How's the desert?
Deserted.
You talk about the adobe house that Hisser was recorded in. How relevant is this place?
The sounds that I get... um... adobes... well, they're pretty ingenious, structure-wise. The old ones are the thickest and with the tallest ceilings. The old one I used to live in had a lot to do with me even buying a house, with the lack of right angles, because I realize the virtue of the sound in a place like that. You know, I'm akin to it. It just makes good sense for every day conversation or living; breaking glass sounds better. They feel better. When I was in Chicago a few months ago I heard that Steve Albini lined his new studio with adobe.
Really? So in terms of your record, am I hearing the adobe?
You are probably hearing the sound of the room, the tone. Fortunately the less sophistication you have with recording, the more natural and room-like sounds you're gonna get. You use fewer mics, cheaper mics and put mics in technically wrong spots.
Are you spontaneous when you are recording? Or do you think a lot about it?
No. I like to forget about it as much as possible. I have mics set up so when the notion hits you in the middle of the night you can just walk into the room, push down the button and just start playing... and capture something. I think this is very inherent in many songwriters. You get a song idea on the way out the door, late for something, going to work, picking the kid up, somebody is waiting for you somewhere, and then advertently you get a notion for a song. If you have a Walkman around normally you'll throw it down. The result of that over the years is that I've lost the cassettes. I just filled up cassettes without ever learning the songs... just with these notions. So one way around it is you have it set up on 4-track to capture it on tape... you can go back to it later. That's what I tried to do with Hisser. Like "Shy of Bumfuck", they were ideas that I literally threw down really quick when I was walking out the door, the kid was outside, the door was open, and I just turned on the tape deck as if it were a giant walkman and quickly put the song down and left. You don't ever get moments like that on big studio recordings. Because you are always there for intended purposes. I like that off-handedness. I think that off- handedness even lends itself more to the room. The more you don't think about things, and DON' T think about recording, the more you can actually get what I think are the most honest recordings.
A lot of Hisser seems to be almost like it was a super-8 camera going. You can't erase Super-8 film, so you just turned it on, caught a feeling, printed it and watched. Did that come easily on Hisser?
Hisser is a licensing deal. If you get a real big recording deal you get a large amount of money to deal with. Which includes a large amount of people to deal with. That way of doing things is ok, there are certain advantages, but it's just not so instantaneous. So with licensing deals there is less money involved. The money for them (V2), that they spend, drops down to next to nothing. I just have the freedom of recording for next to nothing and doing whatever I want. So a lot of Hisser is just the allowance of me not having to deal with the "loop" (of big label bureaucracy) and to keep pushing some frontier in instantaneous recording.
That seems like the ideal of recording...
I know it is... and it only took me about 18 years. (laughs) Yeah, it seems like the nightmare of recording deals is dealing with people who don't care about music. Business people... Everyone has an adoration of sound or melody. Whether or not you fit in that camp, or whether or not you make a mess that they can relate to, you just want them to be moved by it. Then there is a connection and you feel good about everything. The lines of communication are now opened.
Was Hisser recorded first and then presented to V2?
No. I started doing what became Hisser mostly in light of John and Joey's Calexico adventure. A few years ago things got weird... like 1996 and parts of 1997 were really fucked up years for a lot of people. A lot of that was happening around me and with me in the middle of it. And there were like five insane situations going on at the same time and it just took me away from everything. So in the interim John and Joey started having their own troubles with Friends of Dean Martinez so they were recording in their house. We all live in adobes. Joey lives across the street where we all had lived at one point singularly and now it was Joey's turn to have it and he started recording in that place and that's where most of the Spoke record was done. More evidence to the wonderfulness of adobe. So anyway, they had something going on and I was able to completely be removed from everything. and say, "Well, maybe it's time to set up a little four-track in the living room." So I did, and I started coming up with these little bits and pieces. They were all way too slow and mopey. I Did that for about a year and then it started changing, there was a little more spark in life and in the material. So when I realized I was coming up with this record I approached V2 with this notion.
A lot of really great records have come out of Tucson lately: both Calexico records, OP8, Hisser, Richard Buckner's Devotion and Doubt. There is something about the vibe and warmth of all those records that feels really good. My friend and I call it "desert core." Do you think the desert is really influential?
I think that whatever choices you make along the way, how ever you decide to live, whatever you end up going through while you live there, will influence what will happen next. Like in the next year. So in a sense... if I had never lived through a flood in Pennsylvania I might never have wanted to come out to the desert where there was no water. Whatever... I wasn't aware of it at that time. Turning John and Joey on to this place, did a lot for them being able to find sounds they liked or tapped them into some form of imagination. I see Joey taking a lot of different parts of things that already exist and mixing them up. If we didn't move down here, would he have made sounds like on the Calexico record? I doubt it.
Sometimes in order to fuel creativity you have to ditch the notions of being a "band" and just make a record out of it. Is this what it was like for the OP8 record?
Yeah. It was a better blend. The whole idea was really a chance for us to come to the table on equal terms instead of having to deal with seniority like in Giant Sand. It was burdensome. When someone new comes into the band I don't know if they are going tobethereforayearortenyears.SoifI assume that they are an equal member of the band, what I have learned is that I am setting myself up for disaster. Because I want it to be more of a unit. If you don't know their staying power and they end up becoming a big part of the sound and they leave, then you're kind of fucked. When Giant Sand formed in 1980 it was an equal membership. One by one we split and by 1983 that didn't exist anymore. That notion always seemed the most appealing. Like R.E.M. or U2 that had all got together at the same time and stayed together.
Does this seem like an impossibility these days?
No, it did with Giant Sand though. Slowly I was able to figure what or what not to do to find the next idea that would feed some form of record or inspiration or sounds. Or whatever. Then when John came in 1987 it was like the band kept changing now and again and then I verbally offered up a partnership saying "you know this could be great, to start all over again." To only having a drummer as a full partner. So with me and John doing a two piece thing. It was great. So free. And then from that point Joey came into the mess a couple of years later. Didn't know if he was staying or going. And then right when, 4 years down the road, "We're ready to initiate ya." That's when he started, more than ever, picking up side projects. I mean they were all related. They were all things we had become involved in. That was part of the wonderfulness of the credo of Giant Sand, was the coming and going. Whether it was Victoria Williams coming and sitting in, or Lucinda Williams sitting in, or Julianna or anybody...
It still seems that way, like it's a "cooperative."
Yeah. The other thing with Giant Sand was the fear of incorporating too many sounds by too many other people, and then if they weren't around what would you do? OP8 allows us to come to the table as equal, 25% partners. It makes it easier on ya and also more effective. Because it just isn't so heavy-handed. I think the result is really cool.
So does this mean that the new Giant Sand record is a "project?"
No. You have four working bands within this one band. Finally. Depending on the moniker we're playing under you have to be psyched about that band. Otherwise, it'll be unfocused. So if it's one of us, its just me, if its two of us its Calexico, if its three of us it's Giant Sand, and if its four of us its OP8. But the tricky part is letting the other shit go enough, to then come in and trick yourself into thinking "Oh yeah, all we have going on right now is Giant Sand." So it sounds like it when you record. Right now we're having open discussions in the band about this because if that can't happen then there is no point in doing it.
