Rumours of Tilly And The Wall’s whimsical streak are entirely true – the Nebraska pop crew really do use a tap-dancer instead of a drummer.
“Early on, audiences had no idea what the hell I was doing up there in dance shoes,” explains Jamie Williams, whose blithe toe-taps have injected a note of weird grace to Tilly’s two studio records. “We’d set up in these small, quite dingy venues and then I’d start dancing. People were like, ‘What does she think she’s playing at?’”
Employing a tap dancer in lieu of a rhythm section poses distinctive problems of course.
“It can get a little complicated in the studio,” says Williams, who originally played guitar and sang with the band (a roll since assumed by bottle blonde frontwoman Kianna Alarid). “Usually, someone will come up with the melody first. Then I lay down a rhythm. Often I’ll stand on a suitcase ‘cos that gives you a better beat.”
Don’t mistake Tilly And The Wall for novelty cuties, though. The first act signed to Conor “Bright Eyes” Oberst’s Team Love, the five-piece aspire to alt. pop greatness. And if debut album Wild Like Children saw the band give quite blatant homage to their heroes – they're particularly partial to Yo La Tengo – last year’s Bottom Of Barrels LP found Tilly finding something like their own true voice.
Not that they are local heroes just yet. For while Nebraska’s indie movement is the toast of scene watchers elsewhere, in their God-fearing home state the ripples have gone unnoticed. A little piece of Nebraska’s soul, Williams says, will always belong to Jesus. And, despite the long hair and sandals, Jesus doesn’t dig indie rock.
“You’ve got to understand that Omaha is a really conservative city,” she elaborates. “People are either into really mainstream stuff like Christina Aguilera or flag wavers like Toby Keith. There’s no awareness of indie rock. We’re totally not on the map. Obviously it’s not just us. Look at Conor [Oberst] – he’s such a big deal everywhere but Omaha.”
So why not move to one of the big cities?
“You mean like London?”
Well, sure. Or New York , LA, Chicago – the US, after all, doesn’t exactly lack for glittering conurbations. Wiliams smiles wistfully.
“Y’know, we’ve talked about doing that. But it would break our heart to leave Nebraska. Sure, it’s a little isolated. but we’ve our families here, our friends. It would be a big thing to leave.”