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.
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