LITTLE ROCK — The common wisdom is that a dog year is supposed to equal seven human years. The math probably works out close to the same way for rock bands.
Whatever the equation, 16 years is a long time for anything. To the three members of Nada Surf - Matthew Caws, Ira Elliot and Daniel Lorca - the New York trio that released its first record in 1996, the length of time they have been together seems especially mind-blowing.
“Oh, I was just thinking about that,” says drummer Elliot. “We’ve been doing this a damn long time for sure. What band ever thinks they are going to be together longer than six months? I bet even the Beatles thought they would last six months and then go off and be hairdressers.”
Nada Surf arrives Wednesday to play at Juanita’s. The band will feature the work off its latest album, The Stars Are Indifferent to Astronomy. Nada Surf ’s first full-length record, High/Low, was released in 1996. In 2010 the group put out If I Had a Hi-Fi, an album of covers containing the band’s take on songs by The Go-Betweens, Depeche Mode and The Moody Blues, among others.
“We had just come off that covers record,” Elliot says. “We said, ‘Let’s make a fast record.’Our first record was like that. It was essentially a live record. This one [Caws] had some songs ready and we used all of them. It wasn’t like in the past where we’d have to pick between 17 and 20 songs for the record.”
Elliot admits that his band listened to another group for inspiration: “Before going in the studio, we listened to this band called The Soft Pack.They are fantastic, and they are almost a punk band; they have this bracing, fast sound. They make it sound so easy. It’s like they are rediscovering rock ’n’ roll.”
For Nada Surf, the ins and outs of making a record are quite familiar.
But that doesn’t mean the group doesn’t get excited when things are going right.
“For us, it’s about the comfort of knowing each other,” Elliot says. “[Caws] does most of the groundwork, but it doesn’t take us long to get the machine going again. When we are all together and everything is working, you feel like you are 15 again. That’s when the music just feels like it is jumping out of your hands.”
While putting down songs for a record is old-hat, the act of maintaining Nada Surf’s Twitter account is a relatively new thing. Elliot is happy to let Caws handle that part of the social media.
“People talk to me about the account all the time,” Elliot says. “[Caws] does that. He is very Twittery, I guess. I can’t do it. Something about it. I write things out in paragraphs.”
The tour that brings Nada Surf to Little Rock is three weeks, not long compared with acts that spend months and months on the road.
Elliot, 49, says that is by design.
“Typically we go out and play three or four weeks at a time. [Caws] has a son and I have a newborn, a daughter. She is 13 months old. It’s a new wrinkle in the fabric for us. I procrastinated when it comes to being a father. But being a musician, you’re extending your adolescence. I don’t feel all that old.”
Nada Surf
Opening act: Waters 9 p.m. Wednesday, Juanita’s, 614 President Clinton Ave., Little Rock
Admission: $16 (501) 372-1228
Style, Pages 29 on 06/26/2012