MASTODON‘s Bill Kelliher spoke to The Skinny recently about the importance of Record Store Day and why they chose to cover Feist for their split 7″ with the Canadian singer songwriter. Check out an extract from that interview below:

Mastodon have played a number of in store appearances in the run up to today and you still take a lot of care over your physical album releases. What does Record Store Day mean to the band?

Record Store Day brings attention back to these local shops which, for a long time, were pretty much the only places for vinyl collectors and music fans to go and get their fix. Now we’ve got the Walmarts, Targets, the big corporations like Best Buy selling CDs, plus Amazon.com, iTunes and the whole online marketplace. Record Store Day, to me, is about remembering your roots.

It’s also an opportunity for us to do something special, like put out a covers record – something unique for this unique community of people. Vinyl disappeared for a while but collecting is making somewhat of a comeback. I think there’s a whole generation of kids who perhaps didn’t even know what vinyl was, and when it started making this resurgence they probably thought it was something new – like ‘oh, what’s this big plastic thing?’ It’s good to get people back in those stores and off that computer for a second.

Tell us about your split single with Feist, which comes out today. You both played Jools Holland late last year, was that when the idea came about?

That’s when we met, I really didn’t know anything about Feist until we did that show together but she really struck a chord with us. Honestly, I think it was more Troy [Sanders, bassist/vocalist] and Brent [Hinds, guitarist/vocalist] who were talking to Leslie. They were interested in doing some collaboration down the road, it just so happened that it came around sooner rather than later. It was like ‘oh, Record Store Day’s coming up, let’s do something.’

Troy kinda blurted out on some televised interview: ‘Oh yeah, we’re planning on doing a cover song – Feist’s gonna do one of ours, we’re gonna do one of hers.’ I didn’t even know that was happening. Our management called to ask: ‘What’s Troy talking about?’ I said ‘I have no idea – I guess we’re doing a Feist cover!’

Click here to read the full interview.

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