Bristol Fleece

November 13th 2005.

By Lydia Clare (SugarBuzz UK)

SugarBuzz Magazine

Hey, how’s the tour been going so far?

It’s been great, this is the fourth show so far and like it has been difficult for me, I’m a bit of a control freak so being reliant on someone else’s schedule when I’m used to co-tour managing with Dave my partner on drums can be a bit hard sometimes. It’s a bit like being a kid on a camping trip with your parents, they take care of everything else and you just have to show up at set times which is great but yeah, the control freak in me finds it a bit difficult sometimes. We just came off a 6 week tour of the States which was tough; we played near enough every night maybe 33 shows in 37 nights so this does feel like a little bit of a vacation.

So Nada Surf look after you?

Yeah they’re great; sometimes they’ll introduce us to the crowd [as they did later that night at the show] because no-one knows who we are here. We’re just here y’know? This is our first tour here so it feels like touring the States four years ago. Sometimes there are people who’d like their CDs signed but basically it’s a bit like starting over again. When we realised how much work we had to do over here it was a bit like “Oh my god!!” because it is tiring.

People are definitely more open to finding new things I’ve been seeing recently; they’re a lot more receptive to new stuff. I mean this show sold out

Yeah, I think all the shows are sold out, these guys are big, I didn’t realise how big they were because they’re not quite as popular in the States. I just assumed the shows would go well but there were like fanatic fans at the shows {laughs] they wouldn’t let them off the stage but the clubs have curfews so the crews were all on stage with walkie-talkies trying to convince people to leave [all laugh].

Oh yeah, definitely. We only had one day of rehearsal between the tours so we were very insecure and paranoid about what we were doing. The first show for us was very difficult. When you come from playing in a quartet and go down to a duo it feels like there’s a football field between you, there’s so much dynamic room, you can hear yourself so much more clearly. It’s very bizarre. When I first started playing solo it felt like I was on a high wire and wasn’t going to make it, but you get used to it and I do think it’s more powerful to have as little as possible. I did a whole month this summer with an acoustic guitar and it got to the point on some songs where I was barely strumming. It might have been my favourite tour. But this time it’s been a case of adjustment, a bit of a learning curve on each show and I think last night was the best show for us so far. I’m hoping now that when the record is released over here in

Do you think you might follow up this tour with a pared down recorded sound?

I think that the most influential thing I did this year so far with experimenting with line-ups was playing solo and I think I should definitely have three or four songs on the record that is almost nothing and technically has almost no harmonic content, really just the bare bones. I’m definitely going to use this band on my next record which will be a first for me, it’s usually a rotating open policy but I really like this band I’m playing in and it seems to have helped me.

How do you think the British have received your sound?

It’s a lot more enthusiastic than I thought it was going to be. Everyone warned me, people warn bands, “it’ll be fine when you get to the continent but the UK is pretty over saturated with music so just be aware”. It’s the same in the States though, big bands over here go to the US and play for 30 people and they get really angry. It’s just that there’s so many good bands in every small town in America that people don’t really need to look around so much so it is a barrier for both sides going to each others turf. I was surprised that people paid attention, I assumed nobody would and it’s especially hard because we haven’t supported in a long time. That’s difficult in itself because when you’re doing your own show the people are there for you, they know your songs and can sing along but it’s different when you’re supporting it can be a bit of a mind f-u-c-k [spells it out], I didn’t want to cuss on the interview [laughs].

The people reading this over here probably won’t have heard much if any of your stuff so what would you describe as your influences, your sound in general?

The things that interested me when I was growing up were David Bowie’s seventies output and Bob Dylan’s middle/early stuff. There’s a literary thing and experimentation with language that Dylan does that I find fascinating. It’s not only a narrative curiosity and jokiness but also a real desire to needle people either with the way he’s pushing syllables or the words he’s using or what he’s saying.

To constantly challenge people when they’re listening to him?

Yeah, he’s constantly poking at people and at that point he had a very bratty persona, this is before he had a motorcycle accident which for me changed which for me his entire lyrical tone disappeared overnight. David Bowie was important because he saw genre and its limitation like clothing. He just saw it as something you put on and wear and use for a certain period of your musical output. Its like he transcended, he was a couple of levels above the idea of playing art rock or Philadelphia soul or whatever and that for a kid when growing up is very influential especially when every band around you is trying to identify with something. I find it very difficult to like music that identifies with a genre, I pull away from it. One of my favourite bands is Radiohead and they’re the closest I think to floating outside of the constraints of rock and roll. If someone identifies with a scene I can’t do it.

You kind of get tied down with expectations then.

Exactly and once you pay attention to these bands you notice on stage there’s a way of talking that’s scripted and you go outside to their vans and if they’re a garage rock band from New York they have spray paint and you’re just like “OK, whatever, how much did you pay to have that done”. It’s like a uniform and that really doesn’t interest me and I think that is reflected in my own music. I like to try and be a little ‘thinking outside the box’.

I noticed that you’re not afraid to make statements with your music; particularly with the song ‘Bill Gates Must Die’ it’s pretty rare to find anyone willing to say anything nowadays.

I love doing it. People get very confused whether you’re narrating a song or whether you’re writing about someone that’s crazy, or whether there’s a blend of the two. Usually you do have to be a little crazy, I mean look at me, I live in San Francisco and I’m here sitting on a bench in Bristol.

The thing is I love the idea that there is an unreliable narrator and I do identify with someone who wants to kill Bill Gates because I’m a Mac person and I despise Microsoft [all laugh]. Seriously I despise it from the bottom of my soul and as someone who grew up with Apple and watching Netscape and watching all these battles and also all the hubris of this corporate maniac like that.

He stands for me for a lot of people that we don’t necessarily know their names or what they specifically do, but they’re controlling energy markets or resources. So I identify something in him that I intensely dislike. The song [unfortunately not played in the set later] is more about a narrator who’s blaming Bill Gates for the infusion of pornography into his brain so he’s saying well because I’m going crazy because with all this pornography that Bill Gates must die.

People stop me at shows and ask if I have a problem with pornography. They can’t separate the idea that I can write about anything I want. I’ve had songs about bombing the post office as a political statement which in the US would be like shooting at the president, or songs about wanting to see the blood of our leaders running down the sidewalk. I mean I don’t have a problem almost baiting people to respond. I have some sort of sympathies about all these people otherwise I wouldn’t want to write about them but it doesn’t mean I totally identify with these groups.

In the US hip-hop is where it’s happening right now. 3 months after 9/11 there were hip-hop songs about it and you won’t see that in indie music. They’ll just stay away from it, anything that’s concrete or real or might provoke a reaction that might get them into trouble they tend to shy away from. It’s a real shame because rock music is meant to be about saying these things but now everyone’s so mindful about not upsetting certain groups or getting into trouble with their PR companies that it’s taken the life out of music. Back in the sixties and seventies with punk these things were being said, but now it’s really rare to find anyone making any kind of political statement.

Ending the interview there because it was getting close to the show I realised that I’d been privileged to meet one of the few honest musicians around. Someone willing to talk candidly about his beliefs and to not be afraid to put them out there in his music is all too rare. He may be new to Britain but he certainly won over many new fans during his set in the Fleece that evening. He does exactly what he describes and tries not to get stuck with certain generic limitations and gave the crowd quite an original set that mixed indie with rock and a bit of pop with a bit of an electronic edge with keyboard provided by a very hard working Dave. He’s a legend in the States, here’s hoping the British take John Vanderslice to heart too.

Return To SugarBuzz Main Page