Category: interviews & columns

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an interview with tae won yu

it’s an honor to present an interview with insanely talented artist-designer–photographer-renaissance man tae won yu, who used to play in kicking giant. gail and peter momtchiloff interviewed tae in lois’ living room on a moonlit september eve… (this originally appeared in our paper issue chickfactor 17, out in late 2012)

photo of tae won yu by gail o’hara; other artwork and photos by tae won yu

chickfactor: do you come from a creative or musical family?
tae won yu: no, I’m the only one. I don’t know anyone in my family who does art. my father played the clarinet. he had somewhat of an artistic soul but he was really a journalist. both my parents saw me as
 a little bit of an anomaly. they often commented on where I got my predilection for drawing…

peter: which predilection emerged first?
tae: visual art definitely. when I was in kindergarten, constructing elaborate cardboard costumes and sculptures and cray-pas drawings. when I was in elementary school in america, I was obsessively drawing the new york yankees. I remember getting
 a nice autograph from reggie jackson and a bunch
 of players. I would draw portraits of them in marker. for awhile it was quite embarrassing, the living
 room was filled with my portraits. then there was a melding around junior high when I became obsessed with music and I would draw and paint album covers perfectly. I was informed by a style and aesthetic I don’t see anymore, which was—in queens, where 
I grew up, there were a lot of rockers and heshers who had jean jackets with iron maiden art beautifully airbrushed or oil painted on the back panel, the coolest ones.

cf: we saw a leather biker jacket with talulah gosh on it in portland. what were you like as a teenager?
tae: mostly a music phase. very intense, very angry. I was obsessed with the clash and english music. the first record I got—was it called venus records? on 8th?—I asked them what was good and they asked me what I liked. I said I like punk rock, and I don’t like horns. they gave me buzzcocks singles going steady and wire’s pink flag and basically that’s all I listened to.

cf: what about when you started playing music?
tae: that was ’89 I think. I had just started college. the music that influenced me back then was yo la tengo’s first album and seeing sonic youth live for the first time. the first time I heard yo la tengo’s first album it was playing at café orlin. I was into r.e.m. too. there was a good balance to that music. definitely seeing sonic youth, there was something visceral about how they riffed and played music, making noise, attacking the instrument. it gave me ideas and a sense of freedom about how to make music that wasn’t based on playing well. I bought a four-track from a heavy metal guy in the chelsea projects. from there on
 it was very similar…if I want to see something, I’ll draw it. if I want to have something, I’ll make it. in the same way, it’s basically playing pretend.

cf: how did you end up in olympia?
tae: right after graduating cooper union and the summer before that, meeting lois and calvin. people were telling me about olympia bands like the go-team when I was in new york but I didn’t really know about it and never listened to that music.

peter: did you play in any bands in
 new york?
tae: I made a cassette album and passed it around and made it my own obsessive hobby 
to create covers and editions and pass it to people and people liked it. the formative experience was definitely seeing a show at a yoga studio, I remember many things about it, it was downstairs, celebrities were there (jon spencer). it was mecca normal, some velvet sidewalk, go-team, galaxie 500 played, all these things were just swirling. it was an amazing show. I immediately connected with what galaxie 500 were doing and I really got go-team. I gave him my so-called album and he wrote me back and through him and sassy magazine I connected to allison wolfe and molly and bratmobile. it was a whirlwind of activity. no one I knew was aware of these things except for the rock nerds, but I didn’t really learn it from them. that show and myself just writing got me really connected, and somewhere in the next year I was playing with rachel, we had this early version of kicking giant, and olympia seemed to be the promised land. the ipu thing was happening, calvin invited us.

peter: how did you hook up with rachel?
tae: she wore an einstürzende neubauten shirt to our class, just through that, through the t-shirt connection we started talking and became inseparable best friends. every single night we would hang out and talk. we were really close. the experience of going to olympia—the enthusiasm and the freedom—we were there a couple weeks before ipu just dancing. coming from new york, where people are just standing around, and there seemed to be no purpose to play music except to say that you just did. I don’t know exactly why we did it, there were no rewards other than the company. but the eye-opening experience of playing in olympia was that it was kids and they really loved it. it was a lot of love being shown for music. a lot of sincerity and enthusiasm. it was very seductive, so that’s why. after returning to new york, I needed to make a decision. I had nothing going on in new york.

cf: how did it change you to live in olympia?
tae: I learned so many things about self-sufficiency. it gave you freedom and part of it was an exercise in delusion about ignoring certain things you might have to invest your time in doing but I learned about how you make things, and you make things for yourself and each other in the community, I learned to make a pie, I learned to cook. you experience the inspirational energy of riot grrrl and communities that were self-empowered and self-directed toward a greater good, very idealistic. everything had a dark side. there’s a pathology to every good intention but I definitely experienced many things.

peter: what pathologies are you thinking of?
tae: one thing is: not everybody should be making music. some music is really terrible and simplistic. just because you can doesn’t mean that you should. you can try, but… once there was enthusiasm for inclusiveness, everybody, but it turned into this riffing on anger and cutting people down who didn’t adhere to its very simplistic ideals. on the whole the lifestyle in olympia after a while was—I always described it as a marshmallow ceiling—you could do as much as you can and you’ll still be applauded for it and you won’t really be challenged so you have to constantly challenge yourself. but you don’t really get the experience of actually failing in the context of the greater view. it’s very supportive and wonderful in many ways, but if you know there’s more that you can or should do, you do have to venture out I guess. for me.

peter: that’s probably true of many scenes.
 at some stages, that’s really helpful. at some stages, it’s not helpful at all.
tae: I like to be criticized. I prefer to be criticized, I don’t really like people who say how great it is. I have an idea of what’s good, but I always want the art to be better. I don’t care about my satisfaction of my self-perception. for the art to improve it really needs to be critiqued by informed and sensitive people that I respect.

peter: do people pay attention to critique? I mean, you may. most artists—my impression is that if someone tells them they don’t like something about their work, they’re not going to take that well.
tae: most people cry.

cf: it depends how you put it. if they actually do sit down and think about it…
peter: to aim higher is a good thing to be told. perhaps that’s what people need to be told in a supportive environment.
tae: if you’re serious about it, you appreciate the criticism.

cf: what about that art studio you used to work out of in olympia? how many people were 
in that?
tae: I didn’t work in the studio. that was nikki and stella’s place. I mostly worked at home. I would go in and out.

cf: I remember talking to you once about art school, and you said: don’t go to art school. do you have any regrets?
tae: [laughs] no, you can’t really regret these things. cooper union is a very good, intense school. the best thing that came out of it was meeting rachel and forming the band and surviving the first few years, which were really difficult. I wish that I was more disciplined and focused about it but it made me feel like, the things I learned and the attitudes about art were something I couldn’t identify with, it was during a period of heavy theory and marxism, things of that sort I couldn’t really understand. I was more of a craftsman and a traditionalist. I don’t mind things that look like recognizable things. I like skill. I appreciate venerable aesthetics and things that come out of 
long training. it’s not all intellectual for me. allowing things to be and creating a space where sensitivity can be aroused, that seems to be the kind of art that I appreciate. not so much about a storehouse of critical theory. that was the reigning aesthetic at the time I went to school. I didn’t really fit in but I did get a lot of ideas about conceptualization. you need some sort of background/foundation about how to proceed and what sort of direction to go to. it’s just another tool in the tool kit.

cf: what album cover are you most proud of?
tae: hmm, I guess the recent one I did for sour patch I’m very proud of which is all paper construction. the album is called stagger and fade. it’s very similar to the style and aesthetic that I do for the chickfactor posters, paper constructions of a scene. for them I constructed little cassettes, trees, drum kits, instruments and melded it with photo collage. it’s a small band and tiny release, but I was happy to put my all into it. it really reflected their sensibility. it was also for myself very satisfying because I discovered a new style.

peter: it was a big change of style of your work and it seemed to emerge fully formed. was 
it just by chance that you developed a new thing—this 3D paper cutout? and was it an illusion that it emerged fully formed?
tae: the style is very much an extension of other illustration styles I’ve been doing with colors. I mean, I always loved danish childhood design, furniture, books, toys, very simple design, back to basics. I 
love the idea of remaking reality through your hands. especially for the sensibility of a child because that 
is the way that children attempt to control their environment. when faced with the unknown, when you’re powerless, the thing that you can do is draw and fold and glue. make a gnome out of felt or make a rocket ship out of paper-towel roll. that sensibility and attraction is very powerful and if you’re able to do it to a sophisticated level that I was able to, it made perfect sense to do it but the actual arrival of coming to that style is directly from my day job as a designer of children’s books. I was working on a project
where I was designing robots for a book and that
was a lot of paper folding and things like that. it was wonderful, two or three months constructing robots out of recycled materials, I just brought that home, that type of folding, gluing. it’s almost like discovering and remembering that, if you fold cardboard and you have backing tape or glue, what is stopping you from making something you want to make rather than something for a book? if you’re making something that already exists in reality, it doesn’t take that much.

peter: did you feel that you needed a change of style?
tae: I’m pretty restless, I always want to try something new. that’s been my method and my downfall in a way. not very marketable.

cf: does the sound of an album have much to do with the cover design?
tae: yeah.

cf: have you ever had to say no to an album based on the music?
tae: I don’t recall. I can’t remember.

cf: when is your coffee-table book coming out? can we set up a kickstarter tonight?
tae: my weakest point is my sense of organization. knowing what I’m doing. I need a curator, I need somebody who understands me.

cf: chickfactor 17 is our 20th-anniversary issue. how have things changed in the past 20 years?
peter: what were you doing in 1992?
tae: geez, 44 to 24. I was in olympia. oh my god. are you kidding me? I was sleeping with a 17-year-old, downhill from there, geez. my god. in my 20s, I had the privilege of doing exactly what I wanted to do and inventing myself through music. that was something that I don’t regret and was important in my life. being able to play music and almost that spiritual release, inventing music and collaborating with someone. for a short amount of time, it was so ideal. I wasn’t mentally ready to handle it. as with a lot of things, as soon as it got difficult, I felt like I wasn’t being treated fairly so I quit. I started designing record covers and I was able to pursue art. throughout my 20s it was difficult, I didn’t know how to live. I had a sense of purpose doing art and music, but me personally I had no, I was really depressed and addicted to marijuana. I didn’t know how to live. I was terrible. in my 30s I pursued a course of action trying to fix myself. sort of worked. I’m still growing, I still feel like I have a long way to go. but in those 20 years, looking back, I’ve come some way. I’d like to apologize to everybody I’ve ever met in those 20 years.

peter: you said you felt you were unfairly treated?
tae: specifically I felt I was—I should talk to rachel about this, I don’t think I understood it until now—I was booking all the shows, felt like I was doing all the work. she was indispensable, I could never have made music without her.

peter: it’s so common in bands that one person does all the work. I feel like it’s almost universal. I’ve done it once or twice. in most bands I’ve been a kind of passenger. the most important practical thing in a band is having someone willing to do…
cf: a claudia.
peter: something that anyone could do, but someone has to do it. it’s interesting that you put it in terms of unfairness because I think it is unfair.
tae: equally unfair is my ignorance or unwillingness to talk about it. it could improve if I’d put it out there but I didn’t do that. I had a childish resentment and it grew to a level, out of almost revenge I wanted to quit it.

cf: has anyone caught you drawing them on the subway?
tae: yes.

cf: what happened?
tae: depends on the person. some people are really pissed off. I don’t know.

cf: do you feel threatened?
tae: no, they don’t even talk to me directly. they talk 
to somebody else, like “this fool’s drawing me.” whatever. it’s like, hey man. I got eyes, I can do what 
I want. no one likes to be stared at or monitored or so closely observed. it’s natural. I’m just recording reality.

cf: remember in the ’80s when punks used to charge a dollar if you wanted to take 
their photo?
tae: that might make things easier, if I gave them a dollar to model. it’s an odd thing. I’ve had jobs where I do sketching at live events, I’m being paid to do it. sometimes I sit with them and they actually pose for me. those drawings aren’t as strong. their perception of the event changes, they’re concentrating on me 
or rather on themselves. the ideal situation is for
 me to catch people and have some space and be hidden, and that’s when I really capture not only who they are and their physical gestures and messages that they’re unconsciously expressing, but also the environment around them. they become part of the entire thing and the distance that you have from 
this person, this ego, you’re able to report a much more accurate picture of what’s happening. that
 gives me much more pleasure and freedom about it. when a person realizes that they’re being objectified and reported on, they filter out certain things and they’re not themselves anymore. I really love ugly photographs of myself. I like to be taken any way that I am. there are certain photos that make me cringe but I accept that because that’s what I see in other people. what I consider beautiful are all accidental, it’s all just a moment that is not intended to be captured and you’re lucky to capture it. it’s the work of the artist to capture it. that’s not something you make an appointment for. that’s something that a person has to really go out and steal. there is that tension there. my art really comes from that type of reportage,
 that’s a part of it anyway, at least in the drawings and photographs that I make. less so in my illustrations.

peter: I know this photographer steve pyke and I like his stuff, but here’s what a lot of people say about it: the pictures aren’t very like the people. what he does is he takes pictures, he uses various lighting effects and what he ends up with is an interesting image of a human 
face but often it’s an unusual take on a person. people often say it doesn’t look like that person, and that clearly isn’t what he’s trying to do. in a way it’s a depersonalizing thing. it’s not really a portrait in a sense…
tae: well, on the other hand, the person that is being depersonalized can also be recognized as a brand that people are attached to, so what they’re saying when they say it doesn’t look like the person is “I don’t recognize this brand.” you’re selling me coke but this is not coke. one can say that an interesting picture of a face, that’s all it is, that’s all celebrities are.

peter: there’s a tradition that when you’re doing a portrait, you’re trying to “capture” something about the person and I think that is sometimes what people set out to do and that is sometimes what makes a portrait good.
tae: I don’t know, it goes different ways. there’s a wide spectrum of treatment of how to take portraits and report reality but for my own experience/aesthetic, for me what works is not to intentionally create an image that I have in my mind. which is similar to not to interview someone with an expectation of what kind of answers I want from them. it’s like, let it happen, try to let as much accident and chance into it because the subject doesn’t know themselves, and I don’t know it. if we’re really truthful, we don’t really know who we are and we don’t know who anybody else is. so there’s a chance, given the right circumstances, that you might run into a beautiful accident. you hit on something and that’s a risk that’s kind of worth taking.

cf: have you done a new yorker cover?
tae: [laughs] I have not!

cf: what is wrong with those people? adrian tomine, jorge colombo, chris ware, all these people have done them. why are you not on the cover?
tae: I don’t know why.

peter: do you have an agent?
tae: I don’t have anything.

peter: maybe that’s what you need.
tae: I also need ambition.

cf: do you think artists have a responsibility to influence politics?
tae: no! what? how do you influence politics? you mean have an opinion and spread it?

cf: I just meant with art. like pussy riot or whatever.
tae: I don’t know. I’m not very political. I have opinions about issues but for me the artist, my responsibility 
is to hopefully be an example of doing something of noble intent with honesty and thought and purity of intent. and work hard basically. it takes a lifetime to understand what you’re doing. if part of it includes expressing it through political art, definitely so. 
I just see it as a bigger picture kind of thing: it’s 
your behavior, it’s how you do things, to do it right, something that lasts, something that connects with people, to be constantly evolving/changing. it’s more about a practice of how to live and proceed—a method of living—than the actual object itself.

cf: what are your favorite tools?
tae: soft graphite pencils and eraser. x-acto knife.
 pva glue. cardboard. construction paper. graph paper. computer. photoshop. ipad. brushes app. fuji x-100 digital camera. contacts g1. polaroid land cameras.

cf: if the tate called you and said “do whatever you want in the turbine hall,” what would you make?
tae: [laughs] I would like to make a…that’s a big space, right? the challenge of working on such a
 big space is about how much human energy can
 you bring together for one project. so it would be wonderful if it’s something that…in 3D space I
 do love the experience of seeing everyday objects recontextualized. that’s a spiritual experience that I want to have in an architectural space, to enter into an empty room that is huge and endless, it’s like something from a dream. suddenly the space is what your mind can feel if you have no language. you’re not naming it cause there’s nothing there. maybe making a city out of one-color cardboard, something of that sort where there’s a repetition and consistency of form repeated over and over and over until things that you recognize suddenly change into its own
body and its own shape and its own entity and its own spirit. when you have a huge space like that and all you can see is one thing, I can see the collected efforts of so many people and materials coming together. those are things I would think about. that’s a good question.

cf: what about if you could make products or projects and money was no object?
tae: if money was no object, the thing I would really like to do is explore construction and printing. I love making paintings and prints and photographs but I
do love using, again recontextualizing familiar things like greeting cards, books, fanzines—these are all things that we take for granted because we are used to perceiving them as manufactured articles. we don’t have a relationship with them. every single one of them is a legitimate medium in which to express craftsmanship and perception of reality and skill
 and focus. even a cardboard box—you could make
 a cardboard box if you wanted to. in the same way that you don’t have to buy a chair, you could design and make a chair. I do love picking these elements of industry and reconfiguring and seeing what happens if you make it. if you see it through your eyes. the best of performance art always has one foot in recognizable theater or language or some component and another foot in the true avant-garde. if you could have one foot landing on solid ground, it gives you security to reach out further and I guess that’s what
 I imagine. an opportunity to make something—you pay respect to things that exist in traditional form and you take it and kind of run with it and rather than remaking something that existed, you allow it to be what it is and allow the form to stand its ground. all these things are venerable mediums but rather than making yet another card or illustration, you can push it and see what happens. if money was no object, the thing is I don’t think I would actually spend it on any materials. I would spend it on time and allow myself to actually make things. I would make the paper. I would make the woodcut. I would draw.

cf: so if money was no object, you’d still work.
tae: exactly. that’s exactly what I want. if money was no object, I would use it to do nothing but research and work.

cf: how has technology changed your process? do you use any apps?
tae: oh yeah, I rely on the computer for many things. they’re all very useful but the more that you use it, the more you realize that we need tangible objects. we need paper, we need ink. we need…

cf: time away from the screen.
tae: we need time away from the screen. but most importantly, we need something to hand to somebody else. something as a direct expression of a connection between a person. let me send you this link, MP3. that doesn’t, that has no… it means so much more to present somebody with this thing that you made, that’s not analogous to an attachment. it exists and visually you receive it but there’s no heart in it. I’m not against technology certainly, I love technology and finding the right way to use it but I always return to the idea that we need to make objects to exchange between human beings. it’s proven.

cf: what did you take away from working in the magazine industry?
tae: [laughs] geez. you learn about workflow, discipline, time management, how difficult it is to me to exist…I worked for home magazine and ellegirl. one experience that really stands out for me…I never took the job seriously. I thought that everybody there had other things going on in their lives and this was just a job. you just do the work. especially a teen girl magazine—how much could you really stand behind it? I remember going out for drinks and socializing— they were all great people, I enjoyed hanging out with them—I suddenly realized by the look in their eyes that they took it completely seriously. I guess that’s what you have to do. this is your real job, if you’re going to advance, you better take it seriously. I really learned, and I’m still learning, I’m at a publishing house. every day I’m there, I always feel like I should be at home writing songs and drawing.

peter: if you could press a button or a magic wand and have four extra hours a day, would you like that?
tae: yes, would I love it? yes.

peter: what if you could wave a magic wand and never have to sleep again?
tae: I love sleeping.
peter: so do I.

 

cf: what’s in your fridge?
tae: it’s kind of empty these days but usually just basil, heirloom tomato, homemade pasta.

peter: you keep tomatoes in the fridge?
cf: you kind of have to when it’s this hot in
 the summer. in this heat beautiful heirloom tomatoes turn to mush in a second. do you
 have any good stories about calvin, lois, nikki mcclure, jeff cashvan?
tae: [laughs. tells jeff cashvan story deemed inappropriate for print by cf editor] I always feel like calvin will always have a better story about you than you’ll have about him. he still remains so guarded, he reveals
 so little of himself. the story with lois is what a true friend she is, she is truly an example of how to live
 a noble life. the only story I could tell is her being an upstanding person, so reliable, if I have a moment of doubt, I always think, what would lois or eric do in this situation? and use that as my moral compass.

peter: what happened to that rickenbacker you played in kicking giant?
tae: oh, I had to sell it. in one of my buddhist-inspired moments of letting things go, I sold it back to richard [baluyut] for the price I paid for it.

cf: did you have a top moment from the chickfactor brooklyn shows?
tae: seeing versus, though I’ve seen them so often. it was a really stellar set from specifically those years, fantastic, all my favorite songs. and small factory as well. my high point was just this feeling at the end of the last show, staying till three or four in the morning and not being able to say goodbye, reveling in the company of these familiar faces. especially the joy 
of people who traveled far. to hang out with pete and you and lois. the human connection, the sharing, the joy of long-term friendship and appreciation for
 each other.

 

 

 

 

 

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chatting with tufthunter leader peter momtchiloff

PETER

you guys know guitar player and indie legend peter momtchiloff (we call him “momtch”) from his former bands talulah gosh, heavenly, marine research (and many others) and his current bands the would-be-goods, les clochards, etc. for his new project, deep hits by tufthunter, he has assembled a cast of musicians and assigned songs to a bunch of singers. the album is available for free (there are a handful of CDs out there he’s made for friends) and, despite demand for vinyl, he has no interest in capitalizing on it. the record is a true gem that features some of our favorite singers ever: (chickfactor co-founder) pam berry (black tambourine, withered hand, the pines, etc.); lupe núñez-fernández, (pipas, amor de días); claudia gonson (the magnetic fields, future bible heroes); jessica griffin (would-be-goods); amelia fletcher (talulah gosh, heavenly, tender trap, the catenary wires, etc.); lois, bid and loads of others. we asked momtch a few questions but be sure to read ben’s interview with him also. interview by gail

chickfactor: what made you want to do this record?
peter: I have always written a lot of songs, and a few of them have been played and recorded by bands I’ve been in (talulah gosh and the would-be-goods in particular). but I think there is something a bit uncomfortable about a singer being fed songs by another member of the band: fine now and then, but not as the basis for a band. ¶ with my midlife manpunk band hot hooves, I decided to try something I hadn’t done before: singing (some of the) songs myself. I enjoyed this, but was not surprised to discover that I don’t really have the voice to be a good lead vocalist. ¶ so what to do with my songs? asking a different person to sing each one seemed a good way to try to make the most of them. I’m surprised that more people haven’t done this.

cf: how did you go about selecting the people involved?
for most of the bass and drums, I turned to my clochards colleagues ian and gary—I knew they would do a great job. the singers are all friends, so that made it hard for them to say no (no one did). I know plenty of other singers, but these are the people I felt most comfortable asking. ¶ I regret that the music industry seems increasingly to favour the working model of a controlling auteur (artist, producer, or artist/producer combo). I knew I didn’t want to go down that path. for me, personal interaction is the essence of pop music. so I used a collaborative model, starting by working out the basic tracks with my crack oxford rhythm section. and I didn’t try to tell anyone what to play or how to sing their parts.

cf: how long have you been working on / writing the songs?
one is from the 1980s, one from the 1990s, and most of the rest from the last few years.  In late 2013 I went through all the songs I could remember and picked the best ones.

cf: do you want me to ask debsey if she’ll sing on the next one?
sure! though I’d have to work hard to try to come up with something good enough. I’ve been a fan since I heard “been teen” on the radio in 1981.

cf: what guitarists inspired you growing up?
in the order in which I came to them: rock’n’rollers like scotty moore; then george harrison; steve cropper; wilko johnson; dave edmunds; tom verlaine and richard lloyd of television; leo nocentelli of the meters; and various people who played with howlin’ wolf and james brown. I apologize for failing to live up to this list. my favourite guitar players to listen to are steve cropper and django reinhardt.

cf: who are some of the best bands in oxford right now?
apart from my own, I like a couple of punk/metal bands called agness pike and girl power, and a lady/gentleman duo called the other dramas. my clochards colleague karen cleave is developing a very interesting act which I think she is calling mermaid noises. I imagine all these acts will remain local attractions, and I think that’s just fine.

cf: if you had to put tufthunter in a record store “genre” what would you choose?
it was nice when we could all think of ourselves as “alternative”—is that still legitimate, or would we be deceiving ourselves? I am certainly “independent,” given I don’t even have a record label.

cf: why did you not want to charge anyone for this record/package it and sell as vinyl or CD?
it was partly pragmatic: what I would like is for people to hear the music, and I don’t need a financial return. for a little-known band, putting a record on sale can be self-defeating in terms of dissemination, especially if you don’t work hard on selling it at live shows. many people who like music are now fairly unused to mechanisms for buying records, so those mechanisms tend to represent a barrier to dissemination. ¶ in addition, observing the rituals of the record industry and its media, I confess to a certain distaste, and an unwillingness to join in that game. it would be undignified for a gentleman of my years. ¶ so I decided that I would make CDs to give out freely to friends and acquaintances; and that I would make the record free to download, to enable it to reach a wider audience if there is one.

cf: do you have any memorable stories about talulah gosh, heavenly, would-be-goods or your time spent in chickfactor-land?
I’ve generally been content to let my past life slip into oblivion. I remember facts and scenes, but not experiences, on the whole. ¶ looking back I recall what a pleasure it has been to hang around with other bands.  I must have met hundreds over the years and with very few exceptions they have been friendly and comradely. ¶ in place of forgotten stories, let me mention some of the most unusual shows I’ve played. ¶ talulah gosh supporting the blow monkeys at the new theatre in oxford—marooned with our tiny amps in the middle of an enormous stage more accustomed to the tread of quo and cliff. ¶ heavenly doing a tour of japan not only as ourselves but also as bogus BMX, stand-ins for the BMX bandits, backing their singer duglas, who ate only chips for the entire trip, out of fear of surreptitious seafood contamination. ¶ marine research playing with shellac and fugazi in east london—both bands were completely without pretensions and treated us as equals. ¶ would-be-goods on the same bill as an indie fashion show in greenwich village, thanks to chickfactor. ¶ scarlet’s well playing at an art squat commune in berlin, complete with a huge vat of vegan chili, authentically 1980s, but 25 years on. also ostpol, a bar in dresden offering a meticulous exercise in ddr retro chic/naff. ¶ les clochards playing as the only support to tom jones [sic] in the middle of a wood in suffolk.

cf: will there be another tufthunter LP?
the first time someone asked me this I found myself saying that maybe I had drained this particular wound. I report that metaphor in case it seems revealing. ¶ I am going to do a couple more tunes, because there are specific singers I still want to involve. I would certainly enjoy doing another album, but I have used most of my best songs and it might take a very long time to come up with enough again.

cf: thanks!
thank you! I suspect it was you who put pitchfork onto the record—most grateful.

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bohemia forever: the lilac time interview

we interviewed mr duffy for chickfactor 14 back when both of us lived in london, but as his group the lilac time are about to release a new album called no sad songs, we figured it was time to catch up! most of you know him but if not, some fun facts: he was the original singer for duran duran. he spent a few years as robbie williams’ music director. he was in new york city around the time of 9.11 to play a chickfactor party and we were very grateful that A. the show went on and B. he let us write the set list (his presence there at that time was oddly comforting!). he’s been writing beautiful “flower music” for like 30 years. he’s currently somewhat recently become happy, married, a dad and a resident of cornwall. we asked him a few questions to find out what’s been happening.

chickfactor: tell me about no sad songs. was there a theme or aesthetic you were trying to achieve with this record?
it was a sprawling 20+ song mess of aesthetic revolution until I realized that a double album would never get finished. It was without beginning, middle or end in whatever order jean-luc godard would have put them. I just picked the ten I thought I could pull together and finish without crying or without blowing up the house. by chance the ones I picked seem to tell the story of us as a family and musical group going as far west as you can go, in the united kingdom, without discovering america. the song “the western greyhound” vaguely encapsulates the story.
Lyrics:
We took the Western Greyhound
Down the Atlantic Highway
And that’s when we found
Our way home

For on a clear day
You can make out something
We all believed in
Something good…

Now in the dead of winter
Can we make a beach head
In the desert
Of our dreams

I saw a sign in heaven
Bohemia forever
Another dream of wonder
How wonderful to dream.

we grew up in a time when people believed in things and in more than things. In 1978, when I left school, the gap between rich and poor in the UK was at its narrowest. was revolution possible? the counterculture’s lineage from beat to hippy to punk wasn’t expected to just bail.  but instead we were blessed with the never-ending ’80s, the revenge of the ’50s. and governments that want to bury us back into the ’30s. So this album is about nurturing that “little flame among the ashes” like all the others. that’s the light we work by.

how has your approach to songwriting changed over time?
the first good song I wrote was “aztec moon,” which was released, eventually, on the devils’ dark circles record in 2002. I wrote it in 1978 just before I went to art college in birmingham and started the durans with john and nick. I was 17 and had just read jack kerouac’s mexico city blues for the first time and was filled with inspiration and wonder and I stood in my bedroom in birmingham and sang. I was amazed that I had written a song that sounded like a song. over the years and I mean perhaps decades, I tried to get to a more completely personal lyrical style, but now almost 40 years later all the songs sound personal, the choice of literary thievery becomes as personal and as poignant as a faded family snap shot. It becomes the story of your life!

how has your relationship with music changed in the 30 years(!) you’ve been making records?
I suppose my relationship with music has remained the same and the same as everyone else. you hear something and you love it and get excited. you get filled with righteousness or foolishness and sing and dance in the kitchen or discotheque.

I’d listen to records and then go upstairs and play my bass and try to channel whatever it was. even when I’d had hits and made albums I’d do the same kind of thing. I watched a little don’t look back every day before going to record the eponymous lilac time album.
and I still have massive fads and buy everything by people, fill in gaps, get obsessive. I watched travelling for a living, the watersons documentary from the ’60s and immediately I was on eBay buying vinyl and listening to nothing else, telling the band we were going to have record exactly like them. not that they listen to me anymore.

my relationship with the music business in comparison isn’t as jolly. having made my first record in 1979 seymour stein and sire gave me dance hits in 1983—amazing. I had a pop hit in the UK in 1985—scary—and then from 1987 the lilac time “I swore to write but poetry and live upon a hill”— POETRY!
and yet I still get angry with the guys who, when the compact disc was invented, invited us into their luxury offices and told us “you make the software and we’ll make the hardware.” the guys, and they always were blokes, who already didn’t have a clue when I signed to WEA in broadwick street in 1982, but still have well-paid jobs now, even though they are the ones who sold out to apple and iTunes knowing we wouldn’t make a penny. and then gave away everything to the streamers. they didn’t even sell the family silver—they just gave it away.

is being happy a good way to feel while trying to make a record?
I have no idea why I became depressed and I had years of great therapy that was very helpful and even inspiring. maybe melancholy is in you from birth and something pushes it to the fore at some point. illnesses do make people feel special. when I was first prescribed antidepressants and realised I was looking forward to going to the supermarket that this meant I was leaving my cage of specialness, my great palace of sadness and that I could not only become normal but even gormless. I was “if I cant be successful at least I can be depressed.”

this was an incentive to make this recording. to address how miserable the last few lilac time records had been. we all like a happy ending, right? but equally I’m not sure what really made me not depressed. but then I got married and had a daughter, we are—as the ramones said clearly—a happy family and looking after a family, putting them first, doing what that involves, cooking, cleaning, was a first for me, domesticity hadn’t really happened in my first 50 years. I don’t know if putting others first is what killed the depression? for I’d have taken just not being depressed, happiness didn’t come into it.

also, and by the by, accurate checking for vitamin D didn’t arrive until 3 or 4 years ago and I was virtually without any. since then I have been well and truly shot up with Mr D. I wonder if nick drake and other great depressives could have been checked what great music we would have been deprived of and what happy lives they may have lived.

why has it taken seven years since you’ve put out an album?
runout groove, the last album, disappeared faster than most of my records. I hadn’t realised how things had changed since releasing keep going, which had at least paid for itself. With runout groove I committed us to playing shows, with a six-piece lilac time and crew, at the green man festival and queen elizabeth hall, that we filmed and recorded (for the film memory & desire). the film shows me slowly realizing things perhaps weren’t going to plan. I obviously came back from california thinking I was neil young or someone. so after that I decided we’d just to record for ourselves and never play again. then we found ourselves all in cornwall playing in the basement and it didn’t feel that different to ’87 and the first album. then I suppose that egomaniacal desire to share our greatness reappeared.

tell us about the folks who contribute to this record. who did what? how did the process go in the studio?
it’s just me, claire, nick and melvin. all duffys but melvin not so directly related. melvin: steel guitar. claire: keys, strings and vocals. nick: instruments people mock. and me on guitar, bass and drums. it’s the first record I recorded songs and then changed everything, retaining perhaps only the original mandolin. so perhaps it was a little more worked on or considered or something, but it wasn’t laboured, it was revelatory.

will you tour/play shows to mark the record’s release?
we’re playing the port eliot festival on the 2nd of august as a trio.

what do you think is the best role of songwriter in 2015 society?
I can only talk personally but I’d have to say saviour of brutalist architecture and flower child.

has living in cornwall had an effect on the way you write songs?
it’s good to be somewhere so far away from london and everywhere else. apart from when you need to be in london or somewhere else and then you’re miles away. but it’s good to be somewhere so far away.

what happened to the other 10 songs you recorded since moving there? will they be released?
yes, it should be lilac10, the next album. at the moment it’s called the second post. we also have a rarities collection I’m slowly compiling and a live album that just needs mastering. we’re going to reedit and retitle the film memory & desire, adding some new stuff and older stuff that’s turned up and generally cheering it up a bit. and as always, there’s the book I’ve been writing since 1979, boxes and boxes of it, I’d like to finally finish it or some of it and add the thousands and thousands of pictures to make something lovely. because lovely is where it’s at, gail.

photograph courtesy of the lilac time. the album is out on tapete records on april 2.

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bill callahan: the chickfactor interview

we are thrilled to have an interview with the phenomenal american singer songwriter… (originally appeared on paper in chickfactor 17, which came out in december 2012)

interview by connie lovatt and gail o’hara // photograph by kirstie shanley

chickfactor: what’s some of the best advice you’ve been given by a man about being a man?
bill callahan: I don’t think I’ve been given much advice man to man. I wish I had. I think it’s mostly women that have taught me about being a man anyway. a healthy woman wants you to be a man. I grew up with two sisters and they wanted me to be a man right from the start. they were so happy I was a little boyman – I could sense it from their faces. as soon as I could walk my sisters begged me to put on a tutu. this ballerina tutu we had lying around. maybe it was left over from when one or both of my sisters went through their little princess phases. seeing their reaction to me in the tutu was the first time I felt like a man. and I never looked back.


cf: what’s the best insurance against your own shenanigans?
bill: there isn’t any really. things always come back to haunt. and if they don’t, the looming spectre of threat is worse. if we let the shenanigans win….

cf: what were you like as a teenager?
bill: dumb. I was just in receiving mode, programming mode and I was kind of inoperable in that state. just taking things in or waiting for an opening in the race. it helps to have a soundtrack to such times and I listened to music 7 or 8 hours per day. classic rock radio, which I found some worth in but after awhile it started to feel like some drunk guy waking you up every time you fall asleep and just laughing at you and not saying anything. I realized a lot of classic rock is not classic at all. I had been taking their word for it at first. I was always counting the days until school ended, for years and years. and when it did it was even better than I dreamed.

cf: what was the first song you wrote and why and what was it called?
bill: when I was really little I wrote a song called, “peanut butter shoe.” the lyrics were, “it’s new, it’s blue, it’s a peanut butter shoe!” I think I wrote it, since you ask why, to mirror the life impulse inside a human.

cf: tell us about your songwriting process/ space/rituals.
bill: I’m not a ritualist and space is not something I really notice either. well, I guess I like electric light, no natural light and no window. I don’t like to know what time of day it is and I don’t like to see natural events happening. writing and music are human concepts—like electric light, so it helps to block out anything from the unadorned natural world. there is a pen I like, I buy by the carton. I just bought a carton yesterday. I couldn’t find black. It has to be black because of the primal black and white thing, primitive brain sight and film noir. I always turn down help from those big store employees because they never know anything but this time I said yes, where’s the black. he found it. It was in a newly designed box because now the pens are “made from recycled electronics.” I guess this is good but I don’t want to get cellular microbes in my notebooks.

cf: have you ever had to stop listening to a song or band because of a certain person or memory?
bill: maybe, but I wouldn’t think it was a struggle. if a memory or event was that strong then the song probably should go where that person or memory went anyway.

cf: does it bother you when your lyrics are misinterpreted?
bill: I think it happens all the time. I think I also misinterpret other people’s lyrics, other people’s everything. that is the lair of the audience, that is where you make your connection – from yourself. listening to music is not a passive act. when you’re a teenager and your parents wonder how you can just sit and listen listen listen. you’re making all your connections then. your head is dancing with it. so I think “misinterpreted” is the same as “interpreted” really. who can put the “mis-” on there? only the creator and half the time the creator can’t even concretize an interpretation. if someone has an interpretation of my lyrics that feels to me to be way off base, I just think that is the level that person is on at that time. that is where they are finding a connection to the song. but don’t get angry if I or someone else has a different interpretation of the song. I’ve often been told I am lying, when someone asks me what a line I wrote means. because songs become part of the body, part of the psyche, part of the filter of the way a person sees the world. when you tell them something else, they feel as if their essence is being negated. this is why people are so fiercely passionate about the music they love. the music is them.

cf: on most days would you prefer an elaborate breakfast or an elaborate dinner?
bill: oh man. an elaborate breakfast usually says, “I’m going to fuck off today” or “damn, life is good, ain’t it?” both of which are good sentiments. but mostly I like a simple breakfast cos I’m in no mood, you know? I think I like a simply elaborate breakfast. just toss a couple basil leaves in my eggs and I’ll be like, “damn!” breakfast should be simple but with a tiny zing. like raspberries in your oatmeal. food can’t stand on its own though, for me. I can’t have an elaborate dinner and think, “what a great day this is or was based on this meal!” it’s more of a bonus thing, like, “I had a great day of work and now look at this delicious hot pocket before me. it has basil on it.”

cf: what singer or songwriter do you feel is solidly romantic yet gets little credit for being so?
bill: I’m not sure about credit, as I don’t always keep track of public perception of things but—van morrison is quite the romantic scamp, I think. and I don’t feel like I’ve heard people talking about that.

records bill can’t live without
> steely dan, aja
> various artists, keep the pressure down
> barrington levy, run come ya
> television, marquee moon
> marvin gaye, “what’s going on”

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mini-interview with kurt heasley of the lilys

true story: after the first time I saw the lilys in concert (june 3, 2003 at the crocodile with swirlies and explosions in the sky!), I dizzily said to my (now ex-)husband, “his last name is heasley, and mine is headley—I’m gonna go tell him that!” and he put his hand on my arm and said, “don’t,” with a serious look on his face.

WELL, GUESS WHAT, KURT?! WE STILL HAVE SIMILAR LAST NAMES!

kurt was sweet enough to answer some questions after a chickfactor dress rehearsal show at the lilypad in cambridge, ma. the lilys play chickfactor 22 with withered hand, jim ruiz set, and amor de días on thursday, march 20 (night one of two) at the wonderful bell house in brooklyn. eeeeeeeee!!!

photo by gail o’hara • interview by janice headley

well, to start off —how did it go last night?! what’s the line-up gonna be like for CF22?
Last night was great. Awesome, a lot of fun. It was more like a gala, grrr and I’ll be playing on Thursday with Nightime Gallagher.

are you still in cambridge right now? you’ve got old ties to that town! does it feel good to be back in yr old stompin’ grounds?
Yes, I am literally in Cambridge RIGHT now. I’ve worked with so many creative and enterprising friends here in New England, Providence, Northampton. This just seemed like the obvious place to come when we left the ashram. I like the four seasons in Massachusets. It’s not just about coming back to this area. We do have connections here, people we care about that live here, but from other places, too, like Virginia. Also, it’s close to New York, where I like to record.

how has it felt reuniting for chickfactor? I saw you play solo last year in los angeles for CF20… have you enjoyed revisiting these older songs?
I’ve had nothing but fun with these last rounds of chickfactor, 20, 21 and now 22. I see playing songs from the first four albums as some sort of measurement of time and it offers a change in perspective whenever they’re revisited. Any opportunity to re-learn songs from those albums again proves to be enlightening and fun. I see how my approach to music has differed. I’ve loosened up significantly since I wrote those first recordings.

do you think you’ll ever do a show playing the Better Can’t Make Your Life Better-era material?
I do see playing live a lot more over the next few years. We did play a lot of those songs the last time I was in California working with the full band. Having the sound and feel of Better Can’t Make Your Life Better and Services for the Soon to Be Departed live all hinges on having the exact right players in the line-up. And I love playing with them. So, yes I’m thinking that we will find the people interested in making that happen and materializing the mythology.

are plans still in motion to reissue In the Presence of Nothing? will any other albums be reissued? in particular, Eccsame the Photon Band??? (on a personal note, I once drove three hours from portland to seattle listening to NOTHING but “day of the monkey” over and over again on repeat… for THREE HOURS… and I could’ve done three more. that song is so special to me!)
We had some archival issues with that reissue of ITPON that are still being addressed. There are so many people that I have worked with over the years that it makes reissuing the work challenging, but it is definitely something that I want to do and have been working on putting together for many years now, In fact, I am currently negotiating the reissues of three records over the next year and a half with Mike Schulman of Slumberland Records. He just sent me some old DAT recordings today that I am looking forward to hearing. We’ve also talked about recording a new project.

I read you were working on a K Heasley album at one point! are you writing new songs? will you be playing them this week? will there by a new lilys album anytime soon? what are the new songs like, stylistically?
Everything I do is a K. Heasley album at some point! I did record a split 7-inch with Big Trouble that I finished last year—I think you can find it on SoundCloud. (ed. note—you can!) I’ve been working on a number of new songs, I record all the time and on whatever’s available as part of my writing, but it will take actually getting in to the studio with the people from all over that I love to work with and have great respect for before you’ll be seeing that new lilys album. Actually, it is possible there will be no more lilys and that there’ll just be something new, I do have some other projects in mind. I’ve been working a lot with Nightime Gallagher recently. Whatever it is, it’s not just about the music anymore, music is visual and physical, it’s a whole show and I have a lot of ideas for the next project that include a big multimedia environment. Stylistically I’d say these new songs are solar pop.

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mini-interview with the clientele

we first heard the clientele when they played a chickfactor/papercuts party in london in 1999 and were dazzled for life (we interviewed them in CF13, 2000). they continue to be one of our favorite bands, even if they’ve been less than prolific the past few years (we also love alasdair’s other band, amor de días, natch). we asked alasdair a few questions in advance of their first US show in 4 years (and first with this classic lineup in 9): we cannot wait to see them! the clientele plays at chickfactor 22 with versus, barbara manning and the saturday people on march 21 (night two of two) at the wonderful bell house in brooklyn. be there!

interview & polaroid by gail o’hara

what has the clientele been up to? are you back together for good or just a few shows?
I’ve been slowly and painfully writing a novel, and playing in amor de días. mark has moved into a canal boat and is tuning pianos. james has been growing chillis and playing bass for comet gain. ¶ last year I wrote a couple of songs that sounded more clientele than amor de días and it coincided with an offer for the old lineup to play a festival in denmark, which we decided to do for fun. then merge asked us to record a song or two for their 25th-anniversary 7″ singles club so we had a chance to record together again. that’s all so far.

why was it important to reissue suburban light?
again, it was merge’s decision, as part of their 25-year anniversary reissues series. I over-listened to that record when we mixed it the first time round and I got sick of the songs. james and I were talking about how frustrating that whole time was, we kept losing drummers and we wanted those songs to be on the radio but we were in a little studio trying to cut out the hiss on the tape by sliding the faders up and down. every sound engineer we met tried to make us sound like radiohead. ¶ coming back to it was really positive though—we unearthed a lot of stuff everyone had forgotten. It was weird being in a room and hearing our younger selves bantering on tape. I think the reissue does it justice, and it seems to be a lot of people’s favourite clientele record so hopefully it will be enjoyed.

how has your songwriting process changed since you were a teen?
I learnt that songs don’t need to be symmetrical—if one verse has four lines it’s okay for the second to have three. otherwise, not in any way!

how do you keep your guitar nails from chipping?
on tour you can’t keep them from chipping but once they do chip you can replace them with estee lauder press-ons and superglue. kurt wagner showed me when we toured with lambchop and since then both have become an essential piece of tour kit.

what records are you most excited about these days?
I really enjoyed gerard love’s lightships record. the new boards of canada is interesting. I’ve been catching up on old martin newell and cleaners from venus records and also listening to a lot of virginia astley.

what’s the best pub in london?
for me the pembury tavern in hackney central is OK. also the elderfield in clapton.

who is the comedian in the band?
we are all equally amusing.

what will you do in NYC when not playing?
have lunch at angelica kitchen.

best chickfactor party memory/story?
flying in to play one of the london chickfactor shows after a gig in berlin. we arrived backstage with several bottles of berentzen apfelkorn, which is a kind of schnapps which sends you completely bananas, god knows why we had picked them up but we did. we tried to get club 8 to drink it, a german guy personally interceded and warned them not to deal with us.

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mini interview with versus by lois!

versus are one of our long-running music and people crushes. we cannot get enough! they are a chickfactor house band! anyway, we asked another CF event regular (lois maffeo) to interview them for this year’s fest. they play chickfactor 22 friday, march 21, with the clientele, barbara manning & the saturday people at bell house.

interview by lois & photograph by michael galinsky

lois: I was in the middle of a room full of indie bands sleeping on the floor of dave auchenbach’s house after a big night at the providence pop fest in 1992. versus had arrived late, after a gig in some other town. it was probably four in the morning when I woke to see figures with guitar cases moving gingerly across the bedrolls. richard baluyut was stepping over my sleeping bag when he looked down and darkly intoned, “I heard you made brownies.” that phrase (accurate, I may add) kickstarted a long friendship with richard that soon came to include his versus bandmates fontaine and ed and patrick and james. you’d think that over the past 20 years, I would have gotten around to asking richard some of these burning questions. so thanks, gail, for assigning me to interview richard in advance of versus’ appearance at chickfactor 22 on friday, march 21 at the bell house in brooklyn.

is it true that you once got a guitar lesson from roger miller of mission of burma?
richard: I never had a lesson from roger. he did sell me his guitar from mission of burma, before they got back together. when he needed it back, I sent it back to him of course! I believe I still own it, but I haven’t held it in over a decade!

can you describe the ownership timeline of the famous black rickenbacker guitar?
richard: I bought it in 1990, and used it on our early singles. traded it to tae won yu for his SG, which became the versus guitar. tae brought the rickenbacker with him to olympia and made it the classic kicking giant guitar. but he got bored of it and sold it back to me when we were passing through on tour. I sold it to jeff cashvan, who later sold it to carrie brownstein, who made it the signature sleater-kinney guitar. quite an illustrious history! I haven’t seen carrie play it in a long time though; I hope she’s passed it on…

if you could play in any band from the past, which one would it be?
richard: I wish I’d been in the who, isle of wight-era so I would be wearing a jumpsuit…

what is your favorite sci-fi novel?
richard: invisible cities by italo calvino? I was more of a fantasy guy. I only read civil war history now…

what are your top 3 favorite things about new york city?
richard: double-features at film forum. mamoun’s falafel still standing. not living there.

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7 questions for amor de días

when we think of “royals” from the united kingdom, naturally we think of AMOR DE DÍAS, featuring alasdair maclean (frontman of the papillon-obsessed lite psych combo THE CLIENTELE from fleet) and lupe núñez-fernández (one half of the slapdash & adorable pop duo PIPAS). we could not be more excited about seeing them play at chickfactor 22 at the bell house on thursday, march 20, along with withered hand (whose live band will feature pam berry of black tambourine and kenny anderson of king creosote), lilys and jim ruiz set (and mc gaylord fields of wfmu)!

interview by the legendary jim ruiz & photograph by shoko ishikawa

1 distance running
2 love life
3 the live experience
4 where do you most want to live/retire?
5 your meeting gail stories
6 borrowing your name
7 gearhead question

chickfactor: considering the dominance of the UK in middle and long distance running in the past; sir roger bannister’s four-minute mile, sebastian coe and steve ovett’s amazing rivalry on the track, and the astonishing world record of paula radcliffe at the marathon, it was really not a very big surprise to see that you are specializing in the 10k. tell us a little about your training and how you feel it’s going. any tips for those of us who want to start running? what’s your PR (optional)?
alasdair: we have no expertise in running, or specialisms in the 10k. we both ran the new forest half marathon last year and counted ourselves lucky to be alive by the end. the only tip for a 10k run I could offer is don’t sprint the first 3k, the next 7k will not thank you.
lupe: it’s handy for catching the last tube back home after a gig, or the train to the next city on tour. that’s definitely our specialty distance.

charlotte and emily want to know if you are a couple. I assured them I would ask you.
lupe: buy our records and find out! there are hidden messages if you play the vinyl backwards.

emily and I were at an amor de días gig at the triple rock in minneapolis about 3 years ago. that gig was an introduction to your music, it made a big impression on me and I made it a goal to play with you someday. in fact, whenever we visit our friend’s house there is a poster from that gig framed on their wall. do you think that touring is worth it because you never know what impact it has, even if the audience might be small on a given night? or do you think that touring has had its day?
alasdair: what a nice thing to say! I suppose in my career the model of the small gig with a strong connection to the audience has been mostly how it’s happened, and when when that connection really works it’s amazing, nothing can beat it. opening for much bigger bands has taught me that my songs work better in a small space, chamber music rather than a nuremberg rally or a mass singalong.
lupe: touring is usually when you might get to play in front of strangers who’ve never heard your music, and see a sincere reaction. it’s probably very self-indulgent but there’s something to be said for that, whether it’s a good one or not.

living in the middle of a vast continent as we do, without any real possibility of moving anywhere exotic, we are in awe of your EU passports and your seeming ability to move anywhere you please on the continent. do you plan to stay in the UK forever? do you ever miss the sun?
alasdair: come on, minneapolis is about as exotic as it gets! prince lives there! I was born in scotland so have never known the sun. It would be nice to be an internationalist rather than stuck in the UK. I’ll have to work on it.
lupe: when we were in minneapolis a couple of years ago we talked about moving there. I’m not kidding!

tell me how you first met gail….
alasdair: outside NYU in the freezing cold. I think we had eaten polish food for the first time and were semi-comatose.
lupe: I was aware of this cool chick with retro glasses and blond braids at all the shows at fez I went to in the ’90s but I didn’t know her name (or that she’d curated the shows, and put out chickfactor). years later we met in london through our friends pam berry and mark powell—the heat broke at the place where she was staying and I told her she could squat at ours. instant family.

last year the aislers set seemed to take no offense when we changed our name to jim ruiz set. how would you feel about our recording under the name amor de ruiz `rE- ahs?
feel free. it has a classy ring to it.

the classical guitar scares the hell out of me, yet you make it sound so easy. are you self-taught players or do you have years of pumping nylon behind you at some music conservatory? who first inspired you to play classical? who do you listen to for your inspiration?
alasdair: I learnt classical guitar as a kid, my parents put me in for lessons, but I gave up around age 11, and lost a lot of my technique. the first guitarist in the clientele,innes phillips, had the same teacher as me, so we both grew up playing adagios and tangos and only came to playing pop music later—the way for instance george harrison played was a total mystery to us. ¶ my favourite guitarists: toquinho. argentinian folkloric guitarist atahualpa yupanqui. In the flamenco world, nino ricardo. rock guitarists stacey sutherland (13th floor elevators) ron morgan (west coast pop art experimental band), vini reilly (durutti column), maurice deebank (felt) and tom verlaine/richard lloyd. I also really rate ignacio aguilo (hacia dos veranos) and archer prewitt.

lupe: haha definitely self-taught and very limited in my knowledge. I bought a classical guitar for 27 pounds in hackney in 1999, with no previous musical experience or knowledge of what a chord was, etc. I really wanted a bass, or drums, but the guitar was much cheaper, portable. it’s handy as a way of noting a song down, but I definitely don’t consider myself ‘a guitarist’, I just write songs, and make it up as I go along. I think I’m actually a lot better at percussion; my dream is to tour the jazz circuit as a jazz drummer, maybe by the time I’m in my 70s. ¶ my favorite guitarists: probably alasdair, linton from the aislers set, sam prekop and my brother víctor, who taught me that crucial first bass line that started it all (it was “bela lugosi’s dead”).

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an interview with barbara manning

there is no one else like barbara manning! when we met her back in the early ’90s, we were mad about her and went to see her all the time (she was on the cover of CF4 with tiger trap). we’ve seen less of her in recent years, which is why we cannot wait to see her play on march 21 at the bell house as part of our chickfactor 22 thing!

interview by douglas wolk & photograph by gail o’hara (taken at, oddly, douglas wolk’s wedding!)

what are your active or semi-active musical projects these days?
the musical projects that I have been working with for years, such as glands of external secretion, butte county free music society, and others continue to release limited releases. the newest release on which I contribute guitar and singing is from the group, this is yvonne lovejoy; a 45 on psychic encumbrance records called wolverine, an ode to one of the X-men heroes.

locally in long beach, I have been playing bass with a collective of friends and we call ourselves celebration of bad news. we improvise while recording the session so that we can hone in on the best parts for our song structures. my favorite element of celebration of bad news is our singer who reminds me of a female blend of both can singers, a bit of pauline oliveros, and a good splash of fearless punk rock. to have a group that faces in: we are all so eager to play and we look at each other as we play, music makes itself easily. I enjoy being a background singer or to not sing at all while I play. for me, playing this way is both relaxing and an adrenaline rush. however, as you say “semi-active” project, we only seem to be able to get together once a month. last week we had the cops called on us by a suburban neighbor which wrecked the session. now that I am a working stiff, I sure see how valuable time is. if I looked at a pie chart of my time spent being creative versus time working, I’d see why I feel creatively out of balance.

a very bright side to this creative conundrum is my husband, dan. he is always encouraging me to write songs or pick up my guitar. he is a producer from the early L.A. punk rock days. some of his best known work includes legal weapon and alice bag’s cambridge apostles and las tres. dan works on his music at home all the time. I feel that if I could just catch up with my work and sleep better hours, I would pick up my guitar to write again. and when that happens, dan is ready to record me.

what’s a record that means something very different to you now than it did 20 years ago? what changed?
when was 20 years ago? 1994??? good god. that doesn’t seem that long ago; does it to you? let me go back to that year in my head again. I was 29 years old, working at reckless records on haight street in san francisco. I was working on truth walks In sleepy shadows and nowhere had just come out. I felt like I finally had a productive, fun working band with melanie clarin, brently pusser, margaret murray as the sf seals. I got to travel to holland to record with james mcnew that year. I felt like musical success was around the corner….

okay I know! oasis’ first record!!! I used to love the first and second records because the music had a swagger and sound that made me feel confident and easy going. I was quite obsessed with noel gallagher during those couple of years. but, just the other week as I was driving along on highway 405, I put on oasis and the music just did nothing for me. I craved that old feeling you usually get from a well-loved song, but I did not feel it. so I put on television’s first record instead.

you’re an exceptional interpreter of other people’s songs. what’s a song you wish you could perform but can’t, for whatever reason?
thank you for your compliment! that means a lot to me, douglas! a song I continue to try to cover but never seem to get down is “stardust” by hoagy carmichael and mitchell parish. since 1927 it has become the most recorded song in the world. it happens to be my favorite song; this “song about a song about love.” I found out that it also was my grandfather, big rip’s favorite song and was played at my grandparent’s wedding.  It’s a “bucket list” wish of mine to record it. but I just never seem to play it smoothly enough for my liking.

you wrote “better by bounds” with george jones in mind. what other performer, past or present, would you like to write a song for, and why?
douglas, your questions are excellent and I am finding them interesting to think about and not difficult to answer.  thank you for taking your time to organize this interview.

I would really like to write a song for kendra smith to sing and record. she has been an enduring hero of mine since she influenced my singing style back in the early ’80s. especially I would like to sing behind her someday; another “bucket list” wish, but I know that she is very private and elusive. I doubt sincerely that she is aware of my existence and I don’t have any desire to disturb her.

what kinds of collaborations are you best at?
I like spontaneous collaborations, but those are impossible to plan. my mind says that I must feel comfortable with my other collaborators in order to create, but I know in my heart that isn’t necessarily an obstacle to making good music.

the album I recorded in new zealand was full of fairly spontaneous collaborations and I was not always comfortable with my collaborators. every song was recorded the day it was written, except for one I had ready to go. recording those songs was utterly terrifying because I had so much fan-admiration for the artists I worked with (graeme downes, chris knox, denise roughan and david mitchell, robert scott, david kilgour) that I was determined to make good use of their time. I did my best to connect to my musical muse so that what I contributed was open-minded and high quality. I can still listen to the songs on the album, in new zealand, and feel proud of our results.

gail tells me you’re teaching chemistry in high school these days. what are you like as a teacher? how does teaching relate to performing for you (or does it)?
wow, douglas. you are very perceptive because teaching certainly is performing and there is no worse audience than 36 bored teenagers. as a teacher I am loud, funny, informative, compassionate, caring, annoyed, fierce and sometimes inappropriate. I have a lot to learn to get where I want to be as a teacher.  one important thing I have learned within the past months is that teaching requires putting on a show, a new one, every day; and if that show bombs there is no way to close the curtain and ask the ushers to see the audience out for their refund.

what’s the most fruitful piece of advice you’ve ever gotten?
to view everyone as though they are wearing a shirt that says, “please help me feel good about myself.”

barbara will play night two of chickfactor 22 at the bell house, brooklyn, on march 21.

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new jim ruiz interview & vinyl announcement!

Jim-Ruiz-Set-2

it is no secret over here at CFHQ that we dig the jim ruiz set (and the legendary jim ruiz group before it). they’ve been playing at CF events since back in the 1990s, and pam berry had the good sense to interview them back in chickfactor #9. ruiz & co. recently released a fan-fricking-tastic (third album finally) album called mount curve avenue (the compact disc and “digital files” came out on allen clapp’s mystery lawn music label and korda records), and we are excited to tell the world the latest news about that record: jim ruiz set has teamed up with portland, oregon’s ace shelflife record company to put mount curve avenue out on light-blue vinyl! we cannot wait to get our chocolate-smudged fingers on a copy. read more over on the jim ruiz blog and preorder your light-blue vinyl copy right here. the interview that follows was conducted by allen clapp to run in advance of chickfactor 21 last month, but the lazy editor didn’t get it posted in time. enjoy!

chickfactor: jim, you’ve always had a unique blend of melancholy and humor in your songwriting (you even referred to your uncle as being something of a mexican woody allen in one of your songs). who are some other songwriters past or present who can do that thing you do?

jim ruiz: thanks, that’s very kind. I think you could probably trace it back to 1989 and listening to the jazz butcher sing “girlfriend,” “only a rumor” or max eider sing “D.R.I.N.K.”  you don’t know whether to laugh or cry and maybe you just do both. they were able to be able to be incredibly funny but never cross into the realm of novelty. I suppose loudon wainright III does kind of the same thing. there’s no reason depressing confessional lyrics need to be so serious.

over the course of your three recorded albums, you cover a lot of musical ground, but there seem to be a few kinds of songs to which you gravitate: transportation songs, songs that mention or reference your musical heroes, and self-referential songs that look back on an earlier time in your life. is this coincidental, or are those the things that most occupy the mind of the legendary jim ruiz?

I don’t know what you’re talking about. okay, you’re on to me. I honestly didn’t think anyone would notice that! true, perhaps more than most people, I go back to the well. in my defense, I do tend to stop at three. for instance, “groningen,” “minneapolis,” and “mij amsterdam.” there were no city songs on this record (mount curve avenue), but if you got a good thing going, why not! who would have wanted to hear tony bennett follow up “I left my heart in san francisco” with “I’ll see you in oakland—next time!” and “down and out in redwood city?”  I would have!

you’ve always been more of a mod than a rocker. is it easier to be a mod in 2013 than it was in the mid 1990s?

no, it’s easier to be a mod when you’re in your late teens or early 20s, no matter what year it is. even bradley wiggins (winner of last year’s tour de france) seems just too old to pull off the mod look. at some point you reach the “aging mod dude” status. of course when I look in the mirror I think “hey mod!” but luckily people around here just look at me and think “preppy.”

last time I saw you, I noticed your volkswagen vanagon had a decidedly non-stock color scheme. would you care to describe this? how many paint jobs has your famous van had during its lifetime?

the vanagon has only had two paint schemes but many brush coats. as you probably know, car rust is an inevitable fact of life in minnesota. luckily as a child I painted many model airplanes, mostly from WWII.  I didn’t suspect I would later use that skill on my car, the transition was a natural and easy one.

what’s the best thing about playing a chickfactor show?

just being asked kind of blows my mind.  in london gail bestowed on us the title of “chickfactor band.” it wasn’t a public ceremony, and it didn’t come with a little statue, but it’s a moment I’ll never forget and will always treasure.

order your copy of the latest jim ruiz set LP (well, yes, on vinyl, silly, right here!)