Eleventh Dream Day, Showbar, Houston.
Peter Case, Walters, Houston.
Exene Cervenka, Cactus Records.
X, Euphoria, Portland, 1982.
Peter Case, Fenders, Los Angeles.
Peter Case, Project Row Houses, Houston.
Jason and the Scorchers, East Village Eye.
X, Fitzgeralds, Houston, 1986. Courtesy of Ben DeSoto.
X and Reverend Horton Heat at Hootenany 2002. Courtesy of Kalynn Campbell.
Wayne Kramer at TJ’s, Newport, Wales.
Swans at the Graystone, Detroit.
Swans at Club Clearview, Dallas.
Reverend Horton Heat. Courtesy of Tim O’Brien.
M. Gira, Rudyards, Houston.
Violent Femmes, Houston, 1980s.
Deke Dickerson, Rudyards, Houston. Courtesy of Lana McBride.
Alejandro Escovedo and Richard Buckner, Rudyards, Houston. Courtesy of Lana McBride.
Billy Joe and “Eddy” Shaver, Dan Electro’s, Houston.
Tom Russell, Houston.
Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Thirsty Ear Festival, Santa Fe, 2002.
Yo La Tengo, Kennel Club, San Francisco.
Chapter 3
Indelible Indie Rockers
Indie rock, once known more commonly as college rock, serves as an antidote to the aural sheen of soulless pop that tends to inhabit radio frequencies. Often burning with literary allusions, sly song craft that merges genres effortlessly, and sheer gut feeling, artists like Janet Bean and Michael Gira prove their artistic antennae are dynamic and singular. By fluidly switching from art rock to rootsy traditionalism, they prove mavericks follow the paths less traveled.
Janet Bean: Eleventh Dream Day and Freakwater
Originally published in Left of the Dial, 2001.
“It’s a little embarrassing being on the front page of a major Chicago newspaper,” Janet Bean tells me quietly between tasks during her new stint at a law firm, “People walk up to me and say hey, you’re the rock ’n’ roll girl.” Despite such everyday cover, Janet is a terribly vibrant and productive renaissance figure in the Midwest indie rock scene.
In 1983, Bean and then-husband Rick Rizzo formed Eleventh Dream Day, a sometimes breezy, sometimes sumptuous, but always hook-laden rock ’n’ roll band that belonged to a posse consisting of Souled American, Big Dipper, Scrawl, and Volcano Suns. Yet, whereas most of those bands have slipped into the void of discounted and forgotten records, for the last seven years Eleventh Dream Day has harnessed the progressive production of John McEntire (Tortoise, Sea and Cake). They still lean heavily towards Neil Young’s guitar sloshing (think Weld) and Velvet Underground’s infectious and cerebral minimalism, even while flirting with incidental electronic noodling.
Meanwhile, Bean has made an even bigger impression as co-singer/guitarist for Freakwater. Together with old high school pal Catherine Irwin, Bean has crafted a supremely sincere take on Kentucky bluegrass and other back-porch folk schools that transfixes the senses with its often spare and rustic delivery. Although this approach changed with their big-sounding release End Time, the duo (together with a changing ensemble of musical helpers) still trods a path somewhere between the Louvin Brothers, early Emmylou Harris, and a poppier version of Palace Brothers.
Do charts matter, bring people out to your shows, or sell records?
As odd as it may seem, I really don’t pay any attention. The only reason I know this record sold better than the last one is because I got more money. I don’t keep any track of it. I had gone on to Amazon and read a couple of reviews of consumers who bought it because they had read reviews of it, and they liked it, except for one gentleman who terribly despised it. But I could go on and see the other things they buy, and he had bought Broadway musicals, so . . .
With Freakwater, have you made a dent in the country or folk communities? In some circles, it’s been suggested that you and Catherin Irwin are two white hipsters who don’t have the “right” to play such music.
I’ve played this music more than half my life. I don’t think about it one way or another. Catherine and I have been singing some of those since we were fifteen years old, and I don’t think about whether or not I have the right to do it. I just try to write songs and do the best we can.
Does it matter if your audience is a small bar of Chicago hipsters or a folk festival circuit?
No. I couldn’t care less. I don’t think we’re purists in any sense. I just write the songs that seem to happen and I don’t think about them in the sort of way that they’ll fit into a framework of alternative country music; I think of it in terms of fitting into the framework of Freakwater. It’s not really an issue for me. If you say white hipsters are interested in us, that’s great because the bottom line is we want to sell records. As long as someone likes it, I couldn’t care less. . . . We sort of have this odd following of metal kids that like Slayer, and I’m just as happy that they are buying it as somebody who is older and has been listening to country music all their lives.
You think labels are wretched, like when people use the term “post-rock” when describing John McEntire’s band Tortoise or “insurgent country” when referring to Freakwater. Does it have to do with a Midwest sense of individualism?
Part of our personalities is about rejecting being clumped in with anything. Maybe it’s my sort of misanthropic attitude [laughs]. I don’t want to be part of any one thing: I want to be my own thing. I wouldn’t say our upbringing taught us to reject labels. We were involved early on in punk rock and stuff and tried to have a certain sense of freedom, and, as corny as it sounds, of not being labeled as something. I suppose some people get something out of a label like “post-rock,” and it helps them in some fashion to find records they’re searching for, and that’s fine. It’s just really awkward for me to define myself in a category like that. If someone else wants to do that, I can’t stop them. I would never be so bold as to call myself an “insurgent country” or “post-rock” band.
Rick [singer/guitarist of Eleventh Dream Day] has said, “We keep getting farther down the road and don’t know where the hell we are.” So what do you use for points of reference to know whether you’re going in the right or wrong direction?
We certainly live a fairly musically isolated lifestyle for the most part. Eleventh Dream Day makes records very infrequently, and we don’t tour very much. Our bass player Doug is actively playing music all over the place and Rick does buy records, but we’re not really in touch. We don’t have the opportunity to go through things a great deal before we head into the studio. We practice for a month or something and some of the songs we’ve never played before. We play rock ’n’ roll music, but we’re sorta out of time with a lot of things, so I don’t have a lot of reference to say this is the direction we’re going in. We just go in, play the songs we bring to the table, and I don’t think we have a clue. When we’re making it, we’re like, “Is this good? Is it not good? I think it’s okay; it sounds like us.” We ask Bettina [Thrill Jockey], What do you think? This record in particular seemed to recall different styles we’ve created over our musical lifespan. It seemed like a culmination of different time periods.
So it’s more representative of the band’s overall sound?
I like our last record, Eighth, very much. I really love to listen to that record, but I think that it was a record that was different for us to make. The songs were quieter; that’s not really how we play live so much. This time, I was a really big advocate of “let’s get back in and make a garage record.” But you put out a lot of records, and you play twenty years together, and you definitely want to be able to explore different things, like play fast and slow, loud and quiet, and all those different things.
Ricks calls himself musically illiterate. Are we to assume that he is naïve, and would the same apply to you?
I don’t think Rick meant that he is naïve musically, in that he’s unaware of music that’s out there. I think he was talking about his approach to the
guitar. His personal stylings are sort of naïve and have this sort of freedom and sense of abandon.
You’ve said that Eleventh Dream Day exists in its own world, stylistically speaking. Then what is the world made of?
It consists of a couple funny little tunings that Rick likes to do and it consists of me banging away and playing fast and Doug being one hell of a bass player. I don’t know a whole lot of what’s going on brand new in the rock world. When we were in London this past week, I watched MTV, which I hadn’t seen in ten years, really, and we just sat there and watched it for twenty hours straight. We were just so enthralled and amused [laughs]. The Spice Girls had a three-hour power block, and we watched that, and that was really something.
If given the chance, would Eleventh Dream Day jump ship to a major label again [three of their records were on Atlantic]?
God no. The primary reason is we have a really lovely existence where we are. I don’t ever have to be in the situation where you’re wondering if everyone is doing right by you. I don’t have to worry about anything, like about the way Thrill Jockey presents us, the magazines they choose to advertise in, or not advertise in. I don’t concern myself with it, and I think they do a fabulous job. We put out a record every two years and maybe do five shows, and maybe we could do that at this point in our lives on a major label if we were Van Morrison or some huge prestige signing that doesn’t sell any records, but labels want them anyway. But that’s not going to happen, and I don’t have any interest in going out there and touring endlessly.
Being a drummer, were you self-conscious at all when Freakwater brought in the drummer from Waco Bros., Mekons, Elvis Costello, Gang of Four, and Gram Parsons?
No, not at all. Probably more than anyone else in Freakwater, I was the advocate for the drums. I mean, I like them, and I’m used to hearing them.
He had to throw out everything he’d learned before?
I don’t doubt it. Freakwater is like a trainwreck. We don’t follow any musical rules whatsoever, not because we’re defiant and don’t want to; we just exist in our world musically, even more so than Eleventh Dream Day. Anyone who comes into it has to learn the Freakwater way, and some people don’t make it. Some of it is because I’ve played music with Catherine for so long, but unfortunately, some of it has to do with our stubbornness to learn actually what to call things. So you’re using the cable and the third fret, which is an A with a hole in it, and we say A-hole three. We really have our own language, and we just go about things that way, and we don’t use any of the appropriate terms, though it would make life much easier for everyone if we did.
You’ve said that “Catherine and I are too egomaniacal not to be writing songs about ourselves; it’s a combination of self-loathing and egomania,” but then have also said that “it’s hard to capture how poignant day-to-day life can be in a song.”
Maybe that’s why I only write four songs every three years [laughs]. It’s hard. It’s a lot easier to write songs about misery than to write songs about happiness.
But you have songs like “Louisville Lip” and “One Big Union,” which are not entirely self-centered.
I mainly write about myself, and I write in probably a less disguised way than Catherine does. She is a little more protective that way and she can write rings around just about anybody. She’s got a phenomenal gift for the barb. Even “Louisville Lip” is obviously coming from her and has personal elements to it.
If at age eighteen everything is ironic, then what is everything at thirty-six?
I think I’ve reached this point where I try not to be so dismissive of earnestness, you know. I want to be less jaded. At eighteen, you’re all about, “I know that.” Everything is “I’ve done that before” attitude. At this point, I’ve re-approached things. I think it’s just about finding joy in things.
Do you still think you can be an astronaut, or anything you set your sights on?
I still have that kind of completely irrational, delusional attitude. I don’t think everybody is afflicted with this notion that they can do anything, because in a sense it can often paralyze you and you don’t do anything because of it. I think that’s just me. I can’t tell you if anybody else is like that.
In the U.S., you’ve said, culture is media-generated. If you don’t have airplay, you’re not written about, and if you’re not written about, you don’t have sales. Do you feel trapped in this vicious circle?
That’s obviously a true statement, just look at the last election and the campaigns of Ralph Nader and those guys. If you don’t get written about, you don’t get the votes. It’s certainly a cycle, but I’ve grown to feel comfortable in this skin and where we are. And I think we are exceptionally lucky in the amount of press we get. Over the past month in Chicago, Eleventh Dream Day has been in one of the major newspapers almost every single week. It’s almost embarrassing considering how little we play. But we’re just really lucky, and we get to make these records and we get to play five or six fantastic shows, and I couldn’t really ask for anything more.
Is it ironic that even as Emmylou Harris pushes the envelope of country music, even reinvents it for the age of electronica, so many people of your generation in Austin and Chicago have returned to a stripped-down primitive sound?
Well, obviously from Emmylou’s perspective she’s been doing it forever. She wants to be part of what’s current.
Could you just perform with Freakwater exclusively, or just Eleventh Dream Day? Because by doing both, you balance the homegrown and rootsy with the slightly uncompromising, experimental rock ’n’ roll side.
The things that I choose to write in either band, in a certain sense, could go either way. For the most part, the songs I put on an Eleventh Dream Day record could be on a Freakwater record, maybe slowed down. Essentially, they’re the same kind of songs to me. I don’t think in terms of Freakwater that I am trying to retain an old-timey sound: it’s not an issue for me. I don’t know why certain people choose that sound, but there’s a certain beauty to it. There’s directness to it, and for people who have been in rock bands for a long time, they want something simple and direct. And that’s an old acoustic guitar, a mic, and a voice.
Between both bands, you’ve covered a ton of songs. What makes a song desirable to cover, to make your own?
In the last few Eleventh Dream Day shows, we’ve covered “The Thrill of It All” by Roxy Music. I like that Country Life album a lot, and I heard that song and thought, “that’s a driving, Eleventh Dream Day kind of thing, that would be fun to do.” So, we do it. It’s as simple as that. We hear a song, and go, “That would be fun to try.” There are no litmus tests for it.
Growing up, you were an album rock girl.
I was a teenager in the 1970s. I listened to Led Zeppelin and was really heavy into Pink Floyd, Hendrix, and all that stuff. My senior year in high school I started listening to art damaged punk rock stuff like Bush Tetras and just went from there. As a kid, it was basically AM radio. I adored Burt Bacharach as a child. You listen to radio, and that’s what you get.
Are there any remnants of that in your music, are those songs still swimming in your head? Would you cover a Bacharach song?
I sang one once with Anna Fermin, and that was fantastic. I wish I had the power to arrange like he does. I sing his songs all the time. I would like that if Burt crept into stuff. I loved big dramatic production kind of things, like “The Age of Aquarias.”
Will you stay on this course, or will you, as you have threatened over the years, walk away from the music business altogether at some point?
I used to think all the time about just stopping and taking a different direction, but through the years, especially with Freakwater, I just really fell in love with singing. That’s probably the thing I’ve worked most at over time. Of course, you can sing just about any place you want to, in your house or on a stage, but obviously there’s a bit of ego attached to it in wanting to be on stage, and I do like that. So whether it’s with Eleventh
Dream Day or Freakwater, I will try to put stuff out sometimes. I have an ego, and it does like to be taken care of in that way [laughs], like make records and have them out there, and chance whether or not someone else will like them or not.
David Thomas: The Uber-Art of Pere Ubu
Previously unpublished.
As singer for Rocket from the Tombs and Pere Ubu, Thomas is the leading embodiment of unyielding contemporary avant-garde music, yet at times he is also curiously attached to American traditions of storytelling. His warbly, dissonant voice is unmistakable and hard to peg; his lyrics wax obscure and experimental even as they are immersive and bracing; and his style remains ever-morphing, as if he refuses to stand still and reap the rewards of placid listeners.
In another interview, you noted that punk rock was “something that businessmen really loved because it was a victory for Madison Avenue right at the point that rock music was preparing to deliver William Faulkner, Henry James, and Herman Melville.” From the perspective of Rocket from the Tombs and as a rock writer in the seventies, do you believe that there was a crossover and rock was becoming a new literary form?
Mavericks of Sound Page 13