Sun Kil Moon: Mark Kozelek Tells it Like it Is

Mark Kozelek has been making solid records since the mid-90’s– and his recording career has been anything but by the book. From his early work in the Red House Painters to bouncing back and forth between the Sun Kil Moon moniker to a solo project under his given name, his hushed voice has always defined his sound and the quietude of his instrumentation has become even more delicate since he moved on to a nylon string guitar. He’s even made whole records of cover songs, one of AC/DC deep cuts, and another of quality Modest Mouse gems.

Despite his prolific past and the continued greatness of his rapidly growing discography, it’s only recently that the “taste makers” in the music press mafia given him his due credit. And it’s come at what may seem like the strangest of times. Recently Kozelek has become exceedingly honest, almost uncomfortably so. His lyrics have begun to read like journal entries, delivered with a nonchalance, void of typical phrasing, rhyme scheme and verse-chorus-verse formula.

On his latest record Benji, Kozelek writes about two relatives that died from exploding aerosol cans (… yes, two), watching “The Song Remains the Same”, listening to Pink Floyd’s “Dogs”, his first sexual encounters, sucker-punching a kid in grade school, his reaction to Newtown, and even going to see Postal Service and realizing that he’s going through a midlife crisis while watching his old friend play in a new band. In a way he seems as though he’s letting it all out there, to anyone who cares to listen. And in ways it seems like he played the biggest joke on his listeners and he unexpectedly succeeded. Mark Kozelek has always surprised and delighted. He’s always kept us guessing. And it’s great to see that the world is finally following along. Below is the brief Q-and-A email that Kozelek graciously answered mid-tour in August. Since then he’s gone on to offend much of North Carolina by calling them hillbillies, and wrote a really interesting song with an even more intriguing song title and chorus, “War on Drugs: Suck My Cock”. You can listen to it for free on Kozelek’s website, www.sunkilmoon.com . Get ready for a Kozelek Christmas record set for November, and in the meantime enjoy the interview.

NG: How often do you play with a band vs solo nowadays? And do you prefer one over the other?

MK: I’m currently in Malmo with a very much-needed night off on a band tour. I like both solo, and band. Solo is nice because it’s logistically less headache. Band stuff is complicated… all of the organizing that comes with it… but when you’re onstage with a band and everything is clicking, it’s pretty uplifting and worth all of the bullshit. Solo is also very nice – it’s more of a 1-on-1 experience. At my roots, I’m a solo artist and overall prefer playing solo.

The last time I saw you, you played in complete darkness with very few candles as your only light, is that a situation you prefer?

Yeah, I don’t like too much light. My shows are usually 2- to 2 and 1/2 hours long, and the heat from the light dehydrates me, make me sweaty and uncomfortable. I also don’t like movement in the light because nylon string guitar is a temperamental instrument. The lights changing cause temperature changes and mess with the guitar tuning.

In this day of reunions, do you ever get offers to reunite the Red House Painters? Do you ever consider? It seems some people have the “if the price is right mentality?”

We have never received 1 offer, and I wouldn’t take it if we did. SKM is doing just fine. That’s where my heart is, and I’m doing A-OK financially.

Were you surprised at the way Benji was received? Was it weird that people say you’ve found your voice or hit your stride after all these years of solid records?

I think if Pitchfork would have gave it a 5.1 and said it was middle-aged ramblings about dead uncles, people would have jumped on that boat and agreed. People have no minds of their own these days and believe whatever the internet tells them to believe. A 25-year- old girl recently told me, “you finally made a masterpiece”. I said, “baby, I’ve been making masterpieces long before Pitchfork existed.” For some people, music history started 5 years ago.

How do you decide on a performance setlist? Is there a mood you feel? Does it remain the same or similar? Are some songs off limits? Is there an art to the order or do you just wing it?

I play whatever I’m inspired to play. Currently it’s material from 2012 onwards.

How do you view the results of starting your own label? Has the freedom made you release more? You seem like your more prolific than ever? Are the ideas flowing that fast or are you releasing as much as possible because you’re not at the mercy of a label’s schedule?

It’s a combination of a lot of things. Yes, labels held me back to some extent, but I also took my time, with songwriting, recording. But it’s like a guy who works in construction– when you first start, you pay attention to all the details– after a while, you just build fucking houses. I make records. That’s just what I do. Some people do this, some do that, I live and breathe music. I go to bed with music in my head.

Why Caldo Verde?

My favorite soup.

You’ve done a bunch of live records? What makes a live show good enough to release? Do you record all your shows? Do you know going into a show that you’re going to release it or does that come later?

I record live shows from time to time. I release many of them for free, as incentive for fans to buy music directly. It’s easy to record solo performances. If the elements come together– the EQ, no digital distortion, performance is good, it might get released.

Do you have a good memory? It seems like a lot of these topics happened a long time ago? Does something trigger the memories to put them into song? Something that made you say, ‘oh I have all these memories why hide behind metaphor, let’s lay it all out there?’

Ah, hard to explain. When you get older, you just start realizing there is no guarantee you have another 20, or even 10 years left. You think about the things that shaped you. I felt the need to pay respect to my roots in this record… to tell both my mother and my father that I loved them, in song.

Now that you’ve gone the autobiographical route, is it hard to consider writing a song that is just pure fiction or covered in a veil of verbiage?

I just write. I don’t think about it. I just respond to my surroundings and my feelings and I write.

I’ve always meant to ask you… you’ve written many songs about others, and Mojave 3 wrote “Krazy Koz” about you. What do you think about that song?

It’s catchy.

How do you differentiate between Sun Kil Moon and Mark Kozelek? 

Ughh… Dude I’m in Malmo on a day off.  I’m really tired…

You seem to lay it all out there? Why do you want people to know your life and does that make it awkward at all? Do people tend to identify with you through your tales, or less so now? Did you in any way think people were ready for truth or was it just something that changed in your songwriting.

Ughh… Man, I’m getting sleepy….

I saw you played Newtown, what was that like? Have you ever played shows where it went from just playing songs to having to play a show to people that you wrote a song to that was so serious?

Newtown is in September. I won’t be playing ‘Newtown’ when I’m in Newtown, just like I don’t play Alesund in Alesund. That would be cliché.

Thank for your time. I’m in the middle of a tour and this is the best I can give you.

all of my best to you,

mark

 

Wildcat! Wildcat! and the Shimmering Sounds of Summer– The Interview

In today’s industry-driven musical climate, it’s very rare and all the more refreshing to see a band grow strictly through word-of-mouth and hard work. And if there’s any justice out there, you’ll be hearing a lot from Wildcat! Wildcat! in the near future. A Los Angeles three-piece (and sometimes more) featuring Jesse Taylor on bass, Jesse Carmichael on drums and Michael Wilson on keys, the players have known each other since high school, and while they’ve worked together before, Wildcat! Wildcat!’s musical journey began somewhat recently– and at first had no intention of becoming an actual long-term project. Beginning 2013 year with only a limited edition 7-inch and a few tracks on Soundcloud available to their listeners, the band continued to build a loyal hometown fanbase and performed well-populated residencies before hitting the road for SXSW. Playing eight shows in just four days, they quickly became my favorite discovery of 2013’s festival and became known around Austin as one of the festival’s hardest working unsigned bands. On record, Wildcat! Wildcat!’s sound is a sonic onslaught of majestic and perfectly polished pop electronica, providing an intensive listening experience made for both headphones and dancefloors. The twinkle of the keys provides a blinding, shimmering summertime feel, while thunderous drums and bass-led grooves culminate in three-part falsetto harmonies and addictive melodies leaving their fans hungry for more. Wildcat! Wildcat!’s exquisite four-song, self-titled EP was released nearly a year ago on Downtown Records, with their first LP hitting stores last week. The band came through Boston this week and showed they still had that magic summer sound and a slew of great new songs. I caught up with Michael Wilson last year to talk about the band’s future as they got ready to play their first east coast shows. It is most likely one of the first interviews with the band. No, it’s not completely current, but it’s not outdated either. Enjoy, and check them out at https://soundcloud.com/wildcat-wildcat Hey is this Michael?

Yes this is Michael.

Where are you at now?

We are in Indiana.

That’s a pretty epic journey from LA to Montreal.

Yeah it’s pretty nuts. It’s definitely the most gnarly journey I’ve ever had in a car. I think we did 32 hours straight the first day or whatever you want to call it. Stupid is probably what you would call it.

I caught you guys down in Texas and you were one of the best things I saw down there. I know you guys played a ton out there and were warriors at that festival.

Which ones did you see?

I saw the Sonos show and the Fader day party on the last day.

Those were really good shows for us. We weren’t even sure we were going to make it that far.

So you guys were doing one tour and now you’ve totally changed to doing another tour.

Yeah it’s super intense in this business and things change so quickly and it’s funny because you usually have a while to make these “big” decisions, but then the big decisions all of a sudden need to be changed in like four hours. We had literally four hours to find out whether we wanted to change the dates or not, and it was really hard for us because even though we hadn’t sold a ton of tickets, we really appreciate people buying tickets early. It was really hard for us to play our own show, but we are basically trying to work out some other things. We basically created an email account specifically for that reason and so that people can reach out to us. We’re trying facilitate things so people can come see us quicker, maybe even to some of the Ms. Mr. dates.

When I saw you in Texas, you guys were a four-piece, but everything I’m reading about you only mentions three people. Was that just a rare occurrence?

No, as far as live goes it’s always been four and it will probably always be four because we don’t ever want to be a track-heavy band. We want to always play the music that you hear. There are really minimal background sounds that we put on tracks, but as far as main parts, when we’re on stage you’re never wondering where certain sounds are coming from. We always have a four-piece live, but as far as writing and producing and band decisions, it’s always been me and the two Jesses. We just hire guys out. It’s another tough situation as far as who plays and if they’re friends or not. Sometimes it can be bit sticky with that situation because it’s really hard to explain that situation. They’re in the band essentially and everyone sees them onstage and they’re playing the parts, but they’re not really in the band I guess.

There’s very little information about you guys out there, which is intriguing. It says that you guys have known each other forever and played in other bands, is that true?

Essentially, yes. I’ve known them since I was 14. We all pretty much met in high school. I had done a few isolated projects with them individually, mostly with Jesse Carmichael. I never really played with Jesse Taylor, but they had been in bands together, probably too many to count. They are on another level as far as knowing each other musically. They’ve been playing together forever and I just kind of jumped in there and started working from there.

What was the sound of their other bands? Was it at all similar?

No, it was way different. They were doing more traditional guitar and bass music. I don’t even think they ever had keys in their music at all. Maybe a few little shimmers here and there. I think that was just more my musical influence on them. I think its funny because we started making these songs and they were stems from some of my ideas, so there were no guitars, just keys. We’ve obviously thought about putting guitars in there and we’ve tried a few times, but I think it’s just fine as it is and we are happy how it sounds. I think when some people come to see us live they think we’ll be less than or not as good as a traditional indie band with a guitar on stage, but I think people are okay with us not having one.

It’s cool seeing you guys perform live. Even though you have an electronic sound you’re playing actual instruments. When did you guys first conceive this project?

I think we played our first show Jaunary 31, 2012, so it will be two years in February. It was literally supposed to be just one show that we just wanted to play. We landed up putting out a couple songs before the show and it landed up being super-packed, which was really weird for us because we didn’t expect that at all. But sometimes these things happen with the internet these days. It’s good because there was a moment there when we had to decide if we were going to slingshot forward into very fast decisions like getting managers, getting agents and getting all these people onboard super fast and work on their time schedule, but we chose to kind of get to know ourselves and our sound and our band a little bit more. It felt a bit quick. Not that it’s a bad thing, but I think we are definitely benefiting from it because we know who we are as a band and what we’re going for and the trajectory of what we are about which is more or less gaining one fan at a time and making good albums, not just making good isolated songs. We want to make good songs, but to make them part of a collection.

When along the way did getting signed happen?

Actually it was just recently. It’s funny because we kind of went away. After we got on the scene initially, we went away to finish up our album. I don’t think that’s traditionally how you are supposed to do it because you can get off of people’s radars and finally when we had this demoed album out and we started sending them off to labels some of them were like “Hey you’re a new band, and we like your music a lot, but we just don’t know if the investment is there.” Which is fine. We didn’t want anyone to be half onboard. We were in limbo for a little bit and didn’t really know what we were doing. And even though it wasn’t necessarily what we wanted to do, Downtown had offered to do the EP and see how the partnership works and how we are together. So essentially it was a couple of months ago now. It’s an EP deal with and option for a full length.

So you have a full-length ready, but you don’t know where it will end up?

I mean, it’s hard to say, but we are definitely wanting it to be on Downtown. We want to get our music out as quickly as possible. We don’t have that many fans, but the fans we have have definitely waited a while. We also move on as artists as well. We want to do a new album and write more. We basically want to take the path that would get the music out quicker. We had mentioned early next year like March or April and we’re really striving for that. We would love it to be on Downtown and things are looking good as far as that goes, but you never know.

Will the songs that have been out there, the ones on the EP, appear on the new record?

It’s pretty funny because a lot of people on the business side are wanting to put some of them out there, but we feel like we would cap it at one song. We want to give people new stuff and we are excited about the new stuff and not really worried about people missing the old stuff, especially because it’s on the EP as well. We don’t feel like we’ve extended ourselves and don’t feel like we can’t write more songs.

How many songs do you have ready to go?

It’s tough to say because there are alternate versions and depending on how we want the album to flow they can be switched out. Basically we have staple songs that we definitely know will be on the album.

Are these your first ever east coast shows coming up?

Oh yeah, we were able to come out to New York and played a pre-VMA show and that’s the only time we’ve ever been on the east coast.

As far as songwriting goes, is it a unified effort or is there someone who does more than the rest?

Totally, we all have our strengths and the process is different every time, which we really like. We all trust the process enough to know where a song starts and if we stick with it til the end we know it will be a Wildcat song because it will go through all our filters and all of our individual musician gears and our talents are going to come out on that song. It’s pretty even and we all have our hand in each part of the song. If there was something of a starting point, the keys goes are on my end, the groove stuff with drum and bass is Jesse and Jesse and vocals and melodies are all of us.

Was it strange to play with only a 7” out and have all of these people coming to all these shows?

It was really strange because they started singing the songs that weren’t even out. They knew the songs because they had been to so many shows. And that goes with what I was saying earlier, people are so hungry for songs that people are coming to the shows just to hear the songs. They know them already. We know if we put it out that there’s going to be more of those people– maybe not millions– but people that want to come along to the shows and sing along which we are all about. We want to give our music and have people enjoy it.

Are you guys all from LA or did you land up there?

Yeah, we all grew up in Ventura Country, which is like 40 miles north of LA. The two Jesse’s live in downtown LA now, and I live in Long Beach.

Were you able to quit your jobs?

Somewhat– it was a bit of a progression as far as that goes. Right now none of us have conventional day jobs. Every month getting money is different. We are by no means solely supported by music. There are different avenues we have to make money. It’s exciting, but it’s nerve-racking to not know how you’re going to pay your bills without the consistency of a job.

Who is Mr. Quiche?

I don’t know. It was definitely a progression of writing that all of our songs have been. I think the vocals are definitely a process. He’s been a different person every step of the way to be honest. Which, to be honest, I kind of like that. I like songs that change their meaning, even for the artist. We’ve been changing as a band a lot even just over our past few years.

From what I remember you did 4-part harmonies.

Yeah, it’s definitely all about that and our group effort. It shows that everybody is equal and there are definitely songs where only one person is singing, but there are no songs where just one person is the lead singer. It just kind of fills the thing out. We are all really good friends making music and really participating in every ounce of the song.

As far as lyrics and background, do you start with the backing sound? Is one more important than the other?

Sometimes, especially working with some of my original ideas, there were really loose vocals or an idea, but there would be a larger arrangement before it. But recently there has been a little more of the opposite. With a lot of the stuff we are taking the lyricism of the song first and it really is different every time. That makes everything really fresh and exciting for all of us.

Is there are marked difference between recording a song and playing it live? Obviously you have less access to certain elements when you’re on stage.

Yeah, we kind of had to learn a lot of it. It was just a project that we were doing for fun and for ourselves and for us to listen to on our own and be excited about. It was just one of those things that at first we recorded the songs in parts and then we had to figure out how we are going to play it. A lot of the stuff is different live because there are too many keyboard parts and we don’t have enough hands to play all the keyboards. Parts need to be thought through, but I really enjoyed that because we really wanted us to really embody the song live in the performance and really wail and have a good time to make up for any different parts that maybe we can’t put in the song.

Do you feel like there’s a unified scene in LA? Do you guys feel that you have a lot of camaraderie with other bands?

To be honest it’s such a big music town that it’s just so hard to find that. We definitely have bands that we get along with and have played shows with, but there are so many. I think it’s almost more venue-based than promoter-based. They basically choose who they like, and in LA there are also huge booking agents booking huge bands that everybody wants to see. I wouldn’t say we’re part of any LA scene or movement or anything like that.

Well thanks for taking the time to talk to me. I’m so happy you’re finally coming east. It’s very exciting.

You should definitely come say hi. No problem. You were a very nice interviewer.

The Hold Steady: Yesterday’s Kicks and Tomorrow’s Bruises

Over their ten-year career, the Hold Steady strategically amassed a catalogue of songs often centered on a recurring group of characters. Formed from the amalgamation of acquaintances and fictional figures, frontman Craig Finn introduced us to tragic heroes and fallen friends caught up in the life of the party. His skillful wordiness and spoken- word delivery embraced witty double entendres, juxtaposing modern day jargon with scholarly diction as he portrayed the ups-and-downs of the down-and-outs. And somehow he always seemed to stay positive. With their recent release of Teeth Dreams, the band’s sixth studio record and the first on their own Washington Square label, Finn’s songs seem to have naturally evolved from the post-adolescent after-party to the inevitable adult hangover. These are cautionary tales and proof that yesterday’s kicks become tomorrow’s bruises. As an aging songwriter with a repertoire of decadent characters, Finn acknowledges that his narrative had to change and that those on the continual stumble from the straight and narrow will inevitably fall. If rock music becomes classic rock by finding a sound, surviving the party and embracing maturity, then the Hold Steady may be well on their way to being considered “classic rock” in an indie-rock generation. If their message seems heavy, their instrumentation is even heavier– any somber sentiment quickly finds solace by leaning against the towering guitar solos that were hinted at before, but now actualized in skyscraping realities. The guitars have finally soared to reach Thin Lizzy heights, while Finn’s lyrics are still born to run like the Boss. I was privileged enough to catch up with the Hold Steady’s Craig Finn days before the release of their new record Teeth Dreams, and just weeks before the band’s very recent shows in the Northeast.

Where are you guys at now?

We’re in Brooklyn. We leave for tour tonight. Our first show is in Portland, Maine tomorrow.

So tell me about Teeth Dreams. I’ve always had teeth dreams and it’s definitely my most recurring dream theme of all time. You even take it a step further and talk about having tooth dreams about other people. I find that especially intriguing.

Yeah, it’s funny, since we named the album Teeth Dreams… as soon as the title came out there have been a lot of people that have come to me and said, “God I’ve had those dreams too.” And actually I’ve had teeth dreams, but I haven’t had tons of them. I’ve had them where I’m brushing my teeth and they fall out. Which I think is fairly common. When we talked about naming the record, we did some searches on Google and found a ton of stuff on teeth dreams. Supposedly they’re caused by anxiety, but people will tell you specifically about money and personal appearance, but I think it’s just a lack of control in general. But you know, I came up with “last night her teeth were in my dreams”—someone else’s teeth and I thought that was funny and I was re-reading Infinite Jest and I realized there was a scene in there where one of the characters is explaining his dreams to his brother and he’s been having dreams about teeth and they’re someone else’s teeth. In his dreams, not only do someone else’s teeth keep showing up, but then all these bills for them. So he was not only getting these other teeth in his dreams, but being asked to pay for them which kind of amps up the idea that they might be about money.

Was that something that connected these songs? A unified anxiety?

Yeah, we started talking about it. When we started writing the record I was thinking a lot about anxiety. I met this doctor at a cocktail party and he’s a general practitioner in New York and he was saying over half his visits are because of anxiety. People are thinking that something is wrong with them, but it isn’t. I thought that was kind of interesting. I don’t know if that was true 20 years ago or 40 years ago. Then the New York Times has an anxiety column. So I started thinking, “Jeez are we living in particularly anxious times?” I’m not sure. I think we do. I think we’ve just gotten so self-aware about our anxiety and so respectful of it that we almost nurture it. And obviously the pharmaceutical industry has some sort of influence over that.

You’ve had a lot of reoccurring characters in your songs. Are these new characters in any way? Has the songwriting changed?

I think some of the characters are the same. I’ve just gotten away from mentioning so many proper names. I wanted to explore a more elliptical thing. I think a great short story like Carver or something like that, it’s just as much about what they leave out as what they put in. I thought maybe always explaining who it is and what exactly they’re doing might end up hindering putting their own wholesome dreams and lives into the songs. I wanted to create a little more space for people to inject themselves into this world.

But when you get down to it, were these reoccurring characters real people that you knew in your life, or accumulations of many people?

They don’t relate 1-to-1. I’m from Minneapolis and a lot of these songs take place there over the course of the Hold Steady. People from Minneapolis always ask me, “Hey is that character this person?” They’re not any one character, but they are certainly the type of people that I knew and I might take a little bit from somewhere and a little bit from somewhere else. But they weren’t ever one specific person.

It seems like this time around, instead of talking about the party, this seems like the hangover from the party and more of cautionary tale.

It’s definitely the darkest Hold Steady record. While the others had been especially hopeful and maybe positive and optimistic, this one may hold back on that optimism a bit. But you know, the last song on the record, we put a coda on the song. We knew we were going to end with that song, but the way we handled it was just so bleak. I mean I liked it, but it was like we can’t end things this way. Let’s give them a little bit of hope. Writing this record, I wasn’t in a particularly bad place or anything– I just wanted to explore that part of it a little more. And just being fascinated with this idea with anxiety and the idea of mental health and the way we treat it nowadays and the way we deal with our neurosis.

Would you say that by getting older it’s harder to hang on to these characters and narratives? Has your songwriting changed partly due to that?

Yeah, I think that… we started the band ten years ago and for the past ten years I’ve known a lot of people close to me that have struggled with substance abuse and mental health issues. It’s a pretty common thing, you know. I’m 42– when you’re 32 you might still be going along and having a good time, but at some point it starts to drag you down. It might be a change in perspective a little bit. At the same time, I’m drawn to and I’m trying to write characters that are a little older. I think that’s a challenge and it always has been. Rock and roll is often about a teenager and a convertible. But it’s also rock and roll so its 50 to 60 years-old now, so it doesn’t have to be. Great artists like Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young have written great songs about adults. Talk about starting your own label and how that came to be. Has that presented new challenges for you and the band?

Not really. The big thing is we did this covers EP for a fanclub thing. We needed some way to get it out to the fans. So we thought should we start a label? As this industry changes and more and more people hear music digitally, it allows us to in the future to escape album cycles and maybe put out more regularly. There’s a big gear up to put out an album and find a publicist and it allows us maybe in the future to put out music in smaller portions, and maybe be a bit more agile when it comes about. It’s yet to be seen what it will mean, but that’s the idea.

You talk a lot about unified scenes in your music. Is that something you’ve seen change over time? Are there still unified scenes like there used to be? Is it still alive and well in certain places?

Well, the record industry is certainly not alive and well. How many records you can sell in the age of Spotify is certainly very diminished, so I wouldn’t say the record industry is alive and well. But the music industry as a whole, people look at the licensing of music differently than they used to. You used to get in a lot of trouble if you gave your music to a car ad or something like that. Now it’s more accepted. But the last thing is that the live thing is always healthy. If you can get people to come to your shows, you can be okay. I always thought that the live shows had always been the crux of it because even if you’re selling a lot of records, there are still 4 people that are going to handle the money before you get it. There’s the guy in the store, the distributor, then there’s the label and maybe it gets to you, but not much. That’s a lot of hands. With the live show they pay you and you pay your agent. So you touch it first. In that very simple way the live show is always the biggest component of it.

You have always had a crazy amount of energy on stage and listening to the records versus seeing you live, you are an unsuspecting energetic frontman. Have you always been that way? Is it hard to conjure up that energy night after night?

I have to work on it a little more at [age] 42. I have to think about what I eat and drink—especially since I drink a little more than I used to. At the same time there are nights when I’m pretty sluggish when I get on stage, but it’s pretty easy for me to get into it with the loud music and the fans and the celebratory vibe. I get into it quickly. I’m not always great before or after a show, but it’s pretty easy for me to get into a good place while we’re playing.

You’ve spent a good amount of time in Boston, but with few exceptions your characters are very much Minneapolis based. Did you not find any inspiration here? Do you still have a little Boston in you?

Well, I was born in Boston. My parents lived in Massachusetts. I went to grade school in Boston and went back to Boston College. I spent some time there and there are parts of it that still fascinate me and I still have friends there. It’s definitely a part of my life, but I certainly don’t know it as well. If you put me in a car, I would definitely get lost. Whereas in Minneapolis I know it like the back of my hand, so that’s why I feel much more comfortable setting songs in Minneapolis. But I still do have love, a lot of love, for Boston.

Is the RAGE EP still available or was that just a limited time thing to get on?

I think you can still get it. It was a fanclub thing, but I think you can still get it on the website. If not we’ll probably re-release it. The big thing is it was for the fanclub. A friend of ours passed away and he was the unofficial leader of the Unified Scene Fanclub. He was kind of the center of it. He passed away suddenly, December 2012, and he left two kids behind, so the idea behind the RAGS EP was to raise money for the foundation for his kids, but for us we were able to formalize the fanclub and know where everyone is and how to get a hold of them.

Califone: Rustic, Ramshackle, Avant-Americana

In his most recent press photos, Califone’s Tim Rutili appears alone. His former core of backing musicians have moved on, but Califone’s rustic and ramshackle sound remains very much unchanged.

Stitches is Califone’s seventh studio recording and one of the best releases of 2013, Released on Dead Oceans, the record brings Rutili back to a more solitary state of songwriting. Leaving the familiar confines of his Chicago studio for the first time, Califone’s founder wrote and recorded his new collection of songs on the road and fleshed them out with various friends and co-conspirators along the way in California, Arizona and Texas.

Gathering source material on his phone, Rutili turned to his field recordings to create a patchwork of sound collages and musical mosaics to help fill the void left by his veteran collaborators.

Even with Rutili’s new cast of musicians and recording locations, Califone retain their signature sound of avant-Americana. Gentle and haunting, their abstract balladry and genre deconstruction merge swampy blues with muddy country and dusty folk with the unmistakable pluck, slide and sustained hum of guitars join together with layers of obscure percussion and atmospheric electronics leading sparse arrangements to culminate in crescendos of controlled chaos while rusty, disjointed lyrics come to life as a cinematic montage.

We were lucky to catch up with Califone creator Tim Rutili late last year to talk about what has changed and what had remained the same in Califone’s unique sound and prolonged greatness.

NG: I noticed you appear alone in your promo photos for the new album. Is there a reason for that? Is the band still together?

TR: No, we haven’t played together in a long time. I made this record with other people. Benny still played on it, but he’s not going to be in the touring band anymore. Jim and Joe aren’t playing with us anymore. Jim might do some recording on the next record, but Joe and I aren’t together anymore.

Was it after the Funeral Singer shows? Did the extensive touring get to be too much?

Yeah, those guys joined Iron and Wine. They joined that band so they could start making some money. But it’s not that weird. I made my first records up until Roomsound by myself, so it’s nothing that crazy of a change.

But there are lots of other people on the record. Who are they? I read that this record was made more on the road than in your traditional studio. Is that true?

This wasn’t made on tour, but it was made in different places.

Did you get people in each place to play on the record?

Yeah, pretty much. There were a lot of people that I’ve played with before in some way or another and there were people that I wanted to play with in one way or another. So it was mostly playing with friends or people that were hanging out or near us anyway.

Who is in the touring band this time around?

The last tour was me and Will Hendricks and this next one… you’re in Boston… it will be me and Will and Rachel Blumberg and Joe Westerland.

Since you said the album was written while traveling, did the traveling aspect have an unmistakable effect on the music? Did the imagery come from these places, or did it just provide a new way of doing things.

I think it was just a new way of doing things, but the imagery of the places– what places look and feel like– you can’t help but have that leak into the music.

Can you talk about the theme of “stitches”? Is it even a theme?

I don’t know. I just knew this record was called Stitches right when it started. It just felt like making a big quilt to me. Every piece was very different to me and very different than the last. It felt like making a collage from different places and different times. It felt like “stitches”.

As far as stitching goes, you have been known to put sentences together that seem odd from an outsider’s perspective. Do you want to talk about your method of juxtaposing and word choice in songs?

Yeah, I think I know what you’re talking about. I think the same thing happens with the way sound is used as well. [Silence]

So you don’t want to talk about it?

Well what’s your question?

When you approach a song lyrically how do you go about choosing how to put these abstract images together? Does it mean something to you when you read through it?

Yeah, it means everything to me, but it means less on a page than it does coming out of my mouth. A lot of songwriting is about articulating things that maybe don’t make total logical sense. And treating lyrics that way and treating music that way can make an intangable feeling or a feeling that you can articulate, relatable. You know what I mean? So I guess that’s what I have always been shooting for with words. Also when I have tried to make too much sense or write a song that is specifically, specifically about something, I didn’t like it. I like it when things are open and there’s room to come in. And room to transpose yourself and your listener into it, and live in it for a little while.

Were these songs generally written around the same time?

Some of the bits and pieces were written earlier, but most of the things were put together pretty much a year ago, between last summer and March.

With the last record you had the accompanying movie. Do you traditionally think cinematically when you’re choosing your words and sounds, or was that just a separate entity that time.

No they’re all part of the same thing. With Funeral Singers, both the songs and the script for the movie were built around the same time and written around the same time. With this, I think all of it is visual. The way the words are, they are all pictures, you know?

Do you want to talk about your placement of religious imagery in your artwork and song lyrics? What is the significance in the way that you use it?

Well, I’m just sort of fascinated by those characters. I’m especially fascinated by how they are still part of our consciousness. We still read those books and they’re really fucking weird characters and really weird stories, you know. And people kill for those things. Trying to read about those things and trying to understand it for myself, I don’t really have religion. I don’t know if I really believe in God. I don’t know. I don’t know. But I think about it sometimes. I think about it and it comes through in the music. It was fun to think about these characters as timeless travelers with ordinary problems. I mean the story of Moses on the record… Moses going through 40 years of whatever it is, insanity, and then getting to where he’s taking these people and having God saying they can go in but you have to stay here and I’m going to kill you now. [Laughs] Everybody fucking thinks they are that. Everybody has this character where you go through this big fucking ordeal and you can’t enjoy it. You know, that is very relatable to me and it was interesting to explore the intentions of that within a song.

I know you make music videos for other people and your new video is very interesting and original. Were you part of the making of the video for your single?

Well I was talking to the director about it, but it was all him. We were throwing ideas around, but that’s the one that seemed the most powerful.

Looking back was it too big of an undertaking doing the Funeral Singers shows with the live movie soundtrack? Did it get tedious with the repetition night after night? Did it wear on you?

I enjoyed it a lot. It was fun and I think it was a great way to present the music and to present the movie. It was a lot. You’re in Boston?

I saw one in Boston and one in Portland as well.

Those were two really great shows. I thought it was a cool thing to do and I’d like to do something like that again some day.

Was it really strange to play along to the movie night after night? Assumedly you were playing the same thing every night.

Yeah, it seemed to evolve over time. We had beginning cues and ending cues and there were sections that were open to improvisation which I think made it interesting. But I know those other guys were TOTALLY sick of it.

Are you in the process of doing anything else cinematically?

Yeah.

Anything you wanna talk about?

Nah. There are things I’m writing and preparing to do. There are music video things that I’m doing now. I just did a video for David Yao, the Jesus Lizard singer. That should be out there next week. I have a few feature film ideas that have to do with music that I wrote, and I’m just trying to find ways to do them.

It seems like every record you have some strange new instruments that you use. Was there anything especially peculiar this time around?

Not so much. There were strange sounds though. There were some sounds that we recorded outside. We used a hurdy gurdy, that was pretty strange. There’s one song with the sound of rain on a roof. There were collage elements, but I think not being in Chicago—we had our own studio for years—not having that place with all that stuff in it did effect the way this record sounds. I think it effected it for the better. We needed to take a different approach to some of these songs. We had our bag of tricks, but this time we had a new bag of tricks.

So was this source material gathered with you and a taperecorder?

Yeah, not even a tape recorder, but a phone. An iPhone. Doing vocals in the car while driving.

How does that work when you go into the studio and your putiting that onto tape. Is it hi-def enough to work its way in?

It’s not hi def at all, but it works. A lot of time it’s instinctual. Can you hear dogs barking?

I haven’t heard them yet, but I’ve been trying to go back with headphones and get the background sounds a little more.

There’s the sound of my neighbor’s dogs. There’s one part where I was walking around Chinatown and I just shot video with my phone. There was this weird Chinese opera practice. It’s instinctual. There are always things that catch our eye and our ear and our phone is always with us. When you’re making the thing in the studio it’s like lets see what this sounds like here. Or lets try this there. There is a lot of trial and error. Not a lot of logic or planning in respect to the songwriting, but when you go into the studio you use what you have.

When you go into a song do you think of what you’re going to use or is it something you just build layer by layer?

I just build it as it’s happening. Sometimes I just really wanna make sure a sound gets in there or I wrote it on this guitar and I need this song. This record was more about songwriting and singing and the right words. The way the record was approached was more about how to bring out the songs and how to bring out the words.

Superchunk: Back with a Little Less (Laura) Ballance

After nearly a decade-long hiatus leading up to 2010’s Majesty Shredding, indie-rock stalwarts Superchunk bounced back much quicker with their tenth release, I Hate Music, released in August.

The new album’s ominous title, I Hate Music doesn’t reflect any aging angst or irony. Music has long been an all-encompassing part of the band’s life. Besides playing in Superchunk, bassist Laura Ballance and lead singer Mac McCaughan, own Merge records, one of the most influential and successful independent record labels of all time. Instead, the title reflects the inability of music to stop life’s tragedies. The record is a tip of the hat and bowing of the head to friend and film production designer David Doernberg who passed away last year.

With a lyrical focus more mellowed and mature, McCaughan’s nasally nostalgic songs are often travelogues and reverent references to shows and people along the way. And while the subject matter may be heavy, the instrumentation is even heftier with towering guitars, searing solos and the powerful punishment of the drum kit that have long defined the Superchunk sound.

Though the album was an attempt for catharsic release of fallen friends, the recent tour has brought an added sadness for the band itself. After nearly 25 years, bassist and founder Laura Ballance will be sitting out her first ever shows due to hyperacusis, an oversensitivity of the eardrum related to hearing loss. We were lucky enough to catch up with Ballance shortly after the release to discuss the new record, her health, and the emotional pain of having to leave the band for the first time.

Is this an okay time to talk?

Yes, it is the time I have scheduled for you. I had to get off the phone with my mom.

Oh, I’m sorry about that. So, you’re at the Merge headquarters right now. What are you duties over there?

It’s funny, I don’t have an extremely defined role. That’s what happens when you’re an owner. I do everything from listening to bands to decide if they’re going to be on Merge, to accounting related stuff, to working on contracts to cleaning the toilet. It involves making decisions that employees can’t make. Also I take care of my employees.

I’m sorry to hear about your hearing loss. When that start happening or when did you notice it?

Well, that is a not so straightforward question because I started to notice my ears ringing ages ago, probably as soon as we started playing together, but I have noticed that my hearing is getting progressively worse. I noticed it more when we took our hiatus. That was a significantly long break. When we started recording Majesty Shredding we started touring again and I started to notice that my ears were making a lot of noise and I was getting tinnitus. Also, I realized that I was having an increasingly difficult time hearing people who are talking to me. Again, that has been going on for a long time too. I remember talking to Corey Rusk who still runs Touch and Go. He had a lot of hearing loss as well. He and his friend Claire and I were at a restaurant one time and we were all sort of looking at each other and thinking “this restaurant is too loud, I can’t hear you.” And this was probably 15 years ago. It’s something that people with hearing loss start to notice. If you’re in a place with a lot of background noise, it becomes nearly impossible. In those situations you learn how to do a lot of lip-reading and in those situations you find yourself shutting down because you can’t hear them. You learn to just talk to the person next to you and if that can’t happen you just have to sit there and eat your food. A couple of years ago I was at a rock show at the top of a parking deck. The band had finished playing and I had forgotten to bring my earplugs with me so I tried to keep my distance. After they were done I went up to them to say “great show” and they started playing again. I got caught in this really bad spot and during those few songs I noticed in my right ear—and it was instant damage—this weird sound that corresponded to noise. I think that’s when I got hyperacusis. After that if I was exposed to loud noises in my right ear I would start hearing that. And they didn’t have to even be that loud. I had a New Year’s Party at my house one time, and it was not a raucous party, I am a parent and it was just 12 people at my house talking loud. I thought, “oh my god I want to put earplugs in right now because this person is talking to loud.” And it hurt. It’s been a progressive thing.

How did you get through touring on the last round of shows?

I started out doing shows and at a certain point I said, “Hey guys, this is hurting me and I can’t do any more small-venue shows.” I felt like in the smaller venues all of that noise gets trapped and there’s nowhere to step away from it on stage. I hoped that that would help. It seemed like it was going okay for a while and we were just doing outdoor stages. Then we did Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin, and it was no fault of Mac’s, but because we couldn’t sound check, the amps that Mac was using were turned up way too loud. Once we started playing I couldn’t hear anything. It was just so loud and I was just in so much pain I couldn’t play. I tried to run away and get behind the amps; it was just terrible. Then I realized, there’s no way you can predict when you’re going to get slammed. I realized that I want to be able to hear my daughter and hear my grandchildren. I am not doing the right things to make that happen. I feel like I love touring. I love playing in front of people. There are plusses and minuses of course, but it’s so fun and so gratifying and I love it so much more than recording. I love playing for people, but I’ve done it and I’ve done it for 25 years. I think I’ve fulfilled my promise.

Is this the first tour that you’ll be sitting out? Even in the transition between when you and Mac were dating and then not, you were still onstage, right?

Oh yeah.

Did this pose a challenge when it came to recording or is that easier because it’s a more controlled setting?

I had to change the way that I did things. Recently I would stand around in the same room as Jon so I could see him, but I’ve found that that is too loud and it’s too difficult as well. Even with earplugs in. You have headphones on to listen to the guitars. It was just too loud. I had to start recording in a separate room, which is a strange feeling because I’m so used to being in the same room and watching what he’s doing. Fortunately I found a way to look through a window to see him. But it is possible. You have more control when recording. You don’t always have control in a live setting.

What was the band’s reaction to you not being able to tour? Was there any question whether or not the band can be a band without you?

I don’t think so. I think they’ve been expecting me to do this for a while now. I’ve been complaining for so long and half-jokingly saying that they should replace me. And they’d say “No!”. I tried to present it in a way where I said I don’t think I can tour anymore, but I don’t want you to feel like you can’t. I don’t want to limit what they can do because I need to limit what I can do. That’s part of why I tried doing it as long as I did. I felt guilty that it would somehow infringe upon what they wanted to do.

Prior to Majesty Shredding, did you guys ever think you would record again? And if so, did you think Majesty Shredding would be a one-off? Or did you foresee another recording coming so quickly?

Well, we never broke up. We knew we wanted to keep playing. We knew once we had a break that we’d probably want to make records again. When we did Majesty Shredding it was very much of a “we’ll do this and see how it goes” situation. Who knows, maybe it’ll be another ten years before we make a record. We’ll see how it goes and see how much fun we have.

And it was gratifying enough to go at it again?

Yes, absolutely.

Taking that much time off, when you get back into the studio do you find yourselves writing songs differently? Are you still in different locations?

At this point, no, actually. I live in Durham. Jon might live in Carrboro—he might be out in the country toward Pittsboro. Mac lives in Chapel Hill and Jim Wilbur just moved to Asheville. Jon is away a lot because he plays drums with so many different bands. He’s gone away so much that it can be difficult to practice or to get together to record. We have to wait until he has time. I think it’s gotten a lot more straightforward in a funny way. There’s a lot less ego in a way. It’s kind of like “we’ve got to knock this out”. If anybody has any ideas, lay it on the line. Mac does most of the songwriting; he’s very driven. I haven’t felt that driven to make a new record like he has. He’s the one that keeps us going. He’ll record guitar parts and write lyrics and start writing bass parts and drum parts to his recordings. I think it’s what he does all night. Sometimes he’ll come in with this fully formed thing and I’ll say, “you played the bass part on here and some of it I’m okay with and some of it is not me and that’s not the way I’m going to play. But everyone is okay with that.

Will you tell me about the title of the record?

I Hate Music? Well we had a hard time naming the record. There wasn’t an obvious title. It’s a song lyric. It seemed, in our struggle to find a title, it seemed like the most fitting and something that would capture your attention. I assume you are aware that this record is very much about our friend Dave. If you listen to the lyrics in that song it’s always risky to interpret Mac’s lyrics, but it’s interpreting this frustration. Music has been this huge part of our lives and it’s so important to us, but really what is it worth? Music does have a lot of value, but it can’t physically change the reality of somebody dying. But music is really important to people. People need music.

Thinking back when the project was starting out, as far as Superchunk and Merge records, did you ever imagine the longevity that you’ve had?

No, I had no idea. When we first started I figured it would be something we would do for a few months and then I will graduate and struggle to find a job in archaeology. But it worked out in a way that nobody could have ever predicted. Seriously, anybody who says they’re starting a record label or a band, I would tell them “don’t count on it. Don’t quit your day job.”

If I remember correctly from the Merge book, you didn’t like playing live early on. Is that correct? What changed over time and how will you feel on this, the first tour where you are not in the band?

No, I didn’t. At first I didn’t like it. It terrified me. What changed was just repeated exposure to fear and standing in front of people and messing up and realizing that people don’t realize you mess up. Also, they don’t care too much when you do mess up. You survive. The more comfortable I got, the more I found it to be fun. It’s like a rollercoaster ride. It’s scary, but it’s fun. As far as them playing without me goes, I have been really worried that I was going to be really upset and sad about them playing without me. A couple of months ago they played in Calgary without me. It happened and I was fine. Then on Tuesday, release day, they—I have this “we”/”they” problem—they played a show at a really small bar in Durham. We gave out tickets at the local record stores that day and I went to one of the record stores and gave away tickets and reminded people that I wasn’t going to be playing. I had arranged in advance with the owner of the bar that I wanted to participate even though I wasn’t playing. There’s a drink I want to make. I want to bartend for an hour before they play. I went and I bartended and I was really busy and then they started playing and it was fine. I wasn’t upset and I was surprised. I felt liberated. I felt like I had done the right thing. This is good. They were LOUD. They were so loud. I thought it was a stage problem.

Do you have advice to anyone? Do you think that when you were growing up playing that there wasn’t much information out there and we have come to learn about hearing loss through music over recent years?

Well, I have always been pretty wimpy. I started wearing earplugs sooner than people I know. Still Mac and Jim don’t wear earplugs when they play. Mac starts with them in and pulls them out when they start to play and throws them on the ground. I think that people are still taking their ears for granted. Rock shows have gotten ridiculously loud. I don’t know why. People need to be wearing earplugs when they go to a rock show. After you’re in that environment for a while you start to feel like it’s not that bad, but it’s just that your ears have acclimated. They’re still getting damaged. My advice is that everyone wear earplugs to rock shows and no excuses. Don’t say it doesn’t sound as good. Who cares?! You want to be able to hear later. And don’t stand in front of the damn speaker.

Does your daughter like your music?

She does. When she’s gone to shows she wears those big earmuff headphones. She came to this show Tuesday and even with those headphones on she still said it was too loud and she went outside and watched from the window. And even out there her friend had her ears covered. It’s crazy. Yeah, protect your ears.

 

 

Indians: Denmark’s Søren Løkke Juul

For Denmark’s Søren Løkke Juul and his band Indians, the process of getting a record deal was anything but typical. When 4AD contacted him about making an album he only had 2 songs ready to go.

After a decade of playing keyboards in various bands back in Copenhagen, Indians was Juul’s way of stepping out of the shadows and writing his own material. Once he signed to 4AD, Indians went from personal project to an official solo band.

On his debut, Somewhere Else, released this past January, Juul plays every instrument creating layered compositions that combine shimmering keys and delicate acoustic guitars with heavy-handed drum machines and pensive, reverbed vocals. It’s folk music set in a foreign territory of somber soundscapes and dreamy atmospherics. It’s electronic music with teasing tempos that toe the line of danceability, but rarely cross it.

I was lucky enough to to interview Juul twice this year—once in person at SXSW and once over the phone as he prepared for his recent US tour. Both interviews are included below.

April 2013

So is this your first US Tour?

No it’s already like our third. The first time I was here was in April [2012] and I did a few shows in New York, a session in Seattle, then flew to Vancouver and opened for Beirut and then flew to LA and played four shows there.

How long have you been recording versus touring?

It was actually a mixed process because when 4AD contacted me I had only 2 or 3 songs. I didn’t even have an idea myself that I wanted to make a record. I was just spending my time making this music. It’s been a mixed process; every time I would make a new song I would send it over and get their opinion.

How did they find out about you?

Blogs, I think– music blogs and stuff like that. I had one song and it was very busy touring music blogs around the world.

Is English your first language?

No, it’s Danish.

Bands I know from Copenhagen all sing in English. Is that typical?

We have a lot of Danish bands singing in Danish, but to me its pretty natural for me to sing in English. I think the English language is easier to express yourself and I like traveling and I like the idea of sharing my music with people. If I was only singing in Danish, I think I would only be able to share with Danish people. Here’s an opportunity for sharing with people all around the world.

Did you play all of the instruments on the record?

Yes.

Do you tour on your own sometimes or do you always play as a band?

This tour is actually the first tour with the band. Last year I toured as support for other bands, so it was only possible if I figured out some kind of setup on my own. I would always prefer to bring a band though.

Is the band from Denmark?

No, Laurel is from Portland Oregon and Hillary is from New York. I had never met them, they were recommended to me by the label. I have two people I play with back in Europe as well.

So you said you made each song one-by-one. Do you think they link together at all or did the sporadic process change the mood from song to song?

It’s been a process of recording and telling stories about what’s happening in my life so it’s natural to tell stories like that. It’s not fiction. Writing song by song I was in a position to record each day and wake up early and spend all day in the studio.

I’ve seen you play 3 shows already at SXSW, how many are you playing overall?

I’ve played 7 and then I have one tomorrow. I don’t know though, this feels normal.

Does that make it hard with such a busy schedule? Do you find yourself worn out? Do you feel you have limited energy from show to show?

I’m not worn out before a show. Yesterday we had three shows and I was prepared for all of them. Of course I came home and I was very tired. In a situation like this with lots of bands and lots of noise and people, you don’t have a lot of time to worry about that and you don’t have much time to set up which can be very stressful. I feel like when you play a concert and you don’t have time for a soundcheck you just have to work with you got.

What’s the music scene in Copenhagen like?

It’s very good. There are lots of bands. More and more bands are making it out of there and I think it’s because people have been making independently for about ten years now. They don’t make music to get popular; they make music for a human need. That makes it real. There are a lot of bands in Denmark that make really good records because the whole music industry changed their position to make music for the music.

Have you thought about what next or how long before the next record?

I still write and I have an idea for the next record. I don’t think it’s going to be different process. I still want to do it myself, but I just need quiet time to make music. I have new songs ready and I have a lot of ideas of how I want the next thing to be. I hope to make a new one too, but I can’t promise anything before it’s there.

July 2013

Tonight. I basically go straight from the festival here in Denmark and fly to New York tonight.

Tell me again about being signed. You only had a few songs. Is that true?

Yes, yes it is. I think I only had two songs before 4AD contacted me and asked if I would be interested in making a whole album. I was like “Yes if you want to work with me then I will try.” First of all I was really surprised that a label like 4AD wanted to put out an act that never had done a record before. In the start it was a lot of pressure, but I had to forget about the pressure and do what I like to do and enjoy myself making music. I was really, really excited about the opportunity to work with 4AD.

How were people able to hear your songs before the record came out?

Basically there were not very many people who had heard the songs because I had made one song and made a small video for it and shared it on my Facebook page to get some response from my friends.

Were you performing live before the record came out or is the record what led you to take the project from a personal level to a performance setting?

I’ve been in different bands for ten years as a keyboard player, but I had never played an Indians concert before. The first show was in February last year and I remember I only had 8 songs to date to play at that show.

Where did the name Indians come from?

I think it’s about sharing and making music and it’s part of nature. We all need music. We are all born listening to the heartbeat in our mom’s stomach and that’s the first time we hear music. It’s so close to our nature and in a way it’s a celebration for Indians in general. We are all natives from somewhere and I think it’s beautiful to have a simple life so close to nature.

You seem to tour a lot in America. Do you perform as much in other parts of the world or do you feel like you have a bigger reception here?

I think that we have been touring a lot in the States, but things have been coming a lot in Europe too. America is a big country, so there’s a lot of work and opportunity when you go there. There are a lot of venues to cover.

When I saw you in Texas you had to women playing with you. Are you playing with the same band this time around?

Actually that was just for that tour. I’ve been playing with two guys in Denmark sometimes, but at the moment I am playing by myself without a band. It works really well, it’s easier to get around and it’s much cheaper.

How does the live show compare to the record? When you were playing as a trio there was a big sound and three people playing at once? Does playing solo make it hard to sound as big? Or do you even think about playing songs like on the record at all?

I think sometimes you have to change things. Sometimes things work really well on record and it doesn’t necessarily work out live. Sometimes you have to build different arrangements for the songs to keep it intense. It’s different.

So with you playing solo, what is the live setup like?

I’m looping stuff and I’m playing a synthesizer and a piano. So I’m pretty busy. It’s not like an acoustic show. It’s still a pretty epic sound live. I try to have as many elements on the record as possible when I play live.

Have you had time to start thinking about or working on a new record?

I have some new songs and recently at a show in Denmark I was asked to play a longer set than normal so I played three new songs.

Do you have an idea when you might have a new record ready or is it too early to tell?

Hopefully within a year. I hope. I hope. I spend as much time as I can trying to figure out new stuff and writing new songs.

When you made your first record you made songs one-by-one. Do you think your songs will be different this time around? Are you approaching songwriting differently now that you have more experience playing solo? Have your experiences on the road made their way into your work?

I think it’s different because the story that I’m telling with that old record is a new story now. Now my new songs are about traveling around and the people I meet and places I have seen. My new songs are about what’s going on right now.

Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin: When A Name Means More Than Ever

When the band chose their name back in high school, they never had any intention of making a political statement. Thirteen years later, however, recent events have brought them closer to the man in question than anyone could have dreamed.

After being specially invited by the Boris Yeltsin Foundation, SSLYBY became the first American band to ever play and headline Old Nu, Russia’s largest winter music festival, this past January. But that’s just where the story begins.

Taking their memories home with them, the band immediately returned to their attic studio in Springfield, Missouri to start writing and recording a new album. The resulting  ‘Fly by Wire’, was released yesterday, and the results are filled with rhythmically ripe tracks of sentimental revelry fit for the last rays of summer. Taking bits of Russian imagery from the people, literature and art they internalized oversees, the record soars and swoons with lush melodies, hushed harmonies and catchy-as-hell, gentle pop gems.

I was thankful to catch up with Phil Dickey, one of the band’s founding members, when they played their last tour leading up to the album’s release.

I had the pleasure of listening to the upcoming record and it sounds amazing. I noticed in the photo there are only three of you. Did you lose someone along the way?

Yeah, one of our guys, John Robert Cardwell left the band so we did the record as a three-piece. There have always been multiple songwriters in the band so it didn’t change anything as far as writing or things like that.

I immediately noticed that you mentioned the Russians early on, and I thought it was strange you were finally talking politics. Then I read further and saw all about your recent trip to Russian. You’ll probably have to answer this a lot coming up, but can you talk about how that all came together?

Yeah, as far as the song referencing, there’s a Nick Lowe lyric that goes “discussions with the Russians” which I thought was catchy as hell so we used it. That’s going to be the title of our documentary as well. Last summer we were contacted by the Boris Yeltsin Foundation in Yekaterinburg, Russia. I thought it was horrible joke and I thought one of my friends was messing with me. We figured out that it was a real thing and the Boris Yeltsin Foundation was sponsoring a big music festival in Yekateringburg where Boris Yeltsin began his political career and they wanted us to be the first American band ever to play at this, the biggest winter and music festival in Russia. And along with that,  as far as the planning, we were already planning on going over and the US Consulate heard about us going there and we were the first American band playing this festival so they wanted to work out a program with an English speaking school in the same town where we would interact with the students and it would be a cultural exchange. They named us Cultural Ambassadors for a day—which we are all putting on our resumes. We did a rock show at the festival and then we did an acoustic show at the school. It was insane. We ate lunch with Boris Yeltsin’s friends and his personal translator at an elementary school. We ate borscht and they gave us 7 bottles of vodka. We were followed around by a national news crew the whole time and they made us perform Boris Yeltsin’s favorite song on the spot. We had to learn it by listening to an iPod and then immediately perform it. A lot of the stuff that happened we couldn’t make up. This should be a children’s book at the very least.

Did you have to bullshit your way through where the name came from and the significance of it? Did you get freaked out that they would see it didn’t mean as much to you as the person you were asked to honor?

We were always worried about that because the band name was not political at all. We’ve never endorsed his policies. He did seem like a good and decent man. The band name is more of a commentary on that, not about anything political. But we were worried about that. There were a lot of things going on, they have some tension over there. For some reason it never came up though. I think it’s such an anti-political thing to play your songs—especially love songs. We’re not talking about peace or justice; we’re just talking about having a crush on someone. We’re just trying to be crappy Beatles. That’s why I think it made sense that we should go there and play at a school and meet all of these important people. I think there’s way more power in art or something that’s not as political now. That’s why you can really just get along with people because you’re not trying to be weird or have an agenda.

So was this an outdoor festival in Russia in January?

No, it was inside. It was a really major complex. It didn’t make sense to us because it was a Russian building. It seemed like a multi-plex with the stage and theater. The next thing was in the gymnasium at the school and we were inducted into their gymnasium Hall of Fame, which was really strange. And we looked out the window and little kids were cross-country skiing at recess.

So did you start making the record as soon as you got back?

Immediately. I was kind of going crazy, I was itching to write and get these songs down when we got back. We’ve been super fortunate and band that gets to play music and travel, which is very fortunate. But you seem to lose the plot when you start thinking about popularity and the business side. This really was the true moment where we thought this nonsense band name in high school connected these words that we put together and our whole art project somehow got us to Russia and connected us to these foreign leaders and the US Consulate. It was the one time in my life when I thought “words have power; art has power.” It sounds cheesy, but I think it’s something. It says something more powerful than you can say politically. People get along when they’re talking about art or music. That’s why we wanted to do it right away. We were sleep deprived and jetlagged, but we went up to Will’s attic as soon as we got back.

Would you say the experience led you to into the music, or did it inspire you to just write the next thing?

It kinda made its way into everything on the new album. We have some Russian imagery in the artwork. We toured Tolstoy’s museum and Tolstoy’s’ house– the whole experience, whether it was Russia or not. We were kids and we thought of Boris Yelsin, and now we’re adults going to his land and his town. Some of it is reference to Tolstoy, his books, Anna Karenina, or taking the 747 flight to Russia– and some of it is just the feeling of magic to Russian art and the Russian people we met who were so helpful.

Even though you guys are recording yourself again, it seems as though there’s a little more to the overall production on this record. Would you agree?

Yeah, as far as production-wise, I think this is the first time we’ve ever really thought of ourselves as producers. It doesn’t really matter who plays the parts because we can all play guitars and drums. In the past it was playing the song like you would be playing it at the show. This time we really tried to break it down. We were listening to Fleetwood Mac records and wondering why Lindsay Buckingham’s guitar sounded so smooth. We were breaking stuff down. We’ve approached it more like a producer, but also within the circumstances of our band. We were in Will’s attic and I don’t think producers work in people’s attics. We took that role on ourselves. Each song had a different place we were coming from. We were just trying to make the parts dance together and sound simple and also like it could be played on your sister’s cassette player. We wanted it to sound really warm.

Is the production like a nice reaction to coming after the record of demos and B-sides?

Yeah, the example I thought of was thinking of Lindsay Buckingham… probably doing an insane amount of drugs, but recording in the nice studio and then taking the recordings from there and re-recording them in a bathroom. And doing vocals laying on the floor. Even with access to a million dollar studio, it can still sound better in the bathroom. Studio’s can be really stale and it’s more interesting to work with your own materials and your own place that inspires you.

You guys were pretty young when you started the band. Have you noticed a change in your songwriting style or subject matter?

Topic-wise, no. I just turned 30, and I want to resist that idea of “oh they made a mature album and they’re really committed now. “The lyrics have always kinda stayed the same about having a crush and being in love and positive, bored energy and movement.  If anything, we don’t want to sound like we’re 30. It’s not like now it’s time to add strings and sound really mature. I think that would be a sad day for everybody.

Do you have a lot of the new song ready to go on this tour, or are you just going to use the time between to work them out live?

We’re building the ship as we sail. We have no master plan. We’re just focusing on learning the new songs live and testing them out now.  Ungreatest hits or Greatest Emissions, depending who you ask.

After seeing so much of the world is it refreshing to go back to a small town, or do you get restless these days?

We grew up there and there’s something about that place and it will always be home. We kinda love it there. There’s a great community and I like underrated and under the radar. I think it gives you a chance to do things, whereas in big cities all the ideas you have about art and culture are already being done and there are probably people with a lot of money doing it. Where we are from there’s a chance to try and make your city what you want it to be like, and hopefully it can be that place. It seems like now things could go either way.

Rogue Wave: The Ups and Downs that Create the Rogue Wave Sound

Future Bible Heroes ed After taking some time off between Rogue Wave records, Zach Schwartz (aka Zach Rogue) and company are back on tour supporting their recent LP, Nightingale Floors, their fifth full-length, and first on Vagrant Records.

While Permalight, Rogue Wave’s 2010 release was seen by many to be a marked departure from the band’s signature sound— including Rogue, himself, Nightingale Floors is a return to form. Together with longtime collaborator, Pat Spurgeon, Rogue Wave are back with that summertime sound that has come to define the band’s catalogue. But look deeper and you’ll realize that the poppy hooks and inherent hopefulness that ease into their breezy melodic instrumentation often mask the melancholy of the lyrics that lurk underneath their swooning harmonies. No strangers to bad luck and tragedy, besides his own personal health problems, Rogue lost his friend and former bassist in a complications following a house fire, and Spurgeon almost lost his life from kidney failure.

I was able to catch up with Zach Rogue as he set off for tour to talk about his new record, and the ups and downs that lead that amazing Rogue Wave sound.

Hello, Nolan? Sorry I missed your call I was at this gas station. My phone sucks and when I get a phone call and a message my phone freezes up and I cant get a call right back. It’s really weird.

That is strange. Where are you at right now?

I’m at a gas stop somewhere near Minneapolis. There’s a bumper sticker in there that says, “I Love my country, but my president is a moron.” And there’s another one that says, “Sorry about your face, but nice tits.” That’s another one. It’s a really highly evolved country. Wow!

You don’t think the president one is from 8 years ago?

It looks shiny and new. What can I say?

It seems you took some time between touring and recording since the last record. What were you up to? I know you had a solo project…

Yeah, I did. I needed a break in general, you know. I did this band called Release the Sunbird and did a little touring and an album and EP with them. It was a really amazing time and the people I recorded with were ridiculous musicians, and the band I toured with was a whole new set of friends and I got to sing with a new set of singers that were amazing. I also scored a TV show for HBO [On Freddie Roach] and that was really nice. I did a lot of ambient music and stuff I wanted to do for a long time. I think both of those experiences are what led me to make Nightingale Floors.

You said you needed a break, how did you mean that?

Just from everything. Just being on the road. With Permalight, to play those songs live was not really easy to do and it didn’t seem like it sounded like us too much. I felt like I didn’t like the trajectory of where we were going live and needed to take some time away from that and get some perspective. If we were going to keep going as a band, I needed some perspective and it needs to be more closely aligned with us.

What do you think led the songs from Permalight to take that departure in sound?

Everything is a reaction to something else. We started to do Permalight and I had all of these physical problems where I couldn’t move my body and I had lost feeling in my hand, so I felt that I wasn’t able to do any playing. At the time I wanted to make really rhythmic dance-beat music because I was excited to be playing again. The problem is we are not really a dancey band. Live, trying to have click-tracks and trying to have sequenced stuff—it’s great, but it’s not great for us. It’s a great experiment for us when we’re in the studio and heading that direction, but we landed up spending too much time on that record. We landed up spending four months tracking it. That’s too long. We’re not supposed to have a bunch of control in the studio; we’re supposed to be a little more loose. That’s our sound, and it ebbs and flows. That’s how we play, we don’t have any perfection; we have expression. It was an experiment and I’m glad we did it, but I think Nightingale Floors was much closer to how we play and the production values are more in line with what we like.

So is the label change just part of the restart for you guys? What was that decision based on?

I love the people at Brushfire and they’re great people and we have a great relationship with them. I consider them friends. It was a definite amicable separation. They have a deal with Universal that made it impossible for us to stay there. I don’t want to have anything to do with Universal. Not, Brushfire—I love them. It became clear that when we all got back together and were working on new music that it’d be good to go somewhere else where there would be a clean slate and wouldn’t be any fancy Universal-like accounting practices, where you’re under the sum of some unscrupulous corporation.  We just really like Vagrant and they’re great people who put out good music. We have been in touch for years, so it seemed like a good idea. They’re very supportive of us as a band and we just really like them.

There are new players on this record as well, right?

Yeah. There are, but there always is. Ha, there always is.

So the bands ever-changing, but you always have the core?

Yeah, it’s always about me and Pat and that happened ever since we met. Mark who played bass on the record toured with us before, so he’s not that new. Then we just brought in some friends. Pete, from Peter Wolf Crier is one of the best guitar players I know. Our friend Jules came in and I knew we wanted some beautiful female voices in there. So me and Pat and Mark spent month demo-ing stuff and did a lot of live tracking. The way it usually works, no matter what we’re doing, it’s me and Pat messing around with songs—either on parallel or if I’m doing a vocal track he’s on some weird instrument tracking onto his computer or 4-track machine. We pull all the tracks together we like and mix them up… like salad. We’re a salad band. A quilty, salady band.

So you wouldn’t say there’s anything that ties them all together besides time and place?

You mean is there any reason that all of these songs are on this record? That’s up to you. You’re the writer, it’s up to you to say whatever you want about that. These are songs about letting go—of the past and trying to have control over things that you can never, ever control. You can’t control the fact that you’re going to die. Everyone you know is going to and all you can do is just accept it and really live. And it’s okay. I think there’s a lot of that. Every song has some little thing. They’re not completely linked like that, but I think ultimately I think it’s about trying to let go.

Do you find it hard to fit these deeper messages into songs that sound inherently summery and happy?

The way something comes out… happy is a relative term. When I hear certain songs, I wouldn’t necessary that I’m feeling happy when I hear a song. You can’t set out to know what the end result is til its done. You don’t know the overall feel of a song until it’s done. I don’t think you know where the plot is going to go when you’re writing a book. You don’t know, and you don’t know until you find your way around. That’s how these songs are. Maybe I was crying in my whiskey when I was writing it, but maybe it ultimately ended up different than that. With music there’s always a duality of what’s being said and how it’s being said—or what’s being said and how the listener feels when they hear it. You can hear a sad and brutally honest song, but it can make you ironically feel good. It’s like Elliott Smith is sometimes. You can feel happy through someone’s misery, so if you feel that these songs sound happy, I’ll tell you that’s crazy because I wasn’t talking about happiness. Maybe the melody feels good if you like those melodies, but those are different things. But that’s why music is interesting. That’s why people like music and that’s why we play music, because it has that duality and multiple perspectives and you want to hear it over and over.

What’s the significance behind the album’s title?

Do you know what that is?

What a Nightingale Floor is? No I don’t. I thought it was just your term.

Well if you do some research you’ll get an idea, I imagine.

Is that Thomas Campbell’s art on the cover?

No, it’s Andrew Schoultz. I’ve actually been asked before if it’s Thomas, and I love his work as well. Andrew Shultz is amazing. Go to his website [http://www.andrewschoultz.com]. He has some great books and is a super-talented dude.

Is it strange when people focus on the bad luck/tragic occurrences of the band’s past, or do you think that helps people identify with you and the idea that bad things happen to everybody? Or do you think it takes away from the music?

I wonder about that. I think it’s a little of both. I think when people write about music there’s a tendency to cling to a narrative thread that’s easier to talk about than talking about how you feel when you hear the music. But those things are intertwined with us and our records. So if we didn’t have those things in our lives, we probably wouldn’t have made the music that we’ve made. Everything is a reaction to what we see or feel around us. I would hope that people are more interested in the music than the stuff that’s happened to us. I’m not really sure what to say. I can’t lie and say that didn’t happen, but it’s also the stuff that gives us strength and makes us want to go on, even though it’s a shitty business to be in. What happens is you travel around and you meet people who have had things that happened in their life and sometimes if they like our band then that music helps them and you can build a community and relationships and understandings that all make it worthwhile.

Do you still have the physical pain when you’re playing?

Yeah, but I try and bandage it. It’s not as bad as it was, which is great. There are some things—my hand is still numb, but I’ve learned to deal with that and I’m not bedridden—well not yet.

 

The Past and Present of The Future Bible Heroes

Back in 1996, a few years before the Magnetic Fields went from an indie band with a cult following to the critically acclaimed collective that they are today, Stephin Merritt and Claudia Gonson became involved with a Boston sideproject headed by Chris Ewen called Future Bible Heroes.

After releasing two LPs and 3 EPs in 7 years, the band remained dormant for a decade. Now, 11 years since their last release, the band returns with Partygoing, available on Merge Records, on its own–or even more appealing– as a box set with all of their previous recordings together in one package.

Picking up where the band left off, Future Bible Heroes’ sound is still steeped in analog synths, and while the band dives into darker and dancier terrain, Merritt’s signature whimsy and witty sarcasm provide some humor to their seemingly somber tales. With song titles like “Digging My Own Grave”, “Keep Your Children in a Coma” and “Let’s Go to Sleep (And Never Come Back)”, the Future Bible Heroes remain scathingly satirical and inherently fun.

I was especially lucky to catch up with the band’s founder, Chris Ewen for a rare in-person interview at the MIracle of Science in Cambridge, Massachusetts, just a day before tour and a few hours before the masses crowded the streets to jockey for positioning for that evening’s 4th of July fireworks. Below is the conversation that transpired.

What is the timeline history of Future Bible Heroes? Is this an official Boston band? I know Stephin lived here for awhile.

Yes it was. It started in Boston and it evolved when he moved to New York. It started when my own band Figures on the Beach broke up and I was still writing… which is funny because one of the members is now touring with Future Bible Heroes. But when that band broke up I was still working on a lot of instrumental things and one day Stephin said, ‘why don’t you just have someone write lyrics and sing songs to your music,’ and I said, ‘well then why don’t you do it because you’re a great lyricist.’ So we messed around with some songs and wrote some songs.

What year did this take place?

I want to say 1996-ish.

So your band broke up, you were doing instrumentals and then Stephin came into the picture? And then Claudia? The first EP sounds like it’s mostly Stephin and the second seems like it’s mostly Claudia…

Well the first one is definitely boy/girl. It alternated. Stephin and Claudia alternated each track. At that point it was an approach to differentiate them from the Magnetic Fields, where at that time Stephin was singing most of the songs because it was pre-69 Love Songs.

And how did Claudia become involved?

It was weird because Stephin and I put together a bunch of songs and one of then got picked up by a friend of mine– Steve Lau– who used to be in a band called The Ocean Blue. He had a record label through Warner Brothers and through Reprise called Kinetic. He was putting together one of those “Red Hot” compilations and he asked me for a track. So Stephin and I submitted a song called “Hopeless”—a really early version of it. They accepted it, put it out on the comp and someone who was at another label called Slow River, which was associated with Ryko, heard it and wanted to sign us with just that one song. At that point this thing went from being a fun little hobby to being a real band. When we recorded everything for the first record with Slow River, Stephin sent me a recording with Claudia singing and I thought it sounded great. So suddenly she was the third member of the band. So from then on we started writing songs with her in mind as well as Stephin.

So was it just you doing the instrumental parts, or has it changed over the years?

It’s changed over the years. Stephin has always added a little Stephin magic, but most of the instrumentals are mine though.

Does it start with instrumentals and you write with their lyrics in mind or is it a more collaborative process?

In the past it was very much me sitting at home with a bunch of keyboards plugged in. The first two albums were basically me programming MIDI synths and recording live onto a two-track recording… DAT or something like that. Stephin would then write around them or come at them with melodies that mimicked or complimented what was in the tracks. And then occasionally he would add some extra things. It was really hard to change things though. We didn’t really collaborate on the musical end of it. Since everything was recorded live all the time we did it, and it would have to be redone much differently. This time around it was much more collaborative. I would send him demos this time around instead of completed, finished tracks, so he would say change the key or add choruses there, and we would build things up together. Or he would send me different versions of him singing things and we would work around that. This time around he would actually send me lyrics and we would go from there. We were a lot more collaborative this time around.

Would you say the band has always been made up of the same people? Or would you say this is more YOUR band, with guest singers? Or has it evolved from one to the other?

When it initially started out, it was Stephin and myself. When we started getting serious about it and recorded our first record, Claudia was definitely involved and I always thought of this as a band with the three of us. Maybe it’s not a band; maybe it’s a project. It’s definitely not just me and guests. It’s the product of all of the things that each of us brings to it, which keeps it different from the Magnetic Fields. It is it’s own entity.

How are Claudia and Stephin able to differentiate and step out of the roles together in the Magnetic Fields to make this different?

Even with Stephin’s other bands like the Gothic Archies or the 6ths, he basically writes all the words and the music.

When is the last time you actually toured?

Well we haven’t done an album in 11 years, so we haven’t toured in ten. I realized the last live shows we’ve played were in London with a few shows in Spain.

What is the live show setup this time around? And how does the live show differ from the early incarnation of the band?

The first tours we did, Stephin and we brought out all old synths and hardware sequencers and brought out all of our delicate equipment and just did it. The stage always looked great because it was chock full of all these synths, but it was really a pain to carry all of these heavy things around, they were really delicate, they were breaking a lot. So we had to scale that back a bit. Actually, the very first time we toured we had all these synths and had Sam and John from the Magnetic Fields play with us too to flesh things out. Then we scaled it down a bit, as best we could. By the time “Eternal Youth” came out we decided that touring that way was totally impossible. So we scaled it down to a piano and a synthesizer and maybe a drum machine. And Stephin played ukulele and guitar. We basically did an electronic band acoustically. And that was really fun. So this time around, it’s been awhile, we decided to bring out some synths again. There are four of us now. I’m playing synthesizers and drum machine tracks. Claudia is playing synths. I’m playing soft synths. Claudia is playing synthesizer and singing. Shirley sings—she was with the Magnetic Fields. She also plays ukulele and this great electronic autoharp called omnichord. The fourth member of our touring band is Tony Kaczynski who was in Figures on the Beach. He’s playing bass and singing. So we’re playing a lot of stuff live.

In the in-between times did you know the band would pick up again? What brought it back together?

Earlier when I said we like to impose a lot of rules on ourselves… a lot of the rules we impose upon ourselves weren’t rules that we put on ourselves… it was technology at the time and the fact that we lived in different cities for a long time. I mean we were doing the Postal Service thing before the Postal Service. We would send tracks back and forth. A lot of mail, a lot of DATs and cassettes and a lot of phone calls, so it was a pretty unyielding way to work. Now we both have our own fully operational recording studios and can send huge files back and forth. I think that’s made it really easy to actually do it. It was a good time to do it, because it became easier for us to do it. The second album was a real pain to record because digital technology was not at its peak, lets say. We were both using different formats of recording devices so it was tough to synch things up and convert things to each other’s formats. I don’t think it was a pleasant experience. This time it became much easier. This time when we decided to write again, and that is largely based around the Magnetic Fields and his other projects, it seemed like a good thing to do. It just started coming together really quickly.

Was Stephin supposed to be on this tour?

I don’t think it was ever decided that he would be on this tour, but I know from him that touring with his ears is not a good thing. I think the last Magnetic Fields tour really took a toll on his ears. So when we discussed putting this tour together, from the beginning we tried to figure out how we could tour if Stephin can’t tour. That’s why we listed Troy and Tony from the very beginning. Shirley was obvious. Claudia had worked with her for a long time. I had been aware of her since Buffalo Rome, Stephin’s pre-Magnetic Fields band. Tony I knew, and he’s a great musician. It was never something where we wanted to make Stephin tour. I knew it would be impractical for him for medical reasons. Personally, I’d rather make another record with him than have him go out for a month of tour and then lose more hearing.

What made you decided to re-release all of the old work as a package with the new record? Was everything out-of-print at this point?

Yeah, a lot of it was really unfindable and it was all on different labels. We had one EP on Merge, something on Slow River, licensing deals in Europe for different things that had come and gone. The second record was on Instinct records and I don’t think they’re around. We owned the rights to them all. So it seemed like a good thing to do to make all of our stuff available again and have it all on one label and to have Merge do it. It’s worldwide and it’s all available again.

With the new record, the title seems to be tongue-in-cheek. The songs are quite dark, but they also are quite humorous at times too. Is this always a conscious concoction with FBH?

I think that we have always straddled that line of being really perky and fun with lyrics that maybe aren’t as upbeat. I love that juxtaposition and Stephin does too. I think it brings some depth to the songs. Maybe part of it is that Stephin will write lyrics to counteract the perkiness of the music. The last time we toured we put together a setlist and we put all the songs in a row and we looked at the list and it was so horrifyingly depressing that we burst out laughing. It was so ridiculous in a really fun way. And we don’t really think about that until we see all the songs listed in a row. We realized this in Hudson when we were playing “Hopeless” and then there was “Lonely Days”. It just made us laugh.

Is it meant for humor? Is it storytelling? Or does it seem real when you’re doing them?

In some cases, maybe especially on “Eternal Youth”, Stephin got a Sci-Fi vibe from the instrumentals, so I think his lyrics tended to reflect what he was getting. Then the theme developed around an album. Was it supernatural, or human, or one versus the other with this whole Sci-Fi vibe he was getting? I think the albums have tended to be loose concept albums. The first one was love songs or anti-love songs. The second was about people’s obsessions with death, youth and beauty. I think that carries through now that we’re a little older and now people are even more obsessed with beauty and youth and youth culture, and maybe even more divorced from reality. I’m not saying we are feeling our age, but we have a different perspective than we had 10 years ago. Maybe “Partygoing” is our reaction to who we are, as opposed to people we were when we would go to parties, or what parties are like now and us vs. the youth culture. Stephin may disagree with me here though.

Because it was so long in between, were some of these songs ready a long time ago?

We started talking about this two or three years ago, so I started writing for whatever the album was going to be. Whereas in the past I would send Stephen a certain amount of tracks and he’d pick the ones he wanted on there and sculpt his melodic bits, this time we had more freedom and I sent him a LOT of demos that were very loosely arranged to see what he liked and what he could work with. Then he’d work on them and send them back and I would work more on them and send them back. It didn’t take us as long as it has in the past to come up with an album, but there was a time when it was much more of a loose process. Once we got done to recording and making it final, it happened very quickly.

Do you complete all of the finished product and post-production in your studio?

I have in the past, but usually the vocals have been recorded wherever Stephin is living, usually New York. I don’t think we did stuff when he was in LA. This year we did the final mixes in New York, so he took control of that. We could actually have different tracks this time around, so I sent him all the stems. They were mixed much more sympathetically in the past I will say.

You were saying there was a lot of analog stuff and trading things digitally, but have you changed the way you record and the instruments you use?

For a long time my studio has been a hardware and software hybrid. I love the sound of old analog synths and I like to use as many as possible. There are some software things I’ve used, but since we’re so multi-tracked we can use the old analog synths with some updated software as well.

When you’re trading tracks, you are here, Claudia is in New York. And Stephin…

Stephin’s in New York. He lives in Hudson now, which is kind of upstate.

Obviously right now you’re dealing with the present and the current tour and recent record, but do you ever think about whether this project will happen again?

I would like it to happen sooner rather than later. I’d like it if it happened before another decade passed. Besides Stephin’s schedule, I think one of the major problems was how hard it was to make “Eternal Youth”. I think that now we have proven to ourselves that we can have fun making a record together and it’s easier than it was in the past. We can come up with something we’re really proud of. So I think it will happen again sooner rather than later. And I think it’s gotten me back in it as well. It’s one thing when you’re not producing something, or when people are living in different parts of the country– it’s difficult to get in the mindset. But with the ease of this new process, I’m not going to stop now. I’m going to keep writing when the tour is over and catalogue a bunch of new demos for the next time we start recording.

Drunk History: An Interview with creators Derek Waters and Jeremy Konners

What began as a single short film for Derek Waters’ comedy act would eventually grow into an internet sensation picked up by “Funny or Die”. Now, seven years later, Waters and co-creator/director Jeremy Konner are bringing their “Drunk History” to Comedy Central (Tuesdays at 10pm).

Gathering comedic friends and notable fans, Waters and Konner film drunken narrators as they tell enthusiastic historic tales warped by inebriation and then reenacted by A-list celebrities resulting in true hilarity. While it’s hard to imagine that the participants are actually that drunk, Waters assures us that everything, even the vomiting, is the result of unscripted excess.

In their Comedy Central debut, “Drunk History” hosts some return guests, but also add a new echelon of A-listers. Jack Black and Michael Cera are back, and alongside Dave Grohl, Bob Odenkirk, Lisa Bonet, Bill Hader, Kevin Nealon, Aubrey Plaza, Winona Ryder, Fred Willand and Owen and Luke Wilson, the all-star cast takes on stories about Elvis, Nixon, Nader, Lincoln, Mary Dyer and the Kellogg Brothers among others.

I was lucky enough to catch up with comedian Derek Waters and director Jeremy Konners (separately) on the phone to discuss the past, present and future of their hilarious “Drunken History”. Below are the unedited and exclusive interviews that transpired.

Part 1: Drunk History: An interview with Derek Waters

Are you excited for the premiere?

Very excited. Very excited. I finally hear from parents, you know? No, I’m just kidding, I’m very close to my family, I hear from them every day. I hear more for them now.

I saw you talk down at SXSW, but could you reiterate how this thing came to be? Was it really just supposed to be one web episode until Jack Black contacted you?

Yeah, it was 2007 and it’s only intent was to be for a live show I was doing for the Upright Citizen’s Brigade called “LOL”. It was my own show and I was trying to show videos. I figured it was better to make people laugh than to put it online. It was right when the internet was being judged by hits over comedy. I’m still a snob, but I was a bigger one back then and I was hesitant whether people would accept just that. I sent it to Conan and the Daily Show in hopes that it could be a monthly sketch. But nothing really happened until we put it on the internet and it got on the front page of YouTube and then Jack Black who knows Jeremy Konners the director, he saw it and said ‘I always wanted to be Ben Franklin’. And that was that. So basically what you said is true. But those were the specifics. You can’t really turn down Jack Black. Why would you?

How did the show come together after all these years? Did you just keep pitching it around?

Well, it never really… people always said what about a “Drunk History” show, and I said it’s not a show, it’s a five minute idea. I never want it to get old and I know what it is. So I thought, well what is it going to be like? What if it’s me going across America trying to understand our country? But that didn’t feel right, so we just broadened the world so it’s just a history show. We’re trying as hard as we can to tell you about history; it just so happens that it’s slightly altered. But each episode is about a certain town and there’s a thru line between three stories and the idea of broadening the world of history so its not just about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Now there can be stories about Elvis and all kinds of new worlds. And we can do all stories now if we set the bar here.

How many States did you make it through?

Well what do you mean by that?

How many States do you touch on in the show by wanting to do it as a travelogue from city to city?

We did 7 cities, and the season finality is about the Wild West. But there’s Boston, DC, Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Nashville, San Francisco. We’re still working. Oh my god, are we still working? Holy Shit, we have got so much to do. But it’s gotten through a lot of different stages. Comedy Central is the best and they had the best response to the pitch. Anytime you have something, especially if it’s your own project with your friends in your backyard and it becomes semi-popular, I don’t know many stories where people have said ‘Oh I got to do what I wanted at that big network’. Comedy Central has allowed us to stick to that tone where it still feels like you’re with your friends in your backyard making little videos… there are just more movie stars.

Yeah, how did you get such big names? Are these people all your friends? How did the A-list cast come to be?

It was craigslist, that’s all it was. It’s tough times out here right now. No, I knew some of them, but we had a casting director and we would dream a little dream and be like ‘Oh man it’d be cool if Jack Black and Dave Grohl would do the Elvis story’ and they would be like ‘ok here you go’. There’s no real way to say how this all happened, because I still don’t know. I mean, we got Luke and Owen Wilson to play the Kellogg Brothers, I’ve often thought I’m in the Make a Wish Foundation and I’m about to get really bad news. It was very surreal. Most of them, if we didn’t know them, we knew they had an interest in Drunk History or wanting to do it. I guess a lot of people know it’s a lot of fun or they have people who work on it and know it’s a lot of fun and really laid back, so everyone wants to be there and it’s a really rare place to be when you’re working.

Who do you play in the upcoming season?

I’m the host and then I play random parts throughout the series in every episode. I pop up in little parts here and there. I will play Davie Crockett in the season finale, which is probably my biggest role. I don’t want to give away the ending and what happens to me. [Laughs].

When it’s being filmed are you guys drinking or are you fictionalizing what it would look like if you were drunk?

When we’re shooting the reenactments? Never. I mean, definitely in the narration, but when we shoot it we , no—I don’t mean, no that wouldn’t be right—I mean, no we don’t because… There’s the drunk part, but then there’s the other part. I always think of it as ‘man we really want to tell this story so here’s the footage we have and here’s the footage we have of this drunk person’. The comedy comes from trying so hard from something that is so ridiculous that people try and take it seriously. There’s a preview we just put online of Winona Ryder getting hung in the 1600’s and a car drives by in the background. Those are my favorite things that happen during the show. The mistakes. The purposeful mistakes.

In Texas you said you were going to get audience members to help out with the story ideas in each destination. Did that still happen? Is that how the story ideas came about or is it all you guys?

The on the road stuff was more about interacting with people about their towns and getting their reactions about the subject. The stages of filming were we had researchers and we would all dig through books and everything we could find and figure out which towns we would go through. Then we would assign our favorite stories to our favorite narrators out here, shoot them and then based off of our favorite stories, we would go on the road. Doesn’t that sound hilarious?

It’s hilarious that you have researchers only to blur the research.

Here, find something really good so someone can forget it. [Laughs] The people that do get assigned the stories DO have interest in it. I wouldn’t let someone do a story that they wouldn’t want to do. It has to be like ‘oh, oh, oh, oh’, or ‘oh my gawd I had no idea about that, I want to learn more’. There has to be a genuine passion about it, where mixed with alcohol is especially funny and hard for them to articulate why they love it so much.

Who are some of your favorite portrayals of characters in the upcoming season?

MMM, so many. Jason Ritter, I call him the master of Drunk History—so good. He plays my favorite character, Stetson Kennedy. It’s in our Atlanta story. In our Atlanta episode we have a story about J. Edgar Hoover vs. Martin Luther King and we have the invention of Coca Cola, America’s favorite soft drink. Then this one, Stetson Kennedy, who in the 1940’s is the man who came closest to taking down the Ku Klux Klan. It’s really, really cool. He joined them in the 40’s and infiltrated them and learned their secrets and tried to learn a way to fuck with them. Back then radio was a big entertainment facility and “Superman” was the biggest show and “Superman” was looking for a new villain, so Stetson called them and said ‘I think I found a new villain for you; I infiltrated the Klan.” They loved it, so each week Stetson Kennedy would meet with the Ku Klux Klan and called the people at the “Superman” show and each week Superman would take down the Klan with the exact actions that were actually happening within the Klan. All these guys got freaked out and dropped out at the end because their own kids who loved Superman were running around the neighborhood dressed as these really stupid villains known as the Klan and making fun of them. That’s a story where I think it’s fun to get people drunk and have funny tales, but I want stories like that that are true where I’m like ‘holy shit, how do I not know that story?’

If you guys are not drinking during the filming, how do you guys get in character?

Getting in character? I don’t know. Hold on, you know the narration part is the drinking part, right? The reenactments are sober. You’re saying because the people are acting drunk? I don’t know how to answer that.

Does Comedy Central impose any limits on what you say or do? Any quality control if you will?

The only quality control is we have a medic with us when we do it. Luckily having a little more money we have a real medic that stays there so every narrator is taken care of. It should be noted, that every narration is done at their homes. They’re always in good hands. Comedy Central was very good at keeping it in the same light. I don’t think anyone will say you guys changed what used to be good about this. There’s more puking, which I love, but it’s remained true to what the original web series was. It looks a little prettier though.

Is all the puking real?

Oh yeah! Do you know that it’s real.

No, not really.

It’s 100% real. The narrators are completely drunk and the reenactors are completely sober. It’s okay, it’s confusing, but that’s how it goes.

So what does the medic do?

She’s just there to make sure everything is okay. She has a breathalizer. Hilarious, right? A breathalizer! But they’re in their home, so they’re okay. It never gets too crazy. And all the narrators are my friends.

What are your favorite drinks?

Um, Zima. 

But that’s hard to find nowadays.

It is. But I’m an oldie. I have to go to the vintage store to find it. Yeah, I’m going with Zima. I don’t have favorites.

Do you have tips for drinking etiquette?

Man, don’t drink. I don’t know. For this show—I would say it helps when you’re passionate and when you hold back bullshit, but as soon as you realize you’re repeating yourself, stop! As soon as someone you’re with says ‘you already told me that’, you go ‘okay I’ve had enough. I think it’s time to stop.’ And whenever you think you’re hilarious, you should probably stop.

Do you have any drunken regrets?

Jesus, Nolan. My God! I don’t think I can… How about drunken achievements? Well this is my only drunken achievement. No I don’t have any drunken regrets.

Well that’s good.

Yeah that’s alright. You should get a quote from my therapist though. Ask him about that.

Is there anyone you tried to get before the show that you were not able to?

Well yeah, I wanted Marilyn Monroe… um, yes, but I don’t wanna say their names because it will make them seem like they didn’t want to do it. A lot of it was scheduling. I mean also, if you’re an established actor and someone says do you want to make $0 for one day’s work for a comedy show called “Drunk History”. If you’ve never heard of it, you think where is the evolution of television going. On paper you’re just picturing a bunch of jocks running around and puking, so I understand if people don’t want to do our show in this first season.

Is there anyone outside of the show that you’d like to share a drink with?

Yeah, Eddie Vedder. Yeah, I drank a little bit of wine with him once, but it was too weird to even… sometimes you love someone…like you love Santa Claus, but you’re kind of scared of him too. But Eddie Vedder.

Well thank you, I really look forward to the shows. Congratulations man.

Thank you Nolan, I really appreciate it.

 

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Drunk History Part 2: An interview with Director Jeremy Konners

So you were co-creators with Derek?

Yeah, we started it together and we turned it into a television show together.

So what is your role as director on a show like this?

The role of the director is a lot of initial research and vetting of stories, and figuring out which stories are great and which stories will make great “drunk histories”. We’ll go to an interview and Derek will interview someone and I’ll sit behind him with the camera making sure everybody stays on point… because drunk people tend to veer off the path a little. So, I’ll make sure everyone is telling a story correctly and that we’re going the right way and when we get back it’s very collaborative. Me and Derek have to figure out how to edit these five hour monsters into an elegant drunk history. All of those aspects are collaborative. We don’t write it, but we write it through editing it. That is something that the narrator is responsible for, as is Derek and the narrator and the editor—to make it coherent with just the right amount of incoherence. And then once we get on set its much more of a director role.

Do these stories get warped off the cuff or do you guys know the way you’re going to take them? Or does the drunkenness allow the story to take its course?

We absolutely allow the stories to take their course. We go in with a plan and the plan goes out the window immediately. What’s been funny and interesting in this process is that people who are funny and know the story very well, they are very ready to tell the story. Before the story they do the research– which they should– they brush up and read over their books. We think we know how the story is going to go—but no. We sat down with [the person] who was doing the Scopes Monkey Trial. We sat down and said “tell us about the Scopes Monkey Trial” and he says, “it’s all bullshit. It’s all propaganda.” And we said, “well what’s the story?” and he says, “it’s all propaganda to bring tourists and to sell trinkets.” But it’s the trial of the century and he says, “no it’s all propaganda and it’s a metaphor for McCarthyism.” So we told the story that he told us. Which is more factually correct. Inherit the Wind is not the Scopes Monkey Trial. It’s an inherent retelling of the story with and agenda. And it was not our agenda. We’re very open to how stories are told and who is the good guy and who is the bad guy. I think we’ve done some really cool episodes. We deal with the Haymarket riots in Chicago. We have the story of Ralph Nader’s rise to fame when he took on GM. We have the fact that we have Watergate from someone who knows who Mark Phelps is and we know who Deep Throat is and we do the story on him.

Did you find yourself having to “can” any footage because people were TOO drunk?

There’s a lot of unpredictability. People are drinking excessive amounts. We have never pushed people to drink to their physical limit. That is not our interest. We like people getting drunk and telling stories– they don’t need to get sick and they don’t need to pass out—but, it sometimes happens and we have to roll with the punches. The great thing is when people throw up they feel great. If there’s a moment when people are getting sick we always think well, in five second they’re going to feel a million times better. I like to say that is it very strange that people are getting drunk and sick on television, but if everyone at home who was getting drunk was talking passionately about history, it would be an awesome world. So, I’m alright with this. I don’t think it provokes bad behavior, I think it’s a cautionary tale.

So when this first came together was this something that came together randomly when hanging out and you thought ‘let’s film this’?

Yeah, we were hanging out a lot and we were friends and we were making a lot of shorts together and Derek came to me and said I was talking to my friend Jake Johnson and he was talking about Otis Redding and he was really wasted. And we thought it was really funny and we could get someone wasted and have them tell a story and reenact it. I said “that’s fucking great, let’s do it”. But you know what, it didn’t go so well the first time. It was a mess. He didn’t tell any of his story. It was boring and it didn’t work. Then we went over to our friend Matt Gaglioti’s house. We got there late, so he already had way more than he thought he was going to have. He was getting pretty tipsy and he asked “Can I tell you about Alexander Hamilton”? Then he literally goes on a 4 and a half hour rant on Meritocracy. He would be like “Do you know what Meritocracy is?”. And we are like “yes you’ve told us, please tell us there’s a way to weave this into the story”. And like magic, he told the story about the duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr and it was so amazing the way he did it. It was so simple and funny and the way he said Hamilton called his wife and family. Everything he said had us crying laughing. We had to bite our lips because he was so into the zone and his eyes were closed. We were like little kids at the back of the teacher’s classroom and we didn’t want to snap him out of it. He told it so quickly. What happened with the first one, he told us so quickly as opposed to the other ones, which have lasted hours. We knew we were onto something the second we left. I was such a huge History Channel guy. I love that stuff, but I love it and I was so excited to make fun of it, because MAN it takes itself so seriously.

Describe the setting… You go to the narrator’s house? You drink together? Who knows when it’s time?

Well we’ll ask them to have a couple of drinks before we get there. It is a requirement that it is their booze. We’re not feeding them booze. They’re drinking their own drinks. We’ll get there and because of camaraderie we’ll have a drink with them so they feel comfortable. It’s a strange thing to have a film crew staring at you when you’re getting drunk. But yeah, we’ll hang out and eventually start filming. Derek will go around with them and ask them about pictures on their wall and get comfortable with them.

Have you ever been unable to perform the roles of the director because you have had too much to drink?

I have never indulged too much. I waited for the wrap party to indulge too much. And then I caught up. At the wrap party I was a mess. It was embarrassing.

What are some of the more outrageous or interesting cues you give to actors while they’re playing the roles?

They only thing that I’ve had to do is make sure that people tell the historic parts of the story. Like one person told the story and then started talking about his thoughts on circumcision for an hour. Which really happened. At a certain point I’m like “Hey let’s make sure we get the end of that story because we could easily walk away and not get that story.’ I try not to direct them to change how they are acting. You just try to get them to talk about certain things.

Have you ever had to scrap a story because it wasn’t funny or outrageous enough?

There were stories that we filmed before television, yes. We were very lucky because we have been able to incubate this show for 7 years before having a television show, so we know what works and what doesn’t. Someone would say ‘I know everything about Garfield. Let me tell you about Garfield.” And they would start saying all of the facts and about his life and they knew everything and about every war. But at the end of the day it was a list of facts and not a story. After filming a few of those we had to make sure to that the stories are great, but it’s such a weird thing to have your friend go through with that and not have a finished product for them.

So needless to say you probably don’t do this in your drunken spare time any more.

It’s not what we do in our drunk spare time anymore, but it is the same amount of fun. We haven’t lost that. It’s the same show. Comedy Central has been great. It’s still all the things that we love. It could have very easily been one of those things that was once one thing but then got bigger and everything changed. And then everyone would hate it because it was bigger and everything changed. Everybody can hate it, but it’s the same thing that it always was.

Do have anything that sticks out when you were filming where you said “this is genious, this is gold”?

Aha. Ha. A highlight… it was pretty crazy working with Alfred Molina. We were in this incredible theater downtown. He was having so much fun. Having Alfred Molina say, “This is so great. This is so much fun. I love this.” It was really a surreal moment and it had taken on a whole new level that I had never ever expected.