Being signed to Conor Oberst's personal label (Team Love) is very much a mixed blessing: all projects that the indie darling touches seemingly turn to gold, but there's the danger of gaining fame merely as a signee to the label of "that guy Bright Eyes."

However, with their album Wild Like Children moving over 10,000 copies and opening slots for Rilo Kiley and Pedro the Lion, Tilly and the Wall have managed to move out from the shadow of the man who released their albums. And not by any accident: Tilly and the Wall aren't your average indie band, utilizing tap dancing for percussion and writing songs that sound like teenage anti-anthems both deftly written and undeniably powerful.

Sitting down with Derek Pressnall (vocals, guitar), Jamie Williams (tap dancing) and Neely Jenkins (vocals), I asked the band about their unique sound and going from bedroom project to working band.

.. . :: Tyler McCauley with Tilly and (her) wall - June 2005 :: . ..

+ Firstly I want to ask when the alternative percussion came in-the first time handclaps and tap dancing were used? Did you come across the idea, or was the band formed around that aesthetic?

Derek Pressnall: Well, me and Nick moved to Omaha, and we already knew Jamie, we had met her on the Bright Eyes tour, and Jamie plays guitar, too, and she had a bunch of songs, so we just started working with them - vocal melodies, choruses, whatever. And then Kianna and Neely joined the band for singing, and Nick was on keyboard, and we needed a beat, so Jamie strapped on the shoes.

Jamie Williams: I was just going to tap until we figured something else out. And we just liked it, kept it.

+ So it started as a substitute?

Jamie: Not really, it was more out of necessity.

Derek: Jamie told us she tap danced, and we said "fuck yeah, put 'em on!" And we just started playing. The way the band started, it wasn't like "starting a band," it was more like hanging out and playing music.

Jamie: We'd write songs if we got bored.

+ Listening to the record, and hearing you guys live, the songs sound like they could easily be played in a bedroom.

Jamie: Yeah, these songs came from us just hanging out. I've tap danced in bands before, but I'd also play guitar and dance for a couple songs with the drums, and so I'd always thought about having tapping as the only percussion, and with Tilly it just worked out.

+ So when you were sitting around, building songs, are there main songwriters?

Jamie: Derek writes a lot of songs, but I write songs.. . everybody writes. If you look through the songs, there are different styles.

A thing I think really sets you apart from the indie pack is the unique lyrical imagery, especially in songs like "Night of the Living Dead" and "Fell Down The Stairs-" there's this weird exploration of human interaction outside of the cliché love song. A lot of them sound like manifestos of this alternative culture- how did these lyrics come about?

Derek: "Nights" came about when one of my high school friends from Atlanta passed away, and my friends were making a benefit, celebration, compilation- the song was for that. It was about life, being alive, remembering high school. As far as the songs I write, lyrics I write, I try to stay away from ideas I think are cliché, or getting trapped in a category. I like conflict- love songs that are off, not really love songs.. .

Jamie: We wanted to write pop songs that aren't paper-thin pop songs, with tension, that aren't what you'd expect, about different subject matters. We didn't want our performances to be typical-in Omaha, a lot of the bands are amazing singer/songwriters and musicians, but the shows are all kind of the same. We wanted a really fun performance.

The life you talk about in the songs really comes across in the performance -

Derek: We approach each song on its own, like a kid. We try and find out what kind of person that song is.

Jamie: Someone usually brings a song to the band, usually on their own instrument-Nick will bring in a song on keyboard, for example. And that's the skeleton-by the time the song is finished, it's totally different. It'll have the same soul, but it'll have gone in a totally different direction. We give everyone in the band the freedom to contribute-it's like each song is a collective art project.

Obviously, you built your stage show in small venues-how do you keep up your live energy in larger, less intimate venues?

Jamie: Each show has its own energy, and you just need to embrace it for whatever it is. We've played to the bartender, to 3,000 people in a sit-down theater.

When was that?

Jamie: We opened for the Bright Eyes theater tour, so most of the venues were sit-down, which for us was a challenge because we like to see people moving around, dancing. So, I mean, it was amazing, but each show is different and you need to always be stoked on whatever it is.

Derek: It all depends on the energy in the room; the crowd, the weather, the room. Jamie: It changes every time we do it, as far as the energy. If I feel like I'm not into it, I still think about everyone who's excited and who's paid and it gets you excited to be there.

How was the recording environment - how'd you get the live energy on tape? Did you approach it in a certain way?

Derek: We recorded the record in a friend's house with Pro Tools, so we went in looking for a certain soul- not too slick. In a house, it's obviously lo-fi recording, and there are going to be mistakes, but that's what gives a song soul. A lot of the records I listen to have mistakes, flubs, and I love that!

Jamie: On a 7" we did, for a song called "The Gust," we modeled the beat after a Bob Dylan song, and in his version, the song starts over, so we did that, too. Kind of a shout-out to that record.

When you released Wild Like Children, how did the response to the record compare to what you thought it would be?

Jamie: When we released it, we honestly felt that if we sold 1,000 records, we'd be stoked.

How many have you sold?

Jamie: Around 13,000. When Conor [Oberst] sold 100,000 copies of his last album, Lifted, he rented out the zoo and had a big zoo party. And we said, "If Tilly sells 10,000, we'll tell everyone to come to the zoo and bring a sack lunch!" And we did!

Derek: When we went to record the album, we had just done this EP that we had recorded it just to record it, because Jamie was moving to Oregon, and we were like, shit, Jamie's moving, let's record these songs that we'd written. So we recorded the EP, began burning it, selling it, and then some kid asked us on the internet to do a 7". And then when we wrote some more songs, we kept saying "oh, we'll record a record." We're just thankful someone put it out, that it was getting printed, that people liked it, it got good reviews.. . it was so wild, because we weren't waiting for any response.

Jamie: We just recorded something we liked.

How did Conor get involved in releasing the record? I know you were friends before, but did Team Love exist before you were on it, or was he just a fan of the band?

Jamie: We were looking for a label with the 7" and the EP. Conor was just like, "I'm putting you guys out." He had been talking about starting a label for a while.

Derek: He had been talking about starting a label for about a year and a half, and he recorded our EP in his house.

Jamie: Basically, he was toying with the idea earlier, and then we needed to put out our record and he said yeah, let's do it for real.

So after talking about how it started, the recording-what was it like moving from bedroom band to touring band? How often did you play out live, before you had the record?

Derek: Like, every once in a while, every three months or so-we only played in Omaha, and you don't want to play too much. We practiced fairly often.

Neely Jenkins: Now we practice about two or three times a week.

Derek: Once the record came out, we got "serious," like we're an "actual band."

Jamie: Now we'll have band meetings where we just talk business without practicing, and then we'll have just practice, which is obviously way more fun. But we'll have meetings about our website, the record-we keep the meetings separate, though.

You did the Rilo Kiley tour, West Coast dates with Pedro the Lion, and now, with Of Montreal-how have the tours been different?

Derek: Our first tour was with Bright Eyes, and we were booking our own dates at the time, and then Bright Eyes asked us to tour with them. We were playing to 600 to 1,000 people, which was insane. And then our next tour was with this band Head of Femur, and we're playing to bartenders.

Neely: Not always bartenders.

Derek: Yeah, but like, 20, 30 people. It's always different, totally different.

Jamie: The really different thing about this tour is that we're headlining some of the shows, and it's more like that people are coming out for us-and we've played some sold-out shows, which makes it seem like our work has paid off. When we booked those shows, we had this fear of like, "what if these shows are just empty?" But it's been really nice to see that our touring has paid off.

Neely: And all the people we've toured with have been awesome, so many great people. We owe them so much. They've made all of our tours awesome.

Jamie: And that's why the album has done well - you can make the best record in the world, but if you can't promote it, it doesn't matter. And we're so thankful that the tours have been great, it made such a difference.

So what's next?

Neely: Hopefully we're recording in the fall.. .

Will that be on Team Love still?

Jamie: Yeah. And we're going to start working on new songs whenever we get back to Omaha.

- Tyler McCauley

For more information and tour dates, visit tillyandthewall.com