Interview: Pat Phillips of Honduras on Rituals, hanging with Blur, and getting out of the city

Rob Duguay: Honduras' name harks back to a time when you were doing landscaping one summer in Missouri and you had a coworker named Omar who was from Honduras. How did you end up with a random job like that in the Midwest?

Pat Phillips: I've been living in New York for about five years already and I kind of came to a place where I just wanted to just go home and clear my head. An opportunity for a house that actually was in the back of my parent's house and to work with a landscape crew arose. I went home for three months and just worked, just landscaped and cleared my head before I headed back to New York. I did work with Omar but another part of the story is on the Williamsburg Bridge there's this graffiti that says Honduras all up the bridge. When I returned to New York that was right around when the band was starting and that was also something that influenced the band name.

Looks like it was meant to be. With the graffiti on the bridge, is there a street artist named Honduras in Brooklyn as well or was this just a random occurrence?

It was just these four random tags stretching from the Lower East Side to Williamsburg. I've walked that bridge hundreds of times from my time living in New York and it was something that always captured me. We started the band right around that time and after I was walking home one day I saw the name on the bridge and it stuck.

Before you moved to New York City were you in a bunch of bands while you were growing up in Missouri or did you start your musical career in New York?

Our other guitarist Tyson Moore and I actually grew up in the same town together in Columbia. We've known each other since elementary school, we played in bands while we were in high school and it's small scene in a 100,000-person college town. Around junior and senior year in high school we started working on some solo stuff together. Even when Tyson was at school in Chicago and I was living in New York we were sending each other recordings back and forth through GarageBand. That relationship between Tyson and I is probably about 10 or 11 years old now and that whole time we've been making music together.

This past April you guys got to open for Blur at the Music Hall of Williamsburg for their first show in North America in a few years. Did you get a chance to hang out with Damon and Graham? What was the experience like?

Well, they soundchecked for a pretty long time. Obviously they're able to do that. We weren't able to meet them before the show or anything and we actually soundchecked for only five minutes before they opened doors and let people in. Both rooms backstage are next to each other so after their set I was a little too intimidated to go and make an effort to meet them. Our drummer Josh [Wehle] kind of urged me to do it and their manager let us in. I was able to talk to Damon for a little bit, he was just sitting on a couch and drinking a glass of red wine. It was very brief, only for a couple of minutes but he told us that he really liked our energy that's present in our sound and then I took a picture with him for a short moment. It was really great meeting him because I've been a very big fan of his but that was definitely a very cool moment.

I can imagine, especially since you're a fan of Blur and you got to open for them in your home base. It must have been a bit of a dream come true. This past September, Honduras put out their debut LP Rituals after a couple of EPs. Where was the album made and what was it like for the band making their first full length?

The album was actually recorded in November of 2014. We went upstate just to get isolated from the city and we had six days at this studio. We recorded it live on tape and I really felt like it made us a better band. Just hearing yourself on tape and the whole live recording process really helped us evolve. We expected to get that record out before this past September but when the time came around to have it released we were happy to finally have it out. We actually just finished mastering four new songs the other day and we'll be putting out a new EP at the end of January actually.

Awesome! What's the name of the EP?

It's going to be called Gathering Rust, I believe that's the title we're going to stick with.

You've said before that the lead single off of Rituals, "Not Again", was inspired by a regrettable night of drinking. When you go out, do you have a preference between beer and hard liquor or do you drink both? Do you do anything in particular to get over a hangover in the morning?

I'm also a bartender too so I guess whiskey is probably my favorite preference. I would like to lay off a little more liquor these days. When dealing with a hangover I guess a spliff and then a long shower and lots of water. It's nothing really out of the ordinary when it comes to curing hangovers but it usually does the trick.

Usually with me I just drink a lot of coffee and just power through it but everybody has their own little things. Along with the new EP coming out later this month, what else does Honduras have planned for 2016?

Starting this weekend from January 9 to the 17 we're going on a short tour where we'll be seeing you guys in Boston and in Providence. From February 24 to March 6 we're going on tour with Sunflower Bean which will be in the northeast and then down to Chicago. Right after that we play this festival in Savannah, Georgia, called the Savannah Stopover on March 10, then we hit up SXSW and then I think we're going to the west coast after we play the Treefort Music Festival in Boise, Idaho at the end of March. We're going to be out on the road for the majority of the next few months.

HONDURAS + THE BEVERLEYS :: Sunday, January 10 at Fete Music Hall, 103 Dike St. in Providence, RI :: 8 p.m., all ages, $8 :: Advance tickets :: Facebook event page ::: Monday, January 11 at Great Scott, 1222 Commonwealth Ave. in Allston, MA :: 9 p.m., 18-plus, $9 :: Advance tickets :: Facebook event page