Local Music Issue 2011

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ON THE RECORD: SIDEWALK DRIVER + THE SYMPHONY

Posted on October 26, 2011 by HILARY HUGHES
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Photo: Michael Basu. Blaise Déjardin, Tad McKitterick.

Glam pop and a career in classical music: they prepare you for all sorts of “THAT’LL never happen” scenarios, including 8am photo calls at Symphony Hall in the middle of a torrential downpour. Blaise Déjardin, Boston Symphony Orchestra cellist and one of the founding members of the Boston Cello Quartet, showed up with his performance tux in tow—tails and everything. Tad McKitterick, frontman of Sidewalk Driver, arrived in his typical show gear, complete with a feathered coat, sky-high platform boots and metallic adornments plastered across his forehead. Blaise and Tad got comfortable quickly, posed for a few pictures and slipped past the curious retired crowd, their mouths agape as they filtered into the hall for a an open BSO dress rehearsal. Down the street at Espresso Royale, Blaise had changed back into his street clothes—rehearsing with the BSO later in his tux would’ve been a little awkward—while Tad kept the glitter on his face. And in our hearts.

ON WHY CELLO’S HOT:

Tad McKitterick: So you were here for school?
Blaise Déjardin: Yeah. Yeah, there was a teacher I really liked.
Tad: Was your first exposure to the Boston Symphony Orchestra when you were at school? When did you have aspirations to play with them?
Blaise: Very late. Yeah. I auditioned for the first time and I had two auditions with them. I ended up making it to the final round the first time and they didn’t give me a job. I didn’t expect to get that far, so I said, “I’ll try one more time and if it doesn’t work I’ll go back to France.”
Tad: What would you have done if you had gone back to France?
Blaise: Probably freelance and then see how it goes, I don’t know.
Tad: Did you have to think about it when they offered you the job?
Blaise: No, I took it right away!
Tad: What did your parents think when you told them?
Blaise: I mean, they were glad I had a job…
Tad: [laughs] Right!
Blaise: They were very happy. (Laughs) They’re not very showy, but I’m sure they were happy.
Tad: How long have you been playing with the BSO?
Blaise: Three years. I’m in my fourth year now.
Tad: How does it work—what chair are you?
Blaise: In our section, for cellos, there are eight. The first four chairs are fixed, they stay there—right now I’m in the back.
Tad: When I was in high school, I was in the chorus and we did the Requiem by John Rutter. One of the movements had this really awesome cello solo at the beginning. It sounds like it was written in the ‘70s, so it’s got like this movie soundtrack quality to it, but this cello solo’s awesome. There was this girl who played it and I had such a crush on this girl because of this solo. It’s such a beautiful instrument! And it’s got such a great range.
Blaise: Oh, the range is so good.

ON COMEDY:

Tad: So tell me about the Boston Cello Quartet.
Blaise: There’s a tradition in Europe of having cello ensembles, so I thought, why not do a cello quartet? So we started one.
Tad: Where was your first concert?
Blaise: At Tanglewood. The hall’s pretty big. We played this summer and it was packed. We opened for Train, so we played for a ton of people.
Tad: Were you nervous for that first show you did, because it was your project?
Blaise: Yeah. What if people don’t like it? They did, so it was fine!
Tad: How’d you secure the venue for that? Did you have to send them a CD and tell ‘em you’d draw fifty people and they’d let you play? [Laughs]
Blaise: [Laughs] Someone from the Boston Symphony Orchestra accepted our program.
Tad: What kind of music do you play?
Blaise: We play classical and then we have some jazz or tango pieces. I like to write a medley for the end of the program which makes it through classical and jazz tunes, pop tunes … people can relax and have fun. We do a little bit of comedy onstage.
Tad: What do you mean, comedy?
Blaise: We do a little bit of choreography—
Tad: Do you, like, reach over and play the other guy’s cello?
Blaise: Not yet, but that’s a good idea!

ON QUALITY:

Tad: So where did you find the other cellists?
Blaise: They’re all in the BSO so it was pretty easy. When I got into the orchestra I got in with two other people who were close to my age, so I have those two guys and another cellist. We’re all very excited!
Tad: Now, is it kind of like hard to—this quartet, is it like having four bassists? Is it kind of quirky? I guess is there a bit of a novelty that there are four cellos?
Blaise: The cellos all play different parts so someone’s higher, someone’s lower—just like in a string quartet.
Tad: That’s cool. What kind of pop tunes have you done?
Blaise: We did two songs from Train for the show this past summer, I arranged “Parachute” and “Marry Me.”
Tad: Did you play with them?
Blaise: We played with them for the show, yeah.
Tad: Cool!
Blaise: It was kind of scary—the night before the show the pianist from Train, Jerry, he called me and said “Hey, it’d be great if you played with us!” I was like, “Ah, okay!?” He sent me the original track and I wrote some parts for the next day. They were so nice, and it was so nice to play for that audience. We played some classical music for them and they all loved it. A bunch of blogs said the classical music was a nice touch that night, it was nice.
Tad: I think people like quality, you know? It sounds like you guys are entertaining. It’s not like you’re standing up there and going “You should like us because we’re good.” You put on a bit of a show. Which I don’t agree with. I’m all about the music.
Blaise: [Laughs]
Tad: You sound eager to entertain the audience and I think an audience appreciates that, you know?
Blaise: Yeah. It was refreshing to play for a rock audience, too.
Tad: Was it a totally different energy?
Blaise: Yeah. When we played the medley a lot of people recognized the classical tunes, the William Tell Overture and stuff like that. In May or June, we played on Cape Cod. Some kids came to the concert and wanted us to sign the posters and stuff. It was their first classical concert. And they were so excited! That’s kind of what we love to do—we don’t want to just give people what they want, we want to get people interested in classical music.
Tad: Well the cello’s such a dynamic instrument. It’s not as intimidating as seeing a whole orchestra and it’s probably more personal and fun to watch. It’s more fun—people aren’t just watching a conductor with forty other people onstage.
Blaise: Yeah, it’s fun.
Tad: I’d like to see it. We should do a show together.
Blaise: That works!
Tad: I’ll call you the night before and ask you to arrange some parts. [Laughs] So, you write out all the parts?
Blaise: No—basically, now I write how the program will work, the arrangements. We try to pick some stuff that already exists. This year we premiered a piece by Tatsuro Hoshi, a Japanese composer from Berklee. He wrote a great jazz piece for us. We try to do very different things.
Tad: These cellists are all around your age, right?
Blaise: Yup.
Tad: Do some of these older cellists at the BSO, do they have an opinion about the cello quartet?
Blaise: I think they all like it so far.
Tad: Do you have, like, an awkward guy who wants to be a part of it? Like “Heeeey! Wouldn’t it be great if you had a quintet?! Why not?!”
Blaise: [laughs] Maybe. I don’t know. It’s a lot of work, but I’m glad the guys I’ve found are ready to do it.

ON BREAKING STUFF:

Tad: Do people break bows? Does that happen often?
Blaise: … You have to be very angry to do that.
Tad: Stupid bow!
Blaise: Sometimes hairs come off. That happens. They make these carbon fiber bows but you can throw those around the room and they’re fine. I do that in the hall sometimes. [Laughs] … I don’t really.
Tad: Have you ever broken a string while you’re playing?
Blaise: Yeah. Ten years ago, I broke two strings. I broke my D string and I kept playing, and there was a huge D major chord—all the reverberations, I think that’s what made my A and D strings pop out.
Tad: So they just broke?!
Blaise: Yeah.
Tad: What?! I didn’t think they could break!
Blaise: They do at the bridge, yeah.
Tad: Were you just way into it that day? At that point, you have to improvise—
Blaise: No, at that point you get out and change your string. You wait until the next movement and you drop out.
Tad: How long does it take to change a strange?
Blaise: Oh, not long. Five minutes.

ON LESSONS; PARTYING; YO YO

Blaise: So, speaking of the weather—why did you leave Florida to come up here?
Tad: I came up here to go to school, to go to Berklee. I dropped out to pursue my honorary doctorate. [Laughs] I love the city. I think it’s great. I fell in love with it the day I got here—love the seasons, love the people. Miami’s a fun town and I’m glad I grew up there. Culturally, it’s very unique. It was very reflective in my group of friends and the musicians I played with while I was growing up. It was cool. I’m glad to be from there, but I’m happy I’m living here.
Blaise: Well, the basketball team is better here …. [laughs]
Tad: I’d say so! I’ve adopted almost all of the sports teams except the Patriots. That I can’t do. Don’t judge me. But yeah. I didn’t like Berklee all that much, for me—a lot of it had to do with voice being my instrument. I had come from a classical background and when I started taking voice lessons at Berklee I thought they were so short. When you’re learning how to sing, it’s all about imagining things—you’re trying to manipulate muscles that you don’t see and that you don’t know about, so you almost have to trick your mind into doing it. That part of it I just didn’t like and I was really disappointed, because I was really looking forward to experiencing it. I just felt it was—there are some people maybe it would’ve been better for, but having a classical background, I felt like I wasn’t learning.
Blaise: So then you went out and started your own band?
Tad: Yeah. I had been in a band in high school. We all went to different colleges but we all decided we didn’t like it, so we all left college and got a house in Allston and played in a band there. We all lived together. We’d been best friends since eighth grade, so it was a really weird, fun time. That was pretty cool. I started the band I’m in now about five years ago, and this is my favorite band. I started it with one of the guys that I grew up with, but he moved away. He’s not in it now. It’s really fun, I’m really proud of it. It’s amazing too how different we are now than we were five years ago. It’s just weird. Obviously we have a couple new players who have come in, but we’re better at what we do, you know? We know how to do it. When I started the band I didn’t think I had much to learn, but I’ve learned so much at this point.
Blaise: That’s good!
Tad: I think when you stop learning it’s like, what are you doing? No one’s good enough to not learn anymore. Obviously, being in a rock and roll band there are certain trappings that go along with it. There’s a reputation of crazy, fun, you know, there’s drinking, the girls and all that stuff.
Blaise: [Laughs]
Tad: What? What are you laughing at? There are a few girls! Okay!?. I know I’ve hung out with some classical musicians who are pretty crazy. You would never think it, but—is this true?
Blaise: I don’t know! In our area of work, for us, you don’t really have a choice—you have to have a strong personality. I have to be in a band with a tradition of two hundred years. That’s what happens with the quartet. I’m pretty shy and pretty reserved and relaxed, so people are like, “Wow! I didn’t know you were like that.”
Tad: So what happens after the Symphony? Do you guys hang out?
Blaise: Some people do.
Tad: Is there a reception that happens? Or do you guys just go out?
Blaise: Well, lots of people live in the suburbs so they go back to their families and kids
Tad: What about you and your group?
Blaise: We hang out after our concerts.
Tad: I’ve hung out with some opera singers who are insane. Opera singers! I wanted to be an opera singer for like, a day. Maybe a week. I don’t think I have the technique anymore. I’d like to start taking voice lessons again. Do you?
Blaise: I try when I can. I’m really busy, and it’s hard to find a teacher I really want to study with. I had lots of lessons. When you’re a music student you go all over the place to study—if I can get one or two lessons with someone I want to study with, I’ll do it. I went to England to study for a little break from the orchestra. You have to fight to keep up, keep learning, keep improving, otherwise you get stuck. I don’t want that to happen to me.
Tad: We were talking about how Yo Yo Ma seems to keep it that way, seems to keep it fresh.
Blaise: Yeah, I’m sure he keeps practicing too. [laughs]

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ON THE RECORD: SPF 5000 + COYOTE KOLB

Posted on October 26, 2011 by HILARY HUGHES
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Photos: Jess Hodge. Top L-R: Sonny Jim Clifford, Chadley Kolb. Bottom L-R: Noel Coakley, Owen Beane, Amy Douglas, Rob Phillips, Matty Maybruck.

A tiki bar chock full o’ bourbon on a porch, complete with palm tree-shaped fairy lights and weather-proofed bamboo railings. This is not a dream. This exists. And it’s a part of Amy Douglas’ home, and the SPF 5000 frontwoman was kind enough to invite the strapping young gents of Coyote Kolb into her sunny abode for a conversation about … well, just music, man. After shooting the shit for about an hour, SPF 5000 and Coyote Kolb—who had brought all their instruments per my request, in case a photo op presented itself—jammed out on the tiki porch, singing ‘60s rock standards after dishing about influences, how much they love jazz and what exactly an Americana band and a “25th-century space disco” act have in common.

ON THROWING THE BABY OUT WITH THE BATH WATER:

Amy Douglas: I’m the songwriter in the group and I cannot deal with anything that is not a song. It has to be a song or it will never live on after you. I don’t care what it sounds like. I don’t care if it’s five notes in a row—“Everyday People” is one chord. But it has to be as song.
Sonny Jim Clifford: That’s what’s missing from a lot of dance music, I think.
Amy: That’s what’s missing from a lot of music.
Sonny Jim: I would not disagree with you on that one.
Chadley Kolb: But that’s coming from a philistine, really, of the genre in general.
Amy: We would agree with you.
Rob Phillips: No, it’s fine dude. Like, music is music. And I think when you start stripping away all the structures and the forms and 2000-plus years of history in making modern music, you’re kind of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. There’s no reason that the two can’t live happily together and coexist in a meaningful way.
Noel Coakley: I’ve never heard that saying before, and I like it.
Rob: Oh, you haven’t heard that?
Noel: I am a sayings junkie, and I love it.
Rob: Well that’s a good one. You can use that in a conversation to spice it up a little bit.
Owen Beane: Now it’s going to come up in practice.
Rob: “I think we changed it too much man. You just threw the baby out with the bathwater.”

ON LOCATION; C+C MUSIC FACTORY

Amy: I want to start by saying I have checked out your music and I have checked out what you do, and, I love what you guys do. I mean, to have a band that seems by all right a band you would expect more indigenously to be from either something mountain or something rural. Because when you listen to music like yours you’re pulling from so many influences, whether we’re talking about Appalachian influences with real bluegrass and Americana—so that could mean any part of the Appalachian trail—but also, like, the renaissance of musicians like The Band who used the Woodstock region and the Hudson Valley region of New York to have their own renaissance. And, you know, they’ll tell you they were Canadians who played for Dylan and wound-up in Woodstock (where I just was by the way), that, you know, that the south and all of the music, Willie Dixon, blues, Muddy Waters, Johnny Cast. And when I listen to you guys, I think that you could not be a more timely band to happen right now, because people are falling in love with this music again. Very heavily—I don’t know how familiar y’all are with Jace Everett, who does the theme for True Blood. If you don’t know him you’re going to hear him, you gotta get to his manager. And you gotta be like, “I need to tour with this man, you don’t understand.” Because when I first heard your music I went “Oh my God. They need to get with Jace Everett.” That whole like—you don’t even bother classifying what it is, it’s just Americana music with volume. There’s a little ZZ Top in there. There’s a little Johnny Cash in there. There’s a little Bob Wilson’s Texas Playboys in there. And I love that y’all are doing that. Especially considering that no one would ever expect that you’re doing it here.
Chadley: [Laughs] We’re Yankees.
Amy: Yankees, yeah. And that’s something that we’ve also kinda heard about SPF 5000 is “Wow, I can’t believe there’s a group like SPF 5000 in Boston.” So, we might be different sonically, but we share that kinship of being—let’s face it—you know, kind of like odd ducks. You make music and it just don’t sound like it comes from here.
Chadley: You’re right, though, there is kind of a resurgence of Americana music right now. Matty and I went to Newport Folk Festival this year and it was sold out, apparently, for the first time in 50 years, before the event even started. So that’s definitely evidence of that. We were just listening to “White Hot Fantasy” on the way over here. And, uh, having a good time crankin’ it.
Amy: I know you’d never believe this but there are roots way down in “White Hot Fantasy” that come from the same source as the music you make.
Chadley: You’ve got your soul and your R&B in your voice, no doubt about it.
Matty Maybruck: Some C+C Music Factory, a little bit.
Amy: Oh no. [Laughs]
Chadley: Which is a good thing!
Amy: Oh god. We need to fix something.
Noel: C+C makes you sweat ‘til you bleed.

ON HOW THEY DO THAT, EXACTLY:

Noel: So how does that stuff usually come together for you? How do you pull that stuff together?
Amy: Ohhhhh. We’re crazy children. Well, I think SPF 5000 … I’ve referred to us as—
Owen: This whiskey is good.
Noel: Yeah, it’s very good.
Amy: That’s another thing that unites us—we make music that doesn’t sound indigenous to the region, and we are whiskey fiends. That’ll work. SPF 5000—I call us a 25th Century dance band. Now, dance band—especially, like, now, and this is something I’ve spoken to recently about people from New York, where I’m from. I’m actually a New York City girl. I didn’t live in Massachusetts ‘til two years ago. My husband, Dave, is from the area his whole life. I was born in Queens, I lived out on Long Island. I lived on 25th Street and 3rd Avenue two years ago. I came to Somerville and I’d never go back. I love it here. I think this is the tits. For real. But, when I met Rob, two years ago, both of us have the same influences. And both of us are analog musicians. Rob is an outstanding bass player. He is also a great pianist. He is a fundamental musician. And I started doing music when I was a child. I’ve been at it since I was six. And, my whole schtick, as much as I really appreciate things like, a lot of the electronic influences of SPF 5000, I really kind of come more from a purist like—I’m a jazz girl. I love jazz, and I love rock.
Chadley: Sonny Jim just lit up! Watch out!
Sonny Jim: Yeah!
Rob: We both like jazz.
Amy: We both love jazz, we both love funk. Both of us have ties to Parliament Funkadelic. When I met Rob, originally, we only knew that we wanted to do two things. When I left New York City, I had started doing session work for a lot of electronic artists. I started getting into electronic dance music very late in the game. I had always envisioned myself as kind of being in a band that was like Led Zeppelin. I still kind of, deep in my soul, want that polarity. And I feel I’ve achieved that in a much more modern fashion. So when we started making music together, our thought process was all about the analog before we ever thought about how we wanted it, sonically, to carry out at all. So when I met him, I was blessed because, in addition to all of the things I mentioned, he loved them, and, he really is such a knowledgeable, dedicated, electronic dance music fan. And, he was able to say “Hey. Let’s blend these two worlds where we stay very analog in our process,
Chadley: I know I’m curious—and we were talking about it earlier—what your live shows might be like.
Rob: So, Ms. Douglas, amazing vocalist as she is, the front-woman, she’s generally out in front singing the songs, riling up the crowd. We have a live performance vocalist named Damien who performs with us sometimes. I’m in the back kind of manning the fort as it were, so I do some work on my laptop using Ableton Live, which is production software—
Chadley: Yes. Used that.
Rob: I have a DJ mixer, but I’ll also whip out my bass. I have a midi keyboard that I play some synths with. It’s kind of… live hybrid. We’ve got real vocals, I’m kind of doing DJ things but also playing some real instruments on top of that as well.
Chadley: So you’ve got a laptop and a bass and, do you both have mics?
Amy: Both Damien and I do. And because both of us are also keyboard players. I play piano, he plays piano, technically I would have to give Rob the nod and say “The man’s got good fingers,” I’m more of a—
Owen: That’s what your mom said.
Amy: Hey now.
Chadley: Wait—who’s Damien?
Amy: Damien is sort of the equivalent of our Fonzworth Bentley or our Flava Flav. He lights it up, he—
Chadley: He’s the hype man.
Amy: He’s also a really good vocalist. He can really sing his ass off. And when we’re all together we kind of look like an urban Mod Squad, if you will. Damo, he kind of loves to pimp up tuxedos. And then we got handsome over here, and me, and when we’re all together everyone’s just like “Wow.” I have to say that, I think that music in general has suffered. And it’s ironic—we use technology to supplement what we would normally utilize a full band for.  Now between the both of us, we are a full band. Rob plays drums. Rob plays bass, Rob plays guitar and we both play piano. And I have been known to play a damn fine kazoo. So, between us, it’s sort of like the Steely Dan-thing. Back in the ‘70s, I think, if we were more like a band like that we probably would have called every cat and been like “We need you for today.”
Noel: So given that you guys have to do multiple parts for recording’s sake, when it comes to performing live, are you then limited to how far you can go off the reservation, so to speak? When you’re playing live do you have to stick to something ’cause there’s multiple parts for each of you?
Rob: I mean, a little bit. Yeah, we do have some limitations from that, but the way DJ technology is, and the way that software is right now, you can actually re-splice stuff in real-time. So I have midi controllers and stuff. You can take—I wanna extend this 4-bar loop and rip it out indefinitely. I wanna just use a keyboard solo. And you have your headphone monitor so you can listen to what you’re doing in real time. So there’s a lot of room for live experimentation with that. Certainly not as organic or as dynamic as a live band, in terms of just how far off you can go. It doesn’t have to be—it’s not just playing to a backing track all of the time, know what I mean?

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ON THE RECORD: CAMDEN + ABBIE BARRETT & THE LAST DATE

Posted on October 26, 2011 by HILARY HUGHES
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Photos: Mary Flatley: Top, L-R: Jason Bergman, Jim Williamson, Abbie Barrett. Bottom, L-R: Jason Sibilia, Jack Hamilton, Alec Derian, Timmy Miles.

Topics covered over the course of an hour in a Lower Allston living room: concussions, “Jumping Jack Flash”, U2 as assholes, the Miss America Pageant, breaking into somebody’s house in Western Massachusetts (it’s cool though), prison tattoos, favorite venues, playing at a bar during a Bruins game, snowboarding expos, DIY record labels, murder, Walt Whitman, “No Diggity,” how the Internet revolutionized the consumption of music and why Jason Sibilia can no longer ride a bike. (It’s currently for sale, by the way.)

I’m not making this up. Don’t believe me? Here’s what happened (that I can repeat) when Abbie Barrett & the Last Dance hung out with Camden one night.

ON MISSING MISS CONNECTICUT:

Abbie Barrett: Alright, so, what’s the worst gig you’ve ever done?

[Everyone laughs]

Jason Bergman: Oh no. Connecticut.
Jason Sibilia: This was all my fault. Well, it’s not my fault. It kind of sucked. We played at this Bristol Town Fair. Was it a town fair?
Jim Williamson: It was to raise money for the community.
Jason S: They were renovating down town. There were over like 2,000 people there and we went on stage, and like, we played or whatever, and right when we get off, we go to put everything in my Camry. And we didn’t get any band parking privileges, so we’re going, we’re driving back and we couldn’t find where we parked the car. It was a massive parking lot filled with cars. So, I find the car. I get on top of the car and I see them in the parking lot looking over. I’m like, “Yo guys, come over here!” And as I’m stepping off the car, I’m completely dead sober, I slip, fall and knock myself like right off my car. And then we continue to spend the rest of the night in the hospital.
Jim: Well Jason sat up his eyes were rolling in the back of his head and he starting puking everywhere, so we really had no choice.
Jason S: The ambulance came and at first I was like, “No I’m fine! I got this!” And then I realized I didn’t know where I was. And threw up everywhere.
Abbie: Did you have a concussion?!
Jason S: Oh, I got a near stage-three concussion. It’s like my fourth one, so I can’t ride my bike anymore. So I’m selling my bike. But yeah. We actually played great, but it sucked because we spent the entire night in the hospital.
Tim Miles: Everyone was like, “You’ve gotta come party afterwards!”
Jim: I was supposed to meet Miss Connecticut.
Jason S: OH YEAH! Jim had hooked it up with Miss Connecticut!
Jim: If she’s reading this …
Abbie: Not that it matters, but is Miss Connecticut, like, the Queen of Connecticut? Or did she go on to Miss America?
Jim: She goes on. I don’t think there’s any royalty involved [sigh].
Jason B: What’s the worst show you’ve ever played?
Abbie: Um, we’ve had a few. One of them was at a snowboarding expo.
Jack Hamilton: Oh, that was probably the worst.
Abbie: It was like, the lights were SO bright, and we were right by the lines—either to the beer or the bathroom—and mostly it was kind of like people staring at us with their mouths open while waiting for beer.
Jack: It was the stupidest idea to have a band playing at that thing.
Abbie: Yeah it was a really stupid idea. That one really sucked.
Alec Derian: I didn’t think that one was that bad!
Jack: No one ever agrees on these things, by the way.

ON GENRE; FIRST RECORDS

Abbie: Do you guys like messing around with genre?  I feel like we want to fuck around with genre from song to song.
Jason S: We make the conscious effort to make every record different. We tracked this record that’s coming out totally live, whereas the record we did before that we did in pieces.  In the studio, we like to get put into a box, basically, and see how creative we can get with that. We got two guitarists, a bass player and a drummer, so let’s bang out these tracks.
Jack: If you had to pick one album that made you serious about music, what would it be? I remember the first time I heard “When the Levee Breaks” on Led Zeppelin IV, just sitting there going, “Fuck, I want to be involved in something like this.”
Abbie: My first cassette was like, Paula Abdul. And then my second was Harvest by Neil Young, and than I listened to “Decade” and I was like, this is amazing. Really not so much Paula Abdul, but more Neil Young.
Tim Miles: The first cassette I bought was Blackstreet. I wanted “No Diggity.” I was in fourth grade, and I was like, “Mom. I HAVE TO GO TO THE STORE.”

Alec: Mine’s easy—I was like, 14, and it was Duke Ellington: Live at Newport. What he does with dynamics and the trumpet solos in between? That’s what did it for me.
Jason B: It was eighth grade, it was my birthday and I got money from my parents and bought … I can’t remember the name of the album, but it was something by the Chemical Brothers and Weezer (Blue Album).
Jim: During middle school and high school I’d go to my friend’s basement and we’d cover Misfit songs and his mom would order us pizza.  So, Legacy of Brutality.
Jason S.: Shitty gigs are way cooler to talk about than cool gigs.
Jack: It’s like being on a bad date. It’s always a better story.

ON PRISON TATTOOS?:

Jack: Wait—you have a Misfits tattoo?
Jim: You have no idea.
Jason S: Me and Jim each got prison tats one day. We weren’t in prison. But our friend …
Jim: With India ink. In Mission Hill.
Jason S: And our buddy was like, “Yo, I’m doing sick work, come over!” And I like Charles Mingus, and wanted to rep the east coast, so I got “East Coasting” which is one of his albums on my back. Mine turned out … let me show you the difference in quality, if you guys don’t mind. I gotta take off my shirt. So this is mine.
Abbie: Alright.
Tim: It looks great! For a prison tat!
Jim: I was the last one to get one. It took eight hours, by the way. Mine took eight hours and it was 13 letters, and I cried for about half of it. It hurt so bad. And it’s in four different fonts. And it’s my favorite song.

Abbie: It kind of looks cool though.
Jason S: Oh my God! No it doesn’t! Don’t say it looks cool!
Abbie: But it’s so prison that it almost looks cool.
Tim: I always told Jim that I think it’s way cool.
Abbie: [looking at Jim’s arm] You clearly sat there and were in pain.
Jim: I was even dating this girl at the time and she even did it, and she was even like, “You’re being a bitch right now.”
Tim: Do you have any cool prison tattoos, you guys?
Jack: Not prison tattoos.
Abbie: Not ones that I would show people.
Tim: Oh, scandalous.
Abbie: It’s not scandalous, it’s ugly.

ON BOSTON MUSIC:

Jason S: You guys have been around more than us, and all that. So what do you guys think of the Boston music scene?
Abbie: I mean, I really think it’s cool. It took a little bit, and I don’t have anything to compare it to. It took awhile to break in, but it’s nice that we can kind of be like, “I want to do a show here!” and talk to somebody and it happens. And what’s cool too is even though I feel like Boston’s kind of small and there’s a ton of different venues around, you can get an eclectic mix of music. I think when I first got here, I was like, “Oh, there’s only Americana,” but since we’ve been playing out more, it’s cool. There’s all these fucking amazing bands that have nothing to do with that.
Tim: There are a lot of places, and you can find the places that are good for you.
Abbie: Yeah, and also kind of be like surprised, too.
Jim: Surprised in a good way!
Abbie: Yeah.
Jim: But it also helps when you know where you’re going and who you’re playing to, so you’re not playing to the people watching the hockey game.
Jason S: I agree with that, yeah. I think we’ve seen it, I think definitely in the past year and a half, we’ve seen it getting better here. We were talking for awhile about making a move to Brooklyn or something like that. But then we started our record label here and sold some records, so we’re sticking around here and all that. We’ve been on more cohesive bills lately. And we’ve never even asked to play a show—we always just get thrown on bills, which is cool because it’s one thing we don’t have to worry about. And it’s cool because the bills are interesting.
Jim: Some of the bookings we used to do, there would be, like, metal bands. We were like, “Who thought this was a good idea?”
Abbie: I think that’s part of the issue. I think the clubs that I like to go to, it’s a good bill, but I think there are some clubs who just want to fill a night so they’re going to have this random mix of people. And it’s like, you’re doing a shift—your shift comes in, you run it, and then, you’re kind of like, I’d love my crowd to stay around for the next band provided it’s a band people are psyched about. I think it’s better when the bill is more thought out rather than just filling seats.
Tim: Do you guys like playing shows where people are sitting down or standing up?
Abbie: Standing up. I don’t know, how do you guys feel?
Jack: I like shows when people are standing up and dancing. Not super fucked up, but fucked up enough.
Jason S: I like “Boston basement show drunk.”
Abbie: I like when I can say something to the crowd and they’ll actually respond and be excited about it.
Jack: I find it disconcerting to play music for people who are sitting down.
Jim: We actually just did that at OBERON—and it wasn’t as crazy as we thought it was, because it was pretty crowded so that was cool. But the first night everybody was just sitting at tables watching us.
Jason B: I specifically remember one of our songs on the bridge where it’s just me doing this four-four kick, and the guys are just hitting chords—someone went, “Woo!” And I just relaxed down a level.
Abbie: Yeah it’s hard to know if they’re digging it. I think part of the audience, too, is like, they assume the musicians want us to be quiet, because we’re supposed to be listening. But it’s just a different way of appreciating music. I just happen to respond better to the drunken scene.
Jack: And sometimes it’s great, to play good gigs to people who are all sitting down. Both Alec and I have played in genres where it’s like the expectations for people to be sitting down. You know, kind of for older people. But I’ve always preferred to play for younger people.
Abbie: On the record: Jack hates old people.
Jack: What?!

ON THE MURDER CAPITAL OF THE UNITED STATES:

Jack: Are you guys called Camden because of Camden, New Jersey, which I believe is the murder capital of the United States?
Jim: Stop!
Tim: Nah, it’s Detroit. Or Flint. Either one.
Jason S: Camden got their name because when I started this co-op at Northeastern I had to have a name. And I was like, “I don’t know what the fuck the name is.” So I grew up literally 10 minutes from Camden, New Jersey and I, like, lived there for a month, and I lived in this church monastery and did all these service work. And Walt Whitman, one of my favorite poets, is from Camden. But basically, when I was trying to find what I should name the band I was on Wikipedia and I saw the date that Camden was incorporated as a city was my birthday in like 189-something—
Abbie: You’re old.
Jason S: So, that’s how I came up with the name. And then we just kept doing it. Imagine if there was some band in Australia named Camden. And we’re just like, “What the fuck are you doing? You’re from Sydney.” And then there’s some dude from Minnesota who calls himself Camden who makes this weird drone music? That sucks.
Jim: There’s a Norwegian metal band from the ‘90s called Camden, and there’s a couple places that will have our songs up and have their bio there.
Tim: Yes. We have links from our tracks to this Norwegian metal band.
Jim: People find out from us, they’re looking for other bands, they’ll be like, “Oh, you’re from Jersey, I thought you were from Norway. I thought you were 43.”
Tim: How’d you guys get your band name?
Abbie: Well, I was born Abbie Barrett. So that was easy.

ON SONGS:

Abbie: Do you guys ever get frustrated and feel that records don’t seem to matter?
Jack: The worst thing that ever happened to pop music, I think was getting away from the single as the sort of primary medium of how pop happens. It’s like, “Fuck albums, I want to listen to songs. I want to listen to really good songs.” It’s like, “I like albums as byproducts of songs.” But if you think about the ‘60s—
Abbie: I think people put out singles all the time but they’re not going to really go, “Oh I really like that song.”
Jason B: Yeah but if it’s an album, a good one, then I‘ll listen to the whole album
Jack: Yeah but in the ‘60s, you had the Beatles releasing “Hey Jude” as a single and the Stones releasing “Jumping Jack Flash” as a single and they released “Street Fighting Man” as a single like two months later. It was such a charged atmosphere, and now you have assholes like U2 releasing an album every ten years and Rolling Stone gives it four and a half stars or something. That seems to me, in terms of pop music, the primary unit that music should be made out of and that doesn’t negate the fact that it’s a studio production. It’s like, they have this idea that everyone has to sit back and fuck around until they have album to work with the material. And I’m not saying that iTunes has done this, but I think the Internet does make it possible to get past that medium. And in the age of the CD and stuff, it’s like everything was happening with the album. And I don’t know, I think would like people to conserve songs more.
Jim: Would you say—because I think both of our bands are on the same page with this—would you think that maybe an EP or two between an album is a way better look for the future of music?
Jason S: Well I was going to say I think we’ve made a more concerted effort of, like, we’re just going to do a couple songs or we recorded five songs for a totally fine session, but we only released three and then we have two that we’re going to put out and be like, “Hey, here’s a new song!” Especially for a new band like us where there’s a million other people in this city. It’s like, rather than just get people on one or two songs, put out something new every once in a while and then it’s like, “Okay, in a little bit from now we have a new album.” If you look at the past year and a half we’ve been dropping singles every three or four months.
Jack: Everyone still likes music because of songs—that’s like the unit that people like music
Abbie: I do like that there are some albums—and I know you don’t like Pink Floyd—but Animals, to me, is a great fucking album it’s like if you listen to and the whole thing—yeah see we’re going to argue about this.
Tim: The idea of an album is so romantic, it makes sense when it makes sense. When it doesn’t, it sucks.
Abbie: Yeah but when somebody’s song sucks, they suck and when it’s awesome, they’re awesome. There are either good albums or bad albums.
Jack: There are a ton of great albums, I’m not arguing that. I feel extremely strongly that like, Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions would be like my answer to the question earlier where that album changed my fucking life and it’s like I can’t think of it outside of that format. I just want to know that album as a cohesive thing but it’s like I don’t think that it’s the best way to get people into music.
Jim: You’re saying that people consume people on the level of the song?
Abbie: I think the song is always going to draw the person in—
Tim: It’s always something that walks by itself.
Abbie: I just don’t people to ignore the rest of the album just because they want the one hit.
Alec: Yeah but if they like the song enough, they’ll check out the album, that’s what I always do.
Tim: What if it didn’t matter that much if they checked out the album? Which I feel is like the thing with the possible transformation with downloading—
Abbie: No! fuck you guys
[Laughs]
Jack: Yeah but we’re doing it right now with the EPs. We’re releasing three EPs and then doing an album. It’s based off those. We’re saying, “Fuck the album.”
Alec: Wait, what? We’re doing what?
Jim: Are we all in the same band right now?
Jason S: If you guys want to have a band meeting right now that’s cool.

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ON THE RECORD: D’HANA PERRY + MOTHERBOAR

Posted on October 26, 2011 by HILARY HUGHES
FT_motherboard

Photos: Jess Hodge. L-R: Joe Grotto, D’hana Perry, Ken Irwin, Brian Connor.

What do you get when you throw a metal band and a queer nightlife staple together in a cozy booth at a South End corner bar? Some of the most thought-provoking, brave and outright jaw-dropping talking points on tape. Motherboar and D’hana Perry were just as eager to talk about underground rock, mutual favorite bands and their respective roles in the Boston music scene as they were the more controversial stuff—like racism in Boston, the homophobia/homoerotica paradox in heavy metal and one of the very real takes on why the Boston > New York migration exists.

ON SOUND AS QUEER:

Joe Grotto: How much of your identity, as a DJ, is specifically queer, do you think?
D’hana Perry: I’d say 80 percent of it. I’d say what’s important for us now as a crew is that we try very, very hard to make our environment as inclusive as possible. At this point, we’re all queer DJs that run a party as opposed to DJs running a queer party.
Brian Connor: What makes the music queer? Or is it more the atmosphere of the party?
D’hana: It can be both the music and the atmosphere of the party. There’s some music that appeals to the queer crowd, and that makes it queer. I just saw this interview—forget his name, but one of the members of Matmos—
Joe: Great band!
D’hana: Yeah! Drew Daniel talked about how sound in and of itself is queer, because it has a complete separation from linguistics which is heavily hegemonic. It’s full of meaning and everything, and because of that it has these binaries attached to it that you can’t really control. It’s out there and it’s a template that everybody uses. You can apply lyrics, but sound itself is queer because it doesn’t have those attachments.
Joe: It’s interesting—we were talking about how the most homoerotic and at the same time homophobic genre of music is heavy metal. It depends on how close to an urban center you are and how underground you are … the more open-minded [the scene] is.
Brian: If you look at one of our shows and just see a picture of the audience and the performers, you’re like, “Oh! It’s bear night.”
Joe: It’s a bunch of shirtless dudes with beards.
Kenny Irwin: Guys think I’m a bear all the time!
Joe: It’s a really interesting dynamic. There’s a whole bunch of metal bands that are huge metal bands that are incredibly—or, they’re supposed to be super masculine, and if you look at the imagery it’s incredibly homoerotic. I both love it and hate it about heavy metal because there’s so much homophobia and so many people who are closed off to that. It’s so not inclusive. It’s very “white guy.” It’s very singular.
Brian: It’s weird, because at the same time it’s a genre and a scene the rejects all kind of gravitate towards.
D’hana: Yeah.
Joe: Well, that’s what makes me think it should be less singular, but oftentimes it’s not.
Brian: Those kids turn on everybody else.
Joe: It’s like, if you’re not a part of the metal crew, you can go and get fucked. The more underground you are, the better it is, but nationally—even some of my favorite bands, I’ll read an interview with someone and I’m like “Nooo way. I was totally wrong.” Kind of shocking.
D’hana: What do you mean?
Joe: I just mean that I often think that the people who produce the stuff that I like, I’m similar to. Most of the time that’s not the case. We don’t share the same set of values. We don’t share the same—that shit doesn’t light up, you know, and I’m always shocked to see it.



Brian: What’s your perception of heavy metal?
D’hana: I actually come from a rock background. I was that weird black kid who only listened to rock music.
Joe: Where’d you grow up?
D’hana: Cleveland for the most part. We moved around a bunch. I was the odd one out. Nowadays I participate a lot in Afro-punk. Have you heard of that? That’s been a great scene for me.
Joe: With the death, but the Detroit—
D’hana: Yup! Like Death Grips.
Joe: No, but it’s all the same thing! For the metal that we are it’s all old school hardcore punk stuff, as well as Iron Maiden and Judas Priest.
Ken: It’s all underground rock.
D’hana: I was really into … And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of The Dead for a long time.
Joe: I love that.
D’hana: They’re so transcendent!
Joe: Oh yeah, the live show’s unreal. And a couple of their tracks sound really electro.
D’hana: I’m really into Blood Brothers, too. I really like them. And Shit Disco.
Joe: I don’t know them, but that’s an awesome fucking name!
D’hana: I was kind of into screamo for a little bit.
Joe: Yeah?!
D’hana: I tool around with a lot of different genres.

ON BOSTON; THE STUPID RED SOX:

Joe: So what made you come out this way?
D’hana: I wanted to get out of Cleveland. I wanted to come east, but not New York. That’s changing now, but at the time I wasn’t really ready for it.
Joe: Are you gravitating towards New York?
D’hana: Yeah. I feel more natural when I’m there.
Joe: Why do you feel that?
D’hana: Because people are more closed off, generally. [laughs] I stick out like a sore thumb sometimes. I’m used to it because I’ve been here for ten years, but I’ve had some odd moments. It can be very insular and segregated here.
Joe: I lived in Pittsburgh for two years. My buddy moved up to Boston and we were having a conversation about how racist Pittsburgh was, and he was like, “Dude, Boston is way, way, way, way, way more racist than Pittsburgh is.” Boston can be pretty fucked up.
D’hana: Yeah! It can be. My mom was like “Ah, Boston’s pretty racist—are you sure you wanna go there?” And I was like, “It’ll be fine!”
Brian: It’s got a bad history. I think it’s getting better, but it definitely takes a long time to go away.
Joe: It does but I don’t think it’s been because you have to be so proactive about it.
Ken: Well, everyone leaves. If people would stay it’d be better.
D’hana: Right! People keep leaving, and I’m like, “But wait! If we all stick together …”
Joe: I mean, it sucks. Let’s say you’re black, you graduate in Boston. Of course you’re going to leave if you’re gonna get treated better someplace else. If you’re going to be on top of your game then why not go to New York where there’s a better scene?
Ken: It sucks, though, because there’s always going to be a better scene in New York City than Boston. No matter what genre. No matter what time.
Brian: We’ve had up to three black people at some of our shows. I remember on those nights thinking, “WHOA. This is incredible. We’re bringing people together!”
Joe: It sucks in that the student population turns over so quickly.
D’hana: Boston is so transient, it’s really tough.
Joe: There’s also this old school mind set here—“Look out for yours and you’re good.” It sucks a lot of cool shit out of Boston, which is why there are only three clubs who cater to heavy music and there are only so many things you can do. Like, how many bars do you actually go to?
D’hana: A handful, yeah. And then people get mad when you program stuff on the same night that’s similar. People get really upset about that if it’s community driven. It sucks, because you should be able to have options every single night of the week but you don’t, really.
Joe: Sunday night from like, 9 to midnight. [laughs]
D’hana: Exactly. It’d be cool if people weren’t super territorial about that kind of stuff or more open to multiple things happening on one night. If it happened more often people wouldn’t feel so protective.
Brian: You can only really pull of a successful metal show here on a Friday or Saturday night, unless you’re playing wit ha really big band. Otherwise, you gotta check every club’s schedule months in advance—
Joe: And Red Sox games. Our first tour was doing the ALCS. We returned to New England during the World Series, and every night we played was a fuckin’ Red Sox game in New England. So we had three or four people show up to see us play. We had a fuckin’ blast though, we didn’t give a shit. The bands we were touring with couldn’t give a shit either.
Ken: The bands we were touring with were like, “It’s cool, guys, people will come!” We just shook our heads and were like, “It’s not gonna happen.”
Joe: You definitely don’t want to be playing in Boston the same night as another metal band, either.
Brian: It’s kind of a dick move to schedule a show the same night as someone else, anyway!
D’hana: Boston’s more of a party than a DJ type of city.
Ken: What’s your favorite party?
D’hana: Mine, mine, mine and mine. [laughs]
Brian: You can stick with that answer! That’s fine!
Joe: You TOTALLY can.
D’hana: I opened for Robyn once. That was cool. Not open open—it was next door and it was associated.

ON FREE BEER (TECHNICALLY. SORT OF.):

Joe: We’ve played the same batch of 15 songs for…two years.
D’hana: Are you sick of them?
Joe: I love playing the songs and I love listening to the songs. But I feel bad for people, for friends who have to come see us every fucking show. [laughs]
Kenny: A lot of our friends, don’t come for Thursdays … Oh you’re playing Thursday? Oh we can’t make it. but we understand … we’re those people too. If their band plays on a Wednesday or Thursday, I’m like, “It’s a school night.”
D’hana: Yeah totally, I have a lot of friends that used to come out to my night that I did in JP a few years ago, and now they refuse to come out if it’s a school night.
Brian: JP is like Germany.
Joe: I got a job a few months ago where I had to drive all over the place, and I discovered parts of towns like JP that I actually love but never would have gone to otherwise because I live in Somerville, and across that river you might as well be driving to New Hampshire.
Brian: JP’s awesome though. Once I’m there, I’m like, “Why don’t I come here more often?”
Kenny: Do you still DJ there?
D’hana: Not really, no. I used to have a night there for a hot second. We moved over to Cambridge at ZuZu and it’s much better. The music we were playing for that party didn’t click well with Jamaica Plain.
Joe: What kind of music do you play?
D’hana: Now? Our party is more like a mix of like, reggae, club, music that, you know, fits with that … And it’s, sonically, it’s really queer. So we have other things going on with beats. Like, more female-led MCs, and voices, R&B remixes, that kind of stuff. That’s essentially what we do.
Joe: And when you say “we?”
D’hana: So, NU LIFE—that’s the name of our party. We have a crew that we work with, so we operate all Tuesdays together, but there’s two parties that alternate. So me and Rizzla do NU LIFE together, and LeahV and JustIncredible work together. So it switches. Each party has a different sound, more or less, but I guess JP lendsitself more to the indie, pop kind of sound. People there tend to enjoy that musically.
Joe: There’s a lot of younger families strolling around that area too, at least, you can see a lot of strollers.
D’hana: Yeah, JP’s changed a lot.
Brian: Where’s the best place to have this party?
D’hana: Which party?
Brian: You’re party that you do.
D’hana: That I work right now?
Brian: Yeah.
D’hana: It’s awesome. I guess ZuZu is my favorite venue, when you were asking where I like to go. Ugh. Honestly they have a lot. I have beef with a lot of spots. There’s always something off about each place. Where you’re like, “Oh this place is great, but…”
Joe: Always. There’s a lot of places, but if you like heavier music, there’s really only a few places in town that deal with heavier bands.
D’hana: Good Life was alright, I mean I like the bar. The clientele is a little strange now. It’s in the financial district—the programming and the DJs they have there are really interesting, but sometimes the clientele, at least for me, in terms of how I feel comfortable, is very business-y. It’s the after-work crowd, it’s like Mad Men.
Brian: It’s like, would you hang out there if you weren’t actually performing? And the answer is no.
Joe: Luckily with us, I think when we do shows, we’d be hanging around anyway, most of the time. There’s been a couple of shows where I would never set foot in the place.
Brian: There wasn’t a second show at the Baseball Tavern. [laughs] We had a great show there. We stole a keg of beer.
Kenny: We stole a keg, yeah. Well that guy was a douche. We were like, “Check this out, you want to be a douche? We’ll steal a keg.”
Brian: They didn’t pay us.
D’hana: How did you even get a keg out?!
Brian: Well, we had to get the gear out the back room. And there was just a keg sitting there and we were all wasted.
Joe: The best part about it was we get it up there, it was a half keg of beer. It takes a couple of us to get it in the van. By the time we finally tapped it, we realized the beer was actually bad anyway, so we threw it in the trash.
Brian: We threw a party around that keg. We threw a kegger in our practice space.
Joe: It was disgusting.
Brian: But it was free! And it was more of a point too. It was like, “Fuck you.”
D’hana: It’s more delicious when it’s free anyway, even if it’s disgusting.
Joe: That’s true. There was a certain charm to it.

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ON THE RECORD: MOE POPE & QUILLS + OLDJACK

Posted on October 26, 2011 by HILARY HUGHES
FT_moeoldjack2

Photos: Steve Wollkind. L-R: Ryan Peters, Hugh Wyman, Moe Pope, Jason Meeker, Dan Nicklin, RJ “Rain” Rixey, Chris “Talkin” Sheehan.

Oldjack and Moe Pope, Chris “Talkin” Sheehan and RJ “Rain” Rixey, aka Quills, are perched across from each other on the stools in the kitchen at Mad Oak Studios. New Oldjack numbers are being reworked literally feet from where they’re sitting, but Moe, Chris and Rain aren’t ready to talk about the new stuff or about Oldjack’s plans for the future or their new projects just yet. Moe came prepared with a college-ruled notebook full of questions, which he got to before the guys were invited to listen to what Oldjack had been working on at the soundboard. After that, Moe, Chris and Rain insisted on sharing their new work, the much anticipated follow-up to Life After God. And in between sneak peeks and ruminations on Boston hip-hop (as Oldjack’s Dan Nicklin’s previous work includes credits with Mr. Lif and Esoteric), they got deep.

ON MAXIMIZING STAGE SPACE AND HEARTACHE:

Moe Pope: I listened to you guys’ music and it’s very classy.
Dan Nicklin: Aw, thanks man.
Ryan Peters: Tuxedo!
Chris “Talkin” Sheehan: Not a light blue ruffle one, either.
Moe: So we have four people on stage, and it’s fucking crazy. How the fuck do you guys deal with ten people on stage?!
Dan: Ah. Everybody gets a little teenie corner and I get the rest.
Chris: Yeah! Like you rope an area off, “Don’t come into my zone guys …”
Dan: I have a pretty heavy mic stand, so I’ll take someone out.
Moe: [Pointing to Chris] This dude, sometimes it’s like, “Is this gonna be a night when Chris does whenever he wants? Or this gonna be what we practiced?” [Laughs]
Chris: Those nights are me like, maybe crowdsurfing, maybe like throwing a microphone.
RJ “Rain” Rixey: Maybe doing front flips into the crowd.
Chris: Maybe doing front flips into the crowd. Whatever.
Moe: So “Face Like Mine” and “Green” are obviously about heartache. Are these songs autobiographical?

Dan: I mean I think they’re biographical. I just don’t know if they’re autobiographical.
Moe: That means a lot when you can touch into that though. I mean, it seems personal.
Dan: You know, “Face Like Mine,” there was some stuff going on when we wrote this record that just needed to be captured and I was able to capture it.
Rain: We know that well too. Our last record was the same thing.
Dan: “Face Like Mine”—I was taking the train one day and this girl was just crying her eyes out on the train. Like just bawling, like uncontrollable crying. And you kinda wanna help, you know what I mean? But you can’t. You can’t so you just kinda watch. So that was kind of where that one came from and it probably has a little bit of things I see in it.
Moe: I mean honestly, I asked about those two songs because we wrote a whole record basically on heartache. Life After God. All of us were going through shit, you know what I’m saying.
Dan: See, that’s interesting to me because I used to be fairly aggressively involved in the hip-hop community in Boston. And eventually I was like, “Well there’s no room to be a person in this music anymore, so I gotta go somewhere else. I gotta go explore.” So it’s amazing for me to hear you saying that you’re doing that.
Moe: This is our whole point. I thoroughly understand that you have the braggadocio, the fuckin’ very masculine machismo shit. I understand that side of it. I can spit and do that shit, too, and I do on two or three songs on the record, because it’s fun. And that’s a part of hip-hop culture. But for the most part I like to make sure that I write about something that matters to the common man, you know? … If you think about all the other music, from Clapton to Björk, saying they all write about their own experiences and that pain, happiness, fuckin’ all that shit—why can’t hip-hop do it? So that’s what we do.
Ryan: I think that’s awesome.

ON GETTING PIGEON-HOLED:

Chris: I don’t know—it’s so weird with music with us. People pigeonhole us as a hip-hop group and they hear our record and they’re like, “Oh you’re different!” but they’re still like, “So did you like that new Odd Future record?” Like, “Mmm … I don’t know, dude. I don’t know. Maybe if I was a 15-year-old kid I might like it.” I’m sure it’s the same with you guys too.
Jason Meeker: Like country, or classic rock, or whatever. I mean I’m sure you guys have heard like enough times “Oh, I didn’t expect that.”
Dan: [laughs] I don’t think anyone knows what to do with us anyway, as a band.
Chris: It’s the same with us man, because like we’re not a hip hop—like we’re not hip hop enough for hip hop fans, and we’re not different enough for—
Moe: We’re not punk enough for punk rock. That’s what they’ll say. But then again we’re not hip-hop enough for a hip-hop crowd, but they’ll say “Wow I fucking love that. I don’t know that it is but I really like it!” you know?
Dan: That’s really interesting. I think we get a lot of that, right?
Meeker: Tread your own path, yeah.
Chris: Isn’t that a beautiful thing though?
Dan: Well, yeah, it makes shows confusing , but …
Chris: This is the thing. Every time we’ve played New Hampshire, I don’t know what it is, we have like a curse in New Hampshire, but everyone will stand there and be like … just ice grill us the whole time. And we’re on stage and we’re like “What the FUCK? What do I have to do to make you guys do something?” And then after the show everyone comes up to us like, “You guys were fucking amazing!” and I’m like “Well … would’ve been cool if when we were on stage you clapped when we finished a song. You guys just stood there.”
Dan: Yeah! We were at, like, a classic rock show once. And we were up on stage and everybody’s starin’ at us like “Who the fuck are these guys? What are they doin’ here?” I mean we even had the organ player from one of the other bands. And they went mental for the other bands, but for us they were just like staring. It was the same thing, people were like, “I really liked you guys.” And we’re like, “You guys were thirty feet from the stage like sitting in your chair.”
Chris: Yeah! Dude it’s so bizarre. Because for me, like when I go to a show, I’m feeling a band and you know it. I hate to bring it back but I’m a hardcore kid, and that’s what you do. Like I’m in the front fuckin’ row and I wanna touch the microphone. If you ever see us on stage, that’s how I am like on stage. I’m fully—I’m at a fuckin’ hardcore show when I’m on stage. That’s the weird dynamic for us.

ON BEING POSSESSIVE; RECORDS

Meeker: I’ve been with the band and known Dan for a long time, so, Oldjack’s been a good platform. As many bands as I’ve played in, this feels like the right band to be hittin’ the drums the way I do.
Hugh Wyman: We feel very similarly to that.
Moe: It takes the weeding out process to really feel comfortable.
Meeker: Yeah!
Dan: Well we used to have a drummer, he was a little more jazzy—he was still a great drummer, but Meeker just likes to hit the drums hard.
Meeker: I like to keep it simple.
Chris: It’s a good feeling when you find that fit though. When you know, “We have a good band right now.”
Dan: He was my favorite drummer before he played with us, and he’s still my favorite drummer.
Chris: Now who’d you play with before?
Meeker: I was playing with a band called Miss Pigeon for about ten years, and then I played with a band called The Charms.
Chris: Oh yeah! I know some of those cats.
Meeker: Yeah, so I played on one record with them, then went on tour and then I sat in for a little while for The Luxury when they lost their drummer.
Dan: And now he’s our drummer.
Meeker: Yeah Dan’s like—
Dan: No one can have him.
Meeker: [laughs] He gets possessive.
Dan: I do. I get possessive.
Chris: [laughs] Ask Rain about that! ‘Cause we feel the same way. Rain’s like, “Aw, I’m making this beat for someone!” And we’re like “No, you’re not. Last time I checked you weren’t doing that.”
Dan: Yeah, I completely understand that. I do, I get possessive about the people in the band when they go somewhere else.
Moe: I mean, you should!
Dan: However I’m free to go do whatever I want.
Moe: Obviously. [laughs] I agree with all of that.
Dan: But yeah, I mean you have the luxury right? I mean, hip-hop vocalists. You get guest appearances and invited here and there.
Chris: You’re actually pretty picky though.
Moe: I’m pretty picky, yeah.
Dan: So what have you been on in the last year?
Rain: That Paul White record.
Chris: [On] Stones Throw.
Moe: Paul White, Bad Rabbits …



Dan: You were on the Bad Rabbits record?
Chris: That’s our homies, man. That’s our team! [Moe] actually did two songs, for their new album.
Moe: Yeah, the groups are pretty different that I’ve been lucky enough to collaborate with. But I feel like, for [Rain], see—we have a girl who sings with us sometimes, and she does folk.
Dan: We have three. [laughs]
Ryan: Sometimes four.
Moe: —Like indie rock and folk. Very singer songwriter-y type stuff. Tea Leigh.
Rain: She’s from Texas, she just moved here about seven months ago.
Chris: We snatched her up quick. She’s like “Oh. I sing.” We’re like “Cool!” She played some stuff and we’re like, “Now you sing with us.”
Moe: But that’s the next thing for [Rain], like a folk record. That’s awesome. Now I can’t very well just go and make a rap—
Dan: Like a Nancy Purdy type? Do you know that record?
Rain: I don’t …
Dan: It’s Christina Applegate’s mom.
Rain: Really!
Dan: Nancy Purdy. It’s really hard to find.
Rain: I’m gonna have to write that down.
Dan: It’s probably like a hundred dollar record—it’s sampled pretty heavily, but, it’s sorta like a folk record, Hollywood style.
Rain: I feel like we’re gonna do my sound and her sound at the same time. It’s gonna be weird. It’s definitely gonna be weird, because I’m kind of stubborn when it comes to things like that. And she is, too, so if we can combine the two without being like, too campy … Or trying to do this fusion …
Dan: Yeah, or like, what’s his name, Jesus Rodriguez. You must know about those records, right?
Rain: Yeah, I do.
Dan: That record’s super—he’s from Chicago. He’s like a politician now, I guess?
Chris: Politician, yeah.
Dan: But before he made…
Chris: Money or something like that?
Dan: No, the Jesus Rodriguez record … fuck, I don’t remember. I can’t figure it out right now. But you’ll like it. Dennis Coffey produced it.
Rain: Oh really, they just reissued some of that. Traffic just reissued a Dennis Coffey record—wait, what was the name of it again?
Dan: Which one?
Chris: Nancy Purdy. P-u-r-d-y.
Dan: It might be Nancy Pretty? Something like that. Sorry man, we could do this—we could talk records for awhile.
Moe: But see how you did that? That’s what I’m sayin’, that’s what happens. I’m a rapper, so people look at me like, oh … yeah, he must not know that. That’s usually what happens. So yeah I could rap on someone else’s record. Is it seen in the same light as a producer? I feel like it is, but I don’t think other people do. So it’s like, yeah, [Rain] can go off and travel. He can make a classical record if he wants to.
Dan: Well, you could too.
Moe: Well yeah, I can too, but I don’t think that people—I don’t think their first thought is, you know, “This guy wants to make a folk record.”
Chris: We surprise people a lot when they have conversations with us about music. They talk to us about hip hop and we’re like—literally, hip hop is maybe fifteen percent of what I listen to on a daily basis.

ON THAT CHIP ON YOUR SHOULDER:

Moe: “Deny Me Not” speaks to me shitloads because I’ve been in the city for over ten years and I’ve had my fair share of heartache, disappointment, rejection … from music, from the city, whatever. Was there ever any one particular moment that told you that you were finally being taken seriously as an artist?
Dan: No.
Moe: No?
Dan: No… I still… I like that chip on my shoulder. So I’m gonna hang on to it.
Moe: Masochist—shit!
Dan: I do, I like that chip on my shoulder. I like to carry around, it keeps me—I have to prove it to myself.
Moe: There’s always more. You just gotta stay hungry, too.
Dan: Yeah, like we’ve had an amazing year. We really have. We’ve had an amazing ride and people have been super supportive us, but I just don’t feel like we’re done. I don’t feel like we’re through. So, like I said, I’ll hang on to that for a little while longer.
Rain: You gotta stay hungry.
Moe: But it’s funny man—my kid is 15 and I started a year before she was born. I started writing for the first time. I never wrote a rap—anything. I’ve been doing it that long and having no one recognize it, what I was doing. And then all of a sudden people are like “Yo, you’re my favorite rapper!” or “You’re my favorite rapper from Boston!” I was in California for a number of years, too. So during the Lif and Axe kind of rise, I was with a group called Mission. So I kind of missed the whole Boston hip-hop boom. You know, I listened to it from across the way [laughs] but I wasn’t here. I didn’t see it. And it bums me out because I knew all of them beforehand so it would’ve been great to see them doing really well.
Dan: Right. Well, and they did.
Moe: They did. And they still are. They’re still doing amazing, but yeah, even when people say that my record is the greatest thing that they’ve ever heard or that we’re changing the Boston scene, or whatever, I don’t believe it. [laughs] You know? I don’t believe it, man. That’s one person. That doesn’t mean everybody feels that way, and I know that I can always get better.
Rain: We’ll see if we did ten years from now. You know? [laughs] We can’t really tell right now.
Chris: A lot of people come through here; whether they be from here or whatever.
Dan: Well it’s such a big college town.
Chris: Everything flips over every three years. That’s why it’s so hard with Boston music—it’s hard to hang onto fans because everyone just leaves. Even if you get a solid following, slowly but surely everyone just leaves Boston.
Meeker: It gives you the pressure: you’ve got four years.
Chris: Right? It’s crazy.

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ON THE RECORD: WADZILLA MANSION (RIP) + GHOUSE

Posted on October 25, 2011 by HILARY HUGHES
FT_wadzilla

Photos: Mary Flatley. L-R: Elias Bouquillon, Socrates Cruz, Tim Luckow, Shanna MacLasco.

To break from the formula of this feature a little bit, we paired up two groups of people who’ve collaborated previously—and quite successfully—long before this issue hit distribution. GHouse and the guys who booked and maintained Wadzilla Mansion, a beloved and now defunct Allston DIY spot, paired together to put on some of the most talked about shows of the past year. Bands represented by GHouse—including Dirty Dishes, Bad Rabbits, Vending Machetes, Grass is Green and more—have drawn scores of eager listeners down Wadzilla’s steps and into the basement with the neon orange walls for intimate shows that struck a chord a club show could never reach. In this case, the road to hell isn’t paved with good intentions—the road to a vibrant, creative sense of community within the sphere of Boston music is.

ON THAT TIME WHEN BAD RABBITS BROKE THE WADZILLA CEILING:

Eli Bouquillon: Salim going through the ceiling on “Bulls on Parade” was a real highlight of my life.
Socrates Cruz: That show was definitely a different type of show, from anything else we’ve had before up until we got shut down. It was getting a little intense. The floodgates were open, but it was cool.
Tim Luckow: I mean, I would say it was really interesting to see it leading into the need for something like this, though. We’d get hit up by touring bands on legitimate agencies being like, “We’re coming to Boston but we don’t want to do the standard thing, we’d like to, you know, do Wadzilla or do one of these houses.” It’s a different kind of show and bands enjoy it. The vibe is untouchable. People are there for the music, and that’s really it. There’s no awkward bar situation and there’s no giant security bouncers.
Socrates: In a weird way, Wadzilla definitely served an important role in the DIY scene, but I—and I think this is key—I don’t think it was representative of the whole DIY scene. That’s not to discredit the rest of the DIY spots, which I love. It was kind of a fine line to walk because we didn’t want to really speak or represent the DIY underground music scene. I think that’s why a lot of bands definitely wanted to play here because they would like to mix it up.
Shanna MacLasco: It’s a really good step to have in a city where a lot of up-and-coming bands are trying to gain fans. Like you guys were saying, there’s no awkward bar situation and you’re not going to a club nervous that you’re not going to know anyone. It’s more of a community and a more welcoming place to see a band. I could definitely say that a lot of the artists that GHouse works with wouldn’t have as many fans if it wasn’t for this basement scene.
Eli: They definitely started to grow. Every time a band would come back, there seemed to be a few more people too. It seemed like the community was always growing. It was always, like, “This show’s gonna crush the last one.”

ON “THE GOOD KIND OF INCEST” (WTF):

Tim: I remember when you guys installed that new sound system. That was like Christmas. It’s ridiculous. You have these amazing hanging speakers and a real board and real sound men and that’s an amazing thing to have somewhere where there’s … where it’s somewhat unregulated. [laughs]
Socrates: Eli and I would geek out about certain patches, like on the doubling effect and re-verb and delay, and Eli had this other one that he liked to mess with. And, you know, it’s kind of unfair when its your gear and you’re familiar with it, and it’s like being a musician and you’re playing with your hands so you know what its going to sound like. So this was our space we knew what we could do, we knew what would work and what wouldn’t.
Tim: And seeing bands come back again and again, they always got that much more comfortable in the space, they always did that much better during performance and always worked that much harder because they were really enjoying the scene that was there and really knew what to expect.
Socrates: That was really the point of diversifying a lot. ‘Cause, we would really go to a lot of shows just kind of scouting in a way, being like, “That band is awesome, let’s go talk to them.” And that’s the wonderful thing about Boston: you can actually do that, it lends itself to that. New York is a whole other story, but Boston is so incestuous, in a great, wonderful way.

[Silence].

Tim: GHouse is NOT part of that incest.
[Everyone laughs.]

Socrates: You know, I think people actually take Boston for granted. It’s such a small town--your roommate dated some girl that you were in a band with two years ago, and that’s just what it is. And it’s cool because that’s how you can actually have this network that just develops naturally. It’s  great seeing bands show up, and seeing a band that they didn’t even know existed, and they can go to talk to them and set something up for a show somewhere else.
Tim: It was a cool place to be able to approach people, too, becausewhen you’re promoting a show it’s so much easier to approach a band that plays somewhere. As a promoter, you’re not already $300 in debt, or however much in debt before the shows starts. It’s more about “We want to make this line up because this show will be really cool!” much more than “We need this band because they’re going to draw 30 people.” It’s nice to be able to focus on that side a little bit less. It’s a matter of inviting people here. The majority of people at the shows were musicians, so almost everybody in the crowd is in their own band and has probably played in a band with somebody on stage at some point, or at least jammed.
Socrates: Or recognize them from some show and never talked to them. [laughs]

ON GETTING “TOO REAL”:

Socrates: Baltimore also has a really cool warehouse scene, but it keeps getting shut down then popping back up. But for people who are interested in independent, underground music, it’s nice because it doesn’t stay underground.
Eli: I’d say it really just prepares the bands for those big … I think the [Dirty] Dishes are a great example of a band that really grew here, and learned a lot about different shows in general. You know, they would have their show here and then open for Passion Pit at the House of Blues, and then play Wadzilla.
Shanna: It was just a really good spot to have bands become accustomed to playing in front of people.
Eli: Try out new songs, try out new styles.
Shanna: Yeah, and just practice for bigger shows. And just getting actual feedback from an audience, and people who actually come to listen to the music and know them and know the songs. It’s amazing seeing a show happen in a basement and people being really into it. It’s really present across the country, too--DIY is such a strong thing that people don’t really realize. It’s a very important thing for people that are up and coming. When Dirty Dishes and Grass is Green did their two month tour earlier this year, 90 percent of it took place at DIY spots. We wouldn’t have been able to do the tour if it wasn’t for these scenes just wanting to bring in new music, and kids in these towns just wanting to listen to new music. And Wadzilla was able to represent it so well here.
Elias: One part about that whole comfortable environment was that you can really focus on your own versatility as a band. You get to get up, the practice thing goes a little deeper than that--it’s how they can come up with new ideas and let it go. Similar thing here is that people know this space and could play two hours at. We hang out and write music. It was a space where friends hanging out could hang out, and it’s a space where people can be comfortable with the whole process of it, whereas the bar scene it’s something like, you have to go through the ritual and you get all these things out of the way.
Socrates: It’s tough because bars have certain limitations and responsibilities. Most people, they’ll bring up, “Oh you guys got shut down, that’s so sad.” But it’s fine … in a way, it’s fine. We have more free time now! There’s that side. I mean I wouldn’t even describe Wadzilla as a venue. I would describe Wadzilla more as an imaginary community that happened to gravitate around a particular house.
Tim: … I would give yourself more credit than that.
Socrates: Yeah, But definitely, you know now, we’ll be at some show, and someone that played here will be playing, and someone else who played here unrelated to that person will be playing, and you just bring those people together.
Eli: That was the whole goal.
Socrates: It was very conceptual in that sense. I mean, we’re all musicians.
Elias: I think we all learned at Bad Rabbits that we all tried to make it too real. It was so much like a real venue that I was almost at the peak of, “Oh Shit.” Almost knowing we had reached that point.
Socrates: It definitely very clearly revealed the limitations of this space. And the resources.
Eli: At Bad Rabbits, we had a fun show with a packed room. So there was a lot of range in what we could do, but I think, you know, we definitely couldn’t--it would have been completely unsustainable to do Bad Rabbits every weekend.
Shanna: But with bands who’ve reached that level while still maintaining the DIY mentality it just shows the common appreciation in the music industry in general, with hospitality and how it should be. You should be able to just reach out to a band and work with them and find out how to be cool with them. I always think that Wadzilla helped establish something very organic, and kind of the attitude that at least GHouse has,  of working people who are just about none of the contracts, anything, just a very organic, happy relationship with people.
Tim: With bands that play music to play music.
Shanna: Exactly. There’s no ulterior motives to it. it was amazing having a place like that to work with.

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