Mavericks of Sound

by Ensminger, David

  Especially when it’s all true [laughs]. I forget whether it was the Spin or Rolling Stone thing, but I remember my mom bought it because she had heard about it. I think we were on the same page as Marilyn Manson, and when my Dad saw that he was like, “Who’s this Marilyn Manson guy?” It was all worth it just for that. I’m sure there was some pressure, but I think we tried to keep it as far back in our minds as we could while getting ready to make this record. It was, at the time, our most successful record by a million miles. It seemed like more was available to us and more was happening for us while we were traveling; there were more opportunities to play, more people bought copies of the record. That was incredible. We didn’t want to go and do another one of those.

  Georgia once said that there’s always so much to improve upon.

  I don’t know if I consider it really improving. I think you just grow as people. I mean, I think if you do it right, you are able to express that by the music you write and the records you make. I don’t know if we improve with age [laughs]. It’s not like a fine cheese.

  You recorded the record in Nashville, which is not the first time. Does recording in a studio outside of New York/New Jersey give you a different perspective on the music while making the albums?

  Not socially. But I think it allows us to concentrate, and I think it’s been a very good strategy for us, because leaving home and going to the studio, where we will just basically work for twelve or thirteen hours every day for four weeks is a really good way to go. We just get into the groove of working and eating. Nashville is America’s best-kept secret as far as restaurants; I can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s out of this world.

  The band has always been identified with Hoboken, New Jersey, right across the Hudson River from Manhattan, and you end the new record with a fourteen-minute meditation on the city. As Hoboken has changed and gentrified how has the band’s relationship to the city changed, and how has that impacted your music?

  All of our surroundings feed into our work. Hoboken has changed over the years. There used to be what I thought was the best record store in the world there, and that shut down a few years ago. Although Maxwell’s [where Ira used to DJ and the band regularly plays] is doing very well. We just played there over the summer. It’s still by far my favorite place to go see a show. If you become gentrified along with your surroundings, do you notice it as much? Because we notice it pretty severely, so maybe we’re resisting it a bit.

  It’s a three-member band, two of whom are married to each other. Do you ever feel like the third spoke, or is it natural to work with Ira and Georgia?

  It feels natural to me. I just don’t think about it. There have been a few times when I’ve played with other people in other groups that don’t have the female dynamic, and it’s definitely noticeable. I don’t know exactly how to describe it, but it’s there. Or maybe it’s just because Georgia is such a good drummer.

  You’ve done sound-track work for the animated short “The Pigeon Within” by Georgia’s sister, and Hal Hartley regularly uses your songs in his films. Does it surprise you how the songs seem to work their way into films?

  I’m sure somewhere in our consciousness is that element of sound-track music. We go to the movies a lot, and in our record collections there’s a pretty good amount of sound tracks. I know we’re all really interested in that kind of music. We’ve done very little in terms of composing for movies. A lot of times people just take the songs that they want to use and plug them into a scene. We’re a ton more interested in writing stuff for films. We just did some music for a movie called Traffic, which is directed by Steven Soderbergh and is coming out around Christmas time. I was psyched to do it and can’t wait to do more.

  Is there a change between who you are on the street and who you are on stage, like at a sold-out show at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall?

  The bigger the place, the more of an asshole I like to be. It all goes by attendance, really [laughs]. I don’t think about that stuff. When people come to see us, I’m excited, I’m out of my mind.

  On the records, you tend to have eclectic tastes in terms of covers, but for encores you tend toward familiar songs by the likes of Blondie and the Ramones.

  A lot of times they are requests. A lot of times we gauge the feeling of the evening and decide which way to go. Every set is made for the night.

  On the first tour for the new record, you asked venues to install seats, but on this tour you have not. How is this a different tour than the summer one?

  It’s definitely different. The seating idea was mainly a product of being the first tour when the record came out, and no one had heard the songs before. We knew they were different, we knew they were quieter, we knew that attendance would probably be pretty good because we hadn’t toured for a long time. We wanted a more calm setting, because the songs are quiet and it was just a short, three-week trip across the U.S. That’s all we wanted—to play them that way first, and then as time went on, people would become more familiar with the feel of the songs and know that there were quiet songs coming as well as loud songs. I loved that tour tremendously, that was a lot of fun.

  Over the past five years, the band has really reached across a multigenerational indie music perspective by collaborating with Jad Fair (Half Japanese, started in the mid-1970s), David Kilgour (the Clean, 1980s), and Mac McCaughan (Superchunk, 1990s). Did you seek out these people?

  We sought out Mac and David. We knew we wanted to put together a five-piece group and tried to think of people who could play multiple instruments and switch around. Although we were big fans of both bands, we knew them as people too. It was like a dream. It was too short. As the last shows were rolling around, I was really sad. I felt like we were really hitting it. I miss them terribly. When we played England, we played with two more musicians to augment the group, Pete “Sonic Boom” of Spaceman 3 and Neil Innes of the Rutles, so you can add the 1960s also. Just recently, we backed Ray Davies of the Kinks for a series of shows. That was insane, unbelievable.

  Is it important to retain a sense of humor, whether it’s on record or on tour?

  I think so. How do I explain this? I think we’re able to get across our personalities a little bit by playing. We’re fully aware that a seventy-minute record of real serious songs can be a tough thing to take by anybody. It works really great to show the lighter end of a sustained mood that goes throughout the record. And though we’re real serious and all, we’re hilarious people. There’s no getting around that.

  As a band, you’re able to be smart but spontaneous, then be ambient yet noisy too. Is that something planned?

  I hope it comes naturally. I think it does. I don’t think we’d just want to do one thing, but I also like when we can do all those things at the same time, kind of combine them in the span of one song. When those things come together, that’s success.

  Have you ever regretted anything?

  My biggest regret is when on tour in January of 1994, the day after a New Orleans show, I passed on a copy of Lanquidity by Sun Ra with original silver Mylar sleeve because it was thirty dollars. As soon as we drove out of town in the van, I was like, “Wait a minute, go back!” because it goes for like five hundred dollars now. I was really sad about that. But it was just reissued this week, and I picked up a copy in New Orleans, so it all came around.

  Neko Case: I Am the Boss of My Destiny

  Originally published in Left of the Dial, 2002.

  Did you approach the record Boiler Room Lullaby any differently than The Virginian, your first?

  I kind of knew what I was doing this time. The general approach was pretty much the same, though I had some better ideas.

  What do you mean, better ideas?

  I had a better idea of what I wanted. Last time it was kind of an experiment.

  Was it so well received partially because it was an experiment, thus felt a bit fresh?

  I don’t know why it was so well received. I appreciate it, but I was just trying to s
ee if I could make a record or not. It was nice that people really liked it. It gave me a lot of confidence, and I felt good about myself. I also felt that I could do a much better job.

  You’ve said before that you were unhappy with the split singles you did with the Sadies and Whiskeytown?

  Well, my performance on the Whiskeytown wasn’t very good because I had been on the road awhile and was just exhausted. It was a strange time.

  Do you feel yourself pulled between the three places dear to you—Tacoma, Virginia, and Vancouver? Does it give you a sense of dislocation?

  I think I am pulled by not knowing where my home is right now. I live in Seattle at the moment, but I’m moving to Chicago in April. I just feel that I’m not done moving around yet. I feel pulled by Chicago, but I’ll go back to Washington eventually.

  It seems that country music has always been about that sense of place, do you agree?

  It is about a sense of place, but I think people mistake it for geography a lot of times, so people get weird about it if you’re not from a certain place. For instance, if you’re not from there, you’re not playing country music, but that’s not true.

  Is it true that you turned to country music about six years back after a bad breakup with a boyfriend, and country music was just easier for you to write at the time?

  No. I just started writing songs in the band I was in, and they were country songs. I’m sure a lot of bad breakup things are reflected in the songs, but it wasn’t necessarily because of that. I grew up listening to country music from the time I was very little.

  With your grandmother?

  Yes. It seemed the natural thing for me.

  Country music does pull you through the hard times?

  All kinds of music. Different music for different times, but southern gospel is one of my favorites. It’s very passionate, but not steamy love songs. I’m not a religious person, so it’s not about that, but more or less about giving yourself over to something entirely, being totally selfless, such as making music for God. But in my case, making life okay or justifying why I’m alive.

  You’ve said that country music carved a place for women long before rock did. Did you feel discontent growing up and listening to punk rock, which often is male-dominated?

  In the eighties and early nineties, I wasn’t feeling a lot of kinship with the music being made, like I had felt with earlier punk rock. The stuff was monotonous political diatribes that I found boring.

  What about the riot grrrls, who seemed to restore women in the scene?

  I was listening to country music at the time. I wasn’t really in on that at all.

  It didn’t change your views of punk rock?

  No, I always thought ladies should be playing music and I had never taken any shit off anybody, so it didn’t seem that weird to me, I guess.

  Are you at all uncomfortable with all the press and notice your records are now getting?

  People are pretty favorable in their reviews. And it doesn’t really matter. I know what it’s like to be there making the record, and they don’t. There’s nothing they can say that can really upset me. Even if somebody wrote something contrary to what I’m about, I don’t think I’d be bothered by it. Not that I can’t be bothered, but that I was there making the record, and I know what happened. I know what the truth about things is. You know, as long as my grandmother likes it. . . .

  She’s the litmus test for the records?

  Yeah. And it’s just not me on the records at all. It’s not just my performance.

  How did you like playing on the Mekons’ Journey to the End of the Night record?

  It was fun.

  I hear you do a great impression of Sally Timms.

  I have to be around her again for a while [laughs]. Sally is probably pretty sick of my imitation.

  Do you miss living up in Canada?

  Yes, I do a lot. I love living in Canada.

  You were unceremoniously booted at the end of your visa?

  No, I wasn’t booted at the end of my visa. I once got booted because I played a show, which I found out was illegal. Nobody kicked me out because my visa ran out, I just couldn’t work there. I’d have to go through a long process, and I’m not independently wealthy, so I can’t live there without a job. You can’t make enough money being a musician.

  Canada has a different national music culture, with good support from the government and the Canadian Broadcast Company, which is entirely different than the U.S.

  The government and some forms of media are very supportive of the community and embrace it. Here, there are no government grants. In grade schools, they take away the arts.

  They’ve eliminated the tambourines and triangles.

  It’s awful.

  Is there a difference between the music communities in the U.S. and Canada as well?

  Well, there are way fewer people in Canada. It’s very supportive and people aren’t really that competitive, although people aren’t necessarily that competitive here.

  You played Lilith Fair?

  Yes, but I don’t know if anybody notices the smaller bands at Lilith Fair. They all go to see Sarah McLachlan.

  Your producer, Darryl Neudorf, was also her producer, though he had to take her to court over song rights. Is that what tied up the release of the new record?

  No, not legal hassles with him alone. Lawyers are crazy. Lawyers want to feel like they run the show, and they’re slow motherfuckers. We did have some scheduling problems because he did have to go to court, but it wasn’t that alone.

  You met and exchanged records with Emmylou Harris at Lilith Fair?

  I didn’t exchange any records with her. I read that the other day and don’t know where it came from. I met her at the show and drove her to a hotel in Seattle. She was an incredibly nice person. She didn’t remember having met me before, but I had met her.

  You’ve also played on the same stage as Loretta Lynn?

  Yes, but people were clinging all over her. I thought the nicest thing I could do for Loretta was not bug her at all.

  Why do you have such an aversion to being called alternative country?

  Because it’s a cop-out. I listened to country music growing up, and I just want to call my stuff country music. I’m not going to get confused with New Country, so why should I play the whole media thing about alt country?

  But what if the simple term could gain you audience because people look for certain kinds of music?

  I don’t think it’s that big of an issue, really. I’ll never get played on TNT. I’ll never get played on country radio. I don’t have real control about what people call it. They call it alternative country. People ask me the question like it’s some big deal. I don’t think about it. I’m in a good position, I have creative control of my recordings, and I’m not worried about becoming mainstream, though I’d like to do certain things that are beyond my means.

  Are you going back to graduate school anytime soon?

  If I can get together the money.

  You’re unhappy with Seattle?

  Housing is nonexistent. It’s really expensive, and I’m starting to hate it for that reason. I live in a good loft building downtown, but we’re getting kicked out.

  Has the money changed the music scene?

  A lot of people are moving away. It will become pretty culturally void soon.

  Can you illuminate the lines, “I can’t seem to fathom the dark of my history / so I invented my own in Tacoma” from your song “Thrice All American”?

  It’s about growing up in America in a very racially diverse city, including gangs, ghettoes, and racism. It’s so hard to figure out your place in America.

  What about the line “I’m guided by the voices I’ve perfected” from the song “Guided by Wires”?

  That’s about growing up with a bad learning disability and being creative and faking your way through everything. It’s about the difficulty of getting ahead, basically being a smart kid and trying to get ahead, tho
ugh it’s not so specific as all that. Songwriting feels good when you can get close to something. It’s not about therapy but about combining words to create images that you might find in the subconscious.

  Is the emphasis on image what makes punk different from country?

  Well, punk’s more literal. But there are bands like the Cramps, who have the most crazed, twisted, kick-ass lyrics ever made, and at the same time the sexiest songs ever.

  What are you listening to right now?

  I’m loving the new Mekons, and a band from Vancouver called Destroyer, who play the greatest, oddest, mid-1970s Bowie style of pop.

  Does it matter if you play to thirty or three hundred people?

  It depends on the feeling of the place. I’ve played to five thousand people who weren’t there to see me, and it was pretty cold.

  Is indifference the worst part?

  They are usually there to see somebody who made a hit song. It’s hard playing in front of people who aren’t really interested in anything new because they’re waiting for the headline act. They want to hear the hit songs; they’re not really into music.

  How into music are you?

  I don’t know if I could be more into it.

  You have an art degree?

  I do photography, printmaking, and sculpture. But I’m looking for a steady place to live, and I have a hard time making visual art without a steady place to live. I do feel a definite void in my life at the moment.