Episode 15: Ryan Weinstein (Coffin Prick)
The Who Cares Anyway Podcast ·
00:00:00
00:00:00
Transcript
SPEAKER_02
00:00:00
The recording of the record was really, it was a really intense period of time in my life, but like maybe the happiest I've ever been.
SPEAKER_03
00:00:19
Hello and welcome to episode 15 of the Who Cares Anyway podcast. My guest is Ryan Weinstein. Ryan is a musician, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, etc. based in Los Angeles who records under the name Coffin Prick, and we'll say a little bit more about that in just
SPEAKER_01
00:00:43
a
SPEAKER_03
00:00:44
minute. But before moving to Los Angeles in I believe 2017, Ryan lived in Chicago where he played in a variety of musical ensembles including the Cairo Gang and Coffin Pricks, plural. And then before that he lived in Miami where he grew up and was a member of the Sludge slash Metalish band Cavity and appeared on several of their recordings which came out on labels such as Man's Ruin and Hydrahead in the late 90s, early 2000s. Now with all that being said you might be wondering what does this have to do with this podcast series? Which is after all related to a book about San Francisco in the 1980s and 90s. Well, Ryan much like Vincent Alberano, my guest a couple of episodes ago, is someone who I met earlier this year over social media and in the course of following him I saw the announcements for his album, the debut by Coffin Prick in the singular. And I listened to it, in particular the first single, Laughing, which is also the title track. And as I say in the interview, I didn't really know what to expect, but I was still surprised. Partly surprised by how good it was, but in particular the guitar riff on that song Laughing really grabbed me. I described it in a comment or maybe a message to him as a wrong yet musical and I guess I'm fascinated by these kinds of contradictions or paradoxes. And I was interested to talk to him more about the process of not just writing that riff but creating the album in general and some of the ideas or influences that went into it. Particularly given, you know, his enthusiastic reaction to the book and also knowing a little bit about his background. Cavity being a band that's pretty different from what you hear on the Coffin Prick album. And then on top of that, I really didn't know much at all about what had come in between those two bookends. And so that's really what this interview is about. Having said that, there is a really good Neil Hamburger story that you might want to stick around for as well as some other digressions. But we get things started with some of his thoughts or reflections about Cavity before sort of fast-forwarding to not quite the present day and then eventually kind of backtracking into the Chicago era and making some comparisons or contrasts between Chicago and Los Angeles. But with all that said, I'll go ahead and get out of the way and let us get on with this interview with Ryan Weinstein.
SPEAKER_02
00:03:47
It's a strange band and to be honest with you, you know, in context I don't have a lot of fond memories of being in that band because of like some well there's a lot of complicated personal politics of that band and while that band I feel is kind of like inconsequential to in some ways to my musical development. I don't really carry a lot of what I gained there, but I would say that like that band was sort of really crucial and that time was really crucial because it's my first time going on tour, my first time leaving the city I was born in and going to places in the world and traveling in a pretty, you know, intense fashion, you know, it was kind of a crazy crash course for me.
SPEAKER_03
00:04:36
Okay. Yeah, because I I mean that genre itself is I mean, they're kind of on the border between a couple of different genres, but definitely there's I Hate God, there's other kind of bands that are on that sort of sludge.
SPEAKER_03
00:04:51
The
SPEAKER_00
00:04:51
Buzz Oven, exactly. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03
00:04:54
So it's kind of like it has its parameters and and I wasn't sure if you how much you contributed on the writing side, but I imagine if you did it would be something that would have to fit in with Yeah, would that sound?
SPEAKER_00
00:05:08
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02
00:05:08
I mean I've always to me I've played with a lot of people and I've always found it really enjoyable to write to the strengths of a group and not try to you know, I think everybody every musician has their own thumbprint on what they do whether it's a sense of melody, a sense of time, and that always sort of shines through in what they do with whoever, but I unless you're just some super gigger who doesn't have any musical personality, but I think that you know with them it was like, yeah, it was interesting to to write music for that band and I did write quite a bit, but you know, I I think the thing that was really interesting for me in that time with that band was that it was a really good time of like musical education in terms of hearing a lot of music for the first time that I was not aware of through them. Things like the Stooges and the MC5, hearing that for the first time, hearing things like they were really big into things like Swans, which I had only like a peripheral knowledge of, the scientists from Australia, a birthday party, things like that. I was hearing a lot of that music through those people at the time. It wasn't really like a band where the the listening habits were in the sort of school that the group was in, you know what I mean? I think they always thought of themselves as more like a punk type, more rock and roll types rather than, you know, what if you have to use a term, but rather than being like a metal band or something, which I think kind of got everyone, I mean, I would say probably got everybody in the band under their skin a little bit to everyone be like, oh you guys are a hardcore band or you're like a, I don't think that anyone in the band thought of the band that way.
SPEAKER_03
00:07:07
Okay. Yeah. Well, you know a lot of those labels, Hydrahead, Relapse, Man's Ruin were kind of on, you know, their own sort of zone. It's like not capital M metal, but sometimes I guess you end up playing metal clubs or getting packaged with other metal-ish bands. Oh, yeah, all the time.
SPEAKER_02
00:07:32
All the time. It was rare that you had an experience where you were sort of, um, your wig got flipped by some band that didn't sound like a, you know, every band that opened the show the night before or whatever, you know.
SPEAKER_00
00:07:47
So, it was, you know, it
SPEAKER_02
00:07:49
was not that we were like trailblazers or anything, you know what I
SPEAKER_00
00:07:54
mean?
SPEAKER_03
00:07:56
Yeah, you know, it was funny because Hydrahead, I was remembering this, that there are all this, the bands with C's in the name Converge, Cave-In, Coalesce.
SPEAKER_03
00:08:08
Those are all kind of the same concept than Cave-In and Cavitee and then I guess it's like Converge and Evolution as far as I don't know, and Idea is in the air. It's like the Strawberry Alarm Clock and the Chocolate Watch Band or something.
SPEAKER_02
00:08:21
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, you listen, you see, but you can hear a name of a band and you can sort of almost identify it to a time without thinking twice about it, you know. There's just a certain, yeah, I don't know if that's what you mean, but yeah, yeah, something like
SPEAKER_03
00:08:42
that. So you got to Chicago, you were still somehow in Cavitee or was that?
SPEAKER_02
00:08:49
No, by then I had left. The band sort of broke up. We didn't really, yeah, we broke up. We kind of, I left the band for a little while and then I joined again for the last like, I don't know, two years or something the band was together and we sort of split up on stage on a tour. The band was always kind of, I would say, pretty dysfunctional.
SPEAKER_02
00:09:15
Functional on some levels, dysfunctional personally. There was always a lot of rancor amongst the people in the band that was sort of quiet, you know, and we just sort of split up on stage. Just like one by one, somebody would leave the stage and I remember like looking up while we were playing and not knowing where the singer had gone and he was kind of a wild card anyways. So it wasn't a surprise, but something in my gut told me, I think this is pretty much it and I was pretty relieved at that point to have not been the reason that it ended, but that it did, you know. Yeah, and so it was just sort of assumed that that was it. I don't remember there being any real discussion of whether or not it was over. I think it was just kind of like, yeah, I think everyone's pretty burnt out on this. I mean, they had been a band probably for six years before I even started playing with them and had gone through so many people. Dan, the sort of ringleader of the band who's the bass player, kind of had run through a lot of different people, you know, and a lot of people I think were pretty bummed on how it went.
SPEAKER_00
00:10:37
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02
00:10:38
He was kind of like, I feel like he sort of had that kind of real intense almost like when I read about things like SST, Greg Ginn, like the way that they operated, I felt like he kind of, that was sort of a template for him.
SPEAKER_02
00:10:51
He was just always just plowing through stuff, you know, always getting stuff happening. And I really respected that, you know, the whole thing with me playing with them was that they, to me at the time in a young person's mind, I was, they seemed kind of like somewhat dangerous, you know. It was definitely not the standard punk rock, you know, kind of situation. And there was tons of stuff in Miami that was super interesting. You know, Harry Pussy, which I often refer to as kind of being like a real touchstone for me for that time and a band called Cream Electric Santa. And there was a lot of music happening at the time, but Cavity was sort of on their own and sonically, I guess. And they did, you know, I remember seeing them and singer Renee was, you know, I remember finding out later, he's like, you know, he's on acid and he's got his pants around his ankles and they're shutting the show down because they're too fucking loud or whatever it was. And, you know, to me that was really exciting. It was not, it, they were older than I was, you know, I joined the band. I think I was 17 when I joined the band. Okay, I dropped out of high school.
SPEAKER_02
00:12:06
Uh, the whole thing. So you know, to me when I, when I think of the formative experience of being in that group, it was really just that these were like adult people doing this kind of what to me at the time seems like pretty fringe insane music and I wanted to be a part of that for sure. I lobbied to be a part of that.
SPEAKER_03
00:12:31
Okay, did you ever, did you ever go back to, uh, back to school or was that it?
SPEAKER_02
00:12:37
No, I never did. No, I, I started touring and that was it, you know, I moved to Chicago and I was just working and was playing with people there almost immediately. I'd often thought that maybe that would have been something I should have done, but yeah, only rarely do I have moments where I think that I was mistaken in following the path that I did and on as far as like, you know, not pursuing an education or anything.
SPEAKER_03
00:13:06
Yeah, so yeah, I probably have more more regrets for having done so. In
SPEAKER_02
00:13:12
what
SPEAKER_03
00:13:13
sense? It just didn't really, it didn't work out the way I thought it would.
SPEAKER_03
00:13:18
That's all. What did you study? It was, it was a cognitive science, uh program at uh, at Indiana and then also history and philosophy of science to get even more obscure. But
SPEAKER_01
00:13:31
yeah, it
SPEAKER_03
00:13:31
was, it was kind of like, um, it's kind of like you describe me and academia sort of parted ways and it wasn't, it wasn't quite as sudden as like, uh, just walking off the stage. It was more like, uh, I realized it wasn't going anywhere and then some things came along that sort of forced my hand because if you're going to try to stay in and get a job in that it's like you have to really be in it. Once you're out, you're out pretty much.
SPEAKER_02
00:13:59
And I think everybody has that this is your life moment, you know, where you sort of start to wonder if this was, if this is it, you know, and then, and then kind of having the bravado to say, oh, you know, yeah, I think I'm going to be someone who's in a band. Like as though that was going to provide you with any kind of security or especially coming from the place. I mean for me, like the place that we were coming from at the time, it wasn't like there was any sort of notion that you were going to like quote unquote make it or something, you know? Oh, yeah. And it certainly wasn't even though there were times where, you know, you have your ups and downs where oh, well, we're actually, you know, it seemed like a big deal to make $500 at a show, you know, but, but you definitely start to wonder is this it? Is this what I'm doing? And then you kind of just, if you do it long enough and it just becomes the thing that you maybe didn't even imagine you'd be doing, but it just was the thing you accepted. And I think maybe with education system that you kind of get to that point where like, you know, you do wonder like is this it?
SPEAKER_00
00:15:08
Yeah.
SPEAKER_03
00:15:09
Yeah, it's worked out. It's worked out. You know, if, if when I started working on the San Francisco book, it was before I started graduate school and I just thought, yeah, I'll be through graduate school in a few years and I'll work on this in the summer. But it turned out to be longer and I didn't get anything done on the book and really kind of pushed it aside and and it was only after I finished and had some other things come up that I was like, okay, I need to be serious about this and and so yeah, if I had stayed in academia, I wouldn't have been able to do that.
SPEAKER_02
00:15:44
But that's I mean, what what do we do anything for? You know what I mean? Like you writing that book, it's like somebody had to or nobody had to but it was you, you know, and like personally for me, I'm glad you did. You know, because it's like that that's a that's a that kind of world of music was something that I've had like a long long interest in and it's never been really properly documented. You know, Flipper would be a footnote in some other thing and or maybe they would mention crime or you know, or or whatever but that kind of like going into the more obscure bands, you know, Pink Section Minimal Man, even Tuxedo Moon. I have Isabel's book here. I don't know if you've read that but that's so amazing. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_03
00:16:35
Yeah, I read it very closely. I read it very closely and that was one reason why I didn't do more on them, which is because they had already you know, I felt like they'd be like, man, we just did these books and I thought like, man, we just did these interviews.
SPEAKER_02
00:16:51
Yeah, sure. Right.
SPEAKER_03
00:16:52
And it was closer in time when I when I was doing the interviews to when that came out. It was more like eight years. So I felt like I would have been subjecting them to sort of double jeopardy. But coming out, you know, so I quoted from it for sure. But yeah.
SPEAKER_02
00:17:08
Yeah. I mean not that I I still think to this day. I mean people can talk about Tuxedo Moon and and you know, they'll say oh no tears or something, but they wouldn't know a song on holy wars, you know, or any of the later records, I mean, I to me, but but I just think that I I was real happy that that someone hit me to the book and then yeah, when I finally got my hands on it, I was so happy, you know, I've I've read it a few to a few times now, especially when traveling and so it was really happy to and to know some of the people in in That you wrote about was also kind of you know, cool Like I see greg turkington around here in los angeles pretty frequently and we're friendly. I actually booked him to do his first ever When I was living in Miami, it was that long ago. I booked him to come do a neil hamburger gig in Miami I was I had his great phone calls record and I had records on amarylo and uh Is it amaryo or amarylo? How did they say?
SPEAKER_03
00:18:10
I'd say I'd say amarylo. Uh,
SPEAKER_02
00:18:13
that's what I've always said but
SPEAKER_03
00:18:14
you
SPEAKER_02
00:18:14
know But I had you know, I had the zip code rapist record I had uh What other I think I mean had a dieselhead record uh but yeah, I was I was and I had great phone calls and uh, I had booked greg to play a gig in Miami. It was this totally insane thing where I'd written him. I didn't know him at all. I had written him Uh at his website, I think that I probably this is probably like aol Yeah And uh, I i'd written him and got a letter back or an email early email back from someone named bonnie who i'm convinced Was actually greg Uh, unless i'm wrong.
SPEAKER_03
00:18:59
Oh, yeah bonnie jurgens. Yes
SPEAKER_02
00:19:02
That is greg. I think yeah
SPEAKER_03
00:19:04
Yeah, I didn't know
SPEAKER_01
00:19:05
it
SPEAKER_03
00:19:06
Yeah, he had to tell me and I was just like how did I not realize that
SPEAKER_02
00:19:11
Yeah, I was just like, uh, you know, I just figured it was a part of the bruise, you know,
SPEAKER_01
00:19:14
so
SPEAKER_02
00:19:14
um, but I had I had
SPEAKER_01
00:19:16
uh I
SPEAKER_02
00:19:18
was a fan. I really thought he was a genius and and loved what he did So I wanted him to come play in Miami. It just so happened that he was going to be on tour and um And I remember they wanted three hundred and fifty dollars to which I said no way. There's no way I can do that It was that time where it's like, you know, I mean it's that crazy,
SPEAKER_00
00:19:39
you know, there's
SPEAKER_02
00:19:40
just this is I mean Nobody knew who he was, you know in in Miami anyways um
SPEAKER_00
00:19:46
and
SPEAKER_02
00:19:47
uh I said how about two hundred dollars and he put me in touch with his agent and they were like well He really wants to go to Miami. Anyway, so Let's just do it. And so I booked the show um And I promoted the hell out of it I had this one summer where I decided I wanted to try to get something happening. It didn't really even Particularly matter what it was. I just needed to have something happen Miami was so People think of Miami as being a major city and I guess it is if you're someone who thinks of South Beach or but but as far as the Cultural imports as far,
SPEAKER_00
00:20:25
you know, it was really
SPEAKER_02
00:20:26
difficult for people to get there It's geographically really isolated and you know, you're talking about 14 hours of driving from the northern part of Florida to Miami I would also make the distinction of Miami being Miami not really What people consider Florida? Although that's hard to say but I understand. Yeah It's it just doesn't have the same sort of like southern identity that exactly.
SPEAKER_02
00:20:50
Yeah
SPEAKER_03
00:20:51
Northern Florida is part of the south and southern Florida is southern
SPEAKER_02
00:20:55
Florida Yeah, I think once you get to like fort lauderdale or something, that's where it starts to change although fort lauderdale certainly A unique place but but anyway, so greg I had I wanted to book him In Miami to do a neil hamburger show and he agreed and you know We figured out a way to make it happen and I think like a week before the gig happened There must have been a cancellation On the jimmy kimmel show Ah, right And uh, he was on with yoko ono.
SPEAKER_00
00:21:25
Okay.
SPEAKER_03
00:21:26
Yep.
SPEAKER_00
00:21:26
Yep
SPEAKER_02
00:21:27
and uh he uh told the amazing joke of uh
SPEAKER_00
00:21:33
Why did michael jackson Dangle his infant son over the balcony of his hotel room He was punishing him for refusing to finish his plate of sperm Oh Boy
SPEAKER_02
00:22:01
And yoko ono was like mortified, you know, and this is on national tv and this is you know pre social media pre whatever and so Somehow this I think people actually watched it and i'd promoted the hell out of the show and somehow about 300 and 400 people showed up to the show and I was able to pay him like over a thousand dollars Over what I thought I was able to pay him and when I ran in when he and you know, I see him You know every couple months we run into one another um, and I Last I think maybe a couple times I was like, do you remember this gig in Miami? And he was like, oh, yeah, that was the best I've gone back twice since you booked that show and it's been miserable every time So I feel happy that I provided him with that with a good experience, you know Um, but you know just talking connections to that To your book, I feel like it's you know, I have these There are people that I know who are who've been involved in a lot of stuff And I I was really happy to to to get my hands on the book and I I really love it
SPEAKER_03
00:23:03
Okay, because I was well, I appreciate all that. I was gonna ask. Um, you know not that not that there has to be anything but like listening to the the your record, um You know, I was gonna say if I were to try to connect it to anything From that time in place it would be more on the Some stuff that I kind of passed over which would be kind of on the the ralph records
SPEAKER_01
00:23:28
side of things
SPEAKER_03
00:23:29
but That doesn't mean that you know, there's other music out outside of san francisco And i've seen some of the different reviews and the different comparisons that people have have come up with. Uh, I don't know Can you comment on i've seen everything from gary neuman to wire to I mean I thought of I thought of shimmy disc kramer kind of um production stuff with some of the the vocal sounds, um But I don't know where it's coming from.
SPEAKER_02
00:23:57
Um, I don't know where it's coming from either, you know, I mean I think I think every person that has spent their great amount of their time absorbing music is going to regurgitate some of the things that they've Spent a lot of time with I think it's just natural, you know, I think there's you know That's just part of it. But it's been interesting, you know, if you A lot brianino is the thing that seems to come up a lot and I love brianino But I was not thinking about brianino at all in any conscious way. I certainly would not Ever want to make something that I intentionally sought out to ape something else Things are going to be what I think after years of playing there's a there's like a time when you're younger where you really strive You know at least Amongst my peers and people where you're really trying to like stake out some kind of identity, you know But i'm like in my 40s now and I I don't really try that hard To do or not do something, you know, I try to I I Definitely labor over the things that I make While I make them to the point of almost having to disintegrate in front of my eyes, but I but I don't Think really consciously about trying to make anything like Something that someone else would have already made. I mean, I I don't know.
SPEAKER_02
00:25:18
I mean there's What would be the purpose of that? I I guess but um, but yeah, I mean certainly if you were to I mean I'm looking at my wall. I have a Ralph records Framed poster on my wall buy or die, you know It's like the gary panter from the from the cover of the 45 and I love I mean I loved all that music I still love all that music. I love the early residents, especially uh mx-80 I I love throughout tuxedo moon. Although you know, there's some question about whether Do people really consider them a ralph band? I don't know, you know, it seemed like they had a much longer career Off that yellow. I think is amazing the fred frith records snake finger, of course I mean it's been cool to see a lot of younger people discovering snake finger in recent years I I don't know where that came from where how that winds up in the zeitgeist, but you know Stuff like that. I mean, I all the things that people have mentioned For the most part are things that i've you know, I i've owned records by i've listened to them There's some stuff I I have no idea. I saw a review Yesterday or the day before that someone someone from my label had sent me and um, the person there's only one person in my label, but Where they had mentioned someone named Matthew dear I had no I i'd heard this person's name. I listened to the music and I felt no um Kinship with it. Uh, but you know, that's it's kind of the amazing thing when you read reviews that people write of the things that you've made And what they're There was a point in my life where I would almost be like sort of offended by comparison Where now I just sort of accept that that's just the way someone's Experience has led them to think of the music they're hearing, you know But for me, yeah, I mean I think the ralph stuff a lot of it is pretty pretty Deeply embedded in my brain as far as the way I Hear things. I mean that hearing hearing meet the residents when I was very young maybe 15 or something I it really had like a major impact on me To this day. I still think of that record whenever I listen to it. I'm almost like transported to a time where I I can remember how it viscerally how it felt to Hear that record for the first time and feel this sort of like elation and discomfort in it I'm not sure if i'm answering. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03
00:27:57
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well a lot of times I don't really have questions. So Yeah, I just talk until they till uh, well because that reminds me of That that phrase wrong yet musical and there's the two riffs in particular That made me think of that and one of them is on laughing And then the other one is on Smooth rubber ailment. I think it's called
SPEAKER_02
00:28:22
Yeah,
SPEAKER_03
00:28:22
i'm not sure if
SPEAKER_02
00:28:23
you
SPEAKER_03
00:28:24
Know which two i'm referring to but they're both sort of breaks that come in with they have a similar guitar tone to each other And then there's some keyboards going on along with them. But uh, but do you have an idea of what of where? I imagine like something like that riff and i'm not going to try to sing it but it's Um,
SPEAKER_02
00:28:42
it's a fun sound. Yeah,
SPEAKER_03
00:28:43
dude, dude, dude. It's got a lot of motion
SPEAKER_02
00:28:46
Sort of right at the top it happens and laughing. I think probably happens twice in the tune.
SPEAKER_02
00:28:50
Yeah. Yeah Yeah, well I have I have a love for you know, as much as I I there's two things that seem to often be The Mainstays or or things that that are Somewhat constant in I think there's three things I really team Uh, actually no, that's not true But I think I think there's often melody and dissonance in the music that I make and this is the conversation of dissonance especially with this record everybody I know that I talk to you that seems to understand music or as you know speaks this kind of speak Dissonance comes up a lot. It's certainly not something I set out to do But I was talking with a friend of mine recently because i'm starting to work on a new record and I was talking about how sometimes There's this part of me that wishes that I could write a song that sounds like I want to hold your hand or something you know, but uh But everything I write Tends to have this sort of there's a little bit of a of a of a darkness to it and a dissonance to it and um The the person I was talking to is actually this guy graham who's the engineer who helped me help me Do the final mixes of my record. I pretty much mixed everything myself, but he said yeah, but that's actually what Your it's what makes the music that you Make identifiable and I there is some kind of solace in that but I do think yeah, the the melody and dissonance are Two things that seem to be places that I gravitate towards in music and I would say I also tend to one thing that I think maybe is a bit of a distinction in my music From other people that make music that mines from the same field is that I do think that there's part of me that is Often trying to write things that have almost like a hook like quality Um, i'm not sure if anybody else hears that but that's how I
SPEAKER_03
00:30:56
feel I definitely heard it in that part and it was yeah, it's those two things at once that um That I mean that that was The uh quote single and I listened to it. I was like, oh that really it wasn't what I was expecting but I didn't really know what to expect but it was uh, but that that quality because I gathered I mean this is just a guess but my sense would be that that riff or something like that is something that is more intuitive as opposed to something that you're sitting down and mapping out like in terms of uh, You're not getting out the slide rule obviously and like doing tone rows and stuff like that, but I don't even know if Correct me if i'm if i'm wrong here But that might be the kind of thing that you played without really thinking about it and then you go when let me figure that out Or after
SPEAKER_02
00:31:47
yes act that's exactly what that was Yeah, that was that was uh I usually can visualize a sort of map for the music. I'm usually thinking of things pretty visually and i'm almost like Um Conceiving them in a visual way before I sat down to to try to make things but I but you know, I think like with everything there's a process of trial and error and um You know you you you really work on things until something strikes you And that was one of those things where I just I knew that I wanted something I did I'm known as like a guitar player or a bassist with people but this music wasn't really primarily guitar or Guitar music, you know, they're not guitar pop songs, although the guitar is employed quite frequently it's it's music where I I had the time and the means from which to make a recording where I wasn't really limited uh Outside of the actual limitations of what I had to record with and stuff. I could do whatever I had no intention of ever playing this music in front of an audience, so I wasn't it wasn't even a concern of mine. So something like that part, you know I just I just was I knew I wanted a guitar to be there and I just wanted to work it out and I just waited till something worked and then I you hit upon something like that and you just wrench on it until something falls into a space in the music that you feel is An accurate portrayal of whatever you're trying to Convey I
SPEAKER_03
00:33:59
read the wire magazine thing that you posted uh the interview and so I guess it was March April 2020 that you found well a lot of us found ourselves with some time on our hands and um I don't know what you already had equipment wise is was it kind of a matter of I've got some keyboards and drum machines and A lot of time on my hands. Let me see what I can do with them or or how did how did the uh Yeah, at what point did you realize that you were doing something more than I don't know killing time
SPEAKER_02
00:34:35
uh, I think I mean honestly that period of time where I where I Sort of shored up the idea that there was the possibility of making a record was the time that I started to see that I mean because I think the way that I write I Don't think I feel like there was definitely a thread between the music and there was an arc and I think even in the way The record was finished there is sort of like I think of the record as being one continuous piece of music that's broken up into songs Um, there's spaces between them.
SPEAKER_02
00:35:05
I think of it as being kind of like that. So I don't know I guess pretty early on I didn't have a lot of equipment at the time um People had always encouraged me to For years people would say why aren't you making a record of your own? Why aren't you making a record of your own? I never really wanted to I always enjoyed being in a group um, but I guess during that time I don't want to have like a barbara walters moment here, but uh, I had become sober at that time And a lot of really intense physiological changes were happening with me And the recording and the routine that I had of recording during that period of time was very intense I would wake up in the morning. I would walk my dog four miles Um around 7 a.m And I would get home. I'd make myself breakfast and I would record from about 10 o'clock in the morning until about 8 p.m at night every day for about nine months Oh, um And then at eight o'clock when the sun went down we'd walk for another four miles I walked that was like my routine every day And was the extent of like what little socializing I would do as well because I was during that time I was um The covet thing which I don't really want to talk about this record as being uh a covet record or something I did during that period of time But I do think that that time is kind of important in that It may be the only time of my life or anybody I know's life where you were actually Afforded the time to do something like that So I spent all this time Just really really getting into doing things on my own and I didn't know anything about digital recording at all The thing that was really cool was that I I'd spent a lot of time doing things in a really idiosyncratic and technically wrong Way, but I think that that sort of is what allowed the record to sound the way that it does If I had had proper recording techniques in my mind I think the record might not have had the same character. It does I went back recently to listen to the sort of Early stages early mixes of the record and it's very very different same material just different, you know um I so I don't know the recording of the record was really it was a really intense period of time in my life, but like Maybe the happiest i've ever been Which is so fucking wild to say, you know The happiest i've ever been was being sequestered in my home in front of a computer for 10 hours a day You know or whatever it was but it was yeah the the I guess I figured out I I I Maybe a couple months into making it. I realized that I had like enough to force there to be a record Should I finish it?
SPEAKER_03
00:38:23
So It wasn't over intended to be played live but then what what was that uh, What was it like with those two shows? Because you had the one in la and then the one in chicago with a totally different band And I haven't I just saw a little clips I haven't done any like real ab comparisons But I imagine you were doing a somewhat loose interpretation of the the music or definitely,
SPEAKER_02
00:39:00
uh I did not think that I was going to be able to Pull it together. I knew that from I mean, it's not like it I It's not symphonic music you know It could essentially be done with a group of you know, five six seven people But there's a lot of variables involved with putting a group together I feel and a big part of that is like the synergistic relationship between the people playing the music I do feel lucky as much as I sort of have trouble with people in los angeles. I do feel lucky that I know a lot of really great Musicians that are into exploratory Approaches to making music and The cool thing about that my philosophy on this music is that it is hyper composed
SPEAKER_01
00:39:48
And
SPEAKER_02
00:39:48
when I say composed, I wasn't writing sheet music, but I mean I I everything was very intentional But by the time I was done I I had It had been nine months since i'd worked on a tune and I couldn't even remember The process I had gone through to Get to where it ended So I had to go back and sort of relearn a lot of stuff as well
SPEAKER_01
00:40:10
But
SPEAKER_02
00:40:10
essentially the people that I had selected to play with me I knew that I had a good personal relationship with and I knew that they would Understand the music as well as anybody I could imagine in town And so to set up to do these releases or to do the show the release show here in la
SPEAKER_01
00:40:29
I
SPEAKER_02
00:40:30
had to
SPEAKER_01
00:40:30
uh I
SPEAKER_02
00:40:32
had to go back and really kind of go over the music and Try to get myself back into the place that I was when I made the record which was only slightly difficult um But yeah, I didn't think it was going to be possible In to to capture what it was on the record To the t but I think we got close enough with It also being its own thing and I think it was a success on that level for sure
SPEAKER_01
00:41:02
um
SPEAKER_03
00:41:05
Yeah,
SPEAKER_02
00:41:05
yeah, I
SPEAKER_03
00:41:06
could imagine imagine trying to get trying to get to animal retentive about this part in that part would be counterproductive or
SPEAKER_01
00:41:16
Yeah,
SPEAKER_03
00:41:16
not possible and then also counterproductive in the sense of you know, the live setting is different from The studio but it sounds like there's a lot of chicago La back and forth or people who were in la that you knew from chicago.
SPEAKER_02
00:41:30
Yeah. Yeah, I mean I think Los angeles is the place that you're just sort of destined to wind up for some period of time If you have lived in like where I mean if you were living in chicago for 17 years and you wanted to go anywhere that was the Opposite of whatever it was like in chicago la couldn't be any more different, you know um And so los angeles. Yeah, I think a lot of people gravitated here I came here because uh Emmett kelly who I was playing with in the kyra gang had sort of said he We had a record coming out and and he was just kind of like I I really would like you to come out here and I I had kind of burned up all of What I wanted to do in chicago. So it it there there there was and it seemed it seemed a lot more welcoming Than it had previously All the times i've been in la in the past, you know, maybe I didn't have a car Maybe you couldn't get around you couldn't really I mean it would be just such a pain in the ass to do anything And if nobody really wanted to live here, you know, there wasn't really like a reason to live here Uh unless you're in some kind of industry. It wasn't like i'm a graphic designer. I want to live in los angeles. All that has changed now but There wasn't really the call to live here unless you were doing something real specific um But you know, they're all the stereotypes and all the tropes about los angeles They all ring true But there is a whole world of people that are doing stuff and behaving in ways and thinking in ways that don't reflect that And I think that if you're like really careful, you can find yourself with the right people If you're not paying attention you're fucked, you know, but uh I think if you if you If you're somewhat strategic about the kind of people that you want to meet and who you want to be around and The kind of relationship that you want to have With the people you're you're working with creatively. I think you can there are a lot of people that sort of defy the stereotype of You know the kind of los angeles Music biz schmoozy kind of stuff Music We
SPEAKER_03
00:44:10
we kind of passed over the chicago thing and I I admit I don't know The thing your period there, but as I look at the uh trusty discogs.com
SPEAKER_03
00:44:19
Page incomplete incomplete. Well a lot of bands that you were in and I I don't know the common thread in terms of What sort of role you played in terms of central versus peripheral and what kind of common threads there were genre wise
SPEAKER_02
00:44:35
Not really much. Uh, I would say that I'm not the kind of person that you generally speaking that you have in a group where I don't have input Uh, if I were to have a little bit of self-awareness here and kind of Openly admit this I would say that generally speaking if i'm involved in a group i'm usually There in some creative capacity Whether i'm but i'm never like, you know never intended to uh, Take over anybody's uh outlet or whatever but uh But you know, i've always been like kind of like i'm rarely ever just like a hired side person just playing anybody's tunes You know, i'm generally like a when people bring me in it's usually for a reason. I'm I I don't know. Um as far as there being any kind of aesthetic Sort of like a thread between any of them or like it
SPEAKER_00
00:45:27
not
SPEAKER_02
00:45:27
really, uh Chicago chicago, you know, you do find that that there is like generally a Kind of
SPEAKER_00
00:45:36
a I
SPEAKER_02
00:45:38
don't know if you'd say it's like
SPEAKER_00
00:45:39
a A
SPEAKER_02
00:45:41
commonality amongst or like what would you call it? Uh There is like a chicago thing and I could definitely feel it between the groups the approaches in the groups that My los angeles group in my chicago group, you know same music just completely different approaches. I chicago is a very um There's a there's an identity, you know often in the playing It's a it's a it's a little bit like living in chicago. It's a little bit harder. It's a little bit a little bit um more, uh not
SPEAKER_00
00:46:16
meat
SPEAKER_02
00:46:16
and potatoes because it sounds diminishing but There's just something in the way that people approach things. That's just very different You know la la is a little bit lighter people are a little bit lighter in the way that they do things.
SPEAKER_00
00:46:30
Uh, I
SPEAKER_02
00:46:31
don't know. It's it's almost intangible. It's hard to describe But if you've spent a lot of time with playing with people in either place for for uh, Prolonged periods of time you can sense it I would say that the the two groups my group in los angeles my group in chicago were very very different. I mean, we also Had different sort, you know, I flew to chicago and we had to get directly into rehearsing and um
SPEAKER_01
00:46:58
My
SPEAKER_02
00:47:00
travel time to chicago was extremely brutal my three and a half hour flight turned into a 12 hour travel
SPEAKER_01
00:47:05
day
SPEAKER_02
00:47:05
And in the very short amount of time that we had to do stuff. It was I felt like I never bounced back
SPEAKER_01
00:47:12
um
SPEAKER_02
00:47:13
but you know chicago has always been like this really incredible city because Similarly, I think and this is a point I was going to make earlier when you talk about the really a big a big thing that people I
SPEAKER_01
00:47:24
Feel
SPEAKER_02
00:47:25
don't talk about I see some people discuss when they talk about periods of time is the finance of of what it Of what it's like to live in a certain place at a certain time, you know Living in los angeles now you don't have the freedom To do the things you want to do when you want to do them unless you're one of the many people here that seem to have no Real sort of source of income but have all this passive Passive,
SPEAKER_01
00:47:52
you know, I don't know. There's
SPEAKER_02
00:47:53
like people that just seem to have all this money and I don't know where they come from But you know the idea of like I don't know how anybody can spend I have I have a one bedroom apartment That's 1400 which is unheard of here You know, I have and it's rent control and
SPEAKER_01
00:48:08
i'm very
SPEAKER_02
00:48:08
lucky to have it but Or rather fortunate rather than lucky but you
SPEAKER_01
00:48:13
know The
SPEAKER_02
00:48:14
finance I mean this is like a big thing when we talk about music because the truth is finance plays a big role In how people can proceed in their creative practice You know, yeah The world that we live in now is not the world. It was even seven years ago um You know if you're paying if you assuming you live on your own And you spend sixteen hundred dollars a month on rent Which I think is like the median rent maybe for a apartment here if you can even find it that might even be a studio now, I don't even know but You know if you can't afford to have a rehearsal space and you can't afford to pay people for their time Which you know, frankly as you get older that's something people need because they have to take time off work. You're not 21 you you can't just fuck off and do whatever you want You know whether you want to or not is another story, but you know the finance of of maintaining the group and maintaining the practice of having a living breathing group is really Sometimes it's really hard to find a way to do that Breathing group is really It sometimes feels quite insurmountable and um I think the finance of these cities and trying to continue to do these sort of things you're not afforded the time and luxury of being Free with the time to explore like you might want to and I think that that's like I think that the economics of the world are actually Pushing people inward to doing things like making records on their own in their homes But I think it also it has kind of killed an outlet of creativity that people had that did Amount to a lot of really great work in the past You know And I think that's pretty unfortunate but it's like I was in Miami visiting my father recently who I don't really see very often and I went to go visit him and we're driving around And every place that I remembered from my childhood was gone And I was just like fuck man, like I can't believe this I can't believe this is gone I can't believe this is gone. I can't believe it and my dad, you know in a rare moment of Accepted wisdom from him. He just said well, why are you why are you so concerned with all these things? You can't change and this is something that i'm constantly finding myself Battling, you know Yeah, but I do think there's a reality, you know, there's a reality with When we talk about San francisco in the 80s and everyone talks about these massive you know Victorian houses they lived in or these big loft apartments they had in in new york or wherever it was You know, everybody had all these great places to work in like people you just can't find that anymore at least not in the major cities and so I do think that the economics of the world have really kind of have a lot to do Kind of have a lot to do with the way that um People have chosen to or not chosen to but have almost been forced to Deal with their creative lives I mean, this is not even getting into the way that everyone's like sort of constantly prostituting themselves I've caught myself doing it as well through social media to try to get people to pay attention to what they're doing You know, because everyone has the attention span of a gnat as well uh yeah, I think yeah, you know, I think I think it's it's really like, uh Pretty interesting, you know, it's like to think about all this stuff and i'm not sure how I got to this point from where I was but Well,
SPEAKER_03
00:51:43
it's all part of it. Yeah, I mean you can't I think you know one thing that came clear to me as um, you know working on the book is how much uh, you can't divorce the the sound of the music or just the ideas from the circumstances and I think Yeah, it's not about trying to go back and recreate it but sort of maybe Appreciating how how that? Fed into
SPEAKER_02
00:52:07
it Well, I would say this much about chicago, you know when I lived there I had I had a one-bedroom apartment that was $525, you know when I left that I had two-bedroom apartment. It was $900 big apartment You know you could afford to make music plus you had the the the deluge of intense winter that That Had you inside a lot, you know and and doing things like making music With people and going to a rehearsal space or doing it in your home or wherever you were doing it was a viable option As opposed to whatever, you know, but but as opposed to you know You could afford to do it. I guess what i'm saying but I guess I guess the one thing is though that I want to avoid that I want to avoid for the rest of my Life is that I want to avoid ever saying that you know Things are just fucking awful now and whatever they are no doubt awful, but there's always a guarantee that there's always going to be a generation of people that are coming up underneath the generation that kind of Absorbed a lot of the shitty stuff who's going to want to react against that and do something else, you know And that's where all the great stuff always happens, you know, not always I mean, you know But I mean like that's often the genesis of things that become Interesting later down the line or whatever. So, you know as bad as I think it is from my perspective there's someone else who's having the Absolute joy and pleasure and despair and everything that comes along with like figuring yourself out creatively now so It can't be that bad So Oh Like Me Oh Freeze From mouth to mouth Yeah Yeah