CITYist

Bassist Laena Geronimo, singer/guitarist Z Berg, organist Annie Monroe and drummer Tennessee Thomas.

With a new sound (The Supremes meets The Animals), a new look (a little less grunge, a little more Swinging London) and two new members, Los Angeles-bred quartette The Like is poised for indie girl band domination. The two remaining original members, singer/ guitarist Z Berg (daughter of Geffen A&R man Tony Berg) and drummer Tennessee Thomas (daughter of Pete Thomas, drummer for Elvis Costello and The Attractions) favor retro tunes, thigh highs and saddle shoes. After a rollicking four-song set at Soho’s Downtown Studios last night, CITYist sat down with Z and Tennessee to discuss their upcoming Mark Ronson-produced record, singing into toilet bowls and how, like, they got the name The Like.

CITY: You guys have been around in some incarnation for almost ten years—you’re practically veterans now. Is touring easier now than it was when you started?

Z Berg: Touring has always been easy and it’s always been fun.

CITY: You don’t hear that very often.

Tennessee Thomas: Well that’s just really stupid, because what could be more fun than traveling around the world with your friends?

CITY: Who was your favorite band to tour with—or are you allowed to tell me that?

TT: The Arctic Monkeys were really fun, and Muse, we toured with them, that was fun. Kings of Leon were quite entertaining.

CITY: Were they really heavy partiers?

TT: We hadn’t really done a rock n’ roll tour and then we were out with them on the first night in a bar and all this white powder appeared on the table and I was like, “Ahh…what’s going on?” And then Jared was like, “It’s salt!” And then they walked us to our hotel and Caleb’s like, “We going to play spin the bottle or what?” And I was like, “No, we’re going to go home.”

CITY: In their thick Southern accents?

TT: Yeah. [In Southern drawl]: “You’re name’s Tennessee? I’m from Tennessee.”

Z Berg last night at Downtown Music.

CITY: I understand you guys come from musical families. Is it genetic? How did you become interested in music?

ZB: I’ve been singing since before I could talk. It’s just what I did. I was an annoying child, as you can imagine. I actually realized this relatively recently: it’s been the one thing that makes me happy, the most, for my entire life.

TT: And it comes quite naturally as a result of being surrounded by it your whole life.

ZB: I spent literally 45 minutes two days ago standing in a reverb chamber just singing. Like, a capella. Being so stoked.

TT: Sometimes you find that she’s just in a tunnel singing away, in the bathroom, singing into a toilet bowl. Like, “This sounds great!”

CITY: Who are your musical influences?

TT: The girl groups of the 60s were a big one. Just girls that look like they’re having quite a lot of fun, like the Shangri-Las and The Supremes and The Shirelles and all the other one hit wonders.

ZB: The great girls who actually wrote songs, like Ellie Greenwich, Jackie DeShannon. So amazing. And then also, you know, The Beatles and the Stones and the Beach Boys and the Kinks and the Animals. Music that we grew up on that shaped us—shaped me as a writer.

Annie Monroe posing with the short version of their album, “Release Me,” due in June.

CITY: But you guys seem to have undergone a change.

TT: The songs haven’t changed, I don’t think. Your [Z’s] structure and your sentiment have always been the same and really honest. It’s just figuring out how to get it to sound like our favorite music, which is really hard because now with technology, and you can fix anything … And then when we met Mark [Ronson] and the Dap-Kings, it was like, they know how to make it sound fresh and relevant.

ZB: And sound like the things that we love—full of mistakes and grit. Honest is a word we’re trying to create in every aspect.

CITY: Do you guys ever get the “chicks can’t play their instruments” thing?

TT: Not in like a, “na na na you suck” type of way, but it surrounds you because people are so surprised because they see a girl band and they don’t expect much.

ZB: I actually feel like it’s a really positive thing because, you know, there aren’t enough girls who do play instruments and if any girl could see us play, and realize that it is an option and something that girls can do, I think that’s a really positive thing.

CITY: In terms of talking about changing your music style, I hear you saying you really haven’t, but you’ve definitely changed your fashion style.

The Like in the early days.

ZB: Really what’s happened is we went back to the purest version of what we always looked like and wanted to look like … With this record, we’re so proud of the sound and of being exactly what we wanted to sound like, that we feel like having a look that is very specific and recognizable is the only way to really serve that. I know who I am now and who I want to sound like.

TT: When it comes down to it, the 60s aesthetically was just the most…

ZB: Because people cared. Because people spent an hour getting ready. You know what? I do want to spend a long time painting my face and doing Tennessee’s beehive and planning our outfits so that they match because we care. Because attention to detail is important to me. It’s something I feel that’s really lost in this time period that we’re kind of trying to regain.

TT: It’s easy to sort of be like, “Oh, I’m going to sort of go there a little bit.” But to actually fully go there…

ZB: I don’t leave the house unless I look like this.

CITY: You dress like this normally?

ZB: Yes. There’s no difference between stage and life.

CITY: So you look like Mia Farrow in “Rosemary’s Baby” all the time.

ZB: [Laughs] I’m trying any way.

Z rocks the 60s look.

CITY: Last question. Is it true you got the name of your band because you say like so much?

TT: We were having a conversation about band names, and it was like, “I don’t know, like, like, like,” because when you’re thinking of things, you say like. My mom was like, “I think you should call yourselves The Like because that’s all you say.”

ZB: But also, the amount of times people say like, it’s basically free publicity for us. It’s getting ingrained in your head.

TT: Like now, with Facebook, you can click “like.” For our album cover we have these dresses that say like, so I just put a picture of us in our dresses and that one had more people commenting, it was ridiculous. It was like everyone—like, like, like.