Interview: the refreshing Zee Avi

One of the most surprising new acts that I saw at SXSW this year was the diminutive 23-year old Zee Avi, from Malaysia. Plucked from obscurity half a world away in Kuala Lumpur through her homemade YouTube videos, which were seen by Raconteur’s drummer Patrick Keeler and passed along to White Stripes manager Ian Montone, Zee is freshly signed to Brushfire Records.

Her debut self-titled album comes out on Tuesday, with a sound that is a refreshing throwback to jazz vocalists of the 1920s, cross-bred with an island vibe of acoustic guitar and ukulele.

Zee and I bonded over Colorado beers in a noisy bar in Austin after her daytime set at the Filter Magazine party. She looks maybe 17, so I had to double-check before I ordered us some drinks. Still electrified from her well-received set a few minutes prior, Zee was utterly approachable, and completely passionate about where her music is taking her.

ZEE AVI INTERVIEW

F/F: When you were studying in London, were you focusing on musical education, or law?

Zee: Well, primarily fashion design, at first. I did my undergraduate there at the American Intercontinental University in England, but I eventually decided I no longer had “the passion for fashion”…. I did do eight levels in law when I was seventeen – I joke that I was “bred to be a lawyer.” My dad’s whole family were lawyers, so they had that driven mindset. But I’m really glad that they pushed me towards that, because it did teach me a lot about hard work.

I started teaching myself to play the guitar, though, in Malaysia. I had a lot of free time when school ended each day and I bought this guitar for 19 ringgit, which I would say is around thirty bucks. After I got back from London, I bought myself a chord book and decided to take the guitar out of the closet where it had been sitting and….you know, started jamming my A and G chord. It took me some time to figure out how to stretch my hands around it, I have the tiniest hands – you should see how long a bottle of nail polish will last me (laughs). Oh – and it’s an ongoing joke at practice that a ukulele is actually a normal-sized guitar for me. So, I played rhythm guitar in a couple of bands, and then moved to London. When I moved back to Kuala Lumpur, that’s when I really started with the songwriting.

The first time I heard your music, it was kind of surprising (to me, at least) for a girl from Malaysia to have a sound that’s very much throwback to American music styles from, say, the 1920s onward. Where did that influence come from? Were you exposed to women in jazz a lot growing up?

I actually had that comment once on a YouTube video, something like – “How did a twenty-something Malaysian girl sound like she’s from the Mississippi delta?” But I guess for me, it just came naturally. Of course, listening to music that was from that era really helped a lot, it inspired me. Sure, I went through my rock periods and my British indie phase when I was in London, but I felt like none of them really fit me. So I fell back into listening to jazz, and I connected with its simplicity and honesty and just the lack of sugar-coating to the lyrics. Vocal-wise, I would say that 1920s music has a lot of impact on how I write my music today.

In Malaysia, jazz is a pretty big circuit, so I was exposed to it, but I would certainly never call myself a jazz singer even though I love it. Among my friends I am probably still one of the only one who listens to that era, or looks for vintage vinyl, old pressings, of this music from a different time. But American music in general – I mean, blues and jazz came from here and have shaped and defined modern music. I love going back to the roots to see how it shapes music today. I mean, if it weren’t for Howlin’ Wolf, Led Zeppelin wouldn’t have been around.

The way your music was discovered, through your personal YouTube postings, is pretty cool. Tell me about why you started doing that – was that primarily driven by a desire to have your creativity heard?

Well yeah, the whole internet thing has definitely been a blessing. I think it is such a good outlet to help you put your work out there no matter what you do. It does seems to be a more common story these days, that someone, somewhere has their talent first seen on the internet. It’s been pretty crazy to be heard by so many people, and that Patrick (from The Raconteurs) took an interest in my work. I hadn’t even told my friends or family about it until I got the deal. It was really just a place where I could let things out and just write songs for me.

I mean, I don’t talk much about this part of the story, but the whole reason I had even started with YouTube in the first place is simply because a friend of mine missed my first gig and he’s a poet and I really wanted his feedback on “Poppy,” which is the first song I wrote. He wanted me to send him and mp3 but I didn’t know how to do that, but I did have a crappy webcam and an old IBM laptop, with a call center headset. After he watched it, I was going to delete it, with all of the grainy and crackly sound, but he said, “No, why don’t you just let it nest there for a little bit?”

So I left it up instead, and within a few days I started getting other comments on it from around the world, from random strangers. It was just more encouragement for me. I found that the more videos I started recording, the reception was great and more people started coming to the channel to see them and comment and sharing them with their friends. It was all a big, crazy snowball effect

Tell me about the new record that you recorded at Brushfire Studios in Southern California – was that the first time you’d been in LA?

Yes! It was the first time I had been to the U.S. at all, so you can just imagine everything being brand new, and me being a trainwreck of nerves and jetlag. The material that I arrived with was a blend of older stuff from YouTube and new things I had written more recently that they liked when I played for them, they said, “You know what, we should put that on the record!” It was an incredibly good experience – I feel like they are all family now.

One interesting thing on the album is the Morrissey cover song! Why did you decide to cover “First Of The Gang To Die”?

Well, I’ve always been a really big fan of the Smiths, and that particular song was actually played all the time in this indie club in KL (Kuala Lumpur) but it became kind of like an anthem for all of us in that club. It reminds me of feeling like warriors, and a pact of being different from everybody else, and it is just such a beautifully written song. And apparently Morrissey has heard my version of it — which is daunting for me to think about – apparently Ian (Montone, manager) sent it to him. It’s just crazy!

Are you still writing these days? It has been a pretty crazy few months for you.

Yeah, I’m creatively exhausted at this moment. I plan to go home and recuperate for a little while and be a hermit and grow a shell. I need it. Because this summer I have a lot of touring, some cool festivals coming up for me like No Depression in Seattle (with Iron & Wine and Gillian Welch) and Bonnaroo and Outside Lands in San Francisco. It’ll be a good summer.

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Zee’s self-titled debut album is out Tuesday May 19th on Brushfire Records, and you can stream the whole thing on her MySpace.

The Story – Zee Avi

VIDEO: FOUR ZEE AVI ACOUSTIC PERFORMANCES
Live at the Solar Powered Plastic Plant

ZEE AVI TOUR DATES
May 17 – Boulder, CO Etown taping (opening for Mike Doughty)
May 19 – Long Beach, CA – Fingerprints Instore
May 20 – Los Angeles, CA – The Roxy
May 22 – San Fran, CA – The Rickshaw Stop
May 26 – Towson, MD – WTMD Listener event
May 27 – Charlottesville, VA – Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar
May 28 – Washington, DC 9:30 Club (opening for A Camp)
May 30 – Philadelphia, PA – World Cafe Live
May 31 – New York, NY – Mercury Lounge
June 1 – Hoboken, NJ – Maxwell’s
June 6 – Pittsburgh, PA 3 Rivers Arts Fest (opening for Medeski, Martin & Wood)
June 13 – Manchester, TN – Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival
June 15 – Chapel Hill, NC – Night Light
June 16- Kill Devil Hills, NC- The Pit Surf Shop
June 17 – Columbia, SC – Hunter Gatherer
June 19 – Opelika, AL – Eighth & Rail
June 20 – Birmingham, AL – City Stages Festival
July 9th – Spokane, WA- Knitting Factory
July 11th – Redmond, WA – No Depression Festival
July 12th- Vancouver, BC – Media Club
August 28th San Francisco, CA – Outside Lands Festival

Interview: The expansive sounds of Blitzen Trapper

Through non-stop touring over the last two years and a pair of very strong albums (their latest, Furr, on Sub Pop), Portland’s Blitzen Trapper is accumulating a critical amount of deserved buzz behind their music. Straddling genres of expansively golden CSNY rock, the wide-open folk underpinnings of the wilderness, and the squalling rock of fellow Portlanders Pavement, their music delights simply in its unpredictability.

I sat down with half of the band when they were in Denver a few weeks ago, playing a very sold-out show at the Hi-Dive. Brian Adrian Koch (drums and vocals), Eric Earley (lead vocals and guitar) and Marty Marquis (guitar, keyboard and vocals) piled on a sunken green couch and we chatted about their year, while waiting for Ramen from the bar.

BLITZEN TRAPPER INTERVIEW
Fuel/Friends: Last time you guys were here in Denver I saw you open for Malkmus, which must have been pretty cool. Your non-stop touring seems to have generated a good deal of enthusiasm in the crowd refracted back to the stage – the singing along with each word on songs like “Furr”….

Eric: Yeah, that’s been great and surprising. People also really seem into “Black River Killer” on this tour…

Marty: Oh, and also “Not Your Lover”, when the three of us do it all singing together

Not Your Lover (live 2/27/09) – Blitzen Trapper

F/F: I’d read about a thematic connection between Black River Killer and (author) Cormac McCarthy. What about his novels inspire you creatively?

Eric: On the one hand, that song is a classic murder ballad, but in other ways it’s more ambiguous as well, with some spiritual aspects. To me the imagery of the song feels related to the world McCarthy creates.

Marty: And I think there’s also the same recurring theme of regeneration through violence and some sort of redemptive quality in the most mindless, pathetic slaughter. It’s an interesting character in that story of our song and I think people are drawn to those contradictions. I mean it’s an American myth, that’s one of the things that makes us tick as a culture. I think Cormac McCarthy also taps into some of that.

Black River Killer (live in NYC) – Blitzen Trapper

Eric: He’s like our classic, our Hemingway or Faulkner, our Steinbeck crossed with Joyce. And he does it with an amount of experience that’s strange, and he’s writing right now. It’s amazing.

Brian: As rife as those novels are, when they’re translated into film – I watched No Country For Old Men, and there’s no music in it at all, and I didn’t even notice until someone pointed it out to me afterwards and I had to go back and check. There’s not a stitch. It’s so effective, I was flabbergasted.

F/F: It’s consistent with his books I think, though, since there’s such a space and a stillness and a silence in them.

Eric: Yeah, completely.

F/F: How do you possibly maintain creativity while you’re on the road? How have you been able to work on finishing your next album being on tour so much?

Eric: Well, I don’t write on the road, I write when I get home. And I can write really fast, I can write a whole record in a month. January I spent the whole time recording and writing.

Marty: You can barely think on the road.

Brian: The road’s a really good place to form ideas, for things to bubble and boil in your head. But as far as developing them into actual songs, it’s not very realistic. A lot of time to think though.

F/F: I also read that you have a record made between each of your records? Do you ever revisit those songs or play them live?

Eric: Well, we’ve used em for a few things… the Tour EP that we’ve had the last couple tours is stuff that was outtakes from Furr, and then all the Wild Mountain Nation outtakes were released here and there, on blogs and stuff like that. There’s probably an album and a half of stuff that hasn’t been put out.

The next record is definitely going to have some older songs that have been recorded years ago, some that were written when I was like nineteen, mixed in among all the new stuff. Generally when I’m making a record I record 25-30 songs, so yeah there’s a whole lot of stuff out there.

F/F: Do you ever play those unreleased rough cuts live?

Marty: Well you know, we want to make everyone have a good time, and it helps when they know the music. But we do play some stuff that’s pretty obscure in our set. As far as your average person who knows about Blitzen Trapper, they mostly want to hear the album Furr and even some of the hits from the last record, but we will also play stuff that they are totally unaware of.

Furr (live in NYC) – Blitzen Trapper

F/F: I wanted to hear more about your record label….Lidkercow?

Eric: Yeah, Lidkercow – that’s a Joyce reference.

F/F: ….Are you planning to release your own solo projects on that label, or signing some other bands you admire?

Eric: We are always feeling like we hear bands whose records we’d like to release….

Brian: In our fantasy life, we’ve always looked down the road to a place where people can collaborate and create together, and thinking of ways that we can be a part of that.

Marty: I mean, we’ve learned a lot in the past couple of years, we were a band for a long time and we didn’t know how to get the word out. We were just pretty naïve and playing music around Portland for a long time. So when we finally pushed out, we were really innocent, and it’s been a pretty steep learning curve for us. Now we’re getting to a place where I feel like we could help other artists ascend that curve and it would be pretty cool. There’s definitely some bands and musicians I’ve talked to a little bit that we’re pretty impressed with, but yeah, you don’t want to shortchange people either. What we do is a pretty spartan, bare-bones approach.

F/F: Well, and it is a crowded music market out there.

Eric: It’s difficult to navigate it.

Marty: I think people are getting pretty savvy about navigating all the data that’s out there, though. With music these days you can go and hear something immediately, and that communicates on some super-rational level with your core being and you don’t have to rely on what other people are saying about the music.

F/F: Do you think that people seem to have less patience to some degree for bands that don’t fit into a mold or genre? Like for example, people seem to have no idea how to classify your music – it’s quite amusing reading all the descriptors assigned to you guys.

Eric: Yeah, but all of that stuff is writers though. What I’ve learned on this record the last two tours is that there’s a big difference between writers and the fans. You know, and the fans just hear the music and they connect with it, whether it’s classified a certain way or not, it’s unimportant. But you need the writers to communicate to people about the music too.

Marty: I mean, it’s human nature to want to classify stuff. I definitely think that, yeah, if we had been a more focused band maybe, and we’d just said, we’re gonna be a straight country folk act and we’re all going to wear cowboy hats in our photo shoots….we might have been able to penetrate the marketplace a lot earlier because it’s a sharper instrument that people can comprehend a lot easier.

Eric: But you know, I think the way that we’re going though will have more lasting value, as opposed to being sort of like, “Well, you got your year.” I’d rather be able to make 5 or 6 records that will all last, or at least all contain songs that can stand the test of time.

All photos by special arrangement, from a little fly-by-night session we did shortly before the interview with the amazing Todd Roeth.

[thanks to the awesome NYCTaper for the live tracks throughout]

Interview: The Hollyfelds

A few weeks ago, I helped dragged a table out into a bar parking lot on a lovely Sunday afternoon and interviewed last summer’s winners of Denver’s best alt-country band title, The Hollyfelds. They have a new EP coming out Friday, and they played at our Hillbilly Prom last weekend (oh wait, that was the Lurleens).

Feel free to jet on over to Gigbot.com and see what we had to talk about.

[photograph by my favorite Todd Roeth]

Interview: Cody Dickinson (Hill Country Revue & North Mississippi All-Stars)

Head on over to Gigbot to read my interview with Cody Dickinson, of Hill Country Revue and the North Mississippi All Stars. Cody plays the electric washboard. That’s pretty rad.

Grace Potter interview :: Turn the radio up high, and grab the first guitar you see

Grace Potter can electrify a stage with her fearless and excoriating guitar solos, light up a room with her thousand-megawatt smile, and shoot an arcade-game basket from fifteen feet away. In heels.

In addition to possessing one of the most honest, immense, and soulful wails I’ve heard from a female vocalist since Janis Joplin, Grace is a stellar songwriter and rocks the B3 Hammond organ, among other instruments. At only 25 years old this Burlington, Vermont native leads her band The Nocturnals with some serious rockability, and can beat them at many backstage arcade games. At least that I’ve seen.

I recently had the pleasure of seeing Grace Potter and The Nocturnals live for the second time this summer while I was in San Francisco for the Outside Lands Festival last weekend. Around this time last Sunday I was sitting in a tent with Grace for a few questions before we all loaded up and shipped out. Being that it was the end of a long and festive sunny day for both of us, we started the conversation with Grace confiding in me that I wasn’t the only one that’d been drinkin’ since half past noon. “I have a good liver,” she said to me in a lowered voice as she leaned close and spoke into my hair. “It’ll process it. But we’ll be okay — you and me, we’re gonna throw it down.”
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GRACE POTTER INTERVIEW
SAN FRANCISCO, AUGUST 24, 2008

HB: The question I am most interested in asking you stems from my own experiences being a female blogger in this crazy rock world — I’m wondering if you feel that there’s any kind of double standard when it comes to being a woman in the music industry, as opposed to a guy doing the same things that you’re doing?

GP: I personally think that there’s positives to it, and obviously there are negatives. I actually hate girl musicians — for the most part I tend to really dislike them. But I’m not saying that I’m like, the Savior Girl in rock and roll. I make mistakes, we all make mistakes. Still, I’m not gonna throw a fit, I’m not gonna be a diva… I’m never gonna make a big scene if somebody didn’t bring me my fucking champagne. Today they were apologizing for not having a mirror where I was backstage but — who cares?! What’s most important to me is that we’ve got an environment where we can create great music, and I’m more interested in if my amps work or my gear, or if there’s a string broken, or if the setlist isn’t quite right. I would way rather talk about that than what outfit I’m gonna wear. Of course it is fun being a woman, and I’m glad to be a woman. But what I’m most fascinated by is a woman artist who can speak realistically, from her soul, and not be bullshitting.

The music industry is a hard place to live in, but I love my guys in my band, being in a band with guys. They seem to have more of a sense of team and camaraderie that’s ingrained in them that I also feel I’m lucky enough to have. If I didn’t have that, I feel like I would have been Gwen Stefani-d a long time ago. I’ve toured with other women in the band and in the crew and there’s definitely a challenge I have of being “the boss,” so to speak, but not wanting to be the Snow Queen, not wanting to be the bitch. I kinda cater to the Katharine Hepburn mentality, which is “be as wonderful as you possibly can be onscreen, and as edgy and cutthroat as you can be off-screen.”

Do you ever feel like women who front bands are treated as a novelty?

I would SO much rather it go in this order when people walk by our stage — listen: ‘Wow, that music sounds amazing. Look at that bass player, he’s awesome — this band fucking rocks! . . . Oh my god, there’s a girl singing, and she’s pretty good on the guitar, or she’s pretty good on the B3.’ And then maybe, ‘Oh, she’s kinda pretty’ –  instead of the reverse. I mean however you look at it, I feel very lucky to be where we are. I am a 25 year old girl who isn’t afraid to wear a short skirt or to have fun and be myself. Someday I’m going to chill out and be more like Emmylou Harris or Bonnie Raitt or Lucinda Williams and get into a more humble state of mind and a more… subtle state of fashion, but for now this is who I am.

Are those musicians who you mentioned some of the women you admire?

YES. Emmylou Harris, Lucinda Williams and Bonnie Raitt, in that order — my idols. I’ve met all of them, but have never sang with any of them. I almost asked Lucinda on a song, and I almost asked Emmylou, but I just couldn’t work it out at the shows. Bonnie is actually a really good friend of the band, she’s been very supportive, given us quotes and mentioned us from stage . . . one time she was playing in front of 3000 people in my hometown of Burlington, Vermont and she actually talked about me onstage. She was talking about the local music scene and how hard it is for local artists to get off the ground, and bands who have really been able to do something and she said my name. I mean — I lost my shit.

I’d heard that you guys were heading back into the studio later this year. On your last record This Is Somewhere you’d tried to capture more of a live feeling in the studio. Will you continue with that aim this time around?

I think we’re going to relinquish all desperate attempts to capture a live sound because it’s two very different things. Being in the studio last time we realized that you have to let them be different – you can’t force a live sound from a beautiful studio. I mean, we were in a gorgeous studio in LA and we kinda mistreated it, in that we were constantly trying to force something out of it.

I think this time around, depending on where we record and what kind of songs we’re writing, it’s gonna become whatever it needs to become, and we’re gonna pick the studio accordingly. We are thinking of going back into the studio in February or March to make a new record and who knows when that will come out . . . but hopefully a little bit of a quicker turnaround than last time because it took us like eight months from the time we finished recording it for it to actually be out.

Are you happy with the ultimate result on the last record with that struggle between live and studio sound?

I am proud of it. I would listen to it, I would. But I don’t listen to it. Jeff Tweedy from Wilco told me that one mistake you can make is to overlisten to your own [recorded] music. Just let it be what it is. Just leave it alone — record your record and let it be a moment in time because that’s exactly what you sounded like. Be honest with yourself. I mean, be the best version of yourself –don’t underedit, don’t sell yourself short– but pick the best parts of yourself, put them out there, and then forever from that moment on recognize the fact that that was back when you recorded it, in . . . November of 2006 or whatever, and that that’s not who you are now, and that’s okay.

Yeah . . . Jeff Tweedy gives good advice.

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VIDEO: “STOP THE BUS”
OUTSIDE LANDS, SAN FRANCISCO – AUGUST 24, 2008

VIDEO: “PUT YOUR HEAD DOWN”
RED ROCKS, MORRISON, COLORADO – JUNE 10, 2006

[top image credit Kim Hutchens]

The SXSW of Denver is happening this weekend

This weekend brings a vibrant, can’t-miss community festival to all the music loving denizens of Denver.

The Denver Post’s Underground Music Showcase (UMS) is preparing to take over a walkable area of South Broadway (roughly between 3rd and Maple) and 20 venues — including the sanctuary of a church, a Persian rug store, a custom print shop and a modern art gallery, as well as all the traditional clubs and music venues. Over 100 local bands will play on Friday evening and all day Saturday (and okay . . . probably on into Sunday).

In addition to artists I know I dig, like Gregory Alan Isakov, Hearts of Palm, Young Coyotes, Born In The Flood etc, I am especially looking forward to the “wander around aimlessly and listen” plan of attack and discovering some unexpected new local sounds. And if the tunes aren’t enough to lure you, there’s also a photography exhibit presented by some of Denver’s finest rock photographers (with free beer). If you live in Colorado and love music, come on out — a pass for all the action will only set you back a Jackson, and that ain’t bad.

In order to find more about how one nurtures and pulls off such a rad model for a local music festival, I checked in with one of the festival organizers, Ricardo Baca of the Denver Post. He tells Fuel/Friends why you should all come around to his little utopia this weekend.

5 QUESTIONS WITH DENVER UNDERGROUND MUSIC GURU RICARDO BACA

1) When the Underground Music Showcase first began, what hopes and goals did you have for it?

In the beginning, we only wanted to celebrate Denver’s local music community. It was five bands for $5, and the promoters told us we wouldn’t make any money off local bands. We told them we didn’t want to make the money – we wanted it all to go to the bands. (A very un-promoterly philosophy, apparently, given the looks of horror on their faces.) The Denver Post has never made money on any of the seven previous UMSs, nor have we, the organizers. But from the very beginning, the bands have always told us that they make more money at the UMS than any other show throughout the year – and since we believe that musicians deserve to make money, we’ve kept with that philosophy.

To this day, as we’ve expanded to two days and 100 bands and 20 venues and an outdoor stage this year – while still staying all-local, mind you – we still give 100 percent of the ticket sales to the artists who make the UMS what it is.

2) Name a few shows this year that you are anticipating – what’s gonna be epic?

As you know, Heather, The Knew is a fiery live act that isn’t to be missed. And they really step it up at festivals. I really love it how bands often utilize festivals – SXSW or Coachella or the UMS – as a time to step things up, to put on a show. And everybody treats it as an event – including the solo artists.

One of my favorite aspects of the UMS plucks artists out of bands and drops them on a solo stage. We try and pick musicians who aren’t really known for their solo work, too, because it makes things more interesting. Last year, everybody showed up when Bright Channel‘s Jeff Suthers (now of Moonspeed) played an intense solo set at a little paper shop. He’s playing again this year, and now there are others who don’t play out alone much – Pee Pee‘s Doo Crowder, Widowers‘ Mike Marchant, Cat-A-Tac‘s Jim McTurnan and Ghost Buffalo‘s Marie Litton just to name a few – who are stepping out at this year’s UMS.

More bands people should be aware of: Born in the Flood won our Underground Music Poll last year, and Hearts of Palm won it this year. They’re both playing. Some smaller musicians and bands: Mark Darling dazzled me at last year’s festival; The Beebs make lovely music; Roger Green and Dang Head and Joe Sampson and Chris Adolf are all tremendous talents in our community; and then there’s Chewbacca Bukkake – and with a band name like that, how can you not go and hear what they sound like?

3) Looking back at the UMS, what are some memorably fantastic shows that stick out in your mind?

At last year’s UMS, one of our featured solo performers was Patrick Meese. His band, Meese, was about to sign to Atlantic, but we didn’t know that. They were still “underground” enough for us. Turns out some of Patrick’s buddies showed up for his solo set – including Isaac Slade of The Fray. Isaac later sang a tune with Patrick, and then one by himself, and it was all very lovely and memorable.

I’ll also never forget the time Josh Taylor’s band Friends Forever got manic with a tarp, a fan and some other materials when we were at the Gothic Theatre that one year. Wovenhand put on a pretty amazing show at the UMS a couple years ago at the Bluebird Theater, and there was also the year when winning band Munly And The Lee Lewis Harlots got up from their seats at the Irish Rover (he’d requested to play the smallest venue at the festival) and walked out to the back patio, where they finished their set under the stars.

I could go on and on, seriously. Recounting the festivals over the years is like going through a history of Denver’s indie rock/metal/alt-country/punk scenes.

4) How do you think that technology has changed the independent music scene since the inception of the UMS, and related to that, your job as a music reviewer and festival organizer?

Up until this year, we tabulated votes for the Underground Music Poll by hand. That’s 100-plus voters, and each ballot has 20 band names on it. It was mad. This year, our tech guru Sean Porter was kind enough to build us a program that made things easy for everybody – voters included.

Speaking of Sean, he and his colleagues have made an incredible impact throughout the state –all very quietly, mind you– by designing/running most of the major rock club websites and starting his own genius creation, Gigbot. He and his buddies created websites for many of the major music venues and festivals in the city, and their program Gigbot spiders all of those sites and blogs and MySpace pages and brings that data into one place. Who’s playing tonight? Go to Gigbot. That makes my job – and my live music habit – a lot easier.. In the spirit of being forward, Gigbot is the presenting sponsor of this year’s UMS. But still. They were my favorite website long before they were associated with the UMS.

5) In talking about a future vision, what would you like to add to the Underground Music Showcase in future years?

We do like growth at the UMS. Right now we’re an all-volunteer shop. Even our lead booker, designer, sponsorship director and web developer are volunteers. I’d like to imagine a day where those are paid positions, even if it’s just a bonus. These people give so much. They deserve it.

Other than that, I love what the UMS stands for. I hope to keep that pro-artist, pro-fan vision and continue to grow with the booming Colorado music scene.

Thanks Ricardo, for the thoughts shared and for helping (with your crew) to organize such a relevant, viable, ‘music-friendly-first’ local festival! The posters are printed, the bands are ready. I’m in!

[poster photo credit Todd Roeth]

Ryan Auffenberg and the burnished glimmer of Marigolds

There’s a desolate ache to the brand of dusty Americana that Ryan Auffenberg creates from his outpost in the busy heart of San Francisco. As the SF Weekly wrote, “sweet, rough, singer-songwriter kids like Ryan Auffenberg have a powerful animating force — they like to fuck around with folk, and they’ve got love songs to sing.”

I called Ryan an artist to watch a few years ago after first hearing the gorgeously melancholy harmonies of “Under All The Bright Lights” and seeing him perform at Noise Pop 2007. Now signed to independent San Francisco label Evangeline Records (home of Chuck Prophet), Ryan is releasing his newest album Marigolds today. It was produced and mixed by former American Music Clubber Tim Mooney, and mastered by Matt Pence of Centro-matic.

There’s a bittersweet molasses smoothness to Ryan’s voice as it crests and burrows through his songs with a streak of the romantic west gleaming through. Whether plumbing the cold depths of loneliness in songs like “Deep Water” or driving a highway with the windows down amidst the bright Midwest jangle on the closing track “Alright, Okay,” he urges us all to have some faith.

Alright, Okay – Ryan Auffenberg

Lay off the novocaine
’cause you’ve been asleep for days
it hurts but it’ll go away

Almost the first of May
the San Francisco Bay’s
all swollen up from last night’s rain

So if you just come down
we’ll get out of town
take a breath and drive all day . . .

Ryan took a few minutes to answer some questions for Fuel/Friends, since this is one artist whom I tend to get a lot of questions about, and who’s been flying under the radar lately.

RYAN AUFFENBERG
INTERVIEW / UPDATE
Q: You’re from the Midwest but live in San Francisco. How does location and the mood of the city affect your songwriting, in contrast with the twang of your roots?

A: Some of the initial press about the album has played up my Midwestern “country” roots, which I think my St. Louis friends and family find amusing. While I never really considered St. Louis to be much of an epicenter for roots or “country” music, I did grow up 20 minutes away from Jeff Tweedy and Jay Farrar’s hometown, so I guess there is a bit of that scene in my lineage. I remember listening to Uncle Tupelo when I was 11 or 12 years old and they were just a local band. They had a poster that said something like “Fourth best country band in St. Louis!”

While St. Louis does have a pretty auspicious musical heritage, especially in regards to blues and early rock ‘n’ roll, I would say that I identify much more with San Francisco as a place that has shaped my sensibilities as an artist. Cultural influences aside, I think my music is definitely affected by the atmosphere and climate of San Francisco. I live in a particularly foggy neighborhood, which I know has had a big effect on the mood of music I often write.

If you sit down to play some music and it’s foggy outside, that’s going to have an effect on what type of music you play. “Missouri in the Morning” is actually a song I wrote on a particularly foggy day when I was missing home and the blazing heat of the summer time. There’s something really sensual about that kind of weather. I miss that out here.

What can you tell me about your songwriting process on Marigolds?

My songs usually seem to start out with chords and a melody. Once some sort of melody starts to take shape, I’ll sing a bit of free-form nonsense along with the melody until an image pops out that I feel like I can run with. Once I’ve got those images then I’ll start trying to weave some sort of narrative through lines into the song, and piece it all together.

What I find really fascinating about this process is that when I’m nearing completion of a song and take a step back, I often find that what I’d thought was simply some sort of free-association exercise has really turned into a means of expressing emotions or ideas that had been percolating for a while, but I hadn’t quite figured out how to articulate them. Many of what I feel to be my most emotionally honest songs have come out of this process. Also, the writing always happens at different rates of speed. For instance, I wrote “Deep Water” and “Under All the Bright Lights” in about a half hour each respectively, whereas the song “Marigolds” took me six months to finish.

After your self-released first album Climb, your second album Golden Gate Park was never released and seems shelved for the time being. That seems to me to be a bit like the second part in a trilogy being missing. Any plans to revisit the songs on that album?

I would eventually like to release Golden Gate Park in its originally-intended album form. After recording it, I was looking for a label to help put some resources behind the release. So in the interim period, I took four of the songs off of the album, released them as The Bright Lights EP and held off on putting out the rest of that material.

When I was eventually approached by Evangeline, their original intention in making an album with me was to go back in a re-record those songs with a slightly different production approach. However, by that point in time I had already written a new album and expressed to them that I’d much rather make a new album than go back and revisit material I’d emotionally and creatively moved on from. I sent them demos for the songs on Marigolds and they signed off on the idea of making an album of all new material.

I am proud of Golden Gate Park though, and I would eventually like all of those songs to see the light of day, but for now it’s currently locked in the vault (“the vault” being my bedroom closet).

You’ve played shows with quite a variety of musicians, from Mark Kozelek to Laura Veirs to the Watson Twins. What other music has been influencing or astounding you lately?

I’ve been spending a lot of time listening to Neil Young. Tim Mooney (Marigolds producer) and I, aside from being musicians, are also pretty big music fans and would spend a lot of time in the studio just talking about records we loved. After the Goldrush was a recurring topic of conversation. We’ve actually been tooling around with a cover of “Tell Me Why” and may include that as a bonus track in some form or another sometime.

As far as new stuff, I’ve been enjoying the Bon Iver album a good bit lately. Flume, Skinny Love and Re: Stacks are all really beautiful tunes. Sun Kil Moon‘s “Lost Verses” off the new April album is the first song in a long time to give me that “lump in your throat” feeling.

Other newer stuff: Spoon‘s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is a badass album. Britt Daniel crafts these incredibly lean and mean pop songs, and then they’ll do these wild production things like making one tune sound like The Supremes, which seems like a pretty unique choice for a rock band to be making these days. Another thing about Britt that I love is his solo-ing style. Often times during solos, he intentionally plays all these wrong chords or notes and creates this really messy, dissonant, incredible sounding noise.

There’s a moment at the end of “Interstate” (on Marigolds) that’s sort of a mini-musical nod to Britt. I was overdubbing piano on the song and in the outro I just started banging on the piano, playing wrong notes while Tim messed with that fucked-up signal generator noise. Good fun indeed.

###




Auffenberg’s record release party is tonight at San Francisco’s Cafe Du Nord. Head on out to support this talented artist; Willow Willow and Robert Francis open. Ryan also heads out on the road in July & August.

Marigolds is available today.

[portrait of Ryan credit Peter Ellenby]

Using all the colors :: Frightened Rabbit interview

In the short time I’ve been listening to Scotland’s Frightened Rabbit, something in their music has hit me hard. Their latest album Midnight Organ Fight has been more or less on constant repeat and haven’t even come close to getting tired of it. You can read all about it here.

Scott Hutchison formed the band with his brother Grant (who is an insanely ferocious and passionate drummer) in 2004. I was curious to learn more about the person largely behind these gorgeous songs, so Scott and I sat in a Denver parking lot in the deepening twilight this past weekend and talked a bit more about the emotional core of the record, the songwriting, and the production that Peter Katis (The National) brought to it.

They are Frightened Rabbit, they are on tour in the US, and yes, they are happy to meet you.

SCOTT HUTCHISON (FRIGHTENED RABBIT) INTERVIEW

On Midnight Organ Fight you sing about working on erasing someone but lacking the proper tools. It seems that many of your songs on the record are a sort of catharsis, or a tool for working through a difficult situation, but at the same time, a constant reminder of some pretty rough times. Is that ever a difficult dichotomy?

Well, during that part of my life, that relationship and that situation was a really major part that wasn’t going to go away anyways, so I didn’t really see the songwriting as therapy or anything like that. It was just the most important thing that was going on at that point in time, and the only thing I really cared enough about to write about.

And now, each time I sing the songs I definitely think about that time just naturally, like imagery pops into my head, but the whole thing’s not hard anymore. Performing them every night definitely takes some of the edges off of it, but you still have to transpose whatever energy or emotion you’re feeling that day into those songs when you perform them. When the record was recorded it was still pretty fresh. It’s not really anymore. I’m really concentrating on different things when I’m doing it live, like playing it well, and getting energy into it.

I know as a writer that there is some sense of fulfillment when you can string together words that perfectly pierce the gut of what you are trying to express. All of the lyrics on the new album are extremely rich, but do you have any personal, small favorites?

Yeah, I really like the whole of the song “Poke.” I feel like something definitely happened with that one whereby I was able to exactly compartmentalize one particular time in my life – something about it, I don’t really know exactly what. I summed something up perfectly in that song, I really like the line about tying a navy knot, just how two people can be interlaced like rope:

“You should look through some old photos
I adored you in every one of those
If someone took a picture of us now they’d need to be told
That we had ever clung and tied a navy knot with arms at night
. . . I’d say she was his sister but she doesn’t have his nose”

And then I also like the line about “I might never catch a mouse and present it in my mouth / To make you feel you’re with someone who deserves to be with you.” There is a sense of compressing three years of worry on my part into that one line. Those words kind of appeared from nowhere.

But I don’t usually write in the moment or at the time of feeling, I usually write after the fact so that I can them almost fictionalize events and distance myself from them slightly. I’ve always thought that there’s one thing to be personal in a song, but then you’re really a fine line away from being selfish if you’re not externalizing it so other people be invited into your songs. I hopefully try and write so that there’s enough vagueness so that the emotion is specific, but the personal is not specifically mine anymore. People can attach their own emotions onto my songs, and I can let the songs go.

That must be kinda difficult to balance, because the emotion all by itself means less without any details or context.

Yeah. Of course, people close to me are well aware of lines meaning really specific things, which is fine, but I think the metaphors used are still idiosyncratic enough that not everyone feels those things as intensely as I personally would. I mean, I think anyone can even take most of the songs on that record and just enjoy them as rock songs, it depends what frame of mind they’re in.

But I definitely do try and get as much out of each line of lyric as I possibly can. I don’t like throwaway lines in other people’s music. I tried to make the whole record and each line matter. That helps with what we were talking about before, to make the live delivery of each line as if it really matters.

My first introduction to your music was actually a YouTube video where you covered a bit of Fake Empire before My Backwards Walk. The National are a bit formidable to cover, not many bands have attempted that that I’m aware. What is your relationship with their music other than sharing a producer?

I came to that song before we worked with Peter and got to know the record and loved it. I’d heard The National in a bar in Glasgow, and that song definitely came at the same time as when I was writing and finalizing some of our songs on the record. When I first heard “Fake Empire” –on MySpace cheesily enough– I don’t know, there’s something about it where I just visualized myself inside of that song during that time in my life.

The National have a way with lyrics; there’s a line with them so often that really hits you so directly, and there’s wit which I really appreciate as well. I’ve never met the band, although I’d love to, so I cover that song 100% from a fan perspective.

I love Peter Katis’ work with The National, and you’ve said that with Peter you knew there was a certain way the record was always going to sound. Can you tell me more about that? How did that working relationship come about?

I got mostly what I’d expected from working with Peter, I just really appreciate the atmospheric quality he brings to all his records. Up to that point our demos and our first EP had sounded very closed, not really big. I really wanted to achieve a grander scale with this record. There was a completeness to the whole album and to the writing process, and I didn’t want the power of that completeness to be brought down by the music not being sonically powerful enough.

So Peter brought a muscle, I would say, to the record. He approaches things in production from a more scientific perspective than I do, which is good. He has his tricks that he uses on all his records, but he was really clear about the fact that he wanted to make our record unlike most of the other records he’s produced, which are quite dark. We got to the point at the end of mixing where he felt that this should really not be a dark record, actually. Hopefully we kept the power and the muscle without turning into Interpol. I mean, I think there’s black imagery, but also a hopeful aspect to the songs.

I can definitely appreciate the grandness on this record — I mean, there’s a place for the intimacy of bedroom demos, but the atmosphere and the beautiful sonic feel of the album kinda lends itself to expanding into new emotional areas through that as well.

Yeah, see the beautiful thing about Boxer is that there is so much breathing space for people to jump into the record. You can visualize yourself in the record and in the room . . . they definitely have a great way of describing rooms as well. The whole record has so much space, you can absorb yourself in it.

One of the nicest things that Peter brought to our record, actually, was that pulling back sometimes and taking things out. In my demos I tend to be all about filling the whole thing in. When I was younger, my mom tells me that I would always want to color in the whole piece of paper, rather than just drawing a person and a house and leaving it at that. I would want to color in all the white space to the very edges. I think that’s something that’s still there in me, I like to use all my colors. But Peter was very good at trying to make space so that there wasn’t that overload.

Is there a certain song you can point to on the record where you feel he did that really well?

There’s one called “I Feel Better” that I think I could have really taken over the top, going for more of a Phil Spector feel. But with what Peter did with that song, I feel like he made a difference in it. It’s completely different from the demo.

How has the response been in this leg of the tour?

It’s been consistently good. I mean we knew people were enjoying the record and it was doing quite well, but you’re never really sure what to expect until you get in each city and meet people and get their reactions about the songs. It’s been really nice. People are excited to talk to us as well, which is kind of weird for us, they want to meet us and talk to us about how they came to the record and why they like it. People are really forthcoming and very honest, and so many people apologize for being weird about it and taking it to heart but hey, they’re in good company with us. Really a big part of coming over here has been meeting the people that have connected with the record.

Do you feel like it’s been a long journey for the band to get to this point?

It’s been a really nice, steady growth. There’s not been a point with this band since its inception where I’ve felt that we’re moving backwards at any point. That’s the whole motto of the band, as soon as we feel that we’re traveling backwards perhaps it’ll be time to shake things up. But as for now, we’re moving forward and I don’t have any other ambitions aside from that.

In terms of our records, I really don’t feel you should be producing your best work on your first record either, or even on your second for that matter. I would say that I am in fact prouder of our second record, as a fan of albums – that’s definitely an album and not just a collection of songs. That first album was really written over a period of time when songwriting and playing music was more of a hobby to me so it’s more disparate. But this one is more a representation of me as a person, so I enjoy giving that to people more.

And giving to people from the depths of their gut is definitely what this band does superbly well. Later that night they blazed brilliantly through almost every song from Midnight Organ Fight, as well as several older ones from Sings The Greys (the chanting fraternal harmonies of “music now!” felt like a rebel yell). I think I felt walls shake at the Hi-Dive from the emotion reverberating through the near-capacity crowd. I doubt that I will see a better show this year.

Here’s the video I shot of the Fake Empire/My Backwards Walk. Their agitated intensity seeps out of every part, and watch Grant on the drums. The way he can barely contain himself as the song winds to the place where he comes in mirrors the way I felt in watching this song come to life:

Frightened Rabbit is playing tonight at Holocene in Portland, and on Saturday all you San Franciscans should absolutely head out to see them at The Independent. More tour dates follow in the coming weeks; I strongly recommend going home with the albums, a handmade t-shirt (like I did — thanks Steve!), and a renewed faith in the power of good songs and live music.

[My other pics from the show are here, and my creative friend Kate took some artsy shots which can be found on her Flickr]

UPDATE: I greatly enjoyed reading Daytrotter’s piece with Scott, where he tells 5 things that inspired him in the past week.

Musical archaeology in Washington D.C. :: The Library of Congress yields buried treasure

Archaeology is so hot right now. If you saw the new Indiana Jones movie (or maybe in spite of seeing the new Indiana Jones movie) perhaps you got a little hot under the collar as I often do when I think about trawling through the dust and under the veil of time, looking for things that have been all but forgotten.

Larry Appelbaum is a senior music reference specialist (yes! That’s a real job!) in the Music Division of the Library of Congress, and worked for decades preserving and cataloging their vast stores of audio recorded material. He is also a jazz journalist and radio host — we met when he presented the excellent and random workshop at the conference I was attending.

During Appelbaum’s presentation, I became intrigued by a reference he made to a much-fabled lost live recording of Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane that he rediscovered during the course of his work, and ultimately how that resulted in that concert being released on Blue Note in 2005.

The Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall album captures a rare live collaboration between two of the most influential and distinctive musicians in jazz history, in excellent sound quality. It languished for 47 years before Appelbaum and his team came across it in their daily archival work. His heart quickened when he realized what he held in his hands — a recording that had been sought after for years had finally been uncovered in the most unexpected of places.

It’s a great story that seizes the imagination. Appelbaum took some time last Friday afternoon from his offices on Capitol Hill to recount the discovery and the significance for Fuel/Friends.

LARRY APPELBAUM, SENIOR MUSIC REFERENCE SPECIALIST/”JAZZ ARCHAEOLOGIST”

There are a couple of different ways that you discover treasure when it comes to sound recordings. One of them is if you’re looking for it. You search the discographies, you look at all the indices, you look and you read everything you can find, and you take from the very general down to the narrow until you find what you’re looking for. The other way you discover these treasures is — I don’t want to say by accident, but more by chance. This discovery of the Thelonious Monk/John Coltrane tapes was an example of really both of those approaches.

First of all I should say that these recordings represented a sort of musical Holy Grail for jazz scholars. Because despite the fact that Monk and Coltrane are two of the most important and influential and innovative artists, not just in jazz, but in American music, they only worked together for about nine months, and they only made three songs together in the studio, for Riverside (Records).

One of the problems was that Monk was signed to Riverside Records and Coltrane was signed to Prestige — you know how that goes. So they only worked together for those nine months, mostly at a club on the Bowery called The Five Spot. We only had those few songs that everybody clung to and listened to and memorized.

Cut to the end of 2004. I was the supervisor of the Magnetic Recording Laboratory where we do a lot of preservation of recorded sound here at the Library of Congress. We work with lots of different sound collections, one of them is the Voice of America collection. These are about 50,000 open-reel tapes of things recorded primarily in the 1950s and 60s, and sometimes into the 1970s. But when you’ve got 50,000 reels, and you have a number of other important collections, you can’t just devote all your time to one.

So we’d been working through the Voice of America collection for years, and I used to enjoy looking through the queue and seeing what we would be working on for the rest of the week. So one day in late 2004 I saw eight reels titled simply, “Carnegie Hall Jazz: 1957.” That definitely caught my attention — I love jazz, and that’s a good year for jazz, it’s one of my favorite eras. I looked on the back of one of the tape boxes and it’s written in pencil, “T. Monk” with some song titles. That’s it.

I got a little excited because it occurred to me that maybe this was some unpublished Monk. But it was only when I went to actually play the tape that I realized the unmistakable sound of John Coltrane — it’s a sound that’s very near and dear to me. I was really startled by it because I started thinking, “Well, now these are not the studio recordings that we all know from Riverside, this is live. What is this? Carnegie Hall? 1957?”

It turns out it is part of a benefit concert from November 29, 1957. Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane was just one of five acts on a bill that also included Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie’s orchestra, Sonny Rollins Trio, Ray Charles, and Zoot Sims with Chet Baker.

So we had eight reels and it included everything from the 8pm show as well as the midnight show, and all the acts except for Billie Holiday, which still has not been found. I’ve met two people now who were at that concert who both tell me that Billie Holiday was in very bad shape that night. So that leads me to believe that perhaps her show was not recorded, or just that her manager wouldn’t allow it to be released.

We were so lucky, because I don’t think these reels had EVER been played before. They were recorded, wound onto a reel, and just put away in a box for 47 years.

I almost couldn’t believe it. When I heard it, my heart started to race. At that point, I couldn’t quite wrap my head around the fact that this had never been bootlegged, never been circulated. I wondered, is this truly as unique as I think it is? I contacted Lewis Porter, who is the great Coltrane scholar who teaches at Rutgers University. He told me that these had never been circulated, and that scholars had been looking for these tapes for years. No one had ever found them.

In fact, Porter himself had contacted the reference specialists at the Library of Congress, looking for these Monk/Coltrane tapes, and at the time they couldn’t find them because they weren’t properly preserved or cataloged. If he had called and asked, “Do you have Carnegie Hall Jazz 1957?” we could have said yes, but no one had had any idea of what the content was on any of the reels at that point. It’s not enough just to have all of these sound recordings just sitting on a shelf. They were SAFE on a shelf, but we had no idea what they were until we went to transfer them [into digital format to preserve them].

So then I got really excited once I confirmed that yes, this was really unique material, the sound is great — for 1957 it’s a really high quality location recording. We issued a press release announcing the discovery, and [after an initial and unexpected lull] Ben Ratliff, the jazz critic for the New York Times came down and spent the day listening to that recording twice and taking some detailed notes. He wrote a piece that ran on the front page of the New York Times Features section, and that morning the phones started ringing off the hook. It was just unbelievable — every label was calling, asking “How can we get it?”

Now, the Library of Congress does not itself retain any rights to the intellectual property, it all reverts back to the estate of the artist. The attorney of Thelonious Monk’s estate, Alan Bergman, received a listening copy of the recording and took it around to different labels. Working with Monk’s son T.S., it ultimately came out on Blue Note at the end of 2005. I was just so gratified that it sold so well – I mean, you’re used to pop jazz selling well, but to think that a record like that of instrumental jazz that’s not Kenny G, selling half a million copies — that’s unheard of.

Look, I mean, this is why we do what we do! I was really pleased just at the thought that someone maybe bought it for their twelve year old kid who’s just learning music.

I’ve found lots of rare things over the years, things we weren’t even looking for — a jam session with Lester Young during a period when he was in his prime but had been thoroughly undocumented, right before he went into the Army. We’ve been working on preserving all the Newport Jazz Festivals for years, and we have the Newport Folk Festivals as well. We were lucky with the Coltrane/Monk show because it was a really well-made recording, and many other Newport recordings are distorted.

Of course, there’s always more for which we know nothing yet about the content and the significance. We systematically go through things that are in the most danger of degenerating and can’t cherry-pick things out of the collection when other less-stable recordings may be in danger. We’ve been focusing on the ’50s, but what we might find once we get through into the ’60s? I remember one item from our NBC collection from when the Beatles first performed in New York, it was used as backup sound for a news story. Or a 2″ quad video reel I preserved and transferred that was recorded at the Family Dog in San Francisco by NET [National Educational Television] with the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and either Quicksilver or Santana, and then at the end they all jammed together. That was great — not just for the music, but also how you can see the audience and the culture of the moment. And I remember seeing a really nice film of Joni Mitchell once, at a festival in the Midwest where she’s just performing all by herself. Lovely.

Think about it, if I had not been at work that day, we would have still preserved that recording of course — but who would have known what it was? I mean, maybe years later a researcher would walk in the door and look in a database and say, “What’s this?”

Sometimes if all the planets line up just right and you find something with unique content that’s well-done, it can have a profound impact in the music world today, years later. If people can hear something they’ve never heard before, and it moves them, is there anything more important in terms of music and culture? It really says something about who we are.

So yes. To answer your earlier question — yes . . . it’s cool.

Sweet and Lovely (live at Carnegie Hall, 1957) – Thelonious Monk & John Coltrane

BUY: Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall

NOTE: In addition to a Recorded Sound Reference Center online, the Library of Congress also has an American Folklife Listening Room — incidentally staffed by a guy named Todd Harvey who has written a book called The Formative Dylan: Transmission and Stylistic Influences, 1961-1963 that I had fun flipping through as I listened to the tapes of Dylan at Newport in ’63. The main room holds sound recordings that you can listen to and search (I looked through the catalogs of Johnny Cash and Otis Redding). Three hours felt like thirty minutes. If I ever move to DC and no one hears from me for a few months — check there.

[photo credit: New York Times, Stephen Crowley]

The magical realism of Nada Surf

Sitting in the intimate Swedish American recital hall with a few hundred strangers on a recent rainy Saturday night, Nada Surf cast a spell. Almost akin to stepping inside a little jewel box for a few hours, these three guys out of Brooklyn worked through much of the material on their wonderful new album Lucky, as well as some gems from their back catalog that soared and reverberated in this acoustic setting.

The Swedish is a community hall in San Francisco with dark carved woodwork everywhere, not your typical nightclub. The stage was dim and warm with only a reddish glow illuminating the trio; Matthew Caws on acoustic guitar and vocals, Daniel Lorca hiding behind the amp stacks on his bass (from my perspective), the impressively moustachioed and good-natured drummer Ira Elliot sitting happily on his cajon, hammering out the rhythms with his palms and fingertips.

My friend who was at the show with me wrote about the intimacy of the set in his review, how “there wasn’t a person in the room that didn’t know every little bit of the songs they played” and he’s right — the intense level of fandom in this very sold-out show was impressive. We hushed when we needed to hush and enjoy the songs, we yelled along when Caws said to (even though he warned the parents of infants in the room before he encouraged us to sing along).

It was a night of melancholic catharsis snugly interlaced with their gorgeous melodies and harmonies. The arrangements of their new material in the acoustic setting really shone, and when they kicked into those chiming, golden opening notes of “Blonde on Blonde” during the encore? Forget about it. I was in love.

This is a band I will see again and again if I am given the opportunity
[setlist, more pics here]

Before the show, my friend Brian and I got to sit down with lead singer Matthews Caws and discuss a bit about the new album’s old roots, the artistic inspiration, and how hip-hop informed the new disc in surprising ways. Caws was a delight to talk to — someone who feels the music like I do, which always seems like kismet to discover.

FUEL/FRIENDS INTERVIEW:
MATTHEW CAWS OF NADA SURF
by Brian London & Heather Browne

FUEL/FRIENDS: Congratulations on the new album, it’s really a great record. You guys recorded it all in Seattle right?

MATTHEW CAWS: Yeah, actually this is the first time we had someone to record, mix and produce it. On other records we’ve had a producer and an engineer, so this time just having one guy was really great.

We’ve been asked a lot the classic questions ‘What direction did you guys have in mind’ with this album and ‘what makes this record different than the last record’ etc., and . . . we actually had no direction in mind besides wanting John Goodmanson [Rogue Wave, Pavement, Death Cab, Soundgarden, Harvey Danger] to do it. And that is kind of its own direction because we knew it would sound . . . rich. He mixed “What is Your Secret” and “Do It Again” on the last record which are my two favorite mixes so he was kind of an obvious choice. And I don’t know if this album’s process was any different, besides possibly being more focused. At least we tried to be more focused!

So The Weight Is A Gift was recorded in Seattle and San Francisco, Lucky solely in Seattle — do you guys write in the studio, or back at your homes and rehearsal space in New York and then take it to the West Coast?

Most of the writing is done in my apartment and then I bring it in. I finish a lot of songs in the studio. I find that I can never write in the practice space. I’ve found that I need to have total peace and be at home, or have total pressure and be in the studio with the clock ticking.

With the producer looming over you to finish lines.

Yeah, but actually John was the first one I could actually have there because he was so accepting and calm that I could be working on a verse and just ask him to work on something else for a bit while I got it ready to show him, which is something I had never done with anyone before. We would go through and he would say “yeah yeah, that line’s cool, that line’s bad,” and I found it really valuable to have someone you trust that much.

You described John’s work as always sounding ‘rich’, and to me a really good example on the new album would be “I Like What You Say,” because the song now really does sound ‘richer’ than the one previously released on the John Tucker Must Die soundtrack.

Oh I’m glad! Some people seem to like the original better, but I’m not so sure I’d agree. I would agree with you though, and credit John for being so good at that. “Beautiful Beat” is also a good example — when we were listening back he would say ‘You know, that’s a really tall mix’, and I feel like the songs really have some space to them.

I Like What You Say (John Tucker Must Die version)
I Like What You Say (Lucky album version)

It’s interesting to find one person to see the record through the whole process. Has the band ever tried to produce a record all by yourselves, and really maintain your vision over the entire process?

Well, Let Go was kinda me. Because the engineer wasn’t really producing and a friend of ours Fred Maher was supposed to produce but we didn’t have a lot of money, and he was really broke and wound up getting a job auto tuning the bass on the Korn record at the time. And we would always see him totally despondent on the couch because it would be like trying to tune a motorboat, you know [makes a motorboat noise].

I heard a great rock n’ roll ethics story that you paid for the recording of Let Go with 1′s and 5 dollar bills.

Yeah, it was all t-shirt money. It looked like a lot when all stacked up, but it really wasn’t that much money.

. . . And I remember reading a clip in the back of Rolling Stone that said Let Go was “the indie Pet Sounds”, so thank God for the t-shirt fund, right?

Wow, I never heard that. Really? That’s really nice of them.

So tell us a little about the songwriting process on Lucky.

These days I have a very chaotic songwriting process. I hesitate to even call it a process. It’s a mostly dubious adventure, because I write lots of little pieces of songs and not whole ones so there are lots and lots of tapes littered about that I haven’t listened back to in years. And so for this record I decided I was going to go through each and every one and do my homework to find what was on them.

What came out of that process? Any stuff that made the record?

Yeah, a few lines here and there. A few melodies–

[gets excited, interrupts] –By any chance was one resurrected bit the “Behind every desire, is another one / Waiting to be liberated, when the first one’s sated” (from Weightless)? That song shifts so much, that whole segment feels like it might have dropped in wonderfully from somewhere else.

That is actually the oldest thing on the record! You’re totally right. I remembered that line, but I could never find the melody. I knew it was somewhere on one of those cassettes, but the problem with all those tapes is most of it’s awful snippets of me in the middle of the day thinking I’ve got something when I really don’t.

Are there any other places on the new record where older material resurfaced?

Yeah, just things like . . . in See These Bones where it goes [sings] “Do you remember when the light was low? do you remember when it fell?” That melody was maybe five years old, just lying around.

That must be exciting and gratifying to find a home for an idea that had been percolating for so long, and have it fit so perfectly.

Totally. I guess the biggest change in the band for at least these last two records is that I am much more open to that kind of juxtaposition. Daniel [Lorca, bass] and I used to try that more on the first record because he used to write more so we would smush parts of songs we both had and make one whole song and it work which was always exciting to us. But I had never really been in the habit of seeking that out, until these last two records. On “Do It Again” the end section has this really different type of melody which was a separate section added on.

It actually was because I was listening to so much hip-hop at the time, stuff like Nas. What I feel like I really got from that was how in a rap song every verse can be completely different — different point of view, different narrator, different feeling and sometimes obviously different people/voices — mainly how the atmosphere would change. I really like people like Nas who focus on storytelling.

It’s funny that you say hip-hop was an influence on this album, especially hip-hop that has different voices on each verse, because I noticed in John’s credits that he’s also worked with the Wu Tang Clan.

Oh yeah, that’s right! [laughs] But don’t forget he also worked with Hanson.

An all-around guy, then.

Very much so. I think that [the hip-hop storytelling element] freed me up for songs on this record like “Are You Lightning?” That song was recorded for the last record, but the whole end section that starts “I see you in my sheets, I see you in my sleep” — that whole bit was new. The song had been done for five years, words and melody, and the end was just going to be this three-minute fade out.

But since the song was asking the question ‘Are you the person I want to be with’ and not really knowing who that person is and getting to the point of being tired of looking, that by the time we were making this record I was in a very serious relationship so I felt like I had the answer, meaning that there was still stuff to sing about.

It’s interesting because if “Are You Lightning” had gone on the last record without the outro, it would have been a very nice sequel to “Inside of Love.”

Right, exactly. And the fact that it was a whole different melody for the new part was really something that excited me then and now. It was funny because a song would be unfinished, or actually they would be done, but wouldn’t feel that they were good enough. “The Fox” and “See These Bones” were both recorded for The Weight Is A Gift, but weren’t right at the time. And I would add melodies, which might have frustrated some, because there were no words and I was adding these things that were making the song feel completely different. But luckily open minds prevailed and we were accepting of the new parts.

One lyric from Lightning – “Just look at the size of you” is so unique and interesting, do you have anything to say about that or would you just like to leave it as it is? . . . Is it about the way one person can eclipse everything else?

Yes exactly — the amount of room one person can take up in your brain. I’ve always thought about describing lyrics and how it can be defensive, but it would be silly for me to hide behind such a simple metaphor.

On the last album, “Your Legs Grow” has such beautiful, yet elusive lyric, and I’ve always wanted to ask, what made you write that song and what does that song mean to you?

What I meant was . . . contemplate if you’re in a relationship and it’s ending. One spends so much of one’s time thinking that would kill you, or that you would just be lost. It could be whatever, a break up, disaster….I haven’t been through a lot of family death and I know it’s coming to everyone. So if something happens that you feel you won’t be able to get through, it can be sometimes comforting to remind yourself that you do get through it. Like if you were out to sea and drowning, or you walked out to sea and it became too deep, I think the way our minds work is that our legs grow to the bottom of the ocean, and then we walk out. It’s really just a song about the ability to recover.

It’s kind of magic realism because obviously our legs aren’t going to grow, but we do become strong in ways that would seem impossible at other times.

Yeah, I think sometimes –to use your phrase– that “magic realism” is exactly what people want and need from music, with all the stuff that people are supposed to handle in this world. Just to take a concept like that, and place it inside a metaphor, and deliver it in a song – that really seems to be a consistent thread through your band’s body of work.

A frustration I have a lot of the time with life in general is that it’s hard to hold on and remember how magical it can feel. And that’s kind of what the album title is about. Because it’s not necessarily that I feel lucky, it’s that I want to remember that I am. I wish I could turn that on at will because we get so caught up in whatever particular stories are happening with work, love, family, work, or whatever that just being alive and healthy on a planet that might be going down the tubes is totally fascinating. Still we can get caught in the cobwebs of everyday problems and forget how amazing and incredible life is.

The album cover seems very appropriate for the feel of the record, just the weight one can sense when lying down and looking at the sky, yet to still feel lucky and blessed to look around you.

Don’t people say that water at night is the perfect visual representation of the subconscious? And that’s why people are so drawn to it, just staring at it? With the cover I was also thinking about how trees and sky and stars are such extraordinary things…and they’re free. On another corny level, how lucky we are just to have them.

There is a great story about Yoko Ono before she was successful, she was broke and living in Greenwich Village and to make money she put up a poster that said ‘meet me at 5am tomorrow, bring a towel and five dollars, and you will see the most amazing show on Earth. If you don’t agree, there’s a money back guarantee.’ So some people met her, and she brought them up to the roof of her tenement building and they all sat down on their towels and watched the sun come up.

And you know what? Nobody asked for their money back.

[pic credit]

NADA SURF, LIVE ACOUSTIC
HAMBURG, GERMANY 1/17/08 [via]
Concrete Bed
Whose Authority
What Is Your Secret?
Happy Kid
Killian’s Red
Blizzard of ’77
I Like What You Say
Inside of Love
Popular
See These Bones
Ooh La La (Faces cover)
Always Love
Blankest Year
Meow Meow Lullaby
Imaginary Friends

BONUS:
Blonde on Blonde (Vienna, 1/19/08)
Ice On The Wing (KEXP, 1/30/08)

ZIP: NADA SURF LIVE, JAN 2008

We were going to post some Nada Surf b-sides but then we found this (free registration required), and now there is absolutely no use for anything else that we could add. Rad.

[top photo credited to the awesome Peter Ellenby; his fine book is still worth your time]

VIDEO I TOOK: “WHOSE AUTHORITY”
SWEDISH AMERICAN HALL 2/2/08