One Saturday Morning in the '70s

Sunshine Saturday, the fifth album by the duo Florapop is a collection of musical memories from the '70s and more. In the interview Mark Flora talks about the idea behind it, his favorite things in the '70s, the cartoon cover and recording the vocals.

Robert Pally: "Sunshine Saturday" sounds like a concept piece with different moods. What is the idea behind it?

Mark Flora: I guess the main quasi-concept idea that I took into this record was, "I loved how I happy I was as a kid in the 70s waking up on Saturday morning to watch cartoons, eat a box of Fruit Loops or Captain Crunch, dig for the toy prize and then hang out all day with my friends." Being a highly nostalgic guy, I reached back into that bag of emotions and tried to make a record that might share some of those sentiments. I also knew I wanted to incorporate a lot of 70s AM radio sounds, because I’m still quite attached to the songs of that era, and I knew they’d serve as good vehicles for a lot of the songs. Hearing "Beach Baby," "Someone Saved My Life Tonight," and "Yesterday Once More" (believe me, I could go on!) still gets me. In that happy/sad way that comprises the best of melancholy. So, going into the record with that, Lisa told me she was pregnant! Knowing that we were bringing our first child into the world shaped us and the record’s vibe immensely. New songs poured out and the nesting instinct brought much softer hues into the music. I was simultaneously nostalgic and looking forward to my daughter’s (McCartney) arrival. Hopefully some of that mystery got captured.

RP: The mood on the album is mostly happy, but not only. There is also a sad one (song 15). Did you want to show the many moods of life?

Mark Flora: As the recording process progressed, yeah, I’d say that we wanted to convey the wide variety of vibes that settled in. We went through the whole gamut of emotions as we wrote and recorded this, and I’m glad you picked up on its varied moods. Hopefully the sad stuff is a "good" kind of sad, and the joy of rollicking pop is a soundtrack to happy times for people. Lisa feels the record’s centerpiece is "Wouldn’t it Be Cool?" The longing for endless Saturdays expressed in that song is what "Sunshine Saturday" is about for her. For me, the centerpiece is the piano break during "Once Upon a Saturday" that comes in after the lines, "Don’t know what I feel inside, don’t know what it is." Lisa had written that piano part about 4 years ago and it haunted me. One day when we were both kinda down I suggested writing a song around that piano riff to shake up our day. Well, the song was written in about 15 minutes, and then we were so pumped with it that we hooked up the studio and recorded the piano and basic vocals that same day. So right there, you have a song showing many moods.

RP: "Sunshine Saturday" is a big step away from your last album. What triggered that?

Mark Flora: Again, the baby’s impending and subsequent arrival softened this record and informed a handful of tracks. We slapped the first Florapop thing together in this big spurt of, "Let’s just have fun and kick out a power pop record!" We had no idea there was a pop community out there at the time, so we made that one just for the fun of it -- out of sheer joy and love of power pop. Well, it founds its way into hands that really encouraged us to set the bar a bit higher on the next disc. We also started listening to music we’d never been exposed to. The High Llamas, Louis Philippe (thanks to you Robert!), I finally scored a good copy of "Smile", the deeper album tracks from the Beach Boys Brother Records era and Macca’s "Little Lamb Dragonfly/Lazy Dynamite" kinds of things. That stuff really sunk in, educated us and made us want to incorporate those kinds of vibes and places. I love how all the tracks are linked on the High Llamas’ "Hawaii" and I wanted to do a bit of that with this sprawling record. Jeremy encouraging us to take our time was also a boon. We delivered it to him 2 1/2 years after he asked for it!

RP: How long did it take to record the album?

Mark Flora: A good, solid year. Not that we went at it every day, but it was basically from January of 2001 to January 2002. We both work day jobs, so that limited our recording to weekends and week nights. And we only recorded when the vibe was right. I never forced myself to record if I wasn’t in the mood. Plus, there are 22 tracks, and a lot of them have a lot going on. That took a lot of tinkering. I was also writing songs throughout the recording process.

RP: Was this a kind of a dream to do such an album?

Mark Flora: So many things fell into place for this one, so yes, it was a dream come true. All of the musicians were great to work with, there was an incredible vibe associated with this record for the Floras and it was made at an important time in our lives. It sure was rewarding to hear all the songs segueing into eachother for the first time.

RP: Did you first have the idea to "Sunshine Saturday" and then start to write the songs or was it the other way around?

Mark Flora: I knew the next record would be called "Sunshine Saturday" and I had a handful of songs that I knew would make the record.I went into the record knowing that much, and then the vibe of the record and life’s circumstances started dictating what it would ultimately be. It was fun just letting go of the reins.

RP: I get the impression that the lyrics are more used to transport melodies than to have an important meaning. Right or wrong?

Mark Flora: When I’m writing, the melody and its cadence always pour out first. They usually pour out together. I then figure out what emotion caused that melody and try to plug in words that don’t fight it. Seldom do I change a melody to fit in a lyric, but I do take care to make sure what is there lyrically carries the emotional gist. And I usually go with the first thing that pops out of my head. If someone told me they get more out of the feel of a certain song’s mood via its music than its lyrics, I’d quickly agree that I do too.

RP: You have paid extra care to the vocals. How long it did take to record them?

Mark Flora: It’s kinda funny how I’ll spend many hours recording vocals to lyrics that were written in 10 minutes! Depending on the song, we’d spend anywhere from a good week laying vocal tracks to a night or two. Recording sessions were so hit and miss, and there were often times we’d come back to a song a couple of months after we’d started it with more parts that had come to us as we listened to the song in progress. And then we’d spend another week full of nights or a weekend on them. When we went for the vocals on "Wouldn’t It Be Cool?" Lisa was a trooper as we pushed through a full week of nights and then a full weekend on just that song. And then I heard more parts and down we went to the studio for more vocals!

RP: Did you work with effects on the vocals or did you just double them?

Mark Flora: We doubled, tripled, quadrupled and on and on. We would stack them until we felt they had the amount of richness we were hearing in our heads. And then we usually heard counter melodies that we liked to stack as well.

RP: What was the thing on a Saturday in the 70s?

Mark Flora: For the most part I didn’t enjoy school. Saturday meant a lot of good things to me. I didn’t have to be in a classroom, the day started with 4 hours of cartoons, and it usually had something fun in store for me, whether it was going to a matinee, the pool, just riding my bike, going to the Kwik store for comics and candy, going sledding, watching football or hanging out with my friends. Now I’m in a dayjob situation, and Saturday still has that alure.

RP: Is the album also a bit like a photo album with your
memories from the 70s?

Mark Flora: It kinda started out that way, but I’d say it’s more like a snapshot of our lives during the time we were making it.

RP: What equipment did you use to create the special 70s sound?

Mark Flora: I bought the Partridge Family’s garage and equipment on ebay and just went to town with it. Nah, I think it’s just the sounds of the 70s are so ingrained that they come out without much effort. I knew what tones to go for with the guitars, I used a mixture of very clean reverbs, I left the mics on the drums wide open and we used keyboard sounds popular from that era too. Vocally, I guess since I’ve been singing along to "Beach Baby" since 1974 and Lisa has been singing along to the Carpenters, then we have some luck at getting the vocals in the ballpark too. On a handful of songs, in order to get the mix going, I’d play some Wings circa "Band on the Run" and go between that and my mix. It helped me set bass levels and have an idea of where to place the vocals in the mix. It also gave me confidence in which reverb to choose.

RP: You listed a whole bunch of bands in the booklet. How much did they actually influence you? Or did you more try to recreate the feel of their music?

Mark Flora: Quite a bit of both. You can definitely hear the spirit of "Pet Sounds" and "Hawaii" here and there, I used bass lines from "I Wanna Be With You" by the Raspberries, we used Carpenters/Bacharach types of intros on a couple of tunes, we stacked the vocals ala Richard and Karen on a handful of tunes, I’ve always loved and tried to emulate Lindsey Buckingham’s quirky stuff on "Tusk", and Lisa loves going for Cocteau Twins kinds of things. Many of the other bands listed in the booklet have thrilled us with pop and kept us in this very happy place, even though our music doesn’t sound anything like theirs.

RP: There are two psychedelic influenced songs on the album (12, 16). Psychedelic was in the late 60s. What are these two songs doing on a 70s album?

Mark Flora: Even though we deliberately set out to display our love for the 70s on "Sunshine Saturday", we weren’t always trying to nail just that sound. The 70s thing, though abundant, was only one of the wells we dipped our bucket into. Hopefully that doesn’t confuse listeners. Both of those songs you mentioned caught a vibe we wanted on the record and were carefully placed to give some flow to the record. "Hawaii" and "Gideon Gaye" made me want to do stuff like that. I think so highly of Sean O’Hagan, and my recent endless listening of his music from "Gideon Gaye" up through "Buzzlebee" encouraged me to throw little transitions onto "Sunshine Saturday."

RP: Can you tell me more about the cartoon cover design of "Sunshine Saturday"?

The artist, Paul Fricke, contacted me through our website and asked us if we’d be interested in having him do the art for our next CD, and we said "Sure!" Going into the record, I knew I wanted the cover to be very bold and cartoony, but wasn’t sure exactly what it needed to be. Then one night I was shopping for groceries in the cereal aisle and bingo! I saw all of the cereal boxes with these characters looking at a bowl of cereal. I thought it’d be fun to have Lisa and me in caricature holding a bowl of sunshine. The Nutrition Facts liner notes came to me then as well, and then I thought it’d be fun to use the side of the jewel case for a Bazooka Joe like comic strip. Paul took over from there and did a great job and delivering the concept. He designed the back after I told him I’d love to see things from my childhood represented.

RP: How many albums have you released and when did they come out?

Mark: Five discs: I released a solo record in 1995 called Flora. Then Lisa and I decided to become a duo and we released a mellow folk pop disc called "These Same Skies" in 1997. The Florapop EP came out in 1999, "Mark and Lisa Sing Rockabilly Country Gospel" came out in 2000, and then "Sunshine Saturday" this year. I’m probably going to sound like a terrible salesman here, but people have consistently been disappointed working backwards into our catalogue. If folks like "Sunshine Saturday", then they might like the EP and "These Same Skies." The two are kinda blended at times on our new one, because we went to similar places emotionally on them. However, I don’t see "Sunshine Saturday" fans taking to my first CD, and the gospel disc is nothing like the pop stuff.

RP: How did you come up with the idea to "Mark and Lisa Flora Sing Rockabilly Country Gospel"?
I’ve loved rockabilly all my life. I’m a huge Buddy Holly fan, grew up with my parents’ Elvis records, and I still listen to the Stray Cats often. Brian Setzer is my guitar hero! Lisa grew up singing and playing bass in her dad’s country gospel band. For years we wanted to combine those backgrounds and love of the music to make a rockabilly gospel disc, and then songs and inspiration started popping out. I wanted to put gospel messages in the songs because the gospel has been good to me.

RP: Please tell me the story of Florapop.

Mark Flora: Sure! Lisa and I met in 1989 in Clark, South Dakota when her dad’s country gospel band was playing in a park. I told her dad I liked his Telecaster, he asked me to play a few Buddy Holly numbers with them that day, and Lisa and I became good friends. We eventually moved to Minneapolis and married in 1996. Our first CD together was a folk pop thing called "These Same Skies." After that disc we were inspired by the pop sounds of the past and by a lot of the more current artists mining that territory. The stuff just really spoke to us and we wanted to use those palettes in our music. I think we’ll always be making records with whatever music and life experiences are affecting us. We don’t really play much live. We’re much more interested in writing and recording than we are in rehearsing. But, if a great tour could be lined up overseas and audiences were hungry to hear us, we’d definitely be up for that. We already covered the Florapop EP and "Sunshine Saturday", so that pretty much catches you up to date on us. We’re not sure exactly what the next Florapop record will be like, but if it’s anything like the new tunes that are being written and the harder edged songs that didn’t make "Sunshine Saturday", I’d say it’ll be a bit more on the "power" side of pop. Lisa really wants to head into Cocteau Twins meets Karen Carpenter territory, and I’m still trying to digest the pop genius of Louis Philippe, Brian Wilson, Macca and Sean O’Hagan. At the same time, I’m feeling like rocking too. Hopefully the next Florapop disc doesn’t take us three years to make!

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