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The Del-Lords

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<a href="http://del-lords.bandcamp.com/album/elvis-club">Elvis Club by Del-Lords</a>

The Del-Lords (L-R): Frank Funaro, Scott Kempner, Eric Ambel, Michael DuClos

Long after the Mileys and Macklemores are forgotten, anyone coming across the music of The Del-Lords will instantly recognize a Grade-A cut of rock ‘n’ roll, a well-muscled sound full of attitude and heartache with lines running back to the 1950s Sun Records roots and 1970s proto-punk but existing in a now that doesn’t tie it down in any one period. This is a band that makes rock relevant to daily existence with a rattle and hum for the working stiffs and everyday lovers. Their songs and the direct, clear cry of the tautly wielded instruments and ruggedly human voices just work so, so well – a testament to how hard it is to make the fundamentals cut a rug without dressing them up in whore’s paint and frilly outfits. A gut level veracity resides at the core of what this New York City quartet does, where conviction and loud guitars grin and offer up tunes to anyone ready to get down in the streets with them.

As enduringly excellent as The Del-Lords’ 80s output remains – the uninitiated are instructed to check out 1984’s Based On A True Story, one of that decade’s under-sung classics – the band’s first new album in 23 years, Elvis Club (released May 14), is, in the Impound’s estimation, the best damn record they’ve ever made. Elvis Club is the sort of slab perfect for The Stooges’ tour bus, quality drinking holes nationwide, and contemplative leather clad rockers everywhere, a thumping, sneakily thoughtful master class in what a classic four-piece rock band can do. This set fully establishes the band’s return to active service this decade after a long hiatus, and cements their spot alongside fellow travelers like The Smithereens and The Mother Hips as keepers of a flame radio and the mainstream press rarely fan appropriately.

From the instant classic opener “When The Drugs Kick In” through the insanely infectious “Flying” right to the end, Elvis Club is one dead solid killer after another, music born from the varied, substantial experience of Scott Kempner (lead vocals, guitars), Eric “Roscoe” Ambel (guitars, vocals), Michael DuClos (bass, harmony vocals) and Frank Funaro (drums, percussion, harmony vocals), whose huge, varied resumes include Kempner’s crucial work with The Dictators and Dion, Ambel’s extensive production/engineering work (though DI encourages y’all to check out his unsung 1995 solo album Loud & Lonesome for a nasty American answer to Rory Gallagher’s heavy rock), as well Funaro’s ever-great stick work with Cracker, Joey Ramone and others. A subtle air of romance hovers in spots, not nostalgia but an appreciation of what endures and how challenging and rare it is to make love – or music for that matter – that lasts. It is a lock for Dirty Impound’s Favorite Albums of 2013, and if there’s any justice, plenty of other roundup lists, too.

We shot a few questions to Ambel and Kempner and here’s what the songwriting phalanx of The Del-Lords had to say.

What is an Elvis Club and how does one obtain membership? Seems like folks have been trying to get into this one since the mid-1950s, and more than a few have died trying.

Scott: Unlike my nickname, Top 10, and as Damon Runyon would say, as for the name ELVIS CLUB, a story goes with it. In the early days of the band, back in the early 80′s, at a few junctures, the four of us found ourselves living under one roof. Eric and Manny shared a railroad flat apartment on East 13th street in the East Village, and often so did Frank and myself. Four of us splitting one can of beans and one can of rice between us.

Meanwhile, our rehearsal space, which was also part clubhouse, office, laboratory, and hang-out, was up on 8th Avenue, in the Garment District, near the Port Authority. A big twelve story former warehouse that had been made into what was essentially an apartment building, except no one actually lived there. Lotsa bands & un-affiliateds (FLESHTONES, THE IG, THE dBs, and get this, MADONNA!!! This is true) rehearsed there. You could split the rent with a few other bands, so you worked out rehearsal schedules, storage, etc., and we were up there on the 6th floor. It was also a neighborhood heavily served by hookers of all shapes and sizes and all else.

No matter what time of day or night, those ladies were out there workin’ it. Back to your question: One day we are walking from East 13th and 1st Ave. to rehearsal – we walked the two and a half miles both ways often, as we were, as Abbott & Costello would say, “financially embarrassed”. So, one day as we reach 8th Ave., one of the hookers looks at us: four black leather jackets, jeans, boots and sneakers, AND a big old pompadour sitting up on each of our heads, she says right out loud, “Whoah, what is this, The Elvis Club?” Not AN Elvis Club, but THE Elvis Club. That is actually from whence this album title derives. Thirty years after the fact.

The Del-Lords have been back together for a few years now and it would have been easy enough to just play the old tunes to old fans as a live act. What prompted the new album and what was it like working on a full-length release again after more than two decades?

Scott: This whole thing reignited with most of the songs in place first. We didn’t get together to play originally. I had gotten together with Eric with the idea of him producing some songs that I had written. There was also the idea of the two of us going out and playing some shows – in Spain, and here at home. You gotta have something else to sell out there these days, and it is truthfully half of a touring artist’s income. By this point, Frank had come aboard, and so had Manny, to what might have turned out to be just Eric and me. So, Eric and I put down some skeletal tracks for a few songs, and the process was suddenly underway.

1984 Debut Album

The idea of going out to play shows after such a long time between drinks without new songs is not one I, nor would I expect Frank or Eric, have any interest in. What would be the point? I take this stuff very seriously. I may or may not take myself too seriously sometimes, but I know FOR SURE I take rock ‘n’ roll VERY seriously. I have my own aesthetics, my own sensibility of what is cool and what is not, and, basically, the present and the future justify the past, and vice versa. To go out and only play songs that are at least 20 years old smacks more of a one-time only benefit situation oldies-style celebration of the past, as opposed to truly revving it up and taking it back out of the garage and onto the street. Everything we do is, to us, within the context of what we’ve already done, so we all feel that if we are gonna put our good name on something it needs to be worthy of our own history. This was the first time since the first record that we had such a relaxed feeling of control, intent, and lack of outside pressure of any kind. It galvanized us in a new way.

I would say this was the best recording experience of the band’s career. With Eric in charge, and the rest of us feeling extremely confident in his being in the producer’s chair, the tone was set from the get-go. Nothing felt labored or forced in any way – a very easy, upbeat feeling of community and purpose. We recorded together, we ate together, we laughed a lot, and we could all feel we were playing better than ever, both as individuals, and as a band.

Eric: When we decided to accept the offer to go to tour Spain in 2010 we decided we wanted to work on new songs as opposed to just doing the old ones. For me, working on Scott’s tunes and playing with the guys again was a real joy. Making the record at my recording studio with my well oiled team made it that much more fun and satisfying.

Aristotle Knows What’s Up

Given the wide experience you guys have in different bands, as solo artists, etc. what is it that makes The Del-Lords appeal to you? What is at the core of your chemistry as a quartet?

Scott: A band is the pure essence of rock ‘n’ roll, both metaphorically and literally. The chemistry comes from the humanity at the heart of it. It is this particular set of guys from whence the chemistry emanates. Who we are comes through in the music. The songs provide the vehicle. Chemistry is an elusive thing, and cannot be willed into existence merely by putting the “best” players together, much like an All-Star team will never have the chemistry of a team that plays together every day. On the other hand, to try and nail it down, define it, shape it, and put it in a box is impossible. That is why, as Little Steven says, when it is there you do everything and anything to keep it together because it is a rare gift, and, in most cases, it is a once in a lifetime occurrence more precious than gold.

Eric: Aristotle said it very well:

“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”

A real band is a truly special thing. Different than a ‘project,’ different than a front guy and some sidemen, it’s like a relay race. Can’t be beat.

Props for naming a tune “Everyday,” particularly given that it sounds like something Buddy Holly might have knocked out if he’d lived into the modern era. There’s also a whiff of Roy Orbison to this one, and both guys float in the backdrop of a few Del-Lords compositions. Are you fans of ol’ Buddy, Roy and early rock ‘n’ roll in general? Why do you think that stuff endures and inspires still the way it does?

Dion

Scott: It is funny that you pick up the spirit of Buddy Holly here, although I know the song title is a clue. The truth is I wrote this one with Dion, and it was specifically written for a scene in a screenplay written by Chazz Palmintieri for a biopic about Dion that Chazz was gonna also direct. The song was written for the scene where the Winter Dance Party tour hits Clear Lake, Iowa. The bus pulls into the motel parking lot, and upon entering the lobby the guys are met with the first TV reports of the fatal plane crash that took Buddy, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper. Buddy had given Dion his guitar to take to the hotel and, when Dion, in a state of shock from the news gets to his room, takes out the guitar, tries to remember that new song Buddy played last night called “Everyday,” and can’t quite remember it, this is what comes out. Poetic license, yes, but it’s a song about friendship, so it is fitting that Dion remembers it this way.

All the first generation rockers, like the great bluesmen, Hank, Cash, Woody, etc. are like holy men to me. Their words and music are scripture, and their movements guided by heaven. They are my spiritual sustenance.

The Del-Lords’ drummer does just what a rock foundation should – play to the songs with strength and instinctual restraint. Tell us a bit about playing with Frank.

Frank Funaro

Scott: Everything starts with the drummer. There is no such thing as a great rock ‘n’ roll band without a great drummer. We have Frank. I have never played with a more simpatico, song-oriented drummer. I have also never had the connection with another drummer the way I do with Frank, especially as it pertains to this band. Frank seems to get better almost time we play together. Frank always plays from within the song, and he is always there at the service of the song, as opposed to the other way around. That is a greater and rarer talent than one would think. Plus, he is my brother, and that too is not to be underestimated in regards to the contribution Frank makes.

Eric: The songs come first. Frank is a superlative “song player”. While recording, we had four great guys (Keith Christopher, Jason Mercer, Steve Almaas and Michael DuClos) play bass with us. It always felt like the Del-Lords with Frank leading the way.

You’ve got “NYC” smack in the middle of the band’s signature logo. What’s so important about New York City? How does it define who this group is?

Scott: NYC, perhaps more than most cities, is never just the place you live; it is also the place that lives with you, like a roommate, like a badge, like a burden, and like a brother or sister. It is in everything we play, and it defines us to a great extent. The songs themselves would be different if not for our town, and we, too, would be different if we came from anywhere else.

Eric: Rock and Roll at its most elemental has always been a hybrid that borrows from different musics (like country and blues). New York City has always been a big part of the hybrid that is The Del-Lords version of rock and roll.

The first time I heard the name “The Del-Lords” I thought it sounded like a gang from the movie The Warriors. Does this feel like a gang after all these years? Does the Three Stooges association still have any resonance?

Scott: Talk about holy men! The Three Stooges are, as Kerouac said, “holy goofs”. They are part of our fabric. A band is a gang. I always felt that a band name had to satisfy three criteria: it needed to sound good as a band name (duh!), it needed to sound like a gang name, and it needed to sound like a bowling team. Mission accomplished!

Danny Barnes

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Danny Barnes by Dorothy St Claire

Interview & Introduction by Sarah Hagerman

To say that genre-defying banjo virtuoso and songwriter Danny Barnes has always followed his own uncanny artistic voice feels like an understatement. He founded the groundbreaking and influential (read: woefully under-appreciated in their time) Bad Livers and since the group stopped touring in 2000, he has produced several fantastic and wide-ranging records of solo output. In his unpredictable live shows he showcases his inventive folkTronics approach, employing Ableton software and effects pedals with his banjo to paint a sonic landscape that infuses electronic sound experimentation and jazz improvisation with the raw essence of Americana and a DIY ethos. He’s collaborated and shared stages with the likes of Bill Frisell, Yonder Mountain String Band, Robert Earl Keen and Dave Matthews, as well as wailed on a flying V guitar with members of the Butthole Surfers. He has even developed his own instrument, the “Barnjo 15,000,” a prototype of a hard body electric banjo with pickups. And he started his own label, Minner Bucket, specializing in limited run cassettes, which we’ll get to later in this interview.

It’s uniquely Barnes’ path, and it certainly inspires a great deal of respect, the occasional head turn, and more than a touch of awe amongst fans and fellow musicians. But what makes Barnes such a vital artistic voice isn’t just his resume, of which we’ve truthfully just skimmed the surface, it’s the fact that, taken as a whole, his career comes into focus as one unified around highly principled systems thinking. It’s an inspired and holistic approach, and when you interview Barnes, you don’t end up merely talking about the latest projects – you end up talking about the processes, correlations and structures that reach far below the surface.

This isn’t limited to just music. Barnes possesses a drive to dig deeper into mechanics of this world and the strange human creatures that inhabit it. What bubbles up in his work is uniquely in his voice, yet it’s filled with bigger truths. In a present era that seems wholly concerned with skimming the surface, playing loose and dangerous with bite sized pieces of information, it’s encouraging – and absolutely crucial – to know there are those out there with an infectious enthusiasm for seeking out real knowledge and drawing genuine connections.

That modus operandi is reflected on Barnes’ latest album, Rocket (2011). Sonically, the album draws heavily on the Barnjo. The instrument lends Rocket a more balls-to-the-wall rock ‘n’ roll feel than previous albums, the songs steeped in both garage murk and sparkly 70s glam. That kinetic electricity struts through the album’s tales of down-and-outs, ne’er-do-wells, and hopefuls that still believe in love. The songwriting, by turns both humorous and frank, explores lives at the crossroads, building on the narrative themes of his previous release, the brilliant Pizza Box. Rocket was accompanied by two other releases, Poison, a cassette of demos, and Angel, a stripped down, acoustic banjo version of the songs. As with any project, it presented its challenges, and we discussed those, as well as his cassette label and the joyful surprises of the artistic process.

For Rocket, you worked with pretty much the same team you worked with for Pizza Box. What was it like working with that team the second time around?

One thing that was really cool about it was we had our language together. When we first met [for Pizza Box] and started working together we had to figure out where everybody was. [This time] it was neat to be able to jump right in and go to work. It felt very comfortable in that regard.

We were in John’s [producer John Alagia] environment, and that means you have to work pretty quick. We probably cut the record in about ten days. We were down in L.A. in this place called The Village. It’s a really cool facility. I was thrilled to work there. So many great records throughout history got made there, like Sly and the Family Stone’s There’s a Riot Going On. It was amazing just to read how many records came through The Village.

You debuted the Barnjo at Northwest String Summit in 2010. What influence did that instrument have on the songwriting for Rocket?

“Rich Boy Blues” and “Safe With Me” were written on an arch top baritone acoustic guitar, but all the other songs were written on the barnjo. That really shapes what comes out. If you limit yourself to working within a certain type of instrument, it really filters the songwriting process. Sometimes I’ve written with piano. I don’t really play the piano, but I can get music out of it. I’ll just sit down and play, and sometimes you find things that you couldn’t find on an instrument that you’re more comfortable with. [In the case of the piano] you tend to think a little more orchestral.

Barnes Playing Barnjo

So with the barnjo, I was working up a tuning and a voicing for that instrument. I was reading that throughout history various records got made by guys that forced themselves to work out of a certain tuning or write it on a different instrument than they would normally play as a way of encouraging their creativity. Because sometimes as a soloist it can be hard to play those real basic changes and those real basic chords because you start to think you’ve got to do something a little more involved or active. So changing it up and picking up an instrument you don’t really play very much gives you a different perspective.

Also, because the banjo is voiced differently, certain ideas fall out in different ways, and sometimes easier than they would on guitar. The guitar has a certain palette. So, I worked with the barnjo thinking it will help me write songs that would have a thematic and harmonic unity.

I can definitely hear that. I really like this album because it’s very rock and roll. It’s a really great side to what you do that some people. Maybe if they’ve been following your career for awhile they know you’ve always had that element, but this brings it to the forefront.

Chuck Leavell

Yeah! That idea about the barnjo came about from my friend Chuck Leavell, who plays in the Stones. I was talking to him several years ago about just being aware of what Keith Richards does on the guitar. On a lot of their records – like Tattoo You – he plays a five-string guitar. It’s like an open tuning with the sixth string removed, which is kind of like a banjo, except instead of a high string you have a low string. So then I was thinking of how the banjo is very similar a lot of Delta Blues guitar. If you listen to all acoustic blues records, like Charlie Patton, the guitar is very proto-rock-and-roll and it was open tuning, which is very similar to the banjo. Then, there’s Chicago Blues where Elmore James and some of those guys would play acoustic guitar with pickups, but then they’d turn up the amp really loud and play with a slide. That was a pretty rough sound. So, there are these lines that get drawn between rock guitar and banjo. There are these places where they converge.

The barnjo is neat because it allows me to play banjo ideas, but also jazz chords and metal. Plus having access to all these effect pedals, you can play really loud. You can use very large amps and crank it up because it’s a solid body. It definitely just has that rock and roll spirit to it.

I noticed a lot of the songwriting themes seemed to carry over from Pizza Box. You’ve spoken about that theme before, i.e. people realizing they are the cause of their own misery. I’m interested in hearing more about what attracts you to that theme.

Carl Jung

Jung wrote a lot about that. He called it the fire. Here’s the thing: you either went through it or you got stuck in it. Poetically and dramatically, as an instrument, I’m very interested in that moment. Everything happens in that instance. I don’t know if people talk about it too much, about how we’re the architects of our own environment and atmosphere. Like have you ever watched Judge Judy or one of those shows? And they have these guys on there that borrowed a whole bunch of money from somebody, or they wrecked somebody’s car. You can see it in their eyes, there’s almost that moment in their eyes where they see, “Okay, I borrowed your car and I wrecked it. I should pay you for this car.” It’s like this little light bulb goes on in their heads, but very quickly they extinguish it. I find that just to be a very interesting human response to stimulus.

I find that it occurs on mass levels, too. As a country or a nation of people, we struggle with that sometimes. As a group on the timeline, we struggle with that issue. If we could lighten up on each other it would be a much better place. But the brain goes through all these plethora of rationalizations and justifications during those moments. It’s unbelievable what the brain will create – as a society or a species or an individual – as the rationalization to an experience. It’s pretty rich ground to mine.

It’s sort of like that with sound, too. If a guitar is recorded properly, it can really only be recorded properly in one way. But if it’s messed up, if you’re screwing with it or you’re processing it or rendering it, there’s a million ways you can mess with it. I just find that broken theme to be more interesting because the possibility hasn’t been nailed down yet. It has more options. The possibilities are all around the corner.

That kind of leads into a blog post of yours I read. It was called “A Possible Aesthetic for Acoustic Music” and you had a similar thought, that “Things can only get perfect in one way, but things can be kind of processed and messed with in lots of ways.”

Cassette Anarchy Logo

Yeah. And I’m not saying that like I know the answer symbolically or in a symbolic logic way, but I suspect that that may be so, aesthetically.

I feel that, especially for acoustic and picking bands, it’s a really radical way to think about recording instead of looking for that quote-unquote “perfect” sound.

I think if you look at it, just as a recording person, there are certain genres that just get the idea of experimenting with sound, and there are certain genres that really stopped doing that. For me, electronic music is this really rich place because they’re constantly messing with sound and making new sonic aesthetics, considerations and structures. I think [electronic music] is super fertile ground for finding new sounds and incorporating new tableaus. But with Americana, there can be a sort of cop out in the sonic palette. I suppose you also have to deal with the fact that you can go back and hear Red Foley and Jimmie Rodgers and Slim Harpo and Johnny Cash. They are in the database [for listeners]. I like to look for new things, and a lot of people that work in electronic music aren’t artists in that sense of being able to play a complicated piece off the sheet music. They are artists in the sense of being able to put something together in a really interesting way. It’s compelling to me.

You had a very honest write-up about recording Angel. You wrote about how you were really reluctant to do that at first, and how the process was a challenge, but it basically boiled down to, as you put it, “leaving in the right mistakes.” How do you know, artistically, what the “right” mistakes are?

I’ve started studying that aesthetic more and paying more attention to it. That’s one thing missing from a lot of records – they have everything polished. It’s like seeing a photo of someone all photoshopped up. They don’t look like real people anymore. [Those mistakes] are the real drama. It’s like that saying, “The truth is stranger than publicity”

Lil’ Heaven And Hell – Blake Style

Normally in my head, I have all these ideas of vertical orchestration for how things could go. Since I’m pretty comfortable with recording, I can visualize it. I can build what I’m thinking about. It’s pretty satisfying in that regard, so it never really occurred to me to just sit and play [for a recording]. Even when I play concerts, I use electronics. That way you’ll have the light and the shadow, like the contrast and variation between those two polarities. Sometimes when I play my gigs I’ll strip it down to just banjo, but it’s part of that polarity; it makes it stronger because the stuff that’s electronic sounds bigger and more interesting. The acoustic and electronic support each other at my shows. I play [acoustic] all the time at home, just hanging out on the porch or in the kitchen, but it just seems so personal. I couldn’t imagine anyone caring.

To record that way [live and acoustic], you’ve got to be set up for it because you get a lot of ambient sounds. I did this job a few years ago, a spoken word project, where I read the book The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Spoken word sounds like it would be easy to just sit down and read, but it’s really hard because your clothes make a noise, or your breathing or the air conditioning turning on and off. Or like those studios in New York when you can hear the subway or elevator going by – it’s distracting. Also, we had just made Rocket at The Village with arguably the best equipment you could buy. And there’s a record that going to be a companion piece to it that was recorded at the kitchen table? But ex post facto, after the fact, it become clear.

Can you explain more about that clarity?

There’s a track called “If You Really Want to Party with Me (Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Can See)” by Busta Rhymes. It’s all based on this messed up bass loop. If you listen to the bass loop, it starts in sort of the wrong place, but it sounds super cool. If you quantify everything around the beat, it’s called gridding it out. You can put every note, every beat, everything that happens directly and perfectly on the grid and get a perfect tone. But the problem is, if you do that, it doesn’t really sound that good. It’s like CGI. It doesn’t have that element of the brushstroke. It doesn’t have that human quality.

When you start working with looping and pedals, what you’re really trying to do is learn how to time it so you can start the loop at the exact right place. And maybe it takes you a year to figure out how to loop a section in your music and start it perfectly. Then you do it perfectly, but you realize it actually sounds better if it’s a little bit off. I realized a few years ago that sometimes a mistake, or what would be considered an audio mistake, can actually further the idea better than a perfect rendering of it would. But you have to be careful about it; you can’t really look at it like a cop out or a way of slacking your work. It has to create the effect that you want.

But me just sitting there playing, trying to get a pristine recording from beginning to end, I can’t build it that way. So, Angel had to be so direct. It had to be a continual performance, four or five minutes of continued inspiration from beginning to end. And something might be a little bit off, like the floor joints might creak or when the sun comes in the window it will gradually warm up the glass and you’ll get this pop. Or your stomach may growl [laughs]. But that might be your best performance on that track all day. You’ve got to figure out what am I going to go with this? Am I going to try and get rid of this? It’s an interesting process, but I was really happy with the end result.

You’ve recently started your own cassette record label, Minner Bucket. If someone were to go up to you and say why cassettes, what would you say?

Minner Bucket Logo

I’ve got this theory that everything exists. There’s this conceit we have as a society because marketing is so insistent in order to make money off of products that as we move linearly through this artificially constructed timeline new products appear and old products disappear. But, for example, take that silent film The Artist that recently came out. Or that there are more Frank Sinatra records now then when he was putting out new records, or that there are more Beatles records, more Jimi Hendrix records now then when he was alive.

I understand all the comments. “Where you gonna get a [cassette] player?” But I find them on eBay and pawn shops. A lot of people I know have them in their cars. But I understand, and I don’t think in mass numbers it’s ever going to appear on the radar. But I never talk about those numbers anyway. But I’m always trying to find out what’s going on with new music, where the new sounds are coming from. Through research I found out that there was a lot of very interesting music coming out on cassette-only. There’s this entire world of really cool artists. There’s a blog called Cassette Gods and they review the weirdest stuff. I get so many cool tapes off of there. I just wanted to participate in that world.

Another thing that’s really cool about cassettes from a microeconomic punk rock perspective is your entry [requirements] are really low. If you’re on your own – and I’m talking completely independent, not on any sort of record label – and you want to make CDs to sell, your entry fee is going to be $750-1000 dollars to get a thousand CDs made. They typically don’t price it too much cheaper than that. If you try to do a smaller run, they charge you more per unit. But with cassettes you can do these really small runs for really cheap. You can get a tape deck and order forty tapes for under $40. Then you can start selling them. If I’m a brand new band, how am I going to sell a thousand CDs? I’m going to give away 40 or 50 of ‘em. I’ll be lucky to sell 100 in a year. But with tapes I can run them off and sell them pretty quick.

The other perspective is from a point of audio reference. I grew up buying records and making tapes off of records. There’s just some really interesting qualities to tape. When the tape speed is really slow, there’s this weird flutter that happens. The sound warbles just a little bit. I could be totally crazy, but if you listen to a cassette a couple times in a row it sounds slightly different.

Another thing that happens on tape is there is a significant noise floor, which is like a filter. With Pro Tools and CDs our noise floor went way down. But I don’t think music sounds that flattering like that. For me, a pristinely recorded acoustic guitar is kind of boring, just because it’s been done so often for so long. But if you start, for instance, with the ‘wrong’ mic then you’re starting to get into something interesting. You’re starting to create a different sound. If you grew up listening to old country, blues or rock-and-roll records, there was that noise floor. To me, that is very flattering to the music. It’s like the difference between 8mm film and a digital movie. 8mm has a look to it that’s more interesting, like a watercolor. Or for instance, if you just shine a light on the stage, you can’t really see it. But if you pump the stage with smoke, then you can see the light. That energy has to have something to relate to, and for me that noise floor is a very critical part of that music. That’s why hip hop and metal – and bluegrass – on cassette sound fantastic.

Its got a lot more character.

Yeah! It’s just like eating in a weird restaurant. You could eat at Chili’s – they are all exactly the same and served up in a certain way – but if you want to go with something weird, you have to go over to this place. For me, it’s like that with music. I still make mix tapes. If you go to someone’s house today and they have a lot of tapes, that’s a person who really likes music.

I think you could take half the bands that are trying to make records right now in Americana or roots music, and instead of going into the studio and dropping $15,000 on the ‘right’ mics and Pro Tools and an engineer who knows what he’s doing, they could buy a four-track cassette [recorder] off eBay for a hundred bucks and do the same songs. It would be ten times better, just in terms of the sound [which] would be so interesting. It would have more of a vibe, you know?

A really interesting record I use as a litmus is the first Latin Playboys record [Editor’s Note: One of DI’s favorite rock gems. Druggy without the drugs!]. That was made on a 4-track. I believe it was actually a faulty four-track, like the speed was weird on it. That record could be one of the greatest records ever made. Another one is that Springsteen record Nebraska. That record is amazing, and it’s made on a four-track.

The challenge with a four-track is you have to do a pre-mix, so you have to make a lot of decisions early on and you can’t back out of it. If you record one thing on a four-track, you’re already painted into a corner. But if you lay down 128 tracks you’ve got ultimate flexibility. I’m not sure the best art comes out of that. Brian Eno talks about that a lot, how in his studios he wants less options. You’re more creative when you have less options because then you can worry about what you’re doing as opposed to worrying about what the setting is. If our aesthetic is to try and make it sound perfect, then what if the meaning of the poetry isn’t enhanced by a perfect recording? Then we’ve just fought against ourselves. Sometimes the meaning of the poetry is better served by a rougher context.

[By recording perfectly] you can miss what’s referred to as “the idiot glee of sound,” like when you’re doing something with your guitar and it shouldn’t work but it does. You get this weird look on your face; you’re so amazed. It’s that obsession of looking for something interesting sonically. I’m fairly convinced that’s one of the things that makes contemporary records kind of boring – there’s just not enough noise. That’s why I like listening to glitch music. I like how they use a lot of sound that would normally be thrown away.

Speaking of Minner Bucket releases and Americana groups, I really enjoyed the Atomic Duo tape you released [Initial Transmissions from the Lost Continent of Mu]. I thought it was a really good sonic fit, especially for Silas Lowes’ songwriting.

Didn’t you think that from a folk band perspective the tape sounded great? The noise floor and that sort of dark timbre of the tape I think is really flattering to that type of music. It’s like staging a one act play. You’ve got a backdrop and a table, and you stage it with just that. I think that certain things are just more interesting on cassette.

Could you talk about some other upcoming projects on Minner Bucket?

I’ve got quite a good little roster of people. I’ve got this guy Steve Mannion, who’s one of my oldest friends. He was in this great punk band from New Jersey called the Raging Lamos. He’s a great cartoonist. He does a comic called Fearless Dawn. I’ve got another friend of mine Philip Saylor, who goes by the name Stripmall Ballads. And there’s also a really interesting singer/songwriter/mandolin player up here called Matt Sircely.

A lot of the things I’m doing are just going to be limited runs. Like 100 or 200, with hand-drawn covers. The aesthetic I’m trying to create is that if you buy a tape off of Minner Bucket it’s like a friend made you this tape.

My new project that I’m working on now is called the Jam Box Tapes. I’m going to do a series of 100 cassettes. They will all be different, with hand-drawn covers, signed and numbered. I’m going to sit down and have these 38 minute Hi Vox tapes and I’m just going to play right into a cassette jam box. I’m going to sing old hymns, Bad Livers songs, stuff from my catalogue, cover songs. [I’m going to record] effects, warming up, ambient experiences – anything I can think of. Each one’s going to have different material on it. It will be unmixed, unedited recording straight to cassette boombox.

It’s great that you can be on a major label like ATO and still be able to do all these other projects.

Yeah, like I thought it was really cool that they put out that Poison cassette. I’ve been selling a bunch of those on tour. It was a really cool move. I didn’t think a label of that stature would even have a place to put tapes in the warehouse. That was really exciting. The duplications on it sound really good. It’s been a real blessing.

You can check out Danny Barnes’ latest tour dates here

Bart Davenport

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Bart Davenport

Bart Davenport is a man aiming for timeless things, a pop-rocker with his sights on benchmarks far more profound than today’s charts or what’s momentarily hip or fashionable. Throughout his varied, always ear-snagging career this California boy has shown a ceaseless drive towards music that resonates on a deeper level than momentary fads, delivering songs of love, confusion and contemplation in a voice sweet and true – one of those sure arrows like Pete Ham, Erik Carmen and fellow Cali crooners The Moore Brothers that fly right into the meat of a person. From his shimmying, Beatle booted role as lead singer in The Kinetics and The Loved Ones to his modern wrangling in Honeycut to his personal, shuffling, finger-snapping solo work, Davenport is a craftsman of the kind we don’t see much in the pop-rock realm much these days, a diviner of ditties that make you wish radio was the rich, wild tapestry it once was in the 60s and 70s when a ripe artist like this would be welcomed and rewarded for his tenacious pursuit of universally appealing, emotionally honest music.

While Davenport has a new album in its final stages for release later this year, DI spoke to him about his most recent album, Searching For Bart Davenport (pick it up here), a thoroughly winning one man and his dancing guitar tackling a dozen very well-chosen covers that range from Broadcast to Gil Scott-Heron to Caetano Veloso to Love and more, each warmly delivered, cherished jewels mined from rock’s vast mine. Nothing’s obvious in this set and subtle touches elevate the set and putting in the same rarified company as Tim Bluhm’s California Way and Patti Griffin’s Living With Ghosts, where the spare atmosphere only serves to accentuate all the base level positives of the creator.

read on for our chat with Bart!

Robyn Hitchcock

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Viva Hitchcock, A 60th Birthday Celebration for Robyn Hitchcock takes place at The Fillmore in San Francisco, CA, on May 2nd and features Robyn & The Venus 3, Colin Meloy, Amanda Palmer, Rhett Miller, Young Fresh Fellows, Andy Cabic (Vetiver), Eric D. Johnson (Fruitbats) and more.

Time and death are no strangers in the music of Robyn Hitchcock but there’s a somber, mortality contemplating undercurrent to his 19th studio album, Love From London (released March 5 on Yep Roc), where his humor and curious good will remain resolutely intact but this time there’s a bit of a sigh amidst his usual evolution of British Invasion greatness – there are few more obvious or satisfying sons of Syd Barrett and The Beatles. Beginning with a rumination over the ocean where pterodactyls once flew and concluding with the day breaking like an egg, Love From London moves with a maturity and sureness that befits an artist who just celebrated his 60th birthday and has been making music since the early 1970s.

[Editor’s Note: those unfamiliar with his stellar, pioneering pop-rock in The Soft Boys are ordered to listen to Underwater Moonlight forthwith]

Robyn Hitchcock by Michèle Noac

As always, complications abound on the new album, and you’re made of sterner, more serious stuff than the Impound if you don’t grin numerous times during Hitchcock’s latest song cycle. In fact, his ability to find humor in odd places is one of his greatest charms, unmasking politicians and pontificators for the shaky, fault-riddled humans they are like the rest of us and generally offering a deeper ontological deep end than he’s often credited with. A beautiful-strange perspective runs in Hitchcock’s music, and while it’s shifted and shaped changed loads over the years, there’s something truthful and utterly unique about the man and his work that shines at the core of every chapter, including this latest musical missive.

Hitchcock recently shared a slice of time with DI where we swam around in the ideas inside his new album, kicking off into apt tangents about the end of the world, love and time. Read on and then delve into Love From London anew with a fresh set of keys for unlocking this always intriguing rock ‘n’ roller – one of the Impound’s All-Time Favorite musicians with one of the most unshakably excellent catalogs of any artist in the modern era.

I thought it might be nice to start out talking about time, what with your recent 60th birthday and the concluding track on the new album being a smiling tune about the “End of Time.”

Well, time moves forward. It doesn’t really make any difference whether everybody goes or we all go individually. There’s a point where the end of time is within reach for each of us, so it’s something we have to except. Fortunately, outside of societies with capital punishment, we don’t know the day we’re going to die. Even if we know our condition, we can’t know exactly when it will come, and it’s always possible some winged creature will swoop down and bear us off to the Elysian Fields and we’ll never have to actually pass away, like King Arthur or something. It’s pretty likely, statistically likely, that we’re likely to die but we’re not usually sentenced to death. However, we are sentenced to birth. So, that’s the context of that song, I suppose.

We are also at the convergence of an economic and environmental crisis. They’ve just published reports on the remaining amounts of fossil fuels available, which some worry will create fear and panic that we’re going to run out and drive people to search deeper and further for what’s left quicker, which just adds to the environmental collapse and expedites it. It’s a bit like someone with cancer being told they need to smoke more cigarettes. Our energy supply and the stock market is what it’s all about, and we’re definitely coming up to a convergence.

It’s a different kind of crossroads than humanity has been up against in the past. Our choices now directly affect the ability of future generations of humans to sustain life on this planet…

…certainly for the next few thousand years. The nature of our progress – if you can call it that – has always been a relay race. We’re always put here by dead people. We live in houses built by people who’re deceased, and we’re talking a language from now-vanished tongues. Everything comes from the time that has gone. So, whatever situation people find themselves in 500 years on will be because of what we and our ancestors did. If you’re an optimistic person you might say we face exciting opportunities in our time [laughs]. If you’re a pessimist, which I’ve always been, then you’ve just gotta say, “Well, fuck.”

It’s such a heavy environment but you still write a lot of love songs in the midst of this pessimism. The longer your catalog goes on love rises as a central maypole around which a lot songs dance.

Well, great! This [new album] is a celebration of life under these conditions, where life is more precious than ever. How we feel about each other, how we can reach one another is more important than ever. Maybe as times become more brutal people become sweeter; think back to the sentimental songs that were popular during World War II, which emerged as we were blowing each other to bits and trying to put the bits back together as if we were a race of jugs.

As a songwriter, on a more pragmatic level, how does one sustain the impact and creative juice of love as a theme given the loads and loads of love songs already written?

Love is a big word like God, but apart from two great John Lennon songs [thought trails off]. God is a word used to describe everything between fate, accident, destiny, time and everything between the Big Bang and today. It’s not only something in charge of our origins but our fate – the same entity is responsible for everything. Love is a word to describe how we feel sexually, emotionally, and mentally – all the different areas and colors and strata in humans. The kind of emanations we give off and responses we have to each other is just called love [laughs]. It’s no wonder there’s an endless source of it. The most fundamental force we know – whether we’re gay or straight – is whether we’re attracted to each other, how we feel about each other in that way. It’s attraction or its counterpart, repulsion.

It’s the same coin.

I think music is a form of prayer. It’s like an invocation or exorcism. You’re either, “Come here, baby,” or “Get out of my life, woman.” Or, “Leave me alone and fuck off,” or, “I can’t get enough!” Or alternatively, “It’s just lovely. Stay right where you are,” which is perhaps a less exciting sentiment but one we need to express, the idea that we largely dig this relationship and we would be lonely without it.

It’s hard to get as much zing in a song writing about that. Talking about contentment is a relationship is a tougher verse-chorus builder than the heat of new desire or the dissolution of love.

It is. It’s perhaps what I’m trying to do with “I Love You” [on Love From London], to celebrate how you feel about somebody where it’s not necessarily a sudden thing but more recognizing that the fireworks have been burning all this time, except it’s not like a firework anymore, it’s more like a chimney.

We take the sun for granted – well, not over here [in England] where we see so little of it – but imagine you’d never seen the sun before and then suddenly it appeared one day. “What the hell is that,” and we’d go around worshipping it and slaying each other like mad and making promises to it. “Come back and we’ll give you 20 virgins. Stay away and we’ll give you 30. We’ll slay our first born. What would you like? More goats? More vegetables? More diamonds? What can we sacrifice for you, oh Lord?” Then, people start appointing themselves priests. “Well, I can put you in touch with the sun, of course. It’ll just cost you two goats and one of your virgins.” Quickly, there’s a hierarchy.

That’s human nature to trust anyone who says, “I know you’re scared but I’ll safely shepherd you through this fear.”

I’ll be your intermediary but it’ll cost you.

Just a small fee and a willingness to obey a bit…

…and a degree of respect – a nice burial chamber and like that. It often takes the form of priests. There’s something to be said for being faceless I’m not sure I believe in anything that can’t be proved. You can prove love because you can prove the lack of it. I think you can prove the existence of a soul by looking at a dead thing and seeing the difference.

You have a rational mind, which is a trait, at least here in America, that’s on the ropes in some ways.

Was it Dick Cheney or someone that said we create our own reality?

[Editor’s Note: It was Karl Rove, dismissing the “reality-based community” that said, “We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."]

It’s a shame really because the good side of America is that your imagination is very open. In some ways I’ve benefited from that. People are prepared to suspend disbelief while I form an idea, and this childlike element in them enjoys it. But America is dominated by fantasy, and any culture dominated by religion is bound to be dominated by fantasy and not rational science.

If you had to do an epitaph for humanity now, what would you say is the best thing about us, the most amazing thing about us? That we managed to find out about galaxies billions of miles from our own and get interested in theories about the origins of time. What science we’ve achieved, what we know about the universe, is something no other creature could have discovered…but no other creature seems to need it. The worst thing about us is we’re just not able to coexist with each other or nature. We are an ongoing problem and we can’t get it right. Maybe we will, but there’s no sign of it at the moment. It’s a shame about that.

In the midst of this, there’s a desire to huddle, to feel the safety and closeness of others. There’s real comfort in that.

Robyn Hitchcock (or a reasonable facsimile)

It’s comforting to find likeminded people. We liberal hipsters know what it’s like [laughs]. We try and pass this knowledge onto our nephews and nieces and anyone who’ll listen who’ll live on in the face of all the shredded attention spans and chaos.

You’ve been a musician for a long time. At this point, do you feel you’ve found the people who get you?

I don’t know. I hope there’ll be a few more to come, especially when I’m gone. I suppose I’m the property of a small group of people who’ve found me. A friend of mine in L.A. once said, “Stupid people don’t like your music.” That’s a good way of putting it. I accept that I’m visible to some people but not to most. I think there are more people who could hear what I hear and see what I see. I think if I was in the comedy world I’d have a larger audience, but I’m not a comedian. I can be funny but it’s not what I’m fundamentally about. I sometimes think the worlds of humor or literature might understand my stuff better than the rock world, but I’m a musician and that’s it really. It’s my field and I’m grateful to be in it.

Eef Barzelay

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Eef Barzelay

Since the early 2000s, I’ve been telling anyone who’ll listen that Eef Barzelay was one of the strongest, sharpest and most downright original new songwriters rock had seen in decades. With his band Clem Snide and in his prolific solo work, Barzelay cuts to the heart of good songcraft, presenting melodies that linger and thoughts that haunt and illuminate our slouch through life’s muck.

From the beginning of Clem Snide’s arrival it has always been hard to place them in a lineage. Their bounce and electricity as a band shares something with under-sung greats like Miracle Legion and The dB’s but Barzelay’s POV is too singular for any facile comparisons. Both jaundiced and jovial, his tunes vibrate with the rough and beautiful stuff of life, broad themes made more poignant and personal with Barzelay’s gift for small details that breathe, sigh and chuckle with fleshy familiarity. Put another way, the dude understands the human condition and transmutes it into music. That sounds a touch highbrow and Barzelay is always ready to get into the trenches with reality in a way that’s anything but academic.

Over the years Barzelay has also developed into one of the most sublime, intriguing interpreters of other’s material to emerge in ages. He handles an alarming array of songs from every corner of rock and beyond, often shoved roughly into them by his ongoing series of fan-selected covers. To his credit, he embraces each composition with a skill that slices to the heart of why a song works. In 2011, he released an EP of Journey covers that utterly flipped the originals on their heads. Performing solo with just a baritone ukulele accompanying his delightfully warbled voice and incisive, unique phrasing, Barzelay made over-familiar radio staples like “Don’t Stop Believing” and “Faithfully” shine anew. It’s a skill set he’s brought to cuts as far flung as Neutral Milk Hotel’s “In The Aeroplane Over the Sea,” The Drifters’ “Poison Ivy” and Madonna’s “Bad Girl,” each disparate pop culture nugget warmed and savored in a special way. Frankly, the Impound would put Barzelay up against any heavy hitter in jazz in his ability to tackle the yawning Great American Songbook, particularly as updated by rock’s 60-plus years of existence.

Songs For Mary

On May 1st, Eef Barzelay and Clem Snide will launch a monthly subscription plan on Bandcamp called Eldorado, where fans will pay a meager $8 per month to receive, as well as inspire, a new and exclusive 3-5 song EP emailed monthly right to their door. Read what Eef has to say about it here, and keep your ears pricked up for a new Clem Snide album, Songs For Mary, due this spring. DI will be putting our money down for the EP subscription and encourages anyone interested in contributing to great working indie rockers’ well being to do the same.

With all this cool stuff in the works, we felt this was the right time to share a lively, no holds barred chat we had with Eef last year. If you’re already a fan then you’re gonna find out about some of his key underpinnings, and if you’re a newbie to Clem Snide/Eef then you’re about to meet one of the most right-on straight shooters DI has had the fortune to speak to. The state of modern rock, tackling covers, and the self-induced travails of an independent band are but a few of the topics touched on. Click play on the album embedded below and dive in. You won’t be sorry.

<a href="http://eefbarzelay-clemsnide.bandcamp.com/album/bitter-honey-redux">Bitter Honey (redux) by Eef Barzelay</a>

Eef Barzelay

A fun point of entry into your work may be your facility and knack for covers.

I’m not even sure where that comes from. I think it’s because I don’t have that much respect for the original versions. I don’t go into it with this reverence, and people usually cover songs they really love and revere. I’d rather not play a song that I really love.

Where it first really hit me that you had such facility as an interpreter was your take on Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful” on Clem Snide’s A Beautiful EP (2004) [check it out here]. It’s an awesome song but it was so outside what I’d imagined your band would do.

I think it’s exciting to get to a point where you don’t care anymore. It’s beyond irony. It’s assumed Clem Snide should cover the Velvet Underground or Bob Dylan, and there’s something very liberating about putting all songs on equal footing and reducing them to just their melody and words. There are no good or bad songs. There are just songs. Okay, there are some bad songs like “Layla,” which is one of the worst songs ever written. I’d put it in the Top 3 of the famous songs that are just wretched. And my brother just had a little girl and named her Layla. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that I actually hate that song. I’ll try not to hate your daughter but I hate that song! And it goes on for like 10 minutes and the guitars are all high and irritating.

The whole ending piano part was a piece he ripped off from Bobby Whitlock, who had planned to use it on a solo album. Clapton thought it was pretty and insisted it go on “Layla.” Asshole move. I love your lack of respect for the original versions. There’s no sense of you bending a knee to anyone. The Journey EP is absolutely that case.

Well, a song is just a melody and words. Everyone gets so focused on arrangements these days, and I never much cared about arrangements. I’ve always been drawn to words and melodies, and hopefully I can find someone to arrange it and make it sound real good [laughs]. I’ve had to be more involved in [arranging songs], and it’s fun but it’s not my specialty. I just whittle it down to its bare essence and just work with that and not do too much with that.

Bitter Honey Album Cover

That’s what makes something like your Bitter Honey album (2006) so effective. There’s not a lot of filigree on there. The tunes, your voice, and it’s very straight ahead. I think the real caliber of an artist is revealed when things are laid bare in this way.

I’ve come to a point where I just don’t care anymore, which can sound cynical or indifferent but I’ve sort of surrendered. I don’t have any sense of what I’m about. When you first start out you think that’s what it’s all about – the way you dress and present yourself and the kind of music you play. Now, I just don’t know anymore AND I don’t care to know. I’ll let the universe define it for me.

Leaving things open-ended from your foundation up is very liberating. When you do the thing for the doing of it, there’s something real that happens at that moment.

It feels that way, but it took a long time. I started in the late 90s, and like most bands, we tried to get a record deal and we got some deals and then we had this aggressive manager who’d say things like, “This next gig is a really important gig because some really important people are going to be there. This is the most important gig of your life.” Well, we had a lot of “gig of your life” moments [laughs].

I’ve been to a lot of parties and events where I was supposedly going to meet “The Guy” who could give me the dream writing job or introduce me to the guy who could get something published. And in the end nothing good ever came of any of it.

Clem Snide in Days Past

You go through that enough times, well, you can just quit – that’s always an option – or you just kinda surrender. I can’t quit. I can’t do anything else, so I’m kinda stuck doing this. It still makes me happy to do this, and I kind of need to do it. In the face of all the practical concerns of adult life, I still feel the need to do it. I’m all in.

I’ve actually come out the other side a little bit the past five years for me and Clem Snide. We’d sort of passed our expiration date and everything had fallen apart. Our whole infrastructure in terms of business was just disintegrated. The label went under, the manager was gone, and even within the band it got ugly, too. But it didn’t even occur to me that it would end. Maybe other people are able to plan for the future in a more cohesive way but I didn’t [laughs]. Unfortunately, I had a wife and two kids depending on me, and that shit was real. I definitely caused my family a fair amount of heartache and discomfort, but I’m almost grateful for it now.

Artistically it’s put your feet to the fire. I think The Meat of Life (2010) is one of the best albums Clem Snide has made. The more I listen to that record the more I think, “Shit, there’s a lot going on here.” You keep evolving as a musician, adding layers that make me realize that what I thought was going on in spins 1-3 is absolutely wrong because I missed a mid-song turn. You write about the people that other people miss and take for granted. The people most people’s eye just passes over without thought.

The Meat of Life

That’s a nice way of saying it…I’m trying to think of a good justification…I’ve always kind of been on the outside looking in. I’m an immigrant that was born in Israel. My parents are Israeli. So, I never really fit in anywhere. I didn’t feel entirely Israeli, but then I never felt fully American through the years. This may account for the different way I look at things.

Not to disparage him because I think he’s great but Justin Townes Earle is the exact opposite because he steps into this great legacy. The songs he writes are exactly the songs he should be writing and people expect him to write. He sings about hopping on trains and things, and the words are more anachronistic. I always tried to make the words be in the present moment.

You explore very old traditions of songwriting but you’re adapting them to modern times where the subject matter might be a young woman that’s proud her ass was featured in a music video. “Ballad of Bitter Honey” is a song that makes me laugh aloud every time I play it AND it chokes me up a little bit. That’s a great combination, man.

That song is perhaps the most extreme combination of those two sharp emotional turns. I’m always aspiring to make something heartbreaking and goofy at the same time. That’s the best if you can pull that off.

Humor is much harder to pull off than drama or melodrama. It’s easy to pull the long black veil down.

Eef Barzelay

No one ever really does it. Jonathan Richman does it and Tom Waits does it in a wonderful way sometimes, but it’s generally just not done. I think that’s part of the problem for Clem Snide. Because they didn’t know if they should take it seriously they dismissed it. “Is this a joke? Is this not a joke? I’m confused.” Yes! That’s the point! It got dismissed as ironic…and it is ironic but in a good way.

It’s not ironic in the youth punk-pop way where bands are always winking at you. And Clem Snide doesn’t take it as far out as say The Dead Milkmen, where the joke is right up front and they’re clearly trying to offer you punch lines. It makes me really sad that rock has reached a point where most people are uncomfortable with confusion. The wider audience wants to know if you’re a Pitchfork indie band or a tagger on to what’s left of mainstream FM classic rock. Anything that doesn’t conform to neat iTunes-ready categories leaves people scratching their heads.

It’s very unfortunate. It makes me sad. All the indie bands today that are so loved have music where all the pieces just fit together so nicely. It sounds great. The kids making music today are astounding. It’s so sophisticated, so well played and produced, just this effortlessly exquisite music. When I was 20 we were listening to Mudhoney. Now, it’s these quick-witted, exquisite arrangements.

The level of technology they’re playing with is crazy. They’re making these lil’ teenage symphonies to God in their bedrooms in Brooklyn. That wasn’t possible in any other era of rock’s history.

Pro-Tools empowered music for sure. People don’t realize that the stuff you can do on a computer now is…well, you can do anything.

What’s been lost in this is your greatest strength, which is just meat-and-potatoes satisfying songwriting. Your dedication to lyrics that are intelligent, gently poetic and not easily explicated is a trait going straight out the window. As you point out, so much modern music is gorgeous and has incredible flow but how many of these songs are people going to remember the way we do say The Beatles or Simon & Garfunkel? The mood dominates enough to disguise how empty the songwriting is at its core.

It drives me nuts. I almost wish that the music was more awful and loud and goofy but instead it’s just sooooo sophisticated by some 22-year-old with a beard singing these exotic melodies. Ah, come on! It’s a false sophistication.

That they’d be so wise and worldly so young rings false to me, too.

It’s an internet empowered worldliness. They really do have the world right at their fingertips, all of it. When I was in high school all I knew was Led Zeppelin and Van Halen. There was music television but it was crappy and I didn’t even know about indie rock until I moved to Boston when I was 18 or 19. Now, 13-year-old kids have already digested the Velvet Underground.

There’s this internet smorgasbord but it misses out on the mess of life to experience this stuff at arm’s length. Life is usually a lot less organized or pretty when you get up close to it.

Yeah, I never set out to enchant people. I never wanted to make this exclusively enchanting music; I wanted to fuck with them a little bit. I always thought that was what it was all about. Apparently now it’s not. The best example for me was when The Meat of Life came out the same day as the new Joanna Newsom album and they were right together on the Pitchfork. Of course, they give me a 5.3 and just nitpick it and aren’t impressed by any of it, and the Joanna Newsom review was a 9.2 and they’re creaming all over it. I liked that first Joanna Newsom record – I love the sound of the harp – so I listened to her new record and it was like a joke – so over the top pretentious.

[Read Pitchfork’s asshole review of Clem Snide’s album here, and their genuflecting rave for Newsom’s joint here.]

It was a triple record set, and very, very rare the artist that can maintain quality over that stretch.

It’s like music from Narnia soaked in unicorn tears. Is she from this planet? Has she ever taken a shit or thrown up?

I could not agree more [laughs]. John Hofer, the drummer from The Mother Hips, once blurted out at a campground picking session, “Nothing too unicorn-y!” I think the adjective applies to Newsom’s album. It’s daunting to me to watch the lockstep of the music press with people like Newsom, Bon Iver, and Fleet Foxes. Everyone from the British music print mags down to every jerkwater blog all dutifully praise them and share any new video or scrap of news, all while ignoring great working rock bands right under their noses. In my view, your job if you’re gonna write about music is to do the legwork and find the really good stuff that isn’t being covered everywhere. It’s a sad dynamic with music culture in the greater sense. Frankly, I don’t think you or Clem Snide have ever gotten a fair shake in the press.

Eef Barzelay

Well, a lot of people have said that, but I’ll take a fair share of the responsibility for fucking it up. We fucked it up just as a band. One thing you can say about these young bands is they’re some hard working motherfuckers. They’re so fit and professional, and we never really did that. We did things half-assed, and there were always two people in the band that had just gotten their girlfriends pregnant or were going through an emotional breakdown. Then 9/11 hit just as we were about to do our big tour, and our manager was a fucking asshole. I surrounded myself with a lot of fucked up people. I love them all but they’re fucked up. Looking back, I was bitter for awhile but we definitely fucked it up ourselves. But, I just keep looking for ways to make music and make a living at it.

The Kickstarter campaign for the Journey EP worked out pretty well for you, and you seem ideally suited for the new guerilla opportunities for musicians the internet offers.

Oh yeah, it basically saved me. It was getting kinda desperate over here. I was trying to work in movies; I’ve scored a few movies. With this EP, Journey was some of my favorite music when I first discovered music at 10 or 12. Journey, Foreigner, and 80s classic rock radio was my music when I was coming into my teens. The whole thing worked out great.

Fun is an overlooked or outright ignored factor is so much music making, and this seemed fun on a very basic level.

For sure, I had a lot of fun with it. People that pledged $150 or more got to choose any song for me to cover, which really expanded the project.

[Pick up the collection of fan-chosen covers for a name-your-price deal over here. And don’t be a cheap fuck, pay a little something and know you’re doing the right thing.]

That’s even more perverse than Elvis Costello’s Spinning Song Wheel, where he’s got a good deal of input what covers end up as possibilities. You’re at the mercy of fans [laughs]!

I was able to do almost all of the requests. Someone asked me for a really obscure Beach Boys song and I just can’t cover the Beach Boys. For me, they’re just untouchable; I don’t even know where to begin. So, I graciously asked for a few more choices. And this one girl who donated a lot of money asked for “Don’t Fear The Reaper,” and that song is a bitch. I’ve been wrestling with that one for a while but I can’t seem to get. The songs people chose were so weird and random. That’s what made it great and exciting.

But you’re open to that experience and not every musician is. You have to be a little fearless and foolhardy to open yourself up and take on all comers.

I dig it. I was able to do it because, as I said earlier, I went into it with NO respect for the original. It’s even fun to see how far you can separate the melody from the arrangement, where you start to reconfigure the melody a little bit but still conveying the song itself.

Baritone, Tenor, Soprano & Pocket Ukes

How did you get into playing the ukulele? It does seem to be catching on with a lot of musicians these days, Eddie Vedder notwithstanding.

It does seem to be all the rage [laughs]. The thing I’m playing is not really a uke. It’s like a little guitar, and it’s tuned like a guitar. It’s the lowest uke, the baritone uke. There are three other sizes, which are the more traditional ukes. They’re tuned differently so they give you that 1930s feel that lends itself to those kinds of chords. So, it’s more like a little four-string guitar, and I love little guitars. They sound so nice and they cost next to nothing, like a $120 bucks or something – one of those musical finds. And I’m a leftie too so I’ve never really owned a good guitar. My whole life it’s been my cross to bear to find a nice guitar for a leftie. The baritone uke solved this quandary because it was so cheap and gives it up so easily.

The use of this instrument on the Journey EP instantly makes you reorient yourself to these songs, which is perfect for what you’re trying to do.

The great thing about Journey is those songs are hardwired into our DNA at this point. So you factor the memory of the original into the experience and make something kinda cool out of it. I love doing that. I love to splash around in pop culture [laughs].

Field Report

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<a href="http://fieldreport.bandcamp.com/album/field-report">Field Report by Field Report</a>

In this industrial, disposable culture we find ourselves enmeshed in today, we’re driven towards newness. We’re encouraged to embrace fresh experiences over contemplating the past, and each day, week, month and year offers only more new doors opening before us. But maybe what we need, what we hunger for in our very soul, is reflection, a patient and clear-eyed stretch where we sift through what we’ve done, what’s been done to us, and what happened in the wider world around all that. Music, by and large, reflects this fast-forward cultural impulse, but occasionally one stumbles into a song cycle utterly removed from the semi-conscious ephemerality of the New Release cycle. Sometimes we find just the calm center in the storm we need more than we likely realize.

From Field Report’s Facebook Page

The 2012 self-titled debut from Field Report is an infusion of everyday wisdom and love, a work brimming over with the kind of insights and awakenings that only emerge when one slows down and takes a long, honest look into deep, dark truthful mirrors. Lead by singer-songwriter-guitarist Chris Porterfield, Field Report emerges from their musings with the marrow-deep knowledge that time is limited and it’s time to step into things and say as bravely as we can manage, “I am not waiting anymore.” Allowed some sway in one’s life, this is music that eviscerates one to the positive, scraping away the dead skin so something pink and beautiful can emerge. It dares us to try things, if only answering truthfully the questions we pose ourselves in the mirror. It reminds us that “a bird in the hand is useless if you’re too scared,” and then nudges us to grab at what’s just out of reach, doing it even though we’re frightened and unsure.

That all this works as music – lovely, measured, vibrating music – is kind of magical to the Impound. Not a lot feels spiritual to us anymore – jaded as clichés suggest as we slide into middle age – so when we feel such stirrings we’re keen to know more. So, we had Chris Porterfield pull up a chair for this ranging conversation that delves into family, the implications of the band’s name, the uses of language, and more. Like the shimmering album and the equally affecting live performances of Field Report, we felt enriched by this talk in ways we can only partially convey in words – the sort of conundrum that comes up in this chat.

This is such an emotionally exposed record. If engaged with properly, it makes the listener expose their own emotions in response. It’s a catalyst to stripping away layers.

Yeah, I think you’re right because that’s the reaction we’ve been getting from people. If you’re willing to come along for the ride it becomes something you can participate in. It’s been interesting because I didn’t know if it would come across that way, or if it was even intentional. It’s just kinda how it happened to turn out.

What is it like to lay things this bare, put them to a melody, and then let put it out in the world for anyone to see? You’re not writing “Pour Some Sugar On Me,” man.

[Laughs] No, no I’m not. When I was writing some of these songs I thought they were about other people. I thought they were more fictional, but I realized later I was in a lot of the characters. It’s been cool getting it out to people, and amazing seeing people react to it, often with similar emotions to what the narrator is trying to convey…whether that narrator is me or other people…but it is me [laughs]. The hardest part is sharing it with people who are close to me.

As a writer you face that all the time, where you realize, “Damn, I have to do this but, well, sorry, mom.”

[Laughs] Yeah, I still haven’t given my parents a copy of the record, so who knows? I have such a weird relationship with family. They’re super supportive but I just have a weird hang-up about it.

I experience the same thing with my mom, where I never know what she’ll think of what I’ve written. Or I know I’m gonna hear, “Did you have to use that sort of language?” Well fuck yeah, ma, I did [laughs]. It’s really complicated to be honest in one’s work. Even if they don’t understand things on a conscious level you know they’re picking up on the truth of things subconsciously.

Exactly! I didn’t know who we were trying to talk to with this thing. Frankly, I just assumed it wouldn’t be very many people, and it’s already been a broader, brighter reaction than I was expecting.

We went out for a month supporting Counting Crows last summer, and I wouldn’t have thought that their core audience would get what we’re trying to do, but the reaction was mostly warm and welcoming. That opened my eyebrows, and I thought, “Maybe we’re talking to more people than I thought.”

Maybe you’ve stumbled into ontological ground that’s much broader than you suspected.

It’s exciting, and I’m more curious than anything to see what the reaction on a broader scale will be. I’m still waiting on some level for people to write it off as derivative or sappy or pussy or whatever. That hasn’t happened yet though.

If you get that kind of reaction I think it will have more to do with people being scared with what this album stirs up in them rather than the work itself. This music, without being overt and pushy about it, inches one out of their comfort zone.

I think for it to work you have to invest a little of yourself into it. That’s time and maybe more than that to really get the payoff. I understand that a lot of people don’t have the time or the desire to do that, but it seems some have so far and that’s really encouraging.

Time and patience went into making this music. It clearly had a gestation process. This wasn’t, “I have some songs. Let’s go record them” situation.

Vinyl Release of Debut

The whole project was a long time coming. Some of the songs were several years old, some newer when we made the album. It took a long time to curate this process, but the recording itself went quickly. We did it all in six days. So, we had to figure out what these things were about – what they were trying to say and how we wanted to say it – but then we just crossed our fingers and tried to capture an honest moment, an honest performance.

There’s a strong sense of controlled power to the performances on this record. I think it would have been easy to throw in a Pearl Jam style power chord after the second chorus or other easy prods. You keep the reins right where they needed to be for this thing to keep its own gallop.

That’s really cool…A big part of what we sound like on the record and live too is this constant state of reckoning with things. That and musically all the guys sort of buy in and are willing to submit to whatever needs to happen at any given time. It’s incredible to be around such intelligent but ego-less players willing to embrace the struggle of it all. That speaks to some of the choices we made on the record and continue to make trying to reinterpret the record live.

There’s a malleability to this music that’s appealing. Even the one time I caught Field Report live in Santa Cruz tells me how much these songs have changed and evolved.

That’s something we really try to work towards. If anything starts to feel static it starts to feel less honest, and the whole point of this thing is the honesty. So, we continue to…well, it’s not quite trying to sabotage ourselves but just challenge ourselves as we try to figure out what a given song needs on a given night.

Something interesting happens when you step out wrong-footed on a song just to see what happens if you take things down a half-step slower or speed it way the hell up.

It keeps us on our toes for sure, and when we’re engaged in that way it makes for more compelling live show where the audience is able to ride that energy too. That’s really important to us.

Field Report

That’s the difference between playing music and inhabiting music. It’s like Patton Oswalt said about Obama during the last election, where at least it doesn’t feel like an evil robot is speaking to you for a change. Things resonate on levels you can’t communicate in language when people really mean it. The same thing goes for saying things people don’t really mean. I get the sense that when Field Report comes at this music you’re living the pain and the joy of it in the moment.

That is something we really try to do, but let’s stick with political speakers for a minute. They may really mean what they’re saying but if it’s a stump speech they’ve given a hundred times in a month sometimes it’s hard to connect with those words, even in just the logistical bustle of it all. That’s where somebody like Bill Clinton shines. I heard some folks at the DNC tried to chop out parts of his [Democratic Convention] speech, and being the savvy politician and public speaker that he is he just winged it and brought back every single point they cut out.

Something he excels at – and I’ll draw a comparison between you and Big Bill – is he’s really smart but he’s able to communicate things in a way the guy just getting off work and cracking open the much longed for first PBR of the night can relate to. You do the same thing in your songs. The language you use is just gorgeous but you’re also able to hone it down to a couplet anyone can understand.

Well, thank you. In the past, I’ve worried about being too wordy and making it hard for people to understand what I’m saying. I don’t want to dumb it down and make it too easy, but at the same time I don’t want to put up any walls. If you think there are enough rocks sticking out of that wall for people to climb over without too much trouble that really means a lot [to me].

Your lyrical style reminds me a fair bit of Radiohead’s Thom Yorke. It’s not the same sort of music but you share his ability to string a few words together that will haunt somebody. It’s that burr that gets under your saddle, and I think you’ve got the same knack. I’ve played the Field Report album for some pretty savvy music pals and they’ve come away saying, “Wow, I can remember parts of this verbatim after just one listen.”

Huh…that’s really interesting, and interesting that it’s the words doing that. I feel like my melodies aren’t the sorts that burrow into your ears. That’s really cool the words are doing the legwork.

There’s points on the album where I find the music perfectly non-intrusive. It’s a platform for what’s happening with your voice and the words, but always the combination dances. But that’s a challenge to pull off if you’re not going to dumb stuff down or write ditties. It makes it harder to get all those elements onto the dance floor together.

Definitely. Again, I can’t say enough about the guys in the band, who really helped put skin on these things without letting them get too fat. There’s this swirling stuff around everything that makes it work. Those guys are such good listeners and players too, but listeners more than anything.

It’s a real skill to slow down and focus on what’s happening around you as a musician instead of just focusing on what you’re doing. That’s how you pick up on what’s going on in a more total way.

That’s something we continue to work on.

From the first tune I heard by Field Report, I got the sense of a band unto themselves. The easy equation today is this earlier band + this other earlier band + a few adjectives = new band. It’s how music press generally works, and it feeds the general audience appetite for familiarity.

It ultimately ends up saving them time. These are the reference points and if you like that already then you’ll like this. You won’t have to take a chance. This will work for you.

DeYarmond Edison

It’s brand naming, and I understand you have to do it to some degree to convey music in words but it’s WAY more valuable to listen to what’s happening in music as it is instead of instantly shoving it into some hierarchy. And again, I get the feeling with Field Report that I’m not hearing a band trying to be any other band. And it’s interesting how little Field Report sounds like the band you used to be in (DeYarmond Edison) or any of the bands that have sprung from it (Bon Iver and Megafaun).

That’s really good, and I’m really happy about that. We share a lot of similar influences but maybe those guys are just better players or something. I don’t how we stumbled across the noises we make but I’m really happy to hear it doesn’t sound a whole lot like the other guys.

So, did you write screenplays? Your eye for detail suggests it and it comes up on “Taking Alcatraz.”

No, I didn’t. That was just something that popped up in trying to build a body of work.

Ah, just pure projection on my part as a former screenwriter. That’s what happens when you put your music into the world, people making all sorts of assumptions.

[Laughs] My follow-up line to that inquiry is, “Am I writing these sort of youthful songs that are gonna connect with old people? I don’t know.” It’s easy to feel nostalgic about those formative years, and they end up surfacing in a lot of stuff we try to make when we’re feeling reflective. So, it might be a moment of levity but also an awareness that you’ve gotta be careful with that.

I have to step back periodically to check that my writing isn’t just mired in nostalgia. I’m usually nostalgia’s enemy, so I’m generally safe. So, I gotta give you props for working the word “ulna” into a song. That’s not in the standard songwriter lexicon.
Thank you, I haven’t been called out on that one before [laughs].

There’s imagery in your lyrics that you just can’t get at without a fairly serious command of the English language. Have you always been a word guy?

Yeah, I’ve always read a lot. In school I was an English major and then I got more pragmatic and switched to journalism. And then newspapers died and I didn’t end up with a journalism job. These songs became the outlet for that word love. I’ve always been drawn to writers that enjoy challenging the listener, stuff you have to look up to get. And just like any word you look up and now get, you’re more likely to use it later, and it becomes a word you really enjoy. I love songs like that. I remember being really young and listening to Paul Simon’s Hearts and Bones, and jeez, the geography in that “title track [Chris recites the opening verse]:

One and one-half wandering Jews
Free to wander wherever they choose
Are travelling together
In the Sangre de Cristo
The Blood of Christ Mountains
Of New Mexico

Holy shit! Those geographical details help you locate yourself in the song. And there’s another one, “Rene And Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After The War.” I didn’t know anything about impressionist art at the time or who Rene Magritte was but I looked ‘em up and then holy shit! Putting it in post-war Europe totally shifted everything and made it meaningful. I’ve always been drawn to that stuff where you know somebody is trying to say something and when you take that extra step it just opens up a whole different world.

When you chose the name Field Report were you interested in the reporting, man-in-the-field eyewitness to events aspects of the name?

Yeah, I was intrigued by the boots-on-the-ground element, and also the clinical eye to things and the fact that you can always revise a field report; you can always file addendums and update things. So, the continuing revelation aspect intrigued me. It just seemed to fit for all those reasons.

Field Report returns to the road in June when they’ll play a string of shows with Josh Rouse. Check out dates here.

Dolly Varden

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Dolly Varden by Sarah Gross

Dolly Varden has been at the center of several of the most heated, intense music debates this writer has ever engaged in. The point of contention: The best band to come out of Chicago in past 20 years. While many folks tout Wilco as that city’s shining beacon, Dirty Impound fervently believes that Dolly Varden – who’ve been playing and recording as long as Tweedy’s gang – consistently produce better, more readily engaging music.

In terms of melodic, song-focused rock, there’s only a handful of acts to emerge in the past few decades of the same caliber as Dolly Varden, whose albums hold up with the same resounding quality as works like Carole King’s Tapestry, Badfinger’s No Dice, James Taylor’s In The Pocket, John Denver’s Rocky Mountain High, and Big Star’s #1 Record (though Chris Bell’s solo classic I Am the Cosmos is perhaps more apt). What’s so lovely and enticing about their tunes is how unforced everything feels. Nothing is layered on that doesn’t belong, and always the phenomenal, pop-friendly voices of husband-wife team Steve Dawson and Diane Christiansen float above it all – a pair of singers, particularly in their interlacing harmonies, that could have held their own in the days when you had to be as good as the Everly Brothers and Petula Clark to be on radio.

What one finds with Dolly Varden’s work is a totality that’s simply a cut above of what most bands are doing today, and each new chapter only finds them growing stronger and more comfortable in their skin. For A While (released January 22) is crazy catchy yet flecked with curiously insightful observations and interesting musical curves. It’s the kind of record that only a band that’s been hard at it for years and years could produce – music a little wiser and pleasantly weathered by challenges that emerges with the quiet wisdom that they are lucky to be alive and doing their thing. On For A While, Dawson (singer/songwriter, guitars, piano), Christiansen (singer/songwriter, guitar, melodica, organ), Mark Balletto (guitars, lap steel, vocals), Mike Bradburn (bass, vocals) and Matt Thobe (drums, piano, vocals) coalesce the many strengths evident on earlier releases into a focused, top-tier example of post-Beatles rock at its very finest. There is darkness and light wrestling here – often within the same song – but the abiding feeling is there is something good waiting at the end of all the struggles, and at least there are warm hands to hold as we walk through life’s inevitable valleys. Without question, this is one of the best albums we’ll hear in 2013, but DI’s gut says this one will endure as a beloved companion for many, many years to come.

We are delighted to present this ranging conversation with Steve Dawson, where we discuss the new album, the band’s history, what interests him as a songwriter, and more. Dolly Varden is on a short, cherished list of bands that were part of the impetus to start Dirty Impound nearly three years ago to create a space that celebrates and spotlights the finest rock ‘n’ roll out there, particularly the kind made by working bands madly in love with making music. As this conversation reveals, Dolly Varden surely fits this bill.

Steve Dawson

It’s a heavy thing to throw at any musician, but there is a timeless quality to Dolly Varden. One can’t neatly situate your music in one era because it seems like you’re shooting for a greater benchmark that’s not about what’s on radio at this moment.

I’d say that’s true. I don’t really listen to current radio, and current radio in Chicago is all dance music or stuff from the 70s and 80s.

Radio used to let genres mingle and they’re very stubbornly separated now. Dolly Varden is clearly a rock band but one with the classic philosophy that embraces twang, blue-eyed soul and more, and incorporates those elements as the song dictates.

Exactly! I guess I get cues from The Beatles, who tried a lot stylistically and put them side-by-side on records. And those records flow just beautifully!

I wonder where it went wrong [Dawson laughs]. No, man, I’m serious. When did popular music lose that openness and reach? Specificity is the rule now.

I suppose it is, I’d never really thought of it that way. Business-wise, The Beatles’ albums were the most popular albums ever [at that stage]. Now, they really do just want one thing. There must have been some huge record along the way that had six Number One singles on it that all sort of sounded the same…

…Thriller. I think that’s one of the turning points. It’s the same thing that happened in the 70s with movies where the box office success of Jaws and Star Wars birthed the continuing focus on event films. What I appreciate about Dolly Varden, and your solo work as well, is you have these songs you NEED write and there’s no scheming or audience premeditation behind how you shape them.

Stump The Host

No, no, there isn’t. There’s definitely no scheming -what happens happens. Dolly Varden started in 1995, and prior to that Diane and I were singing together in a band called Stump The Host that started in 1986. That band was even whackier stylistically because we had a fantastic, super twangy guitar player and a saxophonist that played with all these blues artists, plus Diane and I singing two-part harmonies. Such a super fun band! So, Diane and I have been singing together since 1988.

I moved to Chicago from Boston and rented out a room in the first floor of a two-flat from a friend of mine. Diane lived upstairs and owned the house. I didn’t really talk to her because she was the landlady for the first six months I lived here. I’d just give her the rent check, but at some point we were singing some old country songs and she came down to sing with us. Then, the rest is history.

The sound of your voices together is special. I don’t know what it’s like to sing with your partner but I’d imagine there’s something extra going on beyond the norm.

Dolly Varden

From the very first time we were singing songs together we thought, “Wow, this is weird.” It’s not so much the sonics, the matching tones, but more the almost effortless ability to phrase things together and start and end notes together. That’s probably more due to her because she’s really good at following, but it’s super weird. We don’t spend a lot of time analyzing it. We just do it.

Some mysteries are best left alone. If you dig too deep you’re not doing yourself any favors.

[Laughs] I agree totally. I have the same feeling about songwriting. Although I do know a lot of music theory, the stuff like lyric stuff and why certain melodies work I don’t really want to investigate that. I want to keep the mystery there.

With your phrasing, it seems like you’re often coming across things in the moment rather than thinking them out beforehand. It’s that natural lilt to the left or right of a word that often makes your phrasing stick.

We stare at each other while we’re singing and a lot of people have said, “Oh, that’s so sweet that you’re looking at each other.” Well, we’re really just watching each other’s mouth to make sure we follow each other really well [laughs]. Part of it is sweet but more of it is about lining things up well.

Tell us a bit about making this new record. For A While coalesces the band’s strengths in a really appealing way. There’s something of all of what you’ve done before distilled into this album.

Well, thanks, I kind of agree, and we all kind of agree. I just think the time was right, and a lot of the songs showed up at the same time out of the blue. I didn’t plan on writing any of these songs. We’d get together and say, “Let’s make a new record.” I had a few things laying around and we tossed those around, but when the seed was planted for a new Dolly Varden album all these songs started showing up. So, if we got together every four weeks, I’d say, “Hey, I’ve got four new songs!” A lot of this album seemed to happen really organically like that.

The last album [The Panic Bell (2007)] took a really long time, and it was spread out because we were all doing a lot of different things. We recorded it at this place an hour south of Chicago, and it was kind of a hassle to get there. I think some of that shows in the record, that it was just a hard slog. [For A While] was just smooth and it all happened just the way you’d want it to happen.

Panic Bell does have a conflict riddled undertow, or just a tension or scrappy quality.

There’s a lot of dark stuff in the lyrics. With [For A While], there’s dark stuff but there’s a lot of gratitude as well. There’s always dark stuff but this one feels like we come out the end of it grateful for what there is and what we have.

That’s made explicit a few times on the record. Every working rock ‘n’ roll band will relate to “Mayfly” [possibly DI’s favorite Dolly Varden song of all-time, a stunner in the vein of David Crosby’s “Laughing”].

That’s one of them that emerged suddenly. I sat down at my desk not intending to write a song and it just bubbled up out of nowhere. I thought, “Well, that’s pretty cool” [laughs]. I’ve read a lot of interviews with songwriters where they talk about the same experience, where a song shows up in about the same time it takes to sing it. You tweak it a bit but the way it comes out is the way it is. Neil Young talks about that a lot. I really, really admire him.

To me, [“Mayfly”] is obvious stuff, both real and made up, and in any song there’s a mixture of actual facts and made up stuff to keep the mood going. I could go line by line and identify which is real and which is made up but ultimately to the listener it doesn’t matter because it all has this dreamlike quality, albeit a fact filled dream [laughs].

I never want to ask a songwriter, particularly one I like as much as you, to parse a song line by line.

Dolly Varden

I’ve done that before when people have asked and they always respond afterwards, “Ah, I wish I hadn’t known that.” It spoils their own take on things.

However, as I look back now, [“Mayfly”] was written during the week of Diane and I’s 21st wedding anniversary. Someone pointed that out to me. I played it at an open mic thing the week I wrote it and someone said, “That’s about your anniversary,” and I was like, “Oh, I guess it must be.”

Saluting resilience in the face of adversity is a cool aspect of this song. It’s far easier to just trudge along and take things as they are despite a steady descent in the arc of one’s dreams, aspirations, etc. A simple, direct lyric like “we are lucky” is bolstering both to the artist and the listener. Yeah, the van might be upside down right now but we’re alive and aware, so we’re lucky in that way.

One thing I wanted to delve into with you is your obvious affection for 70s singer-songwriters. I share this passion/love, and I’m always tickled when it emerges in your work, particularly on your solo albums. It’s not a nostalgia thing in your hands.

It just informs who I am. As a teenager I’d listen to those records and they defined my world and how I perceived things – Jackson Browne records and Van Morrison records and on and on, Joni Mitchell, etc. I grew up in one of those families that never expressed any emotion of any kind, so I lived an emotional life listening to singer-songwriters. It was like, “Oh, this is a safe way to express feelings.”

I grew up in the exact opposite situation with people who had an excess of emotion and an excess of friction and a tendency towards conflict. What I found in singer-songwriters was a buffer and refuge against the unfocused volatility of my family. These songs gave me some sense of what might be going on below the surface with these people who ran hot all the time.

There’s definitely been a backlash against [70s singer-songwriters], but I think that’s calming down. I teach at the Old Town School of Folk Music and it helps me gauge where trends are, especially with people my age or a little younger in their 30s. And people are asking for James Taylor songs and stuff that ten years ago was too un-cool to voice. Enough time has passed that people are realizing it’s good music and want to dig into it.

This is the nature of things with music. The farther away from the origination date the more it’s allowed to just exist on its merits. The previous decade is always going to have eggs thrown at it but the 1950s and 1960s are now sacrosanct, and we’re moving there fast with the 1970s. Personally, I just liked radio better when I was a kid. It was a blast to hear Al Green, Bruce Springsteen, Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show, Linda Ronstadt, Bob Marley and The Bee Gees in a single set. Popular music was interested in a broad audience and not just a subset likely to spend money on certain bits.

Stevie Wonder and Elton John side by side on the radio…Cool…That would never happen today.

Do you feel like your solo work is getting closer to what you do in Dolly Varden or is there still some key differences between the two settings?

I’ve had that question before and I can’t really answer it well. I made the first solo record, Sweet Is The Anchor (2005), because the band was unable to get together. There was too much going – the drummer and the bass player both had new babies – and those were just songs that would have been on a Dolly Varden record if we’d made one. But then as I listen back to those songs, I think there’s some more complicated musical shifts in them, and since it was just me I could memorize them and work with all the weird turns and twists that I wouldn’t have tried to foist on the band [laughs]. The songs are maybe a little more eccentric on the solo records. But then again, the song “Obsidian” [off 2010’s I Will Miss The Trumpets and the Drums] could easily have been a Dolly Varden song, and a really good Dolly Varden song.

So, I think it’s just the project I’m working on at the time. I don’t really change gears in my songwriting. I do think if there’s some kind of feeling that needs to be expressed that’s not appropriate for Dolly Varden I’ll address it in my solo work, like being really mean [laughs]. But, it’s not like I have a lot of mean songs!

Your songs cover a nice mix of sentimental and unsentimental. That’s really valuable to have the range. You need to be able to say, “Fuck you!” in a song sometimes.

It’s just real life.

The lineup in Dolly Varden has been pretty consistent, right?

Dolly Varden

Yep, it’s been the same five since 1995. We had a different bass player for the first year or so, this woman named Lisa Wertman who we’re still really close with but needed to leave for some reason, which was so long I’ve forgotten the details [laughs]. We got Mike Bradburn on bass and it’s been the same lineup since then.

Do you have a fairly solid hometown following?

I’d say so. We sell out shows when we play here, and with this [new] record we’ve got local radio and papers helping us.

There’s a remarkable consistency and high quality of what you do with Dolly Varden and on your solo albums. The level of craftsmanship in your work really sets you apart from herd.

Well thanks, but it’s really just what I do. The thing I strive for is to make good songs and record them well, if I can anyway [laughs]. That’s the craftsman part of doing this. It’s like someone who makes really nice furniture. They want to make it as beautiful as they can.

Recent Christiansen Painting

Diane does other art as well, and I’ve found that people who dabble in multiple fields always enhance their different interests by doing so. One form of art will usually illuminate different things in another art form.

Absolutely. The only drawback of her being a visual artist is she writes fewer songs. She didn’t write any songs on For A While. She co-wrote a couple with me, but on all the other records she has at least a song or more of her own. She’s definitely spending 80-90-percent of her time doing visual art now, where it used to be more 50-50.

Her songs have a different flavor than yours or your collaborations together. Her personality differs from yours in the handling and type of subjects she explores.

I’ve told her I’d love to produce a Diane Christiansen album. Maybe some day.

How did you settle on the name Dolly Varden? Are you huge Charles Dickens fans?

I didn’t know the Dickens reference when we chose it. I just knew the fish. Diane’s dad was also a fisherman. When we were looking around for names for our band in 1994, we had books open and everyone was tossing in ideas. So, I’m a fan of Montana poet Richard Hugo, and I had a copy of one his books of poems open and in one of them there’s a line about Dolly Varden skeletons. I knew what that was from growing up in Idaho, and my dad is a big fly fisherman, so we had fish books and I got into it. “Dolly Varden Skeletons” seemed a cool, spooky combination of words, and I said, “How about Dolly Varden?” Diane thought it was cool, but the rest of the band said, “No!” They thought everyone would think of Dolly Parton, but I assured them it was a fish [laughs]. That would be the worst joke band name ever if it was a play on Dolly Parton!

Maybe that misunderstanding is part of why Dolly Varden still gets described as an alt-country band – a description that’s never fit you well.

Dolly Varden

It’s inescapable I guess. People like to categorize. And it may be that sort of movement with Uncle Tupelo and then Wilco, Son Volt and Whiskeytown – all described as alt-country – coincided with when we came up along the same time. This applies to The Jayhawks, too, at that time. It’s all really good music and that whole world with No Depression magazine. No Depression was super supportive of us, and that may be why we ended up and got stuck in that category.

Maybe early on it was true, but the description doesn’t fit at all with the three most recent albums.

Yeah, it doesn’t really make sense. Like you said, we’re much more 1970s pop radio.

The Beatles and Badfinger much more readily come to mind – melodic music with rock solid fundamentals in place.

The Beatles were the first band I loved, and I still love ‘em.

I’m glad that Dolly Varden has stuck it out. I’m glad you came back after the hiatus [2003-2005], and returned a stronger band to boot.

We figured out that we like doing it to do it. It’s not for some external goal. I think earlier on when the music industry was still the old music industry you were always searching for the bigger or better record deal or some bigger goal. So, even with your accomplishments, it’s always, “Well, what will this lead us to?” rather than just appreciating how awesome it is to record a song you really think is good and make it sound good, just to be happy with stuff like that. It was always, “What can we get from this?” I think that was kind of the way it was before we took the break, and afterwards it was, “We want to do this because we want to do this.” That’s where we are now, and it feels much, much better.

OMG Interview: Chris Stamey

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Chris Stamey by Gail Goers

When the real accounting of rock’s post-70s greats is finally settled, there’s little question Chris Stamey should make the cut. He’d rate if only for the beautifully jittery, intelligent pop-rock he crafted in The dB’s in the early 80s (not to mention Falling Off The Sky, the band’s really fab studio return last year), but there’s also a steady string of fine solo albums, a stint with The Golden Palominos, his cult beloved early days with power poppers Sneakers, a bangin’ collaboration with Yo La Tengo (2005′s A Question of Temperature), and more in his lengthy, always-excellent resume. While not always a headline grabber, Stamey’s work is a steady run of pure quality rock spread over a pleasing variety of styles and moods.

However, Stamey’s latest offering, Lovesick Blues (released February 5 on Yep Roc), may be the most concise presentation of his many charms under one roof. Weaving in and out of love’s corridors, good and bad, the song cycle is intimate, thoughtful and expertly sculpted – the work of a master musician at his most personal and far reaching. Stamey says, “This record is the closest I’ve ever gotten to the sound I hear in my head in the middle of the night.” It’s a set that creeps into one’s bones the longer they spend with these songs, understanding and compassion floating on inviting melodies, strings and vocals that tickle loose smiles and tears from anyone with a living, beating heart. Lovesick Blues is the first contender for DI’s Favorite Albums of 2013 we’ve jotted down to remember in December, so we reached out to Stamey with some questions about his new album, the reunited dB’s, the Big Star’s Third concerts, and more.

read on for Stamey’s Q&A