Dean Owens Interview

Dean Owens at Chapel Arts Centre Interview March 22nd
We spoke in the artists dressing room before Dean and his support treated us to a great evening of fine music.

So you are originally from Edinburgh.
Yes I’m from Leith, which is in Edinburgh. It’s slightly separate from Edinburgh but that’s where I was born and raised.

You started out with this band The Felsons, perhaps you could tell us a bit about them.
We got together for our first album in ’96 I think. Basically it was a bunch of guys who’d been in a pop band called Smile that was going really well. Then as it happens with a young band we broke up and then we got together again, a few years later, as The Felsons. We did three records and we did a stadium tour with a band called The Mavericks. We’ve never really officially broken up and Bob Harris used to play us. Actually, as of a few weeks ago, we decided we’re probably going to get back together again. So it’s still a wee side project.

So how does that link up to today with people like Al Perkins, Will Kimborough and Gen Gunderman [Jayhawks] championing and playing with you?
Well we went to Nashville when as The Felsons we were on tour with The Mavericks and when we were there I met loads of people. Nashville’s a great place, there a real tacky country area but also a lot of really good musicians working there. So I met loads of musicians on trips who said, “If your making a record give us a shout”. So when it came to making Whiskey Hearts I wanted to make it in Nashville because I had such a great pool of musicians there. My previous Album My Town had pulled in all the great Scottish musicians I knew. But this time I really wanted to do something different. I met Will Kimborough at a Steve Earle concert and in fact he came and played on the My Town album.

Your first solo album is the Droma Tapes.
Yeah well Droma is a Loch up in Scotland in the North West. I recorded it in this little cottage there. It’s very much like the campfire tapes. Not really meant to see the light of day, but it did and a lot of people really liked it.

I’ve always felt that the Scottish ballad tradition goes really well with American roots music. Also a lot of Americana bands like Willard Grant Conspiracy have collaborated with Scottish musicians.
Yeah and I obviously went there to make a record and play. What was good was that songs like Raining In Glasgow and The Man From Leith, I knew they had a celtic tinge to them and I didn’t want to do it with local Scottish musicians because I though it was too obvious a way to go. So I thought if I go the Nashville and get people like Al Perkins to play on it then it would bring something else to it. So this album sorta like celtic music with a twang you know.

Yeah that’s the first thing that I noticed that these two elements blended together seamlessly.
That’s good then [laughter]

But essentially I feel it’s the strength of the song that stands out.
That’s right just add a guitar or piano and it’s a good thing.

So what do you feel are your major influences musically?
Well the earliest music I can remember hearing in my house were really basic things like The Beatles, The Stones, Elvis Presley, Bill Haley and The Comets, Andy Stewart. My Granny singing On Ma Kelly’s Doorstep; all these things, Bob Marley. Then when I started getting into music one person was John Lennon, I just thought he wrote really great songs; and there was this Scottish band call Aztec Camera. Roddy Frame was their front man and he was really different from the New Romantic stuff that was around at the time. That made me want to go and write songs, listening to people like Lennon and Frame. Then, of course, I really got into country music. Our manager in Smile gave us some records to listen to like Gram Parsons Grievous Angel/GP, he gave me the Jayhawks Hollywood Town Hall and a Doug Sahm compilation. The another friend who ran a record shop in Edinburgh called Hot Wax gave me a Hank Williams record as well. When I listened to them I was just blown away. I was expecting your average ‘cowboy hat’ country but this was really great song-writing. I mean Al Perkins was playing on the Gram Parsons album and then here he was playing on mine that was an unbelievable thrill.

And Al Perkins really brings a distinctive flavour to the album.
When Al came into the studio I basically said to him “you’ve been around the West Coast you know sunny twangy music can you bring a wee bit of that sunshine into my record?” Then I just let him go with it and we did like three takes and kept everything. His playing on it was so bloody good that, at one point I just wanted to have an instrumental version. I didn’t want to hear my voice on it I just wanted to hear Al Perkins soloing.

Let's face it he is a legend.
He’s certainly a legendary steel player. There’s not that many of them really. He’s played with just about everyone. And Will Kimbrough’s a really fantastic guitar player, very inventive. He just brings so much energy to any room he’s in. He also a great singer and song-writer as well.

As a song-writer are there writers of any type you are drawn to.
Well I really like a lot of American writers which is why, I guess, so inspired by American music and landscape. I love Steinbeck and Richard Yates, Larry McMurty; I mean there’s loads of them. My favourite book of all time is Steinbeck’s East of Eden. I read a lot and also I love movies, old American westerns. So I’ve always been drawn to the American landscape, which is why I’ve travelled there so much. I now have a wee old Airstream trailer because I really fell in love with the desert. My folks are really mystified by this love affair. My mum will “but there’s nothing there” [laughter]. I think that’s the whole point of it. I love being in that landscape, being in the desert. I’m really drawn to the American way, but I’m not drawn to American politics. It’s not so bad now but several years ago I was really embarrassed when they had that arsehole George Bush as President. Now hopefully things will improve.

Irvine Welsh has said some really nice things about you.
Which I’m really grateful for. He’s used some of my stuff in his work. To be honest I was a little surprised, but very pleased [laughs], that he likes my stuff so much.

So what is exciting you musically now?
I’m really enjoying Fleet Foxes and Midlake at the moment. Also a guy called Ben Kweller whose stuff is a real throw back to The Burritos Brothers and Gram Parsons. Also all the great old records like Elvis Costello and all that stuff.
.

Bellowhead2009Interview

Komedia Bath February 18th 2009
They've just finished their soundcheck and I head of somewhere quiet with Andy Mellon (trumpet), Paul Sartin (fiddler/oboist) and Jon Boden (fiddler/singer). The review of that gig appeared in ElectricGhost Issue 14. Here a little later than anticipated is the results of our pre-gig chat.

What’s the origin of the name Bellowhead
Jon: Well bellows as being in melodeon and John [Spiers] and I called our second album Bellow…
Paul: …and also a lot of English bands have the suffix on the them like Motorhead and Radiohead…
Jon: …and we’re somewhere between Motorhead and Radiohead, positioning ourselves like that
Um yeah OK [laughter].
Paul: Well that’s the most coherent response your going to get to that.

OK. I have always been interested in how you’ve named things like your album Burlesque which seems to reflect the theatrical part of your identity. It seems to me that almost from day one you had your musical approach sorted.
Jon: Well not really although I guess there elements of it from the first set. Material that me and John [Spiers] did that we arranged for the big band. Originally quite folky but then it expanded, we noticed what was working and what wasn’t.
Paul: Well I think also as we gelled as a group from a bunch of individual into a band we all felt more confident to bring elements of ourselves to the mix. We have such a wide variety of experience and players its inevitable we’ve bought in the brass band and jazzy stuff for example. As the music has become more varied it’s also become more Bellowhead.

Apparently you [Jon Boden] and John Spiers initiated this idea for a big band whilst stuck on the M25 motorway, or is that just an urban myth?
Jon: Well that’s where the controversy lies John thinks it’s the M25 but I think it’s the M1. [laughter]

Do you find an influence in other English ensembles like Bonzo Dog Doodah Band and Temperance Seven?
Jon: Well we’re certainly English and eccentric. This has arisen before. I’ve never heard of these bands and far as I know no one else is a big fan of theirs. It seem very interesting that we have referenced various bands, also like John Tam’s Home Service that we don’t know very well.

Well I can see that because both the Home Service and also The Albion Band have done stuff in the theatre and used brass. I‘ve also read that your fan base ranges from The Red Hot Chilli Peppers to Frank Skinner, which is pretty varied. [laughter]  On to the new album Matachin. The word is defined as traditional but dangerous, that kind of sums you up doesn’t it?
Andy: Well we had a girl pass out to the words of The Widows Curse recently. Or maybe it was it was too hot [laughter] we haven’t quite worked that out yet.

Mind you whole new array of folk music we’ve got like yourselves Mawkin Causley, Jim Moray and so on, there seems to be something quite full blooded as opposed to the old folk scene which seems to be a bit po-faced and proper and playing the tunes right. You guys seem to have fun.
Andy: Well we haven’t got an issue with playing the tunes right because it doesn’t matter [laughter].
Jon: And also as fiddlers we have quite different fiddle styles. We’ve tried to sit down and unify styles and I think that does give it a freer feel.
Paul: Also we’re the first generation of folkies that have felt secure about it. Previous generation have more concerned with keeping the music going and make sure it doesn’t die out. We feel everything’s been recorded that can be, everything is secure now lets take the ball and run with it and push the envelope a bit.
 
I’ve noticed that the arrangements on your albums are amazing and complex and yet at the same time you pull it off live, do you feel more at home live or on record?
Andy: It’s funny hearing the record because you don’t really hear yourself live apart from the mobile phone or YouTube piece. In a recorded situation its mixed and you don’t hear the whole piece. The whole record thing is strange, I don’t think we’ve been captured properly on record yet.
Jon: This is a basic problem with recording an 11 piece band which I guess answers your question. On stage that’s quite an impressive thing, that scale thing, which you kind of lose on CD. So in that sense I think we are really a live band.
Paul: I think it’s difficult because on a record you play everything carefully because it’s being captured for eternity but on stage it has more immediate impact.
Jon: The great thing about live is that it’s the only job where you get a round of applause every 5 minutes [laughter].
Morris Dancing
Paul: Moving on swiftly…[laughter]

I’m sticking with Morris Dancing you not getting away that easily [laughter]. There was some item on the news recently about not being able to recruit new young people into it.
Paul: Yeah that’s an absolute load of crap

But it does seem to have an image of just not being cool.
Jon: Well somebody is in a Morris team that has got a problem and the media has blown it out of all proportion. It’s not the case that it is a nationwide problem. There’s load’s of young people involved. Its just nonsense. It doesn’t matter if its trendy or not, people don’t do it to be cool its just what they do.
Paul: Also if young people see other young people doing it then they going to at least accept it. I don’t any of us would give a toss whether morris dancing or folk music is considered cool or not.

You seem to have has some success live in Canada have you ever thought, or even have plans for the States?
Paul: I think there are several problems with the States, one is getting Visas and the other is the exchange rate.

You seem to have built up quite a strong visual image by using photographers like David Angel who have a very creative and innovative approach to photographing bands, particularly folk bands.
Paul: Well many folk bands do it at home on a very low budget…
Andy: We did win an award for packaging on Burlesque didn’t we.
Jon: They were either awful or like Topic Records representational but not very exciting, but then Jim Moray’s albums came along and we all ran off and said me next [laughter]. He [David Angel] does go a bit far we have to rein him in sometimes [laughter].

We’ve just got your new solo album through Jon, Songs From A Floodplain, which we’ll be reviewing. Where the hell do you find time to do this with all your other stuff going on?
Jon: I had the idea actually years ago and I just thought I’d better get it bloody done because it could have easily not have happened. Finished writing over last summer and then went into a studio…
…And played all the instruments…
Jon: …yeah because that was essentially a lot quicker than getting a band together for it.

Do you plan get a band together when you tour it?
Jon: Yes I’ll be touring it in March with a four-piece band.

Actually you all seem to have your side projects. Do find that going of and doing those things brings a richness back to Bellowhead?
Jon: I think so; I think it stops me getting bored.

Plans for the future.
Andy: Bondage [laughter]
Jon: Well we’ve got to do a new album fairly soon. And you two [Jon points at Andy and Paul] should do something.
Andy: We have its called The Gimp [laughter]

Blood Choir Interview

The Blood Choir are Robin Maddicott and Joe Mountain. Based in Bath, Southwest England they produce a mix of Folk, Country, Blues and Americana with an experimental edge.

You guys have been playing together an awful long time haven’t you?
Joe: 11, 12 years
Robin: Yes something like that. We celebrate like an anniversary every year really [laughter].

So you’re like an old married couple then [laughter]
Joe: We get a box of wine and some food [laughter]

You’ve been through a number of different names and styles. Can you tell me some of the stuff leading up to The Blood Choir?
Robin: I think there have probably been 5 or 6 incarnations. Starting from when I was 14 or 15 and Joe was around the same age. Starting off in the Britpop era which was…
Joe: …interesting
Robin: The first kind of music we got into. Pretty much a bad pastiche of garage bands of the time like Oasis and so on. Then kind of steadily evolving, and getting better, and then leading up to The Blood Choir.
Joe: Yeah a lot of different bands.
Robin: Afterglow, Levin, and Maddicott Mountain. About 10 different drummers. It was a really good thing in retrospect, helping us to find our own sound. The way I always say it is that we perfected the art of pastiche, [laughter] but not in a knowing way [laughter]. Writing songs in the past we’d listen to say Neil Young and say lets write a song like that. We’d do that and it might be a great song but there was still something about it, which was lacking something. Because it’s not coming from you, you’re trying to do something else. But what happened with The Blood Choir is that we started writing stuff that we couldn’t pin on any particular influence. There are obviously elements of different things in there. But it had come from somewhere that we like to think was completely original.  
Joe: We were playing as Maddicott Mountain for a while; we perfected the art of pastiche with that really. And then it started off as an experiment really, to do something different for a start, to stretch the perimeters with our song writing. Then it took over really and became what we are now.   

Its sounds like when you were Maddicott Mountain you were already getting a kind of Blood Choir sound.
Joe: Yeah We were.

So what I’m hearing today is not a million miles from what you were doing then.
Robin: We had the two running simultaneously at one point.
Joe: Yeah We had two bands. [laughs]. Very Schizophrenic [laughter]
Robin: We had gigs where we supported ourselves.

That sounds interesting but there must have been some difference between the two bands.
Joe: Yeah there was.

So what was the difference because it sounds like The Blood Choir really gelled your sound?
Robin: The Maddicott Mountain songs were a lot more kind of obviously commercial. They were good songs. I stand by a lot of the old songs that we wrote. But when we became Blood Choir we culled about 50 songs. We said that doesn’t fit into what we are doing now.  
Joe: There were a few songs that did…where it did crossover, they were…
Robin: Borderline…
Joe: Yeah borderline. But it wasn’t that specific. It was more organic.
Robin: Something we call the spook. [laughs] The Blood Choir songs had the spook. When we finished a song you knew it had a little something different. Couldn’t always figure out what it was, and that was something we just pursued.

How did you get to name yourself The Blood Choir?
Robin: It was actually an old friend of ours. It was around the time when we were starting to come up with the Blood Choir songs. At The time on MySpace you could only have four songs on your site so we decided to create another site and we needed a name. This friend, who I was with at University, well one of our lecturers had written a book of poetry and the title of the book was The Blood Choir. Good title. It seemed to chime with what we were producing. A lot of people, when we turn up for gigs, expect us to be a heavy metal band. Which is weird because I never thought of that until someone mentioned it. To me it had much more of an old otherworldly quality to it.

I first came across you guys in the Bath Fringe booklet, earlier this year, and I noticed the word Blood Choir. To me you were some kind of otherworldly Americana off the wall kind of band.
Joe: That sounds about right [laughs].

Kind of Willard Grant, Neil Young with a bit of Garth Hudson thrown in for good measure.
Robin/Joe: Yeah yeah.

So there’s no chance of you in spangled jumpsuit then? [laughter]
Robin: Well never say never [laughter].

How are things going with the debut album?
Robin: We’re getting there slowly but surely. It’s just a case of knuckling down and getting it done. We’ve done about 11 or 12 tracks. The problem we’re having is giving it a kind of final thing because we are constantly writing stuff. All the new stuff we write we think oh we’ve got to have that on the album. But you’ve got to have some cut off point…
Joe: …or it’s never going to get finished [laughs]

That does kind of suggest the discipline of working with someone.
Joe: Exactly. I think our plan is to get the album out quite quickly and follow it up with something else. It’s better to have too many songs than not enough.
Robin: It’s also really important to us to balance the album. There quite a few different styles in what we do.  The heavier stuff and the more, off the wall, crazy stuff. Which, I really like. Then there’s the acoustic more melodic stuff.  
Joe: It’s going to be about pacing it. Putting together a bunch of songs that really work as an album.

And the importance of the first track.  
Robin/Joe: Exactly.
Robin: We’ve got a few options there.
Joe: At this point in time we’re favouring Wellwisher.

Sounds like an excellent choice to me, at this point. It works for me. [laughter] The other thing that seems very much part of The Blood Choir that its just the two of and you seem to be able to produce what you have on record really well live. What is your feeling about using drum machines and other stuff?
Robin: We’re getting massively into it.
Joe: Were more into electronic music than many people who listen to our music would think.

Have you ever thought of taking a band on tour to flesh out your sound?
Joe: Yeah
Robin: We’re in the process of trying that out now. Although, as you say, it’s going to be very much a touring band; unless, at this stage, we meet someone who really strikes as having something very special creatively. So it will still be me and Joe writing and creating songs. If we have a pick up band we’ll keep it casual.

Because you’ve been playing together so long it must be difficult to include others.
Robin: Exactly. When we play together we have an almost telepathic communication with each other.  
Joe: And if someone goes off the other can follow.
Robin: Also we are control freaks and if someone comes in and we don’t feel they are adding to the sound why bother.

Also when I’ve seen you live you got a very big sound that doesn’t really seem to need augmentation. I also like the experimental nature of the band.
Robin: Experimenting is key to what we do. I don’t see the need to replicate other people's sound. Or just sticking to a sound that’s already been done. Because it’s probably been done better by someone else. There’s obviously a limit. I don’t think you should experiment for the sake of it. The reason I think The Blood Choir is working so well is that we’ve been through the stage of learning song writing and song craft by copying other people. We’ve now got to the stage where we can take all that and mess it up a bit.

There seem to be a kind of Blood Choir DNA emerging, which is always a good sign [laughter]. I can imagine a few years down the line saying this band sound a bit Blood Choirish [laughter]. You’ve reached the place where you’re playing yourselves.
Robin/Joe: Exactly.

If you could do two covers what might they be?
Joe: Well we’ve done Black Eyed Dog [Nick Drake].
Robin: It’s quite dark and finger picking and we cut quite a lot of the lyrics. So it’s a bit different. That’s one we’ve done, so Joe why don’t you pick one you’d like to do.
Joe: I’m going to have to think about that.
Robin: Well I’m going to say Daniel Johnston. The song would be The Power of Love. A lot of people probably won’t have heard of him and those who have see him as a manic-depressive after that documentary recently [The Devil and Daniel Johnston]. I personally think that his writing and lyrics are quite extraordinary. Tom Waits covered one of his songs and Kurt Cobain was massively into him. Lyrically because he’s slightly insane he doesn’t have the barriers in his head, which a lot of people would, which can be a bad thing on some songs. On this particularly song it just flows out of him, it’s just extraordinary.

OK coming at this covers thing from a guitar angle. I’m looking at you Joe [laughter]. What guitarists light your fire?
Joe: I dunno, there’s so many. Neil Young’s one of my favourite guitarists in both his acoustic and electric stuff. It’s just totally free and there are no boundaries to his playing. It feel like it’s coming from him and not that he learnt a few licks. All sorts of people Robbie Robertson, Peter Green, George Harrison, The Edge…  

That’s an interesting eclectic mixture.
Joe: Yeah I listen to a lot of different people.

Is there a song that you like to cover?
Joe: As A guitarist?

As a human being [laughter]
Joe: I’ve always wanted to play a Peter Green thing called, I think, The Stumble, from that John Mayall album Hard Road. I’ve always thought about having a stab at that.

I’m wondering about videos. We feature a lot of videos in ElectricGhost. It seem that the video is an important part of the publicity package. What are your plans in this direction?
Robin: Well we were just talking about that the other day.
Joe: Our first attempt was just a glorified slideshow [laughter]

Well you’ve got to start somewhere.
Robin/Joe: Exactly.
Robin: I think videos are becoming very important and lot of the video-makers go onto make films. That’s absolutely something we’d like to get involved in. We don’t to want make standard rock videos; we want to bring creativity to everything we do. We want to fit well with the music we’re producing. We won’t accept anything less.

Joe: I’ve just thought of two more guitarists. [laughter]

Go for it.
Joe: John Martyn and Mike Campbell [Tom Petty band]. And I’d like to change the track I’d do… I’d Rather Be The Devil, the old Skip James song.
Robin: I’m going to add a guitarist as well, Richard Thompson. He’s my favourite guitarist.

Along with Neil Young mine too.
Robin: I think he’s one of the most underrated guitarists about. And his songs are outrageously good.

Also for me its good when songwriters turn me onto others things like writers like Kerouac and poets like Baudelaire and Rimbaud.
Robin: Well for us a massive direction on The Blood Choir is the literary influences.

So tell us what you guys read.
Robin: We read a lot of poetry ranging from Thomas Hardy to Milton to Dylan Thomas. TS Elliot, Ezra Pound a lot of different people.
Joe: We are inspired as much by that as we are the musicians, certainly lyrically.
Robin: We take a lot of time with lyrics.
Joe: It’s painstaking sometimes.

What about other writers? Any English or American novelists you are drawn to?
Robin: I have to say Thomas Hardy. I relate to him a lot because he’s from the West Country. Plus his writing is just extraordinary. It’s crystal clear the way he can pinpoint emotion. He’s got a kind of razor edge to his writing.
Joe: I’ve read quite a lot of Cormac McCarthy. He’s pretty special. And they make great films.

Talking of which how about filmmakers or films?
Robin: Well the Cohen brothers obviously.
Joe: The recent Jesse James film [The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford ] and There Will Be Blood.

There seems to be a whole range of literature art and music that guides what you guys do.
Robin/Joe: Exactly.

So it seems that New Year will bring your debut album.
Robin/Joe: We are certainly are aiming for that.

Thalia Zedek Interview

Bristol UK | Monday October 6th 2008

Interviewed by: Lee Edwards

I am sitting in the garden of The Folkhouse Bristol with Thalia Zedek and band member David Curry. Up the road a fire in a shop has put out the electrics in the street. The Cooler, their venue tonight, is working hard to get the place ready for the gig tonight. We settle down on a picnic bench with tea and talk.

So what would you say were your main musical influences?
Thalia: At what period?

Lets say when you were with Come
Thalia: I think I was listening to a lot of Rolling Stones back then, and a lot of old British bands. Me and Chris [Brokaw] bonded on that one. I was really into Nikki Sudden and stuff like that. When I first met Chris I was playing with Live Skull so I was exposed to a lot of that New York stuff, but I wasn’t really in all the bands that were happening in New York at the time. I was into this band called Opal from California and the psychedelic California stuff that was going on. Plus British stuff that was like ‘80s stuff and ‘90s stuff, post punk stuff. When I was Come it was more rock ’n roll and now with this band its more moody stuff like The Dirty Three, and I listen to a lot of Leonard Cohen. Also Bonny Prince Billy that sort of songwriter type stuff. We started out pretty quiet with this current group and now I gone full circle because it’s a five-piece band, and it’s pretty loud. But I don’t think that was an influence of something I was listening to recently; I think it was just wanting to do more stuff with sound you know.

I discovered on a Come album called Eleven : Eleven and I picked it because I loved the cover it was dark and mysterious. Submerge the first track just blew me away. I was at the time reading a lot of nourish novels and I used the term Blues Noir to describe what I was hearing. We recently put a video of Submerge into ElectricGhost. So when Come stopped in 1999 you went solo. What was happening for you at that time?
Thalia: I think at the time I thought I was too old and I’d done or rather being doing it too long to start a new band. I don’t feel that way as much now but in that past I felt I had written a lot of song for bands but they were so associated with those bands that I could really play or maybe I didn’t just play them. Even now we don’t really do any Come songs. We used to do maybe one or two early on but I just don’t like repeating stuff. I felt I‘ve been doing this for so long and I don’t really have anything to show for it. Bands break up and it’s disappointing. If I do solo I can play with different people and if they want to leave I won’t feel like the whole band is going to fall apart. I wanted to be in a band but I didn’t want to be as dependent on people, but it’s a little bit of my nature because I started doing that and I’ve been playing with pretty much the same guys for a long time. I mean me and Dave [David Curry, viola and trumpet] he ‘s got pretty much a unique feel, it’s pretty noticeable as his signature style. But this tour we have a different drummer. My regular drummer Daniel whose been playing… well he actually played on the last Come record and has been playing with me ever since couldn’t come on the tour. So I’m playing with Danny Lee who I played with in this bans Uzi. So we haven’t played together since ’82. Last night was our first show together it was really great but it was a really fucked up show but there was this one certain thing that we still have. It was a certain psychic thing that was really nice to be playing with. So I think I’m definitely a creature of habit but doing the solo thing was an attempt to get out of that and be able to move around more, but I do find myself getting attached to certain musicians you know. But at least this way I can go on tour and unlike Come its not like loosing the rhythm section, on the second record, and getting a lot of grief from it. Not so much in the States but in Germany it was like “How can you call yourselves Come without Arthur and Sean” [laughter]. You know I just didn’t want to be in that position where if somebody didn’t want to play music anymore that I couldn’t play my songs anymore. Or just start over.

I’m very aware of the Come sound where the guitar interplay between you and Chris Brokaw was central, or the signature sound. Then I discovered you when you were playing with a three-piece with the interplay between you and the viola. It seems to have become a very signature sound for you. How did you meet up with Dave?
Thalia: He like foisted himself on me basically [laughter]. He’d show up at shows with his viola and I was just playing with a piano player and he was like “You need some viola!”
Dave: Don’t you need some viola?
Thalia: See what I mean [laughter]. So that was part of it. The other part is we already knew each other, he was roommates with Chris [Brokaw]. We also met before separate from that in clubs but I didn’t really start to get to know him until they lived together for awhile and I would go over there and…  
Dave: It’s still a running joke between me and Chris where every band he’s in I’m saying do you need some viola [laughter]. And he rolls his eyes.
Thalia: Yeah he’s a very gregarious type of guy. So we met because he was Chris’s roommate and he was around. It was a fairly small scene at that time in Boston  so we were at all the same show and stuff. I didn’t really like playing completely by myself so I had a friend and she was playing piano, Beth [Heinberg]. She played on a couple of songs on the first record [Been Here And Gone] and then dropped out, and Dave started joining in. She did some shows with us and then left. It was kind of a natural evolution, it was not so much that I was looking for a viola player…
Dave: I was still learning at that time I didn’t really play all that much with you. I would just turn and sit in here and there. Like a couple of songs, that was all I was able to do.
Thalia: Yeah well Dave was playing guitar when I first met him.

It seems  to me though that your voice and the viola go together particularly well. Also you played recently with Willard Grant on their new album. Also Dave you have a side project, which Thalia also contributes to. How’s that working out?
Dave: The Empty House Cooperative that’s my eternal side project. It comes and goes but it’s always there. I don’t tour with it but…
Thalia: We played Australia
Dave: We did play Australia thanks to you. Yeah I set up a lot of ‘toys’ around me and invite people and friends whose judgement I trust to sit in. It grows or shrinks according to the day and it’s spacey and moody.

Coming back to the current album Liars and Prayers, which I’ve really enjoyed an awful lot, and you justifiable getting some great reaction too. I was very struck by the feeling that this is very much and album of right now. Very much an album where America is right now. Two things struck me, the religious thing and the politics. So was this your response to all that?
Thalia: Yeah definitely. I think you picked up on that. I think it’s pretty blatant with some stuff. I think it been really weird bad times we’ve been living in recently. I think before that the Government was just something you could just kind of ignore. I’m not really that politically active, or been my thing but just on a daily level I’m pretty disgusted by a lot of stuff. It kinda affects me so it came out. I didn’t plan it to be that way when I was writing the songs. I mean there are some more personal, or like, impressionistic type songs as well. Songs about experiences and stuff. But I do think about the other stuff a lot. I mean touring with Danny [Lee, the tour drummer] he’s got such strong opinions. I mean a lot of people, a lot of Americans, are really disillusioned right now with their country and everything.

Dave: TV culture has a lot to do with that. The news is always on with all this bad news right across the news network. The spin they’re putting on it. They’re trying to keep people scared.

But it seemed to that the album wasn’t political with a capital ‘P’. It was more about social justice.
Thalia: Yeah that’s something I deal with on a daily basis like. You see it every day people who can’t afford to go to a doctor and then it turns out that they have advanced cancer because they didn’t get the help. Things have got to that point with this administration. I mean ugh. Yes I have strong feeling about that.

Well things are looking good for Obama but that Palin woman scares the crap out of me!
Thalia: Yeah me too! But you know McCain just can’t win. There’s no way he can win since he got Palin on board. He just signed his own death warrant. How could he do this. To me it’s inconceivable that the majority of Americans could vote for McCain and Palin over Obama.

Well they did vote for George Bush
Thalia: I know but after this they must know… I was reading about all the economic stuff before we left. I mean unbelievable. All the banks are failing because they’ve been de-regulated by Bush. It’s insane the amount of debt we’re in. He’s basically raped the country
Dave: Where we live it’s easy to see this and we have friends who see this too. But there’s a lot of the Bible belt…
Thalia: Yeah you got the religious fanatics. They really don’t care about anything other that their religious beliefs. They don’t care how many wars we go to or how much we are in debt if people have healthcare. All they care about criminalising abortion and stuff. Those people don’t have the priorities most us have. They want their beliefs to be the law of the whole country and for people who don’t follow it to be punished.

So along with the concerns you very rightly have it seemed to me that with this album, apart from the expanded band, that it was about a new direction for you  
Thalia: Yeah I felt that we’d really quiet stuff and we’d really noisy stuff. I really felt the need for a bass player. I’m kind of limited in my guitar playing ability. I felt I couldn’t really play a melody line on the guitar, there wasn’t anything else to back it. I can’t play rhythm and lead at the same time. Also I was writing songs that need to be a little heavier. So I asked Winston [Braman, bass] to come and try out some of the new songs and then he ended up sticking around. And then Mel [Lederman, keys] had played piano on all the recordings already so he knew the songs. But he was in a band Victory At Sea that did quite a bit of touring. Then when the band split he called me up. I had always loved piano but I had given up on it as a live thing because I only really like certain kinds of piano players. It’s not just piano players it’s got to be the right kind. It started with Beth, a then when Beth couldn’t do it on the first album it was Mel who stepped in. Last night my guitar fucked up and I could focus on my singing if I want to. Or I’m not going to play my guitar in the song but come in really loud in the chorus.

So it’s like having an expanded musical palette.
Thalia: Yeah exactly, you could have three colours, or you could have seven colours y’know.

Because the other thing that struck me was, as I went back and listened to a lot of the Come stuff that I have, and then came back and listened to this album had more than any other had that feeling to it. It’s kind of like layers within layers within layers. And Body Memory, for example, really sounds like a Come song to me. So the tour started last night?  
Thalia: Yes last night was the first show.

So how is it going so far [laughs] I know it’s only one show.
Thalia: Well I slept for the first time, last night, in three days so that feels good [laughs]. Last night was about the end of three days of travelling, pretty much non-stop with a little bit of rest. We flew from Boston to Amsterdam picking up a bunch of gear in the van there. Slept for a few hours got up drove and played the show last night. I was a little ragged after the terrible weather, the ferry you know. Work permits weren’t waiting at the borders, then we missed the ferry and were really late. So we got that out of the way. So yeah looking forward to tonight.

Often though first gigs on a tour are an interesting indicator of what’s happening and stuff.
Thalia: Well it was actually quite a good show. I was just a little badly behaved, that’s all. There was also a lot of technical issues. The first gig for me is usually rough. Then after two or three shows you get the kinks worked out.

Finally could you say briefly where you might be going next after this album.  
Thalia: Umm I don’t know. I am happy with the band. I’m happy with the five-piece, I’m happy with the instruments. I don’t feel the need to strip down again. Everyone is sensitive enough musician, no one overplays. I’m not really looking much past this tour. Doing something in October then were going to play a festival in Spain. Come is going to get together for just one night to play that festival. All four of us are going to be I the same place at the same time. Winston who plays bass with me now also played in Come so we are going to do one set which I’m looking forward to. So I’m...
Dave: After that it’s anyone’s guess.
Thalia: Yeah.

He said in a rather pleading way there’s no chance of another Come thing in the UK
Thalia: I don’t think…No.

Well I had to ask.
Dave: I asked for one in Boston. She said no. [laughter]

EG07Cover

The Seventh Issue of the acclaimed Free Monthly Music  e-Journal is again packed with good music.

We feature reviews of great new albums by Calexico, Loudon Wainright III, Giant Sand and Viarosa and much much more. We also have news of some upcoming gems like This Devil's Yours, Max Richter and The Ralfe Band.

As with all ElectricGhost Issues we feature numerous links to music, websites and videos including Live concerts.

You will need to sign up to get regular ElectricGhost e-Journals. Its FREE just send an email to me.

EG06Cover

The sixth Issue of the acclaimed Free Monthly Music  e-Journal is again packed with good music.

We feature reviews of albums by Jessie Sykes, Spiers & Boden, Mawkin Causley, Hinkley Veltones, and Deadman and more plus news of upcoming albums by Calexico, Loudon Wainright III and Giant Sand. Our regular RearView Mirror feature looks back at Whiskeytown's classic Strangers Almanac.

As with all ElectricGhost Issues we feature numerous links to music, websites and videos including Live concerts.

You will need to sign up to get regular ElectricGhost Mini Journals. Its FREE just send an email to me.

A superb concert well filmed by the folks at Fab Channel. We have review of her EP The Gentleness of Nothing in ElectricGhost issue 06.

Handsome Family Interview

A Conversation with Brett and Rennie Sparks of The Handsome Family
June 20th 2008 in Bath. Interviewer: Lee Edwards

I first came across them through a Loose Compilation and their debut album Oddessa. However it was the 1998 album Through The Trees and opening track Weightless Again that confirmed my passion for them.

I guess the first Handsome Family track that stopped me in my tracks, so to speak, was Weightless Again.
Brett: Yeah it resonated with a lot of people.
Rennie: At the time we weren’t sure if anybody would like that song.
Brett: That was a big song. But at the time we were ambivalent about it. It was like, what shall we do with this song. The guy that produced it liked it and had this idea to put this big circus drum on it. That record was recorded with a single eight track tape machine and drum machine. We overdubbed some stuff on top of it. Then he added this huge circus drum – it was a fifty-inch drum. Then it just sounded so cool so we decided we just put this on Through The Trees as the first track, it just sounded so good. That song is probably the most compiled and anthologised Handsome Family song of all time. If we had a hit, [laughter] which we don’t, that would be it.

One thing that that always comes out when people described you is the word ‘twisted’.
Rennie: I can live with that.

But I played your stuff to a friend of mine who doesn’t listen to this type of music mostly, and his response was “wouldn’t that make a great soundtrack for a David Lynch movie?”
Rennie: I’ve heard that one too. [laughs] We haven’t heard from him. But I think David Lynch chooses music not because its similar to him but because it’s different.

I think their kinda saying more it’s like a musical version of a David Lynch movie.

How is the tour going? You’re about half way through now?
Rennie: One we have GPS and two we have Steve [Stephen Dorocke playing violin lap steel and electric guitar in their live band] whose a powerhouse who does all the driving. He’s very helpful. Yeah its been a great tour.
Brett: We have a great band with Jason Toth [drums] a fabulous drum instructor and he’s also with a bunch of indie rock bands.
Rennie: He’s not just a drummer..
Brett: …he’s a musician. He's drummer whose a musician, a very strange combination. And Steve’s great. Yep the best band, I think, we’ve ever had.
Rennie: Its actually fun to play.
Brett: We had a really good show in Belgium and we had a really good show in London at the 100 Club. Great show in Wales last night in a pretty remote place. Steve’s got the Stratocaster and I’ve got the Les Paul and we’re really rockin’ it out.

I’d like to talk about the new album of love songs. Loose [their record company] had this to say about it. “An album of love songs, but don’t worry everyone will probably die in the end.”
Rennie: I keep telling them not to say that [laughs]. We’re trying to write songs that are more about life and love and less about death and dying.
Brett: I have to say that this is probably a one off.
Rennie: The next one will be all train songs. [laughter]
Brett: But on this new album there are still lyrics from Rennie's twisted little mind. [laughter] So, there are lines that people are going to take as twisted or weird you know. There is a song on it that goes [sings] “Were you with me then my friend, are you with me now”.  A lot of people are going to think that that is really weird. Like about a ghost or something. A creepy kind of weird thing, or some Lynchian thing. But if you look at the Lynch movies they are about love. Twin Peaks is a teenage love story. We started getting into…this all started when we were touring through New Zealand and I just randomly bought a Platters Greatest Hits CD. Its got stuff like [sings] “My prayer is to linger with you, at the end of the day”. I mean that shit is so intense you know. So ethereal, spiritual and powerful and it transcends the very notion of love songs and nature and beauty. All those songs include references to nature like [sings] “Heavenly shades of night are falling, it’s twilight time, through the mist your voice is calling… ”. That’s really intense and powerful, and almost pre-Christian you know [laughter]. I mean it’s like nature worship. If you go back even further to the Inkspots you have [sings] “Whispering grass don’t tell the trees, the trees don’t need to know”. So we really starting getting into The Inkspots, The Mills Brothers, The Platters, Temptations, Isley Brothers. All this great tradition of African American love songs. So we really started to get into this stuff. At the same time we were getting into like songs like Stardust and like all the Tin Pan Alley stuff. All the Gershwin stuff, and the Cole Porter stuff. That stuff is so beautifully transcendent that it doesn’t matter that it’s about love that really hit you hard and make you cry. It’s one of the hardest records we’ve ever written you know. Getting the words and the music right because you can really get cheesy with this stuff. You have to watch that you don’t cross that line. I mean it’s a lot easier doing murder ballads, this twisted weird shit, and it’s a lot more forgiving. When the subject matter is love it’s easy to go down a bad alley. Listen to all those Beatles songs, those transcendent Beatles songs. Great Stuff.

And they were influenced by the very people you’ve just mentioned.
Brett: Tin Pan Alley

That’s why they were so successful because the music is timeless. Anyway I see you as welding country music onto to something of your very own. You are unique and one of a kind.
Brett: Yeah and that part of the problem [laughter] Sometimes we’ve gone out of our way to make a joke about some guy shooting his brother in the back or whatever but…
Rennie: …that’s life [laughter]
Brett: We don’t go out of our way to be weird or morose or whatever.
Rennie: I don’t write songs to make myself depressed I write songs to make myself better.
Brett: That’s just a part of country music tradition were we write songs like that, but we write a lot of pop songs as well.
Rennie: It’s about beauty really. You can’t appreciate beauty unless it dies.

I’ve never felt depressed listen to your music but rather more uplifted.
Rennie: I think o lot of those bubblegum type pop songs are really depressing
Brett: I think it depends o how its done.
Rennie: A sad song is about the loss of something beautiful. That’s what life feels like and it doesn’t mean that life is meaningless it means that life is full of meaning that’s why you’re lamenting. If we were all in a nihilistic chaos there’d be nothing to sing about. In America people are really afraid of sadness because they feel they may get stuck there.
Brett: Some people say to us “I tried to listen to your records but I just can’t go there”.

And that really is sad [laughter]
Rennie: A lot of Americans are underdeveloped emotionally. They’re frightened of feeling too much, and it will hurt them a bit. But its good for them.
Brett: With this new record I think its going to be very interesting to see what a lot of people are going to see as another side of us. That is my fear though and some people will see it as just dose of dark weird twisted morose…
Rennie: People find the strangest things depressing.
Brett: We haven’t made a concerted effort to make everything totally different but…
Rennie: ...were just writing songs.
Brett: Just writing songs yeah. But its different, its different. It’s a damn good record I’m really happy with it.
Rennie: A work still in progress.

Do you have a date to release it yet?
Brett: No but it needs maybe one more really strong song…
Rennie: …or maybe three.
Brett: It’s all written basically just needs to be flushed out now.
Rennie: I want to call it 'Love Birds'.
Brett: Nobody really has responded well to that.
Rennie: Mark and Tom [Loose Music] suggested 'Till Death Do us Part' [laughter]
Brett: Hang that was mine [laughter] that was a joke [laughter]

And they took you seriously?
Brett: Yep. [laughter]
Rennie: We’re not going there.
Brett: Definitely not.
Brett: We’ve have been married for twenty years.

Congratulations
Brett: Just celebrated our twentieth wedding anniversary.

Rennie you primarily write the lyrics.
Rennie: He’s written stuff.
Brett: I haven’t written anything in years.

I’m also interested about the Mac element as used in recording.
Brett: I use ProTools.

So you really are a garage band then?
Brett: Oh yeah my studio is in a converted garage. It’s not really a garage, its got walls and doors and air conditioner and its got carpet. But its really filthy…
Rennie: There’s insects down there.
Brett: Its got a work area and yeah lots of weird insects. Millipedes and Moths, and things with pincers on them. I’m cultivating them. I summon them, come to me my little pretties. [laughter]

[Brett walks across the room and picks up a box]
Brett: This is my psychosis. What did I do in Bath today?

What did you do in Bath today?
Brett: I bought a USB interface so I can play around with ProTools and other software and stuff. Actually if I connect this [the USB interface] and that laptop over there I could make a record. Well I’d have to have a guitar and maybe a microphone as well. Yeah I’m kinda addicted to this stuff. We were here for a week or so I kinda got the itch to do some recording and some editing so I had to get this stuff. The way we work these days is that she’ll give me some lyrics and I’ll read them through many times a figure out what the song is telling me to do, and then strum and sing a little bit. Then usually record something to a minidisc because usually I finish around four or five in the morning. The when I do most of the creative stuff. So then the following morning I’ll get up and see if I was nuts or drunk or whatever. If it sounds good I’ll just take a guitar and record a guitar part and a vocal part, and that’ll be the ‘bottom’ of the song. Then I’ll just stack everything else on top of it. I do most of it with fake instruments like fake oboes fake strings and so on. Just to show a lot of shit at the palette. The I kind of figure out what the arrangement is about. Then I eliminate the stuff I don’t want and keep the stuff I do want. Then I’ll start filling in the real digital audio, like sampling real instruments where I’d used fake ones before. Some of the artificial stuff I’ll keep because I like the sound of artificial sounds sometimes. Because they sound cool, they sound nice. I like the hybrid between analogue and digital it’s a really exciting thing. I can sit a listen to just one sound for fours hours until is sounds exactly like I want it. [laughs]
Rennie: Though sometimes the increased choices you have can be problematic.
Brett: Yeah that can be a bitch. Recently I’ve become addicted to this program called Reason, which works, in synch with ProTools. The great thing about Reason is that it has endless possibilities. But the problem with Reason is that it has endless possibilities. [laughter] You can sit there and tweak stuff till your outa your mind. It can really make you nuts but if you want the sound of the B3 organ but with a rotating Leslie speaker the you can change the speed of the speaker, in real time, throughout the song. It’s completely convincing, almost indistinguishable from the real thing. It’s a good time to be a home recordist.

So what about commercial applications like Garage Band they must be pretty limiting?
Brett: Garage Band is OK if you really dig into it, if you really dig into those menus. It’s basically ProTools with a candy-coated surface. It’s the same engine as ProTools its Logic. It’s very friendly and easy to use but if you really dig into the menus in Garage Band it has some really powerful stuff in there. For something that comes with the machine it’s fuckin’ great.

Coming back to endless choices I still feel that eventually you make a decision to go with what you see or hear.
Rennie: Yeah you end up making a decision.
Brett: Yeah well the cool thing about working with a software synthesiser like Reason or Absinth, good name for a synthesiser, [laughter] is that say your trying to get the perfect mellotron mellow sound you can very quickly get lots of choices. Go away and come back later and make a choice you are happy with without recording anything.

So have you ever used a conventional studio?
Brett: Yeah we have. This song [points at compilation with track from debut album Odessa] and Milk and Scissors [second album] were both recorded in what you would call Pro or Semi-Pro studios.
Rennie: When we could afford to.
Brett: The guy was a friend of ours. He recorded everyone from Wilco to Royal Trux. Actually the funny thing is that I recorded with those guys on the first two records and then I started work on an EP for maybe Loose [Loose Music] or a German label that folded and I started making an eight track cassette with a drum machine and me playing most of the instruments. It was then mastered for vinyl. I took what I had done to them and they said “This is great, did you record it at home?” Then was talking to them about reserving some time to come in and work on some material for album three to the guy who owned the studio, who is my friend. He said to me “Why do you want to come to the studio?”. Whilst I wasn’t sure about it he was saying that it sounded fine and that we should do it for ourselves. He even offered to come and help us mix it if we needed it. Then we had the boon of Jeff Tweedy [Wilco] helping us. He loaned us all his equipment. Then we recorded it and that was Through the Trees. The record, that for better or worse, defined us as a band. That was the first record I did myself, I had no idea what I was doing.
Rennie: But the weird thing was that Jeff [Tweedy] gave us all this stuff to use while he was on tour, because he wasn’t going to do anything with it. The he came back from the tour and found that the basement where he had had the stuff stored had been flooded so that all the stuff…
Brett: …would have been ruined.
Rennie: So [laughs] it was kinda a nice twist to things.
Brett: The only reason I know how to use a computer and how to check my email was that I wanted to learn how to use it to record music.

So have you every felt the need to bring in a producer like say Tucker Martine?
Brett: Actually on our last record I wanted to have Brian Deck mix it. He did band like Calliphone and...
Rennie: …a lot of bands we like in Chicago.
Brett: He’s a really cool creative guy but by the time I got to mixing I was so attached to the material that I was…
It was too late to bring somebody in?
Brett: Yeah. It was too late to bring somebody in.
Rennie: We like making our own records.
Brett: I just couldn’t stand the idea of anyone else touching it. So now I’ve kind of resigned myself, and even on this new record, to doing it all myself.
Rennie: I don’t think you can take orders from anybody. [laughs]
Brett: Yeah I don’t want anyone fuck with it at this point. [laughs] Though I keep telling myself I should probably give someone else a chance.
I guess that if you guys got to point of really wanting or needing external input you’d go out and pick someone.
Brett: Yeah maybe. I mean we do have friends come in and get involved with the process. Like other musician who I trust. On the other hand I’ve started recording a lot of other bands at home in my studio. Like I’ve taken on other people’s projects. I’ve kinda gotten into saying “Ok this song needs this”. So I’ve kinda learnt to step and look at a track and see what it needs. I think working with other people has been really good for me. I’ve learned a lot about how to make songs work. The way things sound and flow.

How about live? How does the live experience of you playing live with a band affect how you develop as musicians?
Rennie: I think we’ve learnt a lot about some of these new songs by it. It’s great to hear how our drummer takes on the rhythm and tempo of a song and Steve [guitarist] does with solos. It’s great. It’s nice to play something live.
Brett: That is true.
Rennie: They always add to the song.
Brett: Even something as simple as tempo. Every night you find yourself playing a song twenty-five percent faster. [laughs] So maybe the song should be a little bit faster you know. [laughs] But that’s a weird thing.
Rennie: But I think its good to hear a record and then go see a band and hear something different from the recording. That’s the point of playing live. other wise people could just stay at home and listen to the record. It should be different.

Isn’t it also that meeting between you and the audience?
Rennie: Yeah that’s right.

You feed of the audience and they respond to you.
Rennie: Sure. Otherwise there would be no point in us paying live.
Brett: I just wanna see people fall apart emotionally and run out screaming. [laughter]

I saw Howe Gelb recently live and he was astonishing.
Brett:/Rennie: Yeah we love him.

Musician’s are always telling me how he influenced them in the way he approaches music. The way he works with lots of musicians.
Brett: Yeah Howe’s a really big influence on us. Before I met it was just mainly his, his cavalier…no uhm…
Rennie: Relaxed
Brett: Yeah his relaxed approach. Like without a care. His guitar playing is like totally virtuoso. He’s like the desert Jimi Hendrix. He’s amazing. But it’s almost like effortless and tossed off.
R He’s been doing this for something like thirty years.
Brett: And his overall attitude to music is like fun and effortless. He’s a fucking’ visionary. He’s also like the salt of the earth. He’s the sweetest nicest guy. He sees you’re coming to Tucson [where he lives] and he’s like “You better come to the house before the show and have a beer”. He really wants you to stop over.
Rennie: He’s got room in his heart for a lot of people. We listened to Giant Sand for years and thought this is the kind of music we’d like to make.

He doesn’t seem to buy into music genres
Brett: I was talking to Howe, when I first met him, about that. And he said “Nah who cares. The first time I played a festival in England, that was for music, that was New Romantic. [laughter] That was the Eighties.”

One final question what is the origin of the name The Handsome Family.
Rennie: Sort of a cross between The Carter Family and The Manson Family. [laughter]

I wish you well with the new album [Due out in February 2009, whatever it ends up being called] and look forward seeing you live in Bristol tomorrow.

The live concert was a complete triumph. My friend and colleague Charley Dunlap was there with me. Here is his review.

Copyright YellowMoon/ElectricGhost 2008