “Are you kidding? Let’s do this.”

It’s ambitious and it was hard work to put this together. There’s more synths and there’s more going on, but in a really good way. It’s come together quite nicely and I can’t wait. Honestly, I can’t wait to play The Granada more than anywhere else. I feel like that’s going to be such a fun show. I’m excited about showing my friends and old buddies, that this is what we’re doing with this.

FR: So you’re excited about The Granada show, and I was going to ask how you felt about the big Dallas Convention Center show on New Year’s Eve, the “Lights All Night” performance. That’s a huge deal…

JM: I’m mostly excited because that’s going to be like a vacation, honestly. At that point, we’ll have been on the road for three months. We’re playing Fun Fun Fun Fest. I think we’re going to Europe right after that. It’s going to be intense, and by the end of the year, we’ll have been doing this for so long. So going to Texas and playing this New Year’s show, the enticing thing about playing that show is that we’ll all hang out with our friends on New Year’s Eve and be home partying.

FR: And how do you feel about Fun Fun Fun Fest?

JM: Totally stoked about Fun Fun Fun Fest. In terms of the lineup…

FR: You’re a lineup kind of guy when you play?

JM: I mean, we’re playing on the same stage as Public Enemy. Are you kidding me?

FR: Okay, I’ve got a “gotcha” question for you: How does working with someone like Dave Fridmann compare to working with one of the known local recording tyrants like Justin Lemons or David Saylor from Paperstain Recording?

JM: (Laughter) Aw, man. You know what? Yeah…It’s a totally different vibe. They are going for totally different things. Obviously. You know, to this day I still love the way that Justin records and the stuff that he and David do. Ed and I really helped build that studio and Justin: I f****** love that guy. Ed just made the valid point that it’s a totally different thing now. We helped with the sort of beginning stages.

Fridmann takes a totally different approach. You can just tell in the types of records that he makes. Fridmann’s a bit of a maximalist, you know? Lemons and Saylor are much more stripped-down. They are much more about capturing a live, honest sound. Fridmann just comes out and says, “Let’s just f****** add stuff to it.” Even if you think about records like The Soft Bulletin, Fridmann helped to orchestrate a lot of those records. He just has an ear for huge records.

Totally polar opposites in a way, but I love both styles. As I get older I don’t see those two things being in conflict with one another. They’re just different approaches, and I think they both yield good results in their own contexts. It’s kind of awesome that you asked that. I miss those guys a lot.