The Days of Lore

Home boy, Stephen Malkmus

Thursday, August 25th, 2011 | interviewZ, musiX, pdX | 2 Comments

I was recently asked by Spin Magazine to hang out at Stephen Malkmus’ house and talk to him about random objects that were ineteresting or held some sort of significance to him. I closed the e-mail, changed my underwear and schemed how I would call in sick to my day job in two weeks. “There’s something going around,” I schemed.

I rarely get starstruck these days—only Rhett Miller holds that distinction—but that’s only because he’s so darned good-looking. Malkmus is a pretty handsome fellow, too. And aside from a few more gray hairs, he’s hardly aged. But I wasn’t starstruck—this was more like, “I’m going to hang out with Stephen Malkmus. At his home. What?”

I walked up to his door, which was attached to a very large, very old house in a cluster of other very large, very old houses near a popular park in Portland. His wife, artist Jessica Jackson Hutchins, answered the door. “He’s on his way,” she informed me. The videographer and photographers were already there trying to decide which room had the best light. It was my job to scour the home for quirky trinkets that would lend themselves to even quirkier answers. While the photogs began setting up their elaborate gear, the videographer Aubree and I headed to—where else—the basement.

It was exactly what you would expect: Records, guitars, some recording equipment, old books, genius-at-work clutter. We noted the signed copy of Sterolab’s French Disko on the wall, which Malkmus would later explain: “We did a big, long tour with them in Europe—and at the end we signed records and there were tears and champagne.” Sadly, there were no half-eaten Twinkies I could sell on eBay for a couple hundred bucks. The best part about all this? I was (sort of) casing Stephen Malkmus’ home because that’s what I was supposed to be doing.

Malkmus arrived about 45 minutes later, which doesn’t really qualify as “on his way” (man, he is such a slacker). He was wearing black jeans, a pair of white Adidas and a blue-and-white flannel (yes!) shirt. Atop his head sat a Detroit Pistons cap. Malkmus disappeared into the kitchen, and I could hear him and Jessica chatting, but couldn’t make out what they were saying. It sounded like married-couple talk. He re-emerged and we all introduced ourselves. I think I was the only one who was really familiar with/enjoyed Pavement and/or the Jicks. After some small-talk, Malkmus and I decided to scour the house to find more what-nots and what-have-yous.

We headed back down to the basement. He rummaged through a closet and pulled out a few things, including a small plaster sculpture of his head as a young child. I pointed out the Stereolab record. We made our way back upstairs. His two kids were not there, but the tell-tale signs were: toys, a nook with children’s books, scattered Cheerios on the kitchen floor. Malkmus disappeared upstairs and came back down with a framed photo of his mother as a young girl, a Jamaal Charles Jersey and some tape reels that included demos from Pavement’s Terror Twilight. After we rounded up what we thought were enough “curios” as he called them, we ended up back in the kitchen to talk about the new Jicks record Mirror Traffic and, of course, working with Beck.

“He gave me a call about two and a half years ago and he was just getting started in producing, and he’s like, ‘I’m a producer now, and I’d like to work with you,’ Malkmus explained. “I ran it by the band because we were thinking of ideas, and everyone really wanted to work with a proper producer—I think they were getting tired of the sort of willy-nilly way we were doing it.” Malkmus was making himself breakfast—English style—a fried egg and tomato on toast. Prior to that he had managed to sneak out for a smoke, which truly made it an English breakfast. It looked delicious … the food, not the cigarette.

“We did recording of the basic tracks in five or six days,” he continued. “It was pretty painless, and [Beck] was positive emotionally about everything and pretty mellow like a musician. He said, ‘I might be better at this than judging my own stuff.’ That’s one of the keys, I think, from the standpoint of the band—you want someone who can be like that, that doesn’t want it to be their thing, and can see what’s good about you. I don’t think everyone would be right for it, but he definitely seems to have a talent for it. And I think he’s going to be pretty busy.”

It’s true. Beck’s touches aren’t ham-fisted. Mirror Traffic is far less bombastic than 2008’s Real Emotional Trash, but maintains a warm quality that Malkmus was shooting for. “I didn’t really know what I wanted, I just wanted it to sound good—have a good fidelity that we liked. That’s what I was more worried about—having it sound too digital or modern.” Best of all, Joanna Bolme’s bass is high in the mix—a good thing, as she’s truly a secret weapon (listen to Quasi’s American Gong for proof).

Recording stalled while Malkmus was out for a year on the Pavement cash-grab extravaganza. During that time he was getting antsy, as were the rest of the Jicks. We convened at the kitchen table, where he chatted between bites. (”Sorry I’m eating while we do this.”) The band finished things up this year and released the album’s first single “Senator” back in early June, a song with a memorable chorus that was accidentally timely in the wake of the Anthony Weiner political boner.

“The chorus is just what I sang for the part, and I just made that up—so, I don’t know, that just came from my subconscious,” he explained. “It wasn’t really like shooting fish in a barrel, to tease guys like that, or to be something that would be on The Daily Show.”

The Jicks released Mirror Traffic on August 23, the final album to feature longtime Jick/pal Janet Weiss, who will be focusing most of her attention on Wild Flag. Joggers drummer Jake Morris has joined the lineup, rounded out by Bolme and guitarist-keyboardist Mike Clark. The record is less jammy, filled with well-crafted pop that manages to keep Malkmus’ quirks intact. It might be Malkmus’ best, most Pavement post-Pavement release.

“For me I decided to make it a little more about melody. That could be what I’m better at. I can try to be a big shredder psych-rocker guy, but I’ll let the memorable vocal melodies be the thing you take from the song.”

Jake the photographer came in and told us they were set up and ready to go. I headed toward the bathroom. “Umm, there’s no toilet paper in there, but I can run upstairs and grab some if you need it.” As much as I wanted to tell Stephen Malkmus to grab me some toilet paper, I assured him it was only No. 1. When I entered the living room, he was seated, surrounded by his own artifacts—among them the plaster head, the Charles jersey (a gift from Pavement bandmate Bob Nastanovich) and his diploma from the University of Virginia, where he got involved in college radio and punk rock in a small city in an even smaller red state. (”It was sort of like a mini John Hughes movie—where you would find weirdos and freaks, and you’d be like, ‘Oh, you’re my people,’ amid the uniformity.”)

Malkmus has come a long way since then. He’s come an even longer way since the day his grandmother sculpted a plaster statue of his head. But not much has changed, and that’s a good thing. He’s still mindful of the DIY, punk aesthetic. He still reads poetry from obscure avant-writers like Louis Zukofsky and Tom Clark, who did the cover art for Mirror Traffic. And he still makes interesting music that means a lot to a lot of people. He’s not hip, but he’s not irrelevant either. Throughout the morning Malkmus joked that he’s too old for this or too old for that, or questioned his coolness. I think it’s something he must think about as he eases into middle age.

Of the dozen or so objects we end up talking about, it turns out that one of Malkmus’ most prized is a drawing by Don Van Vliet, aka Captain Beefheart.

“He is an inspirational musical genius,” Malkmus said. He wasn’t smiling, or even smirking when he said this. “You know, he played this really insane music that sounds like outsider music, but it was all planned out. He knew what he was doing, and he still made it sound like it was completely original. To me it’s an inspiration that somebody can be such a weirdo, but also be a calm artist.”

That statement right there speaks volumes. I think Malkmus is going to be around for a while. He’ll definitely continue to be one of the most relevant irrelevant artists of his generation. And he really is a cool dude.

“Senator” - Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks

“Tune Grief” - Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks

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Tags: Beck, Jake Morris, Janet Weiss, Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Joanna Bolme, Matador Records, Mike Clark, Mirror Traffic, Pavement, Spin Magazine, Stephen Malkmus, Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks, Stephen Malkmus interview, Tom Clark

Interview: Alela Diane’s family affair

Tuesday, April 5th, 2011 | interviewZ, musiX, pdX | No Comments

Alela Diane knows her way around a pop song. And on her new album—which introduces Diane’s new band Wild Divine—the Portland singer-songwriter balances the dark folk found on 2009’s excellent To Be Still with sunnier pop melodies and sleeker production courtesy of Scott Litt (R.E.M., Nirvana).

Calling the album “a battle between darkness and light,” Diane manages to keep these friendlier songs from becoming radio friendly with a little help from her band (which includes her longtime collaborating father Tom Menig and her husband Tom Bevitori). Giving the songs their weight are Diane’s distinct falsetto and all of those stark thoughts that have been building up in those notebooks of hers. There are a few unexpected twists and turns (take lead single “To Begin”) that hint toward what’s to come from the songwriter. I like it.

Alela Diane & Wild Divine is out today on Rough Trade. Diane took some time to talk to TDoL about life, death and love. Sounds like the making of a good song.

TDoL: It seems like a lot of folk singers eventually start playing with a band. Why did you decide to go that route this time around?
Alela Diane: It was time for a change, and playing with a band is something I’d been wanting to do for quite some time. The songs on this record were written with a fuller sound in mind, and I wanted to focus more on my vocals, and less on the guitar. It turns out that having a band could make all of that possible. It is enabling me to make the transition from girl with a guitar to frontwoman in a band. I think it’s important to move down different roads when the time feels right, and that is just what I’ve set out to do.

Your dad played on your first two albums, and he plays on the new record along with your husband … how was that?
It’s great working alongside the two Toms. We call dad “Big T” and husband “Little T.” It’s really nice to be on the road surrounded by family, and it definitely helps the homesickness thing. I don’t know what it would be like to have it any other way, because both of them have been by my side throughout my musical career. It works for us, and so I keep them around.

Some of the songs are less folky, a little more poppy. Was that the result of playing with a band, or were you already writing songs that were going in a different direction?
I spent a lot more time on my songwriting for this record, knowing that I’d be recording with a band. It’s also the first time I’ve co-written, and this definitely gives those tunes a different feel. Making a folk record would have been easy. I had to set the bar in a different place, and I had to try for something else.

When did you write most of the new material?
I wrote much of the lyrical content while on the road for To Be Still. There was rarely a moment to actually write the music part while traveling, so when we came home to Portland in late 2009, I had quite a supply of words that needed melodies and music. We had pretty much all of 2010 off from touring, during which time I’d sit around the house all day to work on songs. Many of them went through very different versions of themselves; there was a lot of working and reworking both words and music before they became what you hear on the record.

Lyrically it’s still pretty heavy at times …
I tend to write about what comes up in my life, and there were definitely some heavy things happening. Death is something that kept creeping in on the outskirts, and so I’d write about it. The record does contain a certain element of despair, but there is also the goodness, hope, and light that’s needed to balance those demons. The record is a battle between darkness and light.

What did Scott Litt bring to the recording process?
Scott Litt was our director. He was very helpful in getting parts out of us musicians that we never would have come to on our own. He worked a lot with our rhythm section, Jonas [Haskins] and Jason [Merculief], to develop the feel of each song. It was really great to have someone else telling everyone what to do, and it really took the pressure off of me.

Did you nerd out over the fact that he’s worked with R.E.M. and Nirvana? Do those bands hold any significance to you?
I’d had a couple of R.E.M. tapes I’d listen to in my car when I was 16, but I’m really not very hip with what’s going on now in music, or what went on in the past. When we were considering working with Scott, I downloaded some R.E.M. again and settled into the old songs, and listened to them in a way I never had. I decided that he definitely knew how to produce records, and that he had a great set of ears. That was good enough for me.

Do you prefer recording or playing live?
They are completely different birds. There is something amazing about the fleeting and flowing energy of a good live show, and I do love that. Recording is really exciting though, because you have the ability to create something you can both hear, and hold in your hands. I’m on the fence with this one, because I love and hate things about both.

You recently got married and bought a new house. Does that make it tougher to go out on the road?
We haven’t actually toured since we’ve fallen into domestic bliss! But I will say, that as much as I love home, I’m starting to get a bit restless. It’s been over a year since I’ve really hit the road. I think it will be nice to get back out there, and to know that we have a wonderful home to return to. I think our cat is really what makes it the hardest to leave … I miss that tiny animal when we’re gone, but I’m very thankful that the husband comes along.

Are you bringing the band over to Europe as well?
We will be touring as a band all over the place! It’s the first time I’ve recorded and am touring with the same group of musicians. It feels like the right thing to do, and I am really looking forward to settling into the songs on the road.

“To Begin” - Alela Diane & Wild Divine

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Tags: Alela Diane, Alela Diane & Wid Divine, interview, Portland music, Rough Trade, Scott Litt

Sonny Smith interview/tix giveaway

Monday, January 24th, 2011 | interviewZ, musiX, pdX | 4 Comments

It’s relatively safe to say that TDoL has become a San Franciscophile over the past year. I can’t get enough of it. High on my list is singer-songwriter Sonny Smith, and his ramshackle pop crew the Sunsets.

And over the past year Smith has been a busy body, releasing the universally adored Tomorrow Is Alright, as well as embarking on the 100 Records project/traveling art show, in which he created more than 100 fictional bands, wrote songs for them and enlisted a “Wrecking” Crew” of S.F. musicians including Ty Segall, Kelley Stoltz and The Sandwitches’ Heidi Alexander, who belts it out for Earth Girl Helen Brown’s “I Wanna Do It.” Smith didn’t stop there, working with artists from around the country to provide cover art for each imaginary 7-inch and then releasing Volumes I and II of songs from his creations including Zig Speck & Specktones, Fuckaroos and Loud Fast Fools.

Smith is playing a few dates up the West Coast, including a solo set here in Portland on Wednesday, Feb. 2 at the Doug Fir with The Blow. The Days of Lore is giving away a pair of tickets to the show. Just leave your favorite Sonny/Sunsets song in the comments section (as well as the pertinent contact info), and we’ll set you up. Deadline is Sunday at midnight (January 30), and the winner will be announced the following day on TDoL’s Facebook page.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering about the new Sunsets record—Hit After Hit will be out March 1 April 12 on Fat Possum. Sonny Smith took some time to talk to TDoL about 100 Records, writer’s block, and a glimpse into the new Sunsets album.

TDoL: I wanted to talk a little about the 100 Records project. How did it come about?
Sonny Smith: I was working on a novel and I wanted to make some drawings of the fictional records of the characters in my novel. It was just a small idea, to put a few drawings within the novel. I received a small residency at the Headlands Center for the Arts to work on these drawings. While I was there I farmed a few drawings out to other artists. The work that they did was spectacular, in my humble opinion, so I began making up more and more fictional musicians and asking more and more artists to be involved. Soon this new project took over, eclipsing the novel, and my unfinished manuscript was shelved. Here it is next to me on my desk, this uncompleted novel, yet the 100 Records project continues to travel from city to city.

It sounds like quite an undertaking.
It was a big, fun, mysterious year.

How did Cabezas Cortades come about?
That was just one of the many bands I made up. The art that went with it that Juan Luna Avin made is one of my favorites. Incredible piece. And the tune that Pablo sang is amazing. That should be a radio hit all through Latin America!

The art show was, by all accounts, pretty successful.
It seems to be still trucking along without me now …

And more volumes of music are in the works?
I’m working on a book of the art. The music comes out in little bits and pieces here and there. One of the fictional characters, Earth Girl Helen Brown, is coming out with her own EP on Gorilla Vs. Bear records. So she’s become a real band I guess, she’ll be playing out live soon. A 7-inch was put out of the Transients, and Jackie Feathers, and Adelard Grassley. I’m putting a band together for the Beachticks, so that band will become real. Some of the songs will be on the next Sunsets record.

Is there a part of you that’s relieved to be done with it?
Nah. I’m empty inside now! I need to start something new.

Who are some of the writers that influence you? Do they influence your songwriting as well?
I don’t know where to begin. Tennessee Williams was huge for a while. Sam Shepard. When I was around 17, 18 years old Kerouac and all the Beat stuff had a huge effect. Later I was into Celine, Miller, all the big macho males from the ’40s. There were a lot of poets, too—Whitman, [Pablo] Neruda. I read books here and there, but I graze a lot—just open books, enjoy a few pages, find a passage or something, put it down, move on to another book, come back to the other one, on and on, grazing …

You’re a pretty prolific songwriter … ever get writer’s block?
Yeah all the time. What I do is I try, if I can, to scrap it if it’s not flowing too easily. Put it on the back burner and come back to it later. Then later, I can see what it has, what parts are worth keeping, or getting rid of. Or I can see that it is really meant to be something else, like the song should be a short story, or the article I was attempting should be a comic book.

And now everybody’s burning question: What can we expect from the new Sonny & the Sunsets record?
A politically charged, sexually explicit meditation on the mystic nature of lust. Acres of lust.

“I Wanna Do It” - Earth Girl Helen Brown

“Death Cream” - Sonny & the Sunsets

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Tags: 100 Records, Earth Girl Helen Brown, Fat Possum, Hit After Hit, Sonny & the Sunsets, Sonny Smith, Tomorrow is Alright, Turn Up Records, Ty Segall

Interview: Sic Alps are for loco

Monday, January 17th, 2011 | interviewZ, musiX, pdX | No Comments

Sic Alps haven’t put out a proper record since 2008’s U.S. EZ, but it doesn’t mean the San Francisco band has just been lazing about in some exclusive lo-fi vacation spot located on a secret island off the coast of Yemen.

Close. The trio—Mike Donovan, Matthew Hartman and new member, former Comets On Fire echoplexist Noel von Harmonson—have essentially been living out every band’s dream, opening for indie-rock heroes Sonic Youth and Yo La Tengo as well as being hand-picked by the fellas in Pavement to perform at All Tomorrow’s Parties (Donovan also directed a schizoid video for Portland rock gods Quasi last year). No big whoop. It should also be noted that the band shares a zip code with TDoL faves Thee Oh Sees, Ty Segall, the Sandwitches, Amoeba Records, The Mother Hips, Escape From New York Pizza, Hank IV, SFMOMA … simply put: If it didn’t cost $1,500 a month for a closet-sized apartment, I’d be in San Francisco.

So what is it about Sic Alps? For years the band has been blasting out nuggets of rock that tend to stumble and lurch in beautiful cacophony. They continue to make good on that tenet with their latest Napa Asylum (out January 25 on Drag City)—a sprawling double-album filled with 22 concise little noisies. Of course, there are loads of shiny, happy hooks buried underneath the racket, and first single “Do You Want to Give $$?” offers only a small taste.

Sic Alps’ Mike Donovan took some time to answer TDoL’s burning (and itching) questions about the new record, playing ATP with Pavement, and a little San Francisco music history.

TDoL: Napa Asylum travels a lot of musical territory—thematically and stylistically—was that the point in doing a double record?
Mike Donovan: We had a lot of material going in, although at end the debate was on whether to go with the single or double.

It was originally supposed to be a concept album, right?
My friend John [Harlow], who makes some of our videos with us, has a picture on his wall that he bought at a yard sale—a pencil drawing of the Napa Asylum building which was torn down in 1949. Out the gate this was the inspiration for the album; but 22 songs about an asylum is just a crazy idea.

Do you have any particular favorite double albums?
The Basement Tapes. Although if I had a record press I would press up all 125 or so songs from the “Original Basement Tapes.”

Napa Asylum feels like an album in the classic sense. What do you think of the fact that most people these days just grab the mp3s they like?
It’s always been that way; eventually you skip ahead to the faves.

There’s an incredible amount of great music coming out of San Francisco. It seems pretty tight-knit …
Please come to the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco on February 9 for a show with Thee Oh Sees, Sic Alps and Ty Segall. It’s a benefit for the Homeless Coalition here in S.F.

So, Grateful Dead or Jefferson Airplane?
I’m the only guy in the band who likes the Dead, but it’s OK—I like them enough for everybody.

Moby Grape or Blue Cheer?
The Grape.

Death Angel or Metallica?
My friend Mike used to tour manage Death Angel if you’re looking for some off-the-record tales.

John Dwyer or Ty Segall?
Too close to call.

What went through your mind when you got the invite from Pavement to perform at All Tomorrow’s Parties last year?
That was the most exciting part—being asked to ATP and also to open for them at Brixton Academy in London. Brixton is a complete blur, but I’ll always remember getting that e-mail and flipping out. Pavement is a huge part of why I do this and it was a giant honor. We went and saw them the night before we opened for them in London and it hit me pretty hard. I’m not too easy on myself when it comes to music but it was hard not to reflect and say, “Damn, Donovan. You’ve done good.”

Are there any artists or things that inspire your live performances?
Georges Brassens.

What’s the one thing you wont leave home without on tour?
Markers and scrap paper.

So, what’s next for Sic Alps?
A coffee break.

“Do You Want to Give $$?” - Sic Alps

Photo by Jason Fisher

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Tags: Drag City, interview, Matthew Hartman, Mike Donovan, Napa Asylum, Noel von Harmonson, Sic Alps, U.S. EZ

Rhett Miller dreams Old 97’s

Tuesday, October 12th, 2010 | interviewZ, musiX | 4 Comments

It’s no secret that The Days of Lore is cuckoo has a bit of a soft spot for the Old 97’s. That said, the band’s last couple of records lacked the urgency of classics like Wreck Your Life and Too Far to Care—just ask any kook who follows the band (2008’s Blame It On Gravity came close, but sounded at times like they were aping some of their older material).

Now I’m not sure what the members (that’s singer/guitarist Rhett Miller, bassist/vocalist Murry Hammond, guitarist Ken Bethea and drummer Philip Peeples, for those keeping track—the same four guys that formed the band in 1993) have been up to for the past two years, but they sound rejuvenated on their eighth LP The Grand Theatre, Volume One (out today on New West Records). Not only does it reclaim some of the twang, but it one-ups that by dipping into garage and power-pop. “Every Night is Friday Night (Without You)” sounds like the Bay City Rollers playing a Dallas honky tonk with a roomful of six-shooters aimed at them. And Hammond’s “You Were Born to Be In Battle” is the kinda song you wish Johnny Cash recorded during his Rick Rubin years. I’ll even take “A State of Texas,” an ode to the Lone Star State that could be considered cheesy if it didn’t come off so sincere.

If there’s ever a band that’s brought the two disparate worlds of England and Texas together it’s the Old 97’s. Miller wrote most of the material for The Grand Theatre while touring the UK with Steve Earle, and he and the rest of the 97’s convened at Sons of Hermann Hall in Dallas to lay down what ended up being almost two-dozen songs (Volume Two will be out next May).

“It’s sort of that moment where those two cultures intersect,” explained Miller, who wrote the title track after Birmingham’s Grand Theatre. “And I think that sort of speaks to where this record is coming from.”

TDoL caught up with Miller to talk about songwriting, his hero David Foster Wallace and looking back on a career that spans almost two decades.

TDoL: You did the recording in Texas, and I know you live in the Hudson Valley now. Would you ever consider living in Texas again?
Rhett Miller: It’s a place I’d live again, but it’s a place I’d have a hard time convincing my wife to live. Years before we met she spent a year living in Dallas … well, a year living in Dallas one summer [laughs]. She was over it pretty quick. I come back enough to visit where I don’t feel like I’m losing my connection. There’s a song on the new record called “A State of Texas,” and the chorus is “I’m living in a state of Texas, and Texas lives in me.” I may not actually live there anymore, but I’m still a Texan.

Do you still listen to country? Is it still a part of your musical world?
Yeah. My wife and her family are all huge Willie Nelson fans, as am I, so there’s a lot of Willie that goes on in our house. There are a couple stations on satellite radio that play traditional country and bluegrass. It’s so funny, the similarities between bluegrass and punk rock are so great. They’re two styles of music that people never really think about being similar, but to me they’re right there next to each other—the speed and the intensity. All my favorite bluegrass and the punk rock and glam rock I like seem to have more howling vocals. I spent a couple of years right at the beginning of the Old 97’s as just a touring member of this punk bluegrass band called Killbilly, and I learned about a guitar player’s right arm. Like I can’t make a lot of jazz chords and I can’t do blistering leads but I can strum faster than most people I’ve played with. And I’m proud of that. To me there’s something very propulsive—it’s a marriage of percussion and melody when an acoustic guitar gets played like that.

Yeah, I’m definitely more into the energy and spirit in the music.
I think that’s what people look for. They want a release where they can enjoy themselves and have fun. I’ve had moments in my catalog where I’m sort of being introspective and quiet or sad or whatever, but they’re not my favorites. My favorites are the ones where people can really have a whole sort of joyous exuberance, you know? They get to be part of a crowd of people singing fun songs. I love that.

You’ve been doing this a long time. How have you gone about balancing making a career in music and keeping your integrity?
For me that’s always been a bit of a self-correcting problem. Every time, and there haven’t been many times, but the few times I’ve calculated an attempt to have something that’s really accessible or commercial it’s fallen so flat on my ears and on the ears of my bandmates. There are people out there that are really good crafters of pop—and not in the sense that I like pop music, but pop in a sense that it’s going to be popular. And those people are great, and they write for the Disney network, or the tween bands, and they’re making a lot of money and they’re not doing anything evil. But I just can’t do that, I can’t. The few times I feel like I’ve tried to be something I’m not, it sounded exactly like a guy trying to be something he’s not. I kind of wish I was good at it because the alternative is to make a living by going on the road and playing gigs. As much as I love doing that it becomes harder with each passing year to leave my wife and my kids. You know, that’s a tough way to make living, and it’s really the only way to make a living.

Is there an Old 97’s album that maybe you hold a little more dear than others?
I know that some of my bandmates have records they feel like, “Well, that was our watermark; that was our high-point, the moment we’re striving to reclaim.” I have a hard time thinking like that because the glorification of the past gets in the way of the present moment. I would rather think that the record I’m making now is the best record I’ve ever made, and I’ve always tended to do that. In retrospect I can be a little more objective about records. I think Too Far to Care was a really great moment in our band because we had just gone through the courtship of all the major labels fighting to sign us and we had a huge budget to go off and do whatever we wanted. We didn’t really understand how unlikely it was for us to have enormous commercial success, so that still was dangling out there as something that was really possible. But as things went along we thought enormous commercial success is reserved for a few people that tend to be a little more flash in the pan, accidental kind of successes. And we always said we wanted to be a career band before a hit-singles band.

One thing the Old 97’s have is a rabid following …
Yeah. From what I’ve been able to gather a few things happened: Right when we started in the early-, mid-’90s it was the beginning of the Internet chat-room phenomenon, so I know we were able to build up a little following through word of mouth—the beginning of what is now the medium for finding out about bands. I also think we were lucky not to have a hit, you know a song that became annoyingly ubiquitous. And we were lucky that we never really had a huge clunker. We never made one of those swing-for-the-fences kinda records that had a bunch of horns or a bunch of keyboards. I think there’s a couple records that I think in retrospect are a little less listenable, but even those—objectively speaking—have a few good songs on them.

Can I guess which album?
Yeah.

Drag It Up?
I’ve gotten in trouble with the band for pointing out that that’s not my favorite record before so I won’t dwell on it, but yeah that was a tough one to make. But if we hadn’t made that we wouldn’t have been able to survive as a band. It was coming out of me making The Instigator, and we were just feeling out how we were going to work in this post-modern music industry.

Is there an artist or band that has influenced you in taking sometimes bleak themes and setting them to pop hooks?
I haven’t really thought about it, but off the top of my head I could rattle off a few of the people I’ve been obsessed with at various points in my life. I spent my fifteenth birthday seeing The Smiths on The Queen is Dead tour. Even though Morrissey is famously mopey, there’s something about Johnny Marr’s guitar playing, and sort of the song structure and the liveliness of the drums and arrangements. Even the Buzzcocks—their songs tended to be kinda complicated with very dark undertones, but super happy, poppy stuff. I recently got to be friends with Steve Garvey, the old bassist for the Buzzcocks. What sweet guy. I was told that Steve Garvey was coming to this gig, and I was like, “OK, I don’t really follow baseball.” And then he walked in and he’s British, and I’m looking at him funny. And he goes [in British accent], “I’m not the baseball player; I’m from the Buzzcocks.” And I was like, “Fuck yes!” And I made him and his wife hang out with me all night long. We’ve stayed in touch; we exchange ideas about audio books—that’s what my friendship with Steve Garvey of the Buzzcocks is based on [laughs].

You were talking about audio books … I know David Foster Wallace has been an influence on you in some capacity …
Are you familiar with his stuff?

I’ve only read a few essays from Consider the Lobster.
That was a great one. It was such a relief because he had A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, and then his sort of apex of his career in Infinite Jest. And after Infinite Jest he put out Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, which was … fuck, talk about dark. I mean that’s as dark a book as I’ve ever read. And the fact that it was so well executed made it even more painful to read. That was the first time I ever really got a glimpse into how hard it must have been to be as perceptive as he was. Anyway, when Consider the Lobster came out I felt like this was a good sign about DFW. It still makes me so sad that it worked out the way it did for him.

Were your songs more autobiographical when you started? Are they more character-based now?
I have a hard time even saying, just because I try not to think about it too much. I find that when I do, I edit myself to the detriment of the song. I guess if I’m an observer of my songwriting I’d say that the fact that I sang more about getting drunk and maybe having a looser moral code was more reflective of where I was in my mid-20s writing early 97’s songs. And now my songs have less of that which is reflective of the fact that I found true love and settled down and had a family. I guess there’s an element of autobiography with the debauchery that happens in the songs. I feel like it was only yesterday. If I feel like going to a weird, dark, drunken, angry place it’s very easy to go there. The new songs feel very autobiographical to me but when I sit down and look at them I realize this stuff is just a story and it could be anybody and the details aren’t necessarily the details from my life.

The Old 97’s are one of the few bands I know that still play a large chunk of their catalog …
You know what’s funny, is that twice we’ve done four-night stands—once in New Jersey and once in Dallas—where we did zero repeats except for “Timebomb” at the end of each show. Over both of those four-night stands we played almost 100 songs. Really, the number of songs we didn’t play from our released material was under 10. It’s crazy. And now we’re about to add anywhere from 16 to 20 songs to that list, so apparently our sets are going to have to be even longer.

And you hardly rehearse …
We do pre-production on a record where we’ll get together and play those songs. And like for me I do solo gigs where I play a lot of the catalog in that situation. Every night I dream about the band—I check into a hotel, or I’m playing a gig. That’s rehearsal.

“The Grand Theatre” - Old 97’s

Photo by Allison V. Smith

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Tags: Drag It Up, interview, Ken Bethea, Murry Hammond, New West Records, Old 97's, Philip Peeples, Rhett Miller, The Grand Theatre, Too Far to Care

Janet Weiss talks Quasi mojo

Monday, February 22nd, 2010 | interviewZ, musiX, pdX | 1 Comment

The first time I threw on Quasi’s new record American Gong, I thought I was listening to a different band. Not that it doesn’t sound like Quasi, there’s just a certain—if I may borrow a quote from drummer Janet Weiss—”joie de vivre” to the new record.

Quasi is an interesting band in that it’s almost always felt like the side project to the members’ numerous other projects—multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Sam Coomes‘ Elliot Smith collaboration Heatmiser, Sleater-Kinney, and now the Jicks. Not the case here. American Gong might be the strongest, most definitive Quasi record in the band’s 16-year existence, jam-packed with guitars pushed well into the red and drumming that defies … well, everything. It’s also the band’s first record with longtime bassist (and Jick) Joanna Bolme, whose fuzzed-out basslines are solid enough to walk on. If you need more convincing, listen to the entire album here.

American Gong—Quasi’s first on Kill Rock Stars—is out now. And that’s only the beginning. The band is touring Japan, the U.S. and Europe as well as hitting all the totally hot festivals, including SXSW and Sasquatch. A quick glance at the ol’ Quasi planner looks something like this: 2010 = booked solid.

Janet Weiss took some time to talk to The Days of Lore about their new digs at KRS, the beauty of mistakes, and the band’s love of fuzz-bass.

TDoL: This is your first record on Kill Rock Stars … how did that come about?
Janet Weiss: I sent [rough mixes] out to people I knew, Sam sent them out to a couple people he knew. Kill Rock Stars were just really enthusiastic about it, and said they loved the record. Of course, I worked with them for years with Sleater-Kinney. You know, they’re here in Portland now, it was just so obvious and natural. And I love working with a label where the two people in charge are women—strong, decisive, intelligent women.

I interviewed Kathy [Foster] from The Thermals and she said the same thing.
Yeah, I mean that’s important. I come from that background of strong women, and I want to pass along that it’s important to make choices that enable that to continue. You know, try to take bands on tour where there are women performing and try to show people that it doesn’t have to be all guys onstage all the time. You have to let girls see other girls up onstage or they might not have the courage to do it. If some girl wants to go into the business and sees there’s a girl running that label, it’s really inspiring I think. And it’s very important to actively be a part of that.

I’ve been listening to the new album, and it is loud.
[laughs] I guess so, yeah … I suppose it’s only as loud as you turn it up.

It just sounds like it was recorded with the intention of blowing things out …
Yeah, I’d say we were going for a very live, sort of ballsy sound. We wanted to somehow capture what it feels like to be at a live show or be in the room with all of the molecules banging around.

It almost reminds me of the production on The Woods …
Yeah, Dave Fridmann did mix a few of those songs … I think we would love to make a whole record with him. We admire his … just his joie de vivre [laughing]. I think he’s really unafraid to push the sound and make things unusual and strange.

How long did it take to record?
We recorded it in about 10 days. We were ready when we went in; we didn’t have to do very many takes of songs, and the takes that we did do just got better and better as we went along. I feel like a lot of the music I love and that I listen to—music of the ’60s and ’70s—it was all recorded like that. They just went into a studio on tour and made a record, kept the mistakes and moved on. It’s amazing how many mistakes you hear on old records. You don’t hear that anymore—it’s sad. Mistakes can be so gratifying when you’re listening.

Absolutely. That reminds me of a post on Carrie’s [Browstein] blog not too long ago.
I don’t think I read that one … but it’s scary to think of a world where all of our mistakes are being erased when so much of creativity is about that.

Yeah, the human aspect gets wiped out …
It’s our self-loathing … we want to correct everything all the time.

Did you go into the studio with a set group of songs ready?
We knew we had too many songs. We weren’t positive which songs were going to go on the record—we knew what the heavy hitters were, and kinda let the other songs show themselves. So there are a couple extras, there’s a cover. Then there’s the song “The Jig is Up”—[laughing] Joanna and I went out to get burritos and Sam recorded that while we were gone for like a half-hour. He just pulled an acoustic guitar off the wall and recorded that with a few mics. That’s actually one of my favorite songs off the record.

That one’s great. I really like “Black Dogs & Bubbles.”
Oh cool. That’s maybe one of the oldest songs out of the batch. That one’s been around for a little while. I think we just kind of kept it simple on that one. It sort of speaks for itself … you sort of get that Neil Young-y type of vibe at the beginning. We always wanted to make sure that middle part was shocking.

The Beatles’ “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” came to mind when I heard it …
Yeah, I think I’ve heard that from one other person. That’s great, I’m glad you like that one. It constitutes part of the moody center of the album … as I like to call it, “the moody middle.” It’s funny, because I’m usually pretty involved in the sequencing of most records I’ve played on. This one was pretty easy for some reason; it just sort of made sense. The first song was really obvious and that’s always a big help. On the last Jicks record we didn’t really have a for-certain first song and it made sequencing tough. We got it in the end, but it took a lot more time.

Obviously you’re making a record, but are you ever like, “Do people even listen to full albums anymore?” Does that cross your mind?
It maybe crosses my mind a little more now. I think I’ve always been guilty of top-loading, wanting to put my favorite three songs first. On [American Gong] I feel like the last song is the heart of the record. Kind of like the old days when you’d listen to vinyl—like “When the Levee Breaks,” the last song on Zeppelin IV—the last song wasn’t the single or maybe wasn’t even the catchiest, but it represented the heart of the record. It was what they wanted to leave you with. I don’t really know how people … like do they buy three songs, four songs, one song? I don’t understand that so much, so I just do what I know, which is sequence it as a record and try to put a couple strong, catchy songs up at the top.

Besides being loud, the hooks are definitely still there …
Sam started this project Pink Mountain with some friends in San Francisco … I feel like he got a lot of his weirdo side out with that band, and kind of allowed Quasi—at least the structures of the songs—to be a little more pop-oriented. Although we all are very anti-establishment, and anti-conservative, anti-corporate—we don’t want it to sound like easy listening, we don’t want it to be boring—we want it to represent something free and something that’s not passive. I think to make those pop structures palatable to him as a songwriter we had to turn up the volume a little.

Is there much improvisation involved in the writing?
This was definitely our most collaborative record as far as the writing. Sam came to practice with less structured songs, and just parts that needed to be arranged and organized. And he really let me have a hand in that more, which is something that I did in Sleater-Kinney a lot, and something that I love to do. He’s not used to writing like that; he’s used to writing a song from start to finish. I think Joanna made up so many great basslines that I think define a lot of the songs. I end up humming her basslines more than the vocals or the drums and guitar.

Yeah, there are a couple of basslines that are super fuzzed-out that really stood out.
Well, Sam loves fuzz-bass. [laughing] That is one true statement about Sam Coomes: He loves the fuzz-bass. We’d be working on songs and we’d be like “What does this one need?” and Joanna and I would just laugh and look at each other, “Fuzz-bass!” We know he’s going to say it. That’s the answer for everything. Luckily we like it, too.

You’re about to head out on the road. I take it you like touring …
I’m really into touring, I love touring. Especially these shorter ones, anything under three weeks is totally doable. I mean I like coming home, but I really, really like going out. And I love playing. There’s nothing like playing live, nothing quite like it at all. Gotta keep your chops up.

“Repulsion” - Quasi

“Black Dogs & Bubbles” - Quasi

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Tags: American Gong, Janet Weiss, Joanna Bolme, Kill Rock Stars, Portland music, Quasi, Sam Coomes, Sleater-Kinney, the Jicks

TDoL gets some Goodnight Loving

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 | interviewZ, musiX | 1 Comment

“We’re already three songs into the next LP,” says Goodnight Loving guitarist/bassist Colin Swinney. “Beginning this Thursday we’ll be going back in the studio to hopefully finish the rest.”

I like the sound of that. The Milwaukee, Wisconsin four-piece has been receiving steady play over the last few months here at TDoL HQ. The Goodnight Loving’s ragged rock ‘n’ twang is the sound of a freight train chugging down a lonesome, dusty trail—fully embracing traditional country music, and tussling with ’60s folk and garage.

Of course, it only made sense that the Reigning Sound’s Greg Cartwright wanted to produce their 2006 debut Cemetery Trails (”He was really professional while still keeping up beer for beer with us,” Swinney says). Three full-length records and a handful of 7-inches later and The Goodnight Loving is still cranking out new tunes, no doubt a credit to the fact that all four members write and sing.

The band—which takes its name not from a nocturnal petting session, but from a Southwestern cattle trail established by a couple blokes named Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving—released their Nothing Conquers Us 7-inch for Portland’s Dirtnap Records in November and will—as the kids say—drop a 12-inch EP later this month on Italian label Wild Honey Records. Oh, and that new full-length? That’ll be out some time this summer on Dirtnap.

With so much on their—as everyone says—plate Colin Swinney was still able to make some time to answer all of The Days of Lore’s burning questions, explaining what it’s like to record in a cabin, getting lost in Europe, and why the band will never listen to David Bowie again.

TDoL: I read that you all started out playing in punk bands in Wisconsin. How did you end up coming together and shifting to more country-influenced music?
Colin Swinney: We definitely began with the idea in mind of starting something we hadn’t really tried before. A couple of the guys were writing songs together with acoustic guitars, and it seemed natural to try and play with a full group using those same instruments and whatever other ones we could bastardize, like harmonicas and pedal steels. We all loved country and ’60s folk music, but it’s not like we were into jam bands and pickin’ circles—you still would have found us in basements drinking Old English at a Holy Shit! show. You still can.

Do you ever listen to any of the old Bloodshot Records bands? The Goodnight Loving would sound right at home on that label …
I don’t know if we could count them as an influence, but we are certainly familiar with a bunch of those bands. I’ve seen the Sadies a couple of times and I know Kavanaugh saw Whiskytown open up when he went to John Fogerty with his parents.

Does it surprise you that The Goodnight Loving has been embraced by garage rock crowds?
Not really … everyone loves garage rock. It’s no different in spirit or anything to whatever it is we do. I don’t really know who else would embrace us, either. Soccer moms?

How was it working with Greg Cartwright on your first record?
It was wonderful. We were all really big fans of his at the time, so it was like having a highlight of your career be the first thing you do as a band. He was really professional while still keeping up beer for beer with us, so whatever nerves we had psyched ourselves into quickly passed.

What did you take away from the experience?
I’d say how to make a record to be proud of in just a few days. We didn’t quite know what to expect having never made an album with a producer or anything, but we definitely learned that you can just knock it out quickly as long as the performances can speak for themselves.

It’s not often you get a band where every member writes songs and sings. How does the process work? Does that make it difficult to whittle down songs?
It’s pretty fun and stress-free actually. We show up to practice and say, “Does anyone have anything new?” and go from there. Sometimes songs don’t work, but those ones usually make themselves obvious enough that we just don’t spend much time on ‘em.

I love that you recorded [2007's] Crooked Lake in a cabin. How did that affect your approach over recording in a traditional studio?
A big part of it was that we didn’t intend on coming away with a full-length record. We just had all these songs left over or written after the making of the first LP that we decided it’d be fun to get them down to tape. We picked a cabin on a beautiful lake in June to record them, because who wouldn’t? When it turned out we had enough songs, we fell into our next album.

You’ve had success outside the States … how do you like touring in other countries?
For as much as fun as it is, it’s also a lot of stress. We’ve been driving ourselves around while we’re in Europe, and it’s pretty intimidating trying to navigate with just a GPS that barely knows where the hell you are. That said, there’s nothing comparable to a trial by fire in another language. We always managed to have a good time and keep our spirits up when someone’s reaching a breaking point. And there’s almost always a new, delicious food to set anyone’s mood right.

Any countries in particular that have embraced the band?
Italy and Australia stand out as they’re places where we’ve had labels who released our records, and then followed through with promoting them and bringing us there. We’ve had some really great shows in both. Sometimes it’s hard though. There are some cities where nobody moves, just staring through you as you play and you think “well this sucks” … but you still might sell 200 bucks in merch and suddenly that crowd wouldn’t seem so bad anymore.

What’s usually in the CD player/iPod during tours?
Usually it’s Roger Miller, Buck Owens, Hank Williams, lots of Beatles, CCR … pretty standard road material. We once went five weeks with a Velvet Underground best of and a David Bowie 1962-1967 collection on cassette. No one ever got sick of the VU, but I don’t think anyone of us will ever willingly listen to Bowie again, no matter what period of his career. “Sell Me a Coat” will live on in all our top-five-worst-song-ever lists.

“Nothing Conquers Us” - The Goodnight Loving

“Colin Attends a Party” - The Goodnight Loving (self-titled LP)

“Drafted Into War” - The Goodnight Loving (Contaminated Records 7-inch)

Tags: Cemetary Trails, Colin Swinney, Crooked Lake, Dirtnap Records, Greg Cartwright, Nothing Conquers Us, The Goodnight Loving, Wild Honey Records