“Nike is obviously more sporty than Adidas. I always associate Adidas with Beastie Boys and Run-DMC.”
― John Gourley
“To be an artist that is fully original, it doesn’t exist.”
― John Gourley
“We’re just nerds that play music. Because we get played on the radio and have a Vitaminwater ad with Aaron Paul dancing on a treadmill, people are going to say we sold out. I don’t write music for that. I write music for me.”
― John Gourley
“Miles Davis and Felonious Monk, they’re both great artists who enhance things.”
― John Gourley
“I think there are really great movements happening in Portland. It’s nice being in a place that supports itself and stands on its own.”
― John Gourley
“I went to so many sleepovers where these parents were reading the ‘Book of Revelation’ before bed and things like that. I would listen to that stuff, and I would sit there and say to myself, ‘If God is so great and so good, why is there this list of rules?’ Like, you go to hell if you don’t believe in him and hold him up above everyone else.”
― John Gourley
“Whether it be tour posters, album packaging, videos, stage design, etc., the visual aspect of music is very important to us.”
― John Gourley
“We lived out in the middle of nowhere – the most random places – because of my father’s work. We spent a lot of time in the car on long drives, just to get anywhere. We listened to oldies rock on the car radio, and the most-played group on oldies rock radio is the Beatles.”
― John Gourley
“Mental health is personal for our whole band. As touring musicians, self-care can quickly become make it or break it on the road.”
― John Gourley
“The worst gift I have ever gotten on Christmas is going to see Tim Allen in ‘The Santa Clause.’”
― John Gourley
“I’ve always been into thrifting. I’m a fan of finding unique pieces and having them tailored or altered.”
― John Gourley
“We grew up in Alaska and will rep The North Face all day long.”
― John Gourley
“As much as we love an excuse to dress up, the red carpet is not the place.”
― John Gourley
“There are some athletes who I feel like are just looking for likes, and then there are people who are just real.”
― John Gourley
“I like work, I like song writing, and I like the history of Atlantic Records. They’ve sat in the studio with so many artists – like Ray Charles, for example – and created something amazing. As a label, they seem to be great at growing bands rather than telling you how to do it.”
― John Gourley
“As a songwriter, it’s good to have criticism, and I like objective opinions.”
― John Gourley
“My favourite piece of music is actually ‘The Dark Side Of The Moon’ as a whole. For me, it’s the most perfect and brilliant example of rock song writing.”
― John Gourley
“I see a lot of people say you just make the music you wanna make and just love what you do, and that is what we do, but I wanna write the best songs we can.”
― John Gourley
“’Feel It Still’ came around pretty much as organically as you can put a song together.”
― John Gourley
“I feel like rock n’ roll has become very tame.”
― John Gourley
“To me, sci-fi has the most amazing style.”
― John Gourley
“Levis are my go-to. Plain crew necks and jeans.”
― John Gourley
“I grew up in Alaska, okay? My dad graduated high school and went straight to the mountains. He had $300 and staked a claim. He didn’t even have enough to put a title on the land: just had the records that he bought before he moved.”
― John Gourley
“We went to Japan and stayed an extra day just to go shopping. New York is one of those places where we never get that. If we’re there, we’re working.”
― John Gourley
“When we were kids, my favorite thing was coming to upstate New York where my family is from and hanging out with my grandparents’ friends pre-Internet and them asking if we had stores or ‘Do you have TV in Alaska?’”
― John Gourley
“A country is an individual in the world that represents a group of people, so I decided we would name our band after a country, and Portugal happened to be the one that popped up.”
― John Gourley
“Getting nominated for a Grammy is as high as it gets for us.”
― John Gourley
“It’s so perfectly Alaska to be like, ‘Dad we’re going to the Grammys,’ and for him to be like, ‘Oh, well that’s great, Johnny. All right, gotta go back to work.’”
― John Gourley
“Growing up, the only acts that came to us in Alaska were the big ones. The Mariah Careys.”
― John Gourley
“Portland is where all the fringe groups went to escape. Where the outliers brought that DIY, punk rock attitude and made the city their own.”
― John Gourley
“I love running and good running shoes.”
― John Gourley
“I’ve never been the type of person that puts things on a shelf or, like, needs to clean my sneakers every day. I just wear what I like.”
― John Gourley
“Some New York bands you’ll see rocking Ones or Dunks and things like that, but it is weird that the sneakerhead thing has become so massive. Personally, I think it’s really silly.”
― John Gourley
“I was a shy kid growing up, and I liked the idea of playing under this alter ego: like, I could be Ziggy Stardust, but I also knew I could never be Ziggy Stardust.”
― John Gourley
“The period in the name – huge mistake, I know. We didn’t think about that. We never thought we were going to be written up in magazines. The second we saw it in print, like, what a mistake, man.”
― John Gourley
“For the people that don’t know it, we’ve had members come and go from this band since the beginning. It’s always been about collaboration, and it’s been about just playing music with our friends.”
― John Gourley
“There’s no making art for art’s sake. You’ve got to make the best art you can.”
― John Gourley
“My first concert was Pantera.”
― John Gourley
“I love Unknown Mortal Orchestra, who are from New Zealand, living in Portland.”
― John Gourley
“Right after we recorded ‘Satanic Satanist’ and ‘American Ghetto’ here in Boston, we decided we’d grow our hair out. This is – was – like the Beatles thing. I wanted to see these pictures later in life.”
― John Gourley
“Poor Ron Paul. He means well. He really does. But there’s something about him. I don’t know what it is. From falling victim to Sacha Baron Cohen’s Bruno to that old-man shuffle, he just seems like kind of a… like kind of a sissy.”
― John Gourley
“My dad just decided that he wanted to race sled dogs, and when he did that, he took us out of Wasilla, and we never really went back.”
― John Gourley
“That’s really important in a producer – a producer that can step up and play a keyboard, play a bass, play a guitar, and help you with things instead of just saying, ‘I think this could be better.’”
― John Gourley
“Being robbed is a really great way of editing your belongings.”
― John Gourley
“My dad just left high school in ’69, went to Woodstock, and after half a year of college for architecture, just took off for Alaska. He bought a van and went straight into the mountains and built a cabin.”
― John Gourley
“We tour, we do the distance from friends and family, not really knowing how to connect with people on the same level. I’ve understood now, as much as we tour, we live day-to-day, so our lives are much different than the people who stay at home and go home every night.”
― John Gourley
“If you don’t have negative experiences, you have no way to gauge the positive ones, and you have no way to deal with it.”
― John Gourley
“Growing up, I just always doodled, which is the worst word for it. I would just draw things in class, get yelled at by my teachers, get my drawings taken away. That stuff happened all the time.”
― John Gourley
“Basically, great directors know how to combine music with the scenes that they are working on.”
― John Gourley
“We started playing music because of the Wu-Tang Clan.”
― John Gourley
“Money messes up everything. It ruins art. The second you start putting price tags on this stuff, it’s… Art isn’t for just the wealthy. It’s for everybody to enjoy.”
― John Gourley
“I’m just not into the shady side of the music industry. Give credit where credit’s due.”
― John Gourley
“We’ve always done what we do, and we go out and try and get better with each record we make.”
― John Gourley
“It’s silly to me to not be positive about rock advancing and growing. Really, we just want rock n’ roll to be mainstream.”
― John Gourley
“My dad builds houses, and, for the earlier portion of my life anyway, we moved around quite a bit. It took us to some just really amazing places.”
― John Gourley
“Music is something that you really have to want to do it, and there has to be a reason behind it.”
― John Gourley
“The Alaskan summers are one of the most amazing things you can see.”
― John Gourley
“I would watch ‘Sesame Street’ and see neighborhoods and kids with other kids to play with, and I just didn’t have that. You know, we were on a lake. We just didn’t have that stuff.”
― John Gourley
“Portugal. The Man, to me, doesn’t have any real ties. We try to change things up with every album, really progress, and let things happen.”
― John Gourley
“It’s really hard to escape where you were brought up. Not that I would ever want to escape it.”
― John Gourley
“I think we’re pretty spiritual people, the band in general. We’re not a bunch of hippies or anything like that, but we like to work together and work with people. We believe that positive energy is pretty necessary in life, although it’s not always easy to maintain.”
― John Gourley
“I bought a book with guitar tabs and forced myself to learn. I would go to school and then come home and sit in my room for hours figuring out the songs.”
― John Gourley
“It’s funny, because I had no intention of being in a band because I was so shy. But I loved playing music and loved writing songs. I always thought I’d be in the background and, if I did get into a band, be a backup musician.”
― John Gourley
“We should be able to write songs for a new album every six months. If you think about it, it’s not a crazy amount of writing.”
― John Gourley
“The whole band is from Alaska. It’s like growing up anywhere else.”
― John Gourley
“Portugal is like Ziggy Stardust. The period is there, so you know that it’s not the country, it’s Portugal. The ‘Man’ states, ‘He’s the man.’”
― John Gourley
“We have an amazing job. We get to travel around the world and experience different cultures and just learn so many things.”
― John Gourley
“You can never really know what a record’s going to be.”
― John Gourley
“Great musicians need great producers. The Beatles had George Martin.”
― John Gourley
“I feel like every album we make, that’s our debut album.”
― John Gourley
“When I talk to my mom and dad, and I’m in Paris, I’m like, ‘Can you believe it?’ It’s ridiculous. I have a serious love for what we do. It’s not something we take for granted.”
― John Gourley
“You can’t just be a rock star by rehashing things you’ve seen or done before. Bring something new, which is what hip-hop does best.”
― John Gourley
“I want to share music that we grew up with for this generation, the music my parents shared with me.”
― John Gourley
“You can never predict a hit.”
― John Gourley
“I like the challenge of writing music without being the coolest guy or band in the room.”
― John Gourley
“There’s something about Detroit, man: there’s a serious vibe there. It could be that blue-collar, working-class-mentality person who lives out there. There’s just something about it. It reminds me of Alaska. Texas has the same thing. Detroit is a little heavier than both.”
― John Gourley
“As an artist, you can’t expect a producer to just bring you a record. If you walk in and say, ‘I want Kanye West’s ‘Power,’ it just doesn’t work that way.”
― John Gourley
“It’s OK to fail once in awhile.”
― John Gourley
“When I was in high school and first starting to drive by myself, I listened to Wu Tang in the car, and I recognized their soul and R&B roots.”
― John Gourley
“My dad would come to pick me up from high school in a beaver-skin cap, big gloves, his parka and everything. It was so funny to see him show up – his beard all frozen from being out with the dogs.”
― John Gourley
“The reason I got into music was obviously because of bands like The Beatles and Pink Floyd, things like that.”
― John Gourley
“Weird Al was something that kids would listen to. It’s funny, super funny, smart. It’s just kind of jokey. I remember hearing ‘Smells Like Nirvana’ before hearing ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit.’ That’s how it really worked. I think it’s just such a cool thing how he introduced us to so many cool bands. Even Queen – ‘Another One Rides the Bus.’”
― John Gourley
“I’ve never been to a beach party before. We have gravel-pit parties in Alaska.”
― John Gourley
“We pride ourselves on being a touring band. We work very hard to give a great and unique performance.”
― John Gourley
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