Q&A with Cymbals Eat Guitars' Joseph D'Agostino

For Atlanta Music Guide:

Q&A with Cymbals Eat Guitars' Joseph D'Agostino; Playing The EARL March 11

What do you do when your debut record gets more attention than you ever thought it would? When it’s the blogosphere that drives your success, and your nascent band suddenly has the weight of the critical community behind it? You go on tour!

March 11, Cymbals Eat Guitars will stop at The EARL on the sixth date of their first national headlining run. They’ll be performing selections from Why There Are Mountains, the much-lauded, muscular LP the band released this past September via Sister’s Den Records. Supported by recent indie luminaries Bear In Heaven and Freelance Whales, it stands to be a night to remember. Atlanta Music Guide talked with frontman Joseph D’Agostino about the snowball of success and what it’s like to live with your ears burning.

I really enjoyed your record. Can you talk to me about what it’s been like on your end? It got the mythical Pitchfork Best New Music tag, and people have been noticing it in a pretty big way.

We didn’t have an audience or a career or anything that you might consider serious before we received that review. Really, receiving the Best New Music and the amount of play that we were starting to get from WOXY radio in Cincinnati, those were the two big things that sort of helped elevate our band to the point where we had to be viable — like we had to be a good live act, because we hadn’t been playing any shows before March of 2008, really. At the same time, there’s definitely a disconnect between internet hype and actually attending shows and things. But I get the feeling that we are enjoying a pretty unique situation, because it also seems that the spread of our record has been very much a word of mouth kind of thing, rather than one huge crush, and then suddenly we’re just ubiquitous...[Read more]