Who Is This Guy? Musician.

A perfect segue to your musical endeavors. How about that. I want to talk about the music for a bit but since this will be in a 'zine about writing I eventually want to tie the two together, if possible. I think we can do that. I think all art intersects somewhere, at least in a theoretical sense. But why don't we tie them together first and save the inconsequential minutiae for last? Fair enough. Now, you are a musician, a writer, a painter, a chef. These seem like divergent interests to me even though they can all fall under the category of “art.” Do you find common threads between them? Say, music and poetry? And I don’t just mean lyrically. Absolutely. You are doing the same thing, you’re just doing it with different tools. With music I have the note. With poetry I have the letter. With music I have a chord, with poetry I have a word. A riff, a line. A verse, a stanza. Tremelo and alliteration. And many principles and terms are exactly the same. Dissonance, refrain, meter, dirge. Both poetry and music are about assembling dynamics, mostly. Cooking as well. Painting too. But when talking about poetry and music, the basic ingredient is sound. Generally. I've gotten the sense, since I've become interested in poetry, that poetry and music are essentially the same thing. Aha! Yes, the argument can certainly be made. Written poetry equates to a score, spoken poetry to a performance of that score. But down there on a subatomic level you have the sound. You have the tones of intermingling vowels and consonants, the stresses of sound devices like alliteration and rhyme. If you find your poetry to be a bit dry or a bit static, go listen to some music. But don't just hear it, I mean listen to it. Your dry poem has no music in it. Poems that do have music, where the poet paid attention to the sound of words as well as the meaning of them, are more fluid and elastic. Listen, you say. But I'm not sure what I would be listening to. Or for. I kind of see what you're saying, but I'm not a musician. How should I listen? Is this question making any sense? Sure it is. Try this. Listen to piano solos, or string solos, or if you like rock, listen to good guitar soloists. Whether it's the quirkiness of Zappa or the long bluesy pieces by Gilmore, or even guys who are ripping it up like Murray and Smith in Iron Maiden, they show you how to propel audio artforms with their command of dynamics. Where they hold notes, how long they hold them, when they apply short notes in clusters or spread them out, whether they go up or down the scale, the dynamics between loud and soft, light and dark, fast and slow. It is poetry. Listen to how the soloists place accents right before or right after where you expect them to be. This is a method of propulsion, of pulling the listener along. It's the same thing with poetry. Go back to that Zambezi snippet I recited a while ago. You have four rhyming words in the first two lines, but the second line ends on a word that isn't one of them - "flies." The word before it, "tsetse," is one of the rhymes and would seem to be a natural place to break the line, but I add an extra accent, an extra syllable, after it to move the reader to the next line. That's a musical device. Okay. I think that would take some practice. Sure. What doesn't? I guess this is all tied in with Etheridge's recitation of Ilu, The Talking Drum that I mentioned earlier. Leonard Bernstein gave a series of lectures at Harvard in the early 70's called, "The Unanswered Question." In them he explores musical linguistics as a universal poetic medium. Fascinating and very entertaining stuff. It isn't some dry, pedantic yawner that will make your eyes roll up in your head from boredom. I highly recommend checking it out. Bernstein the conductor? Composer? West Side Story? Yeah, that's the guy. Don't forget, though, that he was an accomplished poet. In fact, at the time of the lectures, he was the Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard. It's not some quack like me trying to tell you what's what. He was the real deal. Sweet. I'll borrow your copy. Let's move along to the inconsequential minutiae. How many bands are you in these days? Three bands and another project on the side. That fourth project is a recording effort, not a gigging situation yet. So, three gigging situations and one “sit around, drink whiskey, talk music, noodle with guitars and hit the record button when necessary” situation. That sounds like a stupid way of saying "goofing off." Call it what you will. There's plenty of goofing off going on, but also plenty of discussion, plenty of listening to the Beatles. Beatles? Everything you need to know about songwriting can be learned by listening to their catalog. And the guy I'm working with has a sub-par musical perspective. He can't even tell the difference between Lennon and McCartney when they are singing. How can a rock musician not be versed in the Beatles? Boggles the mind. The Beatles were unparalleled as songwriters and musicians. Three of them were, at any rate. Huh? Who are you dismissing? Ringo. He didn't do much. What?!? Are you smoking crack? Well, he wasn't much of a songwriter. Wasn't a great drummer... Whoa...whoa...hold on. I'll grant you he didn't excel as a songwriter, but a drummer? He was impeccable. His technique was spotless. And his temperament should be something all drummers aspire to. Put it this way - you'll never hear a good drummer ragging on Ringo. I've been playing with a fantastic drummer for nearly twenty years, but he's also a whiney bitch, like, for some reason, a lot of drummers are. Ringo would do whatever he was asked, would do whatever the song called for. If it called for him knocking out a rhythm on packing cases, that's what he would do. You have no idea how rare that is. My drummer would filibuster until we all died of old age if I asked him to do something like that. I'd love to work with a drummer like Ringo. Okay, I'm convinced. Now, you are a bass player primarily, but you’ve got a few guitars in the arsenal too, right? And a piano. Yeah, I can wear it out on a bass but with the guitar I am strictly confined to giving it the “ol’ college try.” Then again, I don’t necessarily classify myself as a bass player. I classify myself as a musician. Why’s that? While I play bass primarily, hand me any instrument and I’ll get something useful out of it. If it can make a sound, I’ll figure something out. Sax, piano, sousaphone, jaw harp, djembe, banjo, bagpipes. Whatever. In fact, on one of our songs on our second album, I played a microphone stand. Blew it like a trumpet. That’s on “Nothing So Heinous,” right? Great song. The “texture,” which is our middle name, is on full display in that song. Loads of nutty instruments. Well, instruments in a certain sense. Yeah, we’ve got a paper cutter going, a water jug, metal table legs, hubcaps. On and on. It was like Fat Albert’s junkyard band in there. I bet the Ardent people loved seeing you guys lugging junk into their studio. (laughing) That's another nod, by the way, to the Beatles. Hey, we’re professionals. We did have to do some stuff on the sly, though. We used to get an intern to watch the door in case one of the studio execs wandered up. But, you know, aside from the Beatles, we were just continuing in the vein of John Cage. He maintained that anything that makes a sound can be considered a musical instrument, much like his friend Marcel Duchamp who proposed the idea that even everyday objects are art when placed in museums. Some call it "found sound" nowadays, I believe. Yes. And occasionally we took it to another level. In '94 we had a news crew film us while we used a cement factory as an instrument. Made the evening news. Not sure why, but there you have it. We had our own videographer shoot it too. A cement factory? What'd you do, bang it with baseball bats? No, committing vandalism on television didn't seem prudent, but luckily the thing was making a bitchin' rhythm and we used it. I guess it wasn't actually a factory, it was a giant metal contraption that sucked up gravel from one pit, spat it out onto a conveyor belt and hosed it down before depositing it into a pile on the other side. It was a gravel washer or something. I didn't understand it, but I didn't have to. All I had to do was listen to it. (laughing) It was completely absurd. Aw shit, I wish I'd seen that. You can. There's a video on Google. [link] Musically, it doesn't represent what we normally do. It's way out there in left field. But the spirit of John Cage is there. And you can see the contraption. Send me that link and I will. You have a lot of studio experience, right? I’d say so. NTJ has five albums out and our first album, Funeral Mountain, has been remastered and re-released with five bonus tracks. Big Betsy has one album out called 40 Pints and a Bottle. These are purchasable where? www.neighborhoodtexturejam.com and www.bigbetsy.com. Or Amazon. Goggle us. You enjoyed a fair amount of success with NTJ, didn’t you? Yeah. Never quite enough, though. Didn’t reach the level of The Who or anywhere near it, which is what everyone shoots for. But we were written about in Rolling Stone, Spin, and every newspaper you’ve ever heard of, rotation on MTV, rotation on college radio, played with some killer bands in some classic venues. The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), you know, the Grammy people, nominated the band as "best band" and me as "best bassist" for awards that equate to "regional Grammies." Didn't win, but there were some killer musicians and bands among the nominees. Isaac Hayes received a lifetime achievement award that night. It was kind of cool on one hand, but on the other it was a ballroom full of self-congratulation which...I don't know...offended my sensibilities somehow. Too bad. Did you expect to win? Did you have an acceptance speech written up? (laughing) No. And no. I still can't figure out how I got nominated. Capiche. What was the most memorable show you did? Wow, that’s like asking what was your favorite breath you’ve drawn. I think getting kicked out of CBGB’s for setting the ceiling on fire ranks up there in the memorable department. That’s a good story. I put the tale in one of Suture’s past releases. I want to talk about the music itself for a bit. Do you have any mp3’s people can download so they can check out what we’re talking about? Yeah, they’re scattered all over the internet but you can get some samples of each album on our website. I just said the url a minute ago. We also joined the crowd and have a MySpace page. [link] So you did. The difference between your first and second albums is really striking. They almost sound like two different bands. What accounts for that? Circumstance. Elaborate. The first album was under the constraints of a budget and a schedule. The label could afford ten hours in the studio, so that’s what we got. It’s essentially a live album – the only thing missing is the audience. By the time we geared up to do our second album, we had a new guitarist. Murphy got married, left the band, and moved to Birmingham so we replaced him with Whittemore. Murphy was a rocker. A metal-head, pretty much, and that was that. Whittemore was much more versatile and more open to experimentation. We also had, by that time, signed on with Ardent Studios and since business at the studio was slow, we had a period of several months where we could just pop into the studio whenever we wanted and record. We took full advantage of that. So you had a guitarist willing to experiment and the studio time that allowed you to put your experiments on tape. Exactly. And an engineer named Jeff Powell, who was pretty green at the time, who was on board with whatever absurd stunt we wanted to try. Like, one day we’d say, “Hey Jeff, we want to fill in the middle eight of this song with a guitar being played with a weedwhacker." And he’d say, “Weedwhacker? Hmmmm…what microphone should I use for that? How about the U-87?” (laughing) Someone with more experience might have been more uptight about that kind of thing and said, "You're not getting garden implements within fifty feet of a Neumann microphone." But Jeff rolled with every punch. He’s a brilliant engineer and producer. Has a slew of Grammies and gold records to his credit now. Some platinum records as well. Who has he worked with? Bob Dylan, Stevie Ray Vaughn, B.B. King, Big Star, Afghan Whigs, and so on and so forth. Awesome. The last time I spoke to him he told me he got to hang out with Paul McCartney. See? (laughing) It always comes back to Beatles. Always. So Powell is big time. Yep. But when we recorded Don’t Bury Me In Haiti he was a noob. He was assigned to us, like a public defender in court or something. It was just fortunate for us that he was. So the way Haiti sounds, in contrast to Funeral Mountain, has a lot to do with Jeff and his inexperience. He was very capable as an engineer, knew the console backward and forward, knew the mics, the techniques, the outboard gear, all of that, but he didn't know how to "take charge and say no." His inexperience was also leading us to something that, in my mind, sounded too clean and too produced. I tried to explain that to him at the time but he never did quite grasp what I was getting at. I said, "Jeff, we need to scuff this up a bit." Of course, that ran contrary to his training which stipulated a proper signal to noise ratio, so I just got a blank look every time I brought it up. However, here we are thirteen years later, and he and I met up in a bar and we discussed that very topic. He even had to refresh my memory about it all, but he said it helped him a great deal later on when he finally realized what it was I was failing to get at. I think he learned it from Jim Dickinson. Now he records bands in as live a setting as he can, with fewer mics, being less anal about tweaking the EQ. He's every bit as concerned about capturing energy as he is sound. If not more so. So if I could have found the proper way to communicate what I wanted, Haiti would sound more like Funeral Mountain than it does. But I like how Haiti turned out nonetheless. I like the contrast. And our third album falls somewhere in between the two. I said it almost sounds like a different band. It’s still got NTJ written all over it. That would mostly be the vocals. Joe is pretty distinctive. Yeah, both in the way he sounds and with his lyrics. He doesn’t have a good singing voice but he is a great vocalist. I’ll agree with that. That’s why he doesn’t actually sing very much. He’s got more of a spoken, shouted, growled kind of style. Think Lou Reed, Jello Biafra, Henry Rollins - guys like that. He’d never pass the American Idol tryouts but I’d take him over that Stepford crap any day. Yeah, Stepford singers. If I close my eyes I can’t tell them apart. But even aside from the vocals, Haiti has that NTJ…thing…going on. I don’t know how to describe it. Most of our songs are riff-based. And the guitars have a signature thing going on where they include the e-string in all their barre chords. Riff-based as opposed to…? Chord-based. Those would be the two main categories of rock songwriting. Give me an example of each. Um…well, again, you can always look to the Beatles to answer any songwriting question. Riff-based would be ”Day Tripper” or “Come Together.” Chord-based would be “Nowhere Man.” A riff-based song is one that centers around a signature musical phrase. The verse in “Day Tripper” is the signature riff. Right. I see. Yeah, those riffs of Funeral Mountain are all over Haiti. I mean different riffs, but riffs all the same. That's Tee's work. He's a riff-master. We also have some chord-based songs on there. And a few experimental numbers. I am intrigued by the song, “Mental Obsession/Physical Craving.” It’s a tough song. It puts me on edge. It’s supposed to. It’s also seven minutes long. What’s it about? The lyrics are frantic. Joe has an addictive nature. He’s a member of AA and NA and has battled addiction for most of his life. That song is a musical interpretation of what it feels like to be addicted to something. Jonesing for something – nicotine, heroin, crack, whatever. It feels spastic but it also has a definable groove. What’s going on there? It’s a train wreck of time signatures. In the verses I play in six, John plays in five, and Paul changes his drum signature from verse to verse. He’s in seven one verse, three in another, and the last go-round he is the “deranged metronome” with no specific time-signature. So the three of us sync up – you know, hit 1 at the same time - every 33rd time we run through our little riffs or something like that. Except for the choruses and at the end when we all play in the same time signature. We had it all charted out at one point, just to see what exactly it was we were doing. You had to look at it on paper to figure it out? Yeah, retroactively. The chart came after the recording of it. As a “for our own edification” kind of thing. Aside from what we are doing, you also have to throw in Joe, who’s wailing about being tied to the mast of a capsized ship, and Tee playing a spastic lead throughout, augmented by Greg and his shrieking violin. That song has been baffling live audiences for about 15 years now. That’s really my favorite aspect of it. The dumbfounded looks on the faces of the crowd. Even the people who have heard it dozens of times. I love that. Addiction isn't supposed to be a pretty thing. That’s the look I had on my face when I first heard it. I’ll tell you this – when I first heard it I didn’t know what the hell was going on. I knew something profound was happening, but I couldn’t grasp what it was. Now I know. Uh…sorry about that? (laughing) Not at all. Some art is more difficult than other art and it requires more of a committment from the perceiver. King Crimson's Larks' Tongues in Aspic is like that. If I listen to the whole thing from start to finish I need to take a nap afterwards. Anyway, moving on. You know how a band can change its sound and some fans have an adverse reaction to it? Uh huh. Did you get any of that after Haiti came out? Oh sure. There are some people who want to hear the same thing over and over. They want different riffs, different words, but really want them to sound like the last album of yours that they liked. I had a long conversation with my neighbor’s drunken brother one night. He said, “I really like Haiti but…well…it’s just not Funeral Mountain. You know what I mean?” I told him it was a good thing he had Funeral Mountain so he could listen to it whenever he wanted to. I also told him that, as artists, we reserve the right to grow, evolve, and experiment. Recording the same album over and over would bore us to tears. Did that make any sense to him? Not a lick. But he was really drunk, too. It makes sense to me. I appreciate the fact that no U2 album sounds like any of the other ones. That, I think, is the essence of being an artist. We all establish our own personal cliches. I think it's important to recognize them and break them. At least it is for me. But isn’t there something to be said for consistency? Absolutely. That’s best left to the individual. One thing you have to ask yourself is as a band is “does it make financial sense to depart from the trademark sound? Either way, is that a big concern?” Okay. But a lot of people would take offense to the idea that money would be allowed to affect art like that. Right. And these would either be people who aren’t trying to feed themselves and pay their mortgages with their art, or people who have so much money that basic financial necessities aren’t a going concern. I understand the romantic vision of “art,” but making a living with it enables you to keep at it. There is no divine law that states “commercial equals crap,” is there? Look at your cd collection over there. It’s all “commercial.” You went to a store and bought it. Is it crap? If so, why did you buy it? Point taken. But getting back to your music career, I assume you’ve met some interesting musicians in your day. The usual suspects I suppose. It’s interesting to note that, at the time, I wasn’t impressed by a lot of it at the time. I guess I was too busy being “cool,” or maybe I just assumed it was going to be standard and I should get used to it, or maybe I was just too busy, period. I didn’t really have any room in there for being star-struck. And that’s weird because I am someone you would characterize as a “fan.” A fan of what, exactly? Of stars. Famous people. You know, a fan. Well, not just famous people. They have to have an admirable talent first. I found myself in the same little dive bar in Memphis on St. Patrick’s Day in 2001 – it was immediately after the annual Big Betsy gig – with John Entwistle. He was the Lord-High-God of rock bassists, and there he was, sitting with his wife, having a quiet drink. I spotted him and immediately started hyperventilating while I worked up the nerve to approach him. But as soon as I did, there were no nerves. I talked to him for a little bit and that was that. Okay, I did heap praise on him. Justthorne was there with me. Considering how many times the two of us cranked up "The Real Me" and marvelled at the bass line, I'm sure meeting Entwistle was almost as magical for him as it was for me. I think he was more delighted for me, you know, because that's the kind of guy he is. Anyone on DA who knows him knows that. What was he like? Entwistle? He was like a guy in a bar having a whiskey, minding his own business. In fact, none of the “stars” I’ve met have had any kind of ‘tude about them. Just normal people trying to do their thing. It was the b-rate wankers that had the attitude. Insecurity, I suppose. Still trying to carve out their place in the pecking order, perhaps? What kind of b-rate wankers? Like the synth player for Survivor. Remember that act? Eye of the Tiger? High On You? (laughing) Oh god, that shit sucked. Like a 50-foot Hoover. He gave you the ‘tube? No, he didn’t give me the ‘tude. He gave our drummer, Paul, the ‘tude. I wasn't there - it's Paul's tale. He's not here. Do tell. There was some kind of assemblage in the Ardent lounge. Some of the Staff were hanging out, the Survivor guys too. Paul was there because he worked at Ardent at the time. I think it was Jody Stephens, who was the drummer for Big Star and long-time Studio Manager, who was talking to Paul about some time off Paul was about to take. He said, “NTJ going on tour, huh?” To which Paul responded, “Well, not much of a tour.” I think we were just going down to Mobile and Pensacola. The synth player said, “Not much of a band.” (laughing) Paul looked over at him and said, “Wait…aren’t you a synth player? For Survivor? Hahahaha.” There’s nothing faggier than a synth player. Except for one that plays in a bombastic fluff-rock band like Survivor. He wasn’t even a part of the band when they had their heyday back in the early/mid-‘80s. He was just some boof recruited for the ‘90s state fair and casino circuit. Paul just laughed at him. A fine case of “consider the source.” Yeah, no shit. Okay, give me one more story. A good one. Uh…let’s see. Eddie Murphy's bodyguard threatened to beat the poop out of me for drinking Eddie's Snapple. Man, you shouldn't be drinking Eddie's Snapple! What's wrong with you? I didn't know it was Eddie’s. His name wasn't on it or anything. What flavor? Strawberry/kiwi. That was a big bodyguard, too. He blotted out the sun. I was in Studio A raiding the fridge. As I popped the top on the Snapple and started taking a sip, I heard this unbelievably deep rumble of a voice say, "Hey! Why you drinking that? That's Eddie's Snapple!" I turned around and saw this ogre squeezing himself through the doorframe. This is a studio door - they move soundboards and pianos through it all the time, and this guy was squirming to get through it. I almost shat my britches. I mean, there was only one way out of that room and he was clogging it up. (laughing) What’d you do? I said, “Eddie who?” (laughing) You're such an idiot. I guess. He yelled, “Eddie Mother-Fucking Murphy!” Oh shit! Did he chase you around? No. He was just shaking me down. I offered to run across the street and buy another Snapple for Eddie. Actually, I think I offered to buy Eddie a whole case. In reality, I just wanted to get the hell out of there before they discovered that I had two slices of Eddie’s cake as well. That cleared up the mystery of who the Eddie was on the “Welcome Eddie” banner that was hanging above the cake in the lounge.

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