Click over the jump to read the interview.
Your most recent
band album Ormythology mixes rock dynamics with
Turkish/Greek rhythms and melodies. An unusual combination. How did
you first become interested in Mediterranean music?
The first Turkish music
I remember hearing was Erkin Koray. A friend sold me the Shadok's 2LP
collection of his singles from the '60s and early '70s. Then in the
early 2000s I found out about a Middle Eastern music night in Atlanta
at the Red Light Cafe. It was every other month and it was great; I
tried to make it to every one. The first night I went I saw an
amazing Turkish musician play. His name was Namik Ciblak and he was
like the Jimi Hendrix of the bagalama, a stringed instrument also
known as a saz. He was a very nice guy and I got to hang out with him
and see him play quite a few times before he moved back to Istanbul.
Another band that played almost every time was Emrah Kotan and the
Sultans. They were great guys as well and they played at other places
so I became their fanboy and went to see them at some restaurants and
other venues. When I got home I'd try to play some of their songs on
guitar from memory. Eventually I worked up the courage to ask if they
would mind if I taped their set and they didn't so I did. Both
Yedikule and Teli Teli Teli are songs I learned from their sets. They
didn't have a bassist and I misheard the root notes on Teli in a way
that makes it sound more badass I think. We didn't know what the
songs were called and we called that one Koolaid. We still call it
Koolaid but the person who wrote it is still alive and I didn't want
to look like I was trying to put something over. Unfortunately, most
of the Sultans moved back to Istanbul as well, but Emrah still lives
in Atlanta. He's a great drummer and a great teacher and he performs
with a lot of different bands. I went to one of his shows and sang
the songs for him and he told me what the names were.
I
think they way you've mixed things up on Ormythology is
what makes it such a good record, I wish more bands would approach
music with such open-mindeness. What's next for you musically, will
there be more of the same or are there new avenues you plan to
explore?
I'm working on a
Rembetika record right now. The Turkish song Yedikule that I learned
from Emrah and Borte turned out to be a Turkish language version of
an old Greek Rembetiko from the 1930s called I Foni Tu Argile. A
band called A Hawk and a Hacksaw recorded a version of it a couple
years after we put it on our first album, but theirs was much more
faithful to the original Greek version and unlike ours which I'm sure
they never heard. I've learned a bunch of other 1930s Rembetika,
which is in many ways a Greek and Turkish counterpart to our blues of
that period, and I'm making them into rock songs for another record.
TSROS has been playing some of them live for a few years, so
recording them will get me caught up to the present. I want to try to
write a few songs for that record and then maybe try to write some
more psych pop stuff. I'd like to eventually do a record for every
style I love: a country rock record, a reggae record, a funk record,
an acoustic record, etc..
And that title -
Ormythology, is that just something you made up?
Google ain't telling me anything about that!
Before recording each
of the albums, I spent a year or two thinking about what they should
sound like, what the rules would be, what I would and wouldn't do on
them. Working in my own studio gives me infinite freedom, and I try
to think like an artist who is trying to create an individual world.
Having rules (or obstructions) helps me create something that's
cohesive, and I like the idea of doing different things on different
albums, while trying to retain an identifiable sound.
So the first
obstruction was to make it sound totally unlike the first album. Our
first album was conceived as a bubblegum love letter to The Beatles
and my '60s 45 collection. So this one had to be much rawer and less
tightly produced. The White Mice listened and told me not to close
mic everything and I followed their advice. I had used mostly major
chords and optimistic lyrics, so I didn't do that this time around.
And I had birds on the brain, maybe stemming from watching the entire
Twin Peaks series (on DVD and VHS) and finding out that "the
owls are not what they seem". I started listening to a lot of
bird song records and wondered what they were singing about, kind of
like with Dungen. I had this grand concept for the record that
included making some Musique concrète with recorded bird calls and
teaching my bandmates some bird calls on guitar so we could improvise
on them. Unfortunately time constraints forced me to scale down but I
kept the name anyway. Ormythology - the study of bird songs and their
subtext.
It's
interesting you mention Bubblegum music which I have a soft spot for.
I have this theory that people who are able to see beyond the trashy
obviously commercial aspect have a real appreciation for the craft
involved. You could say the same for novelty records which seems to
be a real dying art. For anyone out there reading who knows little
about the Bubblegum genre what top 5 records or bands would you
advise them to check out?
I was a big fan of
melodic 45s that rocked, like the Beatles and the Beach Boys and the
Rolling Stones. 45s sounded amazing back then and they packed a punch
that you just don't get from hearing the songs on CD, or even on a
stereo LP. I listened to the radio or my records all the time and I
had a lot of favourites each year; I loved Tommy James' Hanky Panky
but when they came out with I Think We're Alone Now, I thought it was
an absolute knockout. That stayed on my player for months until I
wore it out. A little later, I picked up Yummy Yummy Yummy by the
Ohio Express and I couldn't listen to it enough. That was the
beginning of bubblegum rock for me, but Tommy James says in his
autobiography that they jacked his riff from I Think We're Alone Now,
so I guess that might have been the true beginning.
If, in fact, the
Shondells were the beginning of bubblegum (and not Kasenetz and Katz
who produced Yummy Yummy Yummy and most of the other stuff I consider
bubblegum), then I would nominate their Crimson & Clover album
for one of my top five in the field. They were a great band and it's
an excellent album.
The self-titled Ohio
Express LP is my favorite album that's undeniably bubblegum; it mixes
quintessential bubblegum tracks like Yummy Yummy Yummy (that are
recorded with studio musicians and the great singer Joey Levine) with
even better tracks by the actual Ohio Express that are much more
experimental and psychedelic. I was very inspired by that when I put
together our first album, the idea that you could combine pop rock
with more experimental filler.
Another favorite 45 was Green Tambourine by the Lemon Pipers and I would highly recommend that album as well. Again, there are some lighter pop-rock tracks combined with some heavier more psychedelic numbers.
I'm not sure if anyone
else would classify The Turtles as bubblegum rock, but I will for
this list. Happy Together and She'd Rather Be With Me were two of my
favorite 45s; they transcend bubblegum but the latter has some of
it's hallmarks. I would highly recommend the Happy Together album
that features both tracks.
For the fifth, I'll go
with John Fred and the Playboy Band, a very underheralded band who
had some great singles and cool albums. Permanently Stated is
definitely one to pick up.
As the last two might
not pass the muster with bubblegum purists, I'll offer up two more
that should: 'Cross the Border by Lt. Garcia's Magic Music Box and
Hard Ride by the 1910 Fruitgum Co..
The very wonderful
Fruits De Mer record label has been very supportive of you in the
past, how did you become involved with them?
Barry Saranchuk, who
makes some very psychedelic CDs as his alter-ego Psychatrone
Rhonedakk, heard our first album on CD Baby and left a nice comment
about it. We were getting ready to embark on our first East Coast
tour and I saw that he was near Scranton, PA so I e-mailed him to
thank him and ask if he had any suggestions for a place we might play
in the area. We exchanged e-mails for a little while and he
encouraged me to get in touch with Fruits de Mer as his friends the
Swims had great things happen due to their association with them. He
kept insisting that I should get in touch with them and I finally
did, which led to another few months of pleasant back and forth with
label head Keith. And when the time came to do Keep Off the Grass, we
started banging around ideas for a song TSROS could do and we settled
on Ten Thousand Words in a Cardboard Box.
Fruits De Mer
releases tend to feature cover versions of classic tracks from the
golden age of psych and prog. It's a brave band that tackle tracks a
lot of people consider to be sacrosanct. For example your version of
The Beatles' Savoy Truffle. What would you say makes for a good cover
version?
I loved doing Savoy
Truffle. And I got props from two different musician friends, one for
showing it could be played on acoustic guitar and one for showing it
could be done without horns. I think bands miss an opportunity when
they play the same parts that the original players did. I like to
look at a song as if it was given to me on paper, even though I don't
read music fluently. If I have the words and the chord changes, I can
take it from there. On Mountains of the Moon, I changed all the minor
chords to Major, I hope the Dead will forgive me for that. We didn't
reinvent Ten Thousand Words... but that's because I didn't know it
was okay to do that until I heard Cranium Pie and Sky Picnic's
contributions.
Your new single (on glow-in-the-dark vinyl no less!) showcases your versions of tracks by The Hollies and The Grateful Dead. Could you explain what draws you to music of a certain vintage and what do you like about those two bands in particular?
I was a music fan
pretty much from the time I was born in 1960. My Mom remembers me
leaned up against the record player and rocking before I could stand.
I started out with Chubby Checker's The Twist 45 and a few others, by
1965 I was spending my allowance on 45s whenever I had saved enough.
I had a lot of the Beatles singles when they first came out, starting
with A Hard Day's Night. My older brother Gus was a huge rock
fan and he got me into all the great bands of the time, many of which
you could hear on the radio as well. My Dad was into jazz and
classical so I was very lucky to grow up with a lot of great music
around.
I loved Bus Stop, but I
think my first Hollies 45 was Stop, Stop, Stop. I always liked weird
sounds and that one had a very weird sounding banjo. Then I got the
On a Carousel single, with a picture sleeve and All the World is Love
on the flip side. Neither my brother or I really remember the latter
song but I rediscovered it on a German import LP when I was looking
for the most obscure Hollies song I could find for a Fruits de Mer
tribute LP.
The Grateful Dead was
the next chapter of my musical development, starting in the early
1970s. Gus got ahold of a copy of Workingman's Dead and I listened to
it all the time. When their self-titled live album came out it had an
address for their fan club; I signed up and received all their
mailings from 1972 on. I was heavily into the Airplane and the Byrds
and CSNY and the Allman Brothers at the turn of the decade; I took
the Rolling Stone reader's route whilst the Creem reader took a
totally different path. The Dead was my favourite band of the '70s,
until Talking Heads pushed them out of the spot in 1979. I got to see
them over 70 times and every show was an experience. The best was in
the '90s when Bruce Hornsby and Vince Welnick were on keyboards and I
could see four shows in a row in Atlanta with no song duplication.
And sometime in the
late '70s I came across a used copy of Evolution by The Hollies and
loved it. It showed that they had successfully made the transition
from singles band to album band, as so many others of the time
weren't able to.
As far as the vintage
goes, I like the sound of music from the 1960s and early 1970s the
most. Our guitarist Jacob feels the same way and we hope it comes
through in our music. I've enjoyed a lot of punk and underground
stuff since then, but I haven't been able to listen to the radio
since the mid-1970s.
I
think you're right about the sound of the music of that era, it
probably has something to do with the human aspect involved – using
live drummers, ensemble playing etc. As well as using natural reverb
of a room as opposed to trying to replicate such things digitally.
Pro-tools is great for cutting out little glitches and mistakes but
also seems to take some of the soul with it. Your recordings all seem
to have a real organic warmth that a lot of modern recordings don't.
It'd be interesting to know how you achieve this and what your
recording set up is.
Thanks so much, that's
something I've really been working toward. Not close mic'ing as I
mentioned earlier has yielded positive results. A little space
between the source and the mic creates natural compression which
helps the track sit in the mix, and also preserves some of the air
that a recording needs to breathe. And I don't compress or EQ
anything if it doesn't need it. I follow whatever direction the
tracks take me but I do like a pulsating breathing track if that's
what I'm getting. Our stuff has all been mixed in Chris Griffin's
Pro-Tools setup and I do think it adds something that's not
necessarily there on the original tracks, for better or worse. But
the thing that sucks the soul out of a recording for me is
quantizing, which aligns everything to a strict tempo, and if
imperfectly applied, it can totally change the feel of a song. I
often build up a track from the drums but I try to recreate the feel
we would get if we were jamming live. That means having to get the
bass and drums and rhythm guitar where they would be with regards to
the click, or 'in the pocket'. I never achieve it perfectly but I'm
always striving for it. Recently I've been playing all three and it's
always a challenge to get the feel right. I never edit the drum
tracks, I just go with what I have and try to work around any
potholes.
As for my setup, I have
some awesome Chandler Limited and Universal Audio stuff. Both
companies are aimed at people who are looking for a vintage sound. I
have a Mackie 24-8 board so I can mix with faders but still utilize
some of the tricks I discovered working with Chris, like running
tracks out to a stomp box such as a Mu-Tron phaser and then back into
the session again, which we did on pretty much every Fruits de Mer
track. I've tracked all the previous TSROS within the cramped
confines of my record store in Atlanta, now I have more space but
the sound is a lot different. I'm working on a new track for a David
Bowie tribute CD that Keith at FdM is putting together and it's a
great opportunity to experiment with the new sounds.
The vintage theme we touched on earlier is continued with the artwork of your releases which are made to resemble the first wave of vinyl bootlegs - plain thick card sleeves with hand-stamped lettering. You obviously believe (as do I) that packaging is still important in an increasingly digital age. Is this commitment to physical formats central to how you think music should be enjoyed?
In keeping with my goal
of making everything different for this record, I wanted to go a
different direction with the cover. For the first album, our friend
Alec Addleton drew an amazing picture of our name with colored
pencils and our friend Susan Archie helped us turn it into a cool
looking album cover. So I wasn't going to top that anyway, and all my
requests for art from my friends and bandmates went unfulfilled, so
eventually I came up with the idea of hand stamps as something that I
could pull off. Unfortunately the earliest promo copies were my
guinea pigs and some of the less attractive ones had their pics
posted online. But I had improved quality control when I got to the
stock copies. I was definitely thinking of the old bootleg LPs and
I'm glad you noticed it. I was also thinking of passports, as each
back cover has different stamps on it in a different order. I wanted
to make it something special because I think it's a special album,
one I could never make again.
I
know from our recent correspondence you've recently relocated to
Massachusetts, what's the scene like there and are there any local
bands our readers might enjoy checking out?
Lou Barlow is back in
the area and he has a new solo album coming out, which I'm sure will
be great. Six Organs of Admittance is here now, and Elisa Ambrogio
from Magik Markers has a new solo album out on Drag City that sounds
really good. Sunburned Hand of the Man is still putting out great
stuff. I saw a punk band called Chemiplastica that was excellent but
I'm not sure if they have a record out. I'm looking forward to seeing
what else I can find while I'm here!
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