Yellow Ostrich is headlining St. Louis on Wednesday, November 7th, and we here at IWTAS are KEYED. UP. The band has released both a beautiful, rich full-length called Strange Land and an equally beautiful, restrained EP called Ghost this year. If you’re still unfamiliar, we officially introduced the guys to readers in a previous post.

Yellow Ostrich’s Alex Schaaf was kind enough to take some time and answer a few of our questions about the new EP and more.

Let’s start with the recent release of Ghost, the new EP you guys are touring behind this fall. It features less aggressive instrumentation than Strange Land, also released in 2012. How and why did this EP come to be in the same year as your first full length with the trio? Also, feel free to elaborate on the creation of my personal favorite track, “U.S.A.” :)

We started working on the EP in May or June, after we had a little break from touring. We’re always looking forward to the next thing, and I don’t like sitting still and not creating something new, so it was just a natural movement forward. It didn’t make sense to put out another full-length LP this year, but we decided it’d be cool to do a 6-song EP, something that’s a serious release, not just b-sides and covers, but something that doesn’t necessarily overshadow Strange Land. “U.S.A.” was originally this song called “Madelyn”, which we had been playing live for a couple years. We recorded “Madelyn” for the Strange Land record, but decided not to use it. Then when we were working on it for this EP, I decided to scrap the whole thing and start over, so I wrote new lyrics and melodies for everything; we used the same basic structure as “Madelyn” but it became a new song, U.S.A.  It’s about traveling and trying to connect with people that live far away.

So I snagged 1 of the 100 copies of Ghost that feature a piece of a larger painting by artist Graham Parks. How did you end up collaborating with Parks?

Graham has been friends with [Yellow Ostrich percussionist] Michael for a long time and he came up with the idea for the cover, both the actual image and the idea for painting it on 100 blank record covers.

At the risk of sounding like a big creeper, I like the way the EP feels in my hands, what with the texture of the paint on the sleeve and such. In an age of a million and one ways to hear or own music for free, how would you relate to emerging artists the value of creating physical recordings for distribution?

I think it’s really important to make a special and interesting physical package for the record/CD. In this day of iTunes and downloads, it’s hard to get people to buy a CD, when it all eventually ends up on a hard drive anyways, and people don’t see the point of getting the little plastic case or the larger LP jacket. But if you put a lot of work into the design and layout of the LP or CD, then you’re really creating something worth buying, and it’s a much bigger experience than just downloading the files. So in order to compete, or to exist side-by-side with MP3s, you’ve gotta really show how physical packages can be exciting and worth having.

Having gone from being a solo artist to a trio playing with two other talented musicians, how does a live Yellow Ostrich show today feel in comparison to those shows back when you were on tour alone?

I never really toured alone, I just played a couple shows by myself where I did a lot of looping. That was pretty intellectual and hard to improvise or create exciting things live, so I really like playing with a full band, there are more possibilities and more of an exciting feeling onstage.

As someone who has created some great cover songs and appears to enjoy artistic collaboration, is there anyone or any other band with whom you’d really like to work?

If Neil Young would like us to be his backing band for his next record, I think we’d listen to his proposal.

Download the title track from the Ghost EP for free:

The show details are right here. RSVP won’t ya? The staggeringly talented Strand of Oaks along with new-to-me St. Louisan Samuel Fickie open.

IWTAS has two pairs of tickets to what will be the perfect day-after-the-election show – come celebrate victory or drown some sorrows with us. To enter, leave a comment below with your favorite Yellow Ostrich, Strand of Oaks, or Samuel Fickie song. Contest ends Tuesday night. Good luck!