Hey Sean, thanks for talking to me! I know you’ve been playing music for a very long time, because I’ve been listening to music you’ve made for a very long time. I’m most familiar with June of 44 and the Sonora Pine record, and I’m also a massive Lungfish fan. I know there are other bands you’ve been involved in that I’m not super aware of so maybe you'd like to talk a little bit about all the projects you’ve been involved in?
A little bit’s cool. The ones you just mentioned are most known for a reason. The folks I’ve been collaborating with in those bands are the most immensely talented people I’ve ever worked with, no doubt. I don’t know where to start. I was in punk bands as a kid in Chattanooga. The goal of being in a punk band in a small town was getting out of your small town. I’m back in my small town which is pretty awesome. The perspectives have changed.
Sean Meadows, photo by Lucio Febo
How long have you been back?
I technically moved back here in 2002 and we’ve lived here (my wife and I and our 2 sons) but I’ve never stopped traveling for work and playing music. But I spent the 90’s mostly in New York. Even moving back in 2002, I continued to work mostly in New York. So New York is a weird surrogate home for me. I actually identify as being a New Yorker at this point as an adult more than being from here, which is weird because I still live here.
What do you do for work, if you don’t mind?
I don’t mind. I’m a freelance survivalist because I just try to survive. I’ve done a bunch of construction work and for the last ten years I’ve been doing work for a company that does art logistics that have art fairs all over the place. I’ve worked with a lot of art handlers installing and shipping art. From my perspective, it’s cool. Most of the folks who have that job are disgruntled artists who don’t want to be art handlers. There is a really poetic misery to that job. When I moved back here in 2002, I cleaned chemical barges on the Tennessee River so I’m not that disgruntled handling art, I’ve had worse jobs. It’s a weird, ground-floor access to the art world. You get to see the same stuff and interact with the same people who are at every station in the art world but you’re doing the shitty work of it. You have a lot of beautiful artists who aren’t successful for whatever reason doing that job and they’re disgruntled about it. I just choose to not look at it like that.
I was recently reminded of the movie Half-Cocked. Is that how you met Jeff (Mueller)?
That’s a good question but that’s actually not how I met Jeff. Jeff and I knew each other before that. I had done some traveling with the band Crain who I’m sure you’re familiar with and before Half-Cocked, I had been driving and roadie-ing for Crain. I wound up being one of the collective of weirdos living in the Rocket House for a spell, a few months at most. Mr. Jon Cook picked me up off the road and shoved me in a corner of the Rocket House and forgot about me for a time and that’s where I developed a pretty fast track and deep friendship with Jeff and Tara. I have a vague memory of meeting Tara in the stairwell of the Rocket House, ghost-like just looking at each other like weird phantoms in that house. So I wound up palling around with her. Her and Jeff were both in the early stages of Rodan. We became friends a year or 2 before Half-Cocked, so the movie was just a continuation of that.
Do you want to talk about what it was like making that film?
I guess? But not really. [laughter] It was a long time ago and it’s in a weird space in my mind. The reason I say no isn’t that I have anything negative to say about it, I just don’t know what to say about it. We thought it would turn out to be more intense artistically than it ended up being. It’s like a yearbook picture that you’re not necessarily all that psyched about. Like a mullet shot.
So, you and Jeff started playing in June of 44 shortly after? How did that initially come together?
I moved from Tennessee to Baltimore with a friend of mine and we didn’t really know what was going on. Things quickly began to look impossible in Baltimore and I wound up taking an opportunity to move to New York City. Being tight with Jeff and Tara, they knew I was moving to New York and they both separately were like “let’s make music, we’re coming to New York too.” That was the beginning of really playing with those guys in earnest.
OK, so June of 44 and The Sonora Pine were kind of concurrent or were you playing with Tara (Jane O'Neil) before Jeff?
Yes, but by only a minute. He was right on the heels of her coming there.
Didn’t ‘Engine Takes To Water’ come together fairly quickly?
Yeah, that was super fast. Jeff and I had the skeleton ideas of those songs for a handful of days and we played with Doug and then Fred came along and we played for 2 or 3 weeks and tracked that record in 3 days with James Murphy. So, that’s pretty fast. It was definitely under a month, start to finish.
That’s impressive. The recent remasters that Quarterstick put out turned out beautifully. It was like traveling back in time.
Yeah, I feel like the current phase of what we’re doing is more a time traveling band than a reunion band. It was a cool experience for me to hear them again after not listening to them for many years.
Is June of 44 going to continue doing anything?
I hope so. I was recently palling around with Jeff in Connecticut writing songs and we’re pretty happy after all this time traveling to be making songs.
June Of '44 recently announced European tour dates, listed below.
That show at the Bottom Lounge, which I think was the last show I saw before the pandemic, was really incredible. It was mind bending to be seeing you guys again.
Likewise, to see that room of people that we know so well, it was a mutual, crazy time traveling experience for us. It blew my mind.
That was really fun. It's great that you guys are writing new songs. David Yow once referred to the Jesus Lizard reunion shows as Jesus Lizard reenactments.
Funny you brought that up because the last show I saw before the pandemic, I took my 15 year old son to Nashville to see the Jesus Lizard. If he wants to call it a reenactment, that’s fine, but for me personally, we stood in the middle of all those people in Nashville and danced our asses off. It was amazing. Mr. Yow, call it a reenactment, but it’s just music to people who love it.
Absolutely. I’d like to talk a little bit about The Sonora Pine because when that record came out, it really floored me. If you have any memories of the making of that record…
Oh that’s nice, I didn’t know you were into that record. People don’t often ask me about that. I have beautiful fond memories of making that shit. In fact, once we got those songs together, before we did a version with Samara and Kevin, we did the demos at my parents’ house. As the years have gone on, I actually like the demos more than the record. I can’t find the demos anymore. I don’t think they exist. Corey (Rusk) might have those demos. We were so dumb, well not Tara, but we wrote all those songs in New York City and I had this weird ass gothic fucked up idea that those songs needed to be recorded in New Orleans so I tried to get a space and a studio and all this kooky shit. If I didn’t do all that goofy shit, we probably would have made it a year earlier than we actually made it in Louisville. I remember wandering around New Orleans trying to sort out how we were going to make that record down there, which was dumb and made no sense. I had this vampire vibe I thought should go with those songs. Does that make any sense? You spent some time with the record.
Yeah, it actually makes a lot of sense. I actually just pulled out the record, so it looks like it was recorded in Louisville.
Tara rented a house in Louisville and Bob (Weston) came down with an 8-Track Otari machine and we recorded it in the living room, dining room, kitchen, and bathroom of this house Tara rented. That seemed pretty cool and weird because we could have gone in the studio but we thought it might be more fun to record it in her house. Then we took those tapes to Steve (Albini)’s house before he had Electrical Audio and mixed it there, which was super righteous to even just walk in there. I was a fan of the records and music coming out of there.
That’s awesome. And Bob mixed it?
We mixed it with him.
Man, you guys have had a long relationship with Bob.
I love Bob.
You mentioned you were in and out of Baltimore for a bit and I always wondered how you ended up in Lungfish and if you wanted to talk about them a bit.
I can a little bit. You know the band so I’m clearly a junior member. They had a fully formed artistic universe before I stepped on their star ship. I knew them from when they first left the east coast and toured the states. A friend of mine booked them in a skate park in north Georgia and I missed that show. I was out of town in New Orleans and I came back to Tennessee and she had the ‘Necklace of Heads’ record. She was like “You’d like these guys.”
So I listened to that record about a dozen times and we were like alright, “Let’s go talk to these guys.” She and I and another friend drove up there and went and found them immediately, before they’d made the first Dischord record. When they toured they would come through here so I knew them all through their first 3 records. It’s a little complicated and weird to talk about how I started playing with them and maybe not that interesting. It’s tricky because I just turned down a Lungfish podcast and I didn’t want to be disrespectful, but as the junior member, I didn’t feel like the spokesperson to talk about that band. I knew this conversation with you would be more expansive. I was just friends with Lungfish and deeply into their music. I made a couple records with them and then we were friends when I wasn’t in the band for six or eight years and then they asked me to work on ‘Love Is Love' which I was psyched about. So it worked to play music with them for another few years. There’s a lot to it, it’s hard to describe how all that stuff works out.
Sure. I was talking about this not that long ago but I was a fan for years and just because of where I lived, I never had an opportunity to see them. I swear when ‘Love Is Love’ came out, I saw you guys in Chicago like 3 times in a just a few short years. I felt spoiled, it was great.
We played a bunch for those few years and then we didn’t play anymore. That whole period was a super beautiful Lungfish music period, absolutely. I’m very proud of that.
I’ve contemplated that tree on the cover of ‘Love Is Love’ as a tattoo in the past. It’s really lovely.
There was almost a different version, but in the end, it came together perfectly. It was nice. Those guys were really deep. The reason it’s tricky for me is I know there are people who love Lungfish music, and out of respect for them, I don’t want to say too much about it. At this point, it’s more theirs than anyone else’s. My opinions don’t matter.
I was just interested in your experience being involved, not necessarily trying to get you to weigh in on the output.
Cool. I can go there, I can share my experience. It spans a decade, it was a lot. I was young and then later, I was old and I felt more confident in my musicality and I felt like I could contribute. The first wave, I was just a kid and those guys were a lot older than me and had toured a lot and knew a lot of folks. They had a fully realized vision for what they were doing. I believed in their music and I wanted to help them realize it. I think a little later, I was able to contribute a little more, I hope.
They took a break for a while and then came back with ‘Necrophones’, right? I feel like those last 3 records just gelled in an incredible way.
I support your affinity for that music. There’s enough work there that people have different feelings about it. From a fan perspective, my own self, I remember I had gone to Spain and I wasn’t playing with them. I came back to Chicago to do June of 44 stuff and Jeff Mueller played me ‘Artificial Horizon’ and that’s the first record in my life that destroyed me in that specific way. I loved that record and yet it was like daggers that I wasn’t playing that music with them. If I want to pleasantly destroy myself, I’ll put on ‘Love Will Ruin Your Mind’. As a fan, not being part of what I played, where they were in the ‘Pass & Stow’ record, I saw them a bunch then before I got in the band and did ‘Sound In Time’. I’ve never seen a band in the spot they were in, in the 18 months of that record. They were scary and beautiful and gentle and ferocious in this way that I’ve never seen anything else like it. So for me, not having anything to do with them, it’s ‘Artificial Horizon’ and ‘Pass & Stow’. I love that you have your own trinity of records and people who love Lungfish music can get on board in different places. They're cool dudes in a cool band.
So you play on ‘Sound In Time’ and ‘Indivisible’, correct? And then, ‘Love Is Love’ and ‘Feral Hymns’?
That’s correct.
I will say, there’s something about those 4 records, something that you bring to it that's not on the other records, even though I love other records by them... there’s something about those 4 that I’m always drawn to.
I’m psyched to hear you say that, thank you. That’s the area where it’s probably better if I don’t say anything about it. Because that’s your music, you know? If you can get inside that music from your perspective, that’s what I want. The music is available to access.
Lungfish was huge for us. Brendan and I are enormous fans and it was in heavy rotation for all the years we worked together at Touch and Go. We would fantasize about what Daniel Higgs was like as a person just because he seemed so mystical. We imagined lengthy band walks, where much was discussed and revealed.
Greetings, Brother Daniel.
I remember once, after Daniel had just released record of himself playing the jaw harp (Magic Alphabet) and Corey (Rusk) came downstairs and he was just like “What the fuck are you listening to?” and I was like “Well, this is Daniel Higgs” and it was one of the 3 or 4 times I saw him just laugh explosively. I did have the pleasure of briefly meeting him (Daniel) eventually and he was a seemingly normal guy. I met Asa once as well, he was also extremely pleasant.
Have you met Mitchell yet?
We’ve chatted on Facebook a little and I met him briefly at Logan Square Auditorium the last time I saw you play there.
Have you read his poetry? He’s a fuckin’ poet, man. His poetry is very deep and cool.
That was a beautiful show. I was bummed that Slint was playing against us. That was not cool.
Lungfish at Logan Square Auditorium.
I somehow made it to both shows. Park West isn’t around the corner either, I can't remember if they played early or something.
You must have been the only one because we got ditched by a bunch of people, understandably.
So, I really like the way you talk about making music. I read an interview with you years ago about ‘Four Great Points’ and you were describing being in the recording studio and having an out of body experience while you were recording. That always stuck with me.
We’ve had some face time. I’m a deep, old school weirdo. I’ve had some out of body experiences, my friend. This relationship to this temporal plane is tenuous.
Is making music something that opens that up for you?
I don’t know that I’ve thought about it like that. I don’t think about it necessarily like that. Creating music is something I do as a practice on a daily basis just to achieve a sense of balance. It started at age 13 when I was able to get a shitty heavy metal glam candy apple red bass guitar. Sound and music, I discovered early on, is something that has helped me achieve balance within myself. It’s something I’ve continued to do on a daily basis since then. Sometimes things get out of balance, depending on the scenario or the personalities or whatever you might be working on, the equations can get pretty weird and stretched out. I love listening to music. I love playing music. I feel better when there’s music I like happening with my body between a community. ‘Four Great Points’ was a pretty special, weird time. Things got stretched out, but they could have gotten dilated if you know what I mean.
Yeah, that record felt like a transition. I remember it hitting pretty hard when it came out.
It changed stuff for us exponentially. We traveled more, we played bigger shows. There was a little more excitement. I think all of our lives changed at least a little bit with that record.
We did a lot of work on that record at Jason Noble’s house on Woodbine in Louisville, but Jeff didn’t live there. It was just a collective commune style. Jason bought that place with Kyle and they had multiple spaces to play in and we piled in there. We had friends with us and we stayed deep like seven or eight people in that house for the better part of the summer and built that record. Then it was easy to go to Chicago and track it. Jeff’s address was technically in Philadelphia then, if I’m not mistaken.
That’s cool. So when you say you guys were traveling more, you mean touring more?
Yeah, we were steadily touring more with that group of folks in that period. The couple years around that record, we worked a lot together.
So you were saying you continue to write every day. Do you ever record? Do you keep documentation of what you’re doing or just write for the sake of writing?
Both. Right before you saw us in Chicago I had a little studio down in Tennessee and I burned it down by accident.
I do remember that. I was going to ask about that.
There was a lot of documentation in that studio of us playing music and recording which I now no longer have. It’s a clean slate. But there wasn’t a Tchaikovsky record in there, ya know. Presently, I just play to play. I just play music to make music. Every day I have instruments around and I listen to records and I play music. I’m not especially good at recording. Early on I thought I might want to take this warrior path of being an engineer like the other great characters we know but I’m just not technically proficient to be that guy. At some phase in building my studio, I knew it wasn’t going to be SOMA or Electrical Audio, but it was a place for me to make music. You don’t need a studio to make music so I make music every day. Right now I’m making iPhone recordings on the dictaphone app.
What was your studio setup like?
It was fucking rad! I didn’t have a lot of great gear but I built a control room, I had 2 dead rooms, I had another super vibrant live room. It was in an old horse stable. I was making paintings in there too which I was super psyched about. Really laborious, long, slow paintings. I had most of my record collection there, it was just like a little church to just feel in balance. I had various tape machines and synthesizers but nothing like any of the rad dudes in your town have. It was pretty rudimentary. Nobody would be impressed by the gear but the space was something I had geeked out about for years. It was the one thing I could control with some recycled materials. It was like this wooden box in the woods. I had imagined some of my deep friends like Bob with his 8-Track Otari tape machine coming down and making a sick record. It did seem to function in my brain as a place you could elevate but a drone strike took it out [chuckles]. I worked on that building for 17 years. It was pretty cool.
The love in your voice talking about it just seems like a really special place that allowed you to be creative in all the ways you needed to.
It was exactly that. You go into an amazing studio and you know the hourglass is ticking and it’s going to cost you money. Living in lofts in New York and Chicago, you just want a space to live and work and that was my live/work space.
That sounds really beautiful and I’m sorry that it went up in flames.
No one was hurt is the most important thing.
Yeah and it was impressive that you guys were able to continue playing dates without missing a beat...
That was the most important thing during the trauma of that it was like “Whoa, this is a collective of heavy dudes making music.” I was super proud of us and felt like “Let’s make more music.”
You mentioned that you’re a painter as well.
Well, maybe I’m a painter. I’m not sure.
Is that something you continue to do, as well as write every day?
Yeah, yes.
Over the span of time you’ve been creating music, how do you feel like your influences have evolved, if they have? Obviously, you’re still able to lose your mind at a Jesus Lizard show. Have you seen your tastes evolve and change over time?
Absolutely. It’s a good question, I’m not going to groan.
Yes, totally.
Can you give some examples of stuff that used to inspire you versus stuff that now might?
I can try. I bought the new Floating Points/Pharaoh Sanders record that came out a while ago. I bought that and it stayed on my turntable for a week. To think about Pharoah at 80 making this patient music that’s contemporary, that’s got some Alice Coltrane vibes, that’s some present, cool music. I’ve been weirding out to this really thin sounding Segovia record, this classical guitar stuff. I reference it with this dude George Cordoba. Do you know about this dude? The Guitarra Exotica record? It’s a weird, secret, fucked up, beautiful, awesome record. If you like Romany jazzy Django Rheinhardt kind of music, I think the guy played with Django at some point. He was a weird prickly type of character. My wife bought this record for me a few years ago at a thrift store. I love this record, I’ve just worn it out. It’s really beautiful. That wouldn’t have spoken to me when I was a kid. To address your question specifically, I want to bring up Mitchell again because he’s a beautiful poet who is a little bit older than I am. He and I talked about how it’s important to constantly consume new music as well as appreciate old music as a practice. I try to listen to new music and go backwards and forwards at the same time. Even the way I listen to music is evolving with just being alive.
There’s nothing more frustrating than getting stuck in a rut with records. Your brain flips through ten things you want to hear and I have ...maybe 4000 LPs. Like, what am I doing?
You were excited when you bought them, you need to re-interface how you felt when you bought them.
Selfishly, when I ask this question in interviews, I’m just looking for recommendations for new music to check out.
There’s an unearthed Don Cherry record I haven’t heard yet that was made the year I was born in 1972. Like everyone else, I’m fixated on the music that was made around the time I was born. My wife was a dancer but sometimes she’s super sensitive to the fact that I need to listen to music non-stop. Having children also re-interfaced my evolution of listening to music. It was cool to drag my son to see the Jesus Lizard but I don’t want to play it in the house non-stop. So we listen to a lot of happy music. My sons are pretty musical. My younger son is like “I don’t like experimental music” and I’m like “Cool, let’s listen to Jimmy Cliff.”
So, have your children listened to bands you’ve been in? What do they think?
Yeah totally. They’re positive and supportive. It doesn’t speak to them in that they need to play it twice but they’re not yet curious on their own so much to hear it. By the time my oldest was 5 years old, he heard more music than I heard in 25 years. They have a weird impression of a lot of music just from being around and living together. If they want to like pop music, that’s fine, because I know the (weird stuff) is in there somewhere. I imagine if they go to college and someone is like “You gotta check out this Jimi Hendrix record”, they’ll be like “I know this record.” I don’t push music or practice on them but they’re both better musicians than I am already. My older son plays piano and the little guy plays drums. They come to it on their own terms.
Have you ever collaborated with them?
Yeah, totally. We just make music when we can, which is kind of all the time.
Let me ask you, I know there’s a coffee angle to this. Coffee's roots are in Ethiopia? What coffee nerd stuff do I need to know about the history of coffee?
The cultivation of coffee started in Ethiopia, which still produces the best coffee on the planet. Coffee grows around the equator and the terroir of different regions will affect the flavors. When you get coffee from the Americas, you’re getting more chocolate notes and caramel because of the sugar cane and cocoa that’s growing. When you get to Africa, you’re getting really bright, citrus-y coffee.
In that thought, are you also really into Ethiopian music?
I’m super familiar with a lot of those Ethiopiques comps and some of the artists highlighted on them. It’s never a wrong time to put some of that stuff on. It always makes the situation better.
Do you think there’s an acceptable synesthesia avenue for people to get the music and coffee together, like certain coffees might go with certain music?
Coffee, as drawn by Sean.
Oh wow. That’s an interesting concept. I’ll have to think about that and get back to you.
I ask because a couple years ago, a friend of mine who lives in Germany now, we were talking about that with wine. We were tasting certain wines and trying to imagine what key they might be in. I’m just curious if there’s a way to access this crossover because people do have synesthesia, that’s a real thing. I think there might be a way to pair music and other alkaloid compounds to give people who don’t have synesthesia a type of synesthesia experience.
For most people, they’re probably drinking coffee in the morning versus drinking wine in the evening. I wonder what kind of effect that would have on what you’re listening to.
There’s a musical quality to really beautiful wine. They have a fucking musical note.
So I have some coffee related questions since you brought it up. What do you like in a cup of coffee?
I like medium roast. I like the beautiful Ethiopian coffees. I’ve spent some time in that central part of Costa Rica and they make beautiful coffees there. Is Vietnam the world’s 4th largest producer of coffee? What’s up with Vietnamese coffee man?
I believe that’s true. I don’t know if they’re 4th, but I do know they produce a lot. In the last 20 years or so? China has also started producing a lot. As far as regions, my least favorite region would be Indonesian coffees. I’ve tasted coffees from Indonesia that taste like leather or tobacco or beef broth. It’s not what I’m looking for in a cup of coffee. If I'm not mistaken, I believe that Vietnam and China’s production mainly goes to huge producers like Starbucks.
What happened to the chemistry set coffee that was popular a few years ago? You don’t see that anymore.
Like vacuum pots and stuff? I have some, my mother in law would get my coffee gadgets every Christmas until I had to put a moratorium on that due to a lack of space. It’s laborious. It’s fun to watch but there’s nothing about it that truly sets it apart? It’s a lot of work and someone’s waiting 10 minutes for their coffee and they’re like “Oh, it’s coffee”. A lot of smoke with no fire, really.
How do you make coffee at home?
I make drip coffee. Just normal coffee. I had the Moka pot but it started giving me anxiety attacks so I had to throw it away because I’d drink the whole Moka pot and freak out.
What do you like to drink if you’re just ordering a coffee out in the world?
It depends on where I am. I like drinking the weirdo Cortados in Spain but I don’t care to drink the European style coffees here. I’ll just have an espresso or normal coffee. I didn’t see anybody talk about the Cafe Corretto in any of your interviews.
I don’t even know what that is.
When you have a beautiful multi-course meal with loved ones in Italy, you might have a digestif of espresso with a splash of Sambuca. You should investigate this because a Cafe Corretto is a beautiful thing. The Italians know what the fuck I’m talking about.
Speaking of beloved Italians, I have one more music question about June of 44. The first reunion show was for the Uzeda 30th celebration right? What was your experience in that process happening?
Wow. I didn’t think we could do it. The initial response was “That’s amazing, there’s no way we can do that.” It was lovely to be asked but we thought it was a little nutty. Then, Agostino was like “Why can’t you do it?” and nobody could think of a reason. It went from an impossibility to a challenge based on our very sophisticated friend.
Were you guys asked to play the Touch & Go 25th anniversary?
I think so but at that time, that was not facilitated through Agostino so the diplomacy would have been different. I didn’t come to the 25th anniversary experience and I’m a little bit sour about it to this day. We were collectively not in a place where we could do it.
Last coffee question. Do you feel like coffee has ever affected your creativity?
Yes. It’s hard for me to expound on that because, unlike alcohol, coffee is a more subtle compound. Like Warren Ellis said in your interview, I am a coffee addict so I need it every day. That’s the slow lane and then the fast lane might be creativity. You get into a very specific, nimble place because if you do too much, it short circuits the creativity in my experience. I’m not a surfer but it’s like a really tight wave that crashes on a small space. Balance. If you look at any practice, balance is the goal. Coffee should be used to great effect in moderation.
The last question I always ask people is if they’ve heard any good jokes lately.
I just got a bunch of jokes from Jeff’s little daughter in Connecticut but I’m going to give you a dad joke instead that I told my kids when they were little:
Q: How many Surrealists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: A fish.
Many thanks to Sean for the lovely conversation and deep insights. June Of 44 recently announced a series of European dates, and maybe we'll get to see them over here again in the future. Do yourself a favor and check out The Sonora Pine, June Of 44, and Lungfish if you are not yet familiar. If you'd like to check out Glassworks Coffee, please use code ENGINE at check out for 20% off of your first order.
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Thank you both, I've been looking forward to talking with you. My first question would be how did Eleventh Dream Day get started? There's a bit of Louisville history before Chicago?
Rick: Yeah, I met Janet in Louisville in 1983. She was rehearsing with another band in what was known as the punk rock house there at a place called 1069. I was hanging out with some friends that I knew and she walked out of her rehearsal and I met her. Next thing I knew, she was moving to Chicago and we were starting a band.
I know there have been a few different lineups, but I think Doug McCombs has been a part of it since the beginning? How did you start playing with Doug?
Rick: Well, we actually started as a 3 piece. Janet worked at The Heartland and there was this other woman Shu who played bass. We did that for about a year and even made some demos. I wanted to add another guitar player. I think it all got a little noisy for Shu back then so she decided to quit and we got Baird Figi to play guitar because he knew Doug. He worked at Round Records. Everybody back then was in Rogers Park and those 2 joined the band at the same time around 1985.
Wow, so you guys have existed as a band for almost 40 years. Any bands before Eleventh Dream Day?
Rick: I went to college in Lexington, KY and after I graduated, I was in a punk rock band called The Pods. Nobody would really know who they were. It was another 3 piece and I taught myself how to play bass but we never recorded or anything.
Janet: When I met Rick, I was living in Louisville and playing in a band called The Zoo Directors and that was the first band I played drums in.
So you made your way to Chicago and met up with Doug and Baird. How soon after were you releasing records?
Rick: About a year and a half, we had some songs that ended up being our first EP that came out in 1987. We started playing shows pretty quickly, got that first EP out and immediately started working on Prairie School Freakout. That came out in ‘88.
So you guys were pre-Nirvana major label "college rock"?
Rick: Yeah, way pre-Nirvana. New Rose put out Prairie School Freakout and we were building up a pretty good indie following, sleeping on people’s floors and driving the ratty van police always wanted to pull over. Livin’ the indie dream. Bettina from Thrill Jockey was in A&R at Atlantic, came to see us play, and signed us in 1989.
Janet: Yeah, I think Hüsker Dü had been signed, and The Replacements.
Rick: Any band that got signed pre-Nirvana didn’t last too long on the major labels. The majors really weren’t set up for bands like us. In retrospect, we probably would have been better off staying on an indie. We definitely got our name out there on Atlantic but when we were touring around Europe, we weren’t able to sell our records or have a merch table. The people that were coming to our shows were definitely indie music fans and being on a major label was kind of to our detriment. We had really grown an audience on Amoeba Records, which is not connected to the record store, but was a small label that put the records out.
You just mentioned touring in Europe during those times. Do any fond live or recording experiences from that time stick out to you?
Janet: I remember the unfun things more, probably. [laughs] We were in Italy and I was pregnant with Matt, my son with Rick, and I was sort of in that state where things were hard. I wasn’t in the best mental mood and I was playing this song called ‘Rose of Jericho’ which is a pretty demanding song physically, and I was in the middle of it and I just stopped. I was just like “I can’t do it”. I was like 3 or 4 months pregnant or something and I think I just left the stage. And then everyone was like “What’s going on?” Finally, I come back out and Rick was like “She’s just not feeling very well” and I was like “I’m fucking pregnant." Then, someone from the audience was like “Divorce him, marry me!” I was thinking “Okay, maybe, if that’s what it takes to get off this stage” because I’d had enough.
Rick: It was an incredibly fun tour. We were co-headlining with Yo La Tengo where depending on the city, we would headline or open. The opening band got to take the car instead of the van, which meant we got to drive really fast on the autobahn while the headliner had to go and do the sound check, which in Europe is always extra long and grueling for some reason. It was just really fun to be on tour with those guys because we were both experiencing the biggest crowds we’d ever had. They were really amazing, big shows. It was our second time in Europe and probably the peak of our band. The first record we did on Atlantic, we went on tour with The Meat Puppets and we were the opener so it was just fun to blast through a 45 minute set. It was just a lot of energy and exuberance. That was the first time we were playing to big crowds because we had The Meat Puppets’ audience. It was all up and down the East Coast and a great way to get inaugurated into the whole thing. They were a fun bunch of guys too.
Janet: The whole tour with Yo La Tengo was the best ever but until you have been on tour and pregnant, you don't get it. It’s just an altered state. I think I can be excused for my bad memories. I was in a funny way. Poor Rick, I was like “I have to eat something other than cheese and ham! I have to eat vegetables!”
So, you all have made many, many records. Let's talk about your latest, Since Grazed. Am I wrong to think this was recorded during the pandemic?
Janet: Mostly before, but bits and pieces were during.
Rick: We were just about ready to mix when the shutdown happened. Doug still had a couple of things to lay down and Janet had a couple of things but it was just finishing touches. During the Covid year, a lot happened, especially on Mark’s end. He spent a lot of time with attention to detail on vocals. We put a lot more time into the mixes than usual.
Janet: I think we thought we were ready to mix, but really the record wasn’t done. That extra year between the time we thought we were finished and the time we put it out was really transformative for the record. We’re really lucky that we got to work at The Loft and we had to be there around times when no one else was using it. We couldn’t block out a week and do it, we did it in bits and bobs. The separation allowed us to be a little more experimental. I could be like “Hey, what if we try this funny instrument here or try singing it like this.” I felt more freedom because everyone else wasn’t around and I felt like I wasn’t taking up time someone else might better use. No one else was there but me, so it was alright. Having the space and time to step back and live with different versions of the songs, which is how most bands do it, but we were always sort of under the gun to try to just bang it out.
Rick: I’m very impatient too. In my mind, I’m always racing. We usually record as a band and we’ve got the songs down and we go in the studio and blast them out together. This time I went in with just my acoustic and sang and tracked all 12 songs in one session. It’s an unusual way to go about it for us. We weren’t really knowing it was going to be an Eleventh Dream Day record at that point. Speaking to the impatient part, I’d had a bunch of songs for a long time building up and I didn’t know what to do with them. I didn’t think they were really band songs. They just weren’t fitting so I just decided I wanted to get these songs down and started recording but it turned out they were Eleventh Dream Day songs. It’s different for us but change is good.
Janet: Rick would come over and we’d play the songs and I was having a hard time imagining how these songs would translate to what we do. He wanted to go record them and asked if I’d lend my ear and if I have any ideas and so I went into the studio and he’s in the recording booth playing. I’m with Mark and he’s moving his head like he likes it and says “this is an Eleventh Dream Day song.” I was sort of pushing Rick to do a solo record because I knew he really wanted to play shows and it was very hard for all of us to make that happen as a band. So I asked him if he wanted to do a solo record and play solo shows and he said “Well I’ve wanted to make an Eleventh Dream Day record” and so we decided that’s what we’ll do. So we started layering it on from there. I can’t say enough about how Mark added to the record. He doubles on drums with me on some songs, he would hear things when we weren’t there and add them in and wouldn’t say he’d done it and we’d be like “Mark did you do something on this?” and he’d be like “yeah” [laughter].
Rick: Yeah, that’s true about Mark, and Jim has a home studio, he was just in his house during Covid and he put on these beautiful string arrangements using synths, as well as his great acoustic playing and piano. Stuff we probably wouldn’t have done if we didn’t do it this way. Doug hadn’t really heard the songs before and he had fresh ears, so he put on some really unique and amazing bass lines. He even played acoustic bass on some stuff because the songs were different and he adapted to that. Everyone in this band is so good and it turns out that making it an Eleventh Dream Day record was really the best move.
Yeah, what you’re talking about, like having the time and room to let it breathe and give space to everyone, I was thinking there’s a lot of texture to the record. I’ve really been enjoying it.
Rick: A couple songs have different mixes to them and it was mostly Mark taking stuff out and getting space built in. The moves he was making to remove things opened the songs up more.
Most of our records are loud with a lot of guitars and not a lot of space. They’re pretty dense. The drums and guitars are different on this record, which opens things up.
Janet: We’ve been doing this thing for close to 40 years, which is mind boggling. If you haven’t decided you can really do something really different than how you’ve been doing it, we’ve earned the right to do whatever we want. It’s not like we’re going to sell a lot less records or a lot more. It’s really not about sales. From record to record we sell almost the exact same number of copies. A few of our fans have died since we put out the last one. [laughter] We really have that opportunity to do whatever the hell we want. A lot of these songs are peculiar. A few of them have this poppy side to them but there’s also some strange kind of discord in them that makes them interesting to me. That’s what I like about the record. They’re all solid songs that are kind of twisted. I was so happy with the way things were coming along with the layering the overall tenor that the record has. This is the first time we decided to let one of our records have a mood to it.
So, you didn't wait to put it out?
Janet: No. We put it out as soon as we could. We were still working on it. We were still adding parts up until the end of January. Right up to mastering. We really wanted to put it out ASAP because Rick had had these songs for so long and I think he really just needed to release them from his mind. The record just had the vibe of what’s happening right now and I wanted it to come out as fast as possible. That’s why we did it on Comedy Minus One because it wasn’t able to fit in the schedule at Thrill Jockey. We had the idea of putting out ourselves on Bandcamp but Jon was very amenable to putting out a digital release and putting out the vinyl on schedule for how long it takes, which is very long right now. So that’s why we did it the way we did.
Rick: It’s not like we’re a big touring band either. We don’t tour so…
Do you have any plans for live shows in the future or related to the release?
Janet: No. I don’t think anybody does, do they? *
Rick: When the vinyl comes out, I’d really like to play some shows, whether outdoors or indoors. Whatever the world is set up for. I think that by that time, the band will be back and the concert goers will be back and there'll be some way we can do some shows. I really relish the thought of playing some of these live. I think it would really complete it for me.
I think the last time I saw you guys, you were opening for Dream Syndicate at The Hideout. It was the day Roky Erickson died.
Janet: I’m all for everyone doing these home recordings, especially in the time capsule sense. 50 or 100 years from now they’ll be like “What was going on?” There’ll be a real catalog of people playing in their house. Perhaps that’ll be all everyone will be able to do ever again. But as far as a live experience, it doesn’t translate to a show for me. It’s a very different experience and I rarely get to the end of the performance when I’m just sitting in my house. I get distracted very easily.
I hear you. I’ve watched a few trying to support people and at times find it maybe a little distracting, like "Hey that's ___________ in their kitchen.” [laughter]
Janet: I think it’s beautiful in the sense that people care that much about music existing that they were willing to do whatever it took, as far as the musicians themselves but it was a gorgeous thing to see audiences donating money just to watch it on their phone. It’s a real testament to the community that is music.
Rick: I really feel for the younger bands at the prime of their careers. Hopefully it will just be a short interruption. Not every band is like us where you just keep going. This kind of thing can really put a damper on somebody’s musical dreams.
Janet: Yeah I wonder, a year and a half is a long time when you’re 19 years old. How many bands did not make it through that might have been really groundbreaking? That’s a long time in the life of a 19 year old. In the life of a mid 50’s year old, it’s nothing. It’s like a season or something. I think about the loss of art in all this.
So you mentioned The Meat Puppets earlier and I can definitely hear some of that sort of stuff in Eleventh Dream Day. What were other influential bands for you guys from when you started versus now and how has that changed over time?
Rick: I was a fan of bands like The Minutemen and Mission of Burma, that great era of indie rock. I was into post-punk, as is Doug, but as time went on, I wasn’t listening to stuff as much but just concentrating on making music. Early on you’re the culmination of all those records you bought when you were younger. It all adds up to your first couple of records and then something else takes over. I’ve gotten more influence from books I was reading than other music.
Janet: I think when we started Patti Smith was a big influence. I was young when Rick and I started playing music. I was just 18 so I had not had this long relationship with super cool music. I was mostly into classic rock and then I fell in with this crew in Louisville and it was a very quick schooling on things. I was given a tape and one side was Gang of Four and the other side was The Velvet Underground but they labeled it wrong so forever I thought Gang of Four was The Velvet Underground and vice versa until I said something to somebody and they looked at me like I was a complete idiot [laughter]. Bands like The Raincoats were a big deal for me for a short period of time but then I met Rick and this whole world of music opened up. We had a mutual friend whose name was Raul who was a deep, deep music enthusiast of all music. And it was like my school because we spent every night in this man’s dank apartment with a rabbit and about 10,000 records that looked out onto the train tracks going through Rogers Park listening to records for hours and hours. Whether it was Fairport or something more current, it was a real schooling.
Rick: A lot of old country music like Buck Owens. Back in the early 80’s there were some really dive bar country places like on Lawrence Avenue, they called it the Cowboy and Indian bar. All these great dive bars with country music on the jukebox, but it was all mixed up with punk rock and indie rock.
Janet: As far as influences for the band, it was more an offshoot of this education and we weren’t really trying to sound like anything. It was just trying to play the instrument really. It wasn’t like trying to make this song sound like Echo & The Bunnymen.
So let's talk about other projects you’re involved in.
Janet: Well I’ve got Freakwater, which happens more inconsistently than Eleventh Dream Day but we’ve had a project that’s been done for a while that’s a mash-up of Freakwater and The Mekons called the Freakons. It’s a record of coal mining songs, a couple traditionals, and a couple we wrote that connect Wales, where John is from and Kentucky, where me and Catherine are from. We are putting that out pretty soon. The artwork for this is really good. It’s this Belgian artist that John found and it’s incredible and a gatefold sleeve. And I’m doing this other thing that got pushed back because of Covid that’s this really remarkable guy named Robert Lloyd who has this band called The Nightingales, which is this classic famous punk rock band out of England. He’s this incredible character. There’s a documentary on him right now called King Rocker that you should look for. I don’t know if you know the comedian Stuart Lee, but he’s the narrator/interviewer. But we’re working on something over the phone right now. We’re supposed to record that in Spain as soon as that is allowed again.
Rick, you've made a couple records with Tara Key and also I was just thinking about Chestnut Station, which is always a fun time.
Rick: [laughs] Yeah, Chestnut Station was so much fun to play in. There was a Drag City party that needed a band. Hey, we opened for Tenacious D. Twice! I think the last thing Chestnut Station ever did was backing David Berman for a few songs at The Empty Bottle. It was Harmony Korine, David Berman, and I think Will (Oldham)? I forgot what the event actually was, but we backed him for a few Silver Jews songs and I think that was the last thing Chestnut Station did.
Here’s a good story: We’d signed to Atlantic and I quit my day job and Janet and I got married. We went on this really long honeymoon trip and I came back and started working at this record distributor, Kaleidoscope Records for $5/hour. It was the brokest I’d ever been because we’d spent all our money on our honeymoon. And there I was in the mail room where I met Dan Koretzky who was the head of the mail room at the time. Then Janet came to work there and David Yow had just moved up to Chicago. So Dave Sims worked in accounting, Yow worked in the mail room with me, and some other of Dan’s friends like Dave Marr. So that’s when I met Rian and Brendan (Murphy) and I was older than all those guys by a lot of years but I had the best time. Dan started Drag City right in that period of time and he lived in a third floor walk up in West Town and he’d get those shipments of records coming off the truck and it was just me and him carrying them up those stairs. I was his first mail order guy. I did mail order for probably 7 or 8 years at Drag City. I didn’t quit Drag City until like 2000 or something, but Dan was pissed when I left. [laughter] But it was really fun to watch Drag City grow and doing those Shellac records, putting them together by hand, stuffing the Drag City fliers in everything. It was an amazing time.
Rick, that actually reminds me, did you play on a tour with Will Oldham in maybe... 1996?
Rick: 1997. It was the Arise Therefore tour. To this day, it was just an incredible experience. It was a 3-piece band. Will was living in Iowa City and I’d go down there to rehearse and he’d sent me a tape of Arise.. and his previous record was not at all like that. Here I was this loud, brash guitar player and it was really different. I was really challenged to be in that band. There was no bass player, the keyboard player Colin programmed bass into his keyboard and Will and I played guitar. There was no drummer so it was a real musical challenge but it clicked really well. We toured the entire country. It was a 5 week tour with just the 3 of us and Howard Greynolds tour managing. Will was behind the wheel the whole time just poppin’ in the tapes. It was magic, just really really fun. If I’d had an iPhone back then...I don’t think I have one picture of that whole tour.
That's funny because when you guys played in St. Louis, I was in the very first band. You guys headlined, Low played in the middle, and I was in the first band which was a kind of bluegrass band made up of 3 really young guys. I remember meeting Howard that night. I’m sure I said hi to you. I was particularly into Will’s music at the time so I was a little bit starstruck. None of us were quite 21 yet, but we got in there and I was talking to Will at the bar and he ordered us both beers, so they kept serving me all night. We got paid in pizza. I remember it being a really fun, great show. Howard’s tambourine contributions were memorable.
Rick: That must have been one of the last shows of the tour. Will’s one of those guys who will throw songs at you last minute, kinda like what Bob Dylan does. You gotta be on your toes. Always a fun challenge.
A friend suggested I ask you about the Wells Street Irregulars...
So, Janet, how did Freakwater come to be and what were those influences?
Janet: I think the connection between punk rock and country music and the sort of rawness of it all, the scene in Louisville that I came out of was heavy into that. Catherine grew up in a household where there was always a lot of Clancy Brothers on the turntable. I would walk around singing that song ‘I’m Not Lisa’. [sings] Catherine asked if we could sing some songs together and we made this little cover band and we played at this bar called the B-Club which was a strip club during the day and a music venue at night. We dressed up, it was sort of campy at that point. I was wearing gowns and a wig and we were singing Tammy Wynette songs and then we just got lazier and stopped wearing the outfits and decided it was easier to just write our own songs than to learn others. It was all born out of laziness. We were just doing our own shit, but it wasn’t disparate from the music scene. We recorded demos in Louisville and went on a west coast tour with Eleventh Dream Day. David Yow invited us to go on tour with the Jesus Lizard, but we turned it down. We were terrified of what might happen to us! [laughter] It was just very organic with everything else that was happening. We weren’t making a concerted effort to be different from anything.
I’m a big Freakwater fan, but I remember at the time I was a sponge for all this new music and Freakwater sent me down a rabbit hole that, to this day, I’m really appreciative of.
Janet: I think in our heads we were writing these amazing George Jones songs or whatever but you funnel it through a couple feeble-minded young girls, and they just turned out to be Freakwater songs.
Rick: So, they started doing that early around 1985-86. Back then, The Mekons had moved to town and you could go down on a Sunday night and see those old guys The Sundowners play downtown. Punk rock and that kind of country were just intertwined.
Janet: I remember distinctly I had this neighbor girl in Louisville and her family loved The Statler Brothers and I could not stand any of that. I thought I really hated country music. Louisville was the furthest north in the South I’d lived because I’d lived in Florida and Alabama, so it just seemed like stupid music that should have been on Lawrence Welk or Hee-Haw. When you find Hank Williams and are listening to it with a bunch of people that you really like, you listen with different ears. You’re a lot more accepting than you might have been. I remember the Gang of Four guys were in town doing a book signing for the 33 & 1/3rd series and they swore they thought they originally were just a ska band but everyone thought they were this new thing. I think that’s how it was with Freakwater. I hope bands still do that, where they think they’re sounding exactly like something else but they create something brand new. Those are the bands I’m always drawn to.
I remember seeing Freakwater in Columbia, Missouri at the Blue Note in the late 90’s and after the show I met Catherine very briefly. She was super nice to me and I was wearing a Jesus Lizard t-shirt with the mouse on the bomb. She was like “Awww, David” (or something like that.) At the time that kind of blew my mind.
Janet: We were just all friends. I don’t know if it was like that in New York and LA, but in the 80’s and early 90’s, there was this beautiful cross-hybridization of stuff. It wasn’t very cliquish if I recall.
What do you guys find yourself listening to currently? What’s on heavy rotation at your house?
Janet: I think the last month, Paul Simon. I love AZITA’s new record. I’m looking forward to the new Superwolves record because that other one is one of my favorite records. I got to see them perform at Cropped Out Fest in Louisville. That record just kills me and I’m really excited to hear the new one. My husband mans the turntables more than anyone else and I’m fine with that. I read more and search out new authors more than I search out new music, sadly.
Rick: I’ve been listening to The Nightingales because I wasn’t that familiar with them but Janet turned me on to that documentary King Rocker.
Alrighty, I have a few coffee related questions. I’m assuming you both like coffee? What do each of you look for in a good cup of coffee?
Janet: I look for it to be in my hands the moment my eyes awake. [Laughter]
Rick: I don’t feel right if I don’t have it first thing in the morning. I really like getting good quality coffee but I had some stomach issues for a while and I had to go to decaf, which is depressing. When you’re making one cup it’s hard going through the process of finding something good to grind. But I still try to treat myself a couple times a week to a cup of real coffee, something nice and full-bodied that goes to your whole mouth. Same way I like wine.
Janet: I don’t like Colombian coffee so much. I’ve been drinking some coffee from Chiapas for the last couple months. That's really lovely.
How do you guys make coffee at home? What kind of machine do you use?
Janet: I have two places. I have a Chemex at one place and I have to admit to having an espresso machine at the other place. I love coffee. When I go to bed at night, I actually think about the coffee I’m going to have in about 7 hours. I have many friends who are into the process of all of it, but I’m just too lazy. I’m really a lazy person. [Laughter]
Do you feel that coffee in any way ties into your creative ability or output?
Janet: I don’t think it always does, but I think it has played a major role in particular songs I’ve written and I write a lot in the morning so I have to have coffee. I don’t think it’s something that’s constantly there, but it has been integral at different points.
Rick: It’s always there, like Zelig. [laughs] If I’m going into the studio, I’m bringing coffee with me. It’s not a co-writer, but it’s always there in the room.
The last thing I always ask people is if they’ve heard any good jokes lately...
Rick: You got the wrong members of the band. Doug McCombs is the funny one.
Gotcha... Hey Doug, have you heard any good jokes lately?
Doug: Hmmm… I’m afraid any jokes I know may be too “off color.” Maybe the first joke I ever remember hearing… “What’s red and goes up and down? A tomato in an elevator.” I heard it on a Peoria area children's TV show called Captain Jinks and Salty Sam.
Thanks again to Rick, Janet, and Doug. If you haven't yet, be sure to check out Eleventh Dream Day's excellent new record Since Grazed, as well as the rest of their expansive catalog and other projects. Since speaking, fortune has smiled upon us and EDD will be playing 3 shows in September:
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Hi Daniel, thanks for taking the time to talk with me. Can we start with you just telling us a bit about what you do?
I’m a singer/songwriter/composer. I’ve worked as a projectionist for some years. I’ve been writing songs since 2007. I don’t like to say too much about my songs, but people tend to find them pretty dark. I find them to be light in spirit.
Daniel Knox, photo by Patrick Burke.
You mentioned to me earlier that as a kid, cinema was a big part of your life. Were you also a music fan growing up? Did you start learning piano as a kid?
When I was young I would listen to a lot of music, mostly things my grandfather would tape and send to me, but also movie soundtracks were where I heard most of the music I listened to. I liked Vanilla Ice as much as the next kid but I didn’t listen to or connect with the stuff that was on the radio. I didn’t have a curiosity about bands or music outside of the movies I was watching. I never felt like playing music was something that was accessible to me. It felt like painting or something you had to go to school for many, many years for. It wasn’t until I was 22 that I ever sat down at a piano to play anything. That was at the Hilton Ballroom here in Chicago and I had a knack for it right away. One of the best aspects of my education as a musician was the lack of interference of anyone encouraging or critiquing me. At a certain point when you’re playing hotel lobbies and hotel bars, eventually they stop kicking you out, and that’s when I realized that maybe I was okay. I took one lesson with some old lady and she was trying to show me how to play ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ with the metronome on, but that didn't work out.
I think you do a pretty great job. I started taking lessons when I was young and I can still fake it a bit, but I can’t sight read anymore. I really appreciate the level of your compositions and I’m amazed to learn that you’re not sight reading.
Well, some of what I’m doing is just faking confidence. There was nobody to tell me I was doing it wrong, so I found my own right way to do it. I can’t sit down and play Rachmaninoff for you, but I could probably play the gist of it. The funny thing is when I started playing, I played busy, ornate sort of stuff. I was really good at it and developed a style, but when I learned to sing along with my playing, it really slowed down everything. It was like trying to play piano with 3 hands and juggle at the same time, but I lost that initial style. I had to go back to playing block chords and work my way up. I don’t use my pinky finger on my left hand, all my chords are inverted by one.
Based on what you just said about starting to write in 2007, had you sang before then?
I used to walk around downtown at night taking pictures and daydreaming. I started walking around in the financial district because it was so empty at night and I could sing down there. I don’t know how I figured it out, but I knew I had a voice. On the early recordings I made, I’m unconsciously doing Judy Garland voice with a big vibrato, really showy. I had this thing I was trying out and over using it. I learned how to belt things out downtown. On LaSalle Street, where they shot The Dark Knight, your voice echoes off all the buildings and it’s beautiful if you’re down there by yourself singing really loud. Then someone would walk by and I’d get real quiet. But I’m still self conscious about singing and have a hard time singing without a piano to hide behind.
Do you enjoy playing live or do you prefer writing and recording in the studio?
If I had to pick one, it would be writing and recording. That’s my first love. I put a lot of work into my records. Some people really love performing and that’s their main thing and I get it. I love going on tour. Especially overseas where they shut the fuck up and listen.
I saw something you posted on Instagram where everyone was posting anniversaries of tours and whatnot, and you shared a tour with The Handsome Family. Was that a year, 2 years ago?
I’ve done a few tours with them.
I’m a huge fan of theirs and I wasn't aware there was a relationship. It clicked immediately, totally made sense. The sense of humor in the lyrics, the darkness…
They’re wonderful people. I was a fan before I ever met them and toured with them. I sent the demo version of my first record to them. They had this thing on their website that said “Don’t send us your music because it will just end up under our couch cushions” but I sent it anyway and she wrote me back a nice letter and told me she liked my music. It wasn’t until several years later that we ended up touring together. And Brett actually sang on one of my records. He sang on the song 'Blue Car'.
Any memories from touring you'd like to share?
My two favorite places to tour are England and Portugal where I am usually received really well. The English and the Portuguese both have their own sense of sadness and cozy up to sadness in different ways that my music is complementary to in their respective cultures. The English are a little more private about their sadness whereas the Portuguese are very open about it. It makes for a very interesting contrast when I’m on tour over there. I actually was able to take my daughter on tour with me last year and we drove around together and did 25 different dates over there. It was amazing. It was nice for her to get to see me do what I do and to see a good night and a bad night. It was funny, the first show we did was in Portugal there were a few thousand people at this show and she was like “what the fuck is going on?” I said “Don’t worry, we’ll be playing for 20 people someplace else."
Did she enjoy it?
Yeah, we had an amazing time. She was 21 at the time and to get to spend that much time with your grownup kid is pretty rare for people and to be able to share that with her was really nice.
When did you start making records and how did you find yourself in a place to release something?
The first records I made were CDs I burned for my friend John Atwood, who has done most of the cover art for me over the years. I initially wanted to make films but they weren’t very good. I realized you don’t need permission or money to make music so I bought a Boss BR-8 8-track recorder and got more serious about recording. The thing recorded on Zip disks so I don’t have the masters for the record anymore. I eventually cobbled something together and it was my first record, Disaster. I actually finished the CD version of that because I was invited to play at this concert in London because this guy David Coulter saw me play organ in front of David Lynch at The Music Box. That led to me playing that show and that’s where I met The Handsome Family in person because they were on the same bill. That was a shock to my system going from burning CDs for my friend to all of a sudden being on stage in London with some of my favorite artists. I came back from that thinking my career has started now and it’s just going to be a gravy train from here on out and of course it wasn’t. It took me a while to make my next record. I used all the money I made on that tour to buy Pro Tools and then I had to learn it for 2 years, so the record didn’t come out for another 2 or 3 years. When I listen to my second record Evryman For Himself, I always hear myself learning Pro Tools. Before that, I had made recordings on a tape deck on an old boom box I had where you would just keep swapping the tape back and forth which eventually built up that really high hiss sound. That was really just me learning how to layer things and make arrangements.
Your excellent recent record Won't You Take Me With You was recorded by Greg Norman at Electrical Audio. Are you still using Pro Tools in a studio like that or are you recording to tape?
I still use Pro Tools a lot and record a lot of demos. I wouldn’t say that I’m an engineer but I know how to record myself and my strength is in editing. I’m good at obsessing over my vocals and Pro Tools is good for correcting those little details but it’s only as good as you are as an engineer, which I am not. The recent records I’ve done with Greg at Electrical Audio, we track a lot of basic stuff there. Then I come home and my co-producer Josh tracks guitar with me.
I’ve probably known Greg for about 20 years. I think he’s a great guy, and an incredible engineer working at arguably one of the best studios in the country.
The combination of his humor, humility and expertise about things is pretty unique. You won’t meet a lot of people with that perfect recipe of those ingredients. He's one of my favorite people, too.
Did you ever hear the band The Bitter Tears that he was in?
I did a show with The Bitter Tears. The release party for my second record was with The Bitter Tears, and they were phenomenal.
I'd like to talk about some of the collaborations you’ve done. How did you end up recording with Nina Nastasia?
Somebody put me on a bill with her which was a dream come true for me. I didn’t really know her, but she did come to see me once in New York at my invitation, which blew me away. She said hi to me after the show and I don’t really get flustered around people but I really think of her as one of my musical heroes. Those two occasions were all I knew her from and when I did Chasescene, which is a breakup record, I wanted there to be a male and female voice and I was blown away that she agreed to do it.
What are some of the other collaborators that you’ve had the opportunity to work with?
Jarvis Cocker is definitely up there. I met him in London and ended up singing backup on his record Further Complications. He heard a song where I sang falsetto on my record and was like “oh he can sing all the high parts." If you listen to his record there’s all these really, really high parts and one low part that I’m singing backup on. We did that at Electrical Audio which is part of how I ended up recording there more regularly. Then, I asked him to sing with me and we kept missing each other until I ended up in London where he agreed to do it and he was just perfect.
I think that something you and I have in common is a love for David Lynch. I think the only time I’ve spoken with you in person was at the David Lynch retrospective at The Music Box maybe 4 or 5 years ago. You played organ while David read a poem at the Chicago premier of Inland Empire. How did that come to be?
I’ve been a David Lynch fan since I was 14, when they started playing Twin Peaks on Bravo (I didn’t catch it in its initial run). The thing at The Music Box happened because he was on tour self-distributing Inland Empire, which I now own a 35mm print of, by the way. They were looking for people to play music. He’d had a violinist in one city but he wanted something different so I was like “Let me play the organ." I was like “Please let me play a piece of music and see what they say” and... they said yes. That night was amazing. I thought I would be more flustered to meet him but really wasn’t. He talked with his hands, he talked real slow, we had dinner together. He had the ravioli and during the dinner he got a call from Justin Theroux, and Justin had just sold a script to Miramax (I Think it was Tropic Thunder) and David told him to watch out. There are a million things I should have asked him, but it was really nice just to be there having a conversation. It felt like we were just 2 people doing a premiere together. After the second show, The Music Box told me I could play if I agreed to go up and finish projecting the rest of the movie.
I was out of town when that happened and I remember being really bummed because it was the first opportunity that ever presented itself for me to be in the same room as David Lynch. Did you happen to eat at Francesca's?
Was the restaurant upstairs? I don’t think it was Francesca's because that was the place a couple blocks away across from the comic book store a little further down Clark. This was literally across the street from Wrigley Field. It was a second floor restaurant.
Was that the only time he made an appearance at The Music Box?
Yes. Unless he did before I worked there, but I had worked there since 2002.
I was told this story that may be bullshit, but supposedly he was eating dinner before this thing he had to do at The Music Box, and he went out front and smoked a cigarette and was the sole witness of a pedestrian getting hit by a car. And as a result, he had to talk to the police and was late for this appearance he was making at The Music Box.
Uhhh, no. I mean, I would believe it if you told me that about David Lynch, but I was there and we finished our dinner and hurried back in time.
I’m both disappointed and relieved at the same time.
Unfortunately this isn't cited anywhere, but my David Lynch retrospective was the largest retrospective of his film and television work shown anywhere. I’ll put that to the test. It was an obsessively complete thing. Any time he picked up a camera or put his name on something as director, it was included. I showed Fire Walk With Me with the missing pieces and the pilot episode, which rarely gets shown. That was the Chicago premier of the documentary Blue Velvet Revisited, which was really hard to see at the time. The freedom they gave me to put that together the way I did, was truly remarkable. We transformed the place.
I found an ear in the lobby.
On the Blue Velvet night, yeah. We went really far with it. The big thing was getting those rugs to go down the aisles with those zigzag patterns. It was a beautiful thing.
Was David aware of this happening?
He was and he wished us well and said good luck to us. They asked him about it in the Tribune article and he was pleased with what we were doing.
Let's pivot to Half Heart, the record of music from Twin Peaks that you made. I’m a huge fan of the original music, but I really loved your interpretations of everything. It’s just so well made.
So, that came at a time when I’d made this 4-Track album called I Had A Wonderful Time which was a big departure for me. I was trying to take a break with songwriting and step into something new. I felt another way to do that was to step into the material of someone else that I hadn’t written. I felt I couldn’t take my time with it or I would talk myself out of it. I needed it to be a visceral reaction to what it sounds like when I play that music and not question it too much. When you’re playing a version of something that you love, your tendency is to be reverent to it in a way that is an obstruction to finding your own voice. So I recorded the Twin Peaks record really fast not too far from when I recorded the Mister Rogers record that I made. I made the Twin Peaks record with Joshua Fitzgerald Klocek, who is a co-producer on most stuff I do now and we both loved that music so much and found our own sound in it. I’m really proud of how that turned out. We didn’t want to do a tribute record and “dress it up”. It’s such a fine line and you can only really walk that line if you’re not overthinking it and you just keep walking. Some people, when they’re doing cover songs try to do it in some kind of contrast to the original where they feel they have to put their stamp on it and make it drastically different, but I just wanted to live inside of those songs and hear what my voice sounds like in that world. To me, you have to bring those sonic elements that are inherently part of the character of it. You have to bring them with you, you can’t pretend like they’re not there. For me to do that music and put too much of my own spin on it would have felt like a crime. I think that what we accomplished feels like the radio signal from that world crossed through my world and came out the other side. I’m proud of how it came together.
Just curious, do you think there will ever be an LP pressing of that?
Man, you know, vinyl is such an expensive endeavor. I would really like to do that one day with both the Twin Peaks and Mister Rogers records. I put them on cassette because I feel like they were already outliers and I definitely think of them as being a duo because they’re both covers records made in the same year. I think David Lynch and Fred Rogers have a lot in common. The way that they present themselves to the world and the way they both have a very distinct imagination and the character of what they do is very much in their own voice. I feel like putting both those records on cassette is a nod to the way I first heard their music. The first time I heard music from Twin Peaks was the Fire Walk With Me cassette soundtrack. This guy Steven Miller has a blog and goes into every detail. You open up the cassette and it has this beautiful design and the same with Mister Rogers, I had those songs on tape.
Are you familiar with the Chicago band Zelienople? They've played sporadically in the past as The Chevrons, doing songs from David Lynch stuff and leaning heavily on Twin Peaks. A few years ago a coffee friend from California got in touch with me and had this idea about collaborating on a coffee called Laura Palmer. The idea was it would be like an Arnold Palmer with cherry and coffee instead of lemonade and tea. We had our fingers crossed we wouldn’t get sued. We took the green coffee before roasting it and infused it with this cherry brandy. It took on the cherry flavor but the booze burns off during roasting and there was no alcohol flavor to it at all.
Somebody mentioned this to me but it was sold out.
It sold out quickly, but we did a release thing at Reed’s Local and had the Chevrons perform. My wife, with some persuasion, agreed to sing 2 songs as Julee Cruise. She did 'The Nightingale' and 'Falling'. This was going to be an annual thing and then Covid hit, but I’m hoping to do it again. It came with an MP3 download code of Twin Peaks inspired music, and I'd like each edition to have its own Bandcamp download.
That’s a great idea. If you have any more of that Laura Palmer coffee, I’ll definitely have some of that, but I doubt you have any left. What do you think of the David Lynch signature cup?
I don’t like coffee as dark as he seems to like coffee. He’s going the almost burnt route, from my understanding. You’re talking about a guy that wakes up at 3am and drinks dark coffee and smokes cigarettes and is almost 80. [laughter] A dream of mine has always been to give him a bag of coffee. Having a minute interaction with him would just blow my mind. Someone told me if you write him a letter and send it via snail mail to his TM foundation, he’ll possibly respond, but not to email. But I have no basis for thinking that’s true especially after the Francesca's story got blown out of the water.
I saw you posted something the other day where you said you were working on something new. Without giving anything away, do you want to talk about that a little?
I don’t want to give too much away about that. With Won't You Take Me With You, I really looked back but also took a bigger step forward than I have with other things. This new record is feeling like a complete step forward. It’s been a lot of fun. I’m only 30% there right now and I have some other things that are going to come out before that. It probably isn’t coming out until the end of the year or next year. Oddly, the pandemic period was a weirdly fruitful period for me and I think part of that was the fear and pain of idleness giving me no other option than to keep making things and charge ahead. But, that has been a bit of a revelation for me because Chasescene and the albums that preceded it were products of a lot of meticulous arrangement and perfectionism that was ultimately a bit problematic for me. Maybe not problematic, but unproductive.
With Won’t You Take Me With You and this new thing you’re working on, are you putting the arrangements together?I write the string arrangements myself but I do it in a weird way. I’m very fortunate to work with a guy named Jim Cooper who is in The Detholz! and Baby Teeth. He’s introduced me to a lot of amazing musicians. Basically when I’m writing parts for strings, what I tend to do is put Post-It notes on my piano or keyboard where the ranges of those instruments are. Then I’ll play the parts by singing or playing a synth version and send it to Jim and he will orchestrate it and send it back to me. We’ll have discussions like “you have a viola doing this and ordinarily a violin does this, is that what you wanted to do?” He helps interpret my intentions with it but he really respects my arrangements and he likes how that turns out. It’s been a great and rewarding process and I’ve learned so much by doing that with him. He’s worked on the strings on all of my records since the beginning. I’m no Mozart or anything but I know what I want to hear. It’s nice working with Jim because he knows and likes what I want to hear.
So, you’ve scored some films?
Yeah, a few things here and there. I’ve scored some Chris Hefner films, some theater, and a few shorts. That’s something I’d like to do more of.
You mentioned earlier you were really into soundtracks and I’m into all that, beyond David Lynch. I’m a sucker for a good horror film soundtrack. John Carpenter, Goblin, Fabio Frizzi, all that stuff.
I just joined the Terror Vision record club and there’s all these amazing soundtracks that they put on vinyl that I’ve been getting from them. I love that stuff. They did the Unsolved Mysteries music and I love that music almost as much as I love the Twin Peaks music. The last one I got was Video Violence which was amazing. I’ve never seen the movie and I may never watch it but the soundtrack is terrific.
Do you want to talk a bit more about Won’t You Take Me With You?
Yeah, that record is unique for me because most of the time, by the time I have a record, I’ve been working on the songs for over a year. On this, I wrote, recorded, mixed, and mastered the whole thing in about six weeks, which felt like a fucking miracle to me. I went from being depressed and listless at the start of the pandemic to finding the resources to make this thing. It really just kind of came out and I’ve never done that, not that quickly. I credit the Mister Rogers and Twin Peaks records for preparing me for that because we were working very quickly, but a huge part of it has been working with my co-producer Joshua Fitzgerald Klocek. Working with him has changed how I approach music in a lot of ways. When I met him, he had been a fan of my music from before, and he has this great index in his brain of every idea I’m throwing out. What happens is I’ll get to a point where I feel it’s not happening or I don’t have anything and he’ll respond to me by telling me seven things that I’ve sent him over the last few weeks. “These ones are good, these aren’t, let’s work on this.” Just having that extra voice and perspective in every aspect. He’s not in the room with me writing but more like he’s knocking on the door saying “How’s it going in there?” The value of that is immeasurable. He also plays guitar and his playing is amazing. It’s funny because when I met him he said he played guitar and I said “I’m a piano guy. I’m not into guitar”, but when he started showing me what he does, it’s perfect for my music. He can do everything but he also creates these spaces. It’s not just straight up guitar playing, it’s something otherworldly and unique, and it’s really broadened the world my songs can inhabit. Just knowing that extra space is available is like finding an extra room in your house. It’s been a beautiful experience, especially this last record. We were both like “Holy shit, we just made a record in six weeks.” It felt like we could do anything. That’s why I’m so excited about the record we’re making now because it’s such an amazing place to start on a project. I was working on Chasescene for ten years. There were versions of that record that had entirely different songs. Only three songs on it were from the very beginning when I started writing it. I really overdid it in a lot of ways. It was a monumental thing for me to finish that because there were times I thought I’d never finish it. Joshua helped me finish that record. We produced that record together. He plays on almost every song on Won’t You Take Me With You. It was a joy to make in a time where there was not a lot of joy to be found.
So you feel like these two covers records reset you and skewed your old approach to making original music?
Yeah, I had a very specific way I wanted my listeners to encounter my recordings. That’s still true, but I wasn’t allowing for their objective experience to be what it was. I felt like I needed--this is what I hear when I listen to my first three records and I’m very proud of them--I had such a specific vision for how those songs were made and to be heard that there were spontaneous things that weren’t allowed to happen. The Disaster Trilogy: Disaster, Evry Man For Himself, and Chasescene, they’re one man speaking and singing a soliloquy or a statement. That’s fine but you can’t keep doing that. You have to have abstraction. You have to have room for things to be interpreted differently. When I started to tour more regularly, people would come up to me and tell me what my songs meant to them or they would write to me about it. Their interpretation would be so wildly different from my intention that it really freed me up to think “You can’t project the perfect image in the listener’s mind, you have to leave space for them to find themselves in your work." It’s not that my early music doesn’t do that, it’s just that I became so paranoid about it being received one way or another that I didn’t allow for things that I’m now enjoying making room for.
It sounds like the same mindset as someone you enjoyed some ravioli with. “I refuse to dictate your interpretation of this."
I don’t like to over-clarify those things and I tell stories about my songs on stage. It’s not so much that I use my moments in between songs on stage to try to bring out some kind of truth behind it all, it’s more like threading the songs together and making them hold hands with each other.
I have one more music related question. To be fair, since we spoke so much about David, I feel we should talk about Fred a little bit. What made you want to make a record of Mister Rogers cover songs?
So, there’s a few things at play there. I found myself with a budget to make something that I couldn’t stack too high and I knew that material would be good for solo, except for the song I sing with Kit Shields, she was wonderful. I’ve always loved Fred’s music. On Chasescene and I Had A Wonderful Time, I was singing about a lot of difficult, personal things. It was raw, and in a lot of cases mean. I felt like I needed something to bring me back a little bit. Those songs are so direct and real. One of the things I love about Fred Rogers’ songs is that they don’t sugar coat anything. When you’re talking about pain, shame, sadness, and love, there are all these complex feelings, especially when you’re talking about them to a child. You do such a disservice by avoiding things. As a little kid, I really appreciated that his music didn’t do that and that he let you know it was okay to maybe wish bad on somebody. It doesn’t make you a bad person, everybody does it. It doesn’t make you weak to be vulnerable. Everybody is vulnerable. That stuff is really potent and complex, but he puts it together so simply. Most kid's music is about pizza and little brothers. He’s singing about how it feels to be jealous or to feel weak when you want to be strong. I think that stuff is universal and as a songwriter, I believe Fred Rogers is up there with Gershwin, Irving Berlin, and Cole Porter. Everything about his songwriting is brilliantly said and the music is beautiful. It was a joy to get into that and it honestly just made me feel better. One of my favorite Mister Rogers episodes is when the mailman Mister McFeely comes over and says “Hey there’s a new shopping center, do you want to go take a look with me” and so these two grown men go to this shopping center. There’s a lot of people walking around and they take a ride up the escalator together. As they’re doing it, they’re describing what they’re doing. They’re telling you how it works and that it’s safe. It’s so beautiful to take such a basic thing and give it meaning and talk about the ritual of it. I love that attitude about things.
That’s all fascinating to me because I'm sure you know that was a Pittsburgh based production as was Dawn of the Dead which is a social commentary on shopping malls. I think where it was filmed was in one of the first big malls? I can’t remember the name of the suburb. Maybe I'm trying too hard to somehow tie Fred Rogers and George Romero together.
I have a documentary recommendation for you called Jasper Mall. Fantastic, really worth watching. It’s about a mall in Jasper, Alabama that used to be bustling and how it stays afloat. It’s basically a year in the life of a mall.
Have you ever worked in a mall?
I’ve never worked in a mall, but I wrote a song about a mall. I spent a lot of time in the mall I wrote the song about in Springfield, Illinois.
When I was a teenager, I worked in place in the mall called Thingsville. It was a half-assed knockoff of Spencer's Gifts or something. This would have been the early 90’s. Working in a mall is kind of fascinating in a weird way.
So, you were a projectionist at The Music Box, how did Covid affect that?
I was one of many people they had to lay off because it was just what was happening. They were great. They kept paying us for a long time and I really hope I can go back to work there at some point. I love that place and since the first time I saw Crumb there in the early 90’s as a kid because it had David Lynch’s name on it, I had my step-dad drive me here just to see that. The fact I was able to work there and be a part of it and contribute with my meager curatorial input on minor things like the Lynch retrospective and midnight screenings. It was just too good to be true.
How did you do it?
It started out because I was looking for a job. I came to Chicago to go to film school and once I realized in order to make films, you have to work with a bunch of people you don’t like and you have to raise a bunch of money, I thought “Fuck that, I’ll write songs.” But I needed to get a job if I wasn’t going to be in school so I worked a bunch of bullshit jobs for a while. I applied at The Admiral in their sex shop video store and at The Music Box for a concession job and I got both. Luckily, I hopefully chose the right path in life and took the Music Box job. I worked at the concession stand for about a year and then this fellow named Sea Bass who was the head projectionist at the time, asked me if I wanted to work up there because he was going to leave. He taught me how to do it but I learned from six different people who all had wildly different interpretations of how to project. They all had their own tricks. Slowly, I learned and got the hang of it and got to be part of some really amazing events. I got to meet some amazing people and have a relationship with movies that was beyond anything I could have hoped for. Some of the most magical times of my life were just showing movies, not even watching them, but getting it just right. I think there’s an experience that movie-goers can have that they don’t even know for sure that they’re having, but it’s intuitive. The way the lights dim, the curtain raises, you get the picture on screen just right, the volume is just right, and you really create this sense of immersion for people. It’s so beautiful and when you can be responsible for that, there’s a pride in that that’s really hard to describe. I guess it would be similar to the pride that a director would have. That’s something really special.
I’m curious about the different projection styles that you mentioned.
Well, there’s not so much a different style in projecting because that is a craft and, like any craft, you’re good or bad at it. You get it right or you get it wrong. I think in terms of presentation, however, there are different styles. I think about the presentation as if I were sitting out there and how it would feel. One of the things I really liked to do was time the overture of 2001 in 70mm. I had it written down on a sheet probably still in the booth there. 2001 starts and there’s nothing on the screen and then immediately the music starts so what I do is leave all the lights on and then you hear the first strains of the overture and everyone is like “What’s going on, why are the lights on?” You time it so over the course of a minute, the house lights slowly start to dim and people realize “This is happening.” But the curtain is still down and then there’s this one discordant strain that lasts for exactly 27 seconds and 27 seconds is exactly how long it takes for the curtain to go from all the way down to all the way up. As the curtain is pulling up, it sounds like it’s pulling the strings that you’re hearing. If you get it just right, it’s so beautiful to be in the audience for that and then it’s dark for a while and all of a sudden that blue MGM logo pops up on the screen so bright and so vivid, and you’re in the movie. It sounds like such a small thing, but it really goes a long way to making peoples’ experience of that movie special and unique.
For festivals, would you be the projectionist for that or would they have their own people?
I was a staff projectionist. I was there for everything. I did everything from when a guest speaker came to when someone would rent the theater out.
Did you do the Danzig movie?
Daniel: [laughs] Yeah, I was there for that.
Alright, it's coffee time. How do you make coffee at home?
Drip machine or I get it at the Dunkin Donuts drive-thru. I don’t like really acidic or overly dark coffee unless I’m having something sweet. I really like the contrast between pie or ice cream with rigidly dark coffee. I’m not a fan of espresso. I’ll have a latte if that’s what someone’s making but it’s a real pain in the ass when I go to Europe because you just can’t find drip coffee any-fuckin-where. Especially in Italy. They haven’t even heard of it.
That’s why the Americano exists. In WWII, US troops over in Europe just wanted drip coffee but Europe just didn’t get it. So, what they came up with was putting a shot of espresso in hot water.
That’s interesting. I always thought of it as an insult.
It may very well be [Laughter].
The other thing they don’t really have over there is cold brew. That may have changed in the last few years though.
The last question I always ask people is if they’ve heard any good jokes lately.
Shit. I don’t have a memory for jokes. I don’t know what it is. I wish I had one for you. I can remember who was in what movie and in roughly what year, but I’ve got no capacity for memorizing jokes. There’s some things I don’t retain like jokes and cooking. I don’t have any space in my memory bank for it. I’m not a particularly funny person anyway. Maybe I am to some people. People say that I am at my concerts but I don’t go there thinking up jokes or anything. It’s easier to get people to listen to your sad songs if you’ve got something funny to say. You don’t just walk up to a bunch of strangers and start crying.
Many Thanks to Daniel for the wonderful conversation! Do yourself a favor and check out his Bandcamp page. Also Check out his fantastic new collaboration with Nick Jones; Coinhammer.
Interested in checking out Glassworks? use code CHASESCENE at check out for 20% off your first order.
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Ben: Hey Larry, thanks for doing this. Can you tell us a bit about who you are and what you do?
I was born in Chicago, raised in the north shore suburbs. I’ve loved music ever since an early age, music is my first love. As far as arts and entertainment, I was lucky enough to work in the music business when there was a music business. When that went away in the early 2000’s, I moved out to LA to start over again, hoping to stay in the music business but it became clear that wasn’t going to happen and transitioned to television and film, I worked on sitcoms, a talk show, pilots, mainstream television. Currently I’m working in the adult field. For Playboy. I hesitate to define myself by my work experience, but that’s the easiest way to let you know what I’ve been up to.
Larry Crandus, photo by Daniela Mileykovsky.
David: I’m pretty sure you were at U of C when you were in college? What was it you were going to college for? What did you see yourself doing?
I finished at University of Chicago and spent 2 years at Syracuse University, initially in their theater program and that lasted one semester but I was not into it. I enjoyed doing plays and improv in high school and then I went to Syracuse and I was amongst a bunch of students that had head shots already and agents and the sort of classes I was taking I just was not connecting with so that lasted one semester and I became a liberal arts major. I dropped out of Syracuse after 2 years because I had no direction, I did not know what I wanted to be when I grew up. So I figured; why waste the time? I don’t know if you’ve ever spent time in Syracuse NY, but it induces depression. The winters are brutal. Chicago has it easy comparatively. So I dropped out and that’s when I came back to Chicago and worked as a foot messenger for one summer and I’d hang out at Wax Trax! after my morning of delivering packages and envelopes in The Loop. I eventually got a job at Wax Trax! just because I was there every day and got to know the people. Eventually I went back to the University of Chicago, studied art history, and got a bachelor’s there. If I was serious about pursuing a career in galleries or museums, I should have gotten a masters, but I didn’t feel like doing that.
For the first 6 months after graduating U of C, I worked at a gallery as an assistant for $3/hour and that clearly wasn’t going to be much of a future for me.
David: So, in a weird way, you were already setting yourself up for the career you have now by being on the pulse of culture.
Larry: If you say so, sure. I was spending so much time at Wax Trax! shopping and came to know the employees there and became friends with people like Carol and Gerda, and Hope.
And eventually, I got to meet Jim at a house party and we had a nice long conversation there and one Friday I was at the store and Carol said “Have you seen Jim yet?” and I said “no” and she said “Go talk to him, he wants to offer you a job” and my heart just pounded out of my chest, I was so excited. This was my home away from home. To be asked to join the ranks was a great day. Of course, on the first day I worked there on Sunday, I got a speeding ticket on Fullerton on the way to the store. I remember the day.
Larry at Wax Trax! Records, courtesy of Wax Trax! archives
David: So, what was your career at the store like when you first started? Were you at the counter or any special assignment?
No, I started just as counter help, ringing up customers, playing records. I remember on the first day, Jim told me to go to the back room and shrink wrap a pile of 7” records and he said “roll a joint and meet me out back.” That was my first day at Wax Trax! and I thought “I am home, this is wonderful.” So, for the longest time, my role was counter help and I transitioned to the mail order department, and created their mail order catalogs, and then eventually, they put out the Ministry 12” single. The second version of which had a foldable sleeve that was modeled after the Section 25 Always Now sleeve and Jim loved that Factory stuff, the Peter Saville stuff. They all came unfolded of course and that was my job for weeks, was to fold Ministry 12” singles. Eventually, the label became stronger, and I went from the store to the label. All told, I was there for about 10 years.
David: What did you do at the label?
I was national sales director for the east coast. I remember everything east of the Mississippi was my territory so I did direct sales to record stores.
David: I don’t know why I was at the label, I was probably delivering something from Interzone and a company meeting was about to start and you said “Hey you wanna stick around?” I did and I just got to watch, fly on the wall style. What really impressed me there was lots of talking over people and just--excitement. Then you talked and people listened. “Like wow, Larry’s a big guy”. And you were pitching Black Pete and I ended up buying that 12”.
David, you should take over this interview because you clearly remember more than I do. [laughter] It’s a shame. One of my biggest regrets is never keeping a journal. Black Pete...I haven’t thought of Black Pete in decades. My goodness.
David: I didn’t know it was a cover, it took me 10 years to be like “Wait, Mississippi Queen is a cover?”
Now I have to go diving into the internet to find out about Black Pete. I remember the name but not much else. Another band I tried to get signed to the label was Masters of Reality, I met Chris Goss. He was a DJ in Syracuse, so when I was a student there, he was the best DJ in town. I got to know him and we would talk music and he sent me a cassette of the earliest Masters of Reality recordings which were all synthesizers and drum machines and a guitar. And it’s really great stuff and I tried like hell to get Jim to sign them but it just never happened and look at them now. Legends.
David: It’s the same with Corey (Rusk). It was slow going. He had to know them. He turned away a lot.
You can’t argue with the results.
Ben: Are there bands that you did bring to the table who ended up on Wax Trax!?
No, I guess my 2 tries were failures. Black Pete and Masters of Reality. Most of the stuff that came to the label were through relationships that Jim and Dannie already had. Al, Frankie, and Marston in particular. Or stuff that they found through the store. So, no, I can’t say I was responsible for anyone getting signed to Wax Trax!.
David: So, there was one person who was pivotal in the history of Wax Trax! and Touch and Go and that was John Loder from Southern and he handled Europe for both labels at one point in time. Do you have any John Loder stories?
Sadly, I don’t. I went to Southern once. I would meet him in passing, but I don’t think he ever came to Chicago while I was involved with the label. I met him at Southern one day. I went to visit Allison who was the Wax Trax! person at Southern, and spent some time in her office. I remember one memory that I have of that visit was Adrian Sherwood sticking his head into Allison’s office to say hello and Allison introducing us. I was a huge On-U Sound fan. I thought it was Adrien Sherwood, I wasn’t quite sure, of course, back then there weren’t a lot of photos but Allison introduced us and said “This is Adrien Sherwood” and I said “Wow, you make great records” and he said “Thank you” and that was my interaction with Adrien Sherwood. But the stories I heard about John Loder were just like “What a great human”.
Ben: I’ve never heard anything but complete praise for him.
David: So, from Wax Trax! you ended up at Mute. Based on their history of records, that’s like another brass ring. What did you do there?
I was Midwest label manager. My business card read “Midwest Label Manager, a title that commands respect”. So, I basically was everything for them in the Midwest from Cleveland to Minneapolis and I did radio promotion and retail promotion. I would take bands around when they would come into town, do in-stores, set up competitions. Sadly I was only there 2 years but with lots packed into those 2 years. The one story to this day I love is when Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds were coming through promoting ‘Henry’s Dream’ and they were playing Detroit, Chicago, Minneapolis, I think. I was in Detroit with them and we were on our way to an in-store appearance. Sadly, at the time, I could give a shit about Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, I was more of techno head. Shameful, because today, Nick is terrific and I’m a huge fan. So I was along for the ride on the way to the record store and Nick was holding court on the bus and he was telling a story about how he was living in Brazil at the time and he had read a story in the paper about cows that lived on fields that were surrounded by high tension power lines, giving birth to deformed calves and he said “in my neighborhood, I’m surrounded by high tension power lines as well. I’m sure I must be sterile by now”.
And I said “talk about the bad seeds, huh” and nobody laughed. Nick just sort of glared at me and he was sitting on some sort of swivel chair and he just swiveled away from me. To this day it’s a great memory.
Nick Cave looking annoyed. He may have looked at Larry like this.
Ben: I’m sure he used it like a week later. [laughter]
Yeah, I think he’s developed much more of a sense of humor in the past couple decades at least, through the Grinderman project. Maybe I caught him on a bad day.
Ben: I can’t remember, was Warren Ellis in the band yet?
No that was Mick Harvey was mostly the music directory at that time.
Ben: What are some more musical highlights from your career?
Einsturzende Neubauten came through. They were playing at The Vic during my time with Mute and they did an in-store at Wax Trax!, but I took them in this old used Volvo 740GOE and I piled all these Germans in and I swear to you, the suspension on that car was never the same. It was ruined. [laughter]
But they were friendly guys and I took them to lunch at Linda Mexico on Lincoln Avenue. And I brought Sean Joyce along from the store and I cajoled him to join us and I asked him to write a story about it for this retail newsletter that we put out at the time called EarWorm. And I asked Sean to write about his lunch with Neubauten. That’s another thing that’s lost through the ages, sadly but it’s a good memory going to this Mexican restaurant with all these big German guys and eating enchiladas and drinking beer.
David: Did you hear the news about El Prez?
Yeah, it’s heartbreaking. I’m holding out hope that they somehow relocate but I guess the clock is ticking there and it pains me to not be there to have a few last meals.
David: Do you want to tell Ben the significance?
El Presidente Mexican restaurant now on Ashland and Wrightwood but before that was this little corner restaurant on Lincoln Avenue that was down the street from Wax Trax! Jim and Dannie loved it and we would all go there regularly. I’ve been eating at El Presidente since 1979. Jim’s nickname was ‘El Prez’. The best chilaquiles I’ve ever had in my life and the most sinus clearing hot sauce. To this day, when I’m flying into Chicago, that’s my first stop. Lupe, the woman that owned it with her father, he would cook and she was the waitress, and she’s been feeding me for 40 years. God bless her.
El Presidente was open 24 hours and if you drove past at 2am, you’d see a fairly big crowd so I would imagine they have a good following, but who knows these days? And Joe Shanahan and people that run venues? I wish I had a magic wand and I could just solve their issues.
Ben: I feel like Joe’s a good example of someone who is being socially responsible and obviously he’s taking a hit, but I think it means a lot to actually be socially responsible. I believe the Metro is having bands that are live-streamed and the bands and the venue are getting a cut so bands are throwing weight into supporting the Metro. People can sit at their house and watch a show on the stage at the Metro. I’ve heard a million things about Joe Shanahan but he’s a vital part of the community. I'm glad to see him getting through this and being responsible.
Absolutely. You can’t take away what he’s built in the city and there are a lot of stories about Joe and I’ve got nothing but respect for Joe. There was a feud between Metro and Wax Trax! for a year and a half or so, I don’t know what brought it on but there was some bad blood between the store and venue for a while. People from the store were banned from the venue and we didn’t let the people from Metro come shop at the store, it was just ridiculous.
David: So celebrities would come to visit Wax Trax!, have you run into any of them in your new life that remember Wax Trax!?
Good question. Nobody comes to mind but it reminds me of a story of working at the store and Phil Collins came in one night and his solo career was just starting and we had a bootleg section and he came up and asked my coworker Gary if he had any Genesis bootlegs and Gary just sort of blew him off for whatever reason and I said “Phil come here” and we went in the back room and there was a bunch of Genesis bootlegs and I figured he’s not gonna whip out a badge and arrest me. I figured he just wants to collect them for himself. And then he said “Do you have any Phil Collins bootlegs?” and I just said “uh no." I laughed in his face and said “no." I didn’t mean to be malicious but I just thought it was an odd question. I couldn’t conceive of anybody recording a Phil Collins bootleg. He paid for his records and was on his way. These days, Wax Trax! certainly has a higher profile than it did for a long time and I’m happy to be involved in all these projects that they’re doing. I was in a meeting at Playboy and this woman across the table from me was wearing a Front 242 t-shirt. And she’s probably in her late 20’s/early 30’s and I just had to take a double take. I asked where she got the shirt and she said she found it online. I said I know that band very well. It’s heartwarming to see people still carrying the flame.
Ben: So, what was next for you after Mute?
I ended up working for Disney, at Hollywood Records.
Disney flew me out to Burbank to Disney studios for my orientation which was a 1 or 2 day class where you learn the history of Disney. They had executive exercises we did and stuff like that. My first day on the Disney studio lot--I kept thinking about my parents, my father in particular--there was this legend that Walt Disney was a big anti-Semite. This is what I grew up hearing and I meet my boss on the studio lot and he says “Let’s go to lunch.” We go to the studio commissary and sit down and his assistant joins us later. This young woman sits down and says “Hi, I’m Debbie, you wanna hear a good Jew joke?” I couldn’t believe it. Later I learned she was a fellow member of the tribe.
Ben: Who were the artists you were working with?
We had the Queen catalog and I had a Brian May solo record so I did in-stores and promos with Brian May but outside of that, it was a train wreck, it was terrible. They had the The Lifers, which was a rap group of prisoners serving life terms. The big joke was “They won’t be touring anytime soon”. I left Hollywood Records and 2 years later they had Miley Cyrus and they were on top of the world.
Ben: So, was Hollywood Records just not your bag? You moved on to Atlantic?
Yeah, I’d been through 2 or 3 regimes at Hollywood and they seemed to be getting their act together by hiring some actual music people to run the label. That’s when I got the call from Atlantic. It was a no brainer. Although for 6 months I was sure I’d made the biggest mistake of my life. I only worked 10-2 at Hollywood so diving into the high pressure world at Atlantic Records was a bit of an eye opener and not a good one. I remember my first conference call where they were setting up the second All 4 One record and the president of Atlantic was always on the call saying “I want to ship 450,000 records, not 440, not 425, 450. Now is that going to be a problem?” And there was a big silence and finally somebody said “I don’t think it will be a problem” and the president said “I don’t want to know what you think, I want to know what you know!”. I was thinking “Oh my god what have I got myself into? Take me back, Hollywood Records, please." But I stuck it out and spent 7 years there. But yeah, Atlantic Records. It was Jewel, Hootie and The Blowfish, Stone Temple Pilots, Sugar Ray, Everything But The Girl... I was a busy guy for 7 years.
Ben: With a label that size, what were you doing? Were you working with all genres, assigned to specific stuff, or how does that work because obviously, Atlantic’s massive.
I was the regional marketing manager which meant I’d oversee sales and marketing. I worked with the distribution company WEA to maximize sales and promotions, secure in-store placement and advertising. My big accounts were Best Buy, Musicland, Target, Kmart, Borders. Most of these places are gone now. Basically I made sure Atlantic got every advantage at retail that we could. Taking bands around to stores and offices and having them hobnob make sure we got the best sales out of all these places.
Ben: Atlantic being so massive must have meant you had a lot of muscle.
People would take my call and give me the time of day. The muscle came from having a lot of hits and a lot of money behind us and places like Best Buy and Musicland were anxious to milk that cow. Even then we’d run up against brick walls. We had this band P.O.D. from San Diego which was this hard rock band that had a Christian identity. They were very devout Christians. Not like Stryper, these guys were badasses from San Diego and the buyer at Musicland absolutely insisted on keeping their records in the gospel section, which made no sense. So they’d be next to Shirley Caesar and Edwin Hawkins and their fans couldn’t find their records in stores and this was such a headache for me for months and months and I just could not get her to change her mind. The band was not happy, the label, we threw everything we had at them and she would not move.
Ben: Do you have any good stories from working at Atlantic?
You know Ben and Tracey from Everything But The Girl? I spent time with them in Chicago, took them around to nightclubs because they’d made this change in their sound with Walking Wounded. Ben was all about House music and he’s in Chicago so he wants to know more about House music so I took him to Red Dog, which was the only House club that I knew on the north side. He just loved it. I introduced him to the DJ and it really made an impact on him. He went back to London and opened a club called Lazy Dog and I kept in touch with him and went and visited him in London. I don’t know there were any funny stories, but a week after they’d been in Chicago, I got a call from my boss and he said “I don’t know what you’ve done with Ben and Tracey but they love you”.
David: So, from Atlantic, how did you end up with Bonnie Hunt? Was there a Chicago connection there?
Yeah, a close friend of mine from High School, Holly, was an actress at Second City and was at Second City with Bonnie. So, through Holly, I met Bonnie and became friends and knew her a bit in Chicago and then she was out in California doing a few sitcoms and I got laid off from Atlantic and decided I wanted to be in California because I had spent a few weeks out here working for Disney and I thought “Wow, California is wonderful.” I did not know truly what it was like to live out here and it became a bit of a shock when I moved out here but I came out here with no job. Little side note, I worked for Gene Simmons for 2 weeks. [laughter]
Larry at Wax Trax! Photo by Rich Menning
Ben: Can we talk about that?
Well it’s part of the story so let’s not skip over Gene before we get to Bonnie. I worked for him for 2 weeks so you can tell already it did not have a very good ending but my real estate agent in Chicago’s brother was Doc Mcghee who manages Kiss, Bon Jovi, Motley Crue, all these bands. So when I moved out here, I said “let Doc know I’m looking for work” and so one day, a few months after I moved out here I got a call from Doc Mcghee and he said “Gene might be looking for some help and I’ll see what I can do.” The call ended, a week or 2 passed and I figured nothing would come of it. And then one night there’s a message from Gene Simmons on my answering machine asking me to call him [laughter] and I really wish I’d saved that message. So I called him immediately and he asked to meet with me about selling his audiobook into record stores. He’d just come out with his biography and I said “Sure, I’d love to meet with you." So he gave me the address and said “This is the home of Bob Goodman, again that’s Bob Goodman as in Good Man because he is a good man.” so I said “Ok, got it Gene, understood." I went to the address the next day, rang the buzzer on the gate, the gate opened and I’m driving up this long driveway and there were dogs running up and down the driveway and I was like “Oh my God, I’m going to kill a dog on the way to meet Gene Simmons.” I finally made it up to the top of the driveway and it’s Gene Simmons’ house and he’s out in front waiting for me. We say hello and go into his office, he’s got his desk set up and he says “Sit wherever you’d like, if you’d like to sit in my seat please go ahead” and I thought “Oh, is this a trick?” I sit on my side of the desk and he sits in his chair and he begins to tell me about his audiobook and how big a hit his latest book is. His office is a museum of Kiss memorabilia. I don’t know if the coffin was there at the time but you could see it on his television show. They go into his office a number of times and they have display cases for yards of every single piece of garbage that Kiss ever put out. So, he starts telling me about his audiobook and what a big hit it was and he goes “Uh you might want to write some of this down”. I said “Okay” and I took out a pen and started taking notes. This was late October coming into November to sell an audiobook into record stores for Christmas. They hadn’t even manufactured these things yet but they were going to ship sometime in December. It was ill advised and I knew that it was an uphill battle to say the least but I had nothing else going on and I had to take a shot at it so I agreed to do it. I was friends with a man named Adam Parfrey and who is sadly no longer with us. He ran Feral House Books and I told Adam I had this meeting with Gene Simmons coming up and he said “Ooh, I got a book that’s perfect for Gene”. Adam put out a book called The X Rated Bible which is basically just every sort of bit of sex taken from the bible compiled all together. I told Gene about this and his eyes lit up and he said “Gene Simmons reads from The X Rated Bible, I can see it now” and I said “Great.” Nothing ever came of that. He hooked me up with his publisher who turned out to be less organized than I would have hoped and kept changing the deal on me and that’s why it only lasted 2 weeks. It was 2002. Audiobooks are dead to begin with. This was before anyone had iPhones or anything so people weren’t buying audiobooks. Record stores were suffering already and it was a Gene Simmons audiobook so it was a tough sell and I had to walk away from it. I will say though; my interactions with Gene, an absolute gentleman. Terrific, willing to help in any way he thought he could. Of course, his public persona is something very different, but it was an interesting 2 weeks.
David: So Bonnie…
Gene Simmons to Bonnie Hunt... So I let her know I was out here looking for work and this was the first year of her Life With Bonnie sitcom and I came by the set once to say hello. Finally they were going into their second season and she called me to ask if I wanted to be a PA on the show and I jumped at it. I was 42 years old and making 500 dollars a week, but I had my foot in the door of an entirely new industry. I was basically her PA and her assistant so through long hours, I basically learned the television production business. It was Bonnie, David Alan Grier and a few other Second City people and it was a great education. Jonathan Winters was a guest star once. Anyway when that show ended, we did some stuff with Pixar, she kept me on as her assistant and I worked for her for 7 years. We did a pilot for ABC with Joe Mantegna which did not get picked up. We did Cheaper By The Dozen up in Toronto, she brought me along for the ride on all this stuff. It was great, it was quite a ride and then we did the talk show for 2 years with Telepictures and that was--talk about a grind--that was easily 14-16 hour days, 5 days a week, and 2 shows a day sometimes. As far as watching Bonnie, there is no one funnier or quicker than her. She is just remarkable. She had this reputation as being the ultimate talk show guest from her appearances on Letterman. To watch her work was something else.
David: So, I’ve never seen the show, but I’ve seen clips on YouTube that you and even your dad feature in. The one with your dad is great. He just took over.
Yeah, that was my dad. So, dad was visiting from Chicago and came to the set one day and I think Jimmy Kimmel was the guest and the day before, we had a power outage in the studio in the middle of the taping of the show. So the day that dad was there, we had a bit where we would have some PA’s on bicycles generating electricity. And the writer said “Let’s have Mr. Crandus as the 3rd PA and my father was 82 years old at the time on these exercise bikes with these 2 other 20 year old guys pedaling away in matching tracksuits. And Bonnie was like “Mr. Crandus, you’re pitching in for your son, how nice of you, can I ask you your age?” and my father says “You can ask.” [laughter] It was a great memory for him and for me and he’s gone now so it’s great for me to go back and look at that.
This will tell you a bit about Bonnie’s character. That morning at the production meeting, she was deferring to me on purpose to give my father the impression that I was a big deal. It was so kind, and my father didn’t know the difference and he was like “Wow, Bonnie’s asking my son if he approves of the plans for the show, how impressive.” That was really sweet of her.
David: I also saw the clip about your carjacking.
Oh yeah, on Letterman. That was--oof--I was delivering a script to Bonnie and she was doing a rewrite of a Pixar script. Pixar is very protective of their intellectual property, and they would send you with a locked laptop with the script on it. They sent it to me and I was delivering it to Bonnie, so I dropped it off and said goodnight and was going back to my car when I was trying to pull my driver’s side door closed and it wasn’t closing. There’s a guy with his arm in the door and a gun pointed at my face telling me to get the fuck out of the car. At first I thought it was David Alan Grier playing a joke on me. I was like “What?" and he was said “Get the fuck out of the car!” and like the guy in Pulp Fiction, I was like “What?” I couldn’t compute what was happening so I get the fuck out of the car and Bonnie is on the other side of these trees hearing all this happening and she’s yelling to me “Larry, are you okay?” and I’m like “Shut up Bonnie, shut up”. They asked for my wallet. One guy hopped in the car and the other guy took my wallet, ran away, and when they were down the street I said “Call the police, I’ve been carjacked." Bonnie was on her way to Letterman the next day and she talked about it on Letterman. She joked that she kept asking if I wanted a sandwich while waiting for the police to arrive and I kept refusing and she said “C’mon, it’s not like I’m holding a gun to your head”. [laughter]
David: So, tell us about the move from the mouse to the bunny.
Well, the talk show ends and I reached out to a friend who had worked in the promo department at The Bonnie Hunt show who was now head of programming at Playboy TV. She offered me a job as a researcher on a show for Playboy that she was developing called The Stash, which was based on The Soup which was on E!. So it was a clip show and Playboy’s version of it--instead of The Kardashians--they were looking for porn clips to make fun of. My job as researcher was to watch porn DVDs from 9am until 6pm looking for funny moments. Looking for unintentionally funny moments. There’s nothing worse than porn people trying to do comedy, it’s just the worst. Me and my partner would just skim through these DVDs all day with headphones on. We worked on that show for 3 months and we kept track and each of us had watched close to 2000 adult DVDs by the end of the show. The first couple of weeks was fun, but then the reality of watching this material for hours a day set it in, and it just became--soul crushing is perhaps overstating it--but somewhere just shy of soul crushing. But, I’ve been at Playboy 10 years now. I haven’t just been working on the show, I’ve moved on to a dozen other shows and met some really wonderful people. One of the bright spots was working on the shows with swingers. Playboy had this show called Swing which was a documentary style show where they would find couples who were interested in becoming swingers or members of the lifestyle. I did some adjunct shows to Swing, we did a talk show about it and a retrospective show about it. Some of the friendliest, most open people you ever want to meet. I also got to work on a show with John Waters. He did a show called Groundbreakers is the adult version of Turner Classic Movies where someone of authority introduces and gives you background about the film you’re about to watch. So we did that with John Waters and classic adult films. I flew to Baltimore for a few days to shoot with him in a theater and introduced myself--at Wax Trax! we had bootlegs of Female Trouble and Desperate Living which we played constantly in the store which had a huge impact on me. At the airport on the way to Baltimore, one of my eyes is tearing up and getting itchy and... I had pink eye and I’m about to meet John Waters [laughter]. One of the things I had to do was go to John Waters' home with the driver to pick him up on the first day of shooting because he needed help with his wardrobe. And by this time, my eye is seriously pink and I can’t hide it anymore. I tell my executive producer and she freaks out and says “you gotta wear an eye patch.” I was responsible for all of craft service and had to be very careful so I went to Walgreens, got an eye patch and I go to pick up John Waters at his home, wearing an eye patch feeling like such a tool. Perhaps it was not the best idea to explain to him why I was wearing an eye patch, but I felt like I needed to. I said “I don’t normally wear an eye patch, but I appear to have a case of pink eye” and John Waters says “Ewww, pink eye??” I’m grossing out John Waters. [laughter] He says “how’d you get that? Do you have a kid?” and stupid Larry should have said “Yes, that’s it, I have a kid!” but honest Larry said “No, sadly I don’t.” I thought “Ah great, John Waters thinks I’m disgusting, that’s a badge of honor, right?”
Larry with John Waters.
Ben: This is amazing, when was this?
This was 2015, I think.
David: What would 10 year old Larry think of you now?
10 year old Larry is thinking “wow, you live 40 minutes from Disneyland and you’re not going every day?” There’s still a bit of a 10 year old Larry in me, I’m enjoying things so I think he’d be happy? [laughter]
Ben: Obviously, we’ve talked a lot about music, but what are you listening to right now? What’s in your current rotation?
Well, I’m known as the A Certain Ratio guy at Wax Trax! and there’s a new A Certain Ratio record that came out a few weeks ago, and it is, as we say, a banger. It is really good, it made me really happy. There’s a band called Bob Moses I’ve been following. I saw them opening for Underworld a few years ago. They put out a new record called Desire which is a really good record. Total Leatherette is another band I just--they remind me a bit of Coil--they’ve got a sort of darkness to them. I like dark music, I like psychedelic music and they have a total Suicide meets Coil sort of sound that I enjoy. They’ve been around a while but I came across Wooden Shjips and Moon Duo and I enjoy that quite a bit.
In the game room at the Playboy Mansion.
Ben: So, I’m going to move to the coffee related questions. Do you like coffee?
I love coffee, I love a good cup of coffee. There’s nothing more disappointing than a bad cup of coffee.
Ben: What do you look for in a good cup of coffee?
Rich, strong flavor, no bitterness. I’ve tried a lot of different methods and I’ve had good luck with my Breville, Barista Express, but was enamored with the Chemex for a while but that sort of fell away. For a long time, I was a French Press guy, but that got too chewy for me.
Ben: In a normal world outside of Covid, what’s your go-to order at a cafe?
I don’t go for anything too exotic. Maybe a double espresso or maybe an Americano. I used to be a cream and sugar guy, but I like it black with a little sweetener. If I want dessert, I’ll get a Frappucino.
Ben: My favorite drink is a Cortado, which is just kind of like a miniature latte. It’s the most beautiful drink I’ve ever had.
There’s a couple places out here that do a nice Cafe Cubano.
Ben: You’ve obviously had an impressive career in music and now at Playboy, how does coffee affect your creativity, if at all? What’s your relationship with coffee?
It’s a friendly relationship. I don’t know that I recognize a connection between coffee and my creativity, but certainly I start my day with a double espresso and I’ll have another 1 or 2 throughout the day. It’s a stimulant, so if I’m feeling a bit of a drag or uninspired, a coffee break is always welcome.
Ben: The last question I always ask people is if you’ve heard any good jokes lately.
Thank you so much for teaching me the word ‘plethora’. It means a lot.
Thanks again, Larry! It was wonderful talking with you.
]]>Hey Chris, thanks for taking the time to do this. Can you tell us a bit about what you do?
My name is Chris Brokaw. I live in Cambridge, Massachusetts. There’s a huge blizzard outside right now. It’s very pretty. I make solo records of vocal and instrumental music. I do some film scores. I play drums in a band called The Martha’s Vineyard Ferries. I play guitar in a band called Charnel Ground. I am sometimes in The Lemonheads depending on the weather and I teach guitar, bass, and drums. That’s sort of my main job right now, during the pandemic.
Chris Brokaw
Oh nice, how has that been going?
It’s nice, I like it. I was doing it before the pandemic started, but I’ve definitely sort of ramped it up since everything else shut down.
So, I first became aware of you from Come and Codeine. I feel like I discovered them simultaneously. I don’t actually know if they existed simultaneously.
For a couple years, yeah. For a couple years, I was in both bands.
Could you give us a bit of history on the various projects you’ve been involved in?
I’ve done a lot of different things, but the first album I made was the 'Frigid Stars' LP by Codeine. The first 7” I did was for a band GG Allin and the AIDS Brigade and it was called 'Expose Yourself To Kids' on Homestead records.
Let's talk about your time in GG Allin's band.
Um, yeah sure. Not much to say, I was in Boston and I just bought a drum set and wanted to play drums with somebody. The first flier I saw the day after I bought this drum set was for GG Allin who, at that point, was not super well known. I was aware of what he was doing and I think he had just signed with Homestead at that point, and his brother Merle, the bass player, lived right around the corner from me. And that was the number I called on the flier. He said “Why don’t you come over and take a look at some of these videos and see what you think.” So I came over and checked this stuff out and it really kind of freaked me out. But me, Merle, and GG got together and auditioned guitar players and we got this guy Tom Nava. He was this heavy metal survivalist kid from Brockton. Funnily, I lost touch with him for many years and have gotten back in touch with him in the last few years. He’s a really nice guy. So we actually practiced for a couple months. There was a big club here in Boston called The Channel all of us really despised and GG really wanted to get a gig there and burn it to the ground, which was hard to imagine because it was basically a giant cinder block. We practiced for a bit and recorded this 7” for Homestead and then he had to go underground for a while because he was wanted by the police in New Hampshire for a few different things. About a year and a half later he called me--I’d played some guitar on the record-- and asked if I’d play guitar with him at a show in Boston at this club called Middle East. I said I was into playing but I was friends with the people who ran that club and I don’t want to be part of something where that club’s going to get trashed or people are going to get hurt. He said “Listen man, I just want to do a whole set of songs. I haven’t played a show in 6 &1/2 years that’s lasted more than 2 minutes.” The band would start, he would attack the audience, and then someone would knock him out. So we did this one show where he was incognito, we were all in drag and some of his people found out and came to the show. Some stuff got broken but not too crazy by his standards. This was in 1989, and I don’t think I saw him again. I still speak with his brother sometimes but it was a short tenure that people continue to ask me about 30 years later.
You know Scott Giampino, right? I remember him telling me he played with GG for a bit as well, but they never got around to recording. One thing he mentioned pointed out was that GG was always super cool to the band and would do his best to make sure nothing would happen to them during live shows.
Huh. Um, I couldn’t speak to that, but he was certainly very cool with me. Really nice and generous in his own way. I was drinking a lot at that point and we would go out drinking and GG was always picking fights and getting his ass handed to him, like all the time. [laughter]
I’ve never seen anything like it. He was very determined about what he wanted to do. When I knew him he had a sense of humor about it but he was working through a lot of stuff.
Can we talk about Codeine and what that experience was like?
So, the thing with Codeine is it’s so much about Steve Immerwahr’s songwriting and this thing he wanted to do. He was very specific about the kind of music he wanted Codeine to be, and basically he asked me and John Engle to participate in that. So the three of us crafted what we wanted to be, something very specific. We spent a lot of time disseminating what we thought that should be. It was very passionate music but we almost approached it in a scientific sort of way. We would spend a lot of time debating amongst ourselves what role the kick drum played in a band, what role the guitar played, stuff like that. I really learned a lot about putting rock music together from those guys and still, John and Steve are 2 of my best friends. Both the music and my bond with those 2 guys is very special to me.
Codeine
Are there any specific recording experiences or live experiences that jump out at you or you hold in extremely high regard?
Well, the first album 'Frigid Stars', which was the first album I ever made, we decided to record not in a studio but in a friend Mike’s basement in Brooklyn just off of Prospect Park. Mike McMackin was a friend of ours working in a pro studio in the city but he really wanted to try recording on 8-track in his basement, so it was sort of an experiment for all of us. Steve was involved with the engineering as well, he has some experience. We recorded side A and side B of the album about 6 months apart. And I think you can really hear the difference between the 2 sides. By the time we recorded side 2, I think we had a better sense of how to approach that music. The people who really liked that band really liked that band. To other people it was confusing or confounding music. People thought it was ridiculously slow. I remember we did this European tour in 1991, which is the first time I’d ever toured overseas. It was the first big tour I’d done at all, a 3 week tour. We played a few shows in Austria and we played in Vienna and it was such a magical show. Big audience, really cool, beautiful, strikingly well-dressed audience, and we just had a magical show. And then 2 days later we played in some mountain shit hole in Austria for a bunch of skinheads who I thought were going to kill us. [laughter] They’d come out for a punk rock show and we were not giving them what they wanted. It was a pretty frightening evening. It’s one of those circumstances you sometimes find yourself in on tour when you’re in a remote place that’s totally lawless and you have no idea what the fuck is going to happen. In a way, it’s a good primer for what touring is like. One night it's a completely glittery, cosmopolitan, and victorious vibe and 2 days later it’s like “If we get out of here without getting killed, it’ll be a miracle." Codeine had just signed with Sub Pop. Actually, Codeine and Beat Happening had just signed with Sub Pop at the same time and Beat Happening were at least from the Pacific Northwest, but we were definitely the first non-grunge bands on that label at a time when that label had a very strong grunge identity. So, we did this tour in Europe with Bastro and it was very much hyped as this Sub Pop band Codeine. A lot of people came and didn’t know our music at all and were expecting Mudhoney or something. A lot of people were really taken aback.
So, I guess Codeine sort of blended into Come for you?
Yeah, well I was playing with both bands simultaneously for a couple years. At the point Come was putting out our first record, I realized we were going to be on tour for 6 months or something and I didn’t think it was fair to either band to try to continue doing both. I thought “drummers are always quitting bands” so I thought I was fulfilling my own destiny as a drummer to quit a band, so I left Codeine to focus full time on Come.
I moved into my first apartment in ‘93 and it feels like we had a hand-me-down couch, some Christmas lights, a lamp, and a bong. We were 18 year old kids, and Codeine and Come were huge parts of the soundtrack of that space/time. I remember there was a promo poster for '11:11' that was birds in the bluest blue and the the sky was the reddest red, intentionally built to fuck with your eyes. I remember staring at that poster until I couldn’t take it anymore.
[Laughter] That's exactly what it was meant to do.
Was that the first record?
That was the first Come album, yeah.
Let’s talk about that band for a bit, if that’s cool.
Come
I met Thalia in 1988. We were introduced by mutual friends who I’d gone to high school with. They had a band with her at the time called Via which was short-lived. I think they only played live a couple times. Really cool band, but those guys invited me over one day to do some jamming with them so I came over and we all improvised music for a couple hours. I immediately had this incredible musical repartee with Thalia, unlike anything I’d ever experienced. She was just about to move to New York to pursue singing with Live Skull full time. So she was down in New York playing with them and touring a lot. I would go down there and we’d play guitars for 2 or 3 days at a stretch and we just started to become friends. We had this immediate musical bond. We were both playing semi-experimental forms of rock music at that point, but we were both interested in doing something more traditional. A traditional romantic Rock n Roll band. We were really into The Only Ones, The Jacobites, The Bad Seeds, and The Rolling Stones. Eventually we were both back in Boston and I managed to hook up with this rhythm section with Arthur Johnson on drums and Sean O’Brien on bass. They both came from Athens, Georgia. They knew Thalia as well, and I suggested that the 4 of us get together and play, so we did. We practiced for a year or so and did our first show in early 1991 and we got asked to do one of those Sub Pop Singles Club singles a week later. Then we started playing shows with bands like Dinosaur Jr. Things accelerated quickly with that band. We’d only played a couple of shows and suddenly we were getting ready to start making records, and then we recorded our first album for Matador in ‘92.
Anything that sticks out to you about that time?
[Laughter] There’s lots of stuff that sticks out to me. Arthur and Sean left after the first 2 records and then we did a third record with a few different people and toured with some of them. We did our last record with a bass player and drummer who lived here in Boston. I’m really proud of that music and the collaboration I had with Thalia is one of the great collaborations of my life, and I’d collaborated with a lot of different people on a lot of different projects. I think that was the most interesting, exciting, and unique. I still really love Thalia and she sings and plays guitar on a couple songs on my new album and I played some stuff on her last record. We’ve gone through a lot together as friends and as accomplices, but I think we still care for each other a lot and have each other’s backs.
Come - Cimarron
That’s fantastic. I was going to say that hearing her voice on 'Puritan' was super cool, knowing Come and everything. After Come ended, when did you start making solo music? The next thing that I know of was The New Year.
Right, well, it was interesting. I was friends with the Kadane brothers and Come and Bedhead did some shows together. I became very close friends with Matt, who was living here in Boston. I remember us getting together for breakfast one morning and the last Come record was about to come out and the last Bedhead record was about to come out so we gave each other our new albums. Each of us was about to go out on these super long tours and we’re getting together like “Welp, good luck” and each of us went on these tours that were totally soul crushing. By the time both those tours ended, both bands were in flames. Come basically called it quits in April of 2001.
Oh, I didn’t realize it had gone on that long.
Yeah, we took a break because we were driving each other crazy. We didn’t really know what to do with ourselves and finally we did break up. And I was starting to write an album that I didn’t want to be a Come record. I just didn’t know what it was going to be. And Thalia was writing a solo record so I was like “Maybe I’m writing a solo record?" Each of us ended up making solo records. I also made an album with this band Pullman with Bundy Brown, Doug McCombs and Curtis Harvey so I went to Chicago and recorded that with those guys, which was awesome. A really fun record to make and the record was really successful, sold really well, and people were really into it.
I was listening to instrumental music all the time. I was basically listening to jazz music throughout the 90’s so I recorded this album called 'Red Cities'. That was my first solo record, which was an instrumental record. I was acclimating myself to the idea of making instrumental records. Matt called me not long after those Bedhead tours and he was like “Bedhead is breaking up and Bubba and I want to know if you want to start a new band” so I said “Sure.” Matt and I started practicing here in Boston, just the 2 of us and eventually we made the first New Year record in Chicago. I really loved those guys a lot and that was my first time working with Steve Albini, who I was terrified of because of his reputation. He turned out to be a totally awesome guy and we’ve become friends. Through the New Year guys, I ended up becoming friends with Silkworm and a whole little galaxy of friends opened up to me. Doug McCombs and I became friends through the Pullman stuff and we’ve made so much music together over the last 20 years. A whole new chapter opened up largely centered around Chicago.
Nice. I remember the 'Red Cities' record because Touch and Go distributed Atavistic. I had no idea that was your first solo record. I really enjoyed that record, and the first Pullman record, which I spent a lot of time with. It’s such a calming, soothing, great record.
Thanks. It was unanimously all of our parents’ favorite record. [laughter] They were so thrilled they could have a record they could put on at dinner time and play for their friends.
Are you still in touch with the Kadane brothers?
I have not had a lot of contact with them over the last year. I saw Bubba the last time I was in Dallas a year and a half ago... No, I saw him a year ago when I did this performance with my girlfriend in Dallas. He was good, Matt’s good. Matt’s teaching in upstate New York. I don’t know if they’re working on music right now.
I was going to ask if The New Year just kind of ended or if it was something more open-ended?
I guess it’s open-ended? [laughter] I would say it’s open-ended. I love those guys and I love their music so if they want to do anything and they want me involved, I’d be happy to be involved.
So, you mentioned scoring some films? Do you want to talk about that a bit?
Sure. I was asked by my friend Roddy Bogawa who is a film professor and filmmaker in New York and an old Los Angeles punk rocker. He asked me to score a movie of his called 'I was Born, But...' and I didn’t know anything about film scoring, but I did it, and it was really fun. It was largely electric guitar based, but there were some different instruments, weird drones, but pretty bare-bones. I recorded it on an 8-Track cassette and gave myself a month to do it. It was a blast. And since that time, I’ve scored 8 movies. They’re all pretty small movies but it’s really fun. I really love it. I did a movie with this couple Julia Halperin and Jason Cortlund. When I first started working with them, they were in Texas, but they’re living in Boston now. I did a movie with them called 'Now Forager' and another one called Barracuda. I scored a movie for Leslie McCleave called 'Road' and one for Lana Kaplan called ‘Sospira’. I did this one short ghost story called ‘Mother’s Garden’ and another for Roddy about a British album cover artist Storm Thorgerson and Hipgnosis called ‘Taken By Storm’. It’s really fun. I really love it and I wish I was doing it more but I haven’t figured out the best way to hustle that work. People have come to me to ask me to do stuff, generally speaking, which is awesome. They want me to do what I do. If any filmmakers are reading this interview now, I’m down to score.
I’m kind of fascinated with film scoring and you mentioned that it was pretty much an electric guitar and 8-Track, which made me think of ‘Dead Man’. Are you watching scenes when you’re writing music? Are you just getting the theme and thinking it through? Do you have a specific way of approaching things or are you approaching each project differently?
It’s pretty different with each project. Generally speaking, I am brought in after the movie is finished and I think that’s fairly typical that the music is one of the last things that goes in. It’s up to the director. They tell me what they want, but people have come to me with different directives. There was one filmmaker who said “I really want a theme song with several variations through the movie”. So, I’ve done stuff like that for that film and maybe 1 or 2 others. It really runs the gamut. I’ve worked with people who said “just record a bunch of stuff and I’ll put it in” and then other people have said “Ok when the character walks around the corner and the door closes, this has to happen”, really going frame by frame. I’ve worked on films that have that stuff and everything in between. It’s cool.
Do you appreciate the challenge of having intense direction or being able to do whatever?
I like to have some assignments. If the assignments are fun or interesting, it’s nice to have somebody to say “I need you to do this or this.” I like it when a director has specific ideas and can express that clearly. That being said, in all circumstances, I’ve tried stuff out and thought “I have no idea if the director is going to like this or not, I’m sort of going out on a limb here but whether they love it or don’t like it at all, whatever they choose is fine.” It’s a semi-collaborative situation that I really enjoy. At the end of the day, it’s their movie. Whatever I’m doing has to just serve the scene. A lot of times that means something very minimal. And even though I have released a few scores I’ve done as records, the music isn’t necessarily intended to stand alone. It’s only purpose is to serve the film. If it’s something you want to listen to later on, that’s cool. It’s funny you mention ‘Dead Man’ because when I first saw it in the theater I thought it was amazing so I bought the soundtrack and brought it home and listened to it and was like “I don’t really like listening to this at all.” [laughter] It just wasn’t nearly as powerful as the way it was in the movie and particularly the way it was in the movie theater. That shit sounded incredible in the theater but I didn’t like listening to it at home.
Do you have any soundtrack stuff lined up?
Nope.
Are there other solo records you want to touch upon besides 'Red Cities'?
Let’s talk about 'Puritan'. I mean, I’ve done a lot of different things under my name to the point where sometimes people don’t always know what to expect. When I go out and play live, generally I’m playing guitar and singing songs with words. I’ll usually play some instrumental stuff, but if I’m playing solo, I will usually go out and sing. I did this show in New York like 6 years ago and this guy came up afterwards and he was like “Uh, that was a good show. The only thing I have of yours is this tape that you put out.” and the tape I put out was this instrumental thing. One side I was playing this echo-y keyboard thing for half an hour and the other side was me playing vibraphone with a thunderstorm going on in the background. It was almost an ambient thing. That’s what this guy was expecting when he came to the show. He wasn’t expecting a guy singing and playing guitar. I like doing a lot of different things and I’ve put different things out under my own name. I didn’t think I needed to come up with a special name for when I make instrumental records. Anybody who is interested in what I’m doing just has to come to terms with that.
The last record I did before 'Puritan' was this album called 'End of the Night' that came out in 2019, an instrumental record. Largely electric guitar but also with a trumpet player Greg Kelley and Lori Goldston on cello. We did this tour on the West Coast in 2019 with guitar, cello, trumpet, and 2 drummers and it was fucking awesome. I had such a good time. But then 'Puritan' is more this rock record with singing that I did with the trio I play with here in Boston.
Nice. Was the band put together for the purpose of the record or is that the current Chris Brokaw band?
It’s the current Chris Brokaw band. I was living out in Seattle for 6 or 7 years and I moved back here in 2017 and I knew this drummer Pete Koeplin. Right when I got back I asked him if he wanted to play some music. He and I practiced together for maybe a year and he brought in a bass player, Dave Carlson. The 3 of us just practiced a lot and I was slowly writing these songs. We played live a little bit, but mostly just practiced and then recorded the album, did most of the tracking in April of 2019. We finished mixing in February of last year and then sat on it being like “You can’t put out a record if you’re not going to be out on tour, there’s a plague going on.” But we reached a point where we were like “I don’t know when we’re going to tour again” so, we put the record out.
Dave Carlson, Chris Brokaw, & Pete Koeplin recording 'Puritan'.
'Puritan' is fantastic. Do you just come up with a theme in your head and go with it or are you constantly writing and finding songs that work together? Is there any sort of process to it?
Well, I think there’s different processes for different records. With this one, the process was figuring out what I was doing with Dave and Pete, which took a while. I think they’re both amazing players and both in very unique ways. I didn’t have a lot of new songs but I had a few, and I don’t write a ton. I think this is true of a lot of records I’ve made. It’s just working on songs until an album starts to come into focus almost like a mirage. Maybe you write one song that feels like the center of a record and start framing other things around it. So I do it in a blind, intuitive way, and patiently. Certainly with this record, I was not in a hurry to have the whole thing together. I’ll know it when I have a record together and when it’s time to go in and do it. There were 2 songs that I recorded while on tour in 2018. Thalia and I played in Fort Worth, Texas and the guy putting us up had a studio. We were doing The Bragging Rights and The Night Has No Eyes and we went in his studio and did it really quickly. I think it’s all first takes.
While 'Puritan' remains in heavy rotation at my place, I've also been really enjoying the new Martha’s Vineyard Ferries record, 'Suns Out Guns Out'. Do you want to talk about them? I guess it’s not them, it’s you guys.
The Martha's Vineyard Ferries: Elisha Wiesner, Bob Weston, Chris Brokaw
I’ve known Elisha for a while. I went out to Martha’s Vineyard around 2004 to play a show and his band Kahoots was playing. He’s been in this band for 20 years or so. Amazing kind of pop band. So I went out there and we played on this bill together and I thought they were incredible and the scene out there was cool so I started going out there a lot. Almost like how I found the crew in Chicago 20 years ago. So Elisha and I became friends and I played drums on a couple Kahoots tours and I’d known Bob (Weston) forever. Bob and Elisha bonded over both being owners of recording studios and geeking out on audio stuff. For a while they had this running joke “Wouldn’t it be hilarious if we had a band called the Martha’s Vineyard Ferries?” But eventually they were like “What if we actually do this and who’s gonna play drums?” and I think pretty quickly they were like “Brokaw’s gonna play drums.” So, we did the first record 'In The Pond' in Bob’s basement. Speaking personally, I love playing with those guys and I think I write differently when I write songs for that band. I can’t say exactly how or why. I think people think that because the name of the band is sort of funny, they think of us as a funny, good times band, which is not inaccurate, but I think our new album ‘Suns Out Guns Out’ is where we take things down a darker place. [laughter] I’m really happy with the record. It took us forever to finish and now that it’s done, I’m really happy with it. I hope when the pandemic is done, we can go out and do some touring because it’s a really fun band to play with and I love hanging out with those guys.
I look forward to seeing stuff from both of these records in a live setting.
I really want to go out with the trio, those guys have kids and 9-5 jobs.
One thing you mentioned was that the record took a long time, and it seems really weird considering Bob's involvement in the band.
[pause] Why do you say that?
I’m just joking, because of Shellac taking 6 or more years in between records.
[Laughter] Yes, Shellac records take like 20 years. So no surprise there. But it was surprising because the other 2 records we did super quickly. It was the post production that took years.
Did Bob record this one as well?
Elisha recorded this one at his place on the Vineyard.
Can you elaborate on what you meant when you said you write differently with these guys?
I don’t know. I honestly can’t put words to it. I feel like I write songs differently when I’m writing them for that band. Both of those guys tend to write shorter, catchy tunes, and so maybe I try to do that as well. I don’t know. I just feel like I am pleased with the character of the songs that I’ve written for that band that I don’t think I would have written otherwise. One of the things I enjoy about playing with other people is you end up doing things you wouldn’t have done otherwise.
Definitely. Did you only write on drums or were the 3 of you collaborating on guitars?
Generally, each person would write a song. And the songs that I wrote, I wrote on guitar and showed the guitar part to Elisha. In some instances, I play guitar on the recording as well. There’s one song on the new record called ‘After You’ where I wrote these lyrics and sent them to Elisha and 2 years later he ended up using them with a verse he added to the end. That’s the only instance where we sort of wrote a song together.
My wife would be so mad at me if we didn't discuss The Lemonheads. How did you get involved with them?
When I moved to Boston in the 80’s, The Lemonheads had just put out their first 7” 'Laughing All The Way To The Cleaners'. So when I first came here the song 'Glad I Don’t Know' was on the radio every 10 seconds. I went and saw their very first show at The Rat. I didn’t really know them at all, but they were around all the time and at a certain point they became this giant rock band. Evan was also at the first Come show so that’s something we bonded on at one point. In 2001, a friend of mine Tom Johnston who used to manage Come for a couple years was managing Evan and he called me up and said “Evan is going to be doing some shows in England, he’s trying to put together a band which I think is going to be a train wreck, but would you be interested in playing guitar with him in a duo?”. I’d seen Evan play solo and I thought he was especially great solo. His songs were good, I liked the quality of his voice, and he was obviously a really good guitar player. So Evan came over one day and showed me like 25 songs in one afternoon. [laughs] And we went to England the next day and played this big festival. In England, Evan was a big star but we really got along well and formed a good repartee as players. So we did these shows in England and 2 weeks later he’s like “Hey, do you want to play these 2 shows in Texas and these shows in Ireland and Australia?” So, Evan and I did these little tours where it was just the 2 of us and... he’s a handful, as many people know, but I really love Evan. I think he’s a really talented, complicated person and playing with him is a blast in part because he’s a bit of a wild card and you don’t quite know what’s going to happen next over the course of an evening. Sometimes that’s bad, but sometimes it’s really great. He’s an amazing musician, incredibly smart, and so I played with him a bunch and recorded on his first solo record called 'Baby I’m Bored'. We did a lot of touring after that for years. Around 2009, he started doing The Lemonheads as a 3 piece so I didn’t do anything with him for a couple years. But in 2013, we did the first Varshons record and went on several tours and in 2019 we did the Varshons II record and I went on sabbatical. I would say that I’m at least a charter member of The Lemonheads.
That’s awesome. That’s an aspect of your career that I was completely unaware of. Have we missed anything?
There’s this band I’m in called Charnel Ground with Doug McCombs and a drummer called Kid Millions from New York. Kid Millions and I did one show together in New York and made a date to go to the studio and do some recording. About a week before he called me and said “what do you think about having James McNew play bass on this recording?” and I was like “Yeah, James is fucking awesome” so James went in with us and made the record and his playing is incredible. It was pretty clear afterwards that he didn’t want to tour on it or devote more time to it, so I asked Doug if he would play bass on it and he’s our new bass player. We did some recording in New York a while ago but I don’t know if we have a whole album in there or not. I can’t wait to get back out there and play with those guys when the pandemic is over.
I make the best coffee in Cambridge and possibly in all of Massachusetts. It’s a really simple formula. I get Lavazza espresso and make it in an Italian moka pot on the stove top and mix in some cinnamon with the espresso before making it. That’s it. I pour it into a cup and add about ⅗ coffee to ⅖ almond milk. That’s my jam. I have 2 cups in the morning and a third cup around 4pm.
Have you tried oat milk yet? I feel like the consistency is so much more like milk.
I’m so enamored with almond milk, I’m not ready to go back to real milk or any alternative. But maybe you can recommend some oat milk brands that are good. I guess when I tried oat milk, I thought it was fine but thought it was inferior to what I was drinking.
I think we just use Oatly barista edition, but as far as espresso machines in coffee shops, oat milk acts the most like milk when you’re trying to do lattes or cappuccinos. Soy milk you cannot do that, where as oat milk you can actually get a very similar consistency. It's more like whole milk. But I’m also a fan of almond milk and the moka pot, which I don’t use often but I do love it. Are you a fan of the darker roast espresso or the medium roast?
Darker.
Say the world was normal and you were out running errands and you were going somewhere to grab a coffee, do you have a go-to drink you would grab?
In Cambridge? Everyone in Cambridge will despise me for saying this but I would probably just go to Starbucks. [laughter] I haven’t found a small coffee place here that I really like. My girlfriend really likes 1369 but I don’t like their coffee at all. There’s this other place Barismo that’s close by but they seem like assholes and I thought their coffee was sour. It sounds lame but I’d go to Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts. I like Dunkin Donuts coffee. I really like Starbucks coffee. I get in arguments with people about that. I’ve talked with coffee snobs who say “all that stuff sucks.” As far as I’m concerned, Starbucks put good, strong coffee in parts of the country that didn’t have anything like good coffee forever. Just in terms of its ubiquity as a drug, you can get good, strong coffee there that’s going to set you right in the morning. If I had my druthers, I’d just be drinking coffee in Italy all the time because that’s the best coffee in the world. It’s a different thing.
I don’t ever seek out Starbucks, but if I’m on a road trip... it might happen. You know you’re going to get a better than decent cup of coffee there. If I’m going to Memphis, I’m not going to pull into some small town in Arkansas looking for the local cafe.
Yeah, yesterday I was driving across the state and I stopped at a travel plaza and had travel plaza coffee and it sucked. It was terrible. I’m grateful for Starbucks and also really like Dunkin Donuts, but that’s kind of a Massachusetts thing.
One thing I found really interesting as I got into the esoteric world of coffee roasting, all the roasters were like “On my days off, I just go to fuckin’ Dunkin Donuts." It’s totally solid coffee. I’ll never turn down a cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee. Do you feel like coffee is a part of your creative process?
I’ve probably written some stuff when I was over-caffeinated. I probably made some business proposals early in the morning when I was fucking jacked, that later on didn’t seem all that exciting. But I wouldn’t say that it’s part of the creative process. [laughter] That said, I really do love coffee and have grown to love it. I didn’t start drinking coffee until I was in my late 20’s. As we know it’s almost 4pm and it’s almost time for 4 o’clock coffee.
Last question I always ask everyone is if they’ve heard any jokes recently and this is the only way I hear new jokes now, so that's why I ask.
I’m usually pretty good with this sort of thing but I have not heard a good new joke in a while. I have failed you and I apologize for that.
That’s alright, I have about a 50% success rate. [laughter]
Many thanks to Chris for the fun and insightful conversation! Be sure to check out his Bandcamp page, as well as the other great projects he's involved with.
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]]>Hey Azita, how's it going? Could you just tell us a bit about who you are, what you do, all of that?
I'm doing alright. Thanks. Ummm I'm a person that lives in Chicago and makes music. [laughs]
Azita Youssefi
Hey, that works! I'm familiar with your projects The Scissor Girls, Bride Of No No, and of course your AZITA output.
That's really it.
I actually just got the Scissor Girls Demo LP. I think it turned out really well.
Yeah, it's pretty. I haven't heard it yet, but it looks nice. I mean, I can't really listen to my old stuff. But I realized that everything on that, I think it's like 7 things, that's the exact first time I wrote any songs. I never once even tried writing before those songs.
Oh wow!
I know! It's so weird, because I never thought about that this whole time, but that's why it's hard to listen to?
If you haven't listened to it yet, you may not realize this, but it's a 45 rpm record, and I don't think it says that anywhere on the labels.
Oh my god, I did not know that! Wow, I guess that makes sense.
I threw it on and was like "Man, it's been ages since I listened to the Scissor Girls, but I don't remember this groove they've got goin' on..." and then your vocals came in and I realized the issue. That said, it's still a great listen!
It all makes sense now.
I know the label that put it out had some delays due to printing issues with the jackets, but the guy Ethan was super responsive and cool about the whole thing.
Right, right. They did have some printing issues. I got to know him because of this, but Dan Koretzky had put him in touch with me and was vouching for him. So yeah, he was very cool to deal with in every way. He wrote me an email explaining the printing problems they had. Someone had posted about the delay on my Facebook, and another person commented saying they saw pictures of the bad covers and that they looked terrible, so I'm glad he redid them. Then, what I saw what the finished ones really look like, I just thought they look amazing. To me, since I have the cassette that was scanned, obviously, it looks exactly like the cassette sitting in the middle of this black field because of the spot varnish. It's just the exact cassette cover. It's cool.
Ok, cool. So, let's talk about the Scissor Girls. From what I remember, you moved here from D.C.? Was that in anyway because of the band, or...
No no no. I moved here to go to the Art Institute. During my first year here, I did what I think a lot of people do in college and went home for the summer break. So, I hung out in D.C. for the summer and when I came back, my friend Heather decided to move here and start the band with me. We didn't really know what we were doing, but we just started coming up with some of the the stuff and then we had Sue Anne, who we both knew from D.C. and because she went to the Art Institute with me join as the guitar player. As far as I remember, we had already worked out a lot of those songs with just drums and bass first. I wouldn't trust my memory 100% on that, but I think it was something like that. like, I had no idea what I was doing.
We were around bands in D.C., we were friends with like Nation Of Ulysses and Fugazi and stuff, and I think Heather lived in a house with maybe James Canty and Guy, or something. One of those kinds of houses. I can't remember. We were just around that scene all the time.
I hadn't even tried playing a bass before. I had no idea how it works or anything. Now that I think of it, I have no memory of anyone showing me the first thing on a bass, like how to hold it, how to touch it, or how to do anything like that. I don't remember. I don't know how it happened, actually. I had forgotten until this point that I had ever had any musical background at all, you know? I had played piano in a really uncommitted, lame way from around 3rd grade until like 8th or 10th grade, and never really understood it. Then I became like, punk rock or whatever and had my uhhh alternative life [laughs]. I completely forgot that any musical experiences had ever happened in my life besides going to shows and stuff. Then, I decided we'd start this band. It's weird! All I really know, all I remember is that I went and got this Rickenbacker bass from Guitar Center and that I paid $475 for it. I don't even think I borrowed a bass before buying it! A 1978 Rickenbacker 4001, a really nice bass.
Azita and her Rickenbacker, photo By John Fletcher.
Do you know Joaquin from Dog and stuff like that?
I don't think so.
Do you know Elliot Dicks?
Yeah, he's great!
Yeah, yeah. He was my boyfriend and we were living together for a really long time, even after that. But Joaquin was over and said "I can't believe you got this as your very first bass!" and it was this idea I had gotten this extravagant thing, which it was! I didn't even know if I was gonna keep playing, or like give it up, or who knows [laughs]! But, I still have it, you know? I don't really like to play it, but I have it. It got kind of trashed, being around different houses, borrowed by different people or whatever. I was not a person that babied things at all, so I had to put some money into fixing it up like a couple of years ago. I don't think I'll ever sell it, but it's not the particular bass sound that I'm interested in. I keep it because it's sentimental or whatever.
I feel like those are great basses for like loud rock, you know?
Yeah, it's not really like a volume thing for me, it's a trebly thing for me. I didn't know a lot about instruments or anything, but now that I've had more time I realize there's only one bass sound that my ear is always wanting to hear and it's P-Bass, so I don't need to fuck around with it, you know? That's the sound of what a bass is supposed to be, for me. It occurred to me that I was always trying to make my stuff sound like that without knowing it.
But yeah, all the pictures in that Scissor Girls record are that Rickenbacker, and it's funny because I only really played it during the time period of these demos. By the time the next record came out a few months later, I was already using this big Hagstrom bass that I used for the rest of the Scissor Girls and for Bride Of No No.
You mentioning the P-Bass reminded me that when I spoke with Michael Gerald of Killdozer for one of these, he told a story about how initially he was just singing and they had a bass player that they didn't really like. He had a P-Bass and actually mentioned trading it in. They may have nudged him a bit to do so, and then Michael bought it and just started playing bass.
[heavy laughter] That's fucked up man! [more laughter] I thought the story was gonna go in another way and you were gonna say they just wanted him to get a Jazz Bass or something and I was gonna be at odds with him, but now I realize that he was just next level! It's not like he couldn't have found one, they're like a dime a dozen! That's the most amazing thing about it. The best sounding bass is accessible to anyone, you know what I mean? At whatever price point. You can get the Squire version and it will still sound pretty much as good. [more laughing]
So, how long was The Scissor Girls active?
I think our first show was Halloween of '91? It would have been the same set as what's on the demos record. Those recordings would have happened around the same time? By '93 we had our first record out, and we went on a tour with Jaks, who I think maybe you're friends with, yeah?
I know Jessica, and can't remember if Bill was in the band as well? Great people.
He may have been later? it was Sean, Shawn, Katrina, and Jessica. Of course Magas was a part of that scene too. So, we went on this tour, and I had this big health issue where I went into a coma., and it was never really explained why that happened. It seemed to have something to do with the fact that I had lost my voice and been given this steroid prescription. So, maybe that lowered my immune system or something, but whatever, I had this event. I woke up in a hospital in Baltimore and the rest of the tour was canceled. That was '93, and it put things on kind of a weird course after that. We did another record, Sue Anne had already kind of quit when that came out, so there was a time period where we didn't know who the guitar player was going to be and then Kelly Kuvo joined. Everything was sort of just difficult after that. I'd say the whole thing was over by '95 or '96.
Any other memories of touring or performing tha you'd like to share?
Well, our touring was pretty sporadic. We weren't a band that went on a huge amount of tours, you know? I know we did some Canadian stuff with Candy Machine, if you remember them. I have a really hard time remembering most things, honestly. I remember waking up from a coma because, you know [laughs]. People are always like "Remember when you came here and did this?" and I don't know... that was a long ass time ago, obviously.
Cool. So, I remember going to what I believe was the very first Bride Of No No show, which would have been during the final week of shows at Lounge Ax.
Right. Yeah, that's weird also, because I remember the event but I have no memory of playing it and being at that stage in that band. Bride Of No No was a really hard band to get together and I just don't remember what the line up was, or really anything about it.
It was the Drag City night, and I believe it was you all, Jim O'Rourke, Palace, and King Kong. I hope I'm not forgetting anyone.
Yeah, yeah, we just did a couple of songs maybe? I have no memory. I wish someone had a recording or something, like a video. Of course, no one did shit like that back then, but it would be really cool because I have no idea what happened at all.
Bride Of No No
So, how did Bride Of No No come to be?
Well I can say personally, for me, that when we were doing Scissor Girls we were just doing stuff that worked for me and Heather. I didn't really know anything about how to write a song, I didn't have any strategy or whatever. That was kind of what made it so hard to deal with. Sue Ann left and then we had a different guitar player, and we didn't have any sort of language to describe it to someone new coming in. It was an incredible feeling of being stuck and not being able to make something again. It's funny, people think it's like "free" to make noise music because you don't have chord structures, you know? But, I found it actually really confining because it can really only be duplicated if you memorize it. There wasn't any freedom in it, in a way. I think with Bride Of No No I was trying to have another band situation but I didn't know how to make it happen. We ended up with this really intricate stuff that we practiced for so many hours. We would practice for like 3 hours, 3 times a week. I look at what we ended up with and its like two records worth of material or something, which isn't enough and seems kind of fucked up [laughs]. We talk about that and we are just like "do you remember how much we practiced?" If I compare that to now, when we practice before a show or a record, we do it like 3 times in a year or something! Like almost not at all, because everyone knows what the song is going to be ahead of time just by looking at a piece of paper that says what the chords are. So anyway, I guess that was me continuing to work, trying to figure out how to have this band, and it was a very difficult experience. During that time, I had gone back to studying some classical piano, as a totally separate thing. That's when I started writing the stuff that ended up being the first solo record. Then, at some point, around the second Bride Of No No record, it became clear to me that I could just do stuff a lot faster by myself, you know?
It's because I didn't have the language, I didn't know how to make the band work at that time. Now of course, it would've been different if I knew the things that I know now, but I didn't really know what I was doing [laughs].
I know you worked with Atavistic Records for the Bride Of No No stuff, but they also released your solo record Music For Scattered Brains, right?
Yeah, yeah. That was totally unrelated. It was actually something I had done as part of my BFA exhibition at the Art Institute for the sound program. That had already been put out on vinyl, and then Kurt just reissued it.
I gotta ask, because I've been curious for years now. Regarding Bride Of No No, what's the deal with the cover for the first record B.O.N.N. Apetit!? I've always been intrigued by it and wondered "What am I missing here?"
[Laughs] Well, we're in it in our outfits as the chefs, right?
On the back, yes.
I think we had some shows or something and were with Jeremy Lemos, who was doing sound with us, and were in Wisconsin or somewhere between here and Minneapolis. We stopped at some restaurant for lunch and that painting was on the wall, and I just decided that I really wanted the painting to be the record cover.
So shortly after, you released Enantiodromia?
Yeah, it was sort of simultaneous, in the same year anyway. I think when we were doing the second Bride Of No No record, we had already basically broken up as a band. While we were getting the record ready, I had either already recorded the record on Drag City or was getting ready to. I don't remember.
How long had it been since you had gotten back into playing piano when you made that?
I think it was around the time that Scissor Girls broke up? So, like '95.
Like so many, I was kind of forced into lessons as a kid, and I regret letting it kind of slip away over time.
Oh, definitely. That's what happened to me. I gave it all up, and then went back and did it all again. It doesn't matter, you can go back to it. Having spent a lot of time, thousands of hours, being a piano teacher you see people coming into lessons with all this shit, there's so much fucked up psychology about it. There's like this morass of self-actualization issues all tied to children's music lessons. You know what I mean? It's so unnecessary. Sometimes I'll get asked if I was classically trained. Like, what the fuck does that even mean to you? It means some kind of antebellum shit or something. Some wood paneled fantasy.
The majority of people that take "classical" piano lessons with a normal piano teacher, yeah, they're learning some classical music, they're learning how to read. That's just normal shit, but they try to put this whole thing on it, and I think it has to do with something else. I don't know if I'm being clear, but it's about regretting missed opportunities and your station in life or something. The reality of it is that you don't have some kind of advantage if you start as a kid, if fact you have many disadvantages. Your fingers don't totally work yet, you don't have very good coordination, you don't have the mental discipline to focus on things.
I can have an adult come in, and they're like a stock broker or something and they have no ear, can't sing a tune, they have no evolved musical tastes, they have like three records they listen to... like Katy Perry or something, they don't know shit about music, but they just want to do something. If they start coming in once a week, and practice the stuff they're supposed to practice, in a year they can play Bach. They don't have to have any special talent or anything. It's just the repetition, and deciding to do it.
By comparison, say I get someone that's like a savant of the guitar or something, some self taught person, and they know all this shit. They may come in and be like "ooh, look at me!" and then they won't even do the first thing they need to do, and then they're like "I can't read!" There's just all this bullshit around it, and none of it has to do with actually just doing it. If you want to play piano, there's no time when you should have started. Three years later, you'll be able to do almost anything you can think of that you want to, if you're actually methodical about it.
You just reminded me that you started teaching at Old Town School of Folk Music years ago. Has COVID forced you to stop, if you hadn't already done so?
I hadn't stopped before, but I was really paring down a lot because I wanted to focus on my own stuff like my new record. It took a lot of time and work to make it, because I do everything on it. I did every single thing on it. I engineered it, I played everything, you know. I mixed it with one other person (Mark Greenberg) but nobody else touched it until it was time to mix. Anyway, I was trying to pare down my student roster, but I had some people that had been with me since they were 5 and they are now like 16. I didn't want to leave them hanging, or go to someone else. Then, this all happened and I didn't want to deal with trying to see people's hands on phones or something. I didn't want to deal with that. Now, I'm doing more and more of my own stuff, so I don't know what's going to happen. While the virus is around, I'm certainly not going to go sit in some 8'x8' room with some kids or whatever [laughs].
So let's talk about your new record, Glen Echo.
To begin with, you've been sitting on this record for over a year, right?
Yeah, yeah. It was mastered in November of 2019.
How does it feel having to sit on this for so long, but also continuing to write and create stuff, knowing this hadn't been released yet?
I mean... it sucks, man! [heavy laughter] What can I say? I'm not the only person this happened to, though. It's kind of wild to think about, I mean some of these songs were written and performed live before Trump took office. It might have even been like 60% of the songs.
I think at first I had a sense that the songs wouldn't even be relevant anymore, because the whole landscape of life had changed so drastically, especially with Trump being president! Then, I had the same feeling again with all the Coronavirus stuff. The first single that was supposed to come out was "Online Life". It was going to come out in April when "Shooting Birds From The Sky" came out. I just thought "This isn't gonna make any sense right now." It's like a party song about giving up the internet? That's not something that's gonna make any fucking sense to anyone right now [laughs]! The thing that sucks for me is that I'm slow at doing things, and I always feel like some percentage of the relevance of the idea suffers before it comes out, unfortunately.
"If U Die"
So as far as recording at home, do you have sort of a basic studio set up at all times?
I basically have everything besides drums in my dining room, you know, like in a normal Chicago style lay out, and I have my drums in the basement. I have sort of a separate recording set up for when I track drums.
I just remembered that we saw you play in D.C. in like 2009, because we were in town for a wedding.
Yeah, yeah, yeah! I remember that. You saw us play when my band was Doug McCombs, Sam, me and Charles Rumback on drums probably?
I remember meeting your mom.
Oh, yeah! That's right, my mom was there! And Mark Shippy! That's right, Mark was there playing with Wrekmeister Harmonies and my mom had a big crush on him for a while, so she was glad to see him [laughs].
Throughout all these bands you've been in, which cover an sizeable amount of creative ground, what would you cite as far as influences and how have you seen those change?
Interesting. Well, I obviously listened to a lot more punk rock back then [laughs]. That was the sort of scene we were in or whatever.
As I said, I came out of all the Dischord stuff. That and Bad Brains and stuff like that is what I was around when I was in high school, and when I first moved here. I was also listenin to a lot of Ska/Mod stuff as well, like English Beat, The Jam, The Clash... stuff like that. I was probably listening to Wire, The Fall, Bush Tetras. Psychedelic Furs, Echo & The Bunnymen, you know, anything in that whole New Wave vein.
Cool, so what are you listening to these days?
So, I don't listen in the same way to things now. I don't really know how to explain it. I was thinking about this the other day. I can have the same thing on that I've heard like a million times, like The Alan Parsons Project's "Eye In The Sky" or something like that, and all I'm thinking is "Listen to how perfect that hi-hat is." I don't know how to offer up a worthy list of influences, because I'm just not listening that way anymore.
Let's say I really dislike something, like Billy Joel or whatever, that doesn't mean that I might not hear something that they did in it that I can appreciate, you know?
I don't listen to music recreationally anymore. The only time I might do something that would be considered that is when I'm driving the car, which I don't do that much. When I do, I have satellite radio, and that's the only way I like to listen, when I'm not picking it. I might change channels or whatever, run through the 5 or 6 channels that might have something that I like. Sometimes, there is nothing on that I like, but I never spend a lot of time choosing something to listen to, unless it's a friend's thing that I wanna check out, or something I want to learn. Sometimes, I think that when I'm done working on whatever, I'll spend a period of time going back and listening to various catalogs that I don't know well. Like, I don't think I know enough of the John Coltrane records, or know them well enough maybe. So far, that time hasn't come [laughs].
I really dislike Billy Joel though. Unfortunately, a lot of kids want to learn how to play Piano Man.
I don't know if you know this, but there's something that happens with musician's brains in an MRI, and the more they are a practicing musician, the more a specific part of their brain lights up when they're listening to music. I've known that for a really long time, and it's sort of like a sad thing, you know? It's like less of your intuitive part is lighting up, and more of your analytic part is. It's sad because I like to be able to lose myself in things, but like I can't do dishes with music on in the background. That doesn't work for me, I have to really think about what I'm hearing. I don't want to miss anything, or else I'll have to go back and listen to it again!
Alright, let's talk about coffee for a bit.
Hit me.
How do you make coffee at home, and what do you like?
Alright, I've had a Rancilio Silvia since 2004. I'm not very good about maintaining the machine, I'm just kind of lazy about that type of shit, and it's very, very finicky regarding when it wants to pull a good shot or not. My boyfriend Joe has become sort of the Silvia whisperer, he always gets a good shot out of it, so he makes coffee for me in the morning, unless I get up before him and then I have to make it myself. In the last week, I've gotten a little better at it. I mean, I've been using this machine since 2004, and for some reason, in the last year or so just every single shot I pulled failed. Lavazza Super Crema is what I use. I don't like a super dark espresso, I like it to be blondish. I used to get coffee from Cafe Umbria at Letizia's in Wicker Park for a really long time.
I also have the matching Rancilio Rocky grinder, but unfortunately, at the time that I bought it I didn't realize that I should get one without the doser.
Anyway, I pour my coffee over ice and put soy milk in it. My needs are not as exacting as Joe's, and he drinks it straight. He actually has his own Lavazza Blue machine that he uses. It takes these little cups. When we were in Italy, we stayed at a number of B&Bs, and we stayed with this lady in Florence that had one and he decided to get the exact same thing when we got back to the states. I was like "It's so wasteful!" but I couldn't talk him out of it, so... I guess everyone has their thing. I'm like "I have a real espresso machine!" His machine is very consistent though. One reason I don't drink coffee from it is that for some reason it's a lot stronger. Like one of them will hype me up insanely. I don't know why it's coming out so much stronger, but I can definitely feel it in the heart palpatations, you know?
What do you get if you're out at a cafe or a restaurant? Same thing?
Pretty much. I mean, there are times, like if I'm in Italy or at a really nice place or something, I will not get my usual drink over ice with soy milk. I'll get something approximating a dry cappucino or a machiatto. Something with a little foam and milk, but not too much. Maybe I would have a plain shot of espresso with the right dessert. I used to switch to hot in the wintertime and back to ice in the summer, but the past couple of years I've stuck with iced all year.
Well, I think that's about it. Thanks so much, Azita!
Don't make me look like an asshole!!! [Laughs]
"It's Understanding"
Do yourself a favor and check out The Scissor Girls, Bride Of No No, and AZITA on BandCamp. While you're at it, be sure to grab a copy of the excellent "Glen Echo", out now on Drag City Records.
Wanna check out Glassworks? First time buyers can use the code GLENECHO for 20% off of your first order.
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I met up with James Marlon Magas in a park one beautiful October afternoon to ask some questions about his musical endeavors and love of coffee. He's a gifted conversationalist full of great stories, and many he told me are presented here for your enjoyment.
Hello, my name is James Marlon Magas, formerly known as MAGAS. I’ve added my middle name and my first name to my Nom De Plume. I used to just have my middle name, Marlon, in there, but I decided to add James. I quit using just Magas, because in 2016 the term MAGA was being used as a hashtag by fascists. I thought about fighting for it and perhaps I still will, but I was looking for a little change of pace anyway, so I decided to go by my full name, James Marlon Magas.
James Marlon Magas, photo by Christopher Rejano.
I began my musical career in 1992 with the band Couch, when I co-founded the record label Bulb Records with Pete Larson. I then moved to Chicago and formed the group Lake of Dracula with Weasel Walter, Heather Melowic and later, Jessica Ruffins. Oh, and occasionally the Manhattanite, who some say bears a resemblance to Al Johnson from U.S. Maple, but this cannot be confirmed.
In 1999, after the breakup of LOD, I left band life and started a solo electronic music career. Also that same year, I started the store Weekend Records and Soap with my then-wife Bridgette Wilson. We sold records and soap. That ended in 2004. I continued doing Magas and now I'm working on a solo album.
I started the record label Midwich Productions in 2015, and that became a vehicle for a bunch of artists in the Detroit/Chicago axis--all analog synth enthusiasts, to make weird sort of experimental techno-ish records. That is still going on, and I am working on a solo album that'll be the next release, which will come out as soon as possible.
What led you to start playing music?
I got a guitar and amp in eighth grade but I couldn't really play it very well. I lived in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in what probably couldn't even be called a village, really. It’s called Shelter Bay. There were like maybe 30 people who live on Lake Superior out in the woods. On New Year's Eve at midnight, there was a tradition where we would go to our door and just try to make as much noise as we could. You know, we'd bang on pots and pans and scream "Happy New Year!" unlike Chicago, where they shoot guns and shoot off fireworks. So I brought my guitar and amp to the door and just turned it up as loud as it would go and made as much noise as I could.
And that's how I started playing guitar. I never really got much better than that.
I'd always been interested in playing music, but I never really thought I could have a band. You know, I always thought there's me just playing for fun and then there's people in bands. I lived in Ann Arbor and after meeting John over a joint behind the Blind Pig, I ended up hanging out with the Laughing Hyenas, who were one of my favorite bands. John and Larissa lived down the street from me and I started hanging out with them a lot. Also Preston Long, who was in the band Wig. He later became P.W. Long. We were just always kind of hanging out, you know, none of us had any real jobs or good jobs or anything like that. Larissa called us the Ann Arbor Down Club.
So we had a fun summer of just hanging out and going to parties and drinking 40-ouncers of Mickey’s malt liquor and messing around. There was a guitar that had like three strings on it and I would tune the strings down really low and we’d pass it around and have these drunken improvisations on the back porch. We would dance around and have fun. These guys were in my favorite bands at the time and they would encourage me, I was like "Wow, I'm getting encouragement from these guys and we all seem to be having fun. Maybe I could actually have a band." We would have jam sessions in the basement of the house I was staying at. The first time I ever sang on a microphone was like John playing guitar and Preston playing drums.
I remember I had a 40-ouncer and sang a song on a microphone for the very first time and said “Wow, I just drank my 40 in three minutes.” Preston says "Now you know what it's like to be the singer." So I just had this boost of confidence and thought, "Wow, this is something I really think I could enjoy." and it sort of broke the barrier. Kind of like “Wow, there's not this invisible wall between them and me. I could do this.” You know, I don't even need to know how to play guitar because I was just like goofing around, playing this terrible guitar. All you have to know how to do is play your own songs.
I remember I was walking down the street with this guy who was in a band, and I said, "You know, I'm thinking I might start a band. I think this is something I could really do." And he was like "You?!? Maybe if you grew your hair and got contact lenses." and right then I was like "Fuck you." I didn't say that, but in my mind. I was like "I'll show you, motherfucker."
So I think that's kind of how I started doing it. That early encouragement and also sort of "I'll show you, motherfucker." It was kind of like a revenge kind of thing.
And then I got really into Japanese noise, like on Hanatarash, Violent Onsen Geisha, Hijokaidan and all this stuff. I was like "This is like even more punk than punk. This is amazing." I got into Boredoms and stuff like that. I had all these Japanese noise CDs. "This is like the future of music. This is like, you know, fuck punk rock and all this stuff. This is punk. This is the real shit. This is like this is the next frontier." I would take all these CDs to like parties and I would hijack the stereo and be like "Who wants to start a band like this?" and everybody would walk away, you know, like "Not me, not me, not me."
Finally, Pete Larson, who was in this band called Hwaseem at the time, he pulled up in a pickup truck while I was walking down the street one night and he's like "Are you the guy that wants to start the band?" We just started talking about all the bands that we hated. Like all these stupid, college rock bands that were in Ann Arbor and we were like "Let's just destroy this, let's let's just do something really wild." and so then we started the band Couch, and that's kind of how I started. We wanted to start a band that would make musicians mad.
Couch (L-R Aaron Dilloway, Pete Larson, JMM) photos by Anthony Bedard
So, we started playing and I wrote a song called "We Are Here". I was like “OK, here's a song and here's how it goes.” Pete was like "You sing it, man. It's your song." When I was in fifth grade, we had an annual spring concert and we were singing "Let It Be" and as a joke I started singing it super-enthusiastically, super-expressively, just kind of making fun of it. The teacher was like "Wait a minute, Jim, you're really good. Could you come over here and do this?" and I chickened out. I had this moment where I just like, belted it out, let it go, and I chickened out and I just went back to the crowd and just decided to sing with everybody else. But at that moment when Pete said, "This is your fucking song, man. You sing it." I was like, I'm not going to chicken out again. And I just went for it and haven't looked back.
So in ‘94, when Pete moved away to Germany we started brainstorming about our solo record. We were going to do a split seven-inch. Pete's like "I'm doing a record by myself" and I thought I should do the opposite, like have a big band or something like that and call it like some totally vain name, like The Many Moods of Marlon Magas or something like that. So I did that. It was like a horn band. It was kind of influenced by Sun Ra and stuff. I knew The Flying Luttenbachers from Chicago and Weasel Walter was a fan of Couch. So I said, "Hey, do you know any horn players from Chicago?" I had a couple in Ann Arbor. So he brought, you know, several of the Flying Luttenbachers and this other character named Nandor Nevai to Ann Arbor. And we recorded The Many Moods of Marlon Magas and we did a few shows in Ann Arbor in Chicago.
Photo by Doug Coombe.
Pete came back and we reformed Couch with Aaron Dilloway. I moved to Chicago because at the time, Ann Arbor was pretty expensive, and Chicago was cheaper, and Pete and I weren't really getting along at the time. I knew so many people in Chicago and it was cheaper and they all encouraged me to move. So I did. You know, you could get an apartment for like 300 bucks. Then Weasel said "Do you want to reform Couch without Pete?" and I was like "Yeah, but we gotta call it something else." I tried to brainstorm about a name. I used to run them through my head and carry a notebook with dozens of them. While on tour with Couch, I had been to a San Francisco video store where I saw a video called Lake of Dracula, which I thought was a really weird name. That's a fucked up name. So, then I knew that was it.
We really liked Heather Melowic's drums, but we knew she was busy with the Scissor Girls, so we figured she'd say no, but she said yeah! So we started Lake Of Dracula, and right away it just gelled. It just came together really quickly. Like, those guys are really good. The songs just came together so quickly. It was just like, you know, it was just the right chemistry and the right people and the right ideas. Weasel was really good and Heather was really good and we just did it.
Lake Of Dracula (L-R: JMM, Heather Melowic, Weasel Walter) photo by Marci Rogal.
After a little while, Weasel, being the restless soul that he is, became quickly dissatisfied with having a good band, playing good songs and he wanted to add something to it. One night I had this crazy dream that we had Al Johnson join us for a song and suggested it to Weasel and he's like "Why don't we have him join us for a whole live set?" and then it kind of became this Manhattanite thing.
Lake Of Dracula in the shadow of The Manhattanite. Photo by Marci Rogal.
Weasel was really into it and he kind of became dejected whenever the Manhattanite couldn't play a show, and I sort of got irritated that he placed so much emphasis on the Manhattanite since I was already the singer. Maybe it was my ego, but for whatever reason, you know, Al could only do it sometimes. He was busy with U.S. Maple.
So then we added Jessica Ruffins. We felt like we wanted to try a bass player and she had been in the Ann Arbor Band, Jaks. So she played bass, we took that band on a west coast tour and then when we got back, Heather quit. We tried to keep it going for a little while longer, you know, trying different people out, but it just never quite really gelled the way it did with Heather, you know? So we called it quits.
Lake Of Dracula in it's final form with Jessica Ruffins. Photo by Bridgette Wilson.
Then I decided that I was going to get serious about a career. I was like, "OK, I'm turning 30. I better get serious." and I decided I was going to give up music. But then after a few months, maybe a year, I started to get restless, and started doing stuff on a four track with a bass guitar and human beatbox. I was living at Kedzie and Fullerton and I would see all these cars drive down Fullerton with their trunks just like blasting super distorted bass, just like, you know, nuts and bolts rattling in the trunk. It was kind of like where all the cars would cruise and show off their bass stereos. I'm like "Man, this is this is fucking cool." It kind of reminded me of some songs from some of the old Hanatarash CDs that I would listen to when I was super into noise. Almost like the next phase. I wanted to do a project like this. So, I asked Jessica "How do you get this sound?" She told me it was synthetic bass, and a light bulb went off. I started exploring drum machines and synthesizers, but I didn't really quite know how to start because I didn't know anything about any of it.
I knew my friends Wolf Eyes had a drum machine. I asked "What are you guys using?" Andrew W.K. had a drum machine. "What are you using?" Quintron had a drum machine. "How do you do this?" They all helped and told me what they were doing. I did a bunch of research and then I picked up a Roland MC-505 Groovebox and started playing with that. I messed around with that for a few months, then I did a show opening for To Live & Shave in L.A. at 6Odum, which was an old Ukrainian cultural center type building, you know, like a brick building, like it is like a little school room, sort of.
My connections to Chicago, The Scissor Girls, Flying Luttenbachers and Math, they were all a bunch of creative people. Chicago at the time, had this scene bubbling and Weasel wanted to brand it as the No Wave scene, and then Skin Graft wanted to put their own spin on it and call it the Now Wave scene. It was kind of like an arty, jazzy, kind of free jazz kind of scene. The Milk Of Burgundy was sort of the epicenter for all that. These people, Jeff Day and Emily O'Hara started a band called Monitor Radio. They started a space called the Magnatroid. So, you know, right when I moved here, Quintron moved away, Robert and Jodie from Math moved away. The whole scene that I moved here for was sort of just kind of fizzling out. I mean, it was still going, but it was kind of like the big, creative bubble was kind of like starting to taper off, all the spaces were fizzling out, and all the bands were fizzling out. All the bands that I was drawn to, anyway. So yeah, 1999, I started doing Magas.
Performing as MAGAS, photo by Nicola Kuperus.
I would show up with my MC-505 Groovebox and people would be like "Where's the rest of your gear?" I started becoming interested in electronic music only because I was doing it now. I figured "Well, I better investigate what other people are doing and learn how it's done." because, you know, I figured it was all terrible, so I'd instantly be the best at it [laughs. Then I started listening to stuff and I was like "Oh man, this is actually really cool stuff." and I started really becoming obsessed with it. I started going to Gramophone, which really kind of intimidated me because it was all these people who were House DJs and had been for a long time. I just really felt kind of scared going in there. I would also go into this place called Quaker Goes Deaf, where there was a guy named Ray Rodriguez who kind of was very friendly and would show me, you know, like I would ask him about stuff, and he would let me listen to stuff. I remember one time when I asked him to DJ this show that I was playing. It was my second show I’m guessing, and at the Congress Theater. We set up this big show and Ray was like "Where's the rest of your gear?" "Am I supposed to have more?" I don't know, like I'm just starting out to do this. "This is my gear." I didn't know I was supposed to have more!
So then I started playing shows and I started to sort of get my sea-legs as Magas, but it was still kind of gelling. When Bridgette and I started Weekend Records & Soap, I became so enamored with all this electronic music, you know. I had a big revelation, like, "Wow, Techno doesn't suck." There's all kinds of amazing shit out there. I thought all this stuff was garbage. Perhaps this is my own self-consciousness, but Gramophone felt sort of like a closed club, like you couldn't really just enter, you know. And like I said, maybe that was me just being self-conscious, but I just felt intimidated. I was like, I want to open this up to everybody, give this to everybody. I want everybody to know about this shit that I'm discovering. I sort of felt like I wanted to be like Prometheus with fire, and my ex-wife wanted to have a soap store. I mean, because she had started natural handmade soap. It was unwrapped, and there was no place in Chicago that was doing that at the time. Now you find soap like that on chopping blocks everywhere, you know, Whole Foods, Lush and this and that. at the time Lush was in Canada and in London, I believe, but it wasn't in the United States. So she wanted to do that, and I'd always wanted to have a record store, so we decided to have a record and soap store.
Weekend Records & Soap, pictured: Beau Wanzer.
I remember going to Weekend.
Really? Cool. So, there's no law against having a record and soap store and, you know, because it was zoned as a mixed use space, which allowed us to live in the back and have the store in the front.
So we did that and when I went on the first Magas tour in 2000, I stayed in Ypsilanti with my friend Lindsay Karty, who is VIKI. She was Vixxen Hott at the time. She said "Hey, do you know this band ADULT. and their label Ersatz Audio?" I didn't, but I started listening to it on this tour, and I'm like "Holy shit, I love this stuff." So real early on, we started carrying Ersatz Audio records at Weekend, and we became friends with them. I nervously asked them if they wanted to come to my show in Detroit. They came and they really loved it, and then I played a second show in Detroit opening for Peaches. I set up the first two Peaches shows in the United States. Bobby Conn gave me a demo of hers and I thought it was amazing. It had like four songs, including her big hit "Fuck the Pain Away". And I was like "I gotta get her to come to Chicago." and so I set up shows with her in Chicago and Detroit, opening for John Brannon's band Easy Action. So, Magas, Peaches, Easy Action. John was like, you gotta send me a demo and I said, “Just trust me, you don’t need a demo.”
After the show, Peaches was like "What are you going to do with this music, man? Like, are you going to put this out or what? I can talk to some people for you." I'm like "Well, I mean, it would be my dream to release stuff on Ersatz Audio, you know." but I was too nervous to ask and then after the show, those guys said "Would you want to put out a record on our label?" and I was like "Wow. YEAH!"
Photo by Nicola Kuperus
They said "Now, this might be too forward, you know, and we don't want to mess with what you're doing. But, we noticed you're doing stuff on this Groovebox, which is digital, and we really like to use a lot of analog stuff. Would you want to come to our studio in Detroit? We could co-produce it and sort of translate these parts to analog stuff." I said hell yes. So then I guess they gave me my analog education, they showed me how MIDI works and then basically we transposed all my parts that I'd written on the Groovebox into MIDI so we could use them on all their amazing vintage synthesizers and they created a monster. That's how I learned how it all works. I'm like, "Oh, man, this is how the kick drum is supposed to sound!" You know, we used an 808. From then on, I just haven't stopped. I started building up my own studio and producing my own music.
When I worked at Touch & Go and we distributed Thrill Jockey, we carried Ersatz titles, and I remember a CD of yours with a cover that was maybe a dog tag in your teeth?
Yeah, it was actually a friendship necklace and it had a big F for friendship. We took a bunch of photos, Nicola being the great photographer that she is, we did one with it in my teeth and that became the cover. It was really weird. In 2005, I went to I was invited to play this big festival in France called Nuit Sonores. It was just like a huge honor to play this big festival, and when I got to the festival, the graphic for the festival was my mouth. Like, there were these giant banners, all the wristbands had my mouth on them, all the coasters. I felt like it was some weird dream.
That's amazing! So, if I'm not mistaken you scored a film for Asia Argento?
Yeah, yeah. So I was working at Reckless and was sending out a tweet about a bunch of new releases I was excited about. There was a new Raspberry Bulbs, (not sure if you know that record, but it's great) and this new Asia Argento. So she tweets back and is like "Hey Magas, I love your shit." I said "I'm a big fan of your stuff too." And we just started kind of like, you know, sending mutually complementary tweets to each other. Then she DM's me and she says, "Hey, I'm doing this film in November, and if you have any music, gimme gimme this, gimme gimme that." So I said "OK, what we do is secret" and she replied "SECRET!" We both grokked the Germs reference and I knew I knew we were going to get along great.
I wrote her an email and I said, "OK, Asia, I'm happy to give you anything that you want, but it's really my dream to score a film. I'll be honest, I've never done this before, but I will put everything I have into this and I will do it til I get it right. I won't let you down. I'm not a technical musician, but I will just do this until it's right and I can, you know, get this on an emotional level. I'll throw my entire being into this thing." And she was like "Alright, here's the script."
So then, I sent her something, and then it just kind of took off from there.
What's the name of the film?
Misunderstood. It's from 2014, and the title in Italian is Incompresa. It is a film starring mostly kids, you know, it's about an 11 year old girl whose parents are divorcing. Her parents are in the film and music business. Charlotte Gainsbourg plays the mother, Giulia Salerno, who plays the 11 year old girl is phenomenal. Asia's daughter Anna Lou Castoldi is in it. And the Italian actor, Gabriel Garko.
So let's talk about what scoring was like. You said she gave you the script?
Yeah, OK. Well, you know, after that I sent her some stuff and she said "Not quite like that." and at that point she could have just said "No, I need to get somebody else." but she gave me a chance and said, "Do something more like this." So she kind of guided me a little bit towards what she wanted. I realized I needed a Fender Rhodes. Basically I had a friend who said "Hey, if you ever want to borrow this Rhodes let me know" and that light bulb went off, and I was like "I need to borrow this Rhodes." Then my friend Julie Pomerleau, who plays in Bobby Conn's band and has done a lot of stuff, had said to me, like back in 1999 "Hey Jim, if you ever want strings for something, give me a call." So it was like "Hey, Julie, remember that favor from all those years ago?" She said yes, and I called Fred Lonberg-Holm, who played cello.
He has pieces book-end the Lake Of Dracula album. So I called him and got them both to play strings on it. I wrote it on the Rhodes. I'm not a pianist. I'm not even a musician at all. I just keep at it till it feels right. And I worked out these themes and those guys improvised based on what I had written. And then Weasel Walter happened to be passing through town. And I said "Hey, Weasel, would you be interested in playing saxophone on this thing?" "Well" he said "I've got my clarinet." So I asked him if he'd come by and we did that so quickly, he had about a half an hour. I'm like, come downstairs. Boom-boom-boom--done. I hadn't seen him in years. He just like cruised through, cruised downstairs, we recorded some pieces and out he went. It was that fast. There is a piece that had him playing clarinet on it. I stripped everything else out of that because I thought it sounded neat with just the clarinet by itself and that's how the piece was used in the movie.
I recorded all this stuff. I mixed it through like a Mackie 1202, you know, and then this great sound designer and mixer in L.A., Paul Hackner, he mixed it. He mixed the sound for the movie and everything. So basically, I had seen some scenes on Asia’s Vine account, but basically I just sent Asia a bunch of music and I didn't hear from her for a few days. I was like "Oh man." Like I was nervous, wondering what she was going to say, and then then she's like "I fucking love it. This is just perfect." and everything was great. Then she sent me some scenes where they had used pieces of the music, you know, and they had edited to the music that I sent. And I was like "Holy shit." I thought maybe this was going to be like ten seconds of music, and they would fade it out. But like in some places the piece was going for like a minute or two with scenes transitioning with the music continuing through the scenes. I was really blown away. It got used for the big climactic scenes and all that, so it was really an honor. It is a great film. It was shot on Super 16mm, and it was actually shot by Nicola Pecorini, who had shot like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He was a great cinematographer and has done a lot of Steadicam work.
So it was like, you know, it was great! It was beautiful and so funny and emotional. I've always been a fan of Italian films. So it had a real Italian flavor, was shot on film, had great actors in it. It was a dream come true. It premiered at Cannes and got a long standing ovation. I wasn’t able to attend the Cannes premiere but I did attend the U.S. premiere at the New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center. Asia was kind enough to invite me onstage where we were interviewed by the great film critic Manohla Dargis, along with music supervisor Echo Danon.
Incompresa at the New York Fim Festival (L-R: Echo Danon, Jim Magas, Asia Argento, Manohla Dargis) photo by John Andersen.
So I'm assuming shortly after this, you started Midwich Productions?
Yeah.
What led you to want to start another label and how did you get that rolling?
I had discovered Moon Pool & Dead Band, and I really loved it. I was old friends with Nate Young from Wolf Eyes. I knew him from before Wolf Eyes. I just knew him as a wild kid in Ann Arbor. You know, it was just like this tall kid with big crazy bushy hair. So I asked him about his "techno project" and asked him who this other guy in the band was, David Shettler. I invited Moon Pool & Dead Band to come and play in Chicago and hung out with Nate and Dave til dawn, just hanging out and having laughs and having a good time, and I really bonded with Dave.
Well, there was this time I went to go meet Asia in Detroit for something, and he came to Dave and gave me a pile of CD-Rs of unreleased stuff by them. I was like "Oh my gosh. Moon Pool is one of my favorite bands and he's given me all of this unreleased stuff." There was also another record by Dave and Joel Peterson, who eventually named themselves Viands, but didn't originally have a name for the project. So, I was driving back from Detroit with a lot of wind in my sails, just full of creative energy from my time there. I'm listening to this stuff and just thought "Man, I’ve got to start a record label." I talked to a friend, pitched my idea, and he agreed to be a part of that as a silent partner. And so we started Midwich.
I asked Dave what he wanted for doing this, and he said "cover art by Mark Salwowski." I knew Mark's work from the first couple of Moon Pool records, and I contacted Mark and licensed a bunch of his work, and started using it on all of our releases.
Moon Pool & Dead Band - Humanizer
I got in touch with Aaron Dilloway, who I've been friends with for a long time. He was involved in a bunch of records, does his own solo stuff and a bunch of other things and I talked to him about doing a record. He may or may not have put out a record on Midwich under an alias. I have no conclusive proof of that.
I had some music that I wanted to put out, so it just kind of took off from there. Alex Barnett sent me some music and then Seth and Heather (HIDE), you know, talked to them about putting out a record and it just kind of took off from there. I wanted to keep the focus local, because I’ve been inspired by labels that keep a regional focus. There’s so much talent right in our lap, there’s no reason to go anywhere else. There’s like, a surplus of great things to release.
So, you licensed artwork for a bunch of projects at once?
Uh-huh, so basically I got in touch with him and we talked and he let me know what was available and so I picked my favorite ones, the ones that I thought would fit the moods of the music, they had all been initially released as sci-fi book covers. Then I sort of listened to some of the music and decided what things would go with what records. Basically, the artists were kind of like "You pick what you think would fit these." Maybe Alex picked his, maybe Mick Travis picked his. It always seemed like a natural fit, like the music itself decided.
Mick Travis - Face Disappears After Interrogation
You mentioned you have a solo record you are working on?
Yes. It’s been in the works for a while now. I’ve been through some changes. I’ve pretty much changed my entire gear setup. I’ve added modular synthesis, in addition to the hardware synths. I’ve started singing again. I’ve also gone through a number of personal changes. My 20+ year marriage to Bridgette came to an end, although we remain good friends and co-parents to our daughter. And then the pandemic happened. However, despite all these changes, I’ve been shoring up power, learning new things and pulling out all the stops. I think this is going to be my best album. Of course everybody thinks that when they come out with a new album, like, did Black Sabbath think The Eternal Idol was gonna be their best [laughs]? But seriously, though...when you work in electronic music, you just keep learning more and more and more and the knowledge builds. And I’ve still got my voice, so...I’m pumped. It should be out in spring 2021, fingers crossed.
Alright, obviously, you're a fan of coffee. What do you look for in a cup of coffee? What are your preferences?
Well, I think I got more into coffee back in maybe 2013 or maybe 2014. I stayed with my friends, Echo and John, in New York and they had an Aeropress. I thought it was really cool, and it kind of got me interested in coffee. Then, I started learning about the Chemex and then I started exploring, you know, since I just really liked how it tasted versus just a plastic coffee maker. I decided I wanted to get into different coffees. I discovered that after having drank mostly dark roasts for years, I started exploring lighter roasts, you know, because I used to think that the darker the bean, the more caffeine, and that's, you know, not necessarily the case. In fact, it's the opposite.
Yeah.
And so I started exploring lighter and lighter roasts. And I think I started liking some of the African ones that had more of a kind of a, you know, almost like a champagne-like astringency, you know, mouthfeel that's a little more acidic.
I really came to appreciate coffee. I like to, uh, you know, just try to appreciate the finer things in life. Life is short and difficult at times. I started paying more attention to the food that I eat. I switched to a plant-based diet a few years ago and just started paying attention more to what I do in life, like what I'm eating, what I'm drinking, what I'm listening to, you know, just just trying to live life to the fullest and having good coffee in the morning since it's part of my daily wake up ritual. I didn't want to just drink the same thing, I wanted to explore. And so, you know, I got a better coffee maker and a nice electric tea kettle with the goose neck so you can pour it properly. I watched a bunch of YouTube videos on how to properly use the Chemex.
So you might use a Chemex at home?
Yeah. It was sort of a choice, like, do I want to get an Aeropress or a Chemex, and chose the Chemex. And you know, because when I was staying with my friends in New York, they had the nice teakettle and I was like "Oh yeah, this is really cool" you know? I enjoy the ritual. You know, it takes a little longer in the morning to make your coffee, but, I just kind of got into the ritual and it just became, you know, like flossing your teeth. It's just something you have to do.
If you're out at a cafe or something, grabbing a coffee, do you have a go-to that you order?
Yeah I will usually usually go for a light roast. I've been preferring light roast, just like straight coffee, not like an oat milk latte or something. Oftentimes, I'll just get a straight coffee because I just like the pure coffee experience, but I had a friend working at La Colombe and she turned me on to this oat milk draft, which I thought was delicious and I really loved that. I also enjoy a delicious espresso. You know, I've had some great espressos. If I'm out--I don't go out a whole lot, especially now. But I really do enjoy a good espresso.
I've been wanting to get one of those burr grinders.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, I recommend it.
If just for consistency's sake, especially with something like a Chemex.
You can go crazy with them, you know. But I think they're becoming more and more attainable. So, as you've gotten more and more into coffee, do you feel it has any impact on your creativity?
Yeah, absolutely. I've always been caffeine-fueled. You know, like when I was in Couch, we would always guzzle coffee. We had a song, The Coffee Gun. We changed the name, based on Pete’s one-time misspelling, but it was The Coffee Gun.
I always drink coffee right before a gig, so definitely coffee fuels the creative process. I think it's good for writing, good for ideas. You know, the caffeine. In fact, before I started this interview, I asked you for a cup of coffee because I knew that it makes me chatty and gets the memory flowing. So, yeah, I love coffee and it's good for conversation, it's good for the creative process and it's good for life.
Thanks so much, Jim. This has been a blast. The last thing I always ask people is if they've heard a good joke lately. It's mostly just for me to learn new jokes because I never hear them anymore.
Sure. A bartender says we don't serve time travelers here. A time traveler walks into a bar.
Be sure to check out Midwich Productions on Bandcamp.
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Hey Greg, How's it going? Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
Hey, Ben. So, I'm Greg Anderson. I play guitar in Sunn O))), and run the label Southern Lord. That's it!
Greg Anderson
You've been in a ton of bands over the years. Could we start with you filling us in on that history?
Yeah! I've played a lot of music over the years. Starting in about 1985, I was the vocalist in a hardcore band called False Liberty out of Seattle, Washington. Basically, I was in high school and it was sort of my introduction to underground music, hardcore and metal. It was really fun, short lived, we put out one 7" and a demo. Played a handful of shows, and it was my first time performing live with a band. We actually went all the way from Seattle down to San Francisco, did a little west coast tour in 1986. It was a lot of fun.
Right after that band split up, I had another short lived band that really didn't do much, but the next thing of note was when I picked up the guitar and I formed another hardcore band called Brotherhood. We were probably around for about the same amount of time (about a year and a half) but we accomplished a whole lot more. We put out a 7", did a full US tour with another Seattle band called The Accused, who were kind of heroes of ours, guys we looked up to. These were guys that really turned me on to punk and hardcore. They were the first hardcore band I ever saw live. It was the first time I ever saw people slam dancing, or people jumping off the stage. It was pretty mind blowing, and being able to go on tour across the US with them a couple of years later was pretty incredible. I learned a lot, and it was really a great time.
After that, I moved to San Diego for a little while. A short period of time, like 4 months? Played in a couple of bands there, guitar in one, sang in the other. It feels like I was really productive for the time I was there, but I didn't really fit in, you know? I was a kid that grew up in the Northwest. I didn't really fit in with the beach culture. Hot weather, sunny all the time, I just wasn't really used to it so I didn't last long there.
So, I moved back up to Seattle, and basically immediately formed another band, playing guitar, called Galleon's Lap which was really influenced by what was happening in DC at that time. Rites Of Spring, Embrace, Grey Matter. We were really into Squirrel Bait, too. This was the first time in a band that I was really exploring melodicism, not only in my vocals, but also in my songwriting and stuff. It was cool, a fun band. Almost like a summer band, you know? (laughs) Get together over the summer to go on tour, everyone's got a break from whatever their lives are. Bands like this in the summer were kind of a thing in my 20's, I've noticed. It was cool though! We had this great rhythm section, a guy named Eric Akre and Nate Mendel. They both went on to do bigger things after that band. Eric was in Treepeople, and Nate was in Sunny Day Real Estate and then joined the Foo Fighters, who he's still playing with. It was cool, another short lived band, we didn't even release anything while we were around. After we broke up there was a 12" that came out. This band was kind of a set up to Engine Kid. That sort of music, and learning to play my guitar beyond box chords and all that, but exploring melody, etc.
So that sort of led into Engine Kid, but the idea for that really came from me being into post-punk/post-hardcore stuff. Stuff coming out of the Touch & Go label like Slint, Rapeman, anything Steve Albini was involved in. Also, bands like Bastro, Bitch Magnet, Codeine. I really got turned on to those kinds of bands and that was the kind of sound or direction I really wanted to pursue with Engine Kid. Um, so, that band was a lot heavier than some of the bands I had been in in the past, but again exploring melodicism in the song writing, and especially the vocals. That whole thing was really fun, you know? That feeling when you're creating music that is outside of your comfort zone is really exhilarating. I honestly hadn't felt that with a lot of the other bands I had played with, because it was all a little more formulaic, you know? With Engine Kid, even though (especially at the beginning) we were like maybe derivative of Slint, for example, we also were discovering this new music for us, something we hadn't really experienced before. We had just heard all these bands and were like "What is this? it's really different!" We really just continued on with that groove. It was always about exploration, you know? We were really into Sonic Youth as well, and everything they were doing with different guitar tunings. We learned about using noise as one of the weapons in our arsenal.
Engine Kid, photo by Samantha Daake.
As the band progressed, we got heavier and heavier, we just sort of got louder and louder. It was really the first time for me to be sonically experimenting like that.
Engine Kid was definitely the first project of yours that I was aware of, and remember being surprised by the horn section (comprised of members of Silkworm) on your John Coltrane cover on Angel Wings.
Yeah! Something I still say all the time is that I'm a massive fan of all types of music. When you grow up playing in hardcore bands, there's a bit of a rule book that you're following. What's cool or not cool to like, or really you were just content to stay within the boundaries of the genre. Engine Kid was all about discovery though. Probably around 1991, I heard A Love Supreme for the first time and was like "Whoa!" So you start listening to that, and then you discover Miles Davis, then you discover Eric Dolphy, Mingus, and so on. That led to Mahavishnu orchestra, John McLaughlin, Weather Report... I mean, it just sort of spiraled out of control! But, that was the spirit of that time and that kind of music, you know? Just discovering as much as we could that we had missed out on while being hardcore kids.
Of course, Marijuana was also very helpful! (Laughs) Discovering all these things for the first time was such an incredible feeling. Exhilarating!
So, we got really into jazz as well, and attempted to do a John Coltrane cover for that Angel Wings record. We had Tim and also Joel Phelps from Silkworm play on it. Silkworm was like our "brother band" because in Seattle at that time in the early '90's, everyone was just obsessed with a certain style, you know? Grunge! All those bands were getting really popular. So, our thing, coming from the punk scene as well as exploring new types of music, left us saying "Well, we're not gonna do that!" I mean we liked some of it. We were really into TAD, Soundgarden, Nirvana of course, but I feel like our punk attitude was like "That's being done, so we're gonna do the opposite." We were kind of the outcasts and we were lucky that we found kind of kindred spirits in Silkworm, although I don't really think they came from the punk scene. They were also trying to do something different in Seattle in the early 90's! It made us stand out, we all got a lot of criticism for it, so we kind of banded together. We played shows together all the time, hung out, toured together, made split records, played on each other's records, things like that.
John Coltrane's "Olé", as performned by Engine Kid.
So, that's the story of Tim playing on the record. It's pretty amazing that we're still friends all these years later. Not that something bad happened or anything like that, it's just one of those amazing things in life. We've been friends for almost 30 years now! I feel real fortunate for that. My mom definitely did something right! I still have all these friends that I've had for many years. I'm really grateful for those connections that have lasted that long.
So, Tim played in Sunn O))) all of last year during our live shows, and on the records Life Metal and Pyroclasts. He really was sort of the ambassador between Sunn O))) and Albini. I mean, we already had a relationship with Steve, he had recorded the first Engine Kid. That was so long ago though. We recorded that record in his basement, which was such an experience for us. Like, we were just fanboys in awe! He was... kind of a different Albini than he is now, he was a bit more snarky, you know? Ha ha! We had kind of expected that, based on his records and stuff, interviews we had read. We kind of knew what we were getting into, and it was just part of who he was. We were there to record with him, warts and all! (Laughs) It's funny though, because all these years later, recording with him as Sunn O))) he was still the same guy, and he still had the same view points, comments, etc. Like you'd finish a take and ask "How was that?" and he'd say "I don't know, it's your record." He'll definitely let you know he's not there to give you his opinion, and that hasn't changed! He's there to do a job and record your band. He was cool, and it was cool to see some of the characteristics that were still there. Even after all these years, all the records he's made, even that Nirvana one, he remains unphased by it all, unchanged, you know? It made me only have more respect for him. So, these are different scenes and such, but it's cool. I guess as you get older you start to recognize and value that more?
That's cool. So, from what I know, Sunn O))) even toured with Silkworm, right? I remember Andy telling me that and just kind of being blown away. I mean, these are two things I love, but that seem starkly different.
Oh yeah! We weren't really a touring band, but whenever we went out to the Midwest, we would always hook up with them. In fact, we once did a show in Milwaukee, with Pelican, Silkworm and Sunn O))) and that was the first time Albini saw us. We were ill in awe, and kept in contact since then. He came to a lot of the shows after that in Chicago, and Tim wouldn't miss one. He would always be there, as Andy often would be. So, yeah. The connection still remains, which is great.
So, near the end of Engine Kid, I was getting full-blown obsessed with metal. It kind of became one of the reasons that the band broke up maybe? (Laughs) Our direction, where we wanted to go, was just getting splintered. The bass player was always kind of neutral, just up for anything, a great guy! The drummer, also a great guy, seemed to want to explore the melodic direction further. Near the end, I just didn't want to do that anymore. We were even at the point where it was becoming an instrumental band.
Sort of as an side outlet at that time, I started a death metal style band with Stephen O'Malley, who was somebody that grew up in the same neighborhood as me and went to the same high school. I'm a little bit older than him, like about 4 years? My very first girlfriend in high school had a little brother who was this goth kid, and he was curious about all the fast hardcore I was listening to all the time, and I turned him on to it. He sort of carried the torch at our high school that I had left behind in a way, and Stephen O'Malley was a metal guy that he went to school and was friends with. There were very few people that were into underground music. So, me and Stephen struck up a friendship and he started turning me on to all of this underground metal that I was unaware of, especially all the stuff that was coming out of Scandinavia. That stuff was pretty cool! He and I pretty much became inseparable, and that friendship sort of influenced my direction in music and the end of Engine Kid, really. Then, he and I started a band called Thorr's Hammer.
It was also pretty short lived. The vocalist, Runhild Gammelsæter, was a Norwegian exchange student living in Seattle and she was also really into death metal. You really gotta understand that in '94 or '95 in Seattle, metal was essentially erased by grunge. It wasn't "cool" anymore, and the metal heads were starting to get into grunge. Like Alice In Chains, you know? Those were all metal guys that discovered grunge. Metal was basically dead, so finding anyone that was listening to that kind of music at the time was super rare.
Thorr's Hammer was really fun, and Stephen and I were really enjoying playing music together. When Runhild went back home to Norway, we continued with another band with the same slow, heavy, extreme Metal style that was called Burning Witch.
Burning Witch
Nearing the end of Burning Witch, I was realizing I was kind of depressed. I'd been in Seattle for years and years, and decided to move down to Los Angeles. I had the opportunity to play with the rhythm section of a band that I really like called The Obsessed, kind of a legendary doom band with an incredible guitar player, Wino.
Wino had left the band, and the rhythm section was in L.A. looking for someone to start something with, and a mutual friend hooked us up. It was kind of an odd pairing, they were these older dudes who were in this sort of legendary, established band, and I was this young kid who had basically played in a heavy indie band and fooled around in a couple short lived death metal bands. I felt a little bit overwhelmed, honestly, playing with those guys as their skill level was quite a bit above where I was at. It really ended up working out great though, and that was the formation of Goatsnake. We got a legendary hardcore singer, Pete Stahl (Scream, Wool) who's band Wool played a lot of shows with Engine Kid throughout the '90's. They were a super kick ass rock band. The music we were playing was, you know, really derivative of Sabbath, down tuned, heavy, etc., but his vocal delivery was so melodic, very different than that type of music (at least at the time) and it really made it something special. It was great! We had a lot of fun, played a lot of shows. My first time going to Europe was with that band, we played some really neat festivals. We put out some records on the Man's Ruin label, which was a big deal at the time. They were the kingpins of stoner rock and heavy music at the time. It was run by the legendary artist Frank Kozik, and it was an honor to have them put some records out. It was cool! It was a good time.
Goatsnake
So, probably a couple years after Goatsnake had formed, Stephen O'Malley decided to move to Los Angeles, and he became my neighbor. In the interest of continuing to play music together, we started Sunn O))). It was really just an excuse to get high together, and play music as loud as possible, you know?! (Laughs) That was about it!
How did you guys come up with the concept for Sunn O)))?
Well, we actually had a few rehearsals in Seattle at the old Engine Kid practice space. It was just a bunch of friends that were really into Earth. At the time Earth only had 2 releases, the Extra-Capsular Extraction EP and Earth 2, and we were just obsessed with those records. Also, we were just really into spaced out music, you know? We were really into Spacemen 3, and Spiritualized. Codeine had some of those qualities as well. Anything that was really slow and spacious. Of course, we were all really into The Melvins, especially the Lysol record as well as anything that Joe Preston had been involved in. He was in Earth, The Melvins, his own solo thing called Thrones.
Those were pretty much the cornerstones for us, really, and we just wanted to do that, while playing through as many amps as we could get our hands on. It was really free and open, with absolutely no expectations. Lots of Marijuana, alcohol, and whatever else we could get our hands on at the time. Mushrooms and such. It was really just a continuous experimentation. There was no structure to it and our aspiration was just to play loud and feel it through our bodies, hopefully we'd come up with a riff that was cool enough to play for 20 minutes straight! (Laughs)
We didn't think we were going to play shows, we weren't trying to get signed and put out a record, we were just going to play together because we liked to do it. We wanted to jam, you know? I always think the word "jam" connotates 2 things; technical ability and something kind of hippy-ish. This is why I don't really use the word very often, but we were just goofin' off. I guess "goofin' off" isn't the right way to put it, but I'd say we would just fuck off, you know? We didn't care what people would think, we didn't even care what we thought really! (Laughs) We were just having fun with it, and it was just another excuse to be in a room with a close friend and play.
Eventually, Stephen moved away from Los Angeles and to New York. We continued to stay in touch and when we would get together, we would try to play some music. Usually, those get-togethers ended up being recordings of Sunn O))), you know?
This band is like nothing I have ever done before. The expectations have always been very minimal. It was really something that was more open and free, and then to have people get into something that was really experimental and unorthodox is really more special than anything I’ve ever done in my life. You know, this band has done more and been more successful way beyond anything I’ve ever done and it’s just kind of the dark horse. "What? This is the band???" (Laughs) Other bands are like “Yeah man, we have goals, we’re going to write these songs, we are going to practice them to death, we are going to get a record deal we are going to play show in front of hundreds of people, you know the rock dream or whatever." With Sunn O))), it was like none of that at all and it's ended up being the thing that people connect with the most. It just blows my mind constantly.
A recent incarnation of Sunn O))), photo by Ronald Dick.
Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. I have been a huge fan, probably since White 1 and White 2. I think that is the first stuff I heard.
Cool, those are the records where we really turned a corner. We started out very derivative of Earth and Melvins and we made two records that I really loved and then I was like “Ok, we’ve done this." In the spirit of the band, it was about going in different directions and exploring different things. Those records were the start of that. Different ideas, not trying to, you know, be the heaviest band possible. I feel like we had something to prove there for a while, and we had to get something out of our system in a way. It was like "Ok, well what else is there? We love music, we love exploring it, so let’s do that with this band." That was a weird thing because those were the albums where the switch flipped on for people; it was a really limited audience for the first two records that were really bristly and heavy, but then we got kind of weirder and branching out and that’s when people started really getting into it. You’re into this stuff? Ok cool! That’s weird... (Laughs)
I've always been curious about the songwriting process.
Well, first off all, the band doesn't practice. When we do get together, it's usually before a tour, and really serves as a way to test out all of the gear. A lot of times we just work on ideas that we've come up with live, and I guess sometimes we work on music. A lot of the music is really created or at least finished in the recording studio. So, each person maybe brings in a couple of ideas, set the foundation with these riffs, and build off of that.
Some of our records, at least before Life Metal, utilized a lot of editing. The engineer would just roll tape for 20 minutes or whatever, and we'd just play. Then, you'd do it again. Then, you'd go back and listen, find the key moments that you really like and edit them together. It's pretty much this whole concept that Miles Davis and Teo Macero were working with on Bitches Brew and those late '60's Miles records. Basically, the composition was an edit, you know? Great moments that happened, and were fused together.
We were really into that idea for quite a while, and had worked with this guy Randall Dunn for many of our records. He's just a great human being, as well as an amazing engineer. It was the 20th anniversary of the band, and we wanted to do something special, kind of as a gift to ourselves. Something on our bucket list, you know? Making a recording with Steve Albini was at the top of that list.
Since we'd really only worked with one guy for many years, we were super familiar and comfortable with him. Stepping outside of that box was going to be something new for us. We were excited about it, but we were a little bit nervous too, you know? So in preparation for Life Metal, Stephen and I actually had 2 pre-production sessions. One was at a practice studio that I had in Los Angeles, and the other in an actual recording studio in Northridge, CA, and we really just hashed out and recorded a lot of ideas, a couple of days at a time. We weren't concerned with complete ideas at the time, just looking for things we liked that we could expand upon in the studio with Steve, but in a more organized fashion then we had done before.
I think those sessions were really great, I was really invigorated and inspired by them. I was excited to go in and work with Steve and I felt like we were prepared. I had this thing in my head, going way back to the Engine Kid days where I was like 'If you're going to record with Steve Albini, you better have your shit together!" We kind of had that over our heads when we went in there, and we couldn't just show up, get stoned and hope something cool came out of it. Since we had been playing together for over twenty years and were sort of so obsessive and particular about our tone, we felt confident that whatever we did was going to be captured perfectly.
Everything kind of came together as we had expected. Steve was really impressed with how particular we were with our tones, how we had obviously worked on them for a long time, and how we knew how to get sounds out of our amps. He ended up being a really great match for us, and the record is one of my favorite things I've ever done for sure, and I'm really glad we got the nerve up to go do it.
Life Metal, by Sunn O))). Artwork by Samantha Keely Smith.
the Pyroclasts record also came out of all of that. That was really cool, it was sort of this thing that we started from the beginning of those sessions. We were staying at Electrical Audio, in the dorms they got there. You'd wake up in the morning, have your coffee and go down to the studio. Everyone would turn on the amps, we'd pick a note and drone. Everyone was free to just play whatever they wanted. We did that like almost every morning, and we also started closing the evening with that too. Steve would let us know he was thinking of wrapping up for the night, we'd ask him to roll tape while he cleaned up and stuff, and we'd do these free form drones. There was no real intention for this ritual, it was just supposed to be a cobweb clearer or something, a relaxing thing to do while we were there, but we ended up listening to this stuff after Life Metal was completed and mixed and we just thought it sounded amazing! We decided to mix it and put it out. The session was really productive, and we got 2 records out of it, in a 2 week period of time! For Sunn O))) that's insane because, by example, Monoliths & Dimensions took over 2 years to complete. It was this massive undertaking.
Pyroclasts, by Sunn O))), artwork by Samantha Keely Smith.
Honestly though, I can't wait to go back and make some more music over there, man. It was just a great experience.
Is there anything Sunn O))) related on the horizon?
No, the way everything worked out last year, we had the records come out and toured extensively... I mean for us! We don't tour like other bands do, but the production that goes into our live shows is a lot of work, you know? A lot of amps, a lot of volume. It's really draining, but in a good way. We usually try to do 2 weeks at a time, but we did that so many times throughout last year, and then the last leg of that tour was this January in Europe. We were actually going to take a break this year, that was our goal. There was some talk of a Japanese tour, which would hve been fun, but then obviously the pandemic hit and everything was shelved anyway. We were sort of fortunate in that way?
So, we don't have any plans at the moment. I think everyone's trying to figure out what's going on right now. I have a wife and 3 kids, so I'm focused on that and also trying to keep Southern Lord alive, you know?
Greg performing live with Sunn O)))
Ok, let's talk about your label Southern Lord.
Yeah, so one thing that happened while Stephen was living in Los Angeles was the formation of the Southern Lord label. The bands we had played in together (Thorr's Hammer and Burning Witch) had both made recordings, but we couldn't find a label to release them. The bass player for Goatsnake, Guy Pinhas, had some extra money and he just loved those records. He told me to put them out on CD and just pay him back in a year.
Something that had kept me grounded in L.A. was that I had gotten a job at Caroline distribution. Even though I was basically a grunt there, just assistant to people, making copies, getting coffee, I just loved the job because I learned so much about music. They were distributing labels of all kinds and I was getting turned onto a ton of music that I would have never known about, and it was just a huge rush. Kind of like we were discussing earlier, that feeling discovering music for the first time, at Caroline I just had all of that at my fingertips, basically. It was amazing, and I learned a lot about how the music business worked and didn't work, you know? I really had no clue. I had done fanzines and had a little 7" label back in the early 90's that released a few things, but that's all done out of your bedroom and you don't have a clue. You don't really know or care about what's going on. You just love the music and are thinking "these are my friends" and maybe you sell a couple hundred dollars worth of stuff, but it's more about being a part of the scene and contributing to it, you know? So to learn more about how the business worked on a larger scale was amazing. I just loved it, and I had Southern Lord going, though it was very small, still run out of my apartment and stuff, but now I had some of the knowledge about how things worked and how to get more records out there. Really it's about sustaining it, you know? Just keeping it going and continuing to release cool stuff on the label, and that's basically what it turned into with Stephen's help. Stephen's involvement with the label was purely on the graphic side. He did all of the design, all the presentation. The artistic angle was all him. I took care of the business and, I guess what you would call A&R duties. Again, our aspirations were pretty minimal, but thanks to the knowledge and connections from Caroline I could push it a bit further. We got really lucky with some of the records we were working with, and people started getting into what we were doing, and we started building a following.
As I said earlier, Stephen moved to New York pretty early on and his involvement with the label kind of decreased over time, and I kept it going without him, really. Sunn O))) continued though, and Southern Lord became a platform for us to release our records. At the time, the music was so obscure and unorthodox, had such a limited audience that finding people that were into it, especially labels, was really a challenge. So, we just said "Well, we'll do it ourselves!" and we started putting out the records.
You know, to me, Southern Lord was about having a platform that we could work from. Obviously this goes way beyond Sunn O))) and includes other artists that we liked, but without question, regardless if people liked it or not, we had a place to put out this stuff we were doing. It became really shocking to us when people actually bought the records! (Laughs) People started getting into it, and every record we put out, we would press more and more copies than the one before it, you know? The demand was starting to grow, which became really surprising and encouraging. People were open-minded enough and connecting with this music that was really experimental. For us, the band always seemed like a selfish project, we just did it for ourselves, we were super close friends, and we liked playing music together. That's the way it remains to this day, but we're really thankful for having some success with it, because we now have more resources to do more stuff. It would have always continued regardless, and that was kind of the thing. We had a label and distribution as a platform, so there was no stopping us.
So, when you started Southern Lord in '98, were you putting stuff out on vinyl?
No, no, no. At that time, vinyl was very unpopular. Most people weren't really doing vinyl, it was all CDs. In fact, I think the first thing we pressed a record of was a Goatsnake EP called Dog Days. At that time, and for several years after that, it was way more about CDs. That was it, there wasn't even really digital. When we did start doing some vinyl, it went really well. As far as packaging, we really spared no expense, and it turns out that people really like that. We realized that when we could afford to make vinyl, we were selling it. So, again, it was really inspiring. In fact, early on, I did a 7" subscription series. Sub Pop was such a huge influence for me as a label, so I did something similar to that which went really well, so we figured that we should consider doing vinyl with our releases. Once we started doing that and kind of making a name for ourselves with our vinyl, things sort of started taking off in that regard.
In those days, the production was kind of primitive on that stuff. Plants we were working with had basically given up, you know? they were like barely open! You'd call them up and they'd be like "Oh really? You wanna do that?" (Laughs) and we'd say we wanted to do 1,000 or something and they'd just be like "OK! GREAT!!!!" It felt like they were even maybe a little rusty with the manufacturing part of things, so there were errors and stuff. There would be issues sometimes getting test pressings you could approve. That happened quite often back then. This was before the vinyl boom happened, and I think they were surprised. They were kind of on their way out, probably working on closing up shop and then in comes an order. "Oh wow, OK, fire that thing back up! We got a live one here!" But it was cool. I think one of the positive things about the vinyl boom is that plants started having more resources, people started working more on their quality control so they could compete with everything going on, so many new plants opening up and everything like that. You kind of hear about new plants opening up all the time. I get hit up by these places now, looking for business. It's pretty crazy, and I think it's great, you know? When we were first starting the label, I was listening to a lot of cassettes. I of course had a CD player and a pretty large CD collection. My old vinyl, especially a lot of my old punk and metal records, those were like my prized possessions. I just always thought that the 12x12 format for the artwork and packaging was way superior to a CD, regardless of your opinions on the sound quality. To me it was such an important part of the whole picture, this jacket. When I was a kid I would stare at those jackets for hours! I mean, you'd pore over the thank you list to see who they were friends with or who they liked, you know? That was a way to discover other bands! "Well, Corrosion Of Conformity thanked Neon Christ, so I'm gonna have to search that out, right now!" So in the late 90's when records weren't really being made, it just sucked. For us, when we were able to press vinyl again, it was like going back to an old girlfriend or something. If at all possible, this was how we wanted to present the music we had been allowed to put out.
Luckily, it went really well! To me, it's not only my favorite format, but it's the most important part of the label to be honest. This is how I'd like our releases by these great bands to be digested.
Nice. Beyond just how crazy everything has been in general in 2020, over the past few years it seems streaming has taken a larger role in how music is released. I'm curious how this has impacted a label like Southern Lord, considering the care and effort you put into physical releases?
There's been no slowing down, in fact we've seen an increase. We had our best year ever last year, and even this year has been great. It's totally insane. I feel like this whole panic in the industry that started with "Ok, it's all gonna be streaming now, all digital. Physical media is dead" didn't apply to independent underground music at all. It was all about the major labels and the more commercial music. But, the underground, in my opinion, has brought it. I think that the internet, digital and streaming have all been tools that are helping all these labels thrive and survive through all of this.
I remember when we first started hearing all this stuff and thinking "Oh, I guess maybe this isn't going to work out for us anymore" and we weren't even taking digital seriously at all anyway. We were just like "Ah, whatever" and threw some stuff up online. It was available, maybe? (Laughs) But it was so half-assed for us, you know? We just continued to do what we did, put out the vinyl, and we'd do well with it. Then, we started getting more involved with the digital and taking that more seriously. My sort of "light bulb" with that was like "Hey, this is just sort of like a giant listening station." You know, when you were a kid and you'd go to the record store and they'd play you something? That was how you heard something? Or in the 90's when independent record stores got stronger and they'd have listening stations? I kind of looked at digital as a way that people could listen to a record and discover new music. That sort of changed my opinion of it, because I had this moment where I realized that this is how people are discovering music nowadays. It's not like when we were growing up and we were trading tapes. So we decided "Hey, we're gonna get in the game here, and we're gonna have everything up so that people can potentially discover this music."
It just really helped everything. Like I said, it just became another tool, another weapon for us to be more successful. So all that paranoia, negativity and fear that surrounded the music industry, I don't really feel like it applied to a lot of the independent labels. Also, you could look at a label like Touch & Go, and I don't know exactly why they are not existing in the same capacity that they were, and I'm sure different labels have different view points on it, but to me I just see us having our best years recently. This year, even with everything being fucked up, we're having a great year, and that's really just testimony to the following that we've built up over the years, the dedication of our fans. It's pretty amazing. The mail order has exploded, and the other thing that has been extremely valuable is Bandcamp. That platform is amazing. We were one of the very first labels to get in with them, even before they had really developed the platform to include labels. At that time, it was more of a focal point for bands that just wanted to get their music out there and didn't have a label, etc. So, when we approached them and said we wanted to put up our catalog, I don't think they were used to having a large body of work like that, it was about working with individual bands. Obviously, they've become such a popular platform that all these labels started approaching them asking how they could get involved.
Before Bandcamp, there was a company up in Seattle that was formed by these ex-Microsoft employees that had come out of the hardcore and indie scenes of the '90's, and started this thing called DIYSTRO, and it was awesome. It was a very similar type of thing where they put the power to just upload the music into the hands of the artists and labels, so to speak. The labels/artists control the content and the aesthetic of it. I was really behind them, and I really wanted it to happen. The streaming platforms at the time didn't give you any sort of freedom or flexibility to present your own content how you wanted it. Unfortunately, those guys all got out of it and sold it off to someone who essentially ran it into the ground.
I'm a big fan/user of Bandcamp and just think it's the best platform out there. I really love seeing how you guys always participate in the "Bandcamp Fridays" and put up rare Sunn O))) recordings, demos, stuff like that.
They really are, man. They've really developed it over the years and it's extremely artist friendly and flexible. I really can't say enough about what they do. Also, working in an activism angle is amazing as well. You can't do that on Apple or Spotify in a way where you're promoting something you believe in. I feel like they win, and this year in particular they're a huge part of the reason that we've done well, and that a lot of others have done well too. You consider the timeliness and it's even more incredible. What are the other platforms doing? Nothing! Spotify set up some half assed donation thing that's like "Oh! If you like this music, you can donate to the artist." Based on the amount of money we generate from Spotify and how it comes to us, that's not going to amount to a hill of beans anyway!
Then, this whole Record Store Day thing that's been happening, at first I was really into it. It was great, and then it kind of got co-opted by major labels and they just sort of overran the whole thing and really jammed up a lot of the manufacturing. It just became a drag. You'd talk to stores and they'd just be overwhelmed. There were too many releases. The system with which they were getting things was really inconsistent, and they don't even know what they're getting sometimes! They just have to blindly order, which is difficult for independent stores. RSD is kind of a blessing and a curse for record stores, and back to Bandcamp once again, you can do something similar, have a special release on a "Bandcamp Friday" and it's gonna get a lot of attention and traffic. That's what we're gonna focus on now instead of Record Store Day. We continue to support the indies, they are extremely important to us, but I don't feel like RSD is the time for us to support them any more. We just want to do cool stuff with them throughout the year. Those RSD releases can set you up for a couple of months, but we've found that we can also do that through Bandcamp Fridays. We're releasing LPs with Bandcamp exclusive colors now. It's been great, and really helpful for us keeping the lights on this year. Like I said, Things have been going well, but I feel like I'm grinding. It's kind of cool, and reminds me of the early days of the label, actually. You're always kind of grinding, thinking about what you're gonna do next. I feel really inspired right now by music again, last year was so busy and exhausting. I've got a lot of really great irons in the fire, so to speak. Projects I'm working on, or people that I've connected with, but it's all sort of a work in progress for next year. Not much is gonna come out this year. I was really excited to release a great new 12" in September by Anna von Hauswolff, this amazing artist from Sweden. I love her stuff. She toured with Sunn O))) in the UK...
Wait! I guess there is one thing that Sunn O))) has coming up! We did a BBC Radio 6 session while we were in London last year, and it features Anna on vocals and organ, and it turned out amazing. She's incredible. Hopefully we'll be releasing that next year. There's also this band Nadja that we're working on something with. They're a duo originally from Cannda, now living in Berlin. Their new record is being mixed by David Pajo, which is amazing and I'm really excited about. Beyond that I have a few archival things I'm working on. So like I said, I've just been grindin' and hustlin', and it feels good. That's what's keeping me going right now, and keeping me from getting depressed.
Sunn O))) has collaborated with several really outstanding artists over the years, and I was wondering if you'd be interested in talking a bit about what it was like working with Scott Walker?
Yeah! Um, that was an incredible experience. It was really, uh, strange, to put it simply. Stephen and I probably got turned onto his music in like the mid-2000's, and we got really into his album The Drift. That became a van favorite on tour. It's great when people can agree on something, and it's good enough to make the cut beyond your Walkman device or Airpods or whatever (laughs). That's one of the things I just really love about music; I had no clue who this guy was, had never heard of the Walker Brothers, and we really got into it. All of the sudden it’s like, you discover something like that and it changes you for a while. You get obsessive, and you start seeking out everything about that artist and their music.
Sunn O))) with Scott Walker
When we were making Monoliths & Dimensions, we thought of a few different vocalists that it would be interesting to collaborate with. Kind of a wish list type thing. He was on that list, but nothing really came of it. I think we were able to get the information and music to someone at 4AD through our relationship with All Tomorrow’s Parties people. Honestly, we didn’t hear anything back and I just kind of forgot about it. There were probably 3 people we reached out to and none of them replied! (Laughs) We moved on on to the next thing, and then the guy from ATP told us that Scott was listening to our music. What? That was weird, because he never replied.
Then, we got contacted by his manager and 4AD, and they were saying he wanted to work together. At first we thought this was a prank or something! It was very strange, you know? Several years after we had reached out to him, he's emailing something to the effect of “I’ve been listening to your music ever since that day thinking about what to do.” (Laughs)
So, yeah. Years later, he comes out of the woodwork. He was a bit of a recluse. When he made contact with us, he had already fleshed out a bunch of demos. These were basically his ideas and the compositions. He had recorded some guitar, how he envisioned it sitting in the compositions, but wanted us to replace it all because he didn’t have the gear we had (laughs) you know? Another strange thing about it was that his vocals weren’t on there. Instead of his vocals, he recorded a Fender Rhodes representing the vocal melodies. He wouldn’t even let anyone hear his voice. This was so bizarre, but of course we were blown away and beyond honored that we were going to do this.
So, we ended up going out there and arrangements were made to record. It was really challenging to schedule the recording, because the studio had to fit very specific criteria of his. First, it had to be within walking distance of his house, and um, second, he basically wanted it booked within two weeks. We had to fly over there and all that stuff, figure out gear. Everything happened, everything basically got thrust together with like 2 weeks notice. The studio that we ended up recording at was basically an overdub studio, and the live room was tiny. The live room was probably 150 sq feet and the control room was 75 or something, so it was basically a studio that was used for vocals, overdubs, and commercials and it was all that he could find in the area. The area that he lived in had a ton of great studios, some really renowned studios, I think one of them he had recorded in before, but they were all booked because he was trying to book things with 2 weeks notice!
We had no idea what the studio was gonna be like, we were just given an address. So, we have gear stored at two places. A backline stored in Europe and a backline in the US. We had our backline in Europe driven out to the studio and we showed up at the studio, not knowing what it was -- what it looked like or what the size was. We had our entire live backline in a freight truck. The engineer opens the door and he’s like “Oh you’re the band?” and we had never met the guy and we’re like “We’re here for the Scott Walker session.” “Oh Ok, so you just go, you squeeze past this doorway here and go through the kitchen and squeeze into this hallway and there’s the live room."
So we’re bringing 16 cabinets into this place? It was pure comedy. Also, in the control room, there’s this beautiful white carpet, that was just pristine. Here we come in, huffing all this gear with our construction boots on, it’s raining outside and we’re tracking mud and dirt everywhere. Scott wasn't even there. We set everything up, we crammed everything into the room. We were sitting on top of each other basically, just laughing about the whole thing, but also we were a little bit worried that Scott might be pissed off about all this gear in this small place. But he shows up and he goes in there and his eyes just bug out of his head. “You guys brought the entire backline?” And we’re like “Yeah, that's the sound.” and he just goes "Cool, right on!” (laughs). He goes right into the spot that he sat in the whole time, which is right in front of the mixing desk, with his hat pulled down over his eyes saying “Sounds great guys, sounds great. What’s next?" but he was so impressed that we brought our entire backline that from that moment on he was like “All right, these guys mean business.” that’s exactly what he wanted.
It ended up being a really cool collaboration and he had an orchestrator, a guy Mike Warman who basically scored everything and had everything written out in charts and stuff, but we didn’t read music so he had someone interpret. Basically a symphony conductor, because that is what Mark was or is and he basically conducted he band as if we were a symphony or something. It was really cool, it was good for us. Everything we’d done up to that point as far as recording was us, our ideas, our compositions. No one was telling us what to play at all. And this time was "You’re going to play this note for this long and play it in this way" and that was how the whole recording session went and we still didn’t get to hear vocals! He never recorded vocals while we were in the studio. That all happened after the fact. I actually did not hear his vocals until I got an unmastered copy of the record right before it got mastered, it was sent to me. It was all a mystery. The experience of making the record was incredible. Working with Scott and the little bit of time we got to hang with him, we had dinner with him one time, was great. He was very strange. He was awesome. I felt like in the studio we had a camaraderie and we bonded right away. It was hilarious. The first thing he asked me, which blew me away, was “Oh, you run Southern Lord?” I say “Yeah.” He said “I really like the Nails record.” Nails is a totally extreme grindcore band! I’m like “Did you say Nails?” and he’s like “Yeah, I really like that Unsilent Death record.” (laughs) This guy is paying attention, even though it took him two years to contact us and he seemed out of the loop he is connected the ways he wants to be connected, which I really thought was cool. You know? But honestly after we left the studio, the whole thing just got taken out of our hands. We had never been in an experience where we were like a hired band and that is how it was presented to us, but after we had gotten along in the studio, it felt like we had gone beyond that hired band stigma. We got everything done so quickly and before the allotted time was over, that he brought out another track. He brought out this track in the studio and was like "Do you guys want to help me finish it?" We were like "Hell yeah!" So there is a song on there that is actually completed by with help with Sunn O))). It was supposed to be a Scott Walker solo project, but then he wanted to change the name to Scott Walker and Sunn O))). And so we were like “oh ok wow, i guess he is feeling the same way that we are about things” but the way it was handled as far as the completion of the record as far as the mixing and mastering and the release of it, we were kind of shut out of it and so it again felt kind of like we were a hired gun. I had a problem with that because our name was on the marquee. It wasn’t an ego thing for me, it was like “Look, if I’m going to put my name behind something, i feel like there are certain things that we should be involved in. We should be involved in the completion of this, but we were not able to attend anything else after our time in the studio was done. We weren’t allowed to come to the vocal session, we weren’t allowed to come to the mixing session and we weren’t allowed to come to the mastering session. I kind of felt like we were slighted a little bit. I was kind of bummed about how that worked out, you know what I mean. I’d never been a hired musician. I’ve played on people’s records and stuff like that before, but this was a one time thing, this was an entire record.
Soused, by Scott Walker and Sunn O)))
We’ve done collaborations before. We did one with Ulver and we did one with Boris, and they are collaborations. I don’t know. I kind of have this standard that I hold myself to and my art and my work especially Sunn O))) and I’ve been doing this a long time. We know what we want. We’re very focused and the way we want our stuff presented is very particular. It’s very preconceived, we don’t just blow our stuff out there. Not that this was thrown out there, but we were involved. I mean, we run our own label. The only thing that we don’t do on our own is book our own shows, we have a booking agent. But we do our own management, we release our own records. You know, we do our own finances. I mean everything is very DIY. So, it is part of a vision that we have so you know when something doesn’t meet that, you know “This is weird.” What I try to take away from that whole thing is just that sort of experience of being in the studio with Scott. Then of course, when he passed, it was like “Oh man, I am so grateful that we had this opportunity to do something with him.”
I saw you in Chicago at the Rockefeller Chapel, I think the day after he passed away or the shortly after. You guys played The Drift (I think) in its entirety before your set.
Yeah, that was kind of our walk on music for a long time on that tour. I was sad, but felt fortunate that we were able to do something. It is an extreme honor to be included in his body of work. It’s one of those weird things to where it follows you, and you’ll talk to someone and it is kind of like this acknowledgement that there are all kinds of different fans and we are lucky. Some guys are just die hard metal fans or whatever, then you got some who are into indie and some guys are into all of it at the same time, but it’s kind of like one of those tests for people where they feel like if they talk to us about that record that we may think that they are not just a metal head/meat head. You know what I mean (laughs)? "Man, you guys worked with Scott Walker" and they want to talk about him and how they feel about his music because it’s really strange. It's one of those things that we have been talking about this entire conversation with music where it’s completely new to you and it blows your mind. For me, it’s like "I want to talk about this to people." I remember getting into Slint, and if you found somebody that liked Slint and you’d just be like “Oh my god” and you'd talk about it for a long time (laughs) because it is so strange and you realize there aren’t a lot of people who are into it.
Totally.
I think Sunn O))) is kind of that band. It’s not like we are commercially successful or huge. It’s surprising for people. It’s surprising that they are into that kind of music. I’m surprised that I like this kind of music, but I do. So you want to talk about it and stuff. So I think the Scott Walker stuff kind of added to it and compounded it and stuff. "Oh yeah, these guys." I think it made sense to some people, I get why this works and of course I think there’s a lot of people who that don’t understand it but yeah, I am glad we did it. I’m really glad we did it. That’s my takeaway.
Cool. Alright, let's talk coffee real quick!
Sure, man!
You like that stuff, right? How are you making it at home?
Man, it’s pretty primitive. Pretty minimal. I’ve gone through different coffee phases in my life. Definitely have been a pot a day or a couple coffee espresso drinks a day kind of person at times throughout my life, but the last couple of years I’ve been trying to cut back on the caffeine for various reasons. I make myself a shot of coffee in one of those pods. I put some coffeemate in it and that’s generally it for me for the day.
There’s a decent coffee shop by the office and maybe I’ll get a pick me up in the afternoon. They do a Mexican mocha there that’s like pretty incredible. Mexican chocolate with coffee in it so I’ll do that. It used to be an integral part of my life and now it gets me awake in the morning to do what I need to do and I try to leave it at that. I drink caffeinated beverages throughout the afternoon sometimes. Coffee is kind of minimal for me. I guess that’s it! (laughs)
Many thanks to Greg for the extremely fun and in-depth conversation! As he mentioned earlier, Bandcamp is a great way to check out Sunn O))), Engine Kid, and more that Southern Lord has to offer.
Wanna check out Glassworks? First time buyers can use the code DRONE at check out for 20% off of your first order!
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Hey Nailah, how's it going? Could you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Hey! I'm Nailah Hunter, and I'm a musician, a harpist, a composer. I feel like my art practice is tone columns of different mediums.
Nailah Hunter
How long have you been playing?
I've been playing piano since I was like 4, I started singing in church when I was about 6. I started playing harp when I was 19, so I've been playing for a while, I guess!
What drew you to the harp?
I was going to school for voice actually, when I was gifted a small harp, and I started taking lessons. I eventually moved up to a pedal harp, and it just sort of became an obsession. It provided me the sound I had always been looking for for my own music, you know? Prior to that I was playing on an acoustic guitar and maybe sometimes piano, but otherwise I was the lead singer of a band, which was not my personality type, in any way (laughs.) So, finding the harp was like finding the right one.
So, were there bands you played in before you started releasing work under your own name?
Yeah, so the bands I played in before were really fusion-like, like Radiohead influenced, along with some jazz influence? I was playing harp in those bands as well, which was cool, I do enjoy playing harp with a full band. It's just that it's such an involved process to play harp and sing in the first place, that when you add other people into that, there's a lot to negotiate. I am excited to approach that again, deeper into my career as a harpist.
When did you start putting stuff out under your own name? Spells was recommended to me a few months ago on a Bandcamp Friday, and I immediately loved it!
Cool! Last year I put out my first single,"Apple, Maple, Willow", and that was my first declaration of "OK, I think this is what this could sound like" and just kept going from there.
By the way, I love the artwork on Spells. It fits the recording so perfectly.
That's great! I love to hear that so much. Ianna, the artist who did that is so fantastic and is like my ride or die Fantasy friend. We went back and forth on the art for some time, but at the same time she really sees what I see, so it's really nice seeing my vision carried out by her hand. I've always wished I was a visual artist, but I just don't have that in me. At least not much!
Spells, by Nailah Hunter, artwork by Ianna Vasale.
Let's talk about your recording process. Do you record at home, or have you gone somewhere to make these recordings?
Yeah, for Spells I actually recorded it all in my home studio and it was a very personal process. I did all of the recording, engineering and everything myself. There's lots of layering, obviously. I really appreciate my little home studio, it's just got all the stuff I need in it!
What do you use?
Well, I have a harp (laughs), and I have a looper that has effects on it. Pedals for the harp, even though there wasn't as much of that for this record. I also use a Korg Triton synthesizer pretty heavily on those songs. I just love playing with texture on a synth because it can get so technical, you know? I mean, it should get technical. My partner tries to teach me all the time, like "this is how to do this" but I'm like "I love that, I'll probably just feel it out as I go." You know what I mean (laughs)? I'm still open to learning... eventually.
This has obviously been a weird year for musicians, but how actively were you playing live and such before the pandemic hit, and how did this impact any plans you may have had for the release of Spells?
It's funny, so before Spells I was in a very not great place about performance in general, and Spells was kind of in response to that. I just wanted to make something that I could perform without having to get in my head about it, and I wanted to make it all about this ritual, so it could be removed from anything I could get stage fright about. I just had really bad stage fright. I did also find that I enjoyed the performances that I played outside. Those were performances where you just listened to music outside, under a tree in the daylight. I don't if it just coincided with this time period, but it made me feel like "Ahhh, OK. Performing can make sense." I was already in a place where I was trying to figure out how I could be an artist, how could I make music regularly but not have to tour.
I don't really like the idea of touring, even to this day. You know, I really just like my zones, right? Also, harps are hard to move! It was really nice to talk to Mary (Lattimore) about that. She's toured all over the place and is like "Yeah, it's annoying!" It's all about what you do for the instrument, but I think it's also about the setting of the performance. That's really important to me so it's nice to be able to open up to more of those opportunities. Having said that, yeah, like all of the coolest ones got canceled. I have faith though that when things open back up it will be fine, but I'm also enjoying having my music out and feeling like a part of a community in a musical way without having to be touring, having to be out until 1am every night, you know what i mean?
Have you been working on new stuff?
Yeah! That's the thing; it's been nice because it feels like the project was an opening that I don't see closing. I mean, I know things ebb and flow, but I don't think I've felt it like this in my life before and it's just so much easier to create. I think maybe I'm just allowing to create, whereas before I felt so bound by expectation? So yeah, I've been making a lot of music, a lot is coming out in the coming months and I'm really excited.
Nice! I'm definitely looking forward to that. So, what do you consider the biggest influences on what you create?
I feel like my playing, especially with the harp, but other instruments as well, is led by obviously intuition, and I've been trying to connect to my ancestors through music as of late. Definitely when I play the harp, I feel in touch with something else, something beyond this realm. So that's always nice, but I'm obviously also very influenced by high fantasy things, like I just love all the nerdy stuff. If it's nerdy, I probably like it. Yeah, I'm creating the places that I wish existed here. That's pretty much it!
What have you been listening to lately?
Hmm... I have been listening to a lot of Green-house, also on Leaving Records. I just love their whole thing. Field recordings and all that stuff. I've been listening to a lot of 90's pop/R&B stuff. Mary Lattimore. I'm trying to think... it's funny, when anyone asks me this sort of thing I can't really think of anything. John Carroll Kirby. Also, there's this compilation I happened upon of Japanese disco music that's really cool. It's been a treat.
So, let's talk about coffee for a bit. You're a fan?
Yeah!
How do you make coffee at home?
I love using my Chemex to make coffee. I usually get it whole bean, because I feel like grinding it is part of the vibe. It's part of the whole situation.
What do you look for in a cup of coffee?
I like dark coffee, but a medium roast is cool too. You know, chocolatey notes? I'm not as keen on what I like about coffee as far as flavors, but I know when I don't like them! You know what I know I don't like? Ethiopian coffee. It seems to have this super acidic thing happening that I just don't like. Other than that, I like most coffee (laughs).
If you happen to be out and about and are grabbing a coffee somewhere, do you have go-to places and/or drinks?
There's a place in my neighborhood called Hilltop Coffee, and they just make the best oat milk latte. It's just great. Oh! There's this place called Sip & Sonder which is equally delicious, I like both of those. If I was going to the store to get beans, probably Stumptown if I feel like treating myself.
Do you feel like coffee plays into your creativity in any way?
I feel like it's an organizer, like it zips you up into whatever tasks you have before you. I always try to drink my coffee at the top of the morning, right before I drink like a liter of water, and then I do my workout. After that, I do whatever musical things. Also, who are we kidding? It cleanses you out. It gets you going, right? Then, you're like "I'm ready to start my day." Haha!
Many thanks to Nailah for talking with us! Be sure to check out her Bandcamp page and listen to more of her beautiful music. New customers can use the code SPELLS for 20% off of your first order!
Banner image by Ianna Vasale.
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Nick Turner performing as Tyresta.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got started as an artist.
So, I grew up in the western suburbs of Chicago. My grandpa worked for 40 years at Nabisco, and his retirement career was singing and telling jokes at nursing homes and Italian fests in the area. He had his own P.A. system and this karaoke machine that he would sort of sing over, so he was an early model, showing that people could entertain as a side gig. My parents were always listening to vinyl and my dad had a reel to reel. Music was always around, so that inspired me early on. I got my first guitar in 4th grade, I think? I’ve played music pretty consistently since then. I started taking lessons and playing in bands closer to junior high.
Let’s talk about the bands you’ve been involved with?
So at that time I was into stuff like Nirvana and, you know, pop punk like Weezer and NOFX and these bands sounded like that and maybe a little bit of Fugazi and that side of punk and hardcore. Um, yeah and my first band in 7th grade wrote a couple of songs and broke up. As I got into high school, I was skateboarding and playing in other punk bands. That gradually shifted into getting into post-rock, and bands like Mogwai. When I was in college, I was in a post-rock instrumental band (two guitars & drums) sort of in the realm of Pelican, Mogwai, Explosions in the Sky, stuff like that. After college, we stopped playing because we were all busy, some people started having families, moving to the suburbs, and so on. So that was kind of my musical journey.
For the better part of a decade, I didn’t do anything musically. I sort of fell into a rut. I got bored with guitar, kind of hit a wall with it and also, I was broke so I didn’t have any money to buy recording equipment, a looping pedal or anything. I couldn’t do anything! So, I kind of walked away. My guitar gathered dust, I’d pick it up occasionally, but yeah, I really wasn’t actively playing music. I really ramped up seeing live music, getting into new bands, collecting records and tapes and all that. I was still consuming music more than ever.
That break coincided with me going to grad school and entrenching myself in the world of social work. A lot of that decade was starting my career, figuring things out, making them work.
Let’s talk about synths and Tyresta.
So, 2016 was a weird year. That’s when my wife and I got engaged, my mom was diagnosed with cancer, and then Trump won the election. After hitting a wall with guitar, a friend of mine who was super into synths let me borrow a Juno and an Axis Virus. I had some interest in synths, I picked up a Korg MS-20, but again I didn’t have any recording equipment, or really know what I was doing. I had sort of been curious about synths for a while, and when we went to Sweden for our honeymoon, I was set on getting a OP-1 (Teenage Engineering, who makes them are based in Stockholm) so, I was even being nerdy about getting a synth from the source. It ended up not working out because they were actually more expensive then back at home! I went by, but just ended up waiting to buy one ‘til I got home.
I had been thinking about making music, and on the plane over I listened to the 331/3 book for Brian Eno’s Another Green World, which went into the history of the making of the record. The time I wasn’t playing was kind of driven by imposter syndrome when it came to making music. I didn’t understand theory, or anything like that. His whole process of letting go of the structure, experimenting and seeing what sticks, going in without a plan, leaning into uncertainty and all that finally left me feeling like “OK, I can do this.”
I should mention to you that I’m still not super well versed in the technical aspects of everything, I’m just kind of experimenting and figuring things out. I think that’s sort of the fun part about it.
I know a lot of people who are well versed in the technical aspect of it and they get bogged down in it and it hinders their creativity. I think there’s a balance to be struck between not knowing what you’re doing, having happy mistakes, and figuring it out.
So, I bought an OP-1 in the fall of 2016 and started Tyresta, named for a forest preserve within the city limits of Stockholm. It’s cool, we went and visited it. I started writing ambient and drone songs around that, and releasing them on Soundcloud. I needed an outlet, I was like struggling. A month before our wedding, my mom was diagnosed with cancer, so that was a really scary time. We got back from Sweden and Trump got elected, I was kind of rethinking my career, I had hit the ground running too hard, and felt completely drained. It just felt like a prime time to dive back into music.
This album came out that year by Suzanne Ciani and Kaitlin Aurelia Smith called Sunergy, and that was my first real exposure to the Buchla music easel. I had already been looking at modular synths and was interested in stuff like that, but that record was really kind of mind blowing for me, and Kaitlin Aurelia Smith used an OP-1 with the music easel on it, and I was just like “Oh this is what I want to do.” So, maybe not the most sound financial decision, but I bought a Buchla Music Easel and gradually paid it off over the course of a year. The first two synths I had that really connected with and started making music on were the OP-1 and the Music Easel.
The Music Easel is a semi-modular synth, but it motivated me to then venture into euro-rack modular synths. Since then, I’ve bought and sold stuff, I had too much stuff at one point and started experimenting with what I connected with and what I didn’t.
I released my first stuff as Tyresta in the fall of 2018, and since then have just sort of been gradually figuring out how to play shows with modular, and how to write and record music, because this was the first time I was doing it on my own. I was a little spoiled in high school and college, one of my friends was a little older and had set up a studio in his house and was interested in sound engineering so we essentially had access to a free recording studio.
Part of it was having a modest, basic set-up. It’s sort of embarrassing, but I still record to GarageBand. It’s simple, it’s straight-forward, there’s not a lot to wrap my head around. I can just hit record and kind of go with it, so I appreciate that type of simplicity.
I had been meditating, studying Zen a little bit and practicing mindfulness off and on for a while, sort of ramping up that part of my life as well. So I wanted to create meditative music that incorporated elements of uncertainty and randomness into it. Music where there was space to feel things and allow for you to immerse yourself in it. Having that creative outlet again was great and not being stuck even in post-rock song structures, not having to “go somewhere” with it, even in all those years that I had played solo guitar when I would try to write folk songs or whatever.
I wanted to allow myself the room to experiment and do whatever I wanted, having a broad range of releases that might not all fit into “Modular ambient” or whatever. I just wanted to have fun and not limit myself and it’s been really fun. That’s part of what crushed me for that decade, overthinking it, giving into imposter syndrome, and just being stuck in the belief that I couldn’t do it, or didn’t have anything to say.
Are there any stories or experiences from recording your own music that stand out to you?
Yeah! Part of working with and designing the modular synth to, at moments, essentially play itself, or setting parameters and creating generative music can lead to things that are surprising, or things you didn’t really expect. That’s been super fun and kind of why I’ve been able to be prolific. I’m constantly recording and editing things. There are moments where I’ll set up a patch, or a couple different patches, and just sit and meditate with it. Then, maybe I’ll tweak something every once in a while which will take it in a new direction or create a new mood. That’s actually happened quite a bit, and that’s why I've felt compelled to release so much music… I’m having so much fun with it. Sometimes people are like “How did you do that? How did you design that sound?” and I just don’t know! It just falls into place, which is kind of the double edged sword of modular. You can create this song that’s just amazing and then you shut off the synth, turn it back on and it just sounds completely different, and you’re not able to recreate it. I think it’s fun though, it puts you in the position to always be recording so you don’t miss out on something.
I’m surprised to hear that this project is only a couple of years old, based on how prolific you are. I feel like you have a new release every few weeks!
Getting into modular synthesis and giving myself the freedom to experiment and not get caught up in self-judgement just opened up this creativity window for me, so I’m constantly recording stuff and kind of gathering an archive. Processing it, slowly putting together songs for releases. You know, part of the fun of this project and what has really kept me going is collaborating with all of these different tape labels and net labels. It’s been super fun, I’ve connected with people all over the world doing that. Working with different philosophies and approaches to releasing music, different artists, artwork, it’s all been super fun too.
I had sold off all of my guitar stuff, I just needed a reset. I wanted to do something I didn’t know, didn’t have any muscle memory for, and that was great. Eventually I started to miss guitar and now I have one again and have slowly kind of been incorporating it back into my music.
So you have a hand in curating at least a couple labels, correct?
Yeah, a couple of years ago my friend Zach started a label called Past inside the Present, based out of Indianapolis. It’s been interesting, that label’s been really successful and I think it’s because he has a really specific aesthetic and a talent for graphic design, so the label also has a visual vision. He was able to do some vinyl releases from the start and was able to grab people’s attention with the presentation. It just kind of took off and I thought I’d like to maybe be a part of it. So in 2019, I randomly saw him post on Twitter that he was looking for suggestions for ambient tapes and I reached out to him and it kind of took off from there. We started communicating, and then I released a tape with them, and then he brought on Isaac who helps run the label and brought on me, and I do write ups for the releases as well as help with curating.
Just in the past few months, this Japanese artist who had released something on the label sent us this EP that had remixes by Jim O’Rourke and Oval. It didn’t really fit the direction PITP was going, and Zach decided to pass on it. I was like “How are you going to pass on a record with Jim O’Rourke on it?!? Let me start a side label, I can take in all of these more experimental demos that we get and try to make something of it.” They liked the idea, so that’s how this new project Fallen Moon Recordings got started. It’s been fun getting that together. There is a sameness to a lot of ambient right now, some of it I really like and some of it I’m just really bored by. I don’t think there’s enough experimentation going on, at least in some of it. The sameness isn’t just in the music, there are a lot of white dudes just making ambient music in their bedrooms. It’s not a very diverse genre. I’ve been trying to focus on women and people of color and It’s been fun trying to support these artists, and I’m trying to place an emphasis on that too.
What do you consider to be the biggest influences on your work, and how have you seen these evolve over time?
Currently, someone I just adore is Felicia Atkinson. The way she’s able to mix Musique Concrete, avant garde, and field recordings with MIDI instruments and her own piano playing and sound design. She is just so good at that, and I’d love to eventually make music like that. Her work has particularly inspired me to experiment even more with processing, field recordings, and kind of making music with whatever. I’m working on an EP that's based on recordings I made of my nephew’s toy xylophone and tambourines that I then put into my modular and eventually computer. These sounds are mixed with other field recordings, but I’m not using any oscillators or sound sources, just creating songs and sound collage.
There’s that jazz label International Anthem, and I’ve been trying to dive into all of their stuff.
I’ve been getting into people that originally kind of invented Musique Concrete, like Luc Ferrari, Pierre Schaeffer, Beatrice Ferreira. I’ve just been diving into that, or these people just making this totally bizarre sound collage, sort of turning their nose up at the establishment and trying to create a new form of music in the 50’s and 60’s. I find that to be super inspiring.
Do you have any upcoming releases?
Yeah, I’ll have a vinyl release coming out this October on PITP. I’m really pretty excited about this one, I pretty much wrote half of it last summer and fall while reflecting on my mom’s illness and the time we were spending together as a family, trying to be present without being so wrapped up in the fear of what would be coming next. Then, I wrote the second half of it right after she died. It was therapeutic writing the record, and it’s my first release on vinyl.
What are you listening to these days?
Well, I’ve amassed a ton of stuff on Bandcamp from those Bandcamp days where they waive the fees, and slowly working my way through it. Christina Vantzou did a record with John Also Bennett called Landscape Architecture that I like a lot. We talked about diversity in music, and I’ve been trying to dive into more female identifying experimental artists, as well as people of color. Marja Ahti just released a record called The Current Inside that’s really good. Shanna Sordahl has a record called Radiate Don’t Fear The Quietus, and Felicia Atkinson released an EP a little while ago called Everything Evaporate… those are some of the stand out ones. I’ve really been studying these to learn how to compose like this and avoid getting bored and creating empty soundscapes. I mean, I enjoy doing that too, but I don’t want to fall into that sort of boredom again, falling into muscle memory but this time with my synths. I want to avoid that sort of comfort zone.
Do you want to talk about what you do professionally and if you feel any connection between that and your creativity?
Yeah, so I’m a mental health and addiction therapist. I went to school for that, and have a master’s in social work, am a licensed clinical social worker and certified alcohol and drug counselor. I do individual therapy and my main focuses are addiction, trauma, anxiety and depression. A big part of that is leaning into emotional experiencing, helping people deal with things that are really difficult. Helping them tolerate distress and discomfort and discover what they want out of life, what’s meaningful and important. What they’re passionate about. I think it plays into my music because, if we go back to talking about when I was feeling burnt out and how invested I was in my career. Having music take up a significant portion of my headspace and time during the week has been nice. It’s a good example and actually came from my work. If I’m teaching people to have lifestyle balance or encouraging them to work on discovering passion, I’m not going to be a hypocrite and not take care of myself. I talk about the music that I make with my clients (when appropriate, not like I’m trying to sell myself to them,) but as a way to talk about my own experiences with anxiety, burn out, grief and loss, and how I’ve been able to cope through music. I try to use it an example of how you can be a creative, passionate person in whatever way you want to be.
I’m not doing as much trauma work as I was before, but I was also dealing with some of my own reactions to my clients through music. The moods, feelings and concepts behind some of the records I’ve done have been informed by my work with clients, so they are very much sort of linked, I guess.
OK, Let’s talk coffee. Do you like that stuff?
Ha ha yeah! I love it.
How are you making it at home?
Most of the time during the week we’re just doing drip but we also have a Clever, and a couple of different French presses, so it’s a mix of those three. But yeah, in the morning when we’re feeling lazy and just want to wake up, drip.
Do you have a go-to if you find yourself out at a cafe?
Just black coffee. That’s the fun of it for me. Discovering the flavors, complexities and different profiles. It’s the same thing I love about craft beer.
Are there regions you like?
Not really, I tend to stick with light to medium roasts, but like to be able to explore the world coffee-wise. I guess maybe I’m a little partial to fruitier coffees than say chocolatey, roastier coffees? I’ll try most stuff, though.
How do you feel that coffee intersects with your creative process?
Well, because I’m a person that tends to be on the more anxious side of the spectrum, I try not to have coffee later in the day, I typically have a cup when I wake up and one before lunch. Most of my music making happens in the late afternoon or evening. I think that sometimes it’s still intertwined. Like, with the Music Easel for example, you have to turn it on, let it warm up and stabilize before you can actually play it, and there are times I’ll make a cup of coffee while I’m waiting for it and then I’ll dive in. Years ago, I kind of had my sights on the Pacific Northwest, just because it had everything like good craft beer, craft coffee, all that stuff that I’ve been interested in, but then Chicago caught up. It’s been inspiring to be here, with both craft beer and coffee. It’s so much fun with all of the options, different aesthetics, different approaches, and it’s kind of inspiring as a creative person.
Many thanks to Nick for taking the time to talk! Be sure to check out Tyresta, Past Into The Present and Fallen Moon Recordings. First time buyers can use the code MODULAR at check out and receive 20% off of your order!
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Britt Walford. Photo by Britt Walford.
Hey Britt, how’s it going?
Hey, Ben. Pretty good, man. I mean, it’s kind of crazy these days.
Can we start with you just telling us a little bit about yourself?
Yeah, sure. So, My name is Britt Walford. I have a daughter who is 17 and going to college next year, just graduated high school. I have been raising her and started doing restaurant work a few years back and then I got involved with a research project in our public schools called Compassionate Schools Project. I’d been doing that for a couple of years and then just got laid off because of the COVID thing.
Do you think that’s something you’ll be brought back into, and how has the COVID situation affected you?
Yeah, I think it’s permanent, because the project already had an end date and I don’t think school will be normal enough for us to do stuff. It’s fine, I’m happy about stuff, so you know.
Was your daughter’s graduation an at-home thing?
Yeah, it was. We had a car parade, and a Youtube graduation.There’s obviously been a lot of tension in Louisville lately, what has that been like for you?
Oh man, absolutely. It’s been very eye opening and sad. I don’t know. Challenging and cool, too. It reminds me of the pandemic, in that for the most part, I’m cheering it on. That’s a privileged position, and not totally smart, but you want the bad things to be changed, so…
It already seems like things are getting to a better place than before, so I’m glad about that.
The protests have kind of, by design, worked their way up to Bardstown Road from the west end. The protests have been insane, and the same cops that are unable to do their jobs appropriately, or in any way, are the same ones that are running all the counter-protest shit. It’s just been crazy, like Shock and Awe. Helicopters, flash-bangs, tear gas, pepper bullets. Just totally over the top. Then, when they lifted the curfew because this man (David McAtee) was killed by the police or the National Guard, it was almost like the cops took their toys and went home. I can’t say that’s why, but it was like they had a tantrum and then they just completely pulled out. Zero police. Free rein. The protest was larger a few days after, and it’s all just pretty crazy. Once the cops left, there was no more violence. Of course, there are all sorts of white supremacists organizing and all that shit.
Update from 07/01/20
It’s been sort of just heartening and disheartening at the same time. Some bad stuff has happened, but people have continued to be out there. It’s sort of curious to me, the structure of it, I guess it’s sort of like taken on an “Occupy” type position, which really makes sense, but it’s sort of a new thing for me to try to understand. Then, there’s been the election, where Booker lost. That sucked, at least as far as I can tell. Also, the council had to vote on a budget right in the middle of all of this, maybe a week ago last Thursday, and they actually voted to increase the police budget which just seems like a bad move.
Anyway…
So how did you get started as a musician?
I definitely grew up around a piano. My dad played piano a lot, classical piano. We had a full sized grand piano in the living room and he would just wail on it, especially on weekends, you know. So, that was a big influence. I started playing piano when I was 6, and I can’t remember if it was before or after that, but I thought I wanted to be a pianist and live in New York when I grew up. I took piano lessons til I was 18, and got into playing in bands because I did get sort of tired of the normal music I’d been listening to, and almost immediately I met some other people at school that were into punk. They might’ve already had a band, or were just forming one at the time, and I’d go see them play at these punk shows, with mostly older people. I eventually joined the band.
What band was that?
It was called Languid and Flaccid. It was great, and I think we got treated to the absolute best side of what I hope was a really positive and inclusive movement. I joined the band late, and there were some lineup changes and stuff, but it was me and Brian (McMahan), Will Oldham’s older brother Ned, a girl named Stephanie Carta and a guy named Paul Catlett.
Languid and Flaccid. L-R: Britt Walford, Stephanie Carta, Ned Oldham, Brian McMahan, Paul Catett.
So taking piano lessons until you were 18 means you were taking them even after Slint's Tweez was released?
Yeah man, it’s true. I really was. I played that whole time. I actually had two lessons a week for a long time, and I practiced every day for at least an hour and a half. So it was like fairly serious? I don’t remember ever considering going to music school, but it was something that I did.
I'm kind of stuck on the amount of time you were devoting to piano, as well as my understanding of the time and effort that were put into Slint. It seems like as a kid, music must have been similar to a part time job for you, at least as far as hours.
Right! That’s true.
Slint - Tweez
Tweez photo shoot, as seen by driver Will Oldham.
So trying to string the bands you were in together chronologically, would you have been in Maurice after Languid and Flaccid?
Um, there would have been some other playing around and things we did, but the next project, I think it was Maurice.
Brian had a band called Maurice, and eventually the lineup changed and I joined. So that was after Languid and Flaccid, and then Squirrel Bait was during Maurice.
I guess I didn’t realize that Brian was in Maurice!
Yeah, it was actually his band with other people first. It was Brian, Sean Garrison, and Mike Bucayu on bass. So when Brian quit and joined Squirrel Bait, we got Dave Pajo on guitar.
So how did you know Dave?
Through Mike. Yeah, I’m not sure how much punk he had been involved with prior to that. I don’t think I knew him before. He played in a rock cover band that was pretty accomplished. They played a lot I think. He was a super prodigy guitar player.
He’s definitely one of my favorite people.
So, you talk about meeting David, and him being a prodigy in an accomplished cover band, but what I keep thinking about is that you guys were all so young. Beyond that, as teenagers, you went on tour with Samhain?!
Yeah. I know, man. Ha ha! Yeah. I don’t think those guys would remember us too much, but I imagine Glenn still would a little bit, because we used to crack him up and that was a big thrill.
I’d call Glenn at his house, you know? You’d hear his mom calling for him and he’d yell (impressive New Jersey accent) “Hey Ma! I’m downstairs! On the phone!” I just can’t believe it now.
I don’t know the last time you listened to the Misfits, but Jesus, man! If I hear that, I feel like I’m listening to Buddy Holly. That guy is just a fucking genius. He’s just an American fucking icon, you know what I mean? Golly.
We saw them (Samhain) at this club nearby called the Jockey Club, it was truly a special place. Maurice actually played with Samhain at the Jockey Club, but that wasn’t the first time I saw them. I’ll never forget the first time I saw them.
First of all, the fucking sky was fucking orange when we drove to Bloomington, Indiana, which is not a very inauspicious sounding place, but we were freaked out, like “look at the fuckin’ sky!”
I had never smelled Clove cigarettes before, and I still associate that with them. I was like “What is that fucking smell?” I thought it was them! It was awesome.
During their set, Glenn would put the mic out to the 4 or 5 people that could crowd around it and they were screaming, but he would be back like arm’s length with his teeth clenched, and all you could hear in the microphone was his fucking voice. That’s fucking amazing. It was crazy.
Then there’s this one story when Glenn actually got a little drunk.
What? That’s weird!
Oh, totally weird! He just had like a couple beers or something, and he was playing John Cougar Mellencamp on an acoustic! I was like right there, and he was showing us how you play the chords in different positions, and you could just tell how talented he was. I mean he was playing “Small Town” or maybe “Jack and Diane” I don’t remember, but he was making the chords cool, and playing them in different positions. It was really great.
I never expected to make this comparison, but I’m thinking of Joni Mitchell, in that you hear her stuff which is unique and great, and then see her play guitar and it seems like she invented her own way of playing instead of going with a conventional approach.
Yeah man, totally. In a way, I think seeing him do that was kind of an influence, because not ever really knowing how to play I always valued that.
I was so excited to hear about these Misfits shows that happened, I just watched one on video and man, it made me really excited.
I went to the two Chicago shows and they were so fun but also so insane.
Man, I loved hearing Corey (Rusk) lament about when they started playing fast. I mean, I think that stuff is great, you know? But he said Glenn was like (New Jersey accent) “We gotta start playing fast, that’s what the kids like! Hardcore!”
Man…
When would you have toured with them?
I think ‘84? Maybe ‘85. I’d seen them before that, touring for Initium. It’s crazy to think that Unholy Passion came out in ‘85, and that’s when Slint started, so there was a lot packed into that year, like life probably seems to most people at that age.
What are some memories that jump out to you from that tour?
I remember once, Dave did this flying kick and hit my cymbal. That was pretty awesome. He’s a really shy guy, he used to go behind his amplifier in Slint if there was a solo part, so that was really cool.
Also, when we played with them, Glenn gave us extra money. Like, a lot. That was really cool.
I remember playing too fast for the bass player, and I think that’s about it I guess.
Maurice, 2014. L-R: Britt Walford, David Pajo, Sean Garrison, Mike Bucayu.
So, you were in Maurice, and you started playing with Squirrel Bait?
Basically, I sort of played drums with them for a while. I think I just wanted to do Maurice, I was more into that. We recorded a whole album worth of stuff, a couple songs appear on Squirrel Bait’s first record, and then after that, Brian joined Squirrel Bait. There was a period when he was in both bands, too. Maybe we even played together in Squirrel Bait.
Cool, and then Slint came after that?
Uh, yes. It’s neat to hear Dave talk about Maurice and Slint, because he really remembers it a lot better than I do. It’s almost like he wrote the first Slint songs, because they were Maurice songs, and they were really weird. They just didn’t really work for the singer, so they ended up being instrumentals. Then, they were incorporated into Slint.
Slint was basically started by me and the bass player, Ethan Buckler, and I guess a song I had written the bass line to. Then, Ethan and I had an idea for the band, so that’s sort of how it started.
So, my understanding is that Brian wasn’t originally in the band? Will Oldham was going to sing?
Uh, yeah. Yeah, I guess that’s correct. I think he was going to sing and play acoustic. Ha ha, I love saying that, too. Like, anything with “acoustic.” Like, if you’re having a party and I say “I’ll bring my acoustic.”
So we played a show, and Will sat in front of my bass drum. It was just a funny show, you’ve maybe heard this before, but we played at this Unitarian church. I think that’s in the movie.
So, after revisiting Breadcrumb Trail, and now with you talking about your years of piano playing, I have to say I was initially kind of amazed to learn how involved you were with the songwriting, as far as guitar and such.
You mean in Slint?
Yeah.
I just played guitar a lot and came up with songs, you know? Dave had songs, Brian had songs, I had songs, and Todd had songs once he joined.
So, Spiderland has 6 songs, how would you break down the songwriting process?
Well, the songs themselves were pretty collaborative, to varying degrees. As far as initial ideas, Todd had one, Brian had two, and I guess I had three.
Slint. L-R: David Pajo, Britt Walford, Todd Brashear, Brian McMahan. Photo by Will Oldham.
Todd, David and Britt with Philip Glass.
It probably goes without saying, but I don’t know that I’ve ever met anyone familiar with the band that wasn’t amazed by what you guys accomplished, especially at such a young age.
Man, that’s awesome. In retrospect, it seems like a very fortunate confluence of events, influences, and opportunities.
Ok, so you were also in the Breeders around the same time?
Yeah, so Steve (Albini) knew Kim and he was recording the Pixies. If Surfer Rosa was recorded in Chicago, I guess that’s what I went to one of the sessions for.
Kim and Tanya had songs, and they needed a drummer, and he told them about me. I’d gone to Northwestern the year before and then ended up living with Steve. Well, basically crashing on his couch for like 6 months. So I went down and met Kim, thought it was cool, and she ended up asking me. Then she said “We’re going to record in Scotland, and we’re gonna go hang out in England and make the songs.” I was like “Ok.”
It makes me a bit upset thinking about it, because I always feel I was insufficiently appreciative of the whole experience and opportunity. Not having anything to do with a career, money, or anything like that, but as an experience. I was just pretty headstrong or full of myself, I don’t know. My concern at the time was “Ok, if this doesn’t work out, you guys are gonna pay my plane ticket home, right?” Then, it was actually great. It was so awesome, I just loved every second of it! I loved writing the songs. We went to the bass player Josephine’s parents house outside of London, and worked on it before recording in Scotland, and overall that was about 2 months.
It was one of the best times of my life, if not the best. It was just so great.
The Breeders, once upon a time. L-R: Kelley Deal, Tanya Donelly, Josephine Wiggs, Kim Deal, Britt Walford.
You just did the Pod record with them?
I did that, and it’s a little touchy I guess, but I played on the next record and it was amazing, I felt like we were a band after Pod. So, when Kim called about Safari, she said “We decided to use you again” and I was like “Dang, I thought I was part of this band.” So then, that was kind of a weird recording experience. To me, Kim is just a phenomenal artist and musician. I just don’t see people like her, or hear people like her, I just think she’s really crazy and amazing. I think she tries to write in ways that maybe I don’t think as much about, but I think she was unhappy with how Pod turned out, and the recording process. So, she wanted to produce this next record, and that was a very different way of working. At the time, “producing” was kind of looked down upon, you know? She brought in this guy from England. I feel like the way Pod sounds is definitely very popular with people, but I certainly understand feeling unhappy with something after it’s over and that’s just horrible. It really sucks, but I think the album was really well served by the recording, mixing and production, you know.So, it didn’t end up working out in the studio, and she decided to get a different drummer.
So in 2014, you recorded with the Deal sisters again on the Biker Gone single. Had you all maintained communication or was that kind of out of the blue?
We kind of have, it’s been very important to me that we did reconnect over the past 5 years or so. In a sustained way that was sort of the beginning, but we had talked some over the years. I hung out with her in New York in the ‘90’s, and sort of always wanted to play with her again. I saw her at Lollapalooza once or twice, and that was pretty much it.
Her singles are great.
Kim Deal - "Biker Gone"
There was a brief period when you were involved with King Kong, right?
Yep. Me, Brian, Dave and Ethan.
Was that while Ethan was in Slint, or after?
So, I don’t know how or why I ended up playing with them. I’m also trying to think about how Dave was involved. I think I just read something about it and honestly can’t remember. I think we all played on that first single, and that was recorded in Steve Albini’s basement. Now that’s funny because Ethan was so upset about the recording of Tweez. After that, I’m not sure how he ended up playing with the other guys in King Kong.
So, if this was recorded by Steve, was it at the same time as Tweez?
I don’t think it was recorded by Steve. As far as when it was recorded, that’s a dang good question. It seems like maybe Brian and I were in college at Northwestern, so that would have been ‘88 or ‘89. I saw a video from Albini’s house, like maybe an interview with Steve, and I think it was the day we were recording that because you can see all of our equipment in the background!
One other interesting thing I can remember is that Todd (Brashear), the bass player from Slint after Ethan, recorded the first King Kong album.
Old Man On The Bridge?
Yeah. That’s such an important album for me, I was like “Whoa, he fuckin' recorded that!?” I’d like to hear about that.
Now I’m thinking about the song "Business Man"…
What do you think that song is about?
No idea, man. A Business man?
I think a lot of those songs are directed at Chicago, or maybe the attitude of Chicago that he saw influencing, or infecting some of us… probably me, mostly. It felt pretty weird because of that, but I still love the album.
So then... Palace Brothers?
Yeah, Brian, Todd, Dave and I all played in Palace Brothers.
Palace Brothers. L-R: Will Oldham, Britt Walford, Brian McMahan, Grant Barger. Photo by Todd Brashear.
Did you play the Palace Brothers show opening for Big Star in Columbia, Missouri?
Yeah.
I was living there at the time, and was at that show. I think this was maybe right before or around the time the first record came out, but had not heard it yet and just went to see Big Star. I think it would have blown my mind to realize I was seeing all of you on stage at the time.
Man, that’s cool. That was really a unique show. Really cool.
How did that come together?
Man, I don’t know. I guess Will made it happen.
What was the extent of your involvement with Palace Brothers? Was it just that first record and a few shows?
There was a little more. At least one more short recording session we did in Chicago, some of which might have come out on something?
I understand how in smaller communities musical endeavors can continually morph into new projects, even with the same members. Do you see these changes having happened organically or simply as the result of a loss of interest?
It was the latter. Brian wasn’t interested in Slint, and as far as Palace Brothers, I think maybe I wasn’t all in? I think Will wanted to do his own thing and he said we didn’t think about it as much as he did, and he was right. I liked playing in it, but i didn’t think of it as my new band.
Ok, then there was Evergreen?
Yeah, they were younger kids here in Louisville and really, really impressive. I liked the music a lot and then became friends with the guitar player, then ended up joining the band. We went on a couple of small tours, and having Hi Ball put out our record was really cool.
Evergreen
But yeah, it just kind of fell apart.
Temporary Residence re-released that record, and I don’t know if people don’t know about it or don’t like it, but it definitely has not gotten a lot of attention.
So then Watter?
Yep. I like those guys, I’m friends with them.
Britt performing with Fred Murphy, a harmonica player and singer. They played together for about 6 months, and Britt describes him as one of the best musicians he had ever seen. This was at a diner called the Coffee Cup where they played early on Sundays.
Have I missed anything?
As far as recording? I recorded a little bit with Sally Timms, on To The Land Of Milk & Honey.
She's great!
She’s amazing, man. Talk about starstruck. Something about how she’s so gracious and down to earth or something.
Sally Timms - To The Land Of Milk and Honey
Cool! So if I’m not mistaken, you eventually worked for a while as an erotic cake baker?
Ha, yeah, so Evergreen broke up, I think in ‘97 and I moved to New York in ‘98 for a year. That’s when I worked at a restaurant that also had an erotic cake bakery. Really I was just clocking in, I just worked there, they needed some help and I wanted some hours.
I would bake them and ice them, but I was like the helper. I don’t think I got to do the final touches like the veins or whatever it was.
When I turned 30, some well meaning friends got me with a boob cake, but it was a pink/fleshy colored sheet cake with two little boobs in the middle.
Ha ha ha! Whoa, that’s awesome.
Man, that’s cool. It makes me want to open a bakery that just makes really bad cakes on purpose. Have you seen that book Cake Wrecks?
Yeah, I know what you're talking about. What would you call your bakery?
I don’t know, man. Maybe just Cake Wrecks, to try to capitalize on it.
Would all of the cakes be erotic?
I guess they wouldn’t have to be, but those would probably be my favorite ones.
I agree. So, in 2005 Slint reunited as a touring band for several years. What that whole experience was like for you?
It was really great, it was also kind of stressful. There was just a lot to do and we were like really democratic, so every decision was a big deal. That part was difficult, but it was great. I liked touring, I liked playing. It was interesting how different it seemed having a different member, or members, you know? I am in no way casting aspersion toward any reunion members, it was just inevitably different. By the end of it, I was starting to get into areas that were truly uncharted, like “Man, I don’t wanna play this shit anymore, this is weird!”
That was a new thing.
I’m assuming this is something that will never happen again?
Yeah, I don’t think so. I don’t think any of us would like playing that stuff again.
Again, any memories from these tours that stick out to you?
There are a few, yeah. So, our first show was here in Louisville, it was well attended, and in a theater that I grew up going to as a kid. We had been doing all of this work that had nothing to do with playing, and also playing a little bit, and it was just this huge thing that had been set up. I mean, we had practiced, but I don’t know if any of us knew if we could do it. I really didn’t know, even once it first started, the first note, you know? “Is this gonna work or what?” I think we were all really nervous, and we were all sick. We had fevers, because we were just so worn out. We kept full on fevers for the beginning of the tour. The reception at that show was one of the best feelings I’ve ever had. It felt really warm and amazing, so that was like the best experience playing I’ve ever had. It was funny, because lots of people came up to me afterwards and were like “Man, that was so great, so awesome! I’m just so sorry.” or just “I’m so sorry.” It turns out that what they were sorry for was heckling. Ariel Pink had opened the show and gotten that ball rolling, man. It was just the most 19th century tin pan alley/throwing vegetables at the stage reception. It was crazy, they were like booed off the stage. It’s funny because I thought they were great, I think they’re great, and they’ve certainly ended up getting a lot of attention and praise, but characteristically Louisville is really insular so that happened. I felt bad for them, but it was funny at the same time for me. So then when we were playing, we were heckled a lot and the thing that was interesting about it was that to us, it all felt like totally warm embraces. We got it, we understood the language. Most people though were just like “Will you shut up?!” so, I thought that was really cool.
The fact that our equipment was packed up, picked up at the back door of that venue, put on a truck and taken to an airplane was really neat for me. It was kind of unbelievable that stuff that heavy could be treated that way.
Another notable highlight was when we played in Antwerp. I guess that ever since I was a little kid, I had a dream of being a rocker, and this was epitomized by the cover of Let There Be Rock by AC/DC. For some reason when we played that show, I don’t think it was sold out or anything, but playing on that stage made me feel like I was fulfilling that dream, so that was pretty amazing.
What do you consider to be the biggest influences on your work, and how have you seen these evolve over time?
I think I’m not good at that because I’m too much in my own world. I was recently wondering how big of an influence Bill Stevenson is. He reminds me a lot of Phil Rudd from AC/DC.
Phil Rudd and Jeff Nelson are big ones.
So, I was never really a big Rush fan, I liked them a little bit. Then recently, hearing Neal Peart died, I hung out with some dudes and listened to a bunch of Rush albums, and was like “Oh wow!” I thought they were cool and I liked them, and I also realized he was a big influence on me, you know?
I feel like movies were a big influence. I really like the sort of oceanic quality of movies.
Also, traveling Europe as a kid was an influence, I guess. Being on passenger trains.
Are you currently involved in any musical endeavors?
Well, I still think about ideas, and I started playing with the guitar player from Evergreen (Tim Ruth) and Ken Brown (Bundy K Brown) recently.
OK, Let’s talk coffee. You explained to me that you are a big fan of decaf.
Yeah, I don’t know, I think it’s like an enzymatic thing, but caffeine is a really rough ride. It’s like an eight hour roller coaster acid trip. I used to be able to handle it, so I don’t know.
Do you have a go-to if you find yourself out at a cafe?
It depends where it is. I guess my preference is pour over, with maybe French press being a close second. Some places I like their espresso, and I’ll get an Americano. Other than that I like cappuccinos, but it’s hard to get one made right. Maybe it isn’t in Chicago, but it is here.
I appreciate the availability of decaf options for you.
Yeah! There’s quite a bit of roasting going on in town, but it’s kind of dominated by these young Christian cult freaks. People I really just don’t like, or am grossed out by.
There is definitely a faction of coffee people that try to use their access to small equatorial communities for missionary purposes, which I find to be pretty manipulative.
Shit man, I just read this article in the New Yorker (which I don’t really like a lot of, but anyway) about this woman who did that. She set up charity work in Africa, and people ended up dying. She seemed like a horrible nutjob. I didn’t realize that was really a thing outside of Louisville. What’s happening here seems like people running a business but trying to fly under the radar, but still using it to generate income. It lets them get into people’s businesses and lives and I just think it’s gross.
What are you listening to these days?
Man, I don’t really listen to music that much, and haven’t for a long time. I don’t know why. I love it when my daughter plays music, it’s almost like she can play stuff that I just can’t play by myself, and I’m trying to think of artists she really liked growing up. There’s so much good pop music, it just blows my mind.I really love Selena Gomez, and I really love Sky Ferreira. I recently listened to Van Halen - 1984, listened to some Funkadelic. I really like Funkadelic. I’ve been thinking about Junior Kimbrough. Listening to Rachmaninoff a little bit, been listening to Nowhere by Ride, which I hadn’t really heard. I like another one of theirs a lot.
How do you feel about Shoegaze stuff in general?
Man, I love Shoegaze. If I listen to drug music I feel like “Alright, this is my music” which is silly, because there are so many types of music I feel that way about, but I feel like Shoegaze is more that way, even though I haven’t listened to a ton of it.
I like it.
I was listening to Matt Jencik's record Dream Character recently, and was really, really liking that. There’s a local band called Fotocrime, been into them a lot lately,
Britt, thanks so much for taking the time to do this. I’ve had a lot of fun!Awesome. Yeah, man. Me too.
Here's a short and informative look at the quarry where the cover for Spiderland was shot.
First time buyers, rejoice! Get 20% off of your first order by using the code ACOUSTIC at check out!
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Well, on the surface he's a tax attorney that lives in Los Angeles. He enjoys spending time with his wife and cocker spaniel. The occasional Nicolas Cage film or episode of Columbo bring him happiness. He is even a fan of dining in restaurants and the great outdoors, however he is not a fan of the Who.
If you dig a little deeper, you will discover that for a number of years he fronted Madison, Wisconsin’s mighty and influential rock trio, Killdozer. Writing satirical songs about the dark corners of midwestern existence, often humorous, always loud and slow, Killdozer actively released records and toured throughout a great deal of the 80’s and 90’s. While sometimes they slept in parking lots, on occasion audience members tried to attack them.
Throughout these life affirming and character building experiences, Michael was able to develop and nurture a love of coffee that perseveres to this very day. He was kind enough to talk with us about this, and a variety of other things, all for your reading pleasure.
Hi Michael, thanks for taking some time to Spill The Beans. Could we start off with you telling us a little bit about yourself?
Oh, yeah. I’m Michael Gerald, and I’m a lawyer in Los Angeles. I practice in the area of employee benefits and executive compensation. Sometimes, I help people adopt foster children for free. I have a dog and a wife.
Michael Gerald and Lolly.
You’ve been in L.A. for a while.
We’ve been here since ’01. I graduated from NYU law school and moved here to be a lawyer, with a job already lined up. I’m not stupid, I didn’t just move here looking for work. Some people do that! It’s fine, if you’re like 20, but I was 40. You know, law is a second career for me, the first having been Rock Star.
The thing that really inspired me to go to law school was The People vs. Larry Flynt…
Not really!
It was more like “I just broke up Killdozer, what am I gonna do now? I guess I’ll go to law school.” It was either that or become a math teacher. My bachelor’s degree is in math through the school of education. The flaw in how we educate is that you don’t do your student teaching until your very last semester. You’ve invested your entire college career, you go and meet a bunch of high school students, and only then realize you’ve made a terrible mistake. I was even in high school myself! Somehow, just in the span of three years in college, I had forgotten just what horrible people they are.
There ya go. My college career in a nutshell.
When I applied to law schools, it was like I threw darts at a map. Sixteen different schools. I was accepted to NYU and spent half my time there living in Jersey City, half living in New York City. We moved to L.A. because we could. When my wife and I decided we wanted to move to southern California, we had San Diego in mind, but that’s a very insular community. All the firms I interviewed with started by asking what my connection to the city was. What I’ve come to realize about San Diego is they’re all too used to people coming from the midwest and east coast because of the weather, and then discovering that it’s actually quite a boring city and leaving. Much like New York, in L.A. the law firms don’t have that problem. That said I still love San Diego and don’t know that I personally would have gotten bored. For all the nightlife in L.A., I don’t do any of it. I go to Dodgers games, but not that often. I don’t go to movie theaters, because I hate the other people in the theater. I don’t go out to see rock shows because they always start past my bedtime. We like to go eat at restaurants, go to the ocean, hiking, that stuff.
Bill Hobson (from Killdozer) has probably been out here since the mid 90’s. He works in movies. There are only so many Coen Brothers movies you can work on back in Minnesota. He’s got a steady job on Grey’s Anatomy. Knowing that he’s still employed is how I know that show is still on the air. I saw him not that long ago. He called me at the office and said “Hey! I’m across the street.” They were setting up to film and I went over there and chewed the fat with him.
I get together with David Yow and Eddie Rivas (Distorted Pony) and have lunch every couple of months. That’s pretty much the extent of my socializing right there.
David, Eddie, and Michael, either before or after lunch one day.
Hod did Killdozer get started?
I grew up in Minnetonka, Minnesota, and Dan and Bill are from Eden Prairie, which might as well be Minnetonka. Dan and I were high school friends, and Bill… well, he’s Dan’s brother! He was two years ahead of us in school, and he got a job driving a school bus. After he finished his route, he would come by our high school, and Dan and I would skip school and ride around with him.
We started it up while in college, while I was studying to be a math teacher. Bill was studying to be an English teacher, and Dan was studying to become a social studies teacher. All of us were at the University of Wisconsin, and being in college was nice but we were really more interested in starting a band. Dan and I rented a house in Madison, solely so we’d have a place to practice. The idea was that I would just be the singer. We put up some notices in guitar stores that we were looking for a bass player and we auditioned a few, but didn’t like any of them. They all played too much. They were just showing off their chops or something. “Look at all the notes I can play!” One of them had a really nice P Bass, and he told us he was going to go trade it in for a Rickenbacker, which I think is about has stupid a thing as a bass player could do. So, he went and did that, and I went down to the guitar store and bought his P Bass. I just decided I would play bass and try to sing at the same time.
There ya have it, we started Killdozer.
Killdozer (L-R): Dan Hobson, Bill Hobson, Michael Gerald
We didn’t call it Killdozer at the time, though. I think at our very first show, we went by some other name.
Do you remember the name?
Yes. Meat Party!
I think it’s an Irish term for a wake.
After the first show, someone asked us “Have you guys ever heard of The Meat Puppets? “
“Yeah.”
“Have you guys ever heard of The Birthday Party?”
“Yeah.”
So, we realized we needed a new name, and it just so happened that the Made-for-TV movie Killdozer was on and we were like “Wow! This is wonderfully horrible!” It’s a terrible movie. Apparently, there’s a science fiction short story, but we didn’t read that. We’re children of the 60’s and 70’s. We didn’t read books, we watched television.
We put our first record out in ’83 on Bone-Air records. We would’ve started playing together in the fall, because that’s when we would’ve moved into the house. We recorded our second record ourselves in Madison and sent that to Corey Rusk (Touch & Go Records) as a demo tape. We also sent it to Homestead records, but Byron Coley lost our phone number and Corey called us first.
Even though unsolicited demos were always accepted, my understanding was that you were maybe the only band ever signed from a demo.
I think I had heard that. We did have an endorsement from King Coffey. We opened for The Butthole Surfers in Chicago, the show being a Steve Albini production. I think it was at The Metro. I just remember that I got piss-face drunk, which I did in those days, and marveled at their accents because they’re from Texas. King told us to send a demo to Corey. I don’t know that he said anything to Corey, but I guess I think he did? I do know that Corey and Lisa asked the guys in Die Kreuzen about us, and probably asked Steve about us. They all must have said something along the lines of “Those guys are OK, but they don’t skate.”
We almost lost a show in Madison once because we didn’t skate. We managed to keep it though, because we were the only band in town that owned a P.A. system. Skate or not, we had to be on the bill.
Aside from Killdozer, have you been in other bands?
As far as releasing anything or doing anything other than playing local shows, Killdozer is the only one. As soon as Dan and I got to Madison in 1979, we started playing with a woman we met at a record store named Genie. The three of us had a band called Genie, Mike, & Dan. We played bubblegum hits, songs by Abba, The Monkees and such. We’d play it all really, really fast and poorly. We just played at basement parties, and had one show at the local punk rock club. I think an open mic at the student union.
Could you share some memories from touring?
We were at this place in Philadelphia, it had to be our very first tour. This place wasn’t even a club, it was Abe’s Steakhouse. Not a high end steak house, a cheap steak place. It might have even been a cafeteria. Cheap grilled steaks. We played in the back room, on a stage that was just dining tables all pushed together. They were kind of wobbly. There was a local skinhead yelling at me, and at one point he grabbed my leg and tried to pull me off the stage while we were in the middle of a song. Dan just dropped his drumsticks and leapt like a superhero over his drum kit and jumped off the stage onto this guy. Then, he and our sound guy dragged him outside and threw him into the alley. They didn’t actively beat him, they just subdued him. Dan had to protect his singer!
Did you guys continue playing?
Well, when Dan got back to the stage.
One tour involved what could euphemistically be referred to as camping, which meant sleeping in the van in various parking lots. We brought along one of those stove top espresso makers and a camping stove. We played one show in Montreal, and our next was in Pittsburgh, but a week later. That’s like a one day drive, so we hung around in Montreal until our work visas expired. I think the guy we were staying with, who at this point was probably eager to have us out of his apartment, was trying to convince us that Canadian Mounties would come round us up if we didn’t get out of the country. We got going, but took the scenic route because we still had days to kill. At one point we actually checked into a campground in the Adirondacks. There were horrible, horrible mosquitoes. We had sleeping bags, but nothing else besides our van, and it was real nice to have that little coffee maker.
I think Bill had brought it along, it was just part of his camping equipment. It was very portable. That was great for stopping along the roadside. “Hey, make some espresso!” However, given that there were four of us, we had to make several rounds. Usually, by the time everybody had some, the first person wanted more.
Most of our camping was sleeping in gas station parking lots until they opened up and made us leave. We checked into a motel in some hillbilly town about 30 miles outside of Pittsburgh the night before our show. We were just Wisconsin kids too naive to understand what it meant when hourly rates were advertised. The uncomfortable beds had thick plastic under the sheets, the kind grandmothers would put on their furniture. There was no air conditioning, it was pouring rain, and humid. We just had this rotating fan. There was a 13” TV secured with a bike chain. We had our sound man with us, and all four of us were in this one little room with two plastic covered beds. It started to sink in what hourly rates meant, as we heard and watched people check in for an hour or less, over and over. Always couples.
There was this other show we played in Muskegon, Michigan. Again, probably our first or second tour. Muskegon is straight across the lake from Milwaukee. They make tires there, and I’m not sure if they do anything else. Not even tires, but tire patches, and to the best of my knowledge, no other industry. Anyway, we went to the venue which was a bingo hall, and the promoter took us to his house. He had to, because they wouldn’t let us load in until bingo was over. I guess it was a bingo hall, so they call the rules. He fed us, probably hot dogs and spaghetti, and it started to sink in that they thought they had booked a different band called Killdozer. A hard core band from New York that later changed their name to Killdozer ‘85, and then became Sharky’s Machine.
So, things got a little ugly at the bingo hall. Some people were surprised and a lot of people were bummed, especially this one really big guy. Now, by big I mean round. A very large person that was so angry we were not the Killdozer he came to see that he ran across the bingo hall, charging us like a linebacker. Watching him barrelling at us like a locomotive, I thought “Our goose is cooked! This is it!” Then someone from the sidelines came at him and knocked him off course, I won’t say tackled. It was like sending a nuclear missile at an asteroid. Later, back at the promoter’s house, people were saying we were OK. They paid us the paltry sum we were promised.
Michael playing bass.
Those were the early days, and we did move up from bingo halls. I think touring for Twelve Point Buck, we played in London at the Marquee. I remember being told “The Who played here!” and I was like “So what? Who else?”
I want to make this clear: Killdozer adamantly dislikes the Who.
There was a guy from the Membranes, and when he introduced himself, he matter of factly informed us that he was a fire breather, and offered his fire breathing services. We took him up on it, and jeez I thought he was going to burn the theater down. He was spitting flames from his mouth that were shooting up to the ceiling. We could feel the heat. Then, a woman climbed onstage and started groping me during "American Pie" and actually pulled my pants down. Dan came out from behind the drum kit at the end, basically to prevent her from pulling down my underpants as well, and as long as he was there, he joined me on the final chorus, holding up my underpants while this woman was at my knees trying to pull them down. I was also holding them up, as I was no longer playing my bass.
I was assured after the fact that she was an unstable woman, and in no way should I think that I was some sort of hottie.
Also, We were once in Oslo, Norway and treated to a Mexican restaurant. I’ll just say I ordered a burrito that had green beans inside of it.
How about from recording?
One recording I remember was when Corey got a deal at some studio in Detroit, or Dearborn maybe, when Touch & Go was still up in Detroit. We had two albums out at the time. He booked us time at a 24 track studio. We had only worked with Butch Vig at Smart Studios, which was 8 track at the time. We said we wanted to bring Butch, which caught Corey by surprise, but Butch agreed to do it for some paltry sum plus airfare.
This was at the tail end of a tour. We came into Detroit on a Sunday and we were booked for the week. The whole week really started with us being driven up to Windsor, Canada to buy as much Canadian beer as we could possibly afford in preparation for the week to come.
We recorded the BURL EP throughout the week, and on Wednesday we opened for Einstürzende Neubauten at the Graystone, where Corey and Lisa were living and running Touch & Go at the time.
After their sound check, Einstürzende Neubauten didn’t want to move all of their giant equipment and junk that they had on stage, so they announced that they would play first.
So after that week, we had Burl under our belt, and I was hellbent on calling the record Butch’s Big Vacation but... you know it as Burl.
So we recorded our first record, Intellectuals Are The Shoeshine Boys Of The Ruling Elite on our own, and at the time, Smart studios was on the second floor of an old factory and they didn’t have air conditioning, so all the windows were open. It made for a lot of street noise in the background. Bus brakes, trucks, that kind of thing.
On one song, I believe “Run Through The Jungle” by Creedence Clearwater Revival, we had this idea for percussion that was just... breaking glass. So what we did was outfit Dan in a leather jacket and welder’s gloves, a hat, mask and goggles. We took two cases of empty Leinenkugel’s (which we had emptied during recording) and a microphone and recorded it. This was pre-sampling, so he listened to the track on headphones, and every time he needed to accent the beat, he took two bottles and smashed them together! 48 beer bottles.
Just so you know how big of a deal this was, there was a 5 cent deposit on each of those bottles! It was an investment.
So you just mentioned your CCR cover, and one thing I’ve always enjoyed about Killdozer is the tremendous amount of songs you covered. How did you guys pick the songs you covered?
Well, most of the covers we chose because we liked them, but that’s not necessarily true with all of the songs on For Ladies Only. While we were actually supposed to be in the studio for that one, we went to the used record store Dan worked at and started rifling through the bins. There’s nothing tying those songs all together other than finding them all at the same time, within the hour we alloted to find music. Initially, my idea for that album was to record songs by the likes on Englebert Humperdinck, but we quickly realized “What are we going to do with that?” It was too hard to figure out, so we went with standard rock recordings. But the whole concept came from American Pie, because we were going to release this as 7” singles, and that song is so long that you have to flip it halfway through. We did that Steve Miller song (Take The Money And Run), and I mean I hate that song! I hated it then! We didn’t even all agree on the songs, and there are probably songs that I wanted to do that Bill or Dan didn’t see the point of.
One thing about that record though, Bill whistles the melody at the beginning of One Tin Soldier. I don’t even know where that came from, but to me, that’s just inspired.
How did you guys end up covering Janet Jackson?
Well, um, first I should clarify that we didn’t actually play that. The starting point was after a Killdozer show in DeKalb, IL. I know Shorty was on the menu, and I think Tar was as well. After the show, my wife and I, Corey and Lisa all got into Corey’s vintage Mustang and drove to Memphis. Immediately after the show. We went to see Graceland and eat barbecue. Across the street from Graceland there was one of those tourist traps where you could record yourself singing, basically doing karaoke alone in a recording studio. I think at that point Corey realized he could write off the whole trip if he got me to record something and we used it.
At first, I was trying to sing "Sweet Child O’ Mine", but I couldn’t, I’m a terrible singer! I was also really nervous because I wasn’t drunk, and I wasn’t with Dan, Bill and Butch. It was the middle of the afternoon, and I was with Corey, Lisa, Eva, and this high school kid who was just grimacing.
Eventually I just did Nasty.
I brought back this really crappy cassette, took it to Butch and asked “Can you make this sound better?” and, um, he did! He actually redid all the music on his computer using samples of Killdozer songs from Twelve Point Buck, which is the only reason you hear Bill’s guitar, Dan’s drums, or my bass. Then I just recorded all of the singing again.
So you guys recorded almost everything with Butch?
Yeah, everything up through Twelve Point Buck and For Ladies Only, which were recorded in the same sessions. That’s why Twelve Point Buck doesn’t have any covers on it.
Twelve Point Buck was our big production number. I remember some affiliates hating the sound on it because it was so slick. But, you know, it helped launch Butch’s career and then we couldn’t afford him anymore. My understanding is that record is how Kurt Cobain heard of Butch.
We recorded Uncompromising War On Art Under The Dictatorship Of The Proletariat with Doug Erickson, who is also in Garbage, so one of Butch’s affiliates. Butch wasn’t available. We recorded it at some place in Madison where they recorded music for radio commercials. I think the place was actually called Jingles. Smart studios had forgotten that we had booked ten days, and they were under construction. We had taken vacation from our jobs and needed to record, which was our mistake. It ended up being very substandard, at least by our high standards.
Now that you mention it, while I like the record, it’s kind of thin sounding.
Yeah, that was all from the recording. There was nothing we could do about it. We mixed it at Steve Albini’s house with Steve and Brian Paulson, and between the two of them they did what they could with what we gave them!
Our very last record, the often overlooked God Hears The Pleas Of The Innocent, was entirely recorded and mixed with Steve at his house, which I believe we credited as "The House That Dripped Blood". I had all of these found photos that I wanted to use for the artwork, but by this time TAD had been sued by the couple in a found photograph that had been used on the cover of one of their albums, so Corey said we were no longer allowed. So, instead, I solicited the employees to provide baby pictures.
Oh, and one real nightmare recording session; We recorded a duet with Urge Overkill at Steve’s house. It was on a compilation album put out by a magazine called Away From The Pulsebeat. Ed and I both played trumpet, and that’s something to behold. We both knew how to, but hadn’t played in years. Your lips are like any other muscle. If you don’t exercise them, they're not up to the task! We practiced a little bit, but by the time it came to record, our lips were so shot we could barely hold a note. It’s really an atrocious recording. It was a song called Evil Woman by the band Crow. It was also recorded by Black Sabbath.
I remember it taking so long, and Ed and Nate were being so finicky, that Steve eventually said “You guys have taken a song that I loved and managed to make it the song I hate the most in the world.”
At one point one of them stopped everything to complain, saying “It sounds like we’re playing 80’s guitars through 80’s amplifiers!” Steve just pushed the button and replied over everyone’s headphones “You are.”
Do you think we will see more Killdozer activity?
Well, no. We did our reunion tours, which ended when we closed down Emo’s in Austin. We were the last band to ever play on their stage and people trashed the place. We were also the first band to ever play their indoor stage. This last show was on December 30th, because they had to be out of there by midnight on December 31st. But after that, I realized we did enough reunion shows to remember why I quit in the first place. It wasn’t fun, it was a lot of work. You’re flying around playing on maybe a Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and staying up until 4 am. The rest of the week, getting up at 5 am. My body and brain just don’t appreciate shifting the clock that way. It was fine when we’d play a festival at like 4 in the afternoon.
We don’t even live in the same city, so to play shows, Bill and I would get together and rehearse how to play these songs from memory, in my living room with tiny little amplifiers. I’m just singing over them, my wife is watching TV in the next room, not even hearing us, dogs sleeping in front of our amplifiers. Then we bring Dan out to L.A., because it’s cheaper than Bill and I flying to Madison, to do some real practicing. It’s just a lot of work and expense, regardless if it’s one show or six. It’s just not what I want to do with my spare time, and going to play shows is not what I want to do with my vacation.
Are these the reasons Killdozer broke up in the first place?
No, it ended because I just lost all of my enthusiasm for it. I realized that for the last couple years of it, I didn’t care about any other bands, I just cared about Killdozer. I mean, I cared about people as friends and such, but I wasn’t interested at all in what was going on musically. Then I realized that I didn’t even care about Killdozer anymore. So, I decided to call it quits and decided to do one last tour, nevermind that I was the only remaining original member, and that was that. I got tired of touring, and even more than that, I was tired of trying to write music. I just didn’t have any more ideas.
I think it would be fun to get together with Bill and Dan and write new music, like two more songs, but given the distance between us and the hours both Bill and I work, it’s just not going to happen.
That said, I invited the members of Killdozer to continue, like a corporation. At that time, it was Paul Zagoras on guitar, and Erik Tunison (from Die Kreuzen) was the drummer. Jeff Ditzenberger was the second guitar player. So I said I was going to quit, and they opted not to go on, so we did the “Fuck You, We Quit” tour. At the time, I decided to get into the world of graphic art and wound up working at an ad agency, doing their packaging. Boxes for Oster blenders and Sunbeam nose hair trimmers. I had put together a portfolio of Killdozer artwork and sold myself, and if anyone asked, I said “Sure! Computers! Macintosh! You Bet!” when I actually did everything with X-Acto knives and rubber cement. Anyway, I got into the work but quickly came to realize it pays shit unless you go to art school. Art school would have been four more years of college, but law school was only three. That’s why I decided to go to law school. I'm not very good with my hands, except with a guitar. Also, I understood that lawyers get health insurance. Before we broke up, I had a hernia and needed surgery, which proved to be very expensive. It was time for a gig with health insurance, which I didn’t foresee Killdozer being.
Do you think your hernia was Killdozer related?
I never thought of that! There was definitely a lot of heavy lifting, but I usually deferred to the other guys to carry my equipment. Sometimes, though, I still had to carry something.
Is that why the lineup kept changing?
Yeah, and they became fathers, so they were just replaced by people that didn’t have children.
I’ve seen that you volunteer and assist with adoptions. How did you get started doing that, and what does it mean to you?
That’s something I do pro bono. It’s not part of my practice. The firm I’m at has always had a great relationship with an agency in Los Angeles called The Alliance For Children’s Rights. They advocate for foster children. One of the things they do, and this started in the Los Angeles County children’s court, is periodic adoption days, four or five times a year. On these days, nothing else happens in the court, except adoptions. A hundred or more children all adopted on that day. I represent one, two, three families. The work I do mostly involves boring, tedious paperwork that has to be filed. It doesn’t necessarily take long for me, but would be monumental for the families to have to do it themselves. So, I relieve them of that burden, and then represent them in the hearing. That takes fifteen to twenty minutes at most. The judge talks to the family and the children, and gives them a teddy bear. There’s always a teddy bear, though sometimes I’ve had a child that claims to be too old for one. I don’t believe there’s such a thing as being too old for a teddy bear. After that, part of my job is passing a box of tissues to the new mothers, because they always weep. I always find that I happen to get something in my eyes.
Also, there’s good coffee at the children’s court and that’s why I do it!
My firm is a big proponent of doing pro bono work, and I choose to do mine for children and animals, grown adults can all just go fuck themselves. They’re the source of all the problems!
What do you do for animals?
My wife volunteered for a cocker spaniel rescue group and I offered them some tax advice.
What are some of your favorite movies, books, etc. that you feel inspire you?
Well, you know, most of what inspired us is right there in the songs! Flannery O’Connor, pop culture, Bert Convy, all as pointless as it sounds. That’s what I paid attention to. Lyrically, though, the biggest inspiration for me was the local newspaper in Madison, WI. The local stories about the various morons that lived in Wisconsin. I wrote songs about morons.
One afternoon, Dan, Bill, and I were sitting around watching TV when we should have been rehearsing and there was a story about a local warehouse burning, a dairy warehouse, and they were showing footage of all these firefighters wading in ditches of knee deep melted butter mixed with water. We realized we had to go check this out, all got in Bill’s car and headed out there! We watched this fire burn and butter flow through the streets. We didn’t write a song about it, but it was still an inspiring moment.
Make no mistakes about it, the butter fire was a tragedy. Countless pounds of butter were lost, and who knows how much ice cream was in there? I’m sure there was cheese in there too, but let’s be honest; they don’t make very good cheese in Wisconsin.
The last time I had Wisconsin cheese, and specifically cheese curds, was when Bill and I were in Madison rehearsing for the Touch & Go 25th anniversary. I have eaten a tremendous amount of cheese curds, but this was the first time I realized that they have an amazing texture and no flavor.
How do you feel about the fact that the Touch and Go 25th anniversary was almost 14 years ago?
I prefer not to think about that.
I’ve realized that my tattoos are a lot older than several people I know now.
Ok, it’s coffee time. Do you like that stuff?
I like coffee. I love coffee. I shocked my wife once when she tried to stump me by asking if I would rather give up coffee or beer, and I chose beer. No way I’d give up coffee. Fortunately, it’s a hypothetical question, those are much easier to answer.
I love coffee.
What do you look for in a good cup of coffee?
I find that the best coffee is the coffee that I make for myself.
How do you make coffee at home?
Sometimes I use a French press, sometimes I use a Melitta, I think the fancy term is pour over. I used to have a vacuum pot, but we now have an induction stove which doesn’t cook with heat, it cooks with magnets. Magnets require that the pot is steel or iron, so I can’t use my glass vacuum pot any more. I also can’t use my stove top espresso pot anymore, because it’s aluminum.
You might be able to find some induction coffee brewers.
That sounds very complicated, I don’t think I’ll do it.
If you are grabbing a coffee at a cafe, what is your go-to?
Well, if I’m at a Starbucks, which is always my last choice, I’ll always get an Americano because their drip coffee tastes like ass. I drink coffee black. A cappuccino is alright after a nice dinner at an Italian restaurant.
I really like Thai or Vietnamese coffee. It’s like the coffee equivalent of chocolate milk.
The best espresso I’ve had was in Italy, and it’s not as good in France. In the 80’s and 90’s, if you were in the UK and wanted a cup of coffee, they would bring you a cup of hot water, a spoon, and a jar of Nescafe. That’s how I learned to enjoy tea.
I always buy whole bean, and I really appreciate who I buy my coffee from. We make a drive to Long Beach which is 25 miles from my house and go to a place that roasts the coffee there. There are plenty of trendy places not that far from me, but I’m just not that into them.
I’ve realized I don't really like coffees from Africa, they’re too flowery. I like coffees from Indonesia, and I like darker roasts because I find them to be sweeter.
Guatemala.
I do like Guatemalan coffees, and I remember that one time when Killdozer was in San Francisco, we stayed with a friend that worked at a coffee roasting place. He served us a Jamaican Blue Mountain, which at the time may have been $40/lb. We were all enjoying this cup of coffee, and I believe Dan asked “Paul, do you think it’s worth that much?” and our friend replied “No, it’s just coffee.” You know what though? He was right.
One of my favorite things about when we used to tour Europe was showing up at the venue and there would always be coffee waiting for us, except for in the UK. In the UK, we’d show up and be lucky if there was even a person waiting for us.
Thanks so much, Michael. Lastly, have you heard any good jokes lately?
I haven’t heard any, what’s the next question?
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]]>Hi Matt, thanks for taking some time to talk. Could you tell us a bit about yourself?
I started playing music in high school, very much influenced by punk rock and alternative music that I liked at the time. I started playing shows around the end of my senior year in the band Hurl, and have played and toured in other bands like Don Caballero, The Speaking Canaries, Karl Hendricks Rock Band, Taking Pictures, Slint, Papa M, Implodes, and Circuit De Yeux. I released a solo record a couple of years ago, Weird Times, and have a new one out now called Dream Character.
Matt Jencik, photo by Melissa Grubbs
How did you get started playing music and doing what you are now?
Like I said, Hurl started playing pretty actively after graduating. I think that maybe the next year we put out a single, and then things kind of took off from there pretty quickly. Like a lot of young people that play music, we were super stoked to be doing it. From 19 to about 24 I toured a ton, and it was really great, definitely the time of my life. Hurl broke up (totally amicably) because Noah wanted to leave Pittsburgh, and everyone was like “All right, we did our thing.” He moved, and I did Karl Hendricks Rock Band, and was trying to write songs as well. Noah had originally moved to Austin after leaving Pittsburgh and didn’t like it, and then ended up here in Chicago. At that point Matt & I decided to come to Chicago as well and play more music with Noah, which is how I ended up here. We played in that band Taking Pictures for a couple of years until that fizzled out. I went back to school at that point, and finished all of that.
Then, through working at Reckless, knowing people like Kip McCabe from Louisville, and having played in Don Cab basically led to me trying out for Slint, which didn’t work out. I was told I was in the running but then they didn’t pick me, which was fine because honestly I never understood why they were even trying out Todd Cook. He was obviously who should have had the job, he’s great. The next time around, he couldn’t do it for some reason, so then they called me. I did that off and on for a year and a half or something like that. During that time, and after being finished with school, I was actually pretty reinvigorated to play music. After Taking Pictures had broken up, I actually stopped playing for about 6 months. I didn’t play at all, I was kind of disillusioned and didn’t know what to do. During the Slint stuff, I started playing and writing again, and it was all pretty different than what I had done in the past. Previous bands had been influenced by artists like Mission Of Burma, Government Issue, even Shellac and other Touch & Go type bands. When I started writing music again, I started writing much more sort of fuzzy noise rock type stuff? I remember thinking, even before I started writing the songs, that I wanted the guitar to have this sort of really fuzzy, warm frequency and I was thinking of Lo-Fi bands that I really liked. Flying Saucer Attack, for example. At the same time, I was getting really into Black Metal and stuff like that. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a lot of that music has that same kind of tone; a really fuzzed out, crackly, warm fire sort of sound. That is where I’ve been coming from the whole time since probably 2007. If I could break it down as simply as possible, that was just a world I decided I wanted to live in where the sound is just surrounding you. My preferred way to listen to music is headphones, and I like music to almost feel like you’re in an isolation tank or something like that.
When I was on tour with Circuit Des Yeux, Rob Frye had brought along this Casio keyboard with him, and we started sampling stuff from our iPods and trying to make songs out of them when we were in the van. It was a really fun thing to do because it was so random and you never knew what you were going to get. I had one of those keyboards, so when I got home from that tour I decided to start sampling my own music and trying to make these songs. I’d sample demos that I hadn’t used for anything, I had hours of guitar demos on my laptop. The next thing I knew, I had like an hour’s worth of these sample songs and I sent it to Hands In The Dark. One of those guys, Antoine, had managed a Papa M tour. While we were on tour, he’d play the records they were putting out, and I thought they were great. When I got back, I ordered some for the record store. So I sent it to them and they liked it and agreed to put it out. I thought it was crazy, because I had never even thought of making a solo record. It was never an aspiration of mine at all. It’s funny, because Ken Camden had been putting out all of these solo records while we were in Implodes and it had never crossed my mind as something I could do.
What are some experiences that stand out to you from bands you’ve been involved with?
Beyond what I already mentioned about Hurl, I think the experience I’ll always remember is that it was the band that I learned to play music in, how to play with other people, and how to write democratically. We would just jam until we had ideas. I mean, there were definitely parts that people would bring in and we would expand upon, but that was my biggest take away from that band. You know, collaborating, being excited about playing music. We rehearsed like crazy, we worked really hard, and it was what we all wanted to do.
Hurl
I’d say with Don Cab, the thing I remember is those guys calling me out of the blue because they were in a bind and needed a bass player for this really big show. They’d been asked to play with Helmet and Rage Against The Machine in Detroit on New Year’s Eve, and they called me less than two weeks before that asking if I thought I could get it together in time. I had no idea if I could do it or not. I don’t remember why, but at the time I was in between apartments and living at my parents’ house briefly. I remember putting For Respect on the turntable in my childhood bedroom and trying to learn the bass parts. Knowing that music, you’d understand how almost impossible that was. I’d see them play a bunch of times, so I kind of knew the gist of what he was doing, but in retrospect I think that was hilarious. I was 19 years old, they wanted me to go play this show with these fucking massive bands, and I did. I don’t think that it was probably very good. The show was really big, like in a medium sized basketball arena. I think we played to 7,000 people or something like that. I only practiced with them a handful of times.
Matt performing with Don Caballero
With Slint, the weirdest thing for me will always be trying out. I had never done anything like that before. I had met Brian because Hurl had played with For Carnation a couple of times, but I had never met Britt or David until I walked out on to the stage at the Metro (where auditions were held). They were one of my favorite bands. Hurl actively, unashamedly ripped off Slint, so you can imagine how bizarre that was for me. There were people out in the seats, literally taking notes, and I was among maybe 10 people trying out. They had given me a CD with the bass lines isolated, so it was sort of like the Don Cab thing but in a much more friendly way. Some of those bass lines are pretty weird, and it was kind of hard to figure out what I was doing. I’ve never really tried out for anything else but I’ll never forget how it felt. It was kind of like when you’re watching a movie and someone is trying out for a dance troupe or something. People in the back taking notes, and when you’re done they just say “Ok, Thanks! We’ll be in touch!” Even after having played a ton of shows with them, knowing them personally, and having all of that behind me, that is still the weirdest thing. It wasn’t them being weird or anything, it was just me and what I put on it, and what it represented.
Slint, photo by Mira Shemeikka
When you say that several people were watching you, do you mean the other people auditioning, or who was it?
It was just people in their crew, I would imagine people from the label were there. I don’t really know. The anticipation for a Slint tour was really high, and nobody had ever really seen them except their friends and bands they had played with and a few lucky people, you know. Even before they started playing shows, the hype was pretty intense.
The thing that struck me the most about Papa M was that Dave has built such a legacy for himself, playing with Slint, Stereolab, Tortoise, Zwan, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and all these bands. He’s so respected. When I started playing with him, the whole point of it was his wanting to play the Live From A Shark Cage stuff, a favorite record of mine, which was also surreal even after doing the Slint stuff. With Slint, there wasn’t much room for interpretation, but the thing that was cool about the Papa M stuff was that Dave gave me a certain level of freedom with the songs. I could add my own parts, and he actually let me improvise quite a bit. It meant a lot to me that he thought I could do that. Again, we’re talking about something I was a fan of, and I didn’t want to ruin this music, but he was like “Who cares? Let’s try it a different way.” That honestly gave me a lot of confidence in starting Implodes. I was like 35 when that band started, and by that time a lot of people are already checked out of playing music! I still had the desire.
Papa M performing in Catania, Sicily 2012, photo by Antoine Richard
One cool thing about Implodes is that Ken and I are both from Pittsburgh, but we didn’t really know each other, he’s a few years younger than me. I had seen some of his bands play before I moved, but he was like in high school at that point. I didn’t really know who he was or anything. Then, he moved to Chicago and started working at the record store. Obviously, we grew up in the same city, had some similar interests and whatnot, and we decided that we wanted to start playing music together. It’s kind of funny, but I still remember I was really into British folk stuff like Roy Harper and Bert Jansch at the time, and he also really liked that kind of stuff, and simultaneously we were both really getting into Ethiopian music. The original intent and discussions were about trying to play around with both styles and see what we could come up with. We started jamming, and obviously it didn’t go that way at all. It was much more drone oriented and sounded kind of like Spacemen 3 or something. This was right around that time that I had come out of that funk and started writing those songs, so I asked if he wanted to try to do those. It really kind of snowballed quickly. Next thing I knew, we had a bass player, and we were playing with a drum machine for a while. I was thinking that we should get a drummer to play that isn’t a drummer. For some reason I thought that would be a good way to go; get someone that sounds like Moe Tucker or something. Basically, caveman drumming, you know? So, I asked Justin. I knew he was a good musician, and had drums, but he’s not a drummer. It was totally appropriate. He kind of wasn’t that good, but it was good for what the songs needed. In a lot of ways, that band never really ended, we still talk about doing it. It’s weird, and I don’t know if it will ever happen, but we’ve had discussions as recently as within the last couple of months about doing it. It’s just hard with half of us living in California and half of us living in Chicago.
Implodes
What would you consider the biggest influences on your music, and how have you seen these evolve over time?
I know we both know a lot of people that have dedicated a significant part of their lives to working in the music industry, whether it be a record label or like for me, pretty much my entire adult life working in record stores. Honestly, I’m just a big music fan in general, and I know that sounds funny to say. It’s something that’s in the back of my mind 24 hours a day. Like a lot of people, as I’ve gotten older the things that I’m interested in now are different than 10 or even 2 years ago in some ways. There are also these static things that have always been there.
You know, I’ve been a Beatles fan since I knew about music. I was talking about this with someone the other day, but one of the reasons that I still like them is that as I get older and my perspective on life changes, my view of their music is different. I mean many, many months will go by where I don’t want to hear the Beatles at all, but then I’ll listen to them again and it will be like I’ve never heard it before, or I’ll hear things that I never noticed, or songs that I never really cared for will become my new favorites.
Another example of something static like that would be Neil Young. I love Neil Young, he’s one of my favorite artists in general. But I don’t feel like my view of his records changes over time, really. I like After The Gold Rush for the same reasons now as I did when I was 16.
So, I don’t know if what I’m trying to say makes sense, but there are some things that remain a constant, while others, even though you might think “How many more times can I hear this fucking song?!?”, suddenly hit you in a different way. It’s bizarre. There is stuff that I always go back to. Nostalgia is really big for me. Another band that has always been really big for me is Hüsker Dü. I’ve never not liked them since I first heard them. I still like them a lot, and I don’t think it’s too surprising that they’re a fuzzy frequency band. In fact, the guitar pedal that I used in Implodes is the same pedal that Bob Mould used, and I bought it purposely to have a similar sound. I don’t think that people would listen to my solo music and hear things like Hüsker Dü, Flying Saucer Attack, or things like that, but it’s all in the background. What I mean by that is that the sounds I’m trying to get, in my mind, aren’t that different.
What’s your songwriting process like?
I easily spent the first half of my “career” in music playing loud rock, and while a lot of people that listen to my solo music may not realize it I am coming at this from a rock perspective. I was really into the Aphex Twin record Selected Ambient Works, Vol. 2. when I was in school for photography and would have to sit in front of a computer doing this mind numbing retouching in Photoshop for hours and hours, and I discovered records that would help me through that. That record was really, really big for me because it was ambient music, but it felt like I was listening to pop songs. There was a lot to grasp on to. A lot of ambient music is this like expanded, drawn out stuff, which is fine. I love bands like Stars Of The Lid, whose whole deal is stretched time or whatever. When I started working on Weird Times, my whole perspective was the opposite. I wanted to make ambient pop songs, and that’s why they’re all so short. So, when I was recording I’d usually be improvising and whenever I’d get to three minutes, I’d just stop. The idea behind that was the concept of the 3 minute pop song. Some of them may even be shorter, but that’s where I was coming from. I thought it would be cool, instead of having 4 or 5 longer ideas, to have these little snippets, based on pop or rock structures. So, I wanted to make something that people could listen to while working, or having to do annoying tasks. Something they could grasp onto, but that wasn’t super distracting like pop music or something.
I have my recording set up going all the time, and a lot of the songs are written, recorded, and finished at the same time. I don’t put a ton of effort into the songs, but there are some that I may sleep on and then make improvements to.
The songs I like the most that I’ve written are the ones that are completely spontaneous, ones I’ve had no sort of precognition about. I just sit down and start playing, and then a couple of hours later I have a song. It’s just inspiration and random luck, I guess. Some artists make comments about how you’re just plucking something out of the air that is already there, and you’re just lucky enough to find it. I definitely kind of feel that way sometimes. You can wake up in the morning and something doesn’t exist, and then a little while later it just does.
Ok, Let’s talk about your new record, Dream Character.
Well, I’d say that it’s kind of an extension from the first one. Some of it’s done the same way, I’m still going for that frequency zone that I was talking about. I make most of my music in headphones, which I think helps me get into that space. I think the biggest change I made with this one was that I recorded a lot of it on four-track cassette, which I found allowed me to get those frequencies in ways that I hadn’t before. I did a lot of stuff like manipulating the tape speed, overdubs with different tape speeds, stuff like that. I really love the half speed fuzzy frequencies, where it’s all slowed down and you get a totally different fuzz. When you combine that with overdubs, you can get this super thick layer. For me, it always goes back to the fuzz. It’s always on my mind when I’m making music. It’s almost like the sound of it is more important than the melody. Like I said, before Implodes started, I knew what the guitar sounds would be like before I had songs, and I kind of feel the same way about this four-track stuff.
Dream Character, by Matt Jencik
With Dream Character, I didn’t structure myself as much. There are a couple of long songs, I stopped timing myself and just let it go. There’s a guitar piece on side 2 that’s fully improvised. The only time I ever played it is when I recorded it, I don’t even know if I could play it again. I liked it, I had never done that before and put the song on a record. I was really proud of that. It ended up being a song that the label kind of fought for.
Same thing as before, all of a sudden I had like an hour worth of music and sent it off. I thought it was like in demo stage personally, but the label responded saying “Yeah, we’ll put this out”, and I was kind of surprised.
When I was working on this record, Johann Johannsson died and I was really into his music at that moment. I had always known his music, but I was in a fucking deep dive, so at that time it was really shocking. This was something I thought I was going to get to keep experiencing for years. He wasn’t that much older than me, I think he was still in his 40’s. Anyway, there’s a song on my record that I think kind of sounds like him, and I can tell that he seeped into what I was doing at the time. At the same time, when I hear that song I can hear all the stuff that influences me all the time. Shoegaze, 90’s Britpop, bands like Ride, Slowdive, Swervedriver, My Bloody Valentine. You know, that whole era of guitar music. I don’t think that would be surprising to anyone who has heard Implodes. I feel like it all sort of connects back to that kind of noise, all that sort of pitch bent stuff. Because I am a fan of so many different types of music and I absorb so much of it (whether it be jazz, folk, rock, or whatever,) like any artist, I think all of those weird experiences combine in your head, so when I listen to Dream Character, I can hear all of that stuff in there.
Any plans to play live shows in the near future?
I would like to. I like performing, I like preparing for it, that whole process. Maybe it’s just that I’m a bad self-promoter, but I often find playing shows to be frustrating. I don’t know if it’s just bad luck. Long story short, I’m not in a position right now where I feel like actively pursuing it. Whenever I put a ton of effort into it and then it doesn’t really go anywhere, I get really frustrated, so I’d rather wait around until someone asks me to play, (laughs) but you know how that goes, sometimes people stop asking. I am hopeful about doing some stuff early next year.
Aside from music, do you feel there are movies, books, etc. that inspire your work?
Yeah, a lot of the stuff I’ve been reading over the past few years has been pretty influential. Some horror stuff like Laird Barron and, not to sound cheesy, but when Implodes was going on I was going through a pretty big Lovecraft phase. That definitely influenced a lot of things. I guess I sometimes think about stories I read in similar ways as music, something about reading and interpreting words, which everyone does differently.
The first song on the new record is named after a Laird Barron story, Hallucigenia. The reason I called it that is because I was reading the story and I got so obsessed with it, I was completely in it, in a way that I also feel when I get really into music. His writing has this depth to it, and is just super musical. I decided to call the song that because something about it gave me a similar sensation. Also, I feel that short stories are kind of song-like, and a collection of them is kind of like an album in some ways. His stories tend to connect in ways, not necessarily narratively or thematically even, but there’s this connecting thread. I think the best albums have sort of an album aesthetic, but the songs also stand up individually. I’m definitely a believer in the album as a format, even though some people see that as an outdated concept. I believe in the concept album, or the themed album, and this record is definitely the headspace I was in during that time.
Hallucigenia, video by Yannick Mosimann
The last couple of years have been sort of rough for me, for emotional reasons. I definitely think that out of all the albums I’ve made, this one has the most mental anguish in it. I was definitely experiencing some mental health stuff while I was working on it, and I don’t doubt that’s in there. I can look back and see it better now than I could while it was happening.
I’m always thinking about movies in regards to music, and I’m a big film soundtrack nerd. I feel like some of this could be good in the background of something. When I’m making music, I’m definitely always thinking about visual stuff.
What are you listening to these days?
I’m not sure why, but I’ve always been one of those people that listens to a lot of metal when it’s cold. I like the new Blood Incantation record quite a bit. There’s a band called Tomb Mold that I like. I really like the new Arthur Russell record Iowa Dream that just came out and is not metal at all. I was describing it to someone the other day saying it almost sounds like one of those Jim O’Rourke records on Drag City, just really ornate pop music. I’ve been listening to this for years, but they just reissued No Other by Gene Clark and I’ve been listening to that a lot lately. The remaster sounds really good.
Ok, it’s coffee time. Do you like that stuff?
You know, I like coffee. Yes. I drank a bunch of coffee this morning.
What do you look for in a good cup of coffee?
I’m certainly not an expert, but I don’t really like dark roast very much. I find that to be kind of acidic and burnt. I’ve much more into like medium roast Guatemalan coffee and things like that. I don’t like really acidic coffee, either. It’s good when there are notes of chocolate and things like that.
How do you make coffee at home?
We’ve been using a Chemex for a couple years. I don’t know if I’m right or not, but I just find it to be a much more satisfying cup. It has a much more balanced flavor to it, and I feel like I have more control over the things I like and don’t like in coffee. Whenever I get coffee out, even if it’s a pour over, I usually don’t like it as much.
How do you feel that coffee intersects with your creativity?
I’m not sure. I don’t know that I could say that it does for me. I’m not an all day coffee drinker like some people. I pretty much drink coffee in the morning, getting started with my day. But, I guess that a lot of times when I’m making music, it’s during the time that I normally would be working, so maybe it is pretty important to the process? It’s part of me getting into a certain headspace.
Dead Comet Return, video by Ben Chlapek
Check out Matt's work on his Bandcamp page.
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]]>Hi Bill, thanks for taking some time to Spill The Beans. Could you tell us a bit about yourself?
Well, I’m primarily a guitarist / composer / singer/ songwriter / improviser and I also write a lot of poetry, so things like that. I’ve actually been playing most of my life, I started on guitar when I was nine. I have so many interests and actually like so many bands throughout time and history that I kind of hybridize in my own work, I put those interests and things into an amalgam of sorts. I sort of see myself as this axis of experimental folk, and experimental rock, along with elements of jazz and classical (things I studied) that I always feel work their way in there as well.
This year I’ve put out two records. The one that just came out, Stir, was made with Katinka Kliejn, a cellist here in town. This would be the fourth one on Drag City, who I started to work with back in 2017.
Bill MacKay, self portrait with coffee
You have a ton of releases, as a solo artist, collaborations, and in a band; how did you get started and how did it evolve for you?
Oh yeah, well my family was pretty musical in a sense. My dad was a trumpeter, my brother also played trumpet. My mom sang quite a bit and liked to play piano to some degree. They were really encouraging when I got into the guitar, and through the years never said anything about me doing anything else, because they knew I loved it and that was kind of my direction, you know?
Being so musically oriented in that way, there was always a good variety of music in the house. They were really into Broadway musicals, jazz, and classical. Then there was my brother and his friends’ influence, as well as the rock and blues and other things on the radio at the time. Early influences are of course things like The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and other artists from that era. Another early one would have to be KISS and those types of extravagant, glammy, spectacle oriented musicians.
I just became enamored with it all, and I begged my mom to get me an acoustic guitar that we saw one day at Sears or something. So, she got it for me, and it was $20. I remember the woman who sold it to us gave us a card because her husband taught guitar, and that was my first teacher, Mr. Clark. I get kind of a kick out of it now, thinking about how he would smoke a bunch of cigarettes while teaching a kid. So, that was in Rochester, New York. After that I had an influential teacher named Kevin Morse who played classical guitar and some of that study really stuck with me, like different ways of approaching music and keeping things going, hypnotically, rhythmically, moving along with just the guitar. Later, I studied in Pittsburgh with a great friend who ended up being a mentor to me, Eric Susoeff. And also Joe Negri (perhaps best known from Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood) who is also a great guitar player, and they were both firmly rooted in different jazz traditions. So, I studied with a few really influential teachers here and there, just briefly, but I drew a lot of power from them and just kind of built on those brief periods. A lot of stuff I’ve learned on my own as well.
Photo by Luke Awtry
What are some experiences that stand out to you from this time as you started to become the artist you are now?
So, various facets of my musical sensibilities came from these experiences and it’s all sort of mixed together in my mind. I never thought of a future in music being limited to one sort of image or one sort of person. I was equally enamored with Miles Davis as I was with, say, John Lennon. Lou Reed and David Bowie later, you know. It’s amazing, right? You can just go back and there’s this ongoing archeology of music and all things going on and you can find these new people that feel like old influences but you’ve just discovered them, like Sister Rosetta Tharpe, for example.
So those experiences; playing with those teachers and then early high school bands and stuff started to come together. You know, playing cover tunes by Black Sabbath and the Kinks, stuff like that.
Probably the next major phase was me going to Boston after high school, and I went to Berklee, just for a year. That was a strange school, and also being away from home for the first time, you get kind of drunk on that freedom, you know? I had a very good guitar teacher and lessons very early in the morning, most of which I missed. I could have taken more advantage of that, but I got a lot out of the people and the friends I made there who were listening to different things like Television, and different adventurous rock, all kinds of free jazz like the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians), Art Ensemble of Chicago, etc. So it felt like everything just kept expanding for me, you know?
So yeah; the freedom to move around without parental guidance, new and sometimes strange people around you, being introduced to new forms of art and all these new sounds… it’s powerful!
There’s something about discovering new art through peers in place of teachers that adds impact somehow.
Yeah! It does. Without pondering it too hard, maybe it’s that sense that it’s people with similar experience as you, or it’s just lacking in authority, so you’re a little more open to it?
You just sparked a really funny memory for me, though. James Catello was this really great psych professor and kind of a 60’s radical at Penn Hills (one of the high schools I went to) in Pittsburgh, and he of course incurred a lot of grief and misunderstanding from other teachers and the administration. He was encouraging everybody to be too free, I guess. The funny thing was, we went in one day and there was a substitute teacher and she seemed real cool (I understand now that she was probably a friend of his), and she just said “Hey I’m going to play some way out music for you guys and see what you think.” The first thing she put on was a live Ornette Coleman record, that one from Stockholm, and it just mystified everybody. I was pretty into it, I had already been listening to a lot of Coltrane and various far out music. It was cool, and she just sort of stood her ground. The reactions were sort of incredulous, but she was just like “No, you have to get hip to this”. So that was a moment where the teacher was playing the most way out thing you would expect.
What would you consider the biggest influences on your music, and how have you seen these evolve over time?
That’s a great question when you think about the ongoing landscape of time, you know? Probably, as with a lot of people, you know those things that are foundational just stay there, yet all this new stuff comes in too. Some things that have been with me from early on and still are would be people like the Coltranes, Chopin, Stravinsky, Miles Davis, The Beatles, Bowie, Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground certainly. Then there were people that were added to those trees that became really important, you know? People like Patti Smith, Iggy and The Stooges and so on. Those are like the eternal trees, and there are other eternal ones that have filled in as I went on. I think that when I went to Boston for school, the people that I got turned onto there became really influential. More jazz people, Albert Ayler, The Clash, Elvis Costello. These were people that I was aware of, but became way more prominent at that time.
Some of the people I would reference now really came along a lot later. The funny thing is that they were always there. I think of Bert Jansch and Pentangle, which is more of a recent thing for me, but it’s been I guess eight or ten years, because I was lucky enough to see him the year before he died. Of course, when you hear Bert Jansch, you’re immediately aware of his influence that was obviously already there through the Jimmy Pages and Nick Drakes and all that. So, it’s kind of amazing. It’s like coming home to somebody that you’re already so familiar with. Around the same time I started in on Davey Graham. He and Bert and John Renbourn often get compared together, but they’re just so different. Davey just has that kind of fluidity and wide vocabulary that I associate with Hendrix, as well as John and Alice Coltrane, and those kinds of people. So, he’s been really special to me in recent years.
Also, I love a lot of Indian music and the Indian classical scene, and Ali Akbar Khan is someone that has been so meaningful to me. His phrasing in music is just one of these super primal things of huge importance. It’s so unique, along with the way he thought melodically. That’s been a big thing for me.
There seems to be such a renaissance in music now, it makes it kind of harder to talk about. I feel the influence of people that would be my peers, or other people playing now. There are people from the AACM, that incredible tree of musicians. Sorry, I have trouble reducing sometimes!
One thing I’m noticing, and I can hear a lot of the influences you’ve mentioned in your music, but I am a bit surprised not to hear you mention any of the American primitive guitarists like John Fahey, for example.
You know, I have mixed feelings about that. It’s interesting and I’m glad you brought it up. I feel like Fahey’s influence was so great that it can almost get overstated in one way, because when I think about him, I also think about how I’m so into Lead Belly and all of these other people like Reverend Gary Davis and Elizabeth Cotten who were finger pickers before that, you know? They were doing all this stuff before, but I can also understand why he is this monumental reference point, but it’s interesting to me because I almost never listened to him. I may have absorbed his influence through other people that I listen to, that’s certainly possible and even probable. The other funny point that comes up a lot is that I have actually never been a finger picker, per se. I always play with a pick and that’s an interesting difference. Always a flat pick. I could never get finger picks to work when I would try it. I do always pick with the other fingers, and I call it hybrid picking.
But, I definitely gotta check out this Fahey guy! I’ve heard he’s pretty good!
I’m glad this came up, and I am curious to hear more, because there are two kinds of responses you typically get, and they’re both understandable. One is the people like yourself that actually hear something that sparks that reference, right? They hear it in there somehow, be it from him directly or through another person or sensibility similar to his. The other one always gives me a chuckle, because it’s humorous but I can still appreciate it. One day, I realized that lots and lots of trumpet players probably hear all the time that they sound like Miles Davis. That’s because for most people, that’s like the one trumpeter that they know! I see a lot of humor in that. It happens a lot, especially if I’m playing acoustic guitar.
It’s interesting though, because he was so influential and his sensibilities are everywhere.
If you are really interested, off the top of my head I would recommend his album America as somewhere to jump in.
Oh yeah? Thanks, that’s great! It’s good to have a reference when someone has like 45 albums. Thanks for the recommendation, we can revisit the ballad of John Fahey in our next conversation.
I’ll hear your next record and be like “Oh man, what did I do?!?”
Ha ha! Yeah, I’m going to cover America note for note, a complete transcription!
It’s funny, now that I think about it, I probably haven’t thrown on one of his records in 10 years? I used to spend a lot of time with them. This would likely be the right time, though, I find so much music to be seasonal for me.
Oh yeah! I can relate to that. You find that with various people. Sometimes you talk with somebody, I remember a situation with the Doors, who to me were always a summer band, and my friend was staunchly convinced that they were a winter band.
What’s your songwriting process like? Do you feel you approach collaborative projects differently than when you are working on your own material?
No, not really at all! It’s kind of funny how that is, nor do I see any real difference between the songs I’ve been working on that have lyrics in them or not. It seems like working with people vs. solo, it’s pretty much the same process. Maybe the difference is that sometimes you have songs that kind of come out fully formed, or quickly formed, you know? You’re really lucky and they kind of just fall in your lap. Then there are a lot of songs that, for me, start with a splinter of something, maybe a riff or a certain progression, and then it’s a process of playing it a bunch in different keys, with different feelings and different rhythms? Maybe just revisiting it a bunch over time until it spills into the next part. Eventually you have a whole thing put together, or maybe you have too many parts and you cut one back, you do some trimming.
I think it’s similar that way, but maybe when you’re working with someone else they can pick up that slack for you, continuing it. So, the process of working with Katinka was different than my recordings with Ryley Walker, for example. With Katinka, it was more of her improvising on themes I had already composed. So we revisited these themes, expanded on them and weaved the improvisation all through them. With Ryley, it was more like they were split pretty much down the middle, I think. So, maybe we would have like 2/3 of the song, and then the other person would kind of fill in the rest. Presenting something you had that was already on it’s way, then we’d play it and then the other having an idea that would be added to it.
"Lonesome Traveler" by Bill MacKay & Ryley Walker
While they are different, I also liken them to the same sensibility, because your partner is kind of like a later you adding a section to it, rather than having to wait until it comes out of you yourself. Maybe it’s because as people, we are our own reference points. To me, whether I had written perhaps a more jazz-oriented song for Darts & Arrows, or say Birds Of May on Fountain Fire, the most recent solo album, it feels like the same sensibility, it all comes from the same place in a way. To others, those may seem like wildly different enterprises.
So, tell us about Darts & Arrows.
Well, I never really have put it in its coffin or anything. I think that was advice that Dan Koretzky (from Drag City) gave me once; “Never say anything is over, because then if you ever want to bring it back you don’t have to make it a big deal.” That was kind of funny to me, but true. So, it kind of came out of this free flowing group of people that I was playing with when I got to Chicago. I’ve hit on this before, but not really meeting the sort of rock-oriented people I was looking to work with when I got here, I oriented more toward my jazz side and started to meet people through the Velvet Lounge, jam sessions and things. I just started to orient my writing to different kinds of ensembles. There was an album called Bill MacKay and Sounds of Now, and one called Broken things - Swim to the River, both precursors to Darts & Arrows, and within a similar circle of musicians. So, it sort of started like that, and I oriented my writing that way. Those first two albums have saxophone, double bass, drums and guitar. Darts & Arrows grew out of that, and we did the three records. Ben Boyd was on keyboards for that, who you may know from around Chicago. It was essentially a mix of my moods at the time. Ben wrote a couple of songs for the group, and I did the bulk of the writing. We were jazz-oriented in regards to the improvisation and other aspects like that, but people always remarked on how it seemed to be coming from another place. It was an interesting mix to me, it always seemed like an amalgam of rock, jazz and folk.
"Evergreen" by Darts & Arrows
I’ll definitely say, I think it’s fall and winter music.
Excellent! I might concur with you on that, especially Altamira, the last one. That’s probably my favorite of the three
I appreciate the way you can blend the three without making it sound like Fusion.
That’s wonderful to hear! Fusion is such a problematic area for many of us. There are all these things that I love from that era, but there are also all of these things that are really problematic to me. That was something that was on my mind, something to not do. It was maybe unconscious, but I wanted it to be an organic, warm venture. I didn’t want to get into that decadence that you might associate with the genre. I wanted it to feel sort of raw, which goes along with my general idea of recording. You don’t knock off all of the rough edges or the strange things that happen. You let things breathe and go with the feel of a take before anything else, you know? It sounds so elementary to say, but I hear so many things that appeal to me but leave me thinking “I wish I would have heard how this sounded before the tenth take.”
Let’s talk about your recent release Stir with Katinka Kliejn. How did it come about and come together?
We did the recording of Stir at Experimental Sound Studio, which I absolutely love. I feel like they do some of the best capturing of sound, some of the best recording. I had been kind of wanting to do something related to the Herman Hesse novel Steppenwolf for quite a while. I should have known that this was a theme that people had written something to, but it doesn’t matter. People write a lot of stuff about everything! So Katinka and I had been playing, I had the session set up there, and I said that I wanted to flesh out that piece. As I started writing these motifs, different melodic themes came to me that seemed to fit into some sort of narrative for an instrumental group, and could relate to the themes of the book. Essentially, it was pretty straightforward. We rehearsed, went into ESS with the piece, and we played it from start to finish, with the pauses between sections. On the record you can hear the pauses in between selections, as well as within the pieces, but we played it as one piece with no second takes. I’m really proud of it and it’s still fresh and very meaningful to me. We were kind of on our game, I guess!
Alex Inglezian from ESS recorded it, and Nick Broste did a heroic job mixing it. In a funny way, for only being two instruments it actually required quite a bit of mixing.
Bill and Katinka at ESS. Photo by Ricardo E. Adame
It took me a little while, but I realized that the artwork is entirely comprised of coffee stir sticks.
I think you’re the first person that’s noticed that, or said so! One reason I was skeptical about using it, it’s an amazing and beautiful piece, but I didn’t want to do anything too cheeky or cute. “Stir” to me is an interesting word, which is why we used it, because of all the meanings; stirring the imagination, things stirring in the night, stirring up a crowd. It connected to a lot of things, including the book. The art was too juicy not to use, for the same reason. It’s also subtle enough, because what you are presented with is this wild kaleidoscope of wood pieces, and I’m not even really amenable to using red so much, to dominate a cover so it’s really bold to me in that way. It’s a beautiful red/pink explosion of color.
You recently played a few shows that correlated with the release of Stir. I was particularly bummed that I wasn’t able to make the one in Milwaukee. I’m not exactly sure why, but I really love being up there.
Likewise, I feel the same. It’s got this great feel to it. To me, it’s got elements of both Pittsburgh and Chicago, there’s this tranquility and a vibrancy that I love. Playing at Ken Chrisien’s place, Acme Records, is great. I’ve played there maybe four times now; solo, with Ryley and now with Katinka, and he just always treats musicians so well. It’s usually pretty full, and with a really appreciative listening audience, so to answer your question, the show was awesome! We had a great time, and that felt really good. Elastic Arts here in Chicago was a real ball. A lot of friends came out, as did a bunch of people I didn’t know. We had Timothy Breen doing visuals, which was super special. I always see his work afterward in people’s videos because I can’t really see it while I’m playing for the most part, which is kind of ironic. He does amazing work, so we were really lucky. The following night we went to Iowa City and played in the old state capitol, which is now a museum. We joined a poet from Latvia, who is part of one of the writing programs there. It was really nice, and we got to play an acoustic set with her and then play an electric set after.
"Hermine" by Bill MacKay & Katinka Kleijn, video by Timothy Breen
Those were all very different, in very different spaces. They all felt like we really took some risks and went some places. I was really happy. Now we just gotta pull out some winter music for the rest of the season, if you know what I mean!
Aside from music, do you feel that any particular movies, books, or anything else inspire your work?
Yeah, a number of things! I’ve always been inspired by the topography of Pittsburgh, which for me comes with the symbolism, or resonance of interior images that reside within yourself but come from the land, also. They seem to bubble up from that land for me. That’s always been quite an influence on my writing. On a more concrete level, film has been a big thing for me. We all grew up with film in one way or another, but there was a particular point of time where I saw a lot of films at a place called the Pittsburgh Playhouse which, like it sounds, had been an old live theater in the Oakland neighborhood. It was a remarkable place, close to the University of Pittsburgh. It was one of those places that had like a film every night, you know? Some would maybe be up for two nights or so. They had some very good curators, so what I remember was this rich tapestry of foreign films, a good smattering of Rock N Roll docs, and then really good dramas and things like that. So you might see Taxi Driver, The Wall, and then some Godard the next night. It was such a great thing, going there, and kind of romantic for me too. Speaking of being inspired by locales, being a younger man walking around the Oakland neighborhood, which was more of a punk side of town, or it seemed that way. That’s where you were going to see a motley mix of people, with a punk rock element, a student element, all of that. That was really something to me.
I always had a sense growing up that I was really interested in activism, righting a lot of the wrongs in the world in some way. I was always attracted to that aspect of music too, and felt like that was a big part of it all for me. Getting inspired by the folk music of the 50’s and 60’s, to John Lennon or Bob Dylan, to the inherit cry for justice that you’ll hear from Albert Ayler or things like that. Later on, there was the punk revolution and then Kim Gordon, Yoko Ono, and all of those people. That was a pretty potent thing, too. I remember reading Malcolm X’s autobiography, or watching the “Eyes On The Prize” video series about the Civil Rights movement. Those were other avenues for the fire of creativity in my mind. You still hear it currently, there’s such a weaving of those sentiments. These things all contribute to make that electricity for me.
What are you listening to these days?
This has been a funny month, because I’ve noticed that I shift from listening to a lot of stuff to almost nothing for the same kind of periods. It’s been a quiet one, but I’ve been shifting around some things. One has been Blues Control, my buddy Dmitry was playing me one of theirs that I hadn’t heard called Valley Tangents that was really amazing. I’ve also been checking out some random things; some of Kim Gordon’s new one, some Magic Sam singles… that’s what comes to mind. Right now, but as I said it’s kind of been a quiet month for music.
Ok, it’s coffee time. Do you like that stuff?
Oh, hell yeah. I’m a big fan. I’ve been a big coffee drinker since I was like 15. I started real young because I had a bunch of older friends that all played music, and we hovered around this place in Pittsburgh, kind of like their Denny’s, a franchise called Eat’n Park. I was really amazed by these guys because they could just drink coffee for like 5 hours. Besides having diner food, at Eat’n Park you could just buy a coffee and they’d just keep refilling it! Coffee just went really well with the whole sensibility of a bohemian life and all of that.
What do you look for in a good cup of coffee?
I like coffee with a lot of body to it. A smokiness, or woodiness. I appreciate darker roasts generally. I found that the higher caffeine but weaker brews were not my thing. I don’t know if that makes sense? I kind of veer toward the older school of coffee in that way, but I guess there’s a roast for every taste.
How do you make coffee at home?
We use a metal French press at home, after breaking like 46 of the glass ones.
What are some of your favorite cafes in the city and if you are grabbing a coffee at a cafe, what is your go-to?
I’ve always liked Jumping Bean, Bridgeport Coffee. My wife and I do a lot of walking through the city, sometimes even from Pilsen up to Constellation for a show. I really like Ipsento.
Aside from black coffee, sometimes I like a Cortado or maybe a Macchiato. Occasionally I like a black coffee with just a touch of steamed milk on top. It’s not quite an Au Lait or anything, but just to cut the acidity a little bit.
Are there coffees from particular regions that you are particularly fond of?
I like Ethiopian Yirgacheffes when roasted deeper, and have always enjoyed Sumatras. A lot of the Central American coffees are really good.
How do you feel that coffee intersects with your creativity?
Oh, man. Well, I think of coffee in the same meditative way that others may think of smoking a cigarette, something you do simultaneously, like reading books with coffee. In that way, I think that writing with coffee makes a lot of sense, whether it’s typing or writing freehand. Not only is it the action of it, but also the active agents of the taste, the caffeine, and all of the associations you have with it historically. Poets and songwriters, as well as other times you’ve been drinking coffee. I think it’s really potent in that way, the act of it as well as the substance itself. In the same way it goes along with writing, it goes well with sitting around with a guitar and some paper. It’s just been with me for a long time. I hope some of that makes sense!
Thanks so much, Bill. Lastly, have you heard any good jokes lately?
This isn’t a joke, but a short coffee related story that I find humorous.
I was in Ohio with my friend Jason Ajemian, a great bass player and composer, and we decided to get some coffee. We go into this café, and had been discussing this Clint Eastwood movie from the 70’s in which he walks into this diner he always goes to, and unbeknownst to him, the killer is in there. Everyone is told to stay quiet and act normal until he leaves, and everyone is scared. Clint goes in, sees the same waitress as always and orders his coffee, but she has no way to tell him that this killer is in the diner, other than pouring and pouring and pouring sugar into his coffee. He senses that something’s weird, but just takes his coffee and leaves. After taking about six steps, he turns around on a dime and goes back in and takes care of business. We get back in the car and drive off, and Jason takes the first sip of his coffee and almost spits it out all over the car. I didn’t realize it at the time, but after discussing the film I had pretty much just filled his coffee with sugar!
"Birds of May" from Fountain Fire
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Hi Rik, thanks for taking some time to talk with us. Could you tell us a bit about yourself to start?
Thank you for asking me to do this! I guess I would say that I am a photographer, and I tend to explore in one way or another things that are hidden, not visible or immediately apparent to the eye through different projects. I play with that line of photography’s normal role of documentation.
Rik Garrett
From what I've seen, you’ve been creating amazing photographic work since at least 2003. When did you get started and what inspired you to do so?
I actually started long before that. My mom was actually a photographer. My origin story that I tell is that she always wanted to be one, even from the time she was really young. When I was in elementary school, she decided to really pursue it, so I watched her do that, watched her take these correspondence courses and lessons. I would go with her when she worked on projects, and she actually built a dark room that was right next to my bedroom. So, when I was about 14, I thought I would try it myself. My mom didn’t just let me in there, I had to take a course in school before she would allow me access, but then she would help me out and coach me.
So, I’ve been doing it for a really long time. I latched onto the process, and it just worked with my personality, I guess. Maybe I just don’t show a lot of what I did before 2003.
Did you grow up in the Chicago area?
No, I actually grew up in Washington state, where I am now. I moved to Chicago in 2006 and was there for 10 years.
What would you consider the biggest influences on your work, and how have you seen these evolve over time?
It’s funny, because I feel that there are a lot of different things at different times that have inspired me. When I was in high school, I accidentally found the photography of Man Ray even though I lived in a small town and there wasn’t a lot of access to art, art history, culture and things like that. I learned about Man Ray from John Zorn album covers, so I had to pursue that by myself and it was actually a big influence.
Maybe we’ll come to this later, but right now I’ve been working a lot with things that are maybe less direct camera photography, and maybe more influenced by early psychical research involving photography. So, more experimental spiritual kinds of photography, things that are supposed to be more scientific, using photography as an apparatus to document something. I’ve been really influenced by these projects from the 1920’s and 30’s and those are the theories I’ve been working on right now. That's been moving away from cameras a little bit, but at different times different things have influenced me and it’s such a funny question because when I’m asked, I always forget to give credit to the things that have influenced me. In 2006, after I moved to Chicago, I went to Switzerland and ended up at the H.R. Giger museum. He was someone I had always known of, and he’s one of those people that everyone goes through a phase with and thinking it’s cool, but going to that museum was amazing. Seeing all of these things in person, when they are just humongous, these paintings are billboard sized. You see all these layers, and you don’t get the texture that’s going on when it’s printed in a calendar or a book, you know? I suddenly realized that I was doing a lot of stuff after that trip like layering light and dark, and I think it was influenced by that kind of texture. But, I’m drawing a blank on all the other people that have influenced me and not giving them credit right now! (laughs)
I’d like to talk about each of your series, starting with Symbiosis?
This was a series that was actually about falling in love. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but have done so more recently because people have been caught off guard by that fact. I think people read different things into that series when they see it, but that’s What it was about. At the time, my now wife Jane and I had been out of touch, and were reconnecting and moving ahead with our relationship and I was thinking about how to convey that, or rather work with these new feelings. At the same time I was thinking about things like that in Alchemy there is a figure known as the Rebis which is an androgyne, male and female in one being, and how that can apply to relationships moving ahead, working together as one being, so I started playing with all of that while working on that series. After going through different iterations and experiments, I settled on the final images which are very small, like 3.25” by 4.25” color darkroom prints. I’ve always wished that sense of scale came across online, because it really doesn’t. They’re very small, because I wanted them to be very intimate, you know? When you see them on a wall, you have to get very close to see them, and they are just color prints with paint applied to basically get rid of the lines between two bodies and fuse them as one character. There’s this act of painting that combined the bodies. I ended up doing a small handmade edition of books of that series which ended up getting a lot of attention online. A lot of different websites ended up picking up on that like Huffington Post and things like that. Actually Russian Esquire printed some of the images. It was really weird! There’s an issue with Jake Gyllenhaal on the cover and my images from Symbiosis on the inside.
So the painting is on the actual print, and they are all one of a kind. If you see them in person, you can see the texture.
Images from Symbiosis, courtesy of Rik Garrett.
Earth Magic?
Well, the Collodion wet plate process has a real unique look to it. I first learned it in 2009, and it has such a unique look to it. You can tell what it is when you look at it. A lot of people that use that process have done the same thing with it. It was very popular during the Civil War and the portraits from that time, and there are certain limitations to the process. You have to do it all right there, develop it right after you take the photograph and it’s very involved. So, I started to wonder how I could really make it mine, how can I make this into my own artwork and push the boundaries of it a little bit? I didn’t really think about it until 2010 when I was using the process and looking at it and thought “Boy, this looks like some real witchy stuff!” At the same time, I was reading a lot of 16th and 17th century writings about witchcraft and witch hunting manuals like Malleus Maleficarum and things like that. It was obviously all on my mind at the same time and just kind of coalesced. So, it was kind of like the process influenced the thoughts that went into the series, and there was this give and take in that regard. Also, I was thinking about some early pictorialist photography which I think is maybe not very popular to talk about right now? But there were these people like Anne Brigman doing these beautiful and slightly creepy outdoor things often involving women. Sometimes it lends itself more toward a beautiful outdoor nude and sometimes more of this forest creature. I really liked that and so it was the process, some of the things I had been reading, and then considering some of the early photographers.
Did you shoot that whole series in the woods surrounding the Chicago?
Yeah, it was all around the Chicago area. I grew up out here in Washington, where there are trees everywhere and when I moved to Chicago I loved it and loved having all of the people around, things going on, all of that, but after being there for about a year, I started having forest withdrawal and fixating on it. I started fetishizing the idea of what nature meant, so when I started the Earth Magic series, it was obviously influenced by that. It was all done in woods in and around Chicago, and there were deer out there! That totally caught me off guard. There were times I was taking photographs and like 10 deer would walk by. I always thought that if I had been doing this in Washington it would be so much better, because there would be all these trees and would involve all of these dynamic forest areas that would be really fun to work with, but it was so perfect in Chicago because most of those photographs were taken in September, October, and even November but it’s not evergreen trees, all the leaves are gone, it’s these scraggly, spindly looking trees that were perfect for the series.
Images from Earth Magic, courtesy of Rik Garrett.
Another aspect to Earth Magic that pertains to Chicago: I started a blog called Occult Chicago that is probably pretty embarrassing to look at now, because I was really just kind of learning about things and putting it out there, I wasn’t an expert about anything. I knew I was going to be staying in Chicago for a while and I wanted to learn about the history because it’s really, really rich regarding different occult movements, leaders, writers, publishers and organizations. It’s just so vast. So this blog just helped me put this information out there, and as a result of that, the publisher Fulgur found my work and contacted me to do the Earth Magic book.
I initially had done a small handmade edition before I was contacted by Fulgur. I like to make books and I had this hand bound edition, and then when the book was published, it had a regular standard edition and a deluxe edition, which sold out the day it was announced. It had a dark room print in it, a clam shell box and things like that.
Earth Magic - standard edition from Fulgur Press.
Oh man, I love the aspects of Washington state and the Northwest that you are talking about, but totally see how this worked well out here.
For sure, we definitely have the whole Cascadian Black Metal thing going on out here!
Wonders of the Unseen World?
This is another collection of different projects that started out with me fixating on different ideas from different times regarding the Earth being hollow. It starts out seeming like a real wild and hair brained idea, but the more you read and learn about it, you learn that it’s an idea that keeps coming up over and over throughout history. It consumes people. There are different cultures from all over the world and throughout history that believe that mankind basically came from underground originally. You find different ideas about a utopia in the middle of the Earth, or passageways at the poles where there is a secret world, usually called Agartha. So, I started reading about this and really fixating on it, because that’s what happens. There’s a certain type of madness that takes over when you decide to indulge this at all. I started playing with the different theories while I was still in Chicago, trying to think of how to explore this idea. There are a couple of different groups there. There are some images where I took photographs... Ok, I basically stole photographs from other people, which I saw as a repurposing, or reimagining… kind of a collage tradition. I took a lot of images from books of photographic history, of things that were more of the outside world and tried to make them feel internal, or like portals, or kind of play with the inside and the outside. There are various different thoughts, like in the Alchemical tradition there’s the emerald tablet which states That which is above is like that which is below, so I started playing with that idea. The inside of the Earth, or a portal or hole… taking the first photograph of the moon, rephotographing it and then manipulating that image until it becomes something totally different, and it looks like a hole. Also, the first photograph of the human eye, the retina, and turning it into something totally different.
Images from Wonders Of The Unseen World, courtesy of Rik Garrett.
This is one I’m still not very good at talking about, so I need to work that out! It really doesn’t make any sense when I talk about it. I worked on it for years and even had the show, and I still wasn’t good at explaining where I was coming from.
I made a book (because I fixate on books) where I took this early 20th century astronomy book, and I started painting over the pages and adding my own photographs, adding found photographs of different things. So, it was kind of this wordless book that turned into something about going inside, both going inside of yourself mentally as well as going inside of the Earth using an outer space theme and turning it on its ear a bit. That book was included in the exhibition.
So that is a very long and rambling explanation that didn’t really go anywhere!
No, no, no! I find it all very interesting. Actually, and you and I discussed this over email, I actually lifted and tweaked imagery I use for one of my coffees from the Hollow Earth Society of Chicago.
Yeah! Cyrus Teed. He was in Chicago for a little bit. We talk about people fixating on this, and then it takes over their mind and their sanity… He started out having kind of a Christian sect and talking about the hollow Earth and the next thing you know, he and all of his followers end up in this living arrangement in Estero, Florida, this hellish swamp, trying to prove that we are in fact living on the inside of the Earth! It’s amazing and saddening the way that it takes over, and I love it! Did you know about this thing they did on the beach? They were trying to prove that we are inside of a sphere, and they built this device called the Rectilineator; this saw horse looking thing, and they spent ages plotting the beachfront in Florida trying to prove that eventually it curves upward. It’s just amazing!
Oh, wow.
Yeah, when you contacted me I looked you up, saw that packaging and figured we’d be able to have a good conversation!
Rare Earth label by Ben Chlapek.
One last series, Subtle Bodies?
I’m excited to talk about this, because I haven’t had much of a chance to yet. It’s a collection of things I’ve been working on since 2010 or somewhere around there. I’m especially excited because I recently had an exhibition of this work in Seattle and I’ve made a book of this series as well, but I’m not hand binding them I’m having them printed. In relation to the show, I did a couple of lectures on the history of these processes, and talked a bit about my work and experiments, as well as photographers that dealt in the same ideas. I spoke at the Buckland Museum of Witchcraft in Ohio, and in Chicago as well.
It’s a variety of different theories based on historical processes used to examine the invisible. So, things like aura photography, spirit photography, thought photography and things like that. People invented photography as a medium to document the world and to document what was visible, allowing you to have a record of grandpa who otherwise would have been lost to time, and no one would have ever remembered what grandpa looked like, but then you could take a picture and generations would get to see him. I get excited about this and think it’s so wonderful, but almost immediately, people started trying to do things to capture what you couldn’t see. People were trying to capture ghosts and spirits, these types of images. It coincides with the spiritualist movement that was happening right when photography was really booming. This movement was based on direct contact with spirits, almost like a free for all and direct relationship allowing to document auras, life force, etc., So all these different innovations, procedures and approaches were devised. Subtle Bodies is this sort of umbrella I have used to encompass all these projects I have been working on for a long time. A lot of the projects involve Kirlian photography, which was invented by a married couple in Russia in the 1930’s which involves an electrical discharge to highlight, illuminate and photograph an aura. I modified this in order to do different things. With the Kirlian process, you can really just take photographs of small things. The really common stuff is a fingerprint, or a leaf, or something like that but I’m in my studio right now and I’m staring at a 9 foot long scroll of a photograph of a whole human body on color photographic paper, which is an absolutely insane process. So, I have been really excited to show these, because they don’t look at all like what you’ll see online. You don’t get any sense of the scale and the scope of this. There’s just amazing textures and I’m impressed with all of the things I happened to get out of this because I don’t even really know what it’s going to look like, so there’s really an element of the unknown. I hadn’t had a proper show in a long time, so I’d been busy preparing that, and working on the book which actually has words in it. I don’t really like to talk a lot, but I realized that this stuff needs some explanation to give people a starting point to try to understand what in the hell I’m trying to do here.
Images from Subtle Bodies, courtesy of Rik Garrett.
How did you learn about all of these processes that you utilized in Subtle Bodies?
Um, there’s a lot of reverse engineering that goes on! There are a lot of old books on spirit photography and Kirlian photography from the time they were invented. Also, I think a lot of people are into this now, there’s been kind of a resurgence over the past few years, but there was also one in the 70’s, so a lot of people were talking about it then. So, different texts from different times and then I try to just play with it, explore it to make it work.
Do you deal strictly with film vs. digital photography?
Yeah.
What’s your set up like at your studio? You just mentioned a 9 foot print.
Well my studio is in a garage, which I am very lucky to have. To do those scrolls, it actually happens in a trough or wallpaper tray, and you roll it up. It’s not like you have a 9 foot tub for the chemistry. You just kind of roll it through.
Aura 4 from Subtle Bodies, courtesy of Rik Garrett.
You lived in Chicago for several years and are now back in the Seattle area. What do you see as the similarities in the two cities and what do you see as the differences?
I’m naturally not very good at getting out and being social, so living in Chicago was actually very good for me in that respect. You’re kind of out in the middle of a city, no matter what. You run into people, you end up places, things like that. Here, it’s a little easier to get isolated. This was something I learned when I moved to Chicago, and learned again after moving away. I’m really happy to be here, but it is very different. It’s just kind of a different pace. I love seeing the trees everywhere, and I love all that. The place my show is at, Mortlake & Company, is a pretty amazing space. It’s an Occult bookstore and it’s an art gallery. It’s run mainly by William Kiesel, who also runs Ouroboros Press, so it’s a great “Ground Zero” for a lot of the stuff I’m into and the things I do. For a person that’s not very good at going out and being social, it’s great. There are a lot of people here, and I feel like this area naturally attracts certain people that gravitate toward certain things. Also, they have a book fair every September called Texts and Traditions and people come from all over the place. There a lectures, and rare book sellers, and it’s exciting. There are people doing things here, so that’s something I like about being here. It’s blown my mind to get to be a part of that and show at that location, and meet some exciting people doing interesting things.
Do you feel like that community thrives more out in Seattle compared to Chicago?
In some ways… I mean Chicago has some things that are kind of hard to beat. There’s the Occult Bookstore, the nation’s oldest of its kind. I think in Seattle, out of necessity, even though it’s not a small town, when there is something specific like this people tend to gravitate toward it more? I don’t want to say DIY, but things pop up in kind of interesting places and that’s kind of an exciting aspect here.
I’m a nerd for it, but it’s hard for me not to think of the atmosphere out there and what your describing and not thinking about the weird fiction of Laird Barron as well as Twin Peaks, both of which are perfectly set in that environment.
Yeah! Well, I’ve definitely told people before when I’ve been in other places that there is a reason that Twin Peaks was set here, you know? Also, when they did a remake of the movie The Ring, they moved it to Seattle. They had to find a place in the United States that could match that weird gloominess, and they found the right place.
What are you listening to these days?
Well there’s usually Black Sabbath nearby as a general rule, and one band I always want to tell people about is Taurus, which is Stevie Floyd from Dark Castle. I think they just have 2 records and they are both amazing. I’ve been listening to them all the time since I found them like 3 years ago. Also, I’ve been going back and listening to one of my favorite bands from when I was like 18, and that’s Neurosis. I’ve been enjoying it, it’s been nostalgic and I set aside for quite a long time so that’s been fun.
My wife and I just got some new speakers, we still had some that we found in an alley in Chicago around 2011, so it was exciting to be able to actually buy some speakers deliberately. I think they were the last thing we had that were an old Chicago alley find! So that’s why we’ve gone back and listened to all the Black Sabbath, Neurosis, etc.
Ok, it’s coffee time. We’ve established that you like coffee?
Mmhmm.
What do you look for in a good cup of coffee?
Oh my gosh. Well, I drink quite a lot of coffee, and I gravitate toward Guatemalan and Central American coffees. I’m not sure what the proper description would be, but they tend to have a quality that’s like round? I don’t know what that means!
I know exactly what you mean!
Ok, so how would you describe that?
They tend to be less acidic, and Central and South American coffees have more of a chocolate or caramel aspect to them as compared to say African coffees, which have a tendency to be brighter, with more acidity, citric and floral notes. Round is a really good description, as they also tend to have a heavier body.
Yeah, like Ethiopian coffees tend to be more floral and bright. I tend to lean toward something with more of brown sugar or fig notes, or something like that.
I tend to like a medium roast. I had that time period of being absolutely dirt poor and drinking Cafe Bustelo for many years. Basically anything that cost $3 and felt like “Wow! I sure am drinking coffee right now!’ is what I went with for a long time, and then I had the opportunity to learn and grow in this world just a little bit and try some new things! I’ve definitely picked up more of the nuance than during the college student experience.
How do you make coffee at home?
Well, on a day like today when I have a little more time, I’ve been doing a V60 pour over, which is nice. On more of a busy day, I’ve got a Buona Vita and that does pretty well in a pinch, but if I’ve got the time, I like to do a pour over normally. I used to have a Chemex, but I think I broke 3 of them, and then I gave up.
I’ve actually had one for 8 years, but now that I’m saying this I’m sure I’ll break it.
Ohhh. Yeah. Well, that’s amazing, and you must be less clumsy than me.
So, I also have an Aeropress. They’re nice, and fun for different things. Those are my main ways to make coffee at home.
Are there particular cafes that you where you’re at? Also, if you are grabbing a coffee at a cafe, what is your go-to?
Yeah! In Chicago, I liked to go to Wormhole, and sometimes I’d go to Ipsento. Out here, and I actually live in Takoma, there are some good places doing good things for sure, and the place I like in Takoma is called Lift Bridge. In Seattle, this is both great and dangerous, there’s a coffee place called Slate Coffee and it’s right next to an Occult bookstore called Edge Of The Circle which is really good. So, if I’m not careful, it’s kind of an all day event where I spend any money I have at all. You get some coffee beans, you get some coffee, and then you accidentally spend a bunch of money on books, and then some of my favorite Thai food is around the corner. I have to be careful about when I go to that block, otherwise it’s all over.
I tend to get a pour over, Americano or latte. Sometimes an espresso, which I would probably get more often, but I usually want to sit and have the experience of hanging out longer.
How do you feel that coffee intersects with your creativity?
I always load up on coffee before I go into the darkroom. I think I already mentioned that i started doing things in the darkroom when I was in junior high, and it was at home in a more casual approach. Later, when I went back to school everyone was like “You can’t bring food or drink into the darkroom!” but I had already been doing it for ages at that point! So, I’m always bringing coffee into the darkroom and spilling things, even though I guess you’re not supposed to do that? You’ve got all this chemistry and you should probably not be drinking cups of coffee right next to these chemicals. Coffee is always the first step before I go into the darkroom though, or even if I have to sit down and work on something.
After all these years, have you ever had any mishaps with coffee in the darkroom?
Never. I should be careful about that because I feel like I’m going to set myself up like you said earlier about your Chemex! I feel very at home in the darkroom, so in some ways I may throw caution to the wind. In Chicago there was a community darkroom that I used for a little bit there, and it was right by Big Shoulders at the time. They made this crazy strong iced coffee and I’d drink two and lose my mind in the darkroom. When I did the Earth Magic deluxe editions, I had to do 35 prints of this really difficult to print glass plate, and so it was a real feat to pull off. I hadn’t done 35 prints of one image in one sitting ever before.
Have you heard any good jokes lately?
I read through your questions, saw this one and was petrified! I told my wife and she said “You say funny things to me all the time!” and I said “Yeah but that doesn’t make them jokes!”
Have you heard any good jokes lately?
Only from the people that do these. That’s basically why I ask.
Many thanks to Rik. Learn more about his amazing work by checking out his site!
Use the code AURA at checkout to receive 20% off of your first order!
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Hi Sam, thanks for taking some time to Spill The Beans. Could you tell us a bit about who you are and what you do?
My pleasure. I’m a freelance illustrator and toy maker working out of Philadelphia, PA. I don’t really have a specific market I work in, but my art tends to lean toward Halloween, Horror and the Macabre. I work in pen and ink with occasional digital color. Current clients include Cadabra Records, Abomination Brewing and other various breweries and distilleries, and a smattering of Halloween merchandisers, just to rattle off a few. I also run a micro toy company, HH Toy and Novelty. We do several releases a year in both resin and PVC, and the toys tend to stick to Horror and Folklore themes.
You’ve been creating amazing spooky illustrations for years now. When did you get started and what inspired you to do so?
Awww shucks, thank you. I was a doodler all through school. When it was clear I’d never be captain of the football team, my parents started signing me up for Saturday art classes and pre-college art classes. My brother, three years my senior and also a freelance illustrator went to college for illustration, and I followed, graduating with a BFA that serves me about as well as a waiter with no appendages. Inspiration… I really couldn’t tell you. I really saw no other option. I didn’t think I could be happy going to a traditional college and having a 9 to 5 in a non-creative field. I was getting freelance work right out of college, but it took several years to brush off the shackles of an hourly job and go full freelance illustrator. It took all the longer because I’ve been very stubborn about what I create. If I pushed my work lighter, less detail driven, made it more approachable, I probably would have been doing this full-time much sooner, but I would have been less happy with my work.
Lantern Jack, by Sam Heimer.
What would you consider the biggest influences on your work, and how have you seen these evolve over time?
Memories of Halloween growing up in any-town America in a Philly suburb. Every year I try to capture that magic and I think I’m getting closer. Short horror fiction definitely played a part. My favorite artists growing up were Edward Gorey, Posada, Dore and Guy Davis. All artists with an engravers line quality and a great sense of humor. I’m not sure why I never went into engraving. I’d probably really enjoy it. Beyond that, vintage graphic design, older architecture, folklore and mythology all rear their head in my work.
What’s your artistic process like?
Everything starts with a little rough thumbnail. From there I do a tighter sketch to scale and ink. The rest is built as if it was analog photoshop, where all the shadows, highlights and colors are inked (in black) on separate pieces of semi-transparent layout comp. While I never have a physical 'finished’ piece, rather a stack of bristol and paper, working in these layers affords me maximum control of the outcome without having to touch a computer till the very end. When all of these layers are finished, it’s all scanned, collated and tightened up. Also, I always work to scale. I hate blowing up or shrinking down my work, it tends to distort the fine detail I use, so I always try to have a firm grasp of the output and final product.
Big Night
Can you give us some examples of your work that you are particularly fond of, or have an interesting story about?
Fond of? All the firsts. My first spot illos in Weird Tales magazine so I could brag about being published in the same magazine as Lovecraft. My first beer can because my very first target marketing campaign out of art school was to Craft Beer Companies, and it took 10 years for me to get a job doing a beer label. The first album I did the art for. I appeal to a niche market within a niche market, so any time I have a first within a new market, it’s pretty cool. These are the jobs I have a soft spot for.
Cthulhu
As far as interesting story; for a while I was carving illustrations into the seats of antique chairs. A special effects makeup artist commissioned me to do four for him. A year or so later he hit me up with illustration work designing a Satanic full-back tattoo for the main bad guy in the final season of the show Banshee. The first glimpse of it, he’s cutting out a woman’s heart. While you never really get to see the full design in the show, which was a bummer, it was a ton of fun to do, and Frederick Weller, Peter Weller (Robocop)’s son, was the one sporting it. They were supposed to send me one of the SFX tattoo’s as part of payment but never did. I had planned on slapping it on my Dad and having him walk around the beach wearing it. Would have been a hoot.
Tell us about the Order Of The Thinned Veil…
The Order of the Thinned Veil is a side-project Jason McKittrick (@the_cryptocurium) and I do annually. It’s both a love letter to Halloween, and a way for us to celebrate and create Halloween art all year long. This is the third year we’ve done it and we’re still growing it and making changes as we go. Basically it’s a tiered membership, where each tier gets resin pieces from Jason, art prints from me, and other membership items like an enamel pin, certificate, local pumpkin seeds, etc. In addition to getting cool Halloween art throughout the year, there’s contests, events, member’s only items, and a big annual Halloween party/art show here in Philly. Spend a few minutes looking at my art and it’s pretty obvious my “happy place” is decked out in black and orange streamers and Jack-o-lanterns, so starting OTV was kind of a no-brainer for Jason and I.
You’ve essentially always been based in or around Philadelphia. How do you feel that region has affected your work?
I’ve never really thought about that. The Northeastern weather, specifically how I remember autumn as a child, definitely plays a part in a lot of my more personal work. Philadelphians are known to have self-depricating humor so that probably shows up in my art. And the settings I rely on are largely based on PA farmland and smaller towns outside the city. As a whole, I don’t think were I physically am plays a conscious role, but over the years has definitely had an impact.
What are some upcoming projects of yours that we can look forward to?
I was asked by a real-deal art toy company to design them some toys. I’m not sure if I can openly talk about it because it’s behind schedule and they have yet to announce it, but holy fuck these things are going to be cool. My toy company has Mythos In My Pocket series 2 coming out in a few weeks. 6 new sculpts based on the writing of H.P. Lovecraft. We’ve also got a few more figures in the pipeline. I’m also working on a handful of personal pieces for the Halloween season, as well as a little comic of sorts about Halloween. OTV has a liquor in the works with Rowhouse Spirits that’ll be coming out in time for the Holiday. Last year we collaborated with Rowhouse on a release that was a Pumpkin Spice Whiskey so this will be volume 2 in the series. And I’ve got art on several new upcoming beers with Abomination coming out over the next few months. And for the Philly natives, I’m showing work around the city AND tabling at a few events between now and October.
Mythos In My Pocket series 1, from HH Toy and Novelty.
What are you listening to these days?
In the studio, mostly all of Do Make Say Think’s albums on repeat and a mixed playlist of Philip Glass. I can’t do music with vocals while working. It makes the passing of time more obvious and when you’re inking shingles on a roof or a pile of intestines for several hours you don’t want to have a clock on the mind. Outside the studio: Built to Spill, Archers of Loaf, Andrew Bird, Tom Waits, Hot Snakes, Budos Band, a mix of dusty Jazz and Blues.
Ok, it’s coffee time. Do you like that stuff?
Love it.
What do you look for in a good cup of coffee?
Life giving sustenance. Flavor wise, dark and roasty. I can’t handle the acidic, citrusy, tea-like ones all the kids are raving about lately.
How do you make coffee at home?
I buy whole beans, grind myself, and brew with a 4 cup French Press. If it wasn’t so cumbersome, I’d drink right from the press like it was a 7-11 Big Gulp cup.
If you are grabbing a coffee at a cafe, what is your go-to?
Small hot. I don’t do large because the small makes me stretch my legs and get out of the studio for a few minutes. I’ve got the baristas at my local spot trained pretty damn well, and they spread the word to new employees. I don’t have to say anything beyond ‘Good Morning’ and it’s there waiting for me. The next time they see me, they know it’s a refill. The next time it’s a cold brew. I highly value silence, not having to talk if not necessary, and them being able to read me like a large-print book. And yes, on days when I don’t brew my own out of time constraints or laziness, I will go there 2-3 times a day. I’ve never asked, but I’m sure I’m their best customer by leaps and bounds. And their drip brew is my local favorite; La Colombe Corsica.
Are there coffees from particular regions that you are particularly fond of?
South America… I think… but I’m honestly not sure. I’m not the most adventurous when it comes to coffee. Yes, I love the flavor, but it’s higher purpose is dragging my ass through the day. I should probably start making a mental note of the roasts and regions I enjoy.
How do you feel that coffee intersects with your creativity?
It definitely drives it. I mean, yes, it’s an addiction I rely on to get through my day, but if I’m not bright-eyed and bushy-tailed with a cup of coffee in hand, I’m not working at full potential.
Also coffee and art related; I recycle all the to-go cups and use them to pour resin when making toys. So if you own any HH Toys stuff, know that I indirectly had my mouth on it, in that the resin was poured from a cup I drank from. Don’t you feel closer to me now?
Thanks so much, Sam. Lastly, have you heard any good jokes lately?
Yeah. America.
Be sure to check out more of Sam's incredible work and his shop for prints and toys!
]]>Hi Rachel, thanks for taking some time to talk with us. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself?
I am a life-long Kentuckian, and I feel most comfortable near to the sounds and rhythms of nature. I have played piano from a very young age, and eventually figured out how to wrangle the musical ideas out of my head and hands and onto paper or the computer and work them into compositions. I really enjoy improvising and playing all kinds of music with other musicians. Film and music offer me endless adventures of the imagination.
Rachel Grimes
You have been involved with a tremendous amount of artists and projects over the years, and I first learned of your work through Rachel’s, when Handwriting was released in 1995. How did you come to get involved with Jason and Christian?
While I was in college, I was playing bass in a rock band called Hula Hoop. We played shows around Louisville with Rodan and many other local groups. I got to know Jason through the music scene, and he and I started writing songs for piano and acoustic guitar just for fun. We were not really intending to start a band, but once we recorded a couple of demos, one thing led to another, and then we asked Kevin Coultas to play drums. Jason shared those demos with Corey Rusk at Touch & Go Records, who invited us to record an album. Jason wanted to include some string pieces he had recorded with Christian in Baltimore several years prior. I met Christian when we got together to learn and record “Southbound to Marion”, a piece for viola and piano, for that first album. It was only as the release date was looming in the spring of 1995 that we realized we needed to actually have a band so that we could have a release show. We played the first show with Kevin, John Upchurch on clarinet, Eve Miller on cello, and Bob Weston running sound, and occasionally playing trumpet and bass. We went on tour that fall with June of 44, with my brother Edward playing drums, and Greg King showing Super 8 films and playing vibes.
The official video for "Southbound to Marion" off of Rachel's "Handwriting".
I remember being somewhat surprised to learn that you were not the namesake of the project! How did the Rachel’s come to be called such?
Jason had a dark, neo-Goth keyboard and vocals solo project in the early 90's that he called Rachel’s Halo. The name was inspired by the replicant Rachel in the film “Bladerunner”. When Jason met Christian in Baltimore and found out that he was a viola player, they worked together to transcribe the keyboard parts into a low-end string quartet to create the string recordings at the Hat Factory. Those couple of songs were included in Handwriting and after some debate, we agreed to drop the Halo part of the name and go with the more obtuse (and forever confusing) Rachel’s.
Beyond Rachel’s, You have been involved in a multitude of amazing projects over the years, as well as had your work performed by several different artists. Do you feel that you have approached these musical projects from a similar place, or tried to achieve something different with each?
Every project and collaboration is a different adventure, influenced by who is involved and so many unique factors of that moment in time. Because I grew up listening to and playing all kinds of music, I am open to trying just about anything. I love having film or imagery to respond to, or a particular instrumentation, subject, or purpose for which to write.
With such an expansive body of work, could you please share some moments that have stood out to you over the years?
Getting to record three Peel Sessions at Maida Vale
Touring a swath of the US, opening for PJ Harvey
Driving the 15-passenger tour van down Lombard St. in San Francisco
Playing a Rachel’s show in Catania, Sicily to a packed theater of very raucous school children
Sharing tears with numerous people over the years who have opened up with the music
Watching my brother’s face light up with awe and joy as we surveyed the 30-some guitars that Jimmy Page brought to Abbey Road - Steve Albini was recording with Page and Plant at the time (I think it was 1997) but the artists were out for a meal, and we snuck into the live room to have a once-in-a-lifetime peek
Recording on an immaculately tuned Steinway in Antwerp - such glistening overtones
Playing the piano in the very center of the Louisville Orchestra with conductor Teddy Abrams, along with a 40-person choir, and numerous musician friends for the premiere of The Way Forth last February
What would you consider the biggest influences on your work, and how have you seen these evolve over time?
My life experiences play a huge role in shaping the direction of the music I am working on at any given time. I am often reflecting on things happening around me and in the world, and responding to other musicians and their ideas to build something unique to that moment. I am more and more interested in flexibility of style and technique, and remaining mentally open to whatever might take shape. The music I played along with my father and grandmother was influential on my interest in learning more early ragtime and jazz standards. All the records I have listened to time and again, too numerous to recount, have made their mark. And I’m deeply influenced by my piano teacher Doris Keyes who always emphasized the musical gesture and phrase of Debussy or Chopin or Bach, and never stopped encouraging me to follow my own voice.
Your newest release, The Way Forth, is coming out in November on Temporary Residence, Ltd. Tell us all about it!
Well, that would be a LOT to tell! It has become a very large scale project, following it wherever it leads me creatively since I started working on it in 2016. The piece is a folk opera and film, and can be performed live with a chamber ensemble and small chorus, or full orchestra and choir. There is live-operated film for the performance, and soon will be a feature length film version which has documentary style interludes giving some backstory to some of the characters and historical topics. The music came in response to a process of trying to organize and understand a treasure-trove of family documents, photos, and letters spanning several generations of several branches of my family. The songs weave back in time through a postcard, a personal account of a long life on a farm, traces of folk tunes, names, places, and rivers, all woven into an emotional fabric of yearning, nostalgia, grief, and the rich intimacies of everyday life. There are solo voices of women, narrators, a choir, strings, harp, percussion, guitar, banjo, clarinet, and piano with quotations and arrangements of traditional church music and popular tunes. The lyrics reflect on a place battered by greed, civil war, bigotry, and the exploitation of natural resources. Sooooo, kind of a big one….
I’ve always known you to call Kentucky home. Is that where you’re originally from?
Yes - born in Louisville, KY, and lived in the state my whole life. Both of my parents and generations of their families are from Lincoln and Madison Counties in central KY.
Do you feel Kentucky has impacted your work in any way?
This is a beautiful, nature-rich, ancient place, with complicated people and history. There are so many accents, terrains, styles and opinions. I never tire of driving the back roads and seeing how people live, the small towns, the barns and fences, rivers and streams, meeting so many unique characters along the way. My life and my family’s history is so tied up here, that I can’t objectively imagine what my work would be if I were from anywhere else.
Anything you are working on currently?
I am working/editing alongside friend and collaborator Catharine Axley to shape the rough cut of the feature length film version of “The Way Forth”. I’m also re-familiarizing myself with the soundtrack that Matthew Nolan and I created a couple of years ago for the Weimar-era silent film “People on Sunday”, which we are performing soon in Ireland. Just got out of three days in the studio with band mates in King’s Daughters & Sons - we were mixing three songs we recorded in early 2012 and are very happy to have had this time together to finally get these songs in shape.
What are you listening to these days?
I am listening right now to the sounds outside my window - gentle, late summer crickets and zooming and chirping hummingbirds. I need quiet for my brain to work smoothly, especially if I am practicing, writing, or editing music. I like to cook with NPR radio kind of shows on. I am stuck on using an old Boards of Canada CD for my mat workout routine. Been driving with the last couple of Loscil records, and the Selecter Greatest Hits, which my husband introduced me to recently - totally missed them back in the day. And the Kate Moore piano album “Dances and Canons” if I want to put something beautiful on the living room stereo - excellent pianist Saskia Lankhoorn.
Ok, it’s coffee time. Do you like that stuff?
Yes, as an occasional treat, especially with a sweet baked good.
What do you look for in a good cup of coffee?
Nice full, dark roast, with heft but no bitterness or burned overtones.
How do you make coffee at home?
I have a hot water kettle and insulated stainless press pot just for coffee. I must admit that I am actually a daily tea drinker, and so coffee is usually for weekends with friends or family visiting.
If you are grabbing a coffee at a cafe, what is your go-to?
Cafe au lait, latte, or mocha - whole milk, little bit of cane sugar. In the summer, there is this killer iced coffee at Red Hot Roasters in Louisville, made with coconut milk and dark chocolate, whirred up in a blender. Not strictly coffee but an incredibly refreshing pick me up.
How do you feel that coffee intersects with your creativity?
Coffee can be a real energizer that helps with focus. But I usually drink tea, black, oolong, or green since it is a bit gentler on the nerves.
We highly recommend checking out Rachel's website for tons of great content and information on what she's up to, but wanted to make sure you saw this video!
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I’m an artist and scholar. Mostly I’ve written songs and poems, but I also have a memoir about my obsession with the horror genre coming out next year. I have an MFA and a PhD and most of my employment has been as a teacher. I was born in Los Angeles in 1985.
Claire Cronin
Earlier this year, your second release Big Dread Moon came out on Orindal Records. When did you start writing music and what inspired you to do so?
I started playing guitar when I was four years old because my dad pushed me into it, which was both good and bad. I wanted to play the flute or harp but he thought guitar was more practical and had secret ambitions that I would become a rock star. I wrote my first song in first grade (it was about an angry dog) and have been doing it since then. I self-released a lot of CD-Rs and tapes in high school and my early twenties. My first label release was a record called Came Down a Storm that Ba Da Bing put out in 2016. It was a collaboration with John Dieterich, though it’s listed as a “Claire Cronin” album. Big Dread Moon was my first label LP that was wholly my own work.
Big Dread Moon, by Claire Cronin. Available on Orindal Records.
Aside from music, you are also a published author. Can we talk a bit about that?
Sure. I see songwriting, poetry writing, and prose writing as interrelated, because I have only one mind and the things I read, watch, and listen to get filtered through my experiences and abilities. I’m not even sure I can articulate the differences between these forms anymore because I feel like I’m exploring the same emotions and arguments in all of them. I just know that there are times when I’m unable to write poems and so I write songs or times when all I can write is expository prose.
I’ve published two poetry chapbooks and, as I mentioned, have my debut full-length book coming out soon from Repeater Books. That book is a true hybrid: part critical theory, part personal narrative. It also includes lists and my hand-drawn illustrations.
What would you consider the biggest influences on your work, and how have you seen these evolve over time?
I think I’m influenced the way most people are. The work comes out of my emotional life. So: personal struggles, family history, religious and cultural experiences, communities I’ve lived in. Those things determine the content of the work.
In terms of style, I’m more indebted to specific artists and writers, but it’s interesting to think of style as coming from mood, biography, landscape, and inter-generational history.
When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time listening to folk music and early rock and Americana stuff, probably because of my guitar teacher and my dad. I also read a lot, painted, and watched huge amounts of TV.
Claire Cronin, photo by Anne Cronin.
Do you feel that you approach music and writing in a similar fashion, or how does your artistic process vary between the two?
I’m unable to approach songwriting as anything but an intuitive, irrational act, except when making final decisions about lyrics or a musical arrangement. I can consciously think through the writing of poetry and prose and layer in different levels of meaning, but the more I try to control a song, the more I seem to scare it away.
Can you give us some examples of your creative work that you are particularly fond of, or have any interesting stories about?
There is imagery in a couple of songs on Came Down a Storm about death in a field or at sea. That came to me intuitively; I wasn’t sure why I wrote about it. Shortly after the songs were finished, a relative died in a tragic accident that held eerie similarities to what I’d described in the songs.
You also recently completed your PhD in English from the University of Georgia Athens! What was the focus of your research and what inspired you?
Yes, and I miss being there so much! I went to UGA because they had a creative writing program within an English PhD, so my dissertation was a book of creative non-fiction and poetry, though all the other requirements were the same. My research areas were 20th century American poetry (mostly post-war avant-garde movements), occult and visionary poetry (from William Blake to Jack Spicer), and visual studies (with an emphasis on death, horror, and spectrality in moving image media). I find that my creative work is always strengthened by theoretical inquiry, so it was a dream to be in a PhD program that upheld that.
So, you’ve lived in Los Angeles, Athens, and are now based in Northern California. What do you see as the similarities in these regions, as well as the differences?
Wow, I don’t know. I don’t think I should make any generalizations. LA will always feel like home, Athens was a wonderful place to be for four years, and I’m still figuring out the Bay Area. Most of my childhood was in Connecticut, actually, so I’ve experienced the East Coast too.
Certain parts of my self-presentation probably change to fit the place where I’m living, either to blend in or rebel against the norms. Usually this happens unconsciously and then I realize it later. For example, when I lived in Athens, I tried to become more interested in college football and ended up becoming obsessed with lifting weights. When I was in LA and renting an apartment at the base of the Hollywood sign, near the Scientology celebrity center, I was convinced my room was haunted and spent way too much money on psychic healers and green juice.
How do you feel the different environments have affected your work?
I don’t have a sense that they have affected my work, but I could be wrong. I read once that many writers can’t write about a place they’ve lived until they leave it: one has to be in exile to reflect on an environment that used to be mundane.
What are you currently working on?
I’m making final revisions on my book, writing new songs, and planning some short tours. I also need to finish writing an essay about the trope of the academic in horror narratives for a conference I’m attending later this fall.
Any plans to tour?
Yes. I’m going on a very mini tour of the West Coast with my friend Alex Dupree next month, planning a solo tour of the Southwest in December, and hoping to take part in an Orindal-themed tour in March.
Claire Cronin and Ezra Buchla performing on Audiotree Live
What are you listening to these days?
I’ve been listening to Townes Van Zandt again and religious music, like “holy minimalism,” Arvo Part, singing in Latin... I don’t know much about it.
Ok, it’s coffee time. Do you like that stuff?
Oh yes.
What do you look for in a good cup of coffee?
I like it to be mellow and not overly bitter, though that seems against trend.
How do you make coffee at home?
I did pour-over for years but didn’t pack my carafe on our cross-country move so I’ve been using a french press. It’s not great. I think I’m drinking a huge amount of coffee grounds each day— kind of “cowboy coffee” style. I need an upgrade.
A French press, which Claire does not think is great.
If you are grabbing a coffee at a cafe, what is your go-to?
Usually that means it’s later in the day, so I go for a cold brew.
Are there coffees from particular regions that you are particularly fond of?
No… I’ve been to many fancy coffee shops that tell me the regions that my beans came from, but I’ve forgotten everything I’ve learned.
How do you feel that coffee intersects with your creativity?
The first half to three-fourths of the day are motored by coffee. Wine is the coffee of night, but that’s dangerous and I don’t do good work while drinking. Coffee brings me into reality and keeps my mind sharp.
Thanks so much, Claire. Lastly, have you heard any good jokes lately?
Dang, no I haven’t. But my dogs often make me laugh.
Claire Cronin - "Saint's Lake"
Find out more neat stuff about Claire and what she's up to right here.
]]>Hi David, You’re David Yow.
Long Pause
Um, yes, Ben!
Thanks so much for taking some time to Spill The Beans. Could we start with you telling us a bit about yourself?
OK, I’m an Air Force brat who’s lived all over the world, I speak a little bit of German, I went to art school after college but I didn’t finish, got into the punk rock and did that for about thirty years, and now I’m enjoying a cup of coffee in the Los Angeles rain.
David Yow
I’d bet most people know you because of your involvement with Scratch Acid and The Jesus Lizard, but you’ve been involved in other bands both before and after. Can we get a timeline of these bands?
Oh, gosh. Well, I played bass in a punk rock band in Austin, Texas called Toxic Shock, and very briefly I was in a band that we called Suck Your Mother’s Dick or The Beatles, and that was with Felix Griffin who went on to play drums for D.R.I. I think we only played two shows, and it wasn’t very good. Then we formed Scratch Acid, did that for 5 or 6 years or something and we broke up; I think in 1987. In 1988 Duane Denison, David Wm. Sims (also in Scratch Acid) and I started the Jesus Lizard in Austin, and kinda blew it off when David and I moved to Chicago, starting it back up again the next year. Then, we broke up in 1999. I moved to L.A. and I was in a band for a little while called Qui, a three-piece band that was guitar, drums, and vocals. There was no bass or keyboards or accordion or triangle or anything like that.
Scratch Acid, photo by Pat Blashill. (L-R) David Yow, Rey Washam, David Wm. Sims, Brett Bradford.
That’s it.
I’ve done some collaborations, recorded with The Melvins, Helmet, Alexander Hacke, Geronimo, Ventura, and Model/Actress. I’ve played live with Flipper, The Butthole Surfers, Breadwinner, and some other stuff.
You mentioned that you’ve performed with Flipper, and I recently saw that you will be doing so again. Can we talk about that?
Yeah, yeah! I’ll be doing three shows with Flipper in April, in Los Angeles at the Regent Theater, in Long Beach at Felix’s, and in San Diego at the Casbah.
Additional Flipper shows were announced after we spoke. More dates available below for our European readers.
Are you guys old friends, or how did this come together in the first place?
I didn’t know those guys at all. About three-and-a-half years ago, Helios Creed was playing under the name of Chrome in Los Angeles, and he had me come up and sing one of their songs that the Jesus Lizard had covered. Steven DePace from Flipper happened to be in the audience at the time, and they were going to be doing three shows in Italy, but Bruce Loose who was singing for them kind of didn’t want to, and had too many issues with back pain and other kinds of stuff. So, they were in the market for a singer and Steve told me they were thinking of Keith Morris, Ian Mackaye, Moby, or me. He said that when he saw me do the song with Chrome, he said “Well, let’s get David to do it!”
When they asked me if I would sing for Flipper, Jesus Christ, I didn’t fuckin’ hesitate. I mean, my god, what an honor. That’s like Queen for a day. I mean, I get to sing with Flipper? Songs like Sacrifice and Love Canal? I felt like a silverback gorilla, I could’ve killed anything.
That was so much fun doing that. three-and-a-half years ago, we only did 11 shows… Three in Italy and, um, what’s eleven minus three?
Eight.
Eight? Eight in the United States.
The Jesus Lizard has been playing shows again after several years. How has that been, and do you expect more to come?
Well, when the possibility of the first one came about in 2009, Barry (who ran the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival,) had asked us to do a reunion show and play at Minehead in England. Then our booking agent said “Let’s think about it and possibly add some more shows”, so we added some more shows and did that.
That first show in England was one of the weirdest experiences of my life because it was so, so emotional. It was something we never thought would happen, and then it was happening, and I was really, really scared, very nervous, and I just didn’t know what it was gonna be like.
It was such a fuckin’ blast. It was SO much fun.
I think right before we went on, I said to Ellen (my girlfriend) “Ya know, I’m probably not gonna go in the audience”, and before the vocals came in on the first song I was shirtless in the audience. I couldn’t help myself, it was so much fun.
So, all the reenactment shows we’ve done have been a complete blast. I love those guys, and it’s great to be with them. I have some difficulty doing more shows ‘cause we’re not offering anything new, and it’s generally done because these people are waving a whole lot of money in our faces. That was never the impetus when we were really a band, you know? So it’s been weird for me, but I’ve been placated by friends that have said we’re making a whole lot of people happy. When we did those shows last September, at one point in Philadelphia they turned the lights on the crowd, and it was just this huge sea of smiling faces. And, uh… that made me feel great. So, I figure all right, if they’re gonna pay us five hundred million dollars to do a show and make people smile, then that’s OK.
As far as anything else, I don’t know. I’ve finally learned to quit saying "No." It’s very possible that we’ll play again, I don’t know. I think it’s lightly possible that we would ever write something, but I don’t think that’ll happen.
The Jesus Lizard, then and now. Top photo (1991) courtesy of Touch & Go Records, bottom photo (2018) by Joshua Black Wilkins (L-R) David Wm. Sims, Duane Denison, David Yow, Mac McNeilly.
I know you guys have always been considered very professional as a touring rock band. How has touring changed for you as a band from the 90's to today?
Well, when we were a band in the 90’s, anything we did in the states was driving from town to town in a van, or very often we’d have two vans. All of this reenactment stuff we’ve done has been flying from town to town, with the exception of some closer towns, and we’d drive, but it’s almost strictly all flying. The schedules have been far more lax than we were accustomed to in the 90's when we’d play sixteen nights in a row, have a travel day, and then play twelve nights in a row, then have a day off kind of thing. So, that’s been merciful.
Yeah, I did notice that your shows were mostly clustered around weekends.
YES. Yes, they were.
The "on the ground" experience I’ve had; if you’re on the highway now in the United States, eating is now much more of a problem than it used to be. There used to be lots of great Mom & Pop type places you could pull over at and sometimes they’d become your favorites when you were in that part of the country. Now, those are largely gone and the best place to eat is like Starbucks, ya know?
What are your relationships within the Jesus Lizard like now compared to before?
Yeah, we get along perfectly. Outside of whenever we would converge in Nashville and practice and then play whatever shows, we don’t talk very often on the phone or anything. David has been out here a couple times to visit. We don’t keep in touch on a daily or weekly basis the way regular friends do, but our mutual love for each other is enormous.
From your years and years of touring, what are some experiences that stand out to you?
There’s a million, but once we had a few nights off in London, and Miller or some other beer company was sponsoring this thing where you buy tickets for a show, but you don’t even know who’s playing. I was with some rock star friend who was dating a model, and we went to this show, and Hole and The Cure were playing. It was just completely ridiculous and not very good, but there was a whole lot of cocaine involved. A LOT of cocaine. A whole bunch. A whole lot of it. I was smoking then, and I go back to the hotel at whatever time it was, and my Zippo lighter was out of gas. All I wanted was a cigarette. So, there was some wine in my room and I poured a bit of it on the desktop to see if my Zippo would spark it, and it didn’t work. But, I had some aftershave, and I put that in the divot on the toilet tank, sparked it with my lighter and it lit up, and I chain smoked about five cigarettes.
Did your breath smell like a man’s face?
Probably!
Another time we were driving in Florida, and I was in the passenger seat of the van with my arm out the window. Immediately after I exclaimed what a beautiful day it was, a pelican overhead covered my entire arm, shoulder and like half the windshield in pelican shit. They eat nothing but fish, so it was like salt water/fish pelican shit. That was horrible! I’ve always hated pelicans ever since then.
Sometimes I’d be a little worse for the wear in the morning than the other guys, but Duane very often would be sort of motherly and he’d get me some breakfast or something. Brendan does a great impression of me getting in the van in Europe all cross-eyed and whatever, and Duane handing me half an egg and cheese sandwich. I was like “Oh man, thanks! Yes! This is the perfect thing!” Then, I took a bite, and spit it out saying “But not right now!”
Similarly, any experiences from recording?
Particularly in the old days, I always drank a lot, being weaned on the punk rock in Texas. We called it “drunk rock” more than we called it punk rock, because that was just what you did. You would drink a lot and do your stuff. So the first few records that we recorded with Steve Albini, he would also encourage me to drink at recordings. When we were recording the album HEAD, after being in the studio a few days, we came in one day and there was a list on the bulletin board of what had been recorded and what hadn’t. The song Pastoral was checked off as if we had recorded that, and I said “No, no, we haven’t done that one yet,” and they all said “Yeah, we have.” I said “Well, I haven’t sung that one yet,” and they said “Yes, you have.” They played the recording for me, and I had absolutely NO recollection whatsoever of doing that song. And you can tell! You listen to that and go “Man, that guy is shitfaced.”
Another time, we were recording at Chicago Recording Company for the album SHOT, that was recorded by GGGarth Richardson. R Kelly had been in there before we had, and had just finished a session. He had left a personal gymnasium in one of the rooms. Weights and all that kind of stuff. So, we kept getting phone calls, several phone calls for R Kelly, just friends of his or whoever, and we got kind of ticked off about it because it was interfering with our work. So, GGGarth, a Canadian guy who stutters, started answering the phone and saying that R Kelly had gone off to become a Buddha. He thought that was really funny, but that got back to R Kelly. So he shows up with his posse, we could see them on the security monitor that he was out there with this guy that was the size of a truck. So we had to let them in, and this guy was as big as the door. They didn’t get violent with us or hurt us or anything, but Duane and I were shooting pool in one of the rooms and R Kelly was in there on the phone with the owner of the studio saying something along the lines of “Man, I’ve been good to you, and I’ve made you so much money and I got you this pool table and stuff.” Then he looked at Duane and said “And now you got these Anthony Perkins looking motherfuckers up in here?!?”
That was pretty funny.
What are you listening to these days?
Um, Flipper.
Is that it?
Oh! Um, my boss telling me what to do, or Ellen saying “This is delicious,” or the hot tub, or me farting, or the sound of my shoes on the floor that sound like I’m a woman walking along…
Um, any music?
Oh, Flipper.
You’ve also been acting for many years as well, and have been involved in several films. What do you feel you get out of acting that is creatively similar to your being in bands, and what do you get out of it that is different?
That’s a really good question. I think for me personally, outside of them both being artistic endeavors, there are more differences than similarities. At least with the music that I’ve been involved with, I pretty much always had complete freedom to do whatever I wanted to do, whenever and however I wanted to do it. Particularly live, you know? I could sing the lyrics that were supposed to be in the song, or not. Make them up, or change them or whatever, completely free reign. Whereas with acting, even if there’s improv involved, there are some rules that you have to follow, and certain parameters where you have to say what you’re supposed to say as you’re picking up that thing and walking walking over there, and you know, quit choking her as you’re saying “Thanks Mom” or whatever.
What have been your favorite projects to work on as an actor, and what can we expect from you in the near future?
I think I’ve enjoyed every project I’ve gotten to act in. Definitely I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore with director Macon Blair, and the cast and crew that were a part of that thing. I was in Portland for a month shooting that, and it was one of the very best experiences of my life. I have made actual friends like Jane Levy. She’s an actual good friend and we talk often. Robert Longstreet, who is also in that movie, I talk to him all the time, as well as Macon. Even Elijah Wood to a degree. Melanie Lynskey and her husband Jason Ritter, they have us over at the house semi-regularly and we all play a game called Mafia.
So, I Don’t Feel At Home… was a blast, and it won Best Picture at Sundance. That was just amazing, because Macon had emailed everyone quite sometime before to say that Netflix had decided they were not going to do a theatrical release, and they weren’t entering it to any festivals. So, we’re all going “What the?” And then about a week later he emails and says that they had changed their minds and it was going to premiere at Sundance.
We all bought tickets to go, and we watched the movie and had a great time. Then I came home, and a couple days later I got the call that it had won Best Picture! My God, I just freaked out. Ellen and I were laughing and crying like crazy. I mean, this puts it in the same league as Beasts Of The Southern Wild.
You know, speaking of Sundance, I was born in the area and spent my early childhood there.
Ooooh! I didn't know that.
Yep, a real mountain man.
John Denver!
I have a lot of memories of hearing a lot of John Denver when I was a little kid.
Oh, cool. I like John Denver!
There are like a handful of his songs that make me cry because I love them so much.
Is one of them Calypso?
I can’t say I know that one.
WHAT?!?!?! Are you serious?!?
Yes.
Oh my god, you have to! It’s his tribute to Jacques Cousteau! God, I love that song!
So, there’s a movie coming out now called Under The Silver Lake that I have a small but important part in, and that was really really fun. It was really fun to work with David Robert Mitchell, who directed It Follows. This is his next movie, and I guess I can say that it follows It Follows.
We got to see it, and it’s a really cool movie, I highly recommend that everybody go check it out.
David as the Homeless King in Under The Silver Lake.
Also, just recently, I shot a movie in Santa Fe which is a Netflix feature called Rattlesnake, and uhhhh, that was pretty good. A movie we shot a while back that was written and directed by my friend Peter Bolte, who I think is from St. Louis but lives in Brooklyn, called All Roads Lead, that’s on Amazon Prime. It’s pretty good, particularly when you consider the budget which I think was possibly less than ten thousand dollars.
I was in a horror anthology called Southbound that was really, really fun to shoot. There’s another one coming out called Dinner In America that I’m in…
There’s High & Outside, which is a really amazing movie in that it’s a very good example of how important editing is. The director is, by trade, an editor. So, that’s cool because you know that he got all of the shots that he’s definitely going to need, but the first iteration of it kind of wasn’t very good. We saw it and were like “Well, you know… that’s OK. We tried really hard and had a good time.” Then, they gave it to this other guy to re-edit, and he made it into a fuckin’ real movie! You laugh and you cry, and you leave going “God, that was a real good movie!” So, that’s my little commercial for editing, which is far too unsung.
You are also a painter, an illustrator and a Photoshop toucher upper. Wanna talk about that stuff?
Well, I didn’t finish college, but I was a fine arts major. My plan at the time was that I was going to teach art at a university, so I could be around it all the time and it would be a cool environment, but then punk rock came along and I didn’t do any of that. I continued to draw and stuff, and I also have a fair amount of photographic experience, so having a fair understanding of light and shadow and reflections and stuff were helpful when Photoshop came along. I got Photoshop version 2 before it had layers, those came along in version 3, and I’ve been fucking with it ever since. Now, it’s what I do for a living; photo retouching.
You’ve been doing that for quite awhile now.
Yep, yep. Five days a week, except my job is really cool if I have to do whatever… a movie, or go talk in Portland or do some shows. They always just go “Alright, see you when you get back.”
Nice, so you can be like “Hey I need to go shoot a movie”, and then say “Oh yeah, it won Best Picture at Sundance.”
Yeah.
What would they say? “Well, just make sure you’re not late next week.”
Chuckles all around.
So, last year you threw out the first pitch at a Dodgers game.
Yes.
I was wondering how that came to be and what that was like for you?
Dodger Stadium is I guess, kind of sort of in Chinatown, which is adjacent to Echo Park. Maybe it’s in Echo Park, I’m not sure. I used to live in Silver Lake, which is right next to Echo Park, which I frequented because of friends living there, restaurants I liked to go to and stuff like that. The Dodgers were having their second annual “Echo Park Day,” and they decided to have some local business and business owners represent on that day. Ronda and Rob, who run an outstanding place called Masa and are Chicagoans. They have a deep dish pizza there that’s as close to anything like Lou Malnati’s that you can find and they were there for this thing. The artist Shepard Fairey lives in Echo Park, and they wanted him to do it, but he couldn’t for some reason, he had something to do that day, so he suggested me. So when they announced me, they said “David Yow: Actor, musician, and Echo Park regular.”
When I found out about this, Ellen and I would get up in the morning and go to this baseball field near the house and practice pitching. It’s really, really easy to throw a ball that far. It’s 51 feet , but it’s not that big of a deal. The difficult part is being accurate. I just wanted the catcher to catch it. I didn’t throw it as hard as I had been at practice, and I didn’t do the wind up as fast as I had been at practice. I kind of slowed it down, and just threw it to the catcher… and he caught it. So, that was that.
So, you’ve probably played enough times in front of enough people, that it wasn’t an intimidation factor for you?
Well, it was so surreal, I mean, Dodger Stadium, and its way before the game. The stands are maybe a quarter full and nobody’s paying attention, they don’t give a fuck. At all. I’ve been there with music, too. Playing shows, thinking “these people don’t care.”
Do you know Shepard Fairey, or did he just recommend you?
Yeah, I know Shepard. When I first met him was at a restaurant we like a lot in Echo Park. I heard a familiar voice, and was thinking “That’s Jello Biafra.” I turn around and there’s Jello, and I asked “What the fuck are you doing here?” and he said (in an impressive Jello Biafra voice) “Well, I’m hanging with Shepard because he’s going to do this record cover for me!” So, that’s when I met Shepard Fairey.
You like coffee?
Was that a question?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. I had coffee today.
What do you look for in a good cup of coffee?
Um, I'm not a fan of really, really dark coffee. I'm not a fan of Starbuck's coffee because to me it always tastes bitter and burnt. I know a lot of folks like the bitter stuff, uh not for me, no sir. I'm a medium roast feller.
How do you make coffee at home?
A Mr. Coffee coffee maker.
If you're out and you grab a coffee, what do you like to get?
Well, I'm sort of off the dairy, so if I'm at home I use the Trader Joe's coconut creamer, but if I'm out an they don't have it I'll just use almond milk or half & half or something. I don't drink it black. Every now and again I do, but I'm just not burly enough to drink it like that.
Do you feel like coffee is essential to get through the day, or in your creative endeavors?
For me it's not. I mean, I know a lot of people that if they don't have their coffee, their day is ruined. I'm not one of those. I like coffee, and when I'm at work I drink coffee all day long, but that's because I don't want water or anything else.
Thanks again for doing this, David. Have you heard any good jokes lately?
Yes! I'm not sure if I read this or if I heard it, but I laughed for at least five minutes.
I remember the last thing my grandfather said before he kicked the bucket. "How far do you think I can kick this bucket?"
The Jesus Lizard - "Nub"
Check out David's acting reel here.
Banner photo by Ben Stas.
Flipper dates in Europe:
7.30 Nottingham UK Rescue Rooms
7.31 Bristol UK The Exchange
8.1 Manchester UK Rebellion Festival
8.2 Glasgow UK CCA
8.3 Leeds UK Brudenell
8.4 London UK Garage
8.5 Gent Belgium DOK
8.6 Amsterdam Holland Paradiso Noord
8.8 Aachen Germany Musikbunker
8.9 Karlsruhe Germany Hackerei
8.10 Bologna Italy Freakout
8.11 Milan Italy Magnolia Open Air
8.12 Padova Italy Anfiteatro del Venda
8.13 Vienna Austria Chelsea
8.15 Bielefeld Germany Forum
8.16 Hamburg Germany Hafenklang
8.17 Helsinki Finland Kuudes Linja
8.20 Berlin Germany Bi Nuu
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Hey Patrick, thanks for taking some time to Spill The Beans. Could you tell us a bit about yourself?
Hey Ben, my pleasure man, thanks for the opportunity to chat with you and the Glassworks community. I’m an artist, musician, print maker, and coffee roaster living in Brooklyn, NY. For the last 7 years of my 11 year coffee career, I’ve been a production roaster for Stumptown here in NYC. My wife Morgan and I run a small screen printing press, which is split between commercial work, commission based illustrations, and original art prints.
Patrick Grzelewski
I first met you through coffee roasting. How did you get started and how did it evolve for you?
I’ve pretty much loved coffee since I was a teenager, spending a lot of time in cafes where the rest of the punks, hippies, and various weirdos congregated in my hometown. I started working in cafes after moving to Seattle in the early 2000’s. But it really wasn’t until I moved to Chicago in 2007 that coffee evolved from medicine into a deep fascination and eventual career pursuit. You can pretty much trace it to the first cup of Rwanda Bufcafe I had from Metropolis Coffee. At the time I had no idea that Rwanda produced coffee at all, let alone the remarkable beverage that was before me. The depth of its natural sweetness, and the clear flavor of raisin and plum were like nothing I’d ever tasted. Even with an underdeveloped palate, it was clear to me that there was something very different about the coffee itself, and the way it was presented. I decided I had to learn more, and that Metropolis was where I wanted to do it. It took a couple weeks of polite pestering before convincing them to hire me at the cafe, and within 6 months I’d worked my way through production and into a roasting apprenticeship. Right place, right time, I suppose. While I did enjoy a lot about being a barista and the camaraderie of cafe culture, I was ultimately much more stimulated behind the scenes. There was something about being a roaster and developing the craft that was very romantic to me, and I had a strong desire to be as close to the product as possible. It had a certain magic and mystique that is hard to describe, and there was so much to learn. It still has that for me, and I’ve never stopped learning. Hopefully I never will.
Could you tell us about your illustration work, Orogenesis Press, and other artistic endeavors of yours?
In terms of visual disciplines in art, I was self taught. While I did end up spending a good portion of my 20’s focused on writing and performing as a musician, drawing was always my first love. Towards the end of my time in the Midwest, life had become very chaotic. I had a young child, my first marriage was falling apart, and I began to take solace in reconnecting with visual mediums as it became more difficult to devote that time to music. The connection between music and artwork for me was always beautifully exemplified in gig posters, album covers, and t-shirts; so it was around this time that I developed an interest in the process of silkscreen printing. As I’m sure you recall Ben, you and Dan Grzeca helped me execute my first ever screen print... a poster for Seafarer’s last show at The Empty Bottle. Fast forward a couple years, and I was living in Brooklyn basically starting my life over after getting divorced. Since the move I’d been doing mostly mixed media collages and abstract paintings, and started working with the Con Artist Collective on the Lower East Side. It was a great community of supportive, creative people, and a good opportunity to show work periodically in a gallery setting. But while the work was cathartic, it was often large scale and pretty unfocused. The space had a four color press and a small exposure unit in the basement, so having hit a wall with current projects I began to mess around. Before I was even modestly comfortable with the process, I was getting hit up to do jobs for friends and co-workers. At the time, Stumptown production was a decent gig for anyone in a touring band, being pretty accommodating to rehires and seasonal help. So between the two communities, there were plenty of opportunities to print shirts, posters, and whatever else. Orogenesis Press however, did not materialize until Morgan Paradis (my current wife and business partner) got involved. She helped me struggle through the first couple projects, and was simultaneously encouraging me to push my artwork more towards illustration and to explore some visual concepts in the context of printmaking. She was also languishing in a corporate day job and looking for something to pursue that she could build on her own terms, something that actually represented her interests and stimulated some creativity. We decided to give it a shot together, and the business has evolved organically ever since. We’ve had the pleasure of working and connecting with so many interesting people along the way; a young local brewery, an organic dye maker, record labels, bands, tattoo artists, and the list keeps growing. Its heartening too that the growth has been entirely through word of mouth, people have been amazing about spreading the word. This last year has seen more opportunities for commission work (album artwork and t-shirt designs primarily,) which is challenging at times but a lot of fun for me. In 2019, the focus is definitely going to be on producing more original work. I have a ton of ideas and half done projects, but a huge spike in commercial work this summer made it difficult to do much else. It's a good problem to have, but I’m certainly ready to switch gears.
You were also actively playing music while living in Chicago. Is this something you are still doing?
Not actively, I’m sad to say. But honestly, I really needed a break from music when I left Chicago. Seafarer was a project I invested a lot of time and emotion in to, and when it dissolved I was pretty burnt out. I’ve picked up my guitar in fits and spurts over the years, done a little writing and composing, but nothing serious. Mostly minimal guitar stuff, ambient/noise, stuff in that realm. If I ever do shift my focus back to music, that's probably what I’ll be working on. That, or an early Alice Cooper cover band.
What would you consider the biggest influences on your art, and how have you seen these evolve over time?
It definitely starts with the early Surrealists. Dali, Ernst, Magritte were all huge for me, but also Hieronymus Bosch, William Blake, Goya, and Francis Bacon. My parents house growing up was basically books from floor to ceiling, and I remember these works vividly from flipping through art anthologies as a child. The simultaneous feeling of terror and complete fascination is probably my first memory of feelings brought on by works or art, and they sent my imagination into overdrive. If I had to name the single largest influence on my work over the years though, it would unquestionably be H.R. Giger. I saw Alien when I was fairly young and it had a huge impact on me, still probably my favorite film of all time. When I got a little older and was exposed to his paintings and sculpture, I became obsessed. My fixation with bio-mechanical imagery has never really gone away. I guess it's hard to pin down exactly how one’s influences evolve, but 3 artists whose work has held considerable impact for me since moving to New York are Mike Kelley, Raymond Pettibon, and Paul Laffoley. Kelley and Pettibon’s work was fairly ubiquitous for anyone who was into punk rock. But Mike Kelley’s massive full museum retrospective at MoMA PS1, and Pettibon’s show To Wit (and subsequent retrospective at The New Museum) drove me way deeper into their worlds. It definitely changed the way I approach my own work. Morgan introduced me to Paul Laffoley and the Boston Visionary Cell. His intricate paintings and models employ principles of architecture and design to create complex living structures and metaphysical machinery that are simply mind blowing. You could spend hours just dissecting the meticulously organized blueprints and explanatory texts; its as immersive as it is visually arresting. Finally I have to mention Moebius and Philippe Druillet. Comics and graphic novels have always had a big influence on me, and more so since my work has moved towards a more illustrative style. I discovered both of these absolute masters of the medium pretty late in the game, but suffice it to say I’m making up for lost time.
What do you find yourself listening to these days?
Lately it’s been almost entirely metal. More specifically, I’ve been kind of obsessed with the NWOBHM era and a lot of the heavy blues based rock from the 70’s that paved the way. Sabbath of course, but also the first few Budgie records and early Judas Priest. Priest has been in heavy rotation pretty much across their catalog, but Sad Wings of Destiny is really unique. You can hear them codifying their eventual stylistic signatures, while still being rooted in that underground comedown era heaviness. Other than that, a lot of old school death metal (Death, Morbid Angel, Cannibal Corpse), thrash (early Sepultura, Voivod, Sacrifice), and some recent stuff that has been blowing my mind (Blood Incantation, Volahn, Tomb Mold). I also want to mention Intensive Care, which I have really been digging lately. Pretty hard to categorize; the vocals can’t help but bring to mind Justin Broadrick of Godflesh, and the whole thing is a blistering push pull of layered noise and perfectly channeled aggression.
Ok, it’s coffee time. How do you feel that your approach to roasting and/or coffee in general has evolved over time?
For better or worse (assuredly both in at least some measure), my approach and general mentality about coffee has been largely shaped by my experience at Stumptown for the last 8 years. To start with the positive, it has been an absolute privilege to work with this caliber of coffees for so long. The level of cleanliness, sweetness, and complexity of the raw product across the menu astonished me from the moment I was hired, and has only improved over the years. The company has changed a lot, and changed hands twice since I’ve been aboard. Not every change has been a positive one, and seeing any company through a period of significant growth comes with its perils. Ultimately though, the dedication to quality and relationships with producer partners has been the strongest and most consistent aspect of the business. Having the opportunity to work closely with these coffees year after year affords a level of intimacy and intuition from a roasting and cupping perspective that I really cherish. Furthermore, traveling to origin to connect with the folks behind these amazing coffees and experience the reality of production as a livelihood really adds another dimension to one’s perspective of the industry. All the polarized viewpoints on roast profiles, pour over fads, and flashy innovations in brewing technology feel quite trivial when you witness the amount of work that goes into producing even the lower scoring coffees of the world. We are once again living in a time where the C Market sits below the cost of production, which is downright criminal. I do my best every day to give these coffees the same care and attention that they are given at source, but it's not even comparable in scale. My goal as a roaster and a quality focused professional is to communicate, both verbally and through the work that I do, that quality transcends cost, personal preference, preconceived notions, and brand loyalty. It is nothing short of a miracle that this product gets to us at all, a sobering fact that we must not lose sight of if there is any future for this industry.
Visiting coffee farms in Colombia
What do you look for in a good cup of coffee?
Clean, sweet, and balanced, first and foremost. I don’t necessarily dislike Nordic style roast profiles on principle, but as with anything I think it needs to suit what is being presented rather than being applied across the board. More often than not when I drink these profiles out in the world, I find that no matter how exciting they may be initially, the cups collapse as they cool and generally lack depth of sweetness. On the other extreme of the spectrum, I can definitely appreciate the deep sweetness and simplicity of darker profiles, but find that the roast inevitably obscures some of the coffee’s inherent qualities. Overall I pay a lot of attention to developed sugars and how they affect our perception of complex aromatics. I don’t believe there is such thing as the one “correct” profile for any coffee, and really enjoy tasting single offerings in different expressions. Great coffees are so full of possibilities, and the transformation that occurs from subtle changes in roasting approach are fascinating to me.
How do you make coffee at home?
An Aeropress or French press, 90% of the time. Honestly, coffee just tastes way better when I brew it at work during the week, or from a great cafe. I usually go out for coffee on the weekends, but when I’m at home I keep it simple. The Aeropress takes literally a few minutes from start to finish and pretty much always hits the mark.
Aeropress and French Press, photos by Kristan Lieb.
If you're grabbing coffee at a cafe, what is your go to?
An espresso shot and a filter coffee, I rarely order anything else. To me it is the best one two punch of variety and expression when getting to know a roaster, a cafe, or particular coffee. I think that Fetco and other industrial brewers are a highly underrated brew method, and always more consistent than manual brews. Unfortunately, when I order pour overs of any kind at cafes, they are almost universally bad. I adore espresso, always have, and I rarely get to drink it at work so I don’t waste the opportunity when I’m out. Unsurprisingly, my go-to after work beverage is a beer and a whiskey shot.
A shot of espresso, possibly similar to ones Patrick has had.
Any coffee growing regions you are particularly fond of?
For me, Ethiopia and Colombia represent the holy grails of their respective regions. I think the uniqueness and beauty of Ethiopian coffee pretty much goes without saying, and I’m sure I’m not alone in that it was what first truly opened the door to experiencing the full flavor potential of the seed. Colombian coffee in my opinion, is unrivaled in its depth and complexity among coffees from the Americas. There is such diversity from region to region, but the hallmarks of tropical fruit, brown sugar, crisp acidity, heavy body, and long finish make for a very complete and enduring cup. I had the great pleasure of visiting Colombia last October, which really solidified my love for the origin and its coffees.
How do you feel that coffee intersects with your creativity?
I’ve associated coffee with creativity and creative communities ever since I was a teenager. My parents are teachers, and a lot of the literature I was surrounded with growing up introduced me to the idea of cafes as the dens of writers, artists, free thinkers, and the meeting place of subversives and controversial ideas. Rituals are very important to me on a number of levels, and coffee is one that stuck early on. I have great memories of sitting in diners in the middle of the night with a bottomless cup and a pack of cigarettes, just talking shit after band practice. Simple pleasures. The town in Hawaii where I grew up was full of ragged expats from just about everywhere, all ending up on the island with a unique and often bizarre tale to tell. Talking to these folks over coffee at the one shop in town, I began to develop a picture of the world outside the isolated rock I called home, and great fodder for my writings and drawings. This association with coffee as a connecter of people and creative lubricant never really left, and as I got older I sought out cafe jobs to stay as close as possible to that dynamic. Unsurprisingly I continued to meet like-minded people, and was exposed to a lot of new music, art, and literature as a result. When I first started learning about coffee production and becoming involved in roasting, I think I was mostly looking for something that resembled a “career” that I didn’t totally despise...a way to finance my work and keep my head above water. What I found was not only a similarly nurturing community (my boss even let our band store gear and hold weekend practice at the roastery), but a new understanding of the inherent creativity in influencing roast development. It got me thinking a lot about the nature of craft, both in its relation to making art and the ways in which it is distinctive. Ultimately I had discovered a lot of parallels, and a totally new way in which coffee would be a driving force behind my desire to create.
Thanks so much, Patrick. Lastly, have you heard any good jokes lately?
Q: How many Surrealists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: A fish.
]]>Hey Julianna, thanks for Spillin' The Beans. Could you tell us a bit about yourself?
Well I’m a musician, I just started out making bedroom recordings when I was in Brooklyn in 2005-2006. A friend of mine let me borrow a little guitar pedal that looped and I started messing around with that. I fell in love with making music that way and made my first record, put it on MySpace, and that led to playing shows in London and Lisbon and, you know, opening for Dirty Projectors. All this stuff just snowballed from that first trip. It’s just been kind of an easy-going adventure since then. I didn’t really make any plans or set any intentions. I just started making stuff and putting stuff out and here I am!
Julianna Barwick, photo by Shawn Brackbill.
So, that was your first record?
Yeah, my first record Sanguine came out in January 2007, and that’s the record I made with my friend’s guitar pedal. I recorded it on a Fostex cassette four track machine.
What led you to make music?
I was always a super musical kid, I loved to make up my own melodies and things like that. I sang all the time. I was in choir in school and sang with my church congregation. So, from a young age I sang a capella with large groups of people, three times a week, in cavernous rooms with tons of reverb. You can imagine that’s where I was informed, and that kind of sound stuck with me forever.
I played clarinet in elementary and middle school, took voice in high school. After that, I was in an opera chorus in Tulsa. I didn’t want to do music in college because I didn’t ever want to dread making music, or having a musical assignment. I didn’t want that to ever be something I didn’t find joy in, because I have always found a lot of joy in music in general. I never wanted it to be a drag, so I did dark room photography in college which is one of my other big loves.
So, I just played around at home and made music for the fun of it. I didn’t think anything was ever going to happen with it, it was just really fun. Especially when the looping thing clicked. I could make music without laboring over composing for hours or days. It’s all very instantaneous and fun!
.
Photo by Drew Litowitz.
You just mentioned Tulsa, is that where you grew up?
We moved there when I was 13, so that’s where I went to 8th grade, high school, and a little bit of college before I moved to New York in 2001. I finished up college in New York and lived there for 16 years. I’m in L.A. now, I moved here a couple of years ago.
Do you prefer one to the other?
Um, it’s not really about preference. I mean, I still love New York. That was the longest I’ve lived anywhere. I just really liked L.A. when I would visit, or play shows. I have a lot of friends here, and I’m loving it so far.
You’ve toured quite a bit and released several records so far, Do you have any stories or experiences that stand out to you?
Well, I’ll elaborate on that trip I mentioned where I was asked to play in London and Lisbon from MySpace stuff. I hadn’t ever played a show outside of New York. The Lisbon thing was set up by a MySpace stranger who is now one of my best friends, Sergio Hydalgo, who at the time had a website/program called Ma Fama. I had seen that Panda Bear had done one of these with pieces with Sergio, where he performed for about half an hour, and then talked to Sergio for about half an hour. So, I found Ma Fama on MySpace, and friend requested him hoping that he would listen to my music and like it (laughs) and it actually worked! He listened to it, liked it, and asked me if I’d ever want to come to Lisbon to play shows and hang out. Once I said yes, he put a couple of my MP3s up on his site, and that’s when a person in London got in touch. I went to London to play three shows that were set up by a perfect stranger, so this whole trip ended up being about 3 weeks. The Ma Fama thing I did in Lisbon was put up on Pitchfork, and I ended up filling a slot for someone opening for Dirty Projectors while I was over in London. A lot of these things just had a snowball effect afterwards as far as getting my music out there, so that was a super magical trip, and I think about that a lot.
Then there was recording with Alex Somers in Reykjavik. We made Nepenthe together. We recorded that in 2012, and that was of course absolutely magical and amazing. Reykjavik is incredible. It’s such a cool place. It doesn’t look like anywhere else in the world, the people are awesome, the views are spectacular, and it’s really just an amazing place.
That recording process was awesome. Not just because of Alex and Iceland, but also because I had never worked with anyone on a record before. The whole experience was the antithesis of recording stuff in my bedroom in Brooklyn, you know? So, that was a real eye opening experience.
Julianna performing "The Harbinger" in Iceland.
So, I got to know Jonsi and the Sigur Ros crew while I was in Iceland, and they asked if I would be on the bus and open for them for a month. I did that in September 2013, and that was incredibly fun.
I also was able to play piano for Yoko Ono for two Plastic Ono band shows at the MOMA, as the closing of her one woman show. I had to teach myself the songs by ear and play them with her, which was completely daunting and terrifying. I’ll still sweat just thinking about it, but it somehow worked out.
There have been so many fun and awesome experiences over the years.
Those are definitely good ones.
Yay.
What would you consider the biggest influences on your music, and how have you seen these evolve over time?
The biggest influences would be the choral a cappella singing I’ve been doing my whole life and soundtracks. Being 6 or 7, I would teach myself to play music that I loved on soundtracks on the piano we had and that I now have at home here. I still know how to play some of these songs that I taught myself from Empire of The Sun, or Somewhere in Time, Some Kind of Wonderful, Yentl or whatever movie I loved, you know?
Similarly your songwriting process?
In the beginning I was using a clunky battery-operated guitar pedal into a Fostex 4 track, and then when I started making Florine I got a computer finally. I went to Garageband workshops at the Apple store in Soho because they were free and I was poor. So, I taught myself how to do that. On Florine, I remember that the same person that lent me the pedal got me my first condenser mic for a birthday, and I figured out how to record piano and get it onto my computer somehow with a PreSonus Firebox interface. I was just following my nose, and doing stuff in the cheapest, self-contained way all along. Everything is still sort of improvised to start with when I sit down to make music. I don’t put pen to paper before I just sit down and jam with myself. Anything I make at this point is me plugging in my vocal loop pedal and messing around, or sitting down at the piano or synth, and seeing if anything comes out of that that sticks and I want to build on.
"Look Into Your Own Mind" live on KEXP.
So, it hasn’t changed that much since it started, but the recording process has progressed. I’ve made everything I’ve recorded since with Garageband and headphones, except for the record I made with Alex, obviously. A few weeks ago, I finally got studio monitors, and I’m teaching myself Ableton. I’m still learning things all the time and trying to get to a place where I can tell people how I record without them chuckling at me.
Both laughing
IT HAPPENS!
What do you find yourself listening to these days?
Well, Panda Bear’s kind of how I got started and he’s one of my favorites. I just saw him play here and have been listening to his new record a ton. I love the new Toro y Moi, a new Arthur Russell song just came out... I’ve been listening to my friend Meg’s new record, a new Hand Habits record. That’s pretty much what’s been in constant rotation as far as new stuff.
When can we expect new stuff from you?
I am just now laying the foundation for a new record, so I want to get that out later this year and do some touring next year ‘cause it’s been a minute.
Photo by Leslie Brown.
Ok, it’s coffee time. Do you like that stuff?
I love it. I can’t live without it. I’m never gonna quit it. I’m never gonna take a day off. I’m just not doing that! No one can make me. I can’t function until I have coffee.
What do you look for in a good cup of coffee?
I like it fresh. Really strong. I don’t like to see the bottom of my cup. I’m kind of a triple latte kind of gal myself, but I’ll just take strong ass coffee.
How do you make coffee at home?
You know, I messed around with French presses and pour overs at home over the years, but I just like the automatic drip. Really strong, brewed automatically, doesn’t have to be hand stirred by a cherub or anything like that. It’s not muddy. I don’t like sludgy coffee. Yuck. No sludge.
How do you feel that coffee intersects with your creativity?
I definitely drink coffee when I’m writing. I’m in this oddball camp of creators, I guess, because I’m never drinking wine, or on drugs, or smoking weed when I’m making stuff. I’m not saying that’s not cool, but I’m usually just pretty jazzed up on coffee or caffeine in some form. My M.O. is just like a pot of coffee and then “Go”.
Thanks so much. Lastly, have you heard any good jokes lately?
Hmm, no but here’s one I told recently:
Q: Why did the monkey fall out of the tree?
A: Because he was dead.
Julianna Barwick - "Nebula"
Check out more of Julianna's music here.
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Hi John, thanks for taking some time to Spill The Beans. Could you tell us a bit about yourself?
You’re welcome and thanks for having me. I get a kick out of Spillin’ The Beans, plus I got nothing but time in this world and I’m in the mood to talk. I was born John Vernon Forbes. I do illustrations, animations, and screen prints. I host a radio show called Grease Train To Laredo on WRHC FM in Three Oaks, Michigan. I run a recording studio called Frogg Mountain with my pal, Andy Slater, and last but not least, I play in the music combo, Tijuana Hercules.
John Vernon Forbes, photo by Elizabeth Golub.
You’ve been playing music for ages, how did you get started and how did it evolve for you?
Music is communal. It’s encyclopedic in the range of emotions. Music seemed to be my entry to the human race. As far back as I remember, there was music playing somewhere in my life. My mom used to sing around the house when I was a child. I’d bust her balls about her singing, but I thought she was pretty good. She could sing whatever the spirit moved her to sing and she could bend a note. Her mother played the piano. I thought it was great that somebody could be their own entertainment. My grandpa was a real he-man that couldn’t carry a tune but sang with gusto all the time. His brother owned a tavern near a Texaco refinery when the refinery was operating full steam ahead. My grandpa would take me to the bar with him when he’d babysit me. I loved being in the bar. It smelled like stale beer and cheap cigars. The radio was always blasting some steel guitar honky-tonk music. I liked hearing it. I also liked watching how it made the people behave after they had a few beers.
Going into the future a few years, my grandma is downsizing to move to a mobile home in Florida. My family got the piano. I took piano lessons and was diligent about them at first. I’m glad I was, but then I got carried away drawing cartoons and playing pranks.
This was about the end of junior high school. I started hanging out with a couple of guys that were music heads and we started to play music together. We played a few teen dances. We played a junior college show to a bunch of farm kids that hated us. I told them they had better go to bed now because they had to wake up early to fuck the cows. I don’t think I have seen a group of people so mad ever since, especially because it took a couple of seconds for what I had said to sink in.
While the going was good, my mom moved us all down to Florida. At first, we were all living with my grandma in her mobile home. I got a kick out of living there. Due to there not being much room for personal space, I’d listen to my records with my headphones on. Scary Monsters by David Bowie had come out, and I analyzed that record with my headphones.
Living in Florida is exactly what anyone that has read at least two news stories in the last half century would expect it to be. Thirty five year old grandmas in bikinis and Cha-Cha heels sauced out of their mind. Bikers. Old people wearing skimpy bathing suits with that dried out bronze skin, and loads of belligerent white trash.
I’d get together to play music informally with people. One guy I liked playing with was a real pain in the ass. He was nuts. He was a mess. His behavior was like the early Daffy Duck cartoons. He wasn’t that way all of time. When we were hanging out playing guitars, he was cool. He knew more about country blues and strange music than I did and he could play better than me. I needed to expand my knowledge, but there’s only so long that you can deal with a maniac.
I met some guys down there that told me they were anti-music. They’d say everything sounded like shit and that everything was bullshit. Nobody was putting their hearts into anything. Nothing was intense enough. They’d play me records of battalions of jackhammers going off. I liked their spirit. One of the guys told me he was going to take a picture of his dumps every morning. When he told me, I started laughing really hard because that is a ridiculous idea. It’s nasty. Because I was laughing, he started laughing too, and I know it was for the same reason I was too. A couple of days later I see the guy again, and he tells me the same photograph plan in a manner like it’s the first time he’s telling it to me. This time he’s on the offense and speaking in slow measured tones like a college professor, which means those statements can’t be laughed at. But, he turned me onto the Butthole Surfers when they were in their prime.
While I’m on the Florida stories, I wanted to talk about the guy I hung out with who had a fist the size of my head. But our waitress won’t let you take her picture with me and I want to move the talk to Atlanta.
Atlanta was where everything was happening that I wanted to know about at that time. Socially, it was wide open. It was a free for all freak show and a ton of fun.
I first fell in with an ad hoc group of street musicians that played Pre-World War II country blues. Like a jug band. They were hardcore good timers and could play. They were probably a bunch of winos.
Toward the end of one Atlanta winter there was a guitar player that I liked. He was a unique specimen. He had a wild take on what a musical experience should be. One moment his playing would be some low down gutbucket, the next it could be something grating and atonal, and then it might be a beautiful rendition of a Stephen Foster song. He came up to me with a plan. He told me on the first warm Saturday that spring a bunch of us were going to set up in a public space and have an outdoor show, except our instruments were going to be garbage cans. The warm day comes and it’s him with a garbage can, me with a garbage can, and a guy that brought a full drum kit. We set up on this sidewalk area between a pizza joint, a record store, and a bar. The two of us banged on garbage cans and the drummer beat his drum set like a true spastic. We were all screaming like the Apocalypse was happening and calling hogs at the same time. Every now and then some Eddie Cochran lyrics would get thrown in. A crowd started forming and they were getting into it also. They joined in with the screaming. A beat cop walks up to us and tells us to zip it. I don’t remember what I was doing earlier that day, but I caught a glimpse of myself in a storefront window while the cop is yelling at us and thought, “Why do I look so filthy? I look like I’ve been rolling around in pig shit!”
We told the cop we’d break it up, but as soon as he was out of sight we started again. It didn’t take long for the cop to come back. He blew his top and called us sons of bitches.
As we were leaving the drummer and I decided to form Phantom 309, which was the first band I did recordings with.
This is how it started. I had bought a used Fostex X-15 from a guy that worked at a recording studio in Tampa, Florida. It's a four track recorder that uses cassette tapes. I also had a Radio Shack reverb box that made the wettest sounds. It was a real Sci-Fi sounding device. I'd sit around for hours making recordings. If I wrote songs they were rip-offs of Mississippi Fred McDowell or Muddy Waters. If I wasn't recording that way, I'd make layers of noises that sounded like space aliens in the Serengeti. It was fun, but there is no thrill like doing something while someone else is hitting a drum. I hook up with his guy called 8-Ball. He had no confidence in his ability to keep a beat. In retrospect, he had his reasons to feel that way. He also rubbed people the wrong way because of his attitude. None of which bothered me.
To play songs, I'd let him drum by himself for about 10 seconds. Once he had gotten his footing, I'd start playing guitar chords. Usually I'd play a primitive resin of the type of songs that James Cotton would do when he was on Sun Records. We'd remember what we had done and call it a song. We played a few shows as a duo but decided we needed a bass player. I found somebody to fill in on bass, but 8-Ball busted the guys balls non-stop. We had a show in Athens, Georgia scheduled. A few days before the show 8-Ball tells the bass player, "When I say the letter S that means for you to shut up because it's wasting too much of my time to say SHUT UP." Everyone has their limits. Harsh words were exchanged and we were without a bass player.
8-Ball was friends with Mac McNeilly. Mac later became the drummer for the Jesus Lizard. 8-Ball had put out records by Mac's old band. Mac was game to pick up the bass. He'd play his ass off and really get into it. It was fun to be around.
Toward the end of Phantom 309 we added another guitarist. Her name was Jennifer Hensley. She played a SG guitar through an Orange amp. She was into Sabbath, the Stooges, and the Misfits, and it showed. Plus she had a full back tattoo when only bikers, sailors, and degenerated hillbillies had tattoos.
Then we decided to form a new group and called it Dirt. Dean Clyne worked for the label Phantom 309 was on and wanted to join. He became the bass player, and man, he was a powerhouse. He would hit his low E string with such force that it would snap in half. Our first drummer was a woman named Dee Gonzalez. I played slide guitar in an open G tuning.
Not to sound gratuitous, but we were a really macho sounding band which was a novelty because half the band were women and we lived in the Deep South.
Mount Shasta, L-R: Jason Bensen, Jenny White, John Vernon Forbes, Al Johnson. Photo courtesy of Skin Graft Records.
I had gotten tired of where I was living and moved to Chicago. Once I got to Chicago, I started Mount Shasta with Jenny White and Jason Bensen. Al Johnson from US Maple played guitar. After he quit, Carl Brueggen replaced him. We wanted to play loud, loose rock and roll. We had some wild times playing weird places out west.
In Albuquerque at the end of the evening some fellows wearing g-strings asked us if we wanted to wrestle. To this day I'm friends with one of them. I have been perpetually fascinated by the idea of adult situations and the running out of the mortal clock. It doesn't cause me anxiety. I was concentrating on the inevitability of multiple apocalypses, fidelity, primal needs, and skullduggery.
I wanted to have some way to play music in my 60s and 70s, and I started Tijuana Hercules to deal with it. I wanted to do something idiosyncratic to fit my mood, something that sounded like it was rooted in the history of mankind. Something raunchy but that wasn't on Viagra.
Tell us about your upcoming release on Skin Graft.
It's a compilation album called POST NOW: ROUND ONE CHICAGO vs NEW YORK. There are eight bands doing two tracks apiece. Representing Chicago is Cheer Accident, Bobby Conn, Lovely Little Girls, and Tijuana Hercules. Representing New York it's the Flying Luttenbachers, Skryptor, Cellular Chaos, and Child Abuse. It seems to me to be taking on a scorched earth policy. A true battle where everyone is the winner.
Can we expect anything else from Tijuana Hercules this year?
You most definitely can. This summer Skin Graft is going to release a collection of Tijuana Hercules singles, EP's, and one-off recordings. It's going to be called MUDSLOD and the SINGLES. Then by the year's end there should be a new album.
Do you have any stories that you would like to share?
I have a story. I don’t know what band I was in, but I remember we played in New York City. After we were done playing, I just wanted to walk around by myself. So, I’m just walking around Manhattan all night long, like lower Manhattan. I come up on this alley and there’s this building, and then a door flies open. There’s this loud party going on inside, and it’s like, I don’t know, somewhere between 3 and 5 in the morning? So, the door flew open because somebody left, and it looked like there were about 40 people in this small room off this alley, and I swear, there’s Tony Curtis standing there in a bra wearing rouge. We made eye contact. He gave me this glare, and then somebody slammed the door in my face.
What’s your songwriting process like?
I keep a guitar tuned in D minor Vestapol tuning. It’s an open tuning used widely in the 1920s for blues. I read somewhere that it got its start in the 1850s as a popular parlor trick for ladies that played guitar for home entertainment. I fingerpick the guitar instead of using a flat pick. It’s what works for me. I’ll pluck around on all sorts of bullshit sometimes something I like appears.
You used to live in the same building as me so you could hear me fool around on the piano. But I mainly like to play old barrelhouse sounding riffs on the piano.
Here’s a vibe that I’m shooting for in song. It’s dark. It’s in an alley behind a restaurant. A restaurant worker is in the alley enjoying a cigarette break. All of the sudden Chuck Berry walks by with a blonde woman on each arm. The restaurant worker is stunned to see Chuck Berry because he’s a fan of Chuck. The restaurant worker starts to speak to Chuck Berry. He’s polite. He calls him Mr. Berry and tells him he’s a fan. Chuck Berry tells him, “Shut the fuck up, motherfucker!” Chuck and the blondes laugh their asses off and hop into a chauffeured car and drive away. I’m only bullshitting here.*
You’re also a prolific illustrator, with generally hilarious results. What do you think puts these images in your head?
To tell you the truth, I have no idea. I think I probably have a very loose mind that randomly bumps along.
Illustrations and animation by John Vernon Forbes.
What are some of your favorite movies, books, and comics that you feel inspire you?
As a kid I watched a sick amount of VHF television. It would be the local independent channel that played old black and white movies from Hollywood’s glory days and cartoons that are now banned today due to violence and racial insensitivity. I was intrigued by it all. I watched everything and enjoyed it even if I thought the movie was not my thing. It took me years to realize that some movies stunk.
To this day I prefer old movies. I like noirs except for the one Lucille Ball was in. John Ford movies hit a special nerve for me, a good nerve. I saw plenty of the same things in real life growing up as is handled in his movies. Fighting. Paddling. Drinking. Wrestling with moral dilemmas.
I’m also hooked on Joan Crawford movies. She can make a horrible movie a great movie by her presence. The plots are soap operas. One character makes a cutting speech to another character. The character that was the speech’s recipient retaliates by slapping the speech giver with wide-eyed vigor. What a great dramatic writing device.
I wasn’t really into superhero or fantasy comics. I was more into the newspaper comics, especially the non-realistic looking humorous ones. It gave me something to aspire to. I could figure out how they did it. The thought behind them seemed to have something on the ball. I’m thinking about Beetle Bailey, Krazy Kat, Peanuts (but that one had a deep spiritual meaning), and Nancy. Nancy was drawn by Ernie Bushmiller. I read a quote from the Village Voice that his sensibility was that of a “moron on an acid trip”.
I used to buy books all the time. Now I go to the library. I read whatever catches my imagination for the moment. I’m all over the board. It might be The Legend Of Gigamesh or a book about the Turk, the chess playing automaton, that played Benjamin Franklin in a game. I used to work in a used bookstore down in Florida. It was an old supermarket that was converted into a used bookstore. I found some good authors while working there by pure happenstance. There was also plenty of crackpot theory books I read for amusement. They were true tinfoil hat potboilers. Being that it was in Florida, the store was always full of penny-pinching retirees. Not only did they browse for hours, but they farted nonstop. You couldn’t walk three feet without stepping into an invisible noxious cloud.
What would you call some of your favorite bands/musicians?
The creme de la creme.
Ok, it’s coffee time. Do you like that stuff?
I do. I only started drinking coffee a couple of years ago which I consider pretty late in life. I always liked the smell and I liked the visual ritual of a coffee drinker. It looked like high life. Everybody that drinks a cup of coffee looks smart while they are doing it, even bums look classy drinking coffee. But the taste was beyond something I could put my head around. It was too bitter for my palate. Then one hot summer day I got a craving for coffee. Not a cup but a pot. That same day I got a craving for a cocktail made of bourbon, Pepsi with real sugar, ginger, and bitters. I have not wavered since that day. Maybe maturity has set in. Or else I’m looking for a new way to get jacked.
What do you look for in a good cup of coffee?
A fifty dollar bill.
How do you make coffee at home?
I use a French press.
Photo by Kristan Lieb.
If you are grabbing a coffee at a cafe, what is your go-to?
See, mainly I drink my coffee at home. But if I’m really feeling dead on my feet and have things to do that require me using my wits, I’ll stop some place to get a cup to try and juice myself up. I don’t have any particular spot that I go to. What I’m looking for is a place that can get me in and out with as little lingering time as possible. I see people with laptops hanging out in coffee shops and it looks like they have been there all day. It makes me wonder if their home lives are so horrible that fooling around on a computer all day in a coffee shop is some sort of reprieve. I have a feeling the only difference between is people that hang out in a coffee shop all day and those that hang out in the library all day is olfactory offensiveness.
When I had down time I used to hang out at the Harold Washington Library, downtown. Once I went into the bathroom on the eighth floor. As I came in I saw a fellow at the sink that looked like Caesar Romero with an Esquerita style pompadour. It was graying, but it was a dry pompadour and it was stacked. He’s looking at himself in the mirror and going to town combing his hair. All the while he’s singing to himself. The song sounded like one of those jivey late 70s-80s R&B tunes where the melody goes nowhere and the lyrics are a combination of the silliest pick up lines invented by man. I do my business. He’s still at the mirror. I go to wash my hands. He’s still at the mirror, but we make eye contact. I leave the bathroom. He’s still at the mirror. I walk about 15 feet from the door and I hear the door and a voice singing in the same style as earlier but this time it is singing, “I JUST WANT TO MAKE LOVE TO YOU! OH YEAH! ALL NIGHT LONG!” I turn around and it’s the guy from the bathroom. He’s pointing both of his index fingers at me and looking me in the eye. He’s singing and dancing like he’s on late night television game show.
Are there coffees from particular regions that you are particularly fond of?
I get French Roast, Ethiopian, or Guatemalan.
How do you feel that coffee intersects with your creativity?
It’s obvious that it goes hand in hand.
Thanks so much, John. Lastly, have you heard any good jokes lately?
No.
*based on true events
Hi Warren, thank you so much for taking some time to Spill The Beans. Could you tell us a bit about yourself?
I am a father, musician, composer and performer. Australian born and reside in France. I am a pescatarian and was born on Valentine’s day. I like watching films and television series. I have no grievance with gluten. It’s welcome in my orbit. I am suspicious of spirulina. I found myself in the profession of musician. I believe People have the Power. Global warming is the most serious issue we face, please tell your president and all the others who doubt it.
Warren Ellis, photo by Jamie Williams
You’ve been playing music for decades, well known for your work in Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds and Grinderman, but also the fantastic Dirty Three. How did you get started and how did it evolve for you?
How amazing, decades. It still astounds me how they have stacked up. Music is something I was interested in from a young age. As long as I remember, I loved listening to music, and one day I became a player. I found an accordion at the local rubbish dump and learnt how to play it, and it just went from there. I was always able to get a tune out of most instruments. Playing violin, flute, and accordion, and listening to AC/DC all seemed rather incongruous. I never dreamed I would make music a career. I went to university and became a school teacher. In 1988 I went to Europe and lived on a Whiskey Distillery, busking and learning tunes. That was for me my first musical experience of great worth. Then I met Jim and Mick and we formed Dirty Three in 1990. From there, I met Nick Cave and it’s just kept growing organically.
Once I started playing, I knew straight away it was on.
Dirty Three. L-R: Jim White, Warren Ellis, Mick Turner. Photo by Annabelle Mehran.
I first became aware of you with the release of Dirty Three’s Horse Stories, and your live shows and records continue to have a huge impact on me. I remember seeing you in a small club in Saint Louis, standing on top of one of the monitors and playing your heart out to about a hundred people, but have also seen you in giant rooms (still playing your heart out.) I’m sure that over time and with different projects you’ve been involved with, certain aspects of your creative process and experience have changed, while some may stay the same. After all of this time, what about these experiences stands out to you?
I think it is true what you say. I have always played my heart out, whether in a room or a studio, with 1 or 100,000 people present. It’s the act of playing that is sacred. I have been blessed in that I have been rewarded for my work, and it’s meant I can raise my family on music alone. I never intended to create music, that was down to the company I was keeping and the wonder of being in a group. I am only as good as my latest project. I always wonder when I go in the studio if it is the last time something will appear. I have been wondering that for 28 years. Somehow something continues to evolve. The main thing is to turn up, no matter what. The rest takes care of itself. I always said I would continue doing this as long as I have something to say.
Dirty Three, performing live for NPR's Tiny Desk Concerts series in 2012.
I have been fortunate to work with people who bring out the best in me. I love a struggle and love to work. In the studio, Nick quite often just walks out at the end of the day and leaves me banging away. I don’t know how to stop.
Screen print for a Dirty Three show in Chicago by Dan Grzeca.
What would you consider the biggest influences on your music?
The desire to do something great. The terror of knowing it might never happen.
You have also scored several films, both as a solo artist and with Nick Cave. Do you have a singular approach for these projects, or do you treat each film uniquely?
An approach has developed since we created "The Proposition."
We are very economical with time it seems, and keep it loose, similar to making an album.
It’s my job to question the musical aspect of things. I like to keep it unexpected and tackle the unknown against my better judgment. Generally a script is read or a cut watched, then we have a discussion, then start making music, and hope some beautiful collisions happen.
Warren with Nick Cave, photo by Kevork Djansezian.
What do you find yourself listening to these days?
Mostly soundtracks and instrumental music. I listen all the time.
I keep going back to Brian Eno. Philip Glass, and Moondog. Strumming Music by Charlemagne Palestine, amongst many.
I still listen to I’m New Here by Gil Scott Heron very much, and Alice Coltrane. Miles Davis and John Coltrane. Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan. Beethoven and Stravinsky. The sound of the city I am in or the sounds in my fingers and head. I make a lot of music and I am constantly listening to that. I can put a loop I have made on and leave it running all afternoon and go about my day, then add to it.
I have worn out several copies of "Blade Runner." I think streaming is fantastic for the listeners and creatives. Such a rich resource on hand.
But it could be something different in a week.
I am always listening to demos and new scores/ideas in progress.
A playlist featuring Warren and artists he enjoys.
What can we look forward to from you next?
I have recently released a new album Negative Capability by Marianne Faithfull that I produced with Rob Ellis and played on.
I am looking at some scores and possibly doing Dirty Three at some stage. I heard a live recording yesterday from 2009 that stopped me in my tracks.
I am just back from a tour of almost 2 years for Skeleton Tree. I will try to find employment as a neighborhood Santa Claus and buy myself some musical instruments. Whatever I am going to work on next, it must potentially be the best thing I have ever created, or there is no point.
I thought he was joking, but this looks like a bit of job training at Air Studios, London. Via Twitter.
Note: since this interview took place, Warren recently stated that he is currently producing new music for Tinariwen, and Nick Cave recently announced at a live performance that he and the Bad Seeds were almost finished with a new record.
You’ve lived all over the place, as well as toured extensively. How have you seen the artistic culture differ in places you’ve lived, and what are some of your favorites to visit?
Istanbul is beautiful and I love Israel. Driving across America is still a wonder.
I loved Mexico City recently and Sao Paulo.
At the Pyramid Of The Sun, Teotihuacan, Mexico via Twitter.
To be honest I love touring and movement. Artistic culture? hmm... I don’t feel qualified to comment. I can work anywhere and all I need is a place that I can unload my internal rumblings. It’s very often that the environment around me inspires me. Except the last studio I was in in Malibu. Something creeped in.
Ok, it’s coffee time. What do you think of that stuff?
It’s "grouse," Australian for awesome.
What do you look for in a good cup of coffee?
Bold taste and clean. I think I like coffee in general, to be honest.
I like drinking all sorts, I am not a coffee snob. Like food, I just want it clean and healthy, made with love.
How do you make coffee at home?
I have a machine that grinds beans then makes espresso. I push a button and watch the magic.
I also have a plunger and Italian pot, if I want a variety.
A French press or Plunger, and a Moka or Italian pot. Photos by Kristan Lieb.
If you are grabbing a coffee at a cafe, what is your go-to?
Double Espresso or a Noisette which is a Macchiato outside France.
I am not into Americano. I prefer a filter coffee or roadhouse.
Milk based is not my speed.
Are there coffees from particular regions that you are especially fond of?
Not really. I will drink anything, I am not a coffee snob. I have instant coffee on hand and find it comforting. It takes me back to my youth.
How do you feel that coffee intersects with your creativity?
I drink coffee all day. I’m hooked. I also like a cup of Lady Grey tea in the afternoon to break it up. If I don’t have coffee it all starts spiraling apart, starting with a headache. I drink coffee before bed sometimes. Nick always rolls his eyes at me at dinner when I order.
Warren & Nick, from the documentary "20,000 Days On Earth"
Thanks so much, Warren. Lastly, have you heard any good jokes lately?
How do clowns taste?
Kinda funny.
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Hey Michael, thanks so much for Spillin' The Beans. Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
My name is Michael McSherry. I lived in Chicago for 10 years, Oakland, California for 5 years, and am currently moving to San Francisco. I worked in coffee for about 10 years - always roasting, sourcing and quality control side of things. I now work in beer for a San Francisco based company called Sufferfest Beer Company. I started and have grown the Field Marketing Program for the business and am now executing over 300 events per year all over California, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, & Texas. That’s the big picture of work life. Hobby wise I have been singing and playing guitar, doing photography, climbing, cycling, and writing. Neil Young is my favorite artist and recently my favorite podcast has been “Cocaine & Rhinestones”, especially the episode about the Louvin Brothers. As of yesterday I have been listening to the song “There’s A Higher Power” of their 1960 album Satan Is Real. There is a pretty great story about that album cover...
It's been a few years since you moved out to California. How has your experience been, and what do you miss about Chicago?
The experience has been really amazing! The nature and the opportunity that is available is unreal. It has a so much to offer. If you get off your ass and get out there to experience all there is to offer and seize opportunities your it’s not hard to get your mind blown on a daily basis.
Things I miss about Chicago? The music scene, the Hoyle Brothers on Fridays at the Empty Bottle, all the friends I made during my 10 years here, biking around the city, quick access to the beautiful state of Michigan, Half Acre, Revolution, and 3 Floyds beers, and the intense joy of Chicago summers, to name a few things.
You started Grinderman Coffee, a bicycle-delivered coffee business while in Chicago. Tell me about that.
I think it was about 2005, I had my own house painting business, worked at an event space called The Greenhouse Loft, and was a part time Preparator at the University of Chicago Oriental Institute Museum. In the winter painting slowed way down which was my primary source of income. I had a good friend named David Meyers who was home roasting coffee and I asked to come see how he did it. He had this thing which was basically just a propane gas grill with a rotisserie motor attached to with a drum on a chicken spit. He would put coffee in there and handle the thing with welding gloves and smoke billowing filling up the garage. When I approached for the first time it looked like the garage was on fire. I took note of the parts and then just assembled a copy of his machine in my own garage. Soon I was roasting coffee and selling bags of coffee at shows my band would play. People asked how to get the coffee if they did not want to come see my band and so Grinderman Coffee was born. I started a website and a subscription service where you could buy my coffee and I would bicycle deliver it to your home. I also sold wholesale to grocery stores. I did that for about 6 years and in the middle of that was offered a roasting position at Metropolis Coffee. Next thing I knew, I had a career in coffee. Those were good times. I just started and didn’t question much. It went well and I used the extra money I made to rent a cabin in Michigan. I am a big Nick Cave fan and yes, Grinderman Coffee was influenced by Nick’s band of the same name, and specifically the song Grinderman. Give it a listen.
So when you left Chicago you were working in coffee, and you’ve since transitioned into beer. What parallels and differences do you see in the industries and cultures? Is there anything about coffee you miss and/or anything in either experience you would like to see more of in the other?
Parallels:
Lots of drinking beverages of your respective industry.
Lots of sharing beverages of your respective industry.
Lots of telling everyone about your beverages and your brand story.
More competition to be known, earn brand loyalty and brand awareness.
No shortage of excellent coffee and beer.
Both beverages really help open us up to socializing with friends and strangers.
We talk and write a lot about what we taste.
Music is a key component in both cultures.
We drink things more than we eat things.
Differences:
I worked in production roasting and quality evaluation in coffee, I now work in marketing in beer.
You tell the story of origin a lot in coffee, In beer you tell the brand story a lot more as well as recipe development, in my experience.
I also work a lot on the events side and there lots of “festivals” in the beer industry and I don’t recall so many “festivals” in coffee.
There are WAY MORE laws in the beer industry that can affect where and how you can serve than in coffee.
Big beer pays lots of money often to buy up successful micro-brands, I don’t think that happens as often for as much money in coffee. I could be wrong but that is what I have noticed.
Anything about coffee I miss? Having so much good coffee available at any time! I now have to buy bags of coffee and occasionally trade beer for coffee, but that is one thing I definitely miss. Other than that, I worked in the coffee industry for nearly 10 years. I feel I got my fill, and learned a lot. I also know I tend to change my interests every 2-5 years with nearly everything I do and I have accepted this. I enjoy what I do when I am doing it. I am thankful for the opportunity and experience, and then I move on.
I love it when people break the stereotypical vibe of a cafe and would like to see more of that. I also would love to see more places that are a coffee in the morning place and turn over to a bar in the afternoon or evening. If I opened a place, for example, it would be a bar and have an old country Saloon vibe. Open early and serve solid coffee in the morning and then in the afternoon change over to serving beer. It would play old country music, and 60’s and 70’s era music. Take it or leave it.
I’ve always known you to be extremely driven by creativity. How are you expressing yourself artistically these days?
Relationships, photography, climbing, 60’s & 70’s style with a little country thrown in is how I am expressing myself these days.
Relationships:
For my work now, I work with a lot of different people, create relationships, and build events and experiences for people these days. I love talking, hanging out, and building ideas that come to life via experiences.
Photography:
I have been working on understanding manual DSLR photography a lot more and have begun to capture the experiences I build. I also love photographing friends, artists in their creative spaces, and I am working on landscape photography so I can hang pictures I am proud of in my home.
Joshua Tree National Park
Navarro, California
Primo Mendoza, Chicago, IL.
Photos by Michael McSherry
Climbing:
Since moving to California, I have been heavily into cycling, then running, now climbing. There is a lot of stuff to climb in California and they gym climbing scene is very strong there. Climbing is very physically challenging, in the moment, requires problem solving, and knowing your strengths and weaknesses. I enjoy the challenge and process of trying to become stronger and more flexible and the feeling you get when you pull off and put together a series of hard moves to reach the top of a new route or problem.
The 60’s & 70’s:
This era and style has always just felt right to me. I just click with everything and feel like I was born in the wrong era sometimes. I just love the sound, style, fashion, vans, attitudes and values. I love the mix of country western and honky-tonk style with 70’s style too... It just speaks to me, man!
Michael McSherry, livin' that life.
From what I've seen, you also seem quite passionate about cycling and climbing. What do these mean to you, and what do you get from them?
I got into cycling a lot more as a necessary means to start Grinderman Coffee. After hauling coffee all over Chicago, I eventually had an urge to just ride and not haul anything. That is when I got a road bike and started doing longer road rides for enjoyment. Long rides always served me as a kind of meditative practice. Focusing on not much except what is in front of me and what is going on the current moment. After moving to California, I rode even more. There is so much to explore and see on a bike in this state and it really helped me to better understand the geography of Oakland and the greater Bay Area.
As far as climbing, I got into it after moving to California. I climb a lot more than I ride now, but it is also very meditative and brings me very much into the present moment. Cycling and climbing both share an active meditation element for me, and both have fitness and exploration elements that I truly enjoy.
What role does coffee continue to play in your life?
I continue to make a Chemex and/or Aeropress at home every day. My favorite roaster and cafe in Oakland is Timeless Coffee by far. Their quality of coffee, roasting, brewing, and kitchen and baked goods are THE BEST in Oakland as far as I am concerned. I love brewing and enjoying at least 2 cups of coffee at home each morning. That said, I have also come down from my specialty coffee throne and am not above a Starbucks drip coffee either. I enjoy the ritual of coffee and feel a connection to coffee in the same way as special agent Dale Cooper. With that I shall leave you with one of my favorite Coop quotes - “...every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don’t plan it; don’t wait for it; just let it happen. It could be a new shirt in a men’s store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black, coffee.”
Thanks again, Michael! Lastly, have you heard any good jokes lately?
Not specifically no, just look around - being a human being is pretty hilarious to me!
I told you this guy was great, but check this out: he made a playlist for ya! Enjoy!
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Hello, Agostino! I can’t thank you enough for doing this!
Sure, no problem! It's a pleasure to do this for you, Ben! :-)
How about we start with you telling us a bit about who you are and what you do?
My name is Agostino Tilotta, I'm an Italian from Catania, Sicily. I play electric guitar in a local band called UZEDA, with Giovanna (my wife) and 2 other Sicilians, and in another band called BELLINI, with Giovanna and 2 Americans. I also play acoustic solo shows, promoted as "Agostino Tilotta... solo... acoustic... In Itinere," performing my instrumental compositions through old wooden guitars handmade in Catania by luthiers who lived a long time ago.
Agostino at Electrical Audio. Photo by Alexis Fleisig.
With Giovanna, through Indigena (our little booking agency) we book shows for independent bands composed of very good friends with whom we share the aptitude for the art of music, freedom from commercial slavery, the sound able to communicate directly to the deepest and most intimate emotions of every consciousness, thus generating an audience, a community of different individuals who share vibrations and frequencies, all together in the same place, even if nobody knows the other. Giovanna is also a screen-printer, she has her own workshop where she prints on fabric, shoes, T-shirts, band merch, leather, etc. When she has a lot of work to do I help her for as long as she needs me. The breaks during all our creative and organizational activities, including the daily routine, are tempered by many espresso coffees that we enjoy sipping them slowly to appreciate its roasting, taste, aroma and fragrance, absorbing and assimilating them with care and pleasure.
In 2018, Uzeda celebrated its 30th anniversary with two days of notable and influential bands, some of which haven’t been active in some time. How did you all get the idea to do this, and what were the bands’ initial reactions to being asked?
Personally, I'm always shy and reluctant to celebrate anniversaries. I always spend my birthdays with very few friends, away from the confusion of crowded parties, playing my acoustic guitar when I feel to interact with my loneliness, sure to be welcomed by friends while they keep talking to each other. In fact in summer 2017 in Catania, Sicily when a couple of dear friends first asked me if we were willing to celebrate UZEDA 30th, spontaneously offering to finance a musical event conceived and planned by us, my immediate reply was "NO".
Their second attempt was successful when they later explained to me that UZEDA 30th could be a great opportunity to inspire many young people, entangled in the jerseys of a self-centered society that limits their creativity and fantasy, thus oppressing their freedom to build an amazing future, day by day, one brick after another, learning from their own mistakes, falling to rise and move forward, strong of a real non-virtual experience.
My immediate reply was: "Sure, let's do it!"
After 4 months of preparation, together with a bunch of friends, mostly members of bands on the line up, the event had come to life, on a beautiful beach in Catania, Sicily, Friday 25 and Saturday 26, May 2018.
UZEDA 30th became the celebration of welcoming and friendship, with a line-up consisting of 8 bands for 9 shows.
Although we ourselves were the focal point of our anniversary, we deeply felt that it was our duty and honor to welcome everyone, bands, audience, and all those we wanted to be at the 30th, together sharing emotions, respect, joy and hope.
This is why we decided to open both evenings by playing first.
Uzeda performing at Uzeda 30th. L-R: Giovanna Cacciola, Agostino Tilotta, Raffaele Gulisano, Davide Oliveri. Photos by Donata Marletta.
All the bands I had contacted are people we admire for their way of being, for their independent attitude to manage their career, for their way of being so direct and so unique in expressing the identity of their thinking through the unconventional sound of their music, and of course for having lived intense human adventures, sharing stages with them around the world.
What were the initial reactions from the bands when asked?
Enthusiasm, surprise, curiosity, gratitude, joy, and all their full desire to be with us, here in Catania, Sicily.
It was not one of the many festivals that fill summer evenings, it was just a birthday party. Friends inviting friends to play for other friends, and this sense of community created nuances, moods, atmospheres, flavors, colors, and lights totally different from the flat routine of any generic festival.
I cannot translate into words the feelings I felt in those days, but if I close my eyes I can still smell the dozens of espresso I tasted, and feel the powerful positive energy generated in those two days of great music and of great humanity, even higher than the energy able to bring a big Boeing from the ground to the sky, when I think June of 44 pushed their hearts to the top of the scale accepting our invitation, and coming back to play in front of an audience 20 years after their last show.
You’ve made many great friends over the years, not only through the bands you are in, but also by bringing bands over to play in Italy and tour managing them. Are there any specific tours or experiences that stand out to you?
Oh well...there are many experiences and many tours I'd certainly love to share with you, but it would take an encyclopedia to enclose them all, and then already my poor English leads me to write long answers to your simple questions. However, I'll tell you a short real story, happened many years ago, while I was a tour manager with June of 44 on tour in Europe.
Coming from London where the band had played the night before, in the afternoon we arrived in Leeds and were looking for a venue called "The Duchess of York" in time for the load-in and the sound check. It was a grey rainy February day in the UK, and we did not have the venue address; in those days without GPS we used to use maps, and without the address available, we used to get information here and there verbally.
In the city center while stopped at the traffic light waiting for the green, I see a guy walking on the sidewalk near the van. I quickly open the window and scream loudly:
"Hey mate, do you know The Duchess of York?" The boy, looking at me from under his umbrella at the mercy of the wind, respectfully responds: "No, I'm sorry mate, I do not know her. I wish I could have known someone as important as her. Ask that elderly gentleman with white hair over there, he might know her for sure!"
An uncontrollable roar of laughter and tears immediately exploded inside the van, we had to stop and get off the van, and we couldn't stop laughing for 15 minutes. Without having imagined it, a sincere spontaneity had created a paradox that lived in reality, transforming a question and its answer in a true theatrical sketch, live on the street.
When can we expect new music from you?
The new album of Bellini Before The Day Has Gone, was released on July 27, 2018, on Temporary Residence LTD.
Bellini in Chicago while recording "Before The Day Has Gone". L-R: Alexis Fleisig, Giovanna Cacciola, Matthew Taylor, Agostino Tilotta. Photo by Alexis Fleisig.
A tour of Bellini in the USA, to promote the new album, is foreseen perhaps this year if we find a band of friends available to be on tour with us.
The new 8 songs of UZEDA that will go on the new album are already running live in our shows. We expect to record them perhaps in January 2019.
(Update: Uzeda recorded a new album with Steve Albini from January 3-6, 2019 in an analog studio in Northern Italy.)
A film/documentary on the history of UZEDA is in preparation and assembly. Filming already started 3 years ago.
I'm planning to record the songs for my first solo album by the end of this year, to be released on 2019. etc.etc.etc....:-)
Photo by Donata Marletta.
What is a regular day in Catania for you and Giovanna?
In the morning we always wake up with the scent of coffee, as soon as it's ready in our 6 cups coffee maker, prepared by who, between the 2 of us, gets up first. We also have a 2 cups coffee maker... but that's useless for us since a very long time. We love espresso coffee, it's a family tradition and part of our culture.
Photo by Ben Crowell.
A little breakfast for Giovanna, and a sequence of little cups of espresso coffee for me, are the occasion for us to plan what the 2 of us will have to do during the day, work, go at the market, take care of the car, pay the bills, work, meet friends, etc. etc.
Our day isn't too much different from other people's day... except for the fact that music is our way of life, even doing other things. Every moment of the day, in my opinion, is a precious source of inspiration that, constantly, indicates all the existing creatures, the specific sound of each individual identity.
So, let’s talk about coffee. How big of a role does coffee play in your life?
As you can read on my answers above, coffee plays a very important role in my life. It belongs to the ancient Mediterranean culture of the island where I was born and where I live: Sicily.
Since I was a child, I learned how to recognize the taste of a good coffee.
My father taught me that espresso coffee should never be drunk like a glass of water, but it should be sipped in small doses, a bit of coffee at the time, holding it in the mouth to absorb its aroma and taste, slowly and...no rush, so as to transform the need into the intimate pleasure of a contemplative moment.
How do you make it at home?
In a 6 cups aluminum Moka/coffee maker.
A Bialetti Moka Pot. Photo by Kristan Lieb.
What do you look for in a good cup of coffee?
Its roasting, taste, aroma and fragrance. Even the best coffee blend on earth can generate an awful coffee. If the Moka isn't carefully prepared and/or if the temperature of the stove is overly aggressive and/or if the water is too much or too little and/or if the coffee blend is too compressed in the funnel-filter. You know, little precious things needs a lot of passion and love.:-)
Can you describe the differences in coffee culture in the U.S. and Italy?
I think the US coffee culture originally came from the British Empire that introduced its use in its colonies.
A super boiling caffeine-rich coffee comes out of a kettle. Drunk in large cups, without sugar, it leaves a taste in the mouth that suggests it is a strange coffee broth, or an unusual coffee-flavored tea. In American culture, coffee is drunk everywhere, walking on the streets, driving the car, sitting or standing on the bus, the train, etc. It is also served "to go" in large plastic or polystyrene glasses, with lids, and wooden scoop to stir the coffee.
In Italian culture, coffee is drunk in particular specific moments, to wake up in the morning, to temper relaxation and conviviality, at the bar talking to other people, friends or relatives, or at home alone, comfortably sitting to concentrate on reading and/or writing, or with friends, to socially entertain.
Coffee is served in small porcelain or ceramic little cups, resting on saucers of the same material, provided with a little metal spoon to stir the coffee.
In the historical and continuous progress of the people and their great migratory flows, the Italians who left for the USA in the mid-30s, brought with them pieces of their culture; mandolins, accordions, and their beloved Moka-coffee makers, invented in Italy by Mr. Bialetti in 1933.
Cultural differences are the great wealth of all peoples on Earth. No culture is superior to another. Meeting each other, all populations progress, contributing to the overall evolution of the only race existing in our planet, what Gandhi defines in one single word: Humanity.
How do you feel coffee intersects with your creativity?
Espresso coffee; totally bitter, without sugar or sweetener or honey, is an active part of my creativity, and an irreplaceable friend who assists me in moments of private concentration, like now, I'm answering your questions and espresso coffee looks at me while I slowly sip it from a cute and tiny red cup.
And although it's 5:30 am, I assure you that I will sleep very well and deeply, immediately after finishing this interview.
Thank you so much, Agostino! Congratulations on 30 years to Uzeda, and all my best to you and Giovanna!
You're welcome my Ben, and thank you for giving me the chance to talk about things I love.
Agostino. Photo by Luci Distorte.
]]>Hi Jon, thanks for taking some time to Spill The Beans. Could you tell us a bit about who you are and what you do?
Ok! Sure! My name is Jon Solomon and I’m a big fan of both the coffee Glassworks roasts and this ongoing series. Thanks for having me. Hello from New Jersey! I’m a DJ at 103.3 fm WPRB and run the label Comedy Minus One among other pursuits.
Jon Solomon, photo by Nicole Scheller.
This December 24 at 3:00 pm ET I will kick kick off the 30th-annual edition of my Holiday Radio Show and instead of a traditional 25 hours this year’s marathon is going to be 30 hours in length running until 9:00 pm ET on Christmas night.
You have been putting out records for years, first as the label My Pal God and now Comedy Minus One. How did you get started and how did it evolve for you?
I have been interested in music since I was a kid, printing microfilm displays of Billboard charts from old newspapers at my local public library. Then I discovered punk rock in grade school and everything changed.
Back in the early 1990s I used some bar mitzvah money to pay for a 45 by the band Purple Ivy Shadows and that was the first My Pal God release.
Comedy Minus One began just over 11 years ago. I wanted a fresh start, better accounting (please don’t set up Quickbooks when you’re in college without someone to help you, dear reader) and to receive fewer emails from people thinking we were a religious institution. It felt unfair to MPG to just hit a “reset button” on that label Marvel Comics Year Zero style, so CMO was born.
We’ve put out about 45 records of various sizes in physical and digital form and instead of religious emails we mostly hear from fledgling comedians.
There are some special projects in store for 2019 and beyond.
With both of these record labels, you’ve dealt with a multitude of amazing artists. What are some experiences that stand out to you?
Flying out to Chicago for a Memorial Day show in 2017 with four Comedy Minus One bands was a real treat that felt like “family,” even though I was nursing two herniated discs in my back at the time. Ouch.
Poster by Ryan Nelson.
But, if I think about the question a touch longer I’ll go with simply HEARING the first Bottomless Pit record “Hammer of the Gods” and knowing that it was what the first Comedy Minus One release needed to be.
If I was going to be starting something new it had to be with an album important to me and special. That powerful record was very much both.
What would you consider the biggest influences when you are considering a band to work with, and how have you seen these evolve over time?
Jeez. I like pairing with people who get what I do and have realistic expectations for what we can accomplish together. A good sense of humor and perspective mixed with a willingness to work hard to not lose money is also welcomed.
You have been doing a 24 hour radio broadcast from the early evening on Christmas eve through the evening on Christmas day on WPRB Princeton FOR THIRTY YEARS.
How old were you when you started?
I was 15, and had just become a DJ at WPRB a couple of months prior.
How did this start, and what inspired you to keep going at such a young age?
Total happenstance.
There was a time slot available on Christmas Eve and I was the first person to sign up for it in the lobby of the station (this was of course before the Internet made such things easier). I stayed on the air all night and decided that the next year I wanted to try and do 24 hours for some inexplicable reason.
Which I did.
Most of what I played that Christmas was from the station’s dusty library of holiday music combined with some very lonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng songs, full versions of the Nutcracker, whatever it took to get across the finish line.
I don’t think I’d ever pulled an “all nighter” prior and when some friends from high school stopped by WPRB, I remember one of them appearing to grow in size in front of my eyes.
That is how exhausted I was.
This year is a milestone, with a special 30 hour version taking place. Any surprises people can look forward to?
Well, the show will be longer.
…
…………...
Hopefully that extension results in fewer moments come late December onwards where I don’t suddenly exclaim “Oh no! I totally forgot to play [BLANK]!” to an empty room.
Jon on the air, with assistant. Photo by Nicole Scheller.
The marathon will open with a special two hour mix I am still formulating and close with something special for three bonus hours.
In between all the favorite moments that have developed over three decades of broadcasts shall happen:
A new “Christmas story” debuting every hour! The All-Ramones-inspired set at 12:34 am ET! The All-Misfits-inspired set at 1:38 pm ET! The All-Fall and All-Joel RL Phelps Xmas sets down the stretch! Snaildartha: The Story of Jerry The Christmas Snail! Lindstrom’s 40:00+ Little Drummer Boy! The Sonics, The Wailers, and The Galaxies plus other traditions within the tradition.
You are also a huge fan of seltzer, as am I. You admin a Facebook group called Now Fizzing that has grown to thousands of members since I was asked to join in the very early days. I drink this stuff all the time, and am constantly jealous of the amazing options that exist outside of the Chicago market. How does this group affect your life and what are your favorites?
I’ve been on a big “store brands” kick and I think Soleil makes the best grapefruit seltzer around. Look for it at your Acme or Jewel. Hal’s New York actually does a coffee seltzer that you as a “coffee guy” might want to find a bottle of. It is WEIRD, yet COMPELLING. Unlike the new La Croix Coffea Exotica cola seltzer that is rolling out, it does contain caffeine.
Now Fizzing has been going for four years and has uniformly improved my life through the people I’ve been fortunate to know via a mutual love of bubbly beverages. It is a real honor to moderate one of the rare remaining positive places on the Internet.
The best is meeting people who only know me through NF and have no idea I do a radio show, run a label, or am involved in any of the other projects that were once how I was easily identified.
I used to go to record stores when visiting different towns, now I seem to find myself checking out the beverage aisles of local groceries when on the road…
Ok, it’s coffee time. Do you like that stuff?
I do.
I didn’t always, but I do.
I used to only enjoy coffee-flavored things growing up (Dannon coffee yogurt in particular) but couldn’t stand hot coffee.
My mom drinks dark black coffee straight-up exclusively, so that was really all I knew.
Thick sludge the color of an endless void.
It was only when my now-wife and I started dating and she would prepare a bagel with cream cheese plus iced coffee at her apartment in Brooklyn every morning that I finally understood.
The funny thing is that the first Monday in December I actually GIVE UP COFFEE until December 26th as part of my Xmas marathon prep. Sweets too.
That is seriously looming as I type!
Switching over to tea for the final weeks until I get off the air really helps keep me retain an even keel. But it is harder to give up the coffee each year.
Green tea, chai and seltzer during the marathon exclusively.
Boy, that coffee when I get up on 12/26 tastes amazing though.
What do you look for in a good cup of coffee?
Well, I’m one of those “iced coffee always” people, save for a rare hot cup of coffee after dinner at a wedding.
I enjoy a strong coffee flavor and usually cut my drink with a mild soy milk. We mostly opt for lighter roasts at Ice Station Solomon. There’s a place about 30 minutes up the road called OQ which routinely prepares the best beans in our general area, yet I lack the vocabulary to explain what is so terrific about what they do.
That Ipsento beverage with espresso, honey, coconut milk and cayenne is something I keep trying to recreate in the comfort of my own home. I’ve come pretty close!
How do you make coffee at home?
Beside the above, a few ways - including this hand-pull espresso shot deal called a ROK that my friend Liz lent me and then refused to take back.
Cold brew in the summer via Toddy and for drip we have a Bonavita.
The Baratza Encore grinder rules.
My wife Nicole will usually make a pot of coffee when she heads out.
16 oz exactly goes from the scale to the Encore to the Rok for max effect.
If you are grabbing a coffee at a cafe, what is your go-to?
It used to be an iced soy latte but often these days I opt for an iced Americano. I think I am still searching for my perfect drink that is intensely coffee but not simply coffee. Tell me what to order, Spillin' The Beans readers and I’ll make that my next beverage. Seriously! Find me on Twitter or Facebook and share what you think that drink should be!
That was something important my aforementioned friend Liz imparted when I thought we needed an espresso maker at home - go out for the special coffee drinks and just improve your drip and grind quality at home.
Are there coffees from particular regions that you are particularly fond of?
I think fondly about this strong Ethiopian coffee I had once after a meal with a heavy ginger taste to it, but I also recall how I mentioned this drink at a different Ethiopian restaurant to the owner and he told me that was “for tourists.”
How do you feel that coffee intersects with your creativity?
Well, I can’t really imagine starting a morning without a pint glass of iced coffee and/or a double shot from the ROK, which is best served in said pint glass with a quick pour of maple syrup at the bottom for starters, amid 4-5 ice cubes, unsweetened soy milk and some cinnamon if I remember.I usually get a drink underway, open the blinds in the living room and dining room, find my allergy medicine + probiotic and then reconvene in the kitchen to take a first sip and get my day going at the dining room table.
Thanks so much, Jon. Lastly, have you heard any good jokes lately?
Well, I know a pretty good modem joke but it is a little baud-y...
]]>Hi Karima, thanks for taking some time to Spill The Beans. Could you tell us a bit about who you are and what you do?
Hi Ben, thank you so much for inviting me to do this! I am based out of Tucson, AZ, where I live with my partner and our dog. I work as a server and a sound tech but the funnest work I do is as an experimental songwriter and videographer. More recently, my work and shows have become very installation-like. I tour a fair amount and have been doing some collaborations this year too.
Karima Walker, photo by Eugene Starobinsky.
You released your first full length LP, Hands in Our Names, in 2017 on Orindal Records. how long have you been making music and how has it evolved for you?
I started making music about 8 years ago while living in Chicago and listening to a lot of folk music. I was making songs as a singer-songwriter, but that has changed over the last few years. I still love words and melody, and I’m also still really interested in narrative, but more in the sense of deconstructing it and stretching it out, rebuilding it. Breaking down what I used to do has left me a lot of room to explore texture, space, arrangement... So now I am at a new crossroads, looking at new ways to fill a room.
"Hands In Our Names" by Karima Walker, Sleeve image by Dan Schmahl.
How long have you lived in Tucson, and what effect do you feel it has on your art?
I mostly grew up in Tucson and moved back to my hometown about 5 years ago. Moving back was a profound experience, a lot of my family still lives here, and the city had changed. I had seen some of the world and came back appreciating how unique the Sonoran desert is. Rich light and colors, a geological timeline, big sky, striking flora framed with negative space, the quiet. It’s a resourceful place too. All these features have nourished me and held my work like a little jelly mold.
What would you consider the biggest influences on your music, and how have you seen these evolve over time?
It used to be heartache and loneliness, songwriters I kept falling in love with, poetry. Now it’s stuff like Roden Crater, Maria Nordman and silence (lol). I think when making music became touring and performance and being given a space to take over, that’s when things started shifting.
Sun / Moon Chamber of Roden Crater, located in the Painted Desert of Northern Arizona.
What’s your songwriting process like?
OMG I don’t even know right now. On tour this summer I fell in love with Julie Byrne’s most recent record, Sun June and Twain too. I started missing songwriting! After a long break I’ve started again and coming back to words feels brand new in the best and hardest ways.
For my instrumental work and songwriting, it’s all about texture, slow moving gradients, collecting scraps, ideas and field recordings and running and re-running them through various mediums. The process is a larger-than-I-can-contain kind of collage.
Your live show involves film projected on and behind you while you play. Are you putting these images together?
I am!
Performing live, photo by Lex Gurasic.
Is your film work predominantly tied to your music?
Yes definitely. The editing process is very similar for me: texture and form broken up and re-shaped. The initial impulse to record is the same in video as it is for music. They feel natural to present together though I think they exist on their own too.
You recently filmed a video for Advance Base’s “Christmas in Nightmare City”. Have you done work for other artists?
This is my first music video project for someone else. It was such a pleasure working with Owen!
What would you call some of your current favorite bands/musicians?
I played a show with Kaila Rose Parrish, or K, in Denton recently, and I have been playing her CD in my car a lot.
When can we expect new music from you?
Next year, I believe.
You tour regularly, how do you feel the creative community in Tucson varies from other places you’ve spent time? Also, how would you compare the coffee culture there to other places?
It has changed a lot in just the few years I’ve been back in Tucson. We are just getting some quieter listening room type spaces (which I am pumped about) and some great festivals and events going. It’s a small city, with people coming and going a lot (myself included) which can be strange being away so often, but also really good for getting things flowing ya know? Alongside this movement, I think a lot of people in Tucson are truly grounded in the identity of this place as, for example, a border city, or a desert with seasons that are different than the rest of the country. I only get to skim the surface of other creative communities!
Ok, it’s coffee time. Do you like that stuff?
<3 love it <3
Karima enjoying some limited edition Glassworks Orindal Roast with Nicholas Krgovich while on tour. Photo by Owen Ashworth.
What do you look for in a good cup of coffee?
Depth, brightness, evolution.
How do you make coffee at home, and do you travel with coffee when you’re touring?
I usually make a V60 at home, or if I’m making coffee for loved ones, a Chemex. On the road I travel with an AeroPress - it’s one of my favorite touring rituals/luxury items. If I can’t find a local spot for coffee, I’ll just make a hot water stop.
The Aeropress. Photo by Kristan Lieb.
If you are grabbing a coffee at a cafe, what is your go-to?
I love a short Americano or a single origin espresso.
What are some of your favorite coffee spots you’ve come across in your travels?
I really love Madcap in Grand Rapids and Tandem in Portland Maine!
Are there coffees from particular regions that you are particularly fond of?
I had a Costa Rican coffee (I think it was a natural process?) that I still dream about. I love the bright Ethiopian or Kenyan coffees, something that sweetens as it cools.
How do you feel that coffee intersects with your creativity?
I think the ritual has something to do with it, getting me ready to sit down with the work for the day. A true comfort! Thank you so much, Karima!
Check out Karima's "Hands In Our Names", available from Orindal Records, and visit her website for news, tour dates, and to see some of her amazing work!
Hey Matt, thanks for agreeing to do this. Why don’t we start off with you telling me a bit about what yourself?
No problem! I’m Matt, I’ve been in the band Zelienople for over 20 years, and I’ve been doing solo work for a little under 20 years. I work in social services. I drink coffee every day, whether I need it or not.
Matt Christensen
You’ve been actively creating music in a series of projects in Chicago for some time now, some spanning decades. Could you tell me about these?
Mike Weis, Brian Harding and I started the band Zelienople over 20 years ago, and we released a lot of records on various labels around the world. We’ve had various 4th members, but Donn Ha has stuck for the past few records. We tend to dwell in the “drone” genre, although I wouldn’t really consider us drone. I know that most musicians don’t like to label themselves, but I really don’t think about it much anymore, so I’m kind of fine with whatever people want to call it. I’ve released music with Scott Tuma and Mike Weis under the name Good Stuff House, and under my own name. I’ve also played with Mind Over Mirrors once or twice (maybe once?). It’s hard to remember, because we were playing a lot of shows together a while back. I don’t play out as much as I’d like to. I also recently released an album with John Kolodij (High Aura’d) under the name Gemini Sisters.
Zelienople, (L-R Matt Christensen, Brian Harding, Mike Weis, Donn Ha) 2014.
You prolifically release music digitally under your own name on bandcamp. What freedoms do you feel this platform offers you in comparison to other ones you’ve been involved in (both bandcamp as well as your solo work)?
From the time you finish a record, to it being online takes minutes, vs. releasing an album through a label, on vinyl, which can take forever. In the past, I would remix and rework songs for way too long, lose perspective, and not even enjoy it anymore. When I signed up with bandcamp, I started off the same way. But then I started to realize that the stakes were so low in just getting something out of your system and into the world. Some people have said that I release too much music, and I understand where they’re coming from. It’s hard to keep up with every record. I’m sure that some subscribers to my catalog can get Matt Christensen-ed out. I also realize that it’s not good for marketing & record sales. But, I don’t think that concerning myself with marketing & money helps anything. I have to play, I have to write songs, I’m not getting any younger, and I have to get the music out there and move on to the next thing.
Wait, you’re not getting any younger?
No, I am not.
a younger Matt Christensen, at Elastic Arts.
You’re a Chicago native, correct?
Yep. I grew up in Rogers Park/ Edgewater, on the northern city limits. It’s a super ethnically diverse area. One of the most diverse communities in the country. I love that about where I live. I took it for granted for most of my life, but now that I have a kid, and I see that she is not going to have to unlearn some weird racial beliefs, I’m really proud of my neighborhood.
How have you experienced the music and art culture in the city, and how has it changed over time?
That’s another thing that I’ve taken for granted. Chicago has, for my entire life, had a lot going on. When I was in grade school, house music was on the radio, when I was in high school, we had Wax Trax! Records and that whole scene. In my 20s, post rock was really big here. It seemed like everything was Tortoise, or a Tortoise spin-off. There’s also something happening every night of the week in Chicago. I mean, you may not be interested in what’s happening all the time, but you still have options to go out and see music that isn’t mainstream. I realized in my adult years that this isn’t the case in most towns. You can be a big fish in a small pond in other places. Here, it’s a bit tough to stand out. I don’t really take advantage of the scene like I used to. Musically, I have a tendency to stay to myself. I don’t feel as guilty about that as much as I used to. But, on the other hand, I saw Mind Over Mirrors last a few months ago, and GAS the week before, both at the Museum Of Contemporary Art. So again, it’s easy to get spoiled and jaded with the options.
At the Goethe Institute, Boston MA.
How about coffee culture?
Small cafes used to be everywhere here. Like most big cities, we have the big chains, but we also have big local roasters and coffee shops. Before I was of drinking age, I went to a lot of cafes and would hang out for hours drawing, philosophizing, playing chess, walking outside to smoke dope, etc. I stopped smoking weed years ago, but I have really fond memories of being “bohemian”. Back then, the cafes were pretty much how they looked in movies from the 70s- darker, less people, you could smoke, disaffected staff. It was great.
So, let’s talk about coffee now. You like that stuff, right?
I very much do.
What brew methods are you a fan of?
For the first cup of the day, I will drink pretty much any coffee that’s put in front of me. I mean, I really like good coffee, but I’m pretty lazy about making that first cup. My wife gets up before me and makes the coffee, so I’m spoiled. I have hot coffee waiting for me pretty much every morning. Note that she doesn’t get up before me just to make me coffee, we just need to leave at different times for work. It’s not like she’s a coffee slave. She does a french press and uses locally roasted beans. It’s my favorite coffee.
French Press, photo by Kristan Lieb.
Are there coffees from certain regions you are particularly fond of?
Oh man. I don’t know. That’s too advanced for me.
How do you feel that coffee plays into your creativity?
My Saturday morning coffee and guitar/ recording ritual is mandatory. So much so that I’ll often take my guitar with me on vacations. I tend to drink too much coffee on these Saturdays, so I’m really trying to limit it to 2-3 cups, and then switch to decaf. I know a lot of coffee drinkers look down on decaf, but I think that if you’re really into the flavor of coffee, you’ll drink decaf on occasion. This is especially true when you get older, and your sleep cycles start to get more jacked-up. I used to drink a lot of coffee and have marathon music sessions. I can’t do that anymore.
Thanks again, Matt. Have you heard any good jokes lately?
Knock Knock
(Sigh) Who's there?
Interrupting cow
(Long pause) Interrupting cow who?
Oh, I'm sorry. It looks like you're in the middle of something. I'll come back later.
Matt has compiled a retrospective of his work for your listening pleasure. You can check it out here, as well as other releases of his.
]]>Hi, Eerie. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this. Why don't we start out with you telling us a little bit about who you are and what you're up to these days?
I am working on the follow up to my book Misery Obscura and painting almost every day. I am a musician, artist, photographer, and author. Been putting out records since 1983.
Eerie Von
You are quite an archivist, made evident in your book, Misery Obscura. Chock full of incredible photographs and stories, it begins with you attending high school in Lodi, New Jersey and your friendship with and documentation of The Misfits, your band Rosemary’s Babies, and spans years and years of your involvement with the legendary bands Samhain and Danzig. What drove you, starting so young, to so closely document all of these experiences around you?
I’ve been a collector since age 8, so I always saw the value of saving, or appreciating things from the past. I started taking pictures because they capture a moment in time. I kept stuff from the bands, because I guess the collector in me saw some sentimental value in them, and as a collector you have to save things so you can pass them on to others.
Eerie and his proud parents at his high school graduation, 1982. From Misery Obscura.
Self portrait in a cemetery, Lodi, New Jersey. 1984 or '85.
Eerie performing with Samhain, likely in 1986.
Could you please share some memories that stand out to you of these experiences, people and bands you were a part of?
There’s too many things to single out, but some of my favorite memories were getting to meet Roy Orbison and HR Giger, and playing to 13,000 people on Halloween night in California, at Irvine Meadows Amphitheater.
Performing with Danzig, in Allentown, PA 1994. Photo by Jaye S. Clarke
At Graceland, Memphis TN. Photo by Glenn Danzig.
In 1985, Samhain played Chicago’s Cabaret Metro, in what you’ve referred to as “The Chicago Bloodbath.” Could you tell us about this night, and what made it so special?
No one had done that before. A whole show covered in blood. Every Samhain gig was special, but that was special for that reason, and we always liked playing Chicago.
"Ever since we did the blood for the cover of Initium, we talked about re-creating that look onstage in a live setting. Somewhere along the way to The Metro in Chicago that November, Glenn decided he wanted to do it there. We looked at the blood idea as both a way to create a Samhain "Spectacular" and to celebrate it being the last show of the tour. We originally wanted to rig it like "CARRIE" with buckets in the rafters that would dump blood all over us, but there wasn't a way we could set up the buckets with The Metro's stage ceiling being so high. Besides, we left the buckets back in Jersey, anyway! We tried to figure out a way for us to get actual pig's blood for the occasion. After all, this was Chicago and they were known to butcher stuff from time to time! It should be a breeze, right? Well, not really. The people who ran The Metro were not into this idea one bit - no way, no how. So instead, we ran over to a local grocery store to get the ingredients for the next best thing: Hollywood blood! Glenn knew the recipe, and we set out to make a massive batch of it for the stage show. I remember us buying up four bottles of Karo syrup and a load of food coloring, and then heading back to The Metro. We are all set. We decided just to dump the mix on each other, but only ended up using three of the four bottles because London didn't want it dumped on his head. There was a pool of blood at least 8 feet wide on the dressing room floor. It looked like a murder scene... it was awesome! The reaction we got from the crowd was amazing; no one had ever done that before. We ended up doing the whole show in sticky Hollywood blood and left one hell of a mess for someone to clean up. It was, simply put, a great night."
- Eerie Von, from Misery Obscura.
Samhain at Chicago's Cabaret Metro,1985. (L-R: Glenn Danzig, Damien, Eerie Von, London May) Photo by Gene Ambo.
Not only have you been making music for decades, but also have a long history as a visual artist, working in photography, illustration and painting. How are you currently expressing yourself creatively?
I still take photos, and I’ve been painting everyday since 1999. Sold over 400 paintings in that time, done some album covers as well.
Painting in Pennsylvania.
Eerie with a painting of his, photo by Jaye S. Clarke.
As a multi-faceted artist, can you describe what you feel you get out of each of these mediums and creative processes?
I approach all creative things in a similar way. A certain amount of “wing it”, and the rest, attention to detail.
After leaving Danzig, how do you feel your process for creating music and art has changed and grown?
Well, I had to start writing all the songs. All the stuff I learned from Glenn, and other songwriters, helps me continue to write better songs all the time.
Performing at a book signing at Generation Records, New York City. Photo by Linda Wildemann.
Eerie Von and Glenn Danzig backstage in 1993. Photo by Mark Leahola.
Do you maintain friendships with anyone from Samhain, Danzig, or other bands you were touring and playing with?
I am still friends with Chuck and John (of Danzig), Doyle and Jerry (of The Misfits), some of our crew guys, and some past opening acts.
John Christ, Chuck Biscuits, Eerie Von, 1994. Photo by Jaye S. Clarke.
As mentioned earlier, you came up in Lodi, New Jersey, moved to Los Angeles, among other places (including James Dean’s hometown Fairmont, Indiana) and are currently residing in Nashville, Tennessee. What have you seen as the similarities and differences in the artistic communities in these different towns?
I had no musical relationships in Indiana, I recorded on my own. I also lived in Florida. I left L.A. before the 4th Danzig record; the musical communities are diverse, no matter where you go.
Eerie shows off but a portion of his collection in Florida, likely 1999 or 2000.
How long have you been in Nashville and what drew you to it?
Been here about 5 years off and on. I came here for a relationship, and stayed for the hot chicken.
Anything we can expect from you in the near future?
More books, another record, at some point, and some more Horror conventions, I guess.
Eerie at a recent exhibit of his work at PUSH Gallery, Asheville, NC.
Ok, let’s talk about coffee. How big of a role does it play in your life?
I love the smell of coffee, but never really drank it until recently. I understand why it is so popular. Never thought when I was a kid, there would be so many shops where you could just go get coffee.
What do you look for in a good cup of coffee?
My mother always drank black coffee, and I think if the beans are good, you don’t need to add anything.
If you are out and about in Nashville, are there any cafes you like to go to?
Things are kind of expensive here, so I stay home a lot.
How do you feel that coffee interacts with your creativity?
It doesn’t really.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Once again, many thanks to Eerie for doing this! If you are interested in keeping up with what he's up to, or his paintings and collectables for sale, follow him here.
Likewise, thank you to the inimitable Jaye S. Clarke for his assistance! Follow him here and here for even more available memorabilia, art, photos, and skulls!
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