With Fountains of Wayne‘s track record of taking four years between albums, the group’s Adam Schlesinger knows better than to predict a quick follow-up to last year’s “Sky Full of Holes.” But he won’t rule it out, either.
“We haven’t really talked about it at all,” Schlesinger, who’s currently on the road with the group, tells Billboard.com. “Right now the most we’ve talked about is just trying to keep playing for the rest of the year.” Schlesinger adds that co-founder Chris Collingwood has been talking about making a solo album, “but then again he may decide those songs will end up on a Fountains record. If we each start writing it may be the kind of thing where if we have three, four songs each we’ll get excited about starting something new. But we haven’t had one discussion yet.”
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Until that point, Schlesinger will likely find plenty to keep him occupied — especially in the world of TV, film and theater music, where he’s been nominated for Academy, Golden Globe, Tony and Emmy Awards. Schlesinger says he’s “been in L.A. a lot… working on a bunch of stuff,” including a “pirate chanty” song for the upcoming animated feature “Ice Age 4.” “I really enjoy that other stuff,” he explains. “It’s a very specific assignment in every case; you come in, get together with a group of people and work very intensely on something for a very short period of time. Then you deliver it and it’s done.
“Part of what I enjoy, too, is the kind of puzzle-solving aspect of songwriting in those assignments. Somebody says, ‘We need a song, it has to be about this, it needs to be this long and in this style.’ It’s just like doing a puzzle — make it what they need.”
The Hollywood path has also led Schlesinger into the latest boy band movement, having written the song “Stay in Our PJs” for Nickelodeon’s Big Time Rush. “That’s in the culture right now; it seems like we’re right about to enter another big boy band phase — or we already have,” Schlesinger says. “It makes sense they would have a TV show band. The guy who created that show (Scott Fellows) is really great. I just did a one-time thing with them, but it was really fun.”
As for Schlesinger’s other bands, Ivy is on hold while he’s focusing on Fountains of Wayne, while Tinted Windows — an all-star project with Taylor Hanson, Cheap Trick’s Bun E. Carlos and former Smashing Pumpkins and current A Perfect Circle guitarist James Iha — remains in amicable limbo since its 2009 debut album.
“I think everybody would like to do it again,” Schlesinger says. “Everybody’s gone off and gotten involved in other things at the moment. James has a new solo record (‘Look to the Sky,’ in Japan). Taylor is probably the hardest one to pin down ’cause the Hanson guys work pretty much non-stop. But I think there’s interest. I have some more songs I’ve finished that I’ve been sitting on. It all happens pretty quickly; if we can get everyone to commit to a week or two somewhere, maybe we can get another record made.”