Chicago – The three-piece family band Tiny Moving Parts is becoming known for making marvelous math rock. Brothers Matthew and William Chevalier and their cousin Dylan Mattheisen grew up in the small town of Benson, Minnesota. With not much to do for fun in the middle of nowhere, they started making music. They’ve been playing together since junior high, but it was after high school when they really got things going and took their show on the road. In 2010 Tiny Moving Parts released their debut EP Moving To Antarctica, followed by their first full-length This Couch is Long & Full of Friendship, and they recently signed with Triple Crown Records and released the LP Pleasant Living, which features the single “Always Focused.”

Last month Tiny Moving Parts played Riot Fest in Chicago, just days after releasing Pleasant Living. Matt (bass), Billy (drums), and Dylan (guitarist and vocalist) took some time out of their busy schedule to chat with BestNewBands about their new album, family reunions, and golfing.

Sarah Hess: You recently released your LP Pleasant Living. Tell me about it!

Dylan Mattheisen: Yeah, we released it off of Triple Crown Records on Tuesday. We recorded with J. Robbins in Baltimore. We started the last week of February and finished in early March. It’s got twelve songs on it. We’re really stoked about it! It turned out really well.

Sarah Hess: What inspired the album?

Billy Chevalier: Ugh, I don’t know. I guess hanging out and having fun. Is that an inspiration? (laughs)

Dylan Mattheisen: Our ideal was to collide everything we like about music into one. We love really technical, crazy stuff, you can say like math rock, with a lot of time signatures and stuff. So we like that stuff and we wanted it to collide with catchy, melodic sing-a-longs. We just tried to find a happy balance with both worlds.

SH: What kinds of music did you listen to growing up?

DM: When we were like twelve, thirteen, fourteen years old, it was a lot of like Blink 182, Sum 41, you know a lot of punk rock. And then when we started learning our instruments better we got into more technical stuff, like the Fall of Troy, Number Twelve Looks Like You, you know weird, crazy stuff like that. Till this day we kind of listen to the same stuff.

Matt Chevalier: Very rarely do we find new bands that we like. We like going back to the older stuff we loved.

SH: You used to be called the D-Cups, but in 2008 you switched to Tiny Moving Parts. Why the switch, and who came up with the name?

Billy Chevalier: Dylan’s dad came up with D-cups because we named the band when we were in eighth, ninth grade or students in high school I think, and we couldn’t come up with a name. Dylan’s dad made some joke band names. [One was] D-Cups. We were like, ‘We’re gonna go with that!’ And then once we wanted everyone to take the band more serious, around the time we were graduating high school, we decided D-Cups wouldn’t be taken seriously, so we made a list of a bunch of band names. Tiny Moving Parts was just the one that we all agreed on.

DM: Yeah, it totally stuck.

SH: You recently toured with Modern Baseball. How was that, and did you guys become fast friends?

DM: Yeah, we just finished up that tour with them. It was us, them, The Hotelier, and Sorority Noise. It was a blast! A lot of the shows sold out on the tour, with like three hundred plus kids a night. It was outstanding! they are the nicest dudes. They play the best tunes. We couldn’t have been happier. It was a great tour.

BC: Today is our first time seeing them since that tour ended a couple months ago, so it was really good to see them again!

SH: Are you going to see their set later and hang out with them?

BC: Oh yeah, absolutely! We’re going to peer pressure them into drinking with us. (everyone laughs)

SH: As a whiskey lover, I must ask about “Whiskey Waters.”

DM: I know Billy likes his whiskey quite a bit! (laughs)

BC: Oh yeah, whiskey waters!

DM: In college that was his drink of choice.

BC: I did a whole summer where I just drank whiskey waters. All summer! Now I don’t really do it anymore because it’s too wild for me. I can’t handle it. (laughs)

DM: We’re more mature these days. We’re growing up! (laughs)

BC: Beer only now!

SH: So what inspired the song?

DM: It’s kind of like a theme for the whole album. We wrote the album about finding your own happiness, and with that song, you know it’s about a dude who finds his happiness with alcoholism. Which sounds kind of sad, but I mean, there are pros and cons with any situation out there. He finds happiness being alone with his whiskey waters. It sounds sad, but as long as he’s happy, that’s all that matters, you know.

BC: To each his own!

SH: You have a song titled “Fourth of July.” What’s your fondest 4^th of July memory?

BC: Actually every year for the Fourth of July we have a family reunion. Me and Matt are brothers and Dylan is our cousin, so like the last ten, fifteen Fourth of Julys we all had a big family reunion at my farm. There’s a bunch of fireworks and drinking all day. I mean, we haven’t been drinking all day since fifteen years ago. (laughs) It’s just fun seeing everyone and hanging out.

Matt Chevalier: This year we did a family golf tournament, so that was really fun!

SH: Did you guys win?

DM: We went to the Benson Golf Course, and I think we got last place.

MC: Golfing is our favorite sport to do!

SH: Really? You guys don’t strike me as golfers. Did you play in high school?

MC: Oh yeah!

DM: We don’t look like golfers to you!

BC: We didn’t follow like the PGA shit, but we loved going golfing after high school.

DM: That was thing to do.

MC: Fun thing to do in Benson, Minnesota! (laughs)

SH: Do you find yourselves having to entertain at family reunions?

DM: Not really.

BC: We played one Fourth of July.

DM: Well, okay so played a Fourth of July. It was so long ago, and we played for our whole family. We thought it was really cool then, but now we look back on it and we’re like it’s funny but weird.

BC: Kind of lame!

Not lame at all Billy! You can see Tiny Moving Parts in all their glory and non-lameness on their month-long tour with Dads, starting October 17. Click HERE for tour dates, and stay tuned for our upcoming interviews with Dads and Modern Baseball. Pleasant Living is available for purchase on iTunes.

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Sarah Hess

At the age of six, Sarah Hess discovered True Blue by Madonna. This resulted in her spending hours in front of the bathroom mirror with a hairbrush microphone, belting out "La Isla Bonita" off key. Her love for music only intensified over the years thanks to her parents; her mother exposed Sarah to The Jackson Five and had her hustling to the Bee Gees, while her father would play her albums like 'Pet Sounds' and 'Some Girls' from start to finish, during which he'd lecture on and on about the history of rock & roll. Sarah would eventually stumble upon rap and hip-hop, then punk and alternative, and fall madly in love with Jeff Buckley and film photography.

After attending The School of the Art Institute in Chicago, Sarah went on to study education at Dominican University, earning a degree in history. When not teaching, writing, or taking in a show, she is most likely to be found with a camera to her eye or hanging out in a darkroom.


You can follow Sarah Hess on twitter at @Sarahhasanh and view her music photography on her website: smhimaging.com.

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