KUCI Events: January 2013

Tuscon, Arizona-based band Calexico, a musical group known for its eclectic sound, played a show at the El Rey Theater in Los Angeles on January 16. The band’s lyricist, vocalist and lead guitarist, Joey Burns, took some time to talk with KUCI before the show. Burns, himself a former UCI student, spoke about his band’s approach to writing music, his musical influences, and Calexico’s latest record, Algiers. He also explained what he thought made his band unique and why Tuscon is hipper than you think. For more archived interviews visit http://www.kuci.org/musicinterviews.

You went to UCI. Describe your experience there.

Well, let’s see, I went to UCI undeclared, and I wound up hanging out a lot in the music department. And I wound up taking contrabass lessons from Claudia Barrett, who was a teacher back then [in 1990]; I’m not sure if she’s still there. I really fell in love with some of the teachers. Zelman Bokser was the conductor. Dr. Margaret Murata was one of my favorite teachers. Dr. Colin Slim was another one of my favorites. There were a lot. They were just really great into turning me onto different kinds of music. I had not had much history with classical music so I took a lot of education from them. And I’m really happy. I’ve taken a lot of that education and used it in what I do here with Calexico and also in some of the music scores we write for films.

Did you run into anybody at UCI who influenced the way you play?

Dr. Zelman Bokser, the conductor for the symphony. He said, one of the most important questions, and I sometimes bring it up when I’m hanging out with friends or talking with people about music, is, ‘How do you get louder?’ And so he’s asking the symphony at a rehearsal, ‘How do you get louder everyone?’ And everyone, of course, is like, ‘What is the trick here?’ And then his response was, ‘Start quieter. And so much so that you’re not even playing. You’re just breathing or you’re feeling the notes before you begin physically making the notes.’ And I thought that was really interesting. And it’s very simple, and it doesn’t take much. But I think it opens up to a lot of possible topics in dynamics.

How do you write music?

For writing new music, John and I often just start with drums and guitar, or some other instrument, a piano, and maybe a scratch vocal—and then we begin improvising ideas of what may or may not become a song or piece of music. And then we’ll listen back and say, ‘You know, ok, does that sound good? Ah, that sounded kind of cheesy right there.’ So we kind of go through this process of evaluating, and a lot of that eventually comes down to listening to it. And sometimes you can only get to twenty seconds, and then you just got to turn it off.

How do you evaluate your own music?

I think you need distance and a certain amount of objectivity when you’re listening to your own music. Because it’s so hard to know what you’re doing may be good or not. And I think it’s important you’re in that writing process to just focus on, you know, getting into the routine, getting into the, what some people call a nasty habit of, ‘Just play it. Don’t think, just play.’

Has your music writing process become more defined over the years?

It’s really not defined. We put out a lot of records through a record company, in the past it’s been Touch and Go Records, and just recently we just joined with ANTI Records. And those records we put a lot of time and effort into. But we also make records for our own label, which we sell only at shows or on our website. We call them tour only records. And those we don’t spend a lot of time worrying or thinking about them. We kind of just let the process happen. And we corral the most interesting ideas on there, but in spirit, they’re, in theory they’re more experimental rather than being kind of more focused, especially to the live show.

And the writing process—I guess it’s changed over the years. It’s hard to say. We’ve really kind of stuck a lot to this collaboration between John and I being the main songwriters and producers. And I come up with a lot of ideas for arrangements and John is giving really good feedback on what he likes and doesn’t like. And you know, we’re constantly trying to challenge each other and encourage each other, to encourage growth and try new ideas, and it’s really good. And by doing that we’ve carved out a really interesting aesthetic to what our band sounds like and what we’ve come to be known.

What makes your style of music unique?

John’s drumming is really essential to the sound. He’s playing vintage drums from the 60s. These are Ludwig drums you hear in the background [at the sound check]. And his brushing technique is very unusual. And he’s bringing in more of a jazz influence, rather than a rock influence. And he’s playing dynamically to the vocal phrasing or the melody lines. So it’s a different kind of, you know—it’s a different approach. And at the same time, we’re trying to grow and change at the same time. So it gets mixed up. But we tend to really like acoustic instruments a lot and we love ambience. So the arrangements tend to have a little element of that. We love the room sound.

How do you feel about modern music, which has become increasingly electronic?

I really like electronic and digital sounds and soundscapes. I think the ambience of some of the digital works of groups like Oval, or even Gotan Project, which is an interesting group from Paris and Argentina, where they combine traditional instrumentation with electronic production and beats and ambience, is really cool. And I identify with some of that. But we still have an actual drummer over there, who’s going to speed up or slow down and drop a stick here and there. And I think that’s more exciting to both watch and listen to—for what we do. If we were to play at three o’clock in the morning at some kind of like festival tent, yeah, maybe it would be fun to combine drum machines with drums. But we’ve never really done that. And I think it’s done so much already that the more hand-made element to what we do is in keeping what’s going on in other fields, like with food and wine and arts and clothing, I mean, and housing and architecture. I think people are kind of going back to, ‘I want to see and feel the texture. I want to see, you know, the human element in this.’ And I think that’s what I’m really proud of, and I feel good coming back and kind of representing that.

Do you try to imbue a certain mood into your music?

Thematically I like more darker [sic] themes. Talking about characters or places that are in a state of transition or conflict. Usually the music is kind of like the source of positivity, and the lyrics kind of go into the darker regions. It’s also one of the reasons I wanted to go to New Orleans to write some songs and see what we could come up with because it’s, you know, aside from all the celebration going on with Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest, it has some really dark themes, and I like that.

How personal is your music to you?

Well for me, it’s quite personal. I put all my heart and soul into it; I stay up all night working on it. I travel all around the globe, I leave home, and, you know, I don’t get much sleep. You know, I’m working my ass off. I’m trying as hard as I can to get the music out there. So it’s personal on all levels. The songs that I write, the themes, and like I just said, the work aspect.

Do you have any songs that are more personal to you than the rest?

What might be personal to me today might not be so personal, you know, two days from now. And these things change. And that’s what’s so cool about music, is that it’s not always going to be the same, things change. You may end up playing a song so much that you’re sick of the song. That’s a good example of taking a song that’s deeply personal, and then you kind of just overdo it. And that’s an important lesson in all aspects of life; just not overdoing things. There’s a song on the new record that’s called ‘Fortune Teller’—and I didn’t write the song, I wrote the music, but I didn’t write the lyrics—but I really relate to the lyrics a lot. It’s a co-write with a singer-songwriter named Pieta Brown out of Iowa, and she sent me some lyrics while I was down in New Orleans and making this record. And I really loved the lyrics and I loved the title, of course, I could kind of identify with the spirit down there; fortune teller. And then I really just got into the song more and more. It became one of my favorites—for today.

Your latest album is Algiers, released in September of last year. Did anything about the record make you particularly proud?

I like certain songs. Like, for example, I like the song ‘Splitter’ off the new record, and I know John was really hesitant for quite a while because it wasn’t finished. And when it got finished, I think he understood, ‘Oh yeah, that makes sense.’ And for me I like the song, musically, lyrically I liked where it was going when it was finished, and also I like the fact that it added another kind of dynamic and energy to the record. We tend to do really well with writing atmospheric, mid-tempo or slow songs. But when we play live, there’s a good sense of upbeat energy with the shows. So it’s important for me to represent that as well.

Do any other songs stand out?

‘The Vanishing Mind’ feels like a song that we’ve written. It feels like it comes from a familiar place, like we might have done something similar in the past. And in actuality I used the same guitar in the record Spoke back in 1996.

Your second album, The Black Light, was a concept album, complete with a story. How did this come about?

John and I started off just writing music and we accumulated all this music, and listening back to it, without having finished the lyrics, or finished the overdubs and all the other last touches—it just felt like this was a concept album. I could hear a story. I could hear Cormac McCarthy’s characters coming through a modern day Western town much like Tuscon, Arizona, where I just moved to from Los Angeles. So everything just fell in place. And so I just wrote out this quick storyline, and with the lyrics I kind of just followed this story. And, you know, kind of singing in different characters’ voices, not being so precise, but just kind of following this as a guide or template. And it was a lot of fun. And it’s something that can be another way of getting you into that creative habit, or that creative mode.

You moved to Tuscon, Arizona early on in your music career. Why? What do you enjoy about living there?

It’s a really surprisingly deep place for how minimal life seems to be on the outside. And I think that that kind of surprise or that depth behind just the shear view of seeing dry barren land or maybe some cactus or some rocks and the absence of water. But there’s a lot there, and it has a lot to offer. And the ecosystem there is incredible. The cultural heritage there and the traditions are amazing, all the way from the Native Indians that have been living there as well the Mexican culture that has been there for a long, long time as well. And it’s also a very modern city at its core. There’s a lot of artists that have been living there for a long time because it’s been a relatively inexpensive town to live in. And I’m speaking about Tuscon, not Phoenix. There’s beautiful mountain ranges kind of surrounding this valley, and it’s just a wonderful place to spend time. I also was living there because I was playing music with several bands, so it kind of kept me connected and staying there. I think also, as a musician, it had a lot of inspiration, a lot of character, and a lot of characters, to draw ideas. And it was quite opposite form Los Angeles, where the theme here is more about success in regards to the monetary music entertainment standards. Whereas out there, success was more about quality of life, which I think was very, you know, had a lot of foreshadow. When I look back, I think a lot of my friends and a lot of people I admire in entertainment or music are trying to do similar things. They’re not trying to sell records as much as they’re trying to, you know, express themselves, as true as possible, without any kind of pressure from anyone. There was a really, and there still is a really great art scene out there in all the arts. It’s a university town so it’s got a lot of fresh ideas that are coming in and out of there. It’s really close to Mexico so it’s really nice to go to Nogales, Mexico. And it just has a lot to offer. A lot of people come through that way anyways because it’s on I-10, so it’s just a nice stop along that interstate for a lot of bands.

What’s the downtown scene like in Tuscon?

There’s a venue there called the Club, it’s called Club Congress. It’s situated inside of an old historic hotel called the Hotel Congress. Right across the street is the Rialto Theater. These are both old establishments that have been renovated and revitalized with a lot of hard work and lot of community supporting them. So it’s kind of like the heart of downtown. And it’s very small. It’s not as big as any of the town out here on the West Coast. And so there’s a certain charm to it too. There’s an accessibility and warmth that doesn’t get overshadowed.

You tour quite extensively. How is life on the road?

I love it. I love travelling, I love meeting people, I don’t mind doing interviews, and I like seeing friends that I’ve known over the years. And so coming back to these towns—touring allows us to do just that. I like playing live. It’s an important part to the musical picture.

Describe one memorable concert.

Well last time we were in Los Angeles, we were getting ready to play at the Fonda Theater. Opening band is onstage, they’re 30-40 minutes into their set—the power goes out. ‘Ok, is going to come back on?’ Everyone’s waiting backstage. A minute turns into five minutes, five minutes turns into thirty, thirty turns into an hour. It was like, ‘Oh, what’re we going to do?’ So it was a really exciting moment because we were all just waiting in suspense. And there’s nothing more exciting than being in this sweeping feeling of suspensefulness [sic], together, in the dark, in an old theater like the Henry Fonda Theater. So it was kind of an exciting time, and eventually we had to close up shop and let people go because it just didn’t look like the power was going to come back on. So we went out on the stage and performed one song acoustically, unplugged. And it was really exciting, just kind of spur of the moment, seeing what would happen. And people loved it and said, ‘We’ll see you! We’ll see you soon, we hope.’ And that’s why we’re here today.

Author’s note: The performance was sold out, and Calexico rocked the show. Like Burns said, their act was spacey, but remained upbeat. I recommend this band to anyone who likes Americana-style music, or Latin American music, especially if you’re into slower chill-out tracks.

Candice, the host of Waving Cornstalks airing Fridays 6:00-8:00 am, recently saw Tycho and Doombird perform at the Constellation Room in Santa Ana on January 16, 2013. Check out her photos and review of the show below. For more from Candice visit http://wavingcornstalks.kuci.org/

Upon arriving at the Observatory in Santa Ana and finding masses of hardcore punk kids at the venue, I was a bit worried that I got the concert date wrong. But turns out they were just all there for the Of Mice and Men concert in the main concert hall. The Constellation Room is a small and cozy room inside the Observatory providing the audience with a more intimate, up close and personal musical experience.

DOOMbird opened with some nice electronic, synthy mellow tunes. Even though the songs were all on the slow side, the singer had tons of energy and performed as if he were singing to all upbeat songs. I really appreciated his enthusiasm.

After a long intermission, Tycho finally came on stage. They played a variety of their best songs from the album Dive as well as some from their older album Past is Prologue. During the performance, they projected a video that showed serene ocean clips and other artsy scenes that added to the calm and tranquil mood. It was so relaxing that the whole time I wanted to lie down, close my eyes, and be fully enveloped in the music, which is how I usually listen to Tycho at home. My favorite part of the performance was the drummer. The live drums really made the songs come alive and made all the difference between listening to Tycho in person versus from a CD. Everything else sounded the same as on their recorded albums. Around 11:25p, Tycho was performing a new song when Scott’s computer fell off the stage, abruptly stopping their music. I was really enjoying the music and vibes so I was sad to be suddenly woken from my dreamlike listening state. But overall it was a really good show and a nice midweek break from work life.