Interviews | secretly important

interview with lonesome shack

March 19, 2013 in interviews, lonesome shack

The vocals are distant and sound as if they’re coming through to you via a walkie-talkie, the guitar spits dusty riffs, the drums boom and clank longingly, impatiently, thoughtfully. Somewhere a bass thuds boogie grooves of heart thumping sonorous sounds, and occasionally a saxophone weeps the sad tale of city man. These aren’t some long lost blues recordings plucked from the mud of the Mississippi delta, these are the gritty, weathered sounds of Seattle’s own blues inspired Lonesome Shack.

Though the name sounds like it was ripped from the back of an old blues album, which it was, it was also the name of a real shack, built by the architect of Lonesome Shack Ben Todd. The shack was a small wood structure built off the side of an old tractor trailer, in the middle of Alma New Mexico, in f Catron County, right on the boarder of New Mexico and Arizona. The New Mexico board of tourism, officially lists Alma as a ghost town. Not so coincidentally, Ben describes the sound of Lonesome Shack as Haunted Boogie.

That trailer and shack would serve as Ben and his girlfriend’s home for ten years, before attending a Luthier school in Phoenix, which eventually brought him back home to the Pacific Northwest, to work at the Trading Musician on Roosevelt Ave. in Seattle, where he would fix and build guitars. Just one block south of the Trading Musician was the quirky, Cafe Racer, which hosted a weekly performance from Ben.

This is where Ben met Kristian Garrard, a drummer, who knew exactly what Ben needed, real percussion. Together they put out three albums, Bound to Die, Slidin Boa, and last year’s City Man. Recorded live at Cafe Racer, City Man would effectively bring the duo full circle, back to where it all began. Though by this time the band had expanded, adding bassist Luke Bergman (who plays in Kristian’s other band Thousands) and Andrew Swanson on Saxophone.

The story of City Man, is full of heart break and ingenuity. It was Kristian’s idea to go for broke and record the album in front of a live audience at Cafe Racer. Lonesome Shack had always seen themselves as a party band, they played best in front of an audience, feeding off that live, and ravenous energy. City Man is far from a polished and precise album full of effects and edits, it’s a live and raw recording, a aural record of one night of music at Cafe Racer.

That was April 6th. Nearly two months later on May 30th Ian Stawicki entered Cafe Racer and opened fire, killing four and injuring another. It would kick off a bloody day as Stawicki would later take the life of another before ending his own in West Seattle. The incident rocked the community to it’s core, especially those at Cafe Racer who were already a tight knit group.

City Man had been posing a host of problems for Kristian and Ben, the recording was messy, far messier than they had hoped. They were toying with scrapping the whole thing and instead recording the album at their home. But following the shooting, they were determined to find a way to make the album work. It wasn’t just a live album full of problematic sounds, it was a recorded memory of friends, some who were killed on May 30th. City Man is dedicated to the victims and their families, and serves as a fitting tribute to the scene at Cafe Racer.

When you talk about bands in the Northwest who for one arbitrary reason or another haven’t received the recognition they deserve, certainly Lonesome Shack tops the list. Perhaps too traditional for the indie scene, and not blues enough for the blues scene, the band is left in limbo. They shouldn’t be garnering attention simply because they’re some kind of novelty, but rather because there’s just so few who manage to do what they do, as good as they do it. Their music makes you want to dance, and hours later the rhythms and melodies are still clanging around your body.

There’s a strong emotional core to this music, it catches you off guard, but it’s present throughout their catalog. The tear educing City Man, the giddy smile of Longtime Love, the cool fear of Robert Pete, or the solitary isolation of Down and Alone. It could be so easy to quickly judge this band without giving them a chance, they are so much more than any simple surface description that I could muster.

Just as with Lindsay Schief and Angelo Spencer, though certainly not purposely, not long after interviewing Shana Cleveland I returned to her home which she shares with her boyfriend Ben Todd, to interview Ben and Kristian. City Man had just come out and not long before that I’d seen them woo a packed house at Cafe Racer.

I would see them again at 20/20 Cycle, once again filling the house so full that people had to be turned away. Though they’re still making the same kind of infectious music that they made years ago when Kristian joined up with Ben, it seems that finally they are beginning to receive the recognition they deserve. There are many ways to describe a good show, fun doesn’t necessarily apply to all, but with Lonesome Shack it certainly does.

I’m guilty of building opinions of musicians before even meeting them, based purely on the type of music they make. I fear that they’ll be pretentious, snobbish, or even just rude. As excited as I was to meet Karl Blau I was nervous for our interview, my fears were completely unfounded. The same could be said for Kristian and Ben, I had wrongly assumed that only serious no nonsense musicians could have devised the genius music of Lonesome Shack. I could not have had more fun interviewing them. They were relaxed, fun, and more than welcoming.

Occasionally I feel like I manage to strike just the right chord in an interview and hit on all the right answers. As a result I feel particularly proud of the final result in this interview. I felt like we really got to the core of what Lonesome Shack is and how they work. While this written interview serves as a nice jumping off point, I strongly urge you to listen to the full audio podcast. Which you can listen to right here, or in itunes.

brian snider
The story goes that Lonesome Shack began in an actual shack that you built yourself in New Mexico.

ben todd
A friend of mine from Bellingham owned some property in New Mexico and he wasn’t living there at the time, so I asked if my girlfriend and I could move to his land. So I got a sixteen foot travel trailer and pulled that onto his land, and built a shack off the side, using the trailer as one of the walls, so I only had to build three walls. That became the Lonesome Shack. Lonesome Shack is also the name of a Memphis Minnie song, but it became the name of the shack, and eventually the name of the band.

brian
You were recording some music and putting it on tape?

ben
I think the first tape that was called Lonesome Shack was around 2002.

brian
How did that get around?

ben
Mostly just sending them to friends. We had a “huge sale” once, at a wedding that we played. I think we moved ten tapes.

brian
How did you find your way back up to the Northwest?

ben
After being in the Southwest for about ten years I went to a Luthier school to learn how to fix and build guitars in Phoenix. I was there for a year and I didn’t know where I was going to go after that. I was either going to move to Tucson or New Orleans. I ended up getting a job offer at Trading Musician in Seattle. I wasn’t planning on moving back but the job seemed like just what I was looking for.

brian
How did you two meet?

kristian garrard
When Ben came back here, he started playing weekly shows at Cafe Racer on Roosevelt. I lived around the corner from there and my girlfriend at the time was a bartender there, so I hung out there a lot, and would see Ben play every week. I’d been playing drums for a long time, and at some point it occurred to me that we should try to play together.

ben
He said if I ever felt like I wanted drums, he’d be into trying that out. Then I saw him play drums in this old band that he used to be in and I noticed that he was really good. I used to stomp my feet on a little box, and I’d do some percussion with my feet. So I had some rhythm going on. Once we tried playing together, I felt like it clicked right away. My song writing has changed partly because of the way Kristian and I work together. Because I think of rhythm or a part, that I think is interesting rhythmically.

brian
Up until this most recent album, City Man, it had just been the two of you. But with City Man you added bass and saxophone. Was it a choice to be just a two piece before.

kristian
It’s easier for touring, but we just didn’t want to complicate things too much. I like the bareness. Our record Slidin Boa, that’s just drums and guitar. If you listen to it back to back with almost any other band recording, it sounds very empty. Thin guitar and booming bass drum. We were trying to go for that spareness. We’ve always looked at ourselves as a party band, whenever we play at Racer we encourage dancing, we get drunk and play for a few hours. Adding the bass, just gave us an extra element of something to dance to.

ben
It thickens it up a little. That bass is a good frequency for people to feel as they’re dancing. The sax was so appropriate for the song City Man, because it’s the “urban sound.”

brian
It’s rare for an album of original music to be recorded live first. Why choose to do a live album?

kristian
The set up of the recording was no different, it’s just that we did it all in one night in front of an audience.

ben
Kristian came up with the idea. It sounded like a good thing to shoot for. Why not try it. It’d be novel, because this happened in one evening. You’ve got to let it go and let it be what it is. You can’t nitpick over little things. There’s plenty of stuff that I wasn’t happy with in my performance, but overall I was really happy with how it sounded. I think it’s good to let go of some of that perfection. For the style that we play it works really well, to have that live sound spontaneity, to hear the crowd.

kristian
We definitely play better in front of an audience.

brian
Was there any extra challenge to recording this way?

kristian
The mix was challenging. We couldn’t figure out how to mix it and have it sound as jamming as we’d hoped. It was messy, there was a lot of bleed from all the mics being live. The raw material was pretty rough. We almost scrapped it and wen’t “alright, let’s just do it at home.” But I had a few ideas that I wanted to try, and it ended up working out okay.

ben
I’m happy with the way it turned out. Some of the original mixes just didn’t sound that great. So we did quite a bit of post production. There’s only so much you can do with live recording. We took the final mix and put it onto a cassette, cranked up the levels a bit to get more compression, and add some crustiness. That technique has worked really well.

brian
The album was recorded live at Cafe Racer on April 6th of last year. Just shy of two months later there was a shooting that took place there. As a result, you dedicated the album to the victims and their families. Did that effect how you proceeded with this album?

ben
I think it did. There was a time when we were on the fence about whether we would use this recording, and that definitely pushed it more towards wanting to use it. Because of the significance of Racer to us and the fact that a few of the people the were shot were at the show, and you can hear them on the recording. I wanted to use it more after that happened, to honor the scene there.

kristian
That was definitely the driving reason why we kept the live recording. There’s a moment in the end of the last song on the record where you can hear Drew, who was one of the people killed, yell his signature phrase, “goddamn!” He used to say that almost every song.

ben
If he thought that it was a good song.

kristian
That’s a special moment on the record. The last thing you hear before it fades out.***

You can purchase Lonesome Shack’s albums as a digital download, audio cassette, cd, or vinyl album at lonesomeshack.bandcamp.com. You can see them live in the coming months; at Blue Moon Tavern in Seattle 4/13, Cafe Racer in Seattle 4/19, and the Comet Tavern in Seattle 6/22. Keep up to date with all their comings and goings at Lonesomeshack.com.

As I said before, while this abridged article is certainly a good look into a unique and talented band, I strongly urge you to give the full podcast interview a listen, there’s some much to learn from these guys, and so many insights into how they create their amazing music. Listen to the podcast here, or in itunes.

lonesome shack: website/facebook/twitter

Tags: andrew swanson, ben todd, blues, bound to die, cafe racer, city man, haunted boogie, Kristian Garrard, lonesome shack, luke bergman, podcast, shana cleveland, slidin boa, the podcast, the trading musician
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interview with LAKE

February 8, 2013 in interviews, LAKE

I attacked this profile from every angle, I symbolized, I mythologized, I literalized and still I could not boil the essence of what LAKE is or what LAKE means to me, down to something simple and compact.

By the mid 1990‘s the boom of the Grunge years had begun to decay, and by the late 90‘s we were reading it’s obituary. The great tradition of music in the Northwest didn’t die, it was simply struggling to find it’s place in a post grunge world. In the mid 2000‘s a new generation of artists living and working in the PNW emerged, finding their way to a new and hungry audience.

In 2009 I was living in Los Angeles and had been removed from the burgeoning music scene of the PNW. It was sheer accident that I stumbled upon the song On The Swing, a hauntingly beautiful fantasy of a song by LAKE. Soon after I took a trip to Amoeba records, and as if placed their by the hand of fate, I found LAKE’s catalog of music waiting for me. A year and a half later when I decided to move back to Seattle, one of my first thoughts was how much closer to their music I would be. Who were these people that made this music that so easily destroyed me?

LAKE: Lindsay Schief, Ashley Eriksson, Kenny Tarantino, Eli Moore. That these disparate artists would find each other in the same city, let alone the same band, is so serendipitous that it sounds like I made it up. Lindsay was a recent transplant to Los Angeles from Michigan, when through a friend of a friend she met Ashley. Through Ashley she would meet Kenny, Markly Morrison, and Andrew Dorsett who was a transplant from Florida. It was on a whim that Lindsay would move to Olympia Washington, where she met and collaborated with Eli Moore who was originally from Whidbey Island. When Eli took a trip to California to visit an uncle, Lindsay suggested that he meet up with Ashley, and miraculously he did. Soon after Ashley would move to Olympia, and not long after that, everyone else would follow.

By 2006 LAKE had recorded and self-released their first album the self titled, LAKE. Recorded by Karl Blau in Anacortes at the now defunct Department of Safety, it would be the first of many albums and collaborations with Karl who is like the Neil Young to Crosby Stills and Nash. Their second album simply referred to as Cassette (after the fact, because until recently it was available only on cassette) was recorded with members of the Portland band Typhoon. Originally these recordings were seen as raw demos to be polished and refined later, but in the end they contained too much “spontaneous magic,” and the album was left as is.

Their next album was Oh The Places We’ll Go, originally self-released, before Calvin Johnson founder of the infamous K-Records expressed interest in re-releasing the album under K. They would release two more albums for K in the coming years, Let’s Build A Roof and Giving and Receiving. This past year the band recorded two more albums both of which are in the process of being completed.

Magic is a word that I often think of in reference to LAKE, whether it’s their unlikely formation, the sound of their music, or their glaring passion and talent. I find myself at a loss for words when it comes to meaningfully describing the music of LAKE, one part the jazzy softness of Steely Dan, one part the endlessly addictive melodies of Fleetwood Mac, and one part R. Stevie Moore quirk, the rest? As banal as it sounds… magic.

If there is a cradle for that magic you could say it’s in the band’s ability to collaborate. There are no defined roles in LAKE, songs are constructed by exploiting members strongest attributes. It’s birthed in the writing process and continues all the way through to live performance. A song could be written, played, and sung by anyone on any instrument. This can be challenging for live performances, as song beaks become Chinese fire drills, wherein everyone dashes to find the instrument needed for the next song.

LAKE is at their best when they work in conjunction to one another, alone they are all amazing musicians, each of have appeared in other music, Baby Island, Skrill Meadow, Solid Home Life, among others, but something happens when they come together to write music. I often think of their album titles as being perfect representations of what the band stands for, Oh, The Places We’ll Go, Let’s Build a Roof, Giving and Receiving, it’s obvious. It’s possible to imagine that the emotions I feel when listening to LAKE pales in comparison to the emotions the band feels when they finish writing a song together.

I originally contacted Eli about an interview back in February of 2012, at the time the band was just beginning to work on the first of the two albums recorded last year, and Lindsay was still a member. By April the band would have moved on to a second recording in Phil Elverum’s Unknown studio, and Lindsay would step away from the band to attend Evergreen State college. I interviewed Lindsay in the midst of all this transitioning, it was a bittersweet time for everyone it seemed, the first LAKE album not to feature Lindsay would turn out to be improvisational(esque), thrown together in just a matter of days. Even in a changing landscape LAKE took their collaborative efforts to new heights.

When finally I caught up with Ashley, Eli, and Markly (Andrew couldn’t make the taping) it was mid November and much had changed since my original email. I’ve come accustomed to taking the trip down I-5 south to interview artists, coincidentally Ashley and Eli’s house was just blocks from where Lindsay and Angelo Spencer live.

It was a surreal experience to be sitting there talking to a band that just a few years earlier I had only envisioned in my head. What wonderful and delightful people, I interview artists because I’m fascinated to hear what they have to say about music and get a small peek into their artistic process. I keep interviewing artists because they have all been such welcoming and generous people. An enormous thanks to everyone for taking the time to sit down with me and talk about themselves, without question, every artists least favorite topic.

As always, what follows is just a slice of what you’ll hear in the full podcast interview. So take a listen to the podcast here or in itunes. And don’t forget to “like” us in facebook and subscribe to us in itunes.

Brian Snider
When I interviewed Lindsay Schief, she was in the process of playing her last few shows with the band, before moving on to attend Evergreen state college. What has it been like moving on without her?

Markly Morrison
She’s an element that we miss. It’s a tough void to fill, but it’s forcing us to think more creatively.

Eli Moore
We did an album without her in Anacortes with Paul Benson (Ever Ending Kicks) filling in. The feeling was different for a multitude of reasons, but it was more experimental, it was very therapeutic to do something and hear it, and still have it sound like LAKE but be different.

Markly
We Kind of Pulled it all out of thin air. We went into the studio with next to nothing, and largely made it up as we went along.

Ashley Eriksson
It felt really healing to do it at that time, instead of moping. It was fun. They [Eli, Andrew, & Markly] would sometimes just record the songs and I would be outside working on lyrics.

Eli
A third of that album is music that we wrote collaboratively, including lyrics.

Brian
You recorded the first LAKE album in Anacortes with Karl Blau, and at this point you’ve worked with him so often that I see him almost as a member of the band. What about his process keeps you going back to work with him?

Ashley
We really connect with his aesthetic and admire his openness. He’s really into finding the beauty in first takes. He tries to keep this raw element and not over-producing, even though that’s our tendency. It’s nice to have him to balance that out.

Markly
Karl has a really good ear for spontaneity. I’m always surprised by the things he singles out and wants to focus on. He’ll come up with ideas for our songs and he’s back there at the controls. Captain Karl wants us to try something and we’ll go for it, whether it flies or not.

Eli
It’s real faith based, if there’s a mistake he’ll trust that it was supposed to happen, and rather than try and correct it, he’ll try and bring it out. There’s one song we did where on the very last note, someone played this note that wasn’t in the key of the song. We were like, “let’s just punch in that note.” And he was like, “I think that’s supposed to happen.” So we ended up all punching in, and the song had this outro that’s in this really bizarre key.

Brian
During live shows it’s fun to watch you all shift instruments. I assume that has to do with how the song was written, and who played what. Is there a reason you don’t have defined roles?

Ashley
We’re all multi-instrumentalists and we really enjoy playing different things, and get bored playing the same instrument all the time.

Markly
When we’re working on something new, one person will be like, “I hear a keyboard, or I hear a good bass line.” And that person does it.

Eli
Sometimes someone will write a part on an instrument and then decide to switch. It’s also skill, some people can play certain things on guitars that others can’t. Some people can play a certain funkiness on the bass, some songs Andrew’s better on drums…

Ashley
It takes a long time to switch between songs, so it’s not totally idea from an entertainment aspect. We’re not doing it as a gimmick. Sometimes it’s frustrating.

Eli
It gives people a chance to look at their iphones.

Brian
After you finished recording Giving and Receiving you found that the tape it was recorded on began to disintegrate.

Eli
We had to save it, so we transferred all the tracks to the computer. We ended up adding more tracks because we had more available to us. It led to the album, maybe being over-produced. We probably never would have transferred it to the computer. We would have finished it on tape, and it would have been slightly rawer. The reason I prefer tape has more to do with process. I think projects go faster, I like the limits of tape, it’s a creative limit. But with digital the possibilities. The first album [the album recorded at K with lindsay in 2012] is all on the computer at this point. It’s the first album we’ve made where we’ve been able to try every idea we’ve thought of. It’s been a cool freedom.

Brian
After you finished Oh, The Places We’ll Go, you were approached by K-Records about releasing it. What was it like back then to have a storied label like K want to release your music, and then more of your music in the future?

Markly
I was really excited. When I moved up here that was a goal I had envisioned. Wouldn’t it be cool, specifically if K wanted to put this stuff out.

Ashley
When I was first making music in Santa Clarita, I had barely any idea of what indie record labels were. I knew two, K-records and Saddle Creek. I moved to Olympia not ever thinking that I would end up having music on K-Records. That was really cool when that happened.

Eli
When I moved to Olympia in 2002, I was a huge K-Records fan, I felt awkward when I saw people associated with the label at the co-op. It was a very natural progression for them to ask us. It wasn’t like it came out of nowhere, because we’d been collaborating with Karl, and we played as the backup band for Adrian Orange. Not to say that we deserved it, or that we knew it would happen. K is very community oriented, we were a part of the community at that point. I think Calvin [Johnson] appreciates people who are a part of the community and not just passing through.

Brian
Did you look at the band different after that, that this wouldn’t just be something you do for a few years, that there was a real vision for the future?

Ashley
It’s hard to end a band and start again. Once you have a name and an identity, it feels so good to have that and keep going.***

Oh, The Places We’ll Go, Let’s Build a Roof, Giving and Receiving, as well as some special singles and b-sides are available through k-records. You can download LAKE’s earliest albums through their bandcamp page, at laketheband.bandcamp.com. They’ll be performing live at The Shakedown in Bellingham Feb. 22, The Waldorf Hotel in Vancouver BC on Feb. 23, and the Treefort Music Fest March 24. And keep a look out for two new albums later in the year.

Back in mid 2011 when I decided I wanted to conduct podcast interviews I did so with LAKE in mind. In fact I came up with the website after I did a review of Giving and Receiving, it’s safe to say that without LAKE I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing now. There’s so much I could thank them for, but what I thank them for the most is the unending inspiration they have given me. A big thanks to everyone in LAKE, past and present members. Don’t forget to listen to the full audio podcast of our interview here or in itunes.

LAKE: website/facebook/bandcamp

Tags: Adam olesner, anacortes, Andrew Dorsett, ashley eriksson, baby island, Calvin Johnson, cassette, eli moore, GIVING AND RECEIVING, interview, K-RECORDS, KARL BLAU, Kenny Tarantino, LAKE, Let's build a roof, lindsay schief, markly morrison, OH THE PLACES WE'LL GO, OLYMPIA, podcast, skrill meadow, solid home life, the podcast
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interview with she keeps bees

November 21, 2012 in interviews, she keeps bees

On the surface there are so many things people want to compare Jessica Larrabee and Andy LaPlant to; Cat Power, PJ Harvey, The White Stripes, The Black Keyes, basically any bluesy duo or female singer with a stone smooth voice. I wouldn’t deny that there is a common thread that runs through those bands and into She Keeps Bees, but for this duo there is so much more.

Somewhere in an inferior parallel universe is a Jessica Larrabee who never transitioned from the drums to the guitar. In another is an Andy LaPlant who continued to play the guitar and never learned the drums. And in one more universe Andy never entered the bar the Jessica was working at, they never met and She Keeps Bees withered. In our clearly superior universe, we can celebrate the beauty that is She Keeps Bees because Jessica did move from the drums to guitar, because Andy did trade in his guitar for the drums, and because in the mid 2000’s Andy, a New Orleans transplant, did walk into Jessica’s Brooklyn bar and they met.

Jessica had already been writing, performing, and home recording her songs when she met Andy who at the time had done some engineering and played the guitar. I often think about fate when it comes to a band’s formation, so often the best bands rely so much on seemingly coincidental events and meetings to come together. Invariably this creates a perfect give and take, like mixing the perfect drink.

Sensing that what was needed was a solid beat, Andy took a seat behind the drum kit. Jessica who followed in her musician fathers foot steps as a drummer began to focus exclusively on the guitar, honing her rhythmic style. Since that time in 2006 Andy and Jessica have released three albums, each evolving in mass and density. Their minimalistic construction was nurtured in their infancy and grew from their debut Minisink Hotel, to Nests, and then Dig On.

It was Dig On which boasted the best of what Jessica and Andy had to offer. Thunderous percussion with metronomic time. Simple yet powerful guitar riffs that grab your gut and twist it. And Jessica’s sultry vocals which basically massage your heart. It has a Patti Smith quality, belting out pristine and uncracked notes that hold the music together like a smooth and satisfying adhesive. Her voice is so strong that throughout the SKB catalogue you’ll come across songs that are almost completely absent of anything but vocals, where Jessica’s voice carries everything on its back.

Though they’ve spent six years as a minimalistic duo, for their July, 7” release they enlisted the help of experimental cellist Gaspar Claus. Counter Charm fills the room unlike any previous SKB song, and it’s possible that this is a hint at what is to come. Of course the B-side empties that room with the 1930’s classic Blue Moon, which is sung like a gentle and warming lullaby by Larrabee.

She Keeps Bees in another way is a band of deceptions. You might not expect a band with the quaint name like this to rock, you might not expect a duo to fill the space with so much sound, you might not expect such a beautiful voice from such raw and gritty indie-blues-grunge-rock. But you would be wrong wrong wrong, because SKB does it all.

I became aware of SKB just this past Spring when past guests The The The Thunder announced tour dates on the West Coast, SKB was on the bill of their Seattle show at the High Dive. I was immediately in love, it was heavy, it was soft, it was a pair of steel toed boots and moccasins all at the same time. Though I didn’t know it, I was looking for music just like this.

But as delightful as they were blasting through my speakers, what I got when I saw them live was something almost otherworldly. It was like the splitting of an atom, how something so tiny could produce so much exceptional sound was beyond me. It was one of those amazing moments in music that I crave so dearly, when my heart leaps in my chest and I am left awestruck and speechless at what a band can do.

I spoke to Jessica and Andy via skype from their home on the East Coast. It was a little strange to talk to a band without any Northwest roots or solid connections. Their Summer tour through the PNW was their first ever. But if you’d told me that SKB was from the Northwest I would have believed you without question. It’s either regional music sensibility or just wishful thinking on my part.

Jessica and Andy were such a joy to speak with. These are two people who I respect immensely and I’m not afraid to admit that I was a little star struck while speaking with them… I hope it didn’t come through in the podcast. A big thanks to both of them for taking the time to interview with me.

As always, what you can read here is just a fraction of what you’ll find in the full podcast. Which by the way you can listen to by clicking here, or by visiting itunes.

She Keeps Bees at the High Dive

brian snider

How did you and Andy meet each other?

jessica larrabee
I was bartending in Brooklyn and Andy had just moved from New Orleans, and naturally went to the closest bar to his house, and that was the bar I worked at. We just became friends, I knew he was an engineer, so I gave him a CD of my solo stuff. Then we started to record together. He was coming to the shows anyway, so I was like “just start playing drums.” We were growing together, he was accompanying me on my folkier songs, then it became more rock.

brian
This is almost too strange to be true, but Jessica, you were originally a drummer. Now you obviously play guitar. And Andy you originally were a guitarist, and now you play drums.

andy laplant
When I met Jess, I didn’t play the drums particularly well. I found my place in the band more as a rhythmic section than as an accompaniment. I could have played guitar but I thought what it needed was a beat. So I worked at that as hard as I could to try not to embarrass her because she’s a good drummer in her own right.

jessica
My father was a drummer, that’s why it was my first instrument. I wanted to play guitar, but my hands weren’t strong enough. I’m not going to be Steve Vai with my guitar playing, I just have to focus on what is natural, and rhythm is what speaks the most with my guitar playing.

bs
Was being a duo born out of necessity or was it preference?

jessica
I think it was necessity because it’s a thing of convenience. Also low overhead, we could travel lightly. And we weren’t really thinking that we needed another person. I think that was good to just narrow the vision of the songwriting to very simple terms, until we could start inviting other instrumentation in. We have it in mind, maybe for the next record. It’s allowed us to do what we want.

brian
From your first album to Minisink Hotel to your last Dig On, your sound has become bigger and more full. But then some of my favorite songs are often the very simple ones. Those that are acapella or almost-acapella.

andy
A lot of times a song comes to [Jessica] and it doesn’t have a guitar part, she’ll just start singing a melody. And we’ll discuss if it needs anything and usually I’ll say less is more. Especially with her voice because it’s so powerful, it doesn’t need much behind it.

brian
Do you feel like you over complicate or over simplify your songs when you first write them?

andy
We’re usually starting with the most simple and then adding a few accompaniments that we find necessary. We’ve never really blown anything up like crazy then had to scale it back.

jessica
But then it’s only been us. Other artists have big teams of producers to bounce ideas off. That’s what we’re excited about for the new album. We don’t know where we’re recording but we are open to adding another person/conversation and have different ideas.

andy
It becomes something so personal that when you release it out to the public you want to throw up because not more than five people have heard it before.

brian
In July you released the single Counter Charm, which has an even bigger and more filling sound than what’s on Dig On even. Is that something that we can expect from the next record?

andy
I think yes. It was the first time we ever had someone else record and mix our music.

jessica
Because Gaspar [Claus] our friend who plays the cello, he’s and experimental cellist, the things that he can pull out of that instrument makes me feel very proud of that song. It was really beautiful to have this mix expand what he does.

She Keeps Bees at the High Dive

As She Keeps Bees prepares to enter the studio for their fourth album, I am literally giddy at what they’ll bring to the table this time. Counter Charm added a whole other dimension to their music, it’s not better, just different, another evolutionary step.

I’ll admit that I’ve come close once or twice to penning a letter to whom it may concern, begging She Keeps Bees to relocate to the Northwest. Their music has that dark and heavy yet soulful and melodic quality that North Westerners would devour like a much needed break in the rain clouds. For now I suppose I have to wait for the next time they tour our beautiful coast. You can find all their albums and various merch at their website shekeepsbees.com. And let’s face it if you don’t immediately close this window and buy up all their music, then we’re not on speaking terms.

Again, if you read only this brief excerpt you will miss the wonderful conversation we had, full of so much really great stuff. You can hear the full audio podcast by clicking here, or in itunes. And while you’re in itunes check out our other interviews and maybe even rate and review us.

Tags: andy laplant, blues, BROOKLYN, counter charm, dig on, gaspar claus, INDIE ROCK, interview, jessica Larrabee, minisink hotel, nests, podcast, she keeps bees, the podcast
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interview with shana cleveland

October 17, 2012 in interviews, shana cleveland

Perhaps you’re familiar with Andrew WK’s Cartoon Network show Destroy Build Destroy? The concept is obvious, two teams Destroy a set of random objects like cars, musical instruments, or boats. In turn they salvage parts from their destruction and Build them into another device, compete against other team and the winner Destroys the losers contraption. This was immediately what came to mind when I thought of Shana Cleveland’s career, well, on a far more simple level.

It’s safe to say that this would not have been the image that first came to mind had Shana and her band mates in the infamous Curious Mystery not decided to call it quits just a few short weeks before our interview. The Curious Mystery had become a centerpiece of K-Records and their Olympia Washington indie rock empire. We Creeling, their 2011 follow up to the album Rotting Slowly was beautiful, intense, and nothing short of amazing.

The specific image that penetrated my brain was of Shana gently planting a tightly wound bundle of dynamite underneath the rusty hulk of a handful of musical styles. She runs quickly unraveling the fuse before attaching it to a comically large plunger marked TNT. She pushes down and watches as shrapnel of notes, trebel clef’s, and bars go flying. When the dust settles she marches back into the blast zone with a wicker basket and precedes to gather the building blocks she’ll need for her next project.

Then off in a laboratory somewhere she sits at a work bench delicately reassembling the pieces into something new and beautiful. When she tires of this construction she’ll start this whole process over again.

Generally I find that I really like about two thirds of any given musicians projects. It seems there’s almost always one that just misses the mark for me, when it comes to Shana Cleveland the projects she’s been involved in, I love them all. No matter what she stamps her seal of approval on, it always lives up to my expectations.

It began in her collaboration with Nick Gonzalez forming The Curious Mystery a psych-folk-indie-rock band that included everything and the kitchen sink. While working with TCM, Shana joined with Olie Eshleman to record an album under the name Evening Plains. It’s an album brimming with so much airy folky(ness) that you can almost literally see and feel golden grass blowing in the wind with a bleached cow skull nestled near the roots.

Another of Shana’s musical involvements is with The Sandcastles. A “quiet time collection” of soulful folk music that is absolutely delectable. In many ways that band might be the best pure expression of what Shana is capable of, a sultry voice that swirls and wafts like freshly blown cigarette smoke. Smooth folky guitar that has so much texture to it you could literally pick it up with your hands.

Then you have Shana’s most recent project La Luz, an all girl surf rock band. It’s that classic surf music constructed with classic rock and roll structures and wavy distortion pedals like water logged ears. I’ve been a longtime fan of bands like the Ventures, and Dick Dale & the Del-Tones, La Luz cuts right into that genre with a switch blade and inserts the lovely twist of female voices, namely Shana’s. Which also happens to be exhibited at its best.

I almost feel as if a big thanks is owed to Shana’s mother (a singer herself) who visited Seattle while Shana was wandering the strip malls of North Hollywood and the Valley. It was an issue of the Stranger sent to her from her mother that sparked her interest and initiated a move to the PNW. It’s possible she would have gone on to play music elsewhere, but we have her right here in our back yard.

I met Shana in her University District home in North Seattle, just a few blocks from where my wife and I lived years before. The house is nestled in between a series of tall trees that wrap its branches around it like a great leafy hug. Inside it was just as I’d imagined Shana’s home to be, earthy, organic, and textural. All around was a mixture of her own beautiful artwork and a number of oil painted landscapes; a mountain towering over a placid glacial lake, or golden rolling hills. Shana Cleveland’s music practically radiated straight out of the canvases.

After the interview was finished Shana and I spent a little time out on her porch (as I waited for my wife to pick me up) talking music, Los Angeles, and Anacortes. I’m trying to prepare myself for the day I encounter some really nasty artist who hates me and my interview, but that hasn’t happened yet, as once again Shana was an absolute delight to meet and spend a couple of hours with. As I said before, it’s rare to find a musician who’s various projects are as consistently incredible as Shana’s.

As an interviewer my goal is constantly to become more relaxed and conversational, every time I sit down with an artist I get a little closer and this might be my best attempt yet. We covered so much more ground than what I had initially planned and the end result is some fascinating audio. What follows is just a microscopic fraction of my conversation with Shana and I highly encourage you to download the full audio podcast, which you can hear for free here or in itunes.

brian snider
For the past six or so years you’ve been most associated with your role in The Curious Mystery. What made you all decide to move on from that band?

shana cleveland
We’d been doing that for a long time and I felt like it had run its course. We went on this long tour last Spring and I started listening to different styles of music and forming an idea for a band that I would start when I got home. Then I realized that I really couldn’t be doing three bands, so I had to get rid of one of them. I love The Curious Mystery, but I felt like I’d grown past it in a way. My whole life I’ve really love building and then being okay with leaving it. I think it’s really important as an artist to not just stay with what’s working, to challenge yourself to move forward.

What did it do for the band to meet Calvin Johnson of k-records and his network of musicians?

That whole network of k bands was really inspiring because it’s people doing their own thing. There’s nothing really trendy happening there, it’s all people who just make the music that they want to make, and it’s not with an eye towards what’s going to sell or be popular or cool. It’s just about pure artistic expression. It’s also so diverse, the roster of artists on k, it’s all over the place.

There’s a really sweet story about how your parents met. Would you mind telling that story.

My dad met my mom when he was on tour with a band, I think a Country Swing band. My mom was dancing, she’d just gone to the bar to dance. They liked each other and then my dad would come through every now and again on tour and try to get ahold of my mom. Eventually she just started traveling with them, she ran their sound for awhile to pull her own weight. Then she started back-up singing. And she’s a singer now, and a harmonica player.

What was the catalyst to get The Sandcastles started?

There’s a bunch of folk musicians that are really inspiring to me. Certain albums are really exciting as far as albums that sound quiet and relaxed but also feel sloppy, like you’re just hanging out in a barn with these people. Like Viva Last Blues and this girl from Maine, Caethua, her albums were influential to me and I really wanted to get at that intimate rough folk sound.

On your bandcamp page you called these songs, “quiet time songs… I think they sound best on a windy morning or at night with no lights.” I really like that description because while it’s not exclusive to how you should listen to the album, it’s very accurate of the sound.

You’re not going to put them on and party, it’s not going to make you want to get up and move. There’s some albums that make you want to turn off the lights, and just sit in a room and listen to them by myself. That’s what I had in mind for the album.

Tell us about your latest band La Luz.

It’s pretty much a combination between surf rock and a girl group. Not that we’re all girls, which we are, but the 60’s girl group, the Phil Spector sound. I was listening to a lot of girl group music and was getting into four part harmonies; ooh-ah’s and doo-whops.

You mentioned that this is the music that you’ve been wanting to play for a long time. Why is that?

I’ve been getting into early rock and roll in a lot of different areas of the arts. The late 50’s and 60’s rock and roll style is so powerful, you can see that in the fact that on every continent people have tried to imitate that style. It’s not white music or black music, or even American music, even though it started as American music. It’s cheesy but it’s like the power of rock and roll music.

The Northwest has a tradition of female rock bands, especially with the whole Riot Grrrrl movement in the early 90’s. What was your inspiration for wanting an all girl band?

I really like the way that women’s voices sound together when it’s all women. And I don’t really run across a ton of sexism in the music industry, but I do every now and then and I just got tired of playing shows where the sound guy didn’t take me seriously. I got tired of that attitude. I really liked the idea of being in a band with four women that are really awesome, not just that we’re all cute, it’s that we’re really good. You kind of have to take us seriously. Even though I’ve always played with open minded guys, I just got tired of people adjusting my amp or thinking that I couldn’t do those things myself.

Another thing that makes me excited to be in an all girl band was, I have this goal to be the most killer guitar player ever [laughs]. I was just feeling like there was a lack of really awesome female rock guitar players, and part of my goal is to try and fill that space.***

To hear the entire podcast interview go here or subscribe to our podcast in itunes.

The purpose of Destroy Build Destroy is two fold, make awesome machines from scrap, and blow shit up. This is where the analogy fails when talking about Shana Cleveland. It’s just the end result of years spent perfecting one sound and the desire to create something new. La Luz is still just a newborn less than a month removed from its mothers womb, there are still plenty of years before a stick of dynamite is placed at its feet.

In September La Luz released their debut EP Damp Face which you can find at laluz.bandcamp.com. In October they began playing live with one final performance on October 26th opening for Lonesome Shack at Cafe Racer in Seattle. You can find the Curious Mystery’s albums at k-recs.com, and The Sandcastles at shanacleveland.bandcamp.com.

Again, there is so much more to hear that you’ll completely miss out on if you don’t listen to the podcast. I’m really proud of the conversation we had and the topics we covered. You can listen to the full audio podcast here or in itunes. And while you’re there please take a brief moment to rate and review us, thank you.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Tags: andrew wk, bandcamp, cafe racer, Calvin Johnson, destroy build destroy, evening plains, interviews, ITUNES, K-RECORDS, la luz, lonesome shack, podcast, rotting slowly, SECRETLY IMPORTANT, shana cleveland, THE CURIOUS MYSTERY, the sandcastles, we creeling
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interview with lemolo

August 31, 2012 in interviews, lemolo

It was a midnight stage, black and sweaty with impatient anticipation. A swath of powder white mist cuts lazily through the black, a harbinger of what was to come. A lonely guitar melts the stage with isolated beauty. A sensuous voice rises alongside a low thunder. It builds to a satisfying climax where my heart skips a beat, leaving behind barren scorched earth. This is how I thought of Lemolo the first time I saw them play live. It was a moment that literally made me giddy and had me wishing that I could have shared it with more people.

Just three and a half years ago Lemolo wasn’t a band, when Meagan Grandall, who’d been playing music all her life, approached her friend Kendra Cox, who despite owning a drum kit, never formally played. This was two weeks before a battle of the bands, a battle the duo took second place in. Following that the pair would play Bumbershoot, Sasquatch, the Capital Hill Block Party, Doe Bay, and coming up Music Fest NW. This past July they released their self titled debut album, The Kaleidoscope, which was preceded by two sold out shows at the Columbia City Theater. Obviously they’ve been doing something right.

Lemolo’s music fluctuates between dark and solitary to catchy “dream” pop. The songs are deceptively simple, which is by design. They fight the urge to go with their initial complicated instinct and strip it down to it’s emotional core. Meagan takes center stage with the vocals, alternating between the guitar and keys. Kendra provides the intense heartbeat with the drums and keys. They compliment each other in a way that few bands can… yes, like peanut butter and jelly, rice and beans, nuts and bolts.

This is what I took away from seeing Lemolo live and meeting them, these two have great affection for one another. I could see it in the way they looked to one another across the stage, and the way they interacted during the interview. That affection is most apparent in the beauty of their album.

The two originally hail from the Scandinavian Puget Sound Port of Poulsbo, in fact the name Lemolo comes from a scenic stretch of road in that area. Not coincidentally Meagan and Kendra met while they were both working as kayak instructors. Kendra has since moved to Seattle while Meagan continues to reside in the sleepy seaside town, presumably to keep close to the plethora of Norwegian trolls sold in Poulsbo shops.

I met Meagan and Kendra in a quiet little coffee shop on 14th on Capitol Hill in Seattle, not far from Seattle University where Lemolo made their debut at the battle of the bands. We recorded on location at the coffee shop, which gave me some wonderfully delightful audio, but in an uncontrolled environment you get what you get. Which I both love and loath. When you listen to the podcast you’ll understand why.

Meagan and Kendra prove that NW artists are by far the nicest in the country, I haven’t met a single one who wasn’t disgustingly hospitable and delightful. I had intended to get to the interview early and buy them both drinks, but they beat me to the punch and bought me a tea. They couldn’t have been nicer to take the time out of their day to sit down with me and talk about themselves.

This interview feels very special… I can’t quite pinpoint why, it just has a unique and fun feeling to it, I hope that comes across to you in the recording. I came away with a greater love and deeper appreciation for Lemolo musically and personally. Their compressed rise to notoriety couldn’t be happening to two better people. What follows is a mere slice of the full audio podcast which you can listen to right here, or in itunes.

brian snider
You’re both from Poulsbo Washington, in fact the name Lemolo comes from a stretch of road in that area.

meagan grandall
There’s a street in Poulsbo called Lemolo shore drive and also a neighborhood that surrounds the street, which is where I live now. It’s really beautiful, it follows along the water and we both grew up. It’s this quintessential hangout and place to enjoy the sunshine. We had that in common and wanted to pick a band name that was meaningful.

brian
How did you two meet?

kendra cox
We both worked at a kayak shop together in Poulsbo called Olympic Outdoor Center. I was 17 and I grew up going to kayak camps, and always wanted to work there as a kid. So I got a job there one Summer and Meagan worked there. The next year after that [we] lived in Seattle and started playing music then, for a battle of the bands that Meagan was performing in at Seattle U. She said, “Do you want to play drums?” and I said “sure”. So Meagan wrote all my drum parts because I had a drum set but I’d never really played it.

meagan
It’s funny because I remember the first time I saw Kendra, before she worked at the kayak dock, and [she] came to rent a kayak. I thought she was crazy and really cool because she strapped a boom box onto the kayak and went out wearing neon spandex. I was like “who is that girl? I’m going to be friends with her.”

brian
Meagan, how long before that battle of the bands did you ask Kendra to help you?

meagan
I asked her two weeks before the show, then she sprained her wrist.

kendra
The day of our first practice.

meagan
so we couldn’t practice for a week. So we literally had six days to learn these two songs. We pulled through and actually got 2nd place, which we were not expecting.

brian
You’re sound is very stripped down and simple, but still big and expansive.

kendra
On my end of finding out how to make that big sound; I love things that feel heavy. Since we’ve started adding bass to a lot of our songs, I love the way you can almost touch that bass. Drumming wise, I love tribal feeling things, they’re simple but feel heavy.

meagan
That space is something that we try to preserve and consciously think about. We have an expression in our practices, KIS: keep it simple. A lot of times we get caught up in trying to make things too complicated, then we realize this isn’t working and go back and strip it back down again. The version that we usually end up liking the most is the simplest version.

brian
Generally how do you write a song? Do you write the melody first or the lyrics…

meagan
In general, the melody and the lyrics come together at the same time. Then after playing with the melody and key words the rest of the lyrics fill in. For a lot of the songs that process happens by myself. Song writing for me has always been a private thing that I’ve been self conscious about, that I haven’t enjoyed doing when other people can hear me. It’s my own personal therapy, the way I get my feelings out. Then once I get the courage to share it with Kendra, we add her parts, and she rights those.

brian
Shawn Simmons (who recorded the Head and the Heart debut) recorded your album The Kaleidoscope. What did he bring to the recording process that you would not have brought yourself?

meagan
He brought a lot to the table because this was the first time we ever recorded anything in a professional studio. We knew what ideas and sounds we wanted to get across and he helped us figure out the steps and how to get there.

kendra
He’s really open to ideas, but he also has a strong set of ideas of his own. He’s patient. We, I think, are not the easiest people to work with because we’re both perfectionists.

meagan
We had a lot of moments where we faced mental road blocks, doubted ourselves, and hit a wall. Then he’d be like “let’s go stand on the porch, let’s take a moment.” He’d give us a little talk and bring us back to reality. He was a really good motivator and moral supporter.***

For being just two gifted musicians, Lemolo has a surprisingly large sound, big enough to fill an amphitheater, it feels like. At the rate they’re going, that won’t be long. Toward the end of our interview asked them if the past three and a half years have felt surreal. They’re answer, “of course.” This could easily be one of those dreams where you build something from scratch into something great, only to wake up and realize it was all just a dream.

It’s been a busy summer for Lemolo, with their many shows and festivals, including the release of their debut album The Kaleidoscope. You can see them live on September 6th at Music Fest NW in Oregon and the City Arts festival in Seattle on October 18th. Get yourself over there to see them live, the tickets are a steal at any price. Don’t forget to visit their website lemolomusic.com where you can buy their album and merchandise. You can stream the album at lemolomusic.bandcamp.com.

Once again, don’t forget to listen to the full audio podcast of this interview, there’s so much great stuff you’ll miss if you don’t listen. You can do so here, or in itunes. And while you’re in itunes, please take a moment to rate and review us. Thank you.

Tags: city arts festival, columbia city theater, kendra cox, lemolo, meagan grandall, music fest nw, poulsbo, shawn simmons, The Kaleidoscope, the podcast
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interview with the the the thunder

July 25, 2012 in interviews, the the the thunder

Bands traditionally form through a shared love of music, a group of people come together with an instrument, then they play together in a garage or a rehearsal space, once they’ve written a small catalog of songs they play their first live show. Only after playing a number of shows together and honing their craft does a band go into the studio and record an album. The The The Thunder took that storyline and turned it on its head.

That storyline isn’t a blueprint for success, Lindsay Schief and Greg Olin of Solid Home Life built their amazingly sweet album through home recording sessions and never played live. The The The Thunder’s story is even less typical, they never played live or even played all together in the same room at the same time until months after the release of their debut album All At Once. In June they embarked on a mini East coast tour and for the first time rehearsed and performed live as a single unit.

This bicoastal band is split between Brooklyn and Seattle. Dan, Julia, Artie and Glen making up the New York contingent with Nick and Jill in Seattle. The band arrived in Seattle with little more than bass drum, acoustic guitar, and keyboard tracks recorded from a Civil Defense session in Brooklyn. From there they put the remaining pieces together one at a time at the Push Pull studio. But still they never played all together.

What I find so amazing about TTTT is that you get no hint of this division in the album. They compliment one another perfectly with a thoughtfully crafted and honed sound that you would think they’d been playing for years.

Equal parts Lou Reed, the Talking Heads and dare I say DEVO, TTTT knows not of the neofolk movement coursing through the veins of the indie music scene. This is hard and fast rock and roll, with soft and gentle undertones. Each member is a piece to a jigsaw puzzle that when placed together forms the portrait of a truly great band, they were destined to be so. If you believe in such things. When you barrel through the obstacles placed in front of you (like an entire continent) and release an awesome album, I’d say it was their destiny.

If this is what they can do with fractured elements organized into multilayered music with heart and soul, what could they do with more time to coalesce? They set the bar so high on All At Once, amazingly they can only continue to climb higher from there.

Back in early may I entertained Nick and Jill at my home while Dan and Julia were Skyped in from their home in Brooklyn. This was the ultimate test of my technological capabilities, and it surprisingly went off better than some of my more straight forward two people in the same room with microphones, episodes. This was a loose and fun bunch who despite being just a few steps up from a hypothetical band, answered my questions like old pros.

Notably This interview was recorded prior to their East coast tour, and prior to their first full rehearsal. I entered the interview fixated on the idea that they were separated by an entire country, at the time I wasn’t even aware that they’d never actually played all together at the same time. Then I became fixated on that idea. Some time in between the interview and this profile I came to the realization that they did play together, just not in the way we typically imagine a band playing together. I look forward to interviewing them again some time to see just how things have changed, if they’ve changed.

What follows is an excerpt of my interview Nick, Dan, Julia, and Jill. The full audio version can be found in itunes here, or in the podcast section of the website. It seems that I say every episode is my favorite, which isn’t really true. That said, this was my favorite interview.

brian
It almost sounds too surreal to be true, but your first show took place at a Country Western bar in Japan?

dan
It did, but it wasn’t the full band.

julia
We were in Kobe, Japan and we saw a bar called City Lights Country American Music Station Bourbon and Coffee.

dan
That was the full name on the sign. We were like, “I don’t care what that is but after dinner we’re getting drunk there.”

julia
We went there and our friend was talking to the bartender, and said something about how Dan played guitar.

dan
I said no, but saying no sometimes [in Japan] if you don’t say it strongly enough means yes. We were politely saying “no, no, no,” which means, “yes I’d love to play guitar.”

julia
As soon as we say no, he gets up from the bar and starts hooking in cables and amps, hands Dan a guitar, and starts yelling out names of chords.

dan
We wound up covering Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley. This owner, who clearly music was his life was like, “play some of your own songs.” So Julia got involved and we played three or four songs. So we count that as our first show.

brian
At that point was there a band?

julia
We had a band, it was just broken into two pieces and we didn’t know how we were going to put them back together. That was after Jill and Nick moved to Seattle.

brian
How did it happen that you all come to play music together?

nick
We all knew each other in High School and we’ve all been doing our own musical thing for years. How I became involved, which is how Jill became involved is that I was playing with a different band, and we played a show in Brooklyn and Dan and Julia came. After the show Dan came up to me and was like, “we have to do something, we’ve been friends for ten years now.”

dan
We were working on songs and there was this moment of “Why have we never played in a band together?”

jill
I often don’t play well with others, so playing in a band with these two guys [Nick and Dan] was threatening to my relationships as far as I was concerned. So I said no. When they decided to come out here and record the album, and Nick started listening to the tracks again. The song I heard was Emergency Room, I looked at Nick almost angry, “Why didn’t you tell me it was this good?” Then I said okay.

brian
Had any or many of the songs on All At Once been played live for an audience before they were recorded?

nick
Not a one, unless you count Bronson Kobiashi [from the Japanese bar].

brian
What was it like to make an album that never had any audience reaction to it?

dan
It’s scary.

julia
Up until the day we released it, and still it’s scary.

dan
There was a moment when we were done mixing, where I was, “please I hope people like this thing.” Because you don’t know. You try and please each other and build each other up and be our own audience. There’s always that fear, what if people don’t understand what we were going for? But the reaction to the record’s been positive.

nick
It is a weird thing, because I have at least played these songs with the band. Jill hasn’t played any of these songs with anyone in any live or rehearsed situation. But then my favorite song Hey Forever [on All At Once] I never played that with the band at all.

jill
Our first rehearsal is June 8th and that will be the first time all six of us are in a room together playing these songs. It’s not only going to be new to the audience, it’ll be new to us. We know there’s chemistry there, that’s in theory. We have to put it into practice.

dan
We’re a theoretical live band. ***

I often take special note as to how I get introduced to a band; through a show, bandcamp, word of mouth, or a website profile. In this case Jill works with my friend Meghan, were it not for that little twist of fate it might have taken me years to find out about The The The Thunder, fortunately for me, I was right there at the beginning.

Fresh off their East coast tour The The The Thunder will be taking the West coast by storm. You can catch them August 24th at Le Voyeur in Olympia, August 25th at the LoFi Octopus Fest in Seattle, August 29th at the High Dive in Seattle, August 30th, at Bombs Away Cafe in Corvallis Oregon, and August 31st at Silvermoon Brewing in Bend Oregon. And don’t forget to grab a download of their stunning album All At Once on their bandcamp page, thethethethunder.bandcamp.com. You can listen to the full audio interview on our website or in itunes, where I hope that you can take two seconds and please rate and review the podcast.

Tags: all at once, bandcamp, devo, INDIE ROCK, interview, LOU REED, podcast, talking heads, the the the thunder
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interview with angelo spencer

July 3, 2012 in angelo spencer, interviews

photo by Joseph P. Traina

You could say that my musical re-education in Pacific Northwest artists began with Angelo Spencer. It was 2009 and k-records, the label releasing the self titled Et Les Hauts Sommets, was beginning to promote its up coming release. It was around this same time I discovered Karl Blau, LAKE, Old Time Relijun, and so on. The album was an instrumental affair that blended punk rock with wavy surf guitar and tribal beats. Later I would come to recognize the finger prints of many k artists on that album, but at the time the Et Les Hauts Sommets and Angelo Spencer were a mystery to me.

In the year that I’ve been interviewing musicians in the PNW one passion ties them all together; a desire to create new sounds working within and around established genre’s. Angelo is a beautiful personification of this desire. Perhaps more than any artist I’ve met thus far the word cultural magnet comes to mind, in an extreme display of polarity, music from around the world is attracted to him. The tribal music of Africa, or as I learned in our interview Bollywood.

Angelo grew up in the French Alps, a landscape which has stuck with him to this day. Et Les Hauts Sommets (the high summits) is an obvious reference to the Alps. At age four he discovered Ennio Morricone’s classic soundtrack to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, an obvious influence for the music he would later create. Those two loves would blend into a love of music with a natural landscape feel.

While his French background would seem to be the perfect worldly addition to a career in the PNW surrounded by artists with similar goals, he had to overcome some serious insecurities concerning French music. In France you either listened to music in French or you pushed back and listened to American and British bands singing in English. The two groups didn’t co-mingle and you had to make a choice. Angelo chose English, and years later as he approached his appropriately titled World Garage album he accepted the challenge of integrating French into his songs. A concept he’d been uncomfortable with until that point.

This is what I most admire about Angelo; his willingness to challenge himself to do something new and unique. Once he feels he’s lived inside that challenge enough to get an understanding for it, he pushes forward to something else that’s been nagging at his cerebral cortex, and he attempts to live inside that. Name another indie musician willing to utilize the quirky art of auto-tune. It could have been disastrous, Angelo was willing to leap right in and integrate it seamlessly.

Just listening to him describe his intentions for his next sonic adventure gave me goose bumps. What would he do next? In what way would Angelo Spencer expand his sound by doing something that no one else is willing to even attempt.

Roughly a year ago I sat down with my legal pad and generated a list of musicians, artists, authors, comedians, and so forth that I would like to interview. Angelo was at the top of that list. As I began to understand, you’ve got to take opportunities when they appear, and it wasn’t until April that I drove down to his house in Olympia to interview him.

Not so coincidentally it was just a week after I’d driven down to interview his girlfriend Lindsay Schief (LAKE, Solid Home Life). Once again I set up my equipment at their dining room table, while Angelo made some absolutely delicious tea. Again with the eyes of the Papier-mâché Fox were trained upon us as we had our conversation. Occasionally the neighbor cat would casually walk in through the front door march around the kitchen like he was supposed to be there and exit out the back.

Angelo could not have been more hospitable and I relished our conversation while the tape was rolling and our lengthy discussion afterwards about recording in Anacortes, favorite lyricists, and my impending trip to Sasquatch. I’m trying something different this time and instead of releasing the podcast after the interview excerpt, I’m publishing it first. Therefore the podcast has been available for sometime now and I highly suggest you give it a listen, there’s so much that you’ll miss if you only read this heavily abridged interview. You can find the podcast on our website or in itunes.

Brian Snider

You grew up in the French Alps (you’re our first international guest), what was it like to grow up there?

Angelo Spencer

It’s pretty neat, I’ve never really been to the Rocky Mountains, but it’s probably the same as Colorado, I would say. The same environment. It’s a lot of small little towns and valleys and mountains.

How do you think that effected you musically?

I like mountains, I can’t imagine myself living in a flat part of the world. I like the feel of the desert, there’s no trees, just a bunch of rocks like glaciers… not a lot of life. And I always like music like, landscape music. Ennio Morricone’s The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, was my first memory of listening to music and being like, “wow, this is good, I like this.” I was 4 or 5. I like music that brings you images of desolate landscapes.

What brought you from France to the US and more specifically the Pacific Northwest?

A girl. We hung out in France and started dating, and we decided to have a kid together. I was still in France and her parents were going to move from New York to Seattle. I was like, “well, let’s move with them.” Previously I did a cross country [trip] from New York to the west coast, and I really liked it there. I went to Anacortes, Seattle, Bellingham, Olympia, Portland. I liked it way better than the East coast.

On World Garage you use English, French, and Farsi Lyrics.

I wanted to experiment with French because I was never able to write anything in French before. I was just too shy to sing in my own language. Now it feels more natural. English? I don’t know why… it was just in English, it just happened that way.

Did you listen to many French bands when you lived in France?

Not so much. There’s two groups of people, those who listen only to French music, and the other group is only going to listen to American or British music, and those two groups of people don’t mix. So for the artists it’s a statement to sing in French. Or you start your own band and sing in English. I was part of the snobs listening pretty much only to American music. I grew up in that environment, so to start a band and sing in broken English, your friends don’t understand it anyway, it doesn’t really matter.

I never really considered that there would be a bias or a divide like that.

Only a few bands do the crossover. Recently this happened to me. I have this booking agent who asked this venue for a show for me, while on tour, and the venue listened to my new album and was like “oh no, there some songs in French, we don’t want him.” They just want pure exotic American music. It’s bizarre.

How do you approach recording your albums?

I brought some ideas, and we just made things up. There was nothing rehearsed beforehand, it was just on the spot happy accidents and building things. Some really cool stuff happened, really weird happy accidents that totally made some songs. There was a plan but nothing official.

You use a fair amount of auto-tuning on World Garage, which surprised me. It’s not really associated with indie music.

I discovered that people in North Africa have been using it for years, and it mixed so well together. It has a bad rap now. All those people in North Africa still use a lot of phaser on guitars, which was popular in the 70’s and 80’s. I think auto-tune’s going to come back. When you have a weak voice like me it’s like singing keyboard. It’s hard to control, so there’s always weird flickering. There’s always a surprise in there. I don’t know what it does to my brain, but I love it.

What are you working on now?

We started recording a new album in Anacortes last July, but I got so busy. I was to record an album soon. With Lindsay [Schief] we were talking about writing some songs together. I want to do an album with a lot of back and fourth, male and female singing, kind of like Bollywood style. I want to make a really happy album, I don’t want some whiny singing, I want really full of life singing.**

Until Angelo told me so, I had no clue that his albums were essentially the product of improvised recording sessions. That speaks volumes about how talented a musician he is, as most songs sound well thought out and carefully designed. It also speaks to the artists that he has surrounded himself with over the years, far too many to list here. Angelo Spencer is a true gem of the Pacific Northwest and though not a native, he’s just as good as one, we’re lucky to have him right here in our back yard making music.

Angelo is taking a break from performing in order to work on new material and hopefully record a new album. You can purchase all of Angelo’s music at Krecs.com and you can hear him lend his talents to numerous projects including (but not limited to) Ruby Fray, Arrington De Dionyso, Kimya Dawson. You can stay up to date on all Angelo’s comings and going’s at angelospencer.com.

And don’t forget to check out the podcast for this interview, either on the website or in itunes.

Tags: ANGELO SPENCER, Arrington de Dionyso, ennio morricone, et les hauts sommets, french music, indie music, KARL BLAU, kimya dawson, LAKE, OLYMPIA, PNW, solid home life, the good the bad and the ugly
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interview with lindsay schief (solid home life, LAKE)

May 23, 2012 in interviews, lindsay schief

photo by lindsay, taken at Dead Goat, Whidbey Island

The more I thought about Lindsay Schief and her career, a pair of words continued to reverberate in my brain, coincidence and fate. Generally these words are mutually exclusive and while in the presence of a fated event one cannot call it coincidental. Had she not left her home in Michigan and moved to Los Angeles she might never have met Ashley Eriksson, and Andrew Dorsett who she would later form LAKE with. Had a friend of hers from Michigan not moved to Olympia, she might not have found herself in the PNW. Had she not met Eli Moore, who was also a founding member of LAKE, she might not have encouraged him to give Ashely a phone call while he was visiting LA. Lastly had she not then left Olympia for Portland, she might not have collaborated with Greg Olin to make one of my favorite albums, Solid Home Life.

Sure anyone’s life is full of these “if you hadn’t” moments, what makes Lindsay’s special is that it seems to have happened so many times and resulted in such beautiful music.

Lindsay Schief had been on my radar for a few years, LAKE (this won’t shock anyone) quickly became my favorite band. I’d been hoping to interview them for some time (we’re still working on that) but in the mean time I stumbled across something called Solid Home Life, a recently released album for PIAPTK records. It featured Lindsay and Greg Olin, known mostly for the band Graves, and a who’s who of other Northwest artists such as Karl Blau and Nate Ashley. This deceptively simple and sweet album was in effect a musical journal for their lives for about two years. I don’t think I’d even finished listening to the album preview on Bandcamp before I sent her an email asking for an interview.

There’s no question that she grew up musically inclined. Her Dad was a professional musician, and now plays in Eddie and the Breakers. Her sister’s followed in Lindsay’s footsteps and found themselves in bands such as The Mona Reels, and The Family Stoned. Her sisters Steph and April also appear as back up singers on Solid Home Life. It would seem that Lindsay was fated to become a musician, yet were it not for a series of coincidental meetings, it’s anyones guess as to where she would be today.

Early on Lindsay began playing in Lyrebird with Kanako Wynkoop and then later in the intriguingly named Encyclopedia of Fun. She’s worked with past secretly-important person Karl Blau both as his touring band and on his album, Nature’s Got Away. And has also collaborated with Adrian Orange (of the secretly-importantcast theme song) and Greg Olin, Solid Home Life. She found her place however in LAKE, a relationship that spanned over six years and five albums. As the band prepares to go out on tour this Summer, Lindsay will not be joining them, instead focusing on school (she’s attending Evergreen in the Fall) and her own solo projects. I wouldn’t count her out of LAKE entirely, I’m sure she’ll appear with them again at some point. Now she is stretching her musical prowess by playing bass in the very different Angelo Spencer et les hauts Sommets.

Lindsey’s songs not surprisingly are full of heavy and catchy beats, with soft and sultry vocals that often take little unexpected twists and turns in a pleasing way the hits you right in the gut. LAKE’s 2009 release Let’s Build a Roof featured the dark and elegiac Gravel, written by Lindsay. It was one of the stand out songs on the album and last year received one of k-records highest honors, a Dub Narcotic remix. There is a neglected myspace page under the name Islindz that features a number of her solo works that are true works of art, as well as demos for songs that would later be recorded by LAKE, I highly suggest a visit.

I made the hour drive from my home down to Olympia, the unlikely hotbed of northwest music still twenty years after the hight of grunge. In reality Seattle music is rarely born out of the metropolis, it comes from places like Anacortes and Olympia. Home to k-records and Evergreen state college, Olympia was mini-Portland before Portland was well, Portland. The art scene is quirky, unique, and thriving, it helps assist the massive subculture of crunchy artists, organic farmers, and lost souls. It’s almost too easy to forget that this is also the state capitol of Washington.

I met Lindsay at the little house she shares on the west side of town with her boyfriend and fellow musician Angelo Spencer. The plan had been to record outside in their garden, but as is the case even on a nice day in the PNW, the rain can come out of nowhere an it did. Instead we settled for the kitchen, where we were watched over by a papier-mâché fox, and I was treated to a fresh homemade coffee cake.

The first thing you might notice upon meeting Lindsay are her eyes. I want to call them gray, but then I’m the guy who thought my wife’s eyes were brown for almost two years (they’re green) so they are probably some variety of blue. They look like the kind of eyes that would write her music, clandestine and full of emotion. We talked about gardening, and making a dandelion cordial, before finally settling in and talking about music.

I want to mention just how welcoming Lindsay was to me, and I want to give a big thanks for taking the time to talk, it was an absolute delight, and proof that the PNW not only has the best artists but also the nicest. Once again what follows is just a very small excerpt from our entire conversation, to hear the full interview which is much longer and more in-depth, check out the podcast available in itunes or right here.

brian snider

You’re From Michigan. How did you end up in the Pacific Northwest?

lindsay schief

When I was about 22 or so, I was having a real tough time in Michigan. I was feeling like things were adding up in a way that were signs letting me know that I needed to get out of there and do something else. So like a naive young person, I just sold all my things, and bought a train ticket to Southern California. This was sort of before the internet was popular and I just had a friend of a friend who I’d never met who lived in Northridge in the Valley. I didn’t know anything about it. I thought that Northridge sounded like a beautiful country town in the Golden State. I got there and it was horrible. I had a hard time admitting it to myself that it wasn’t what I expected or wanted. I ended up staying for a year and a half, and that’s where I met some of my band mates, Ashley (Eriksson) and Andrew (Dorsett). Then I ended up moving up to Olympia, because a friend of mine from Michigan had just moved there. I went up to visit him and just loved it. So I went back to LA and got my stuff and just left.

You’re a founding member and also the “L” in LAKE. How did that band come together?

When I was in LA, my first friend that I made was Ashley. She was a friend of my roommate and she called the house looking for him one day, I picked up the phone and we ended up talking for three hours. She was 17 and I was 23. Then we made a plan to hang out. She was a budding songwriter at the time, she would have me play parts and learn singing parts for her songs. She was going to some kind of arts high school, and that’s where she met Andrew Dorsett, so the three of us started playing music together. Then when I decided to leave LA it was sad to leave them behind but I needed to do it.

Then, about a year later, Ashley decided to move up here [Olympia] with her boyfriend at the time, Kenny, he’s the “K” in LAKE. I’d been up here for a year and met Eli [Moore] and I really looked up to Eli, and liked his music so much, and I always wanted to play with him, but I didn’t think it would ever happen. Then eventually Andrew also moved up. But before that it was me the L, Ashley, Kenny, and Eli. That was the four founding members of LAKE. As time went on Kenny moved back home to LA and Adam Oelsner joined the band, and so did Andrew. Late Adam left and Markly Morrison joined the band, there was an overlap, at one point we were a six piece.

How do you feel your role in LAKE has changed since the band was founded in 2006?

At the beginning I was very timid, I started off just playing drums. But over the years I’ve learned how to play some bass lines and started singing lead on a couple songs, getting out from behind the drum kit. Something has really changed in the last week, which is that I’m stepping away from LAKE. I used to be a committed member of the band- things have been changing for LAKE very recently, and I’m going to be going to school in the Fall, so I’m not really in the band. It’s not like anything bad happened and I quit the band, I’ll still probably end up playing with those guys here and there, I just couldn’t be so committed to the project anymore. I really wanted to shift my focus over to school and also my own music. It’s been like a relationship. It felt sad to admit that I was ready to move on. I feel like it’s a positive thing, for everyone involved, because in a way I felt like because I was ready to move on but wasn’t ready to admit that, I started to feel like I was holding things back, because I was so reluctant to move forward and commit.

You come from a musical family. Just about everyone in your family is involved with music.

My dad is a full time musician. Since I was little he’s always been the piano player for every church we went to, he was always the bandleader. My dad grew up playing organ for a baptist church since he was 5- he started playing when he was five. He’s in a band now, a surf band called Eddie and the Breakers, my dad’s name is Ed. My Mom was the lead praise and worship singer at the church, she was a beautiful singer. And I have four younger sisters and all of us grew up singing together a lot in the kitchen harmonizing. I was the first one to start picking up instruments. Sometimes I think of myself as the Brian Wilson of my family, really in my head and concerned with composing and recording. Looking back I wish I had pulled a Brian and forced them to sing with me and do parts, like Brian Wilson did with his brothers. He’d make them sing parts he’d written. I moved out here and one by one my sisters followed me, in the order of age, and now a couple still live out here and a couple live near our home town. The youngest two were in a band called the Mona Reels with Peter Connelly. My sister April keeps collecting instruments and is multi-tracking. She puts out a Christmas album every year. She does covers and writes her own Christmas songs. My sister Steph just moved back to Michigan to pursue music, because she wanted to take lessons from our dad. We didn’t take lessons even though we were a real musical family. So each of us had to forge our own path with that. Playing with LAKE was a huge learning experience for me, playing with other people.

You just recently put out an album with Greg Olin of Graves, called Solid Home Life. And it’s probably one of the sweetest albums I’ve heard in a long time. It also has an interesting story attached to it. Can you explain the origins of that record?

I first met [Greg Olin] in Olympia. Then about a year later we played together on Karl Blau’s Nature’s Got Away. Then I moved to Portland, and I ran into Greg and there was this vibe there. There was some sort of attraction to each other, we just made a plan to hang out, and right away he was like, “hey, I was working on this song, do you think you could play the drums for it?” It just sort of built up, he had a couple songs he’d written, and then I started writing a couple songs. I was really inspired by him-his way of so easily writing a song, playing a couple of chords, and improvising lyrics and we’d come up with ideas. We’d just record everything we did, and people would come over and our friends would end up playing on those songs. Over the course of a year or two we ended up having a collection. We never played out, it wasn’t a ‘let’s go and play a show,’ type of band. It was just for us in a way. I think both of us were looking for a solid home life. We both really love domesticity and the idea of simple things, and a nice time at home. [Greg] was always really good about keeping it going, he was the driving force. He basically did all the foot work to get this put out, and I really appreciate that about him, because I don’t know the first thing about putting an album out.

So there was no structure to it necessarily, it was more loose?

He’d be like, “here’s the song that I’ve been thinking about, here’s the chorus.” And he’d just play it over and over so relaxed, laid back. And I’d be like, “what if we did this… or changed that… or added this.” It was so easy, it’s almost like there was no effort involved, not that we weren’t trying. It just came to us so easily.

When you listen to that album now, does it feel like a slice of time right out of your life?

Definitely, it brings back a lot to listen to it. It was such a nice time. The album took years of casually recording and doing overdubs. It spans quite a bit of time, and each song reminds me of things that we were doing or ways it felt to hang out together. It feels good to look back on that time and have it all condensed down to this album. It’s like a journal.

How is it that you didn’t feel defined as a drummer and began to branch out and play other things like bass or keyboards?

I’ve never felt like a very good drummer, I haven’t taken very many lessons, I don’t ever practice, I just go to band practice and do my best. Sometimes I’m in the mood and it’s awesome, sometimes we’ll play a show and I would leave feeling terrible. I’ve never personally defined myself as a drummer, even though I know I am one. Because Andrew [Dorsett] is a really good drummer there were certain types of LAKE songs that Andrew was good at and I had a harder time with. So he would play drums on a couple songs, and I was like “what am I going to play?” A lot of the time I would just play tambourine, then Adam [Oelsner] left the band and it left a couple of bass parts open, so I expressed interest in learning bass. I felt that it was rounding out my musicianship, to get out from behind the drums and play something else. I didn’t set out to just be a drummer, I want to get back to my roots playing other instruments.*

I still don’t know which word to use, coincidence or fate. Was this a case of a remarkable sequence of circumstances that had no apparent connection? Or were these chance meetings and life changes the work of some supernatural being? Lindsay was fated to find a life in music, but could you chalk up her phone call with Ashley, her friend who moved to Olympia, or collaboration with Greg Olin, as coincidental, happy accidents that led to wonderful music. Is Apollo looking down from mount Olympus maneuvering people around, pushing them together, and ensuring that the right people find one another to give us the fruits of their labor.

Though Lindsay is stepping away from LAKE, we can look forward to what will without question, be some wonderful solo work. And then there’s the latest incarnation of the ever evolving Angelo Spencer et les hauts Sommets. I think that the essence and energy of this band will be very good for her, I look forward to seeing them in action. You can catch her performing with Angelo Spencer this Friday at Folklife in Seattle. LAKE’s albums are all available at krecs.com. And finally, Solid Home Life is available on Cassette and a limited pressing of blue vinyl with digital download through PIAPTK records. You can stream the entire album at solidhomelife.bandcamp.com.

Please don’t forget to check out the full podcast interview right here or in itunes. There’s so much great stuff you’ll miss if you don’t give it a listen.

Tags: ANGELO SPENCER, ashley eriksson, eddie and the breakers, eli moore, Gravel, Greg Olin, INDIE ROCK, k-recs, KARL BLAU, LAKE, lindsay schief, Nate Ashley, PNW, solid home life, the mona reels
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interview with josh kornbluth

April 25, 2012 in interviews, josh kornbluth

photo by: wiliam mercer mcleod

It was 2006 and I was a recent graduate from art college with a BFA in theater and writing. I was getting on a plane to fly down to Sundance, Utah for three weeks of artistic enlightenment. I was going there to be a stage manage new play developmental workshops, so the enlightenment didn’t necessarily apply to me. Which is a little like being a teachers aid, except you’re in charge of the teacher too. There were five plays, a musical, and a solo performance, all in early developmental stages. As a hopeful playwright I was most interested in watching writer’s progress over three weeks, I ended up falling in love with something very different.

Josh Kornbluth was the solo performer, and he arrived at the mountain sanctuary with his director David Dower, and an idea. Democracy, that was the idea. Three weeks later he left with a dozen improv sessions and a rough outline for the show that would eventually become Citizen Josh. The idea was so simple and broad that it seemed impossible that he could hone it down to something specific and focused. I was lucky enough to have a front row seat as he improvised his way through stories on the idea of Democracy.

I had discovered Spalding Gray the year previous and was busily devouring everything from him that I could get my hands on. To meet Josh at that time in my life and watch him work, was just unbelievable. Since Gray’s death in 2004, I can say with complete sincerity that Josh Kornbluth might be the preeminent monologist in America. Beginning in the late 1980’s he began amassing a repertory of some of the most funny, smart, somber, and poignant monologues around. They include Red Diaper Baby, Haiku Tunnel, The Mathematics of Change, Love and Taxes, Ben Franklin Unplugged, Citizen Josh, Andy Warhol, Good for the Jews? among others.

After ten years of performing, he turned three of his early plays into the book Red Diaper Baby. In 2001 his monologue Haiku Tunnel was turned into a narrative film directed by his brother Jake. It played at Sundance and was picked up by Sony Classics. Red Diaper Baby was also filmed by the amazing documentary filmmakerDoug Pray(Scratch, Hype) and released as a concert film, and The Mathematics of Change will soon get the same treatment. Josh and Jake are currently hard at work finishing up their second narrative film, Love and Taxes.

Josh it seems has never had a shortage of great material to perform. Whether he’s talking about being a terrible legal secretary, his major tax problems, hitting the mathematic wall at Princeton, or growing up in New York in the 1960’s to committed Communist parents. There’s much that one could say about Josh’s work, but one thing you cannot say is that it’s not original.

My battle with technology was ever present throughout this interview. In fact this is the second time I’ve talked with Josh. The first recording, which was completed in late February was lost immediately after the interview concluded. I can’t thank him enough for being such a good sport and taking the time to answer my questions once again. An hour is far to short a time to really get into Josh and his incredible body of work, but it’s a good place to start.

You might notice that the written interview is somewhat shorter than in the past. These written excerpts are designed to give you a taste of what you will find in the full podcast here or in itunes. We had a wonderful conversation, that covered a range of topics including Josh’s take on the Mike Daisey situation.

brian snider

Probably the most central underlying theme in your work has to do with your parents raising you as a communist.

josh kornbluth

Yeah, I didn’t think everyone was being raised Communist when I was a kid, but I didn’t realize until I got a little older just how few of us there were. If I started telling stories about myself, that was one of the obvious things to talk about because it was just so weird. And because it’s such an outsider[y] thing.

Where did you get the idea to start getting on stage and tell personal stories, and what made you think you could even do that?

Really, I didn’t think I could. I was a journalist at the time, I hadn’t been a performer. I was in my mid/late twenties- journalist sounds like I was breaking the Watergate story, I was copyediting at this newspaper in Boston. A friend of mine brought me to see Spalding Gray, who was doing a retrospective of his shows starting with Sex and Death to the Age 14. I was enchanted by Spalding; by his voice, and the focus of the audience. I just loved everything about it. But I didn’t think I could do it because I didn’t have any traditional training at all. I wanted to do it, I thought it would be cool, I didn’t think I could but I tried. When I saw Spalding Gray I just thought that would be such a great form. I guess because I wanted to be a writer and to me Spalding’s stuff, in a really good way was so literary. The connection of the audience to the storyteller had the same rewards and demands on attention span that you would have for a short story or a novella. It felt like this beautiful combination of this theatrical and literary experience.

How did you find places to get up on stage back then?

The first thing I did, there was this bar called T.T. The Bears Place in Cambridge Mass., at the time, and I had some acquaintances, a group called Scruffy the Cat, that was a cool local group. And they were doing acoustic nights in the middle of the week. So I just had this idea, “oh, what if I went in between the two sets?” I asked one of the guys and he said he would let me do that in condition for me letting him use on stage the Martin guitar that my father and step-mother gave me. Basically I just set up this thing that I was going to do, that I had never done before, and I told people about it. It was real stupid or risky- but it didn’t feel that risky, because you’re just being humiliated maximally in front of just the people who have come to acoustic night. I would have done this in 1986-87, which was about what my father told me about sex and communism, probably it will be one of those things that people do, that doesn’t work out.

Bizarrely it worked out. that got me a booking as part of this comedy review. Then I followed a bunch of my friends to San Francisco. The way I got booked initially for my first monologue in ’89, a friend told me there was a space open in North Beach. This guy Enrico Banducci who ran the Hungry I club which had all these great folk and jazz acts, and a lot of great comedians that he’d discovered. But he had a lot of Tax problems and he had a place called Banducci’s, but he was the cook, the owner let him book this little place and he let me do a thing there.

Was there a specific moment, or did you just gradually realize that you were making a career of this?

I was doing my second show, Haiku Tunnel, which was about my day job which I was still doing, as a really bad legal secretary. I got my first professional gig- it was like $50- maybe they weren’t even paying me, but they weren’t charging me. I was going down to LA to perform and I invited my brother Jake to come with me, and Jake said, “Well, this is it, clearly you’re on your way. You should quit your job.” So I did, also I might have been very close to getting fired. For the most part was able to stay quit for twenty-some years.

Anyone whose seen your shows might assume that it’s something that you’ve written down and rehearsed, but that’s not how you create your shows. Can you describe that process?

I found that first time I set up at Enrico Banducci’s, I’d planned to write it like a play and memorize it, and then perform it. As the date approached it was clear that I wasn’t writing it. I was going to do something, people were going to show up and what I did out of desperation was improvise, I just told stories. And I just kept doing that and it became a system. I worked with a sequence of directors and for over a decade with David Dower, with David we’ve refined the system. What I do is improvise at least tens of times some times hundreds of times, or between tens and hundreds. All my stuff is developed in front of an audience through improvisations. As I do these improvs certain stories and certain themes come out, and my collaborator will help me put it into a structure like an outline. But I still won’t be writing stuff down, by the time the show opens it’s pretty much word for word.

In 2001 you transition from the monologue and made a narrative film with your brother Jake, based on your monologue Haiku Tunnel.

There was a time after I did Red Diaper Baby Off-Broadway, in ’92, that made it seem like I might be potentially hot property. I was taken on by a couple of agents at the William Morris agency. So what happened was that I got optioned. Red Diaper Baby was optioned by Universal pictures, and Haiku Tunnel got optioned by Miramax. So I had these two screenplays, one of which, Haiku Tunnel I would star in. Then they both went into what’s called turnaround, so they didn’t make the movie and then it sort of died.

But I’d worked for several years to try to make both as feature films. My Brother Jake said, “We can do it. We can do it ourselves.” He had been working as a PA, volunteering and working his way up. He learned stuff by being a first AD on feature films. We raised money with Pizza parties and people invested and we made the film. Then it got into Sundance and picked up by Sony Classics.

You’re just finishing your next film based on your monologue Love and Taxes. What are the differences between the two films?

The really big difference is that Haiku Tunnel is completed and Love and Taxes isn’t. Haiku Tunnel is a very simple story, it’s about a guy who does not mail a bunch of letters, important letters, and he tries to cover it up and things go awry. It was also pretty compact, it took place in this office, and his apartment with very little transition. It was a good movie to start with. It’s the kind of thing that lends itself to making a movie inexpensively, not that many sets, not that many characters. Love and Taxes to me is a dark and lonely story about this guy who is isolated, and it’s about a time in my life when I was.

You have a book that includes three of your early monologues, Red Diaper Baby, Haiku Tunnel, and The Mathematics of change. Are there plans for another book like that?

Yes, in fact I’m going to do it soon. I have a friends Susie Bright, she’s like the queen of erotica. She’s working with Audible.com, so soon I’m going to be making an audio book for the three monologues in Red Diaper Baby. The other thing is that I’m going to make an e-book of three later monologues, Citizen Josh, Ben Franklin Unplugged, and Love and Taxes, all three that I did with David Dower. And I’m going to make those at least as an e-book, then I can make, hopefully an audiobook.

Did you ever expect that within your career that you would get the chance to do things like turn your monologues into a book?

No. It’s ironic, I had an ambition to be a writer and couldn’t ever meet a deadline, and so I ended up, through failing, doing this form where I talked my stuff out. That that would then be transcribed and then be turned into a book, it’s really nice and weird. But I didn’t really think I’d be able to do it for a living, or do it continually. It’s really amazing to me still. I was thirty when I did my first monologue, which I didn’t think was going to go anywhere, and thirty to me is crazy young now. It still feels new and amazing to me that I get to do this. It’s a tremendous privilege.*

What intrigues me about Josh Kornbluth’s life is how it unfolded. Inspired by Spalding Gray, he attempted to take on the monologue as well. Twenty plus years later he has accomplished a life time’s worth of work, books, films, a stage career, and very soon an audiobook. There’s still so much more to come from Josh, and I look forward to where he takes us next.

If you live in the Berkley area (or just happen to be stopping by) you can see Josh performing three of his early monologues at the Ashby stage. Red Diaper Baby April 30th, Haiku Tunnel May 21st, and The Mathematics of Change June 18th. For all things Josh Kornbluth go to his website joshkornbluth.com. Look for the concert film The Mathematics of Change soon on DVD, and their narrative film Love and Taxes, sometime next year.

Please don’t forget to check out the full podcast interview right here or in itunes. There’s so much great stuff you’ll miss if you don’t give it a listen.

Tags: andy warhol good for the jews?, ashby stage, ben franklin unplugged, citizen josh, david dower, doug pray, enrico banducci, film, haiku tunnel, jake kornbluth, Josh Kornbluth, love and taxes, Mathematics of change, monologist, monologue, red diaper baby, spalding gray, sundance
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interview with jessica dobson (deep sea diver)

March 27, 2012 in interviews, jessica dobson (deep sea diver)

Back on March 10th The Shins were making their long awaited return as the musical guest on Saturday Night Live. In a picture that was circulating a lot (in my world at least) was the band and cast members of SNL, and right in the middle of the picture sandwiched between James Mercer and Jonah Hill, on the same stage as Tom Hanks, was Jessica Dobson. She’s not the type of person who seems to be star struck by being on an iconic television show seen before millions. She might not have been awestruck but I was.

Deep Sea Diver’s Jessica Dobson has a story that serves as both a cautionary tale and a success story. By the time she was nineteen she had a recording contract with Atlantic records. A phenomenal opportunity that most musicians will never get. By the time she was twenty-two she had recorded two full length solo albums, neither of which would ever be released, and then she was dropped from her label. You only get one shot at the majors, if it passes you by you’re most likely done and you move on. It’s a rarity to get a second chance.

It’s a testament to Dobson’s talent as a musician that she’s not just another cautionary tale. She struck out on tour as the guitarist for Beck, and later as the bassist for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. She went back to Phil Ek (who recorded the second ill fated solo Atlantic album) and recorded a new batch of songs. Impatient with the bureaucratic label system and probably still with a sour taste in her mouth, she self released the New Caves EP, the first release for Deep Sea Diver. Its success pushed her to start recording a full length, History Speaks. It took a year and a half of torment and tinkering before it was released, but the final result is one of the most powerful debuts I’ve ever heard.

It was a Sunday night two days after the History Speaks record release show, I was busily trying to finish an article when I distracted myself with a video that had been sitting on my screen since the following Wednesday. No more than five minutes later I was buying the album on Bandcamp. My heart was pounding like I’d just run a marathon, this is what happens when I find something so amazing that I don’t know what to do with myself.

I assumed that History Speaks was Deep Sea Diver’s well honed and expertly crafted third album, their masterpiece. That it’s actually their debut is astounding, and makes you wonder just how much better they could get. DSD (As I’ve come to refer to them when I’m feeling lazy) with Dobson at the helm, along with her husband Peter Mansen, John Raines, and Michael Duggan work as a cohesive unit as strong as steel. They take you from indie rock reminiscent of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, to beautiful piano infused ballads. What sets Deep Sea Diver apart from anyone you might want to compare them to are the truly unique melodies that just feel really good rattling your bones.

Of course Dobson’s voice is what haunts me even when I’m not listening to DSD. It’s like a bottle rocket, blasting off, weaving and wobbling, twisting and turning in ways I can’t recall having heard before, then it explodes. Her voice sounds redolent to numerous great singers, but I don’t imagine that it’ll be long before those singers are compared to her. If you can’t tell I think that Jessica Dobson and Deep Sea Diver are about the best thing since sliced bread. If you haven’t bought their album yet, do so, or we seriously need to reconsider our friendship.

This brings me back to March 10th and SNL where Dobson performed with The Shins as their new guitarist. It was just three days later that Jessica and I spoke, two days later she would head out on tour with The Shins. I felt extremely lucky to have an hour to talk with someone as fun, and talented as she is. The week of its release History Speaks was the number one album at Bandcamp. In June DSD will join Dobson on tour and open for The Shins. For DSD it’s only a matter of time before they are seriously recognized.

My conversation with Jessica was absolutely delightful. I came away with an even greater respect for what she has been able to accomplish given her rocky start. What follows is just a sampling of the full interview. You can, and absolutely should check out the full podcast interview here, or in itunes. It’s the best fifty minutes you’ll spend all day, there’s plenty that isn’t included in this excerpt.

Brian Snider

How long have you been in Seattle?

Jessica Dobson

It’s been a year, a really awesome year.

And before that you were living in Los Angeles?

Yeah, I grew up in Southern California: born and raised.

While you were in Los Angeles, the city caused you to consider quitting music. What was it about California that made you want to quit?

LA breeds that handout kind of community. It’s just shoulder rubbing and it’s a lot more materialistic than I think the Northwest is. It’s a really uninspiring place to be, I personally like the quiet, we [her and her husband fellow Deep Sea Diver Peter Mansen] live out very close to the woods and a lot of parks. I got tired of the LA rat race and it’s nice to be away from that. I wasn’t too inspired by the music scene down there, in Seattle there’s a lot more going on and it seems… not that it’s any easier to come up in this scene, but there’s a lot more support.

What is it that makes the Northwest more bearable than Los Angeles?

It’s definitely slower paced. I love how spread out the city is, where you have all your different boroughs, Ballard, Capitol Hill. I find myself going out less. Seattle people are spoiled, because in Los Angeles you drive everywhere and you have to have a car or else you’re crusin’ with your mom. In Seattle you don’t have to have a car. So I find myself walking, running, biking, so much more. But getting to shows, I feel like I get to the ones I really want to see, whereas, living in California I felt like I had to be out every night and see everything. Here I have more time to be at rest, and I’m fine being in my basement making music six nights out of seven and just going out once and being inspired by the bands I think are sweet.

You’ve been a touring member of Beck, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and now The Shins. How has playing in those bands helped you shape your own music?

I think anytime you spend time getting into the mind of another songwriter it rubs off on you. With Beck, that was when I started really getting into pedal-world of different fuzzes and effects. With the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s, that was just bass and I became a better bass player. It’s funny because I’m not really a bass player but I played bass for them and that was a pretty interesting experience- and I love them. With The Shins, James [Mercer] actually plays a lot like I do because we grew up listening to the Smiths and a lot of jangly-pop guitar. But he’s obviously a much different songwriter than I am. He’s so good at taking the three chord song and putting such a unique melody on top of it. Where I tend to clutter up songs with what I think are interesting chords, where the melody stands more simple and then the band comes back and is spooning out what doesn’t need to be there. I’ve learned a lot from James and just keeping things simple.

You recorded a solo album for Atlantic records that ended up not being released. What was the story with that?

When I was nineteen I signed a record deal to Atlantic. It’s the age old story of: signed too young, didn’t necessarily have the right management influence, I didn’t have the right team around me. I got lost in the system and recorded a record that didn’t even sound like me. So by the time it was finished I was adamant about it not being released, and so we scrapped it. Then we recorded another one with Phil Ek up in Seattle, which was awesome, but it never got released because all the momentum was lost. There’s actually two full lengths I recorded from age nineteen to twenty-two on Atlantic records. Then I got off the label and released New Caves Ep- self released it, this is Deep Sea Diver. At the time at Atlantic I was just going under my name, then it became Deep Sea Diver. It’s funny because I’ve recorded two full lengths, but this [History Speaks] is the first Deep Sea Diver full length, which is really exciting.

With that first recording was there a feeling like this is your shot and you’ve got to make it work because most people won’t even get that opportunity?

When I was driving back from LA and the offer had come through, I remember thinking those exact words: so wet behind the ears and wide eyed, this is my only chance. I was just talking to my buddy Jessie Baylin, she has almost the identical story of mine, I think just a different major label. If you don’t have someone who’s actually experienced and been through that [to say] “no actually, keep honing your craft, keep writing good music. If the deal’s right don’t pass it up.” I think back at that time when I was nineteen, labels were throwing out a lot more money for younger talent or new talent that they as a label, “the suits” thought they could manage and bring up. So many opportunities have come my way and they’ve never been any that I’ve gone after, they’ve always just happened to me. I just had no idea at that age.

How did the transition happen from your second full length that wasn’t released to the New Caves EP with Deep Sea Diver?

I was pretty bummed for a while after I got off the label, and I actually hid away, I became a manager of some restaurant and was pretty unmotivated to release anything. But I feel like there were a few pivotal people in my life that kind of slapped me back into the music world. I just released that [New Caves EP] without any expectation, I didn’t know if people still cared. That was a really good stepping stone into the next season of life, which was a lot of touring and playing with Beck and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and buckling down for a full length. It put the wind under the wings.

When I first heard History Speaks, I thought I was listening to a well established band and it really surprised me to learn that the album is currently only available on Vinyl and as a download through bandcamp. Was that a choice, or was that made out of necessity?

In a way I was a bit nervous on waiting on anybody to put it out. I’ve seen plenty of friends self release records and if it does well or if someone’s interested, the labels will come to you. It’s okay to put out your own record and not wait on a label and see what happens. That was my mentality for self releasing this time around. I did not want to have to wait through contracts, I’ve just been through that so much in the beginning of my career. It was actually quite easy, self releasing. Our record label is in our bedroom, there’s boxes of vinyl everywhere and we package it ourselves, and we take it to the freaking post office and it feels really good. It’s awesome, it’s so much work to self release. I’ve never worked so hard in my life on the business side of music. But there’s a lot of really surprising things coming our way that I think wouldn’t have happened if we didn’t put so much work on the front end in. A lot of people are stepping forward and we got this tour with The Shins and obviously me being in the band had an influence on that, I’m not assuming that we would have got it if I wasn’t in the band.

I’m totally not opposed to being on a label, but so many people are getting smart, sometimes it’s just best to self release and get a distribution deal. Sometimes it’s best to just do the label thing, or start your own label, there’s no formula these days. All I care about is putting out good music and if people want to support that, that’s great.

How long did it take to record History Speaks?

We began recording that record in January of 2010 and we literally recorded up until a day before the last song was mixed and sent off to mastering. It was a good year and a half process, which was beneficial because we were able to go back on a few songs and rerecord. It’s different when you get to fully tour on songs and we didn’t necessarily get to do that, so we had to trust our ear and the judgement of our friends, to wade through and see what to chop off and what to keep.

What is it like having that much time to record an album?

It drove me crazy, the times when I had no lyrics but we would set a hard date out for ourselves. It’s weird because sometimes I do so well in really condensed and hard deadlined periods of time. On a couple of those songs I wrote the lyrics the first day I wrote the song and then a year later I rewrote them, and I think they’re so much better, so I don’t think there’s any formula to it. Having a year and a half I never expected for it to take that long, I was just living in the moment and rolling with what my gut told me to do next. Sometimes we had to make some hard decisions to scrap stuff, which then tacked on another month or two to the recording process. We had to remix things, we even remastered the record, there was a lot of- not second guessing but just not settling for half rate. And I think the record is not the same that it would have been if we didn’t make any of those decisions that took more time, but in the end it’s a record that we’re proud of and I’m glad that we sacrificed six months or a year.

Are you the kind of person who keeps a little notebook and constantly writes down ideas as they come to you?

Yeah, it’s usually like, one phrase that sets off a song. Like, You Go Running, was on the front of my field notes, “assisted watch, your lips pulse to the beat of trouble.” I don’t even know where that came from, I just wrote it down and then it became an entire song, six months later. Which is so strange, out of one line it was able to birth an entire story. I don’t understand half the time where these songs and lyrics come from, it’s usually from a phrase I’ll write down or just a word.

You’re going to be going on tour with The Shins, both as a member of the band as well as with Deep Sea Diver, opening for them in the middle of their tour. After that are you going to be diving (sorry) right back into Deep Sea Diver and building that up more?

Every day I’m working on two things, whether I’m on tour with The Shins, it’s focusing on that. But anytime I have to myself it’s working on it [Deep Sea Diver]. It’s an interesting situation, I committed to The Shins and I also released a record and there’s some scheduling things that I have to work around, but Deep Sea Diver is my first love. We’re already writing our second record and so it’s just a lot going on and I’n trying not to focus too much on what I can’t do this year with Deep Sea Diver, but make the shows that we do play count.

Were you surprised by the reaction you got from History Speaks?

Oh Yeah, I was blown away actually, because I knew I was proud of what we put out but I didn’t realize that it would resonate so much with people. It’s so nice to finally have put something out. It’s not the praise of people that I care about but, the genuine response of just, “this is resonating with me,” I think that’s incredible. Because it was really easy to lose track of that over a year and a half- two years. Especially with the history of me being in the music business. With New Caves, that was a cool thing to release and I think it was a stepping stone to History Speaks. I haven’t been able to receive anything like this. Not that it’s the biggest deal in the world, it’s definitely still a slow ship being built and I’m just excited that it seems like there’s a foundation now to stand on. It’s exciting times. I just love packaging up the vinyl and it’s so cool to do it on our own right now.***

Deep Sea Diver at Neumos

Jessica Dobson should or could have ended up little more than a cautionary tale of signing with a major label unprepared at nineteen and having the whole thing fall apart by twenty two. Looking back she doesn’t see that early Atlantic deal as a bad thing, from that she was able to take her genuine talent and make some really amazing music.

Back in February I posted an article from Jesse Thorn of the PRI show Bullseye. In the article he talked about twelve artists who were able to achieve a level of success by doing “their thing”, rather than what a larger organization was pushing them to do. I would add Jessica to that list. She could have gone forward with that first Atlantic recording believing it to be her chance to make it. Instead she took a risk and shelved it, and walked away to do her own thing. She worked hard, took the right opportunities as they came along, and when the stars aligned and the time was right she did her own thing, and self released an outstanding album.

Deep Sea Diver has already begun work on a second album, and they will join the Shins on tour in June. Sometime this Summer you can expect to see History Speaks on itunes. Make sure to check out thedeepseadiver.com for any new music or shows. You can also watch Jessica shred it up on the guitar for the entire tour with The Shins. History Speaks is currently available as a digital download or a limited pressing of vinyl at Bandcamp, with cd’s coming soon.

Don’t forget to check out the full podcast interview here or in itunes. Jessica was a wonderful guest and we really had a great conversation.

Tags: atlantic records, beck, deep sea diver, history speaks, INDIE ROCK, interview, james mercer, jessica dobson, jessie baylin, LOS ANGELES, new caves EP, peter mansen, phil ek, PNW, podcast, the secrelty-importantcast, the shins, tour, yeah yeah yeah's
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