The War On Drugs Talk India Debut Ahead of Bandland Festival

The inaugural edition of Bandland Festival in Bengaluru on December 16th and 17th banks on nostalgia with its headliners, U.K. rock legends Deep Purple and New York pop rock hitmakers Goo Goo Dolls, but that’s not all there is at play.

American rock band The War On Drugs will make their first trip to India as part of Bandland, performing on December 16th and they’re one of the recent torchbearers of rock music the way it stands right now. After all, the band won Best Rock Album at the Grammys in 2018 for their album A Deeper Understanding and earned another Grammy nomination in 2023 for “Harmonia’s Dream” in Best Rock Song from their 2021 album I Don’t Live Here Anymore.

The core of the band – which has seven members when they perform live – is often recognized as founder, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Adam Granduciel, bassist David Hartley and multi-instrumentalist Anthony LaMarca. There’s also drummer Charlie Hall, who’s been a friend of the band for long and originally a collaborator in 2008 that ended up becoming a full-time member just before they launched 2014’s Lost In The Dream. It was an intense, journeying and psychedelic album that built upon Granduciel’s folk candor inspired by the likes of Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, among others.

For the last decade or so, The War On Drugs have proven just how mind-altering yet soul-searching rock music can be, with the band members leaning into synths as well as saxophone, courtesy of Jon Natchez. Now, they bring exactly that kind of blend to India, at Bandland Festival, which is produced and promoted by BookMyShow Live.

In a video interview from Australia before their show in Perth, Hall speaks with Rolling Stone India about the band’s journey so far and his contributions, plus what’s in store for Bandland Festival. Excerpts:

Rolling Stone India: How did this India show offer come your way? Did you know you had fans out here? 

Charlie Hall: No, I didn’t [know The War On Drugs had fans]. I’m very, very excited. Actually, this is something I’ve wanted to do for a very long time. I’ve never been to India, I’ve never been anywhere in India, and I’m very interested in Indian music. Bengaluru sounds like a really amazing city, both from a sort of geography standpoint, and it’s such an interesting city. But then also some of the other aspects of it, like the vegetation, for example. I’m interested in the food… I can’t remember what it’s called, [but] there’s a style of food that’s primarily vegetarian, that’s very predominant in Bengaluru…

The dosa?

Yeah, I’m excited for all of it.

What’s the setlist going to include at Bandland?

We plan it [the setlist] every night, we kind of plan it a little differently. But the band has been playing together for a long time. We’ve been kind of on tour, in one sense, since the beginning of 2022, if you look at it from a macro level. So it’s a pretty well-oiled machine and we’re playing great. We sort of have been able to transform some of the songs into new way that they are living. I mean, they live one way when you record it, and you put it on a record and it’s frozen in time. But then you play the song 200 times, and it sort of breathes, it becomes a new animal.

I think the larger statement this festival wants to make is about how there’s always a diehard audience out there for rock, who want the old stuff and the recent torchbearers like The War on Drugs. What are your thoughts on where rock music is at, globally in 2023? 

Hopefully, I’ll learn a little bit more about that after I visit for the first time. I hope people will enjoy it. I hope that maybe people who aren’t as familiar with rock music – people who are used to maybe listening to other styles of music – might come and check this out and feel some sort of a way about it.

Hopefully, they’ll be moved by the sounds that they hear and the feelings that they feel, even if it’s guitar-based music, as opposed to if it’s maybe they’re used to listening to more computer-based music or hip-hop or pop or whatever it is. For one thing, rock fans will be excited to see some rock bands, but also hopefully people that maybe have never seen a rock band really, before might come and check it out and realize that music is just music. We just paint with different colors. Music is all organized sound and rhythm to transfer a feeling, no matter what style it is.

Came Into the band when Lost in the Dream was out.

The band has been kind of set really ever since [when I joined], that was maybe 2013, or something like that. My own involvement also goes back to the early days of the band, before [2011 album] Slave Ambient and, and [debut album] Wagonwheel Blues. We added Eliza Hardy Jones at the beginning of this last album cycle, and she’s helped us elevate everything; she’s made everybody better and made the sound of the band more whole. We are sort of a strong seven-piece unit now.

What was it like seeing that trajectory as someone who’s known the band for so long, having seen Grammy wins and tours around the world in the last decade?

I think that I appreciated both as a participant in it, but also as a friend, because we’ve all been friends for so long. As a friend of Adam’s, I can sort of also enjoy it from that vantage point and feel proud of somebody who I’ve known for so long, and who’s worked so hard at creating something unique. I think I enjoy it in all those ways, if that makes sense.

You got to be part of I Don’t Live Here Anymore in more than just drums, with something called “prepared piano” on “Wasted.” What did that entail?

Well, do you know the notion of the prepared piano in modern classical music? You would play around with the harmonics of the strings by inserting objects in. So you find whether whatever it is – if it’s a piece of rubber, or if it’s a screw, or if it’s a pen, whatever it is. In this case, I think I can’t remember now… I think I was using erasers and my hands and you just find a place on the string. So you play the piano with one hand, but you’re manipulating the strings almost as if you’re playing a guitar. You’re manipulating things in that way. So that’s how that came about on “Wasted.”

You’ve said you have the best job on the planet. How did it come about?

Yeah, it’s a pretty good job! [laughs]

Yeah, well, I guess… I don’t know. Everything you do in life prepares you for the next thing. That doesn’t necessarily mean every musical thing that you do. It’s like everything you do in terms of the people that you meet, and the people the relationships that you make, that you build, and the choices in life that you make, and how we treat one another. All of those things are everything that we do in life, I feel like it informs what we do and who we are. So that’s maybe a little bit of a long winded way of not even really answering your question.

I just think life just happens. It’s just a matter of always being ready for what’s next. What’s that expression? You know, there’s this overused expression, I can’t remember who is attributed to that. Luck is the combination of preparation and opportunity. I kind of liked that as much as it’s an overused expression… there’s a lot of truth in that. And I think that anybody would be lying, if they said, there wasn’t a great deal of luck involved in just… there are so many amazing musicians in the world, and people making beautiful music and creating new things. We hear some of them, but some of them, we just don’t actually have the opportunity to hear, for whatever reason. The stars didn’t align for that thing to get heard by many people, but fortunately, people have been able to experience our music, and I’m grateful that I get to travel around the world and play this music for people and hopefully have people share this experience with others.

You’re a multi-instrumentalist and had your own album Invisible Ink out earlier this year. You got to pick up different instruments as well on A Deeper Understanding. What is the process within the band like?

I think everybody in this band plays every instrument, for the most part. It’s just about sharing ideas and that’s really what it is. whether or not you’re actually playing that instrument that or somebody else might be playing, it’s also about just understanding what it’s like to be playing that other instrument.

I had that experience recently when I was playing a solo show. I was playing guitar, and the drums and bass were doing this thing. And I was, ‘I’m so used to being over there on that side of things.’ It made me think about things in a whole new way when I was on the other side of it.

I think it helps you communicate, and it helps you understand each other. What we’re doing, ultimately is trying to connect with each other, and also trying to connect with the audience. I always recommend to people – especially to kids that are learning to play the drums – that they also try to learn how to play the guitar and learn the piano, just to understand it. I’m not trying to say that you have to be a virtuoso on every instrument, but I think that it’s a really good thing when you have an understanding of how everything works.

What’s coming up in 2024?

More of this, you know? More of playing shows, writing, doing other things. I think it’s also important to do other things outside of this. Like I was saying before – everything we do contributes to who we are. So I think everyone in the band is… Jon [Natchez] is scoring films and Eliza [Hardy Jones] is making incredible quilts and teaching and having exhibits and museums and everyone’s writing music. It’s just trying to be as productive and creative as possible, at all times.

Get tickets to see The War On Drugs at Bandland on December 16th on BookMyShow.