All the entries were good, but the hands-down winner was Gurbtron, who managed to squeeze in more titles from Feed the Animals than anyone else.

“my first Girl Talk show:
it was Like This, he asked the crowd to “Play Your Part” and Let me See You put your Hands In The Air, but Here’s The Thing….Don’t Stop!!”
we did, the crowd anxiously In Step, yelled back “Give Me A Beat!!!!!!”
he Set It Off!! had the crowd bouncing with No Pause!
he pulled us on stage to fuel the fire and Play Our Part a second time.
The energy in the club was off the walls!
It was insane!!!!!!! he literally Shut The Club Down.
some bouncer tapped me on the should telling me “the shows been over for hours now….we’re closing down”
I was Still Here, on the stage dancing.
thats What It’s All About!”

Congrats Gurbtron. Have a ball at the Girl Talk show!

Since I had Girl Talk, aka Gregg Gillis, on the line anyway, I decided to catch up with him to see how things had changed since he graced the cover of Pollstar in November of 2007.

You’ve been on the road pretty much non-stop since we last talked.

“Yeah, basically I’m doing my normal style of doing weekend shows and then coming home. I did a full spring tour that was all colleges and that was a month straight. Outside of that, for 2009, it’s been mainly two to three shows a week. I’m keeping busy that way and I’m doing a lot of festivals this summer.”

So do you have a new album in the works?

Photo: Mike Bamford / 3KZL
The Nov. 26, 2007, issue of Pollstar.

“Yeah, kind of. The way I always work is by preparing material for live shows and then that goes on to influence what will be on the album. So unlike a more traditional band, about half the material in my show is typically new. I try to balance it.

“I have a lot of material sitting in front of me and I have a lot of ideas I’ve come up with. I kind of feel like finding new perspectives and different ideas for what I can do with the new album, how I can take it further a little bit. But for right now – you know, doing the album is a very specific process of taking a few months and sitting down and preparing to do that every day. When I do that, it kind of takes away from preparing for live shows. Because when I’m editing the album, I can’t really be working on coming up with new material.

“So I don’t have any specific game plan for when to do it, but I’m very happy with the amount of stuff in front of me that will definitely go onto an album in the future.”

You went to Australia and New Zealand earlier this year, was that your first time touring there?

“No, that was actually the third time I’ve gone over. I’m hoping to do that again this year. That was around December or January, when their summer is hitting.

“There are a lot of festivals over there. There are only a handful of major markets in Australia for shows, so I’ve noticed there are a lot of traveling festivals. If you go at different times, there are different festivals going on where you kind of get with a group of bands and you do six or seven cites throughout Australia. This is the first year that I was a part of one of those. So that was exciting. There was a completely diverse lineup with bands like The Hold Steady and No Age and Stereolab – it was kind of all over the place and didn’t have any giant headliners or anything like that. It was all bands with a similar sort of draw.

“That was cool to go do a festival every day with the same acts. You get to know people. I played back to back with the band Architecture in Helsinki just about every night. It was kind of like being on tour with a lot of people except you didn’t have to worry about the details of everything.

“To me it was really cool because it was kind of reminiscent of Lollapalooza in the early days. That was something I was really into and I always kind of fantasized about playing when I was younger. I always thought it was such a great idea to have a really eclectic lineup of bands and that would go on for months and every day you’d show up at a new city and play a festival.

“I’ve kind of gotten a taste of that by showing up at a new festival each weekend. It’s something you kind of grow used to, but simultaneously it’s a weird thing to cater your shows to a large outdoor audience. It’s very different for me than what I’m used to doing with the more intimate club shows.”

Photo: Dove Shore

How much have you had to change what you do on stage as you’ve gotten more popular?

“I feel like the set musically – there aren’t too many subtleties to my set. It’s pretty over the top throughout. But there are definitely peaks and valleys on the album and during the shows. I’m just a bit more aggressive and blatant at the festivals because it is a larger crowd. I think every band kind of has that strategy.

“In addition to that, in the past year, starting last fall, I started to incorporate a few of my friends doing physical props on stage – people with toilet paper blowers and giant beach balls and confetti and different things like that. I’m happy I kind of got that ball rolling in the fall because I think we’ve gotten good at doing those specific things.

“So going into the summer festivals that’s been a big a big focus of my concentration besides the music, getting everything ready on that end so we can have a very specific vibe and mood at the show. I think when you see so many bands in a row on the same stage it can turn into kind of a buffet experience where you just get a little bit and it doesn’t really impact you that much. So we try to come and do something that other people won’t be doing and create a very specific atmosphere.

“Because you lose the intimacy that’s a big part of my shows, I think at a festival it really goes over well. It turns into something else. You don’t need that intimacy when it’s so many people all partying together. I feel like we’ve fine tuned the show just to cater to a larger audience. Every week it’s getting more specific. That’s the way it rolls for everything really. Even when you’re doing club shows, you learn what works.”

Photo: John Davisson
It’s not a party until somebody climbs up on a table.

Looking back over the past couple of years, anything you would differently? Anything where you’ve said to yourself, “Oh my God what was I thinking when I did that?”

“Not really. I’m pretty excited about everything. I’m trying to think of something that would be an issue. There have been a couple of shows here and there that didn’t necessarily work out perfectly. But I think in my history prior to the past two years I had a lot of shows that were bombs – a lot of shows where people were hating on it. Back when I was playing to 15 people and that sort of thing.

“I feel like that experience is valuable. I had one show a couple summers ago where I played at Red Rocks on the 4th of July opening for Blues Traveler. And it was the sort of show where they put me on right when they opened up the doors.

“I think the promoters had perhaps seen me at a festival and maybe thought I would go over well. I think they thought I would play background music until people got there. But the way I’ve always performed is more in the style of a band where you just go a hundred percent from the get go.

“So that show was at a beautiful amphitheatre and I had my shirt ripped off by the time there were only five people in the building. It was just an extremely awkward experience for everyone. Pretty uncomfortable and weird. The show went over very poorly. They kept the sound low because they wanted background music and I was trying to put on my normal performance at six o’clock in the afternoon. That show definitely bombed to a certain degree, but I wouldn’t have changed it in retrospect because all of those shows are very valuable. It’s important to have them so you can kind of build up your skin. If you can go down and try to win crowds over in those kind of situations, that’s a great skill to have. So no real regrets.”

Have there been any shows that surprised you? Any shows where you were amazed by the turnout?

“The size of the crowds at all the festivals this year has really been surprising. I’ve done a couple of festivals over each of the past summers. And this summer in particular, I’ve been going up against a lot of bands. As you get better spots you’re bound to be playing at the same time as a big act. The turnout for festivals is usually pretty mindblowing. I never now how many people have seen me and I never know how many people want to see me versus someone else. So that’s all been consistently surprising.

“The most surprising thing for me though was probably the last European tour. I feel like the following over there is smaller and more intimate, but on the last tour just about every show sold out – which has not really happened in the past. So that was great because I go there kind of hoping for the best and want to expand the fan base a little bit. I want to play all over the world as much as possible, so it was nice to see an audience come out over there.”

Photo: John Davisson
Beneath this mild-mannered exterior lurks the heart of a party animal.

You’re going to Japan soon. Is that a first for you?

“That’ll be my second time. I went there in 2004, but that was in a very different time. I booked that tour myself with my own money. I definitely didn’t make any money on that tour. I played shows with a friend of mine, Frank Musarra, who records under the name Hearts of Darknesses and who I do remixes with. We did a handful of shows over there that were all just kind of do-it-yourself shows, playing in small clubs and playing to a handful of people in small cities. That was a really wild experience, but I’m interested now to go back five years later after the albums have gotten out more over the world. I’d love to play more shows in Asia, I just haven’t done it.”

Going back to festivals, when you’re doing them, are you on the main stage now?

“It depends. Certain ones have an electronic music tent and occasionally I’m in there. I love it when I’m not in there. I always like trying to frame this as a live act. That’s always been a big priority for me. I have nothing against the acts that do play in the electronic tent, but if they put me outside on the main stage area then I always kind of take that as a compliment.

“I noticed coming up at the Virgin Music Festival they’re putting me on one of the main stages there. Things like that are exciting. I want to expand this and it’s always interesting to see how far a guy with a laptop can go and just how close it can come to being just a straight up rock ‘n’ roll experience.”

I think people like you and Deadmau5 have broken the ceiling so it’s not a surprise to see you on the main stage now.

“I think it’s the kind of thing where ten years down the road it might be a much more common occurrence to see any sort of electronic performer – turntablist, laptop artist, whoever – there. So I’m happy to push that to a degree and I think it’s definitely an interesting time when many different forms of electronic music are becoming more accepted. I’m excited to see where it will go.”