Edible names are what drives me as a musician. My next band will be called the Hot Dogs.
I worked at a jewelry store to pay the bills when I first moved to N.Y.C., and I always loved the phrase 'Semi Precious.' So I wanted to just call the band Semi Precious, but my dad told it was kinda sissy, so I added Weapons.
This guy kept telling us that rock was the big thing, everyone's talking about the big thing, our band was the big thing. So he made us change our name to The Big Thing. Can you believe that?!
The first band I was ever in, I played guitar. We did Gary Glitter and Green Day covers at the time. We were called Fizz. I have no idea why we picked that. We were, like, 12 years old.
I've never been in a band where someone goes, 'Ah, I've got the perfect name! And it's because I climbed Mount Fuji, and at the top a golden dove came down...' It's always a bunch of guys sitting around going, 'How about Rotten Chipmunks?'
I typed up a long email with different band name ideas and sent it to Stephanie, and they all started with 'the'.
For me, naming bands was the forerunner to really writing lyrics, because I work off titles.
A rock-and-roll group needed a name that fit criteria in three areas: It had to be great for a bowling team; it had to be great for a gang; and it had to be great for a rock-and-roll group. So we called ourselves Dion and the Belmonts.
Michael Giles the first drummer of King Crimson, never agreed to the name King Crimson. But then, if you'd knew Michael, you would know he didn't agree to the album cover either. So maybe Michael didn't agree to the point of definition with many things.
The songs were there before the band was there, and it's my songs. And it's like, we're not in the 1950s. We can't call ourselves, like, 'The Revolvers' - it just doesn't work that way. And 'The Lukas Graham Band' just sounded wrong.
Honestly, before I settled on a name for the Bon Iver project in general, Chigliak was in the running for what I was going to name the band.
Choosing a name for a band is always a difficult thing, and I don't think people should read too much into a name because, after all, it's just a handle. It doesn't mean anything.
When you're looking for a band name, I know it sounds weird, but everything you look at, everything you observe and read, you kind of think, 'Man, maybe that could be our band name.'
At my high school, there were always kids carrying acoustic guitars around, which is why I named my band the Mountain Goats. I didn't want to seem like one of those guys who brought his guitar to the party whether you asked him to or not.
Our band doesn't really have a name.
