Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    

I have to mention Cat Stevens, too.  I've been listening to some early
recordings, some of which I'm going to post, and you can hear the influence
quite clearly in my singing.

I think what I learned from Elton John and Cat Stevens in 1971 - just before
I was turned on to the Grateful Dead, which changed everything - was more
about themes and atmospheres as much as anything.  This was the era of the
"sensitive singer-songwriter," when James Taylor was at the top of the
charts.  I learned a lot from him, too - his clear, precise fingerpicking on
"You're Got a Friend," "Country Road," "Fire and Rain," etc. urged me in that
direction.

I'm having a hard time putting a finger on the Elton & Bernie influence.  I
was turned on to them by my songwriting partner, Stephen Donnelly - who also
took me to my first Grateful Dead concert and introduced me to lots of other
great music, too.  Songs like "Sixty Years On" and "The First Episode at
Hienton" appealed to us lonely romantic teenagers, so maybe that was their
main influence.

One thing that jumps out at me, from a later album: in the song "Dixie Lily"
- a trifle, really - there's a line about the women on the riverboat. "Must
be fancy breeding lets you live that way."  That double entendre tickled me.
They were by no means the first songwriters to put that idea in my head, but
that particular line still springs readily to mind, and my own catalog is
filthy with that sort of thing.  And I'm damn proud of it!
  

    
I love that song and I've never been able to parse the lyric.
  

    

It's another of Bernie Taupin's charming bits of Americana, of a piece
with all of "Tumbleweed Conenction."

What about the other little ditty right next to it - "Solar Prestige a
Gammon."  Total, intentional gibberish.
  

    
yeah! I spent *ages* trying to figure out what language it was in!

I was always amused by the song on Madman Across the Water ...I forget
the name of it, but the one where he's singing about being an Indian,
and I wanted to play it with Peter Gabriel's San Jacinto, and then find
some other song by an Englishman singing about being an Indian so it
could be a threefer.
  

    

"Madman Across the Water" has some great songs and some awesome production.
The strings on the title track are amazing.
  

    

You've often described your songwriting self to me as "not prolific," and,
yet, it seems your output has been increasing over the past couple of years.
Do you attribute the greater composing productivity to the focus
on/commitment to your music career? If not that, then why the spike in new
tunes the last couple-three years?
  

    

Necessity is a mutha!  As my fortunes have improved and my gigs have gotten
better, I've felt a greater need to keep growing.

And I also have some things I want to say.  The subject matter of my
songwriting has been more along the lines of positive messages - that's the
Jeb Puryear (Donna the Buffalo) influence.  Both Jeb and his bandmate Tara
Nevins write and perform songs that are spiritually positive without being
hippy-dippy.  I asked Jeb once if he was espousing any particular philosophy
or religion, and he replied: "No.  I just think that if you're going to get
people's attention, you might as well say something positive."  Or words to
that effect.

Last year I sat with with Lorin Rowan and in an afternoon we turned one of my
personal life-lessons into a fine song: "Every Kick in the Ass Is a Shove in
the Right Direction."  As I said earlier, I think "Surely You Jest" stilled
the angry voice in me for now, and I've been trying to get some of my life
lessons into my songbook.

I'm also tacking political and cultural themes with some gusto.  One of my
most effective songs in recent years is "Who Will Save Us from the Saved?"
( http://dgans.com/lyrics.html#SaveUs ) I set out to express my dismay and
concern about the encroachment of theocrats on American public life in the
most even-handed of terms, and the feedback I've gotten on the song has been
overwhelmingly positive.

I've got another song i the works right now that I don't want to say much
about because the concept is tricky and I may not be able to pull it off.  I
spent a delightful afternoon kicking it around with Stevie Coyle of The
Waybacks; his sense of humor is perfect for this idea, and he co9ntributed
some fine thoughts to it.  I'm hoping we'll have a chance to get together
again soon to finish it.

The loop-based composing I'm doing right now is really satisfying and really
challenging.  I am going to have to bring actual sheet music out on tour with
me, I think.  As these improvisations become compositions, there are four or
five (or more) musical gestures that give each one its character, and the
easiest way for me to remember the particulars is the old-fashioned way.  And
I haven't read notes off a page since high school (before I took up guitar
and ditched the clarinet).
  

    

(By the way, I'm about to head over to KPFA to host a four-hour tribute to
Vince Welnick, a member of the Tubes and then The Grateful Dead, who died on
June 2.  I'll be on the air from 8 pm til midnight, on KPFA 94.1 in northern
California, and streaming online at kpfa.org, kfcf.org, and nugs.net

Vince and I played together many times over the last ten years.  He was a
brilliant musician and a sweet, if somewhat haunted, man.  I've got quite a
few of his old friends and bandmates calling in, too.)

(I'll upload some of the music I've been talking about tomorrow, to that page
I mentioned before:  http://www.dgans.com/inkwell
)
  

    
(Five for Fighting has a lot of that what's-his-name-like string stuff
on early Elton John albums.)
  

    
My favorite version of Lazy River Road- maybe ever, anywhere- is one
that you told me was a 'mistake in musicmaking' and you didn't like it
because you felt you made mistakes.  Then I used the analogy of Jerry
throwing Phil down the little flight of stairs and them later using the
tracks for the live album. Ever since then I've been trying to hear
what you hear, why you don't like it, but I can't hear it.

Then I started on Echolalia and asked for your favorite version and
you said you didn't have a feeling about the merits of one performance
over another.

That said, how do you know when you've done a performance you're proud
of? And how do you know when you've not? Both after the gig and after
listening to the recording?
  

    
Just finished listening to Vince sing 'Golden Days'. You said you
tried it and didn't feel it was right for your voice. Can you explain?
Thanks.
  

    

> My favorite version of Lazy River Road- maybe ever, anywhere- is one that
> you told me was a 'mistake in musicmaking' and you didn't like it because
> you felt you made mistakes.

That was an attempt to play "Lazy River Road" w/ the loop station.  I thought
I'd record a rhythm and play a solo later, as I do with other songs, but I
played so badly over the recorded accompaniment that I decided I'd be better
off leaving it as a pure solo acoustic number.  I may try that again, but the
song is so perfect in its simplest form that I suspect I'll always bring it
back to that.



> Just finished listening to Vince sing 'Golden Days'. You said you tried it
> and didn't feel it was right for your voice. Can you explain?  Thanks.

There's a lot in the lyric that feels a little thin to me.  It works amaz-
ingly well as performed by Vince, because it is his cri de coeur and he
poured a vast amount of personal pain and passion into every version of it
I've ever heard.

When I tried performing it, just me and my acoustic guitar in my living room,
it didn't seem like it would ever get off the ground.  I may take another run
at it - I would like to keep the song alive, because it expresses something
important, but it may turn out that I can't.  I feel that it does fit my
personal narrative - there are things he says in there that I can say
truthfully in my own voice, but I'm a different kind of musician working with
a different set of tools.  As Mister Natural famously said, "Use the right
tool for the job!"  If I don't feel I'm the right tool for that job, then I
won't do it.
  

    

I've just added "Who Will Save Us from the Saved?" and "Shove in the Right
Direction" to the collection of sound files at http://www.dgans.com/inkwell
  

    
Two questions (well, perhaps more):

First, to return to looping for a bit (sorry if my questions are
"loopy," Steve ... I'm more than a bit loopy myself!).  This isn't the
first time you've done work with digital technologies in creating music
-- there's also your earlier "Mutilaudio" stuff.  Are there any
connections between the two either conceptually or in terms of process?
 And would you ever anticipate a melding of the two approaches -- a
deconstructed cut-up piece entering into a loop work as one of the
layers?  Or perhaps a looped work subjected to the Mutilaudio
technique?

And, second, even the title of "Who Will Save Us From the Saved?"
suggests that some of your recent work has a strong political element. 
Could you comment some on that?  Do you see yourself as a "political"
artist?
  

    
David, one of the obscure items from the Gansian oeuvre that we happily 
have on our shelf is your book on Talking Heads.

Do you have any delicious TH stories that might not have made it into the 
book?
  

    
I'll second that question!  

Especially since with the new Talking Heads reissues I've been getting
deeply into their music all over again.
  

    
And I can't resist the impulse to tell a little Gans/Talking Heads
story either ...

On one of the many occasions when I've had the pleasure of watching
David perform at the Suwannee Music Park down here in northern Florida,
he opened his set with a great version of "Psycho Killer."  There were
many befuddled faces around me in the amphitheatre there, & I heard
someone nearby say something like "... but he's a DeadHead, isn't he? 
What the hell do DeadHeads know about the Talking Heads???"
  

    
The name of that band is Talking Heads, dammit.  ;-)

This Deadhead knows a *lot* about Talking Heads. I always hated that 
provincial attitude in certain corners of the scene.
  

    
And I know that David has plenty to say about the travails of having
to deal with that kind of provincial attitude!
  

    

David Gans wrote the book on Talking Heads!
  

    

The Talking Heads book project was offered right after I turned in "Playing
in the Band."  My approach to the band was rebuffed, and in fact some of the
people I approached for interviews told me that were advised not to par-
ticipate (but some of 'em did anyway).  So it wound up being purely a re-
search project.  I enjoyed it, but it wasn't nearly as much fun as I had
hoped it would be.

The editor who signed the project left the publisher before the book came
out, and the publisher decided to discontinue that type of book - trade
paperbacks on music, or whatever - so "Talking Heads: The Band and Their
Music" sank almost immediately.  It was never promoted, and went out of print
very quickly.  Furthermore, the publisher reneged on their contractual
obligation to make the books available to me when it was deleted from their
catalog.  So I wound up with a handful of copies and the rest were fed to
pigs or whatever.  I occasionally pick up a copy in a used book store so I'll
have one on hand (no matter how ragged) to give as a gift of to a journalist
or whatever.

The publisher licensed it for publication in the UK, and I have one copy of
that edtion, which has a different cover.

You can see both covers at http://www.trufun.com/books/

I do have a David Byrne story, though.

iFrom 1976 until the radio show became my day job in '87, I worked as a music
journalist.  One of my gigs was as music editor of Mix: The Recording In-
dustry Magazine.  I got an assignment to interview Leslie Shatz, who at the
time was doing the sound design for Byrne's movie "True Stories."  I went to
Russian Hill Recording in San Francisco to interview Shatz and Byrne.

One fun thing that happened that day was that I was drafted to assist with a
bit of Foley work.  I held a large rubber band and twanged it in front of a
microphone as part of the sound effects for a scene on the assembly line that
featured Jo Harvey Allen.

I also took that opportunity to invite David Byrne to a Grateful Dead show at
the Greek Theater the following weekend.  (This must be June 1986.)  He at-
tended, accompanied by producer Karen Murphy (who I had met earlier in con-
nection with her work on the masterpiece "This Is Spinal Tap").  I have a
photo of Byrne in the roped-off section near the soundboard, enjoying the
music.

After the show, I brought Byrne backstage to be interviewed (KPFA was broad-
casting the whole weekend).  Bob Weir was at the table, too.  All I remember
about the interview was quoting someone as saying Talking Heads were "the
Grateful Dead of the '80s" and asking Weir what he thought.  "God help 'em,"
was the reply.

If Byrne knew the journalist doing this story on Leslie Shatz was the same
one who had written a book about him over his and his management's objec-
tions, he never let on.  He was charming and personable in our interview for
the Mix piece.

Right around the time I went looking for photos and other materials for the
Talking Heads book, record company promo shots began being distributed with a
notice that they were for periodicals only and not authorized for publication
in books.  In my more paranoid moments, I feared I had single-handedly ruined
things for book authors.

And one more thing about that story: I misspelled Leslie Shatz's name in the
article!  I spelled it "Schatz" throughout.  He was very kind about it when I
ran into him a couple of years later and prostrated myself before him in
apology.
  

    

Regarding Gary's question about Mutilaudio as it relates to looping:

First of all, a definition: "Mutilaudio" is my contribution to the great
tradition of "appropriative art," which uses found objects or redeploys
things to make a statement.  Duchamp's "Fountain" is an example of
appropriative art ( http://www.beatmuseum.org/duchamp/fountain.html ), and so
are Dickie Goodman's "Space Man" records from the early '60s.

In the audio realm, Negativland and John Oswald are particularly brilliant
practitioners.  Oswald: http://www.plunderphonics.com
Negativland: http://negativland.com

I've got several Mutilaudio pieces here: http://www.trufun.com/mutilaudio/
At the bottom of that page you'll find a link to an article on me by Cynthia
Dyer-Bennet from MicroTimes magazine, and an article on John Oswald that I
wrote for Wired.


My live looping work is entirely live: I've never used a pre-recorded track
or sample.  I wouldn't rule it out - there are laptop-based performances
going on all over creation, although I've never tried to use any of those
tools.  Everything I do live is done on the spot, and for the time being it's
going to stay that way.  But I could see making a rhythm track from found
sounds - a sort of low-level Mutilaudio - but these are two different art
forms in my mind.

On the other hand, I've been using the digital audio workstation to develop
live and studio loop pieces.  The record I'm working on now will consist
(almost?) entirely of loop work, sculpted after the fact.  (My first working
title for this record was "Slightly Sculpted.)

I've posted a work in progress at http://www.dgans.com/inkwell - it's called
"Honeydew-> Perfect Peach."

On April 20, I went into Jeremy Goody's studio here in Oakland, accompanied
by my friend Hal Month.  Hal lives in your town (Tallahassee), Gary; he tours
with an Athens-based band called Cosmic Charlie and he hosts a weekly gig at
the Warehouse in Tallahassee called Dead Keys and Friends.  Hal was coming
to the Bay Area for a seminar, and he wanted to get together and play.  I
suggested we play in a studio rather than let our collaboration escape into
the ether.  As it happens, Jeremy has the same electronic keyboard that Hal
just bought: a Nord Electro 2 ( http://www.clavia.se/nordelectro/ ).  It
does a phenomenal job of delivering a wide variety of sounds, including a
pretty convincing Hammond B-3.

Jeremy recorded several versions of each instrument: we took a feed from my
guitar preamp, took the stereo feed form my amplifier, and put a microphone
on the speaker as well.  From Hal's setup, we took a direct feed and miked
the amplifier.  This gave us great flexibility in editing and mixing the
results: with the unprocessed preamp feed, I had access to a raw version of
any note I played.

I'm still working on the recordings we made that day.  Jeremy and I are
editing and mixing some pieces, and I took one over to my friend Jim LeBrecht
at Berkeley Sound Artists ( http://www.berkeleysoundartists.com ).  Jim does
a lot of film sound, and he's got a fantastic array of tools including things
that can place sound in the 3-mindnsional audio world of 5.1 surround.  Jim
and I have taken one of the 4/20 jams to some wonderful places.

Give a listen to "Honeydew-> Perfect Peach" at http://www.trufun.com/inkwell/
It's a loop jam that has been edited and enhanced with the same tools I use
to mutilate audio, and then some.
  

    

> And, second, even the title of "Who Will Save Us From the Saved?" suggests
> that some of your recent work has a strong political element.  Could you
> comment some on that?  Do you see yourself as a "political" artist?

I've always had a strong desire to change the world, but my aproach and
methods have changed over the years :^)

As I said earlier, I've made a conscious decision to write songs that express
my thoughts and feelings about the world and our society.  I think art should
be political: as Brecht said, "Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a
hammer with which to shape it."

Growing up in the '60s and watching most of the ideals of that time crushed
under the wheels of fundamentalist and corporatist machinations, I've come to
the understanding that the world has to be changed one person at a time, not
by force but by persuasion and example.
  

    
"Who Will Save Us From the Saved?" is a fine song!

David, when you say:
> "Mutilaudio" is my contribution to the great tradition of "appropriative 
> art"

Does that mean you coined the term?   
  

    
It was actually the "Honeydew-> Perfect Peach" track that made me ask
the question about Mutilaudio.  I really love that piece -- rooted in
improvisation and on-the-spot composition, then re-formed and
manipulated afterwards to great effect.

That and the fact that Hal Month is a great keyboard player!  (Oh, and
not that anyone who doesn't live in Tallahassee cares, but he's not
doing the weekly Dead Keys events here any more -- he'll do one every
once in a while, but it's no longer a regular gig, unfortunately.)