Anp Quarterly V2 #3

A few weeks ago, me and Tobin Yelland (fantastic photographer and cinematographer) flew out to Austin, Texas to do a filmmaking workshop. The invitation was extended by our old friend Jennifer Brandon, who we know from her earlier lifeincarnations, first as a writer for Big Brother magazine and later as a successful music manager. In 2008, Miss Brandon left Los Angeles and the music industry behind and relocated to Austin looking for a new life. As we found out when we arrived, she’s found it. She’s now a director at the Austin School of Film, an incredible facility, just off the main drag in the city that offers filmmaking classes to young people in what I believe is a very progressive manner.

Aaron Rose: Much of your background up to this point has been in the music industry, what led you to make the transition to taking a management position at a film school?

Jennifer Brandon: The film school actually found me! The co-founders of the school, Anne Kelley, who had previously worked in band management, and her partner, Erica Shamaly, who was my college roommate, both heard I wanted to move back to Austin and offered me the position. They had the insight to know that my credentials as a music manager translated perfectly to the film industry. It’s the same really. You are dealing with really creative people. It might be a ten year old, a seasoned filmmaker or Bono, but they always need your help. And besides, once you’ve worked in entertainment you’re kind of stuck. Applying for jobs after being a band manager is almost like an astronaut looking for a normal job.

AR: What is the Austin School of Film’s history?

What kinds of classes do you offer?

JB: The Austin School of Film started as the Cinemaker Co-op in the late nineties. Basically it was a group of artists who got together looking to promote film production, postproduction and exhibition as an affordable art form. They offered workshops on filmmaking and artists from all walks started showing up including musicians, philosophers, writers and painters. These were people looking to express themselves creatively and be among peers.

The community really took to it and that’s what launched the school. We got a really good reputation. Anne Kelley then approached the group and said they should offer the same type of workshops to kids and teenagers. Back then the classes really focused on Super 8 projects, but now we’re focused on making art with both film stock and new technology. We have digital filmmaking, video production, software training, video game design, web design and animation classes.

AR: Does the school have an overriding mission statement pertaining to the way film is taught there?

JB: Absolutely! The main mission is to provide practical training and staying on top of the latest

technology. We try and get students away from thinking there is only one way of doing things.

We want our students to be able to get good jobs. It’s the practical experience and knowing how to be resourceful that lands you consistent work.

AR: What function do you feel you play in young filmmakers lives?

JB: It’s the same function as a band manager per se, but a bit more educational. The kids come to us and say they want to learn filmmaking, but perhaps have no idea what that really means. They tell us their ideas and we put together a practical curriculum and path for them. They may have a script already written, but have no idea where to get actors or how to work with a DP. Or they may think they want to be a director, but they are actually a natural born producer or editor. I give them suggestions on films to see or things to research. The kids are usually pretty in tune with music, but not necessarily artists and filmmakers. I also have to be really patient with them and not so blunt at times. That’s a challenge. People need to make mistakes to learn so I kind of guide their mistakes sometimes. Sometimes I feel like Michele Phifer in Dangerous Minds!

AR: Can you tell us about some of the projects you’ve worked on?

JB: Since I’ve been here, I’ve helped out with a lot of shorts and features that students came up with when they were teens and are just now finishing up in their early twenties. I watch their projects and give them notes, suggestions and help them figure out the next step. Rusty Kelley has made a 16mm ultra minimalist outsider zombie film called “Shores” and a short called “Thurible” about a girl and her family digging a hole in their backyard and performing a coming of age ceremony. Ben Foster is in post-production on a time travel epic called “Strings”. We recently took in a very talented young filmmaker named Brandi Sanchez and are helping her develop her short “He Said, She Said” into a full feature. We are working on animations for Tiger Darrow’s film “Picturebook” and are nurturing a group of 2D animators named Andrew Tu, Ryan

Sommerset and Jason Fisher. We also have an upcoming teenage telenovela filmed in Spanish about the lives of 2nd generation immigrants in Central Texas. I also curate filmmakers and artists for our monthly Artist Salon and Screening series and do a lot of writing myself.

AR: Do you feel that the film community in Austin is exciting? Do the kids from your school have a future in film there if they want it?

JB: I absolutely adore the film community in Austin. People here really love films and go out to see them because it’s their passion. It’s very different from Hollywood and New York. We also have the Alamo Drafthouse that shows 35mm prints of older films in addition to new films. You forget how much better it is to watch movies on the big screen. The Alamo even has their own film festival called Fantastic Fest that specializes in horror, fantasy, sci-fi, action and just plain fantastic movies from all around the world. Also, the city kind of shuts down around SXSW so the community can really partake in film, music and interactive media. Its rare to find that kind of encouragement. I feel the kids can get really good at being an artist or filmmaker and go on to do whatever they want.

I see kids way move advanced than some of the people we consider stars in LA or NY and they don’t even know it. Time moves at a different pace here, so you can get really good. It’s a great launching pad or home base. The longer I am back in Texas, the better I understand Richard Linklater, Wes Anderson and Mike Judge.

AR: What are some of your future plans?

JB: I’d like to get the films coming out of here distributed or form our own mini label. I’ve written a movie about the music industry called “Ms. Management” and have an epic flapper movie based on Zelda Fitzgerald that I’m writing now with my cousin. I have a few art shows I want to curate as well. I’d also love to move into a bigger space to accommodate all the classes we need to offer. You’d be surprised how many people still don’t understand all the technology that’s available and how to use it creatively. I guess I just hope we can use media to make the world a better place, connect everyone up more creatively.

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INTERVIEW BY AARON ROSE PORTRAIT BY TOBIN YELLAND IMAGES COURTESY OF AUSTIN SCHOOL OF FILM

The Kreuzberg district of East Berlin is most definitely ground-zero for all things new and hip in the city. Walking the streets there one finds a wide variety of small boutiques, restaurants, record stores and more all mixed in with the local community. But, like all great cities…it has it’s secrets. One of the best discoveries I’ve had recently is Motto Books. Tucked away just behind the main street, down a back alley and through an unassuming courtyard, lies a little gem of a bookstore.

Started by photographer Alexis Zavialoff, and installed in what used to be an old jewelry store (with vintage fixtures intact), Motto is a book lover’s dream.

INTERVIEW BY CLARK RAYBURN / PHOTOGRAPHS BY ALEXIS ZAVIALOFF ANP: I’ve always known you as a photographer, what inspired you to get into books?

Alexis Zavialoff: This idea came as a natural evolution of still being a photographer, but getting more and more involved with publishing and all its aspects. I’ve been working for many

adventure is no exception. I still feel very far away from being an expert, everyday I discover a new publisher. I think I would just say I pick a book and imagine it on my own shelf, and then I imagine if I would still have it there in 20 years and feel the same about it, but that might sound like an idealistic naive

magazines and other projects, always helping for all kinds of matters in the D.I.Y process. Since I tend to travel a lot and stay in different countries for longer periods as well, I’ve always been searching for interesting stuff in these places, and that includes bookstores as well. I relocated to Switzerland a few years ago, some 10 years after starting photography and magazines, and I realized that most magazines were not really available there.

I then met some people, and among them was Benjamin from Nieves who was distributing a few things, and offered me to take over, in order to concentrate on his own publishing only. I started with few titles I was already working for or close to, and very soon after I received a call from a big distributor asking me to order from a catalogue of 600 magazines I could get supplies from. Today I still have lots of magazines, but I am also more and more interested in books and smaller self published items.

ANP: What gave you the idea to open a bookstore?

AZ: I wasn’t exactly planning to open the store in Berlin, and I think that the location made a big impact on my decision. I was just there and it seemed that this space was just waiting for someone to take it. At a certain moment it came more or less naturally, as a continuation of the distribution activity, and it is also a place where I can concentrate on my research, deciding what I display and highlight.

ANP: What kind of things would you say you specialize in? Is there a focus to the books you stock?

AZ: As I mentioned, I originally started by distributing magazines and it’s still a big interest. I have been working on assembling selected magazines archives, but still selling them.

Most of them are art publications like Texte Zur Kunst, Afterall, Cabinet, Uovo, Dot dot dot, A prior, Gagarin, Foam, Zing, etc.

I also have selected design and fashion titles I concentrate on like Purple and all the related publications, A magazine, Self Service, Odds and ends, Liebling and so on; in general the more experimental ones. I am now also collaborating with few people to build up a big selection of artists books and self published items of all kinds, and I would hope that with time I can have rare editions as well. Actually, I wanted to mention that ANP is missing on my list!!

ANP: What is your criteria for choosing a book?

AZ: I have been learning everything by doing, and this new

cliché. I have to mention that I particularly admire Christoph Keller’s approach to publishing and collecting.

ANP: You chose to open in the Kreuzberg neighborhood. Why did you choose this location?

AZ: It is a decision who came automatically with the fact that I am living there, my friends with their business are also there and the space itself was just perfect for my idea... Beside this I do believe that Kreuzberg is an interesting area where to start something nowadays in Berlin, as lots of people are moving in, and I enjoy the cultural mix a lot there.

ANP: Why do you think Berlin is so active right now?

AZ: Even if I visit Berlin since 1994, I don’t know if I am the right person to speak about this, as I still feel quite new to the Berlin scene after not even a year living here. But after residing in the south (Barcelona, 10 years ago), and East (Praha), the city seems like a nice melting pot, and you can achieve many things with little money. Then, there is about 400+ galleries of all kinds, and possibilities to make different events in original locations still remain, even if you will hear that it was better before. I just think many people come here because it is still quite affordable compared to Paris or London for example, and despite the long winter, life is quite comfortable and not boring.

ANP: What are your future plans for Motto?

AZ: I have few ideas in mind with Motto, but things tend to go faster than me, and I just want to be careful. In a immediate time, I am working on various events and temporary stores and presentations, around Europe, preferably traveling East or South East. I am also inviting publishers for presentations in the store every month, and this is really motivating. Things being as they are, I am also close to launch a proper web store with selected rarities that I have been collecting.

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MOTTO BERLIN Skalitzer str. 68 10997 Berlin U1 Schlesiches Tor www.mottodistribution.com

Much like the human-sized pink cake box that temporarily sat in the bay window of his Victorian-style house, Noah Davis exists in a world that straddles absurdity and literality. But unlike anyone I know (save my college art history professor), Noah Davis’ mind reads like a complete art historical encyclopedia. At twenty-five years old and with a short (but impressive) exhibition history in tow, Davis creates contemporary, pertinent imagery that combines the invented and the factual. This tension exists throughout Davis’ work: nostalgic and saccharine, unsettling and grotesque. The gigantic confectionary container was in fact a recent collaborative conceptual venture by Noah Davis and his wife, Karon Vereen; one of many projects that expand beyond the painting stretchers that provided Davis with instantaneous inertia into the art world.

After walking away from art school and taking on odd jobs of all sorts, Noah Davis’ paintings have unexpectedly found themselves in high demand. Years of resisting brush-to-canvas work led to Davis’ return to painting…and painting…and more painting. Top collectors quickly took notice and gallery-goers paused with near synchronicity in front of Davis’ canvases.

The paintings are undeniably entrancing—they draw you in close and then knock the wind out of you—leaving you wanting more. Davis’ painted subjects are deeply psychologically focused, but they also act as a discreet punch line—if you picked up on the joke in the first place. The paintings stand in as narrator for forgotten or suppressed moments in American history as told through a modern lens. They quietly remark on the banality and sadness of daily life; they point to tired stereotypes and strained classifications. All at once, Davis is a historian, a surrealist, a storyteller, a comic and a sentimentalist. In February 2009, fellow painter and art fan Ed Templeton, visited Noah Davis at his Los Angeles home to discuss art, its history and working off-the-beaten-track.

TEXT AND INTERVIEW BY ED TEMPLETON PORTRAIT BY ED TEMPLETON IMAGES COURTESY OF ROBERTS & TILTON, CULVER CITY, CA.

The Waiting Room, 2008, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 50x65”

Ed Templeton: Where were you born?

Noah Davis: In Seattle.

ET: And when did you start painting?

ND: I can’t remember not painting. I painted as a kid. My mom was an art teacher. She taught at the middle school I went to before I went there. I went there for one year while she was teaching and it was really awkward having my mom as the teacher. She was busting all these kids for smoking pot; so all the kids hated me. They were all white kids smoking pot, and they thought I was so uncool. I got a bunch of shit for that. My mother painted kind of Gaugin-ish, she wasn’t a professional painter or anything but she inspired me. She painted at home and she would take classes, and would show me around. So I was always surrounded by art. I started to take it seriously in high school, they had a realist V school in Seattle, and I took a couple courses there. Art wasn’t popular, nobody did that shit, and at a certain age everybody stopped painting…

ET: Time to grow up, get a job?

ND: Yeah, or start rapping. Being an artist wasn’t cool. I felt like the only one, or there was only one other kid making art in Seattle. So I would stay home and paint. My parents got me a studio, I lived in West Seattle, and I made these really fucking awful paintings, I can’t even describe them they’re so bad. I was looking at other artists, I would go to the library and do research. I was very much into the 80s at that time. I wanted to paint like Eric Fischl but I couldn’t get it right and they came out really bad. So I applied to Cooper [Union School of Art] and I drew a lot, I just kept drawing. My application was all drawings and I got in. I don’t know how I did. When I got to Cooper my whole world changed in terms of art making. Hans Haacke was my first sculpture teacher, I just remember being eighteen and making these really awful sculptures, and trying to explain my bullshit theories on art to him. I never even thought about sculpture at all, I just wanted to be a painter. I made some of the worst sculpture! [Laughs] I failed his class.

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Installation View, Nobody, 2008, Roberts & Tilton Messenger Multiples 4, 2008, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 30x40”

ET: You can fail a sculpture class?

ND: I got a very bad grade despite doing every project. I worked my ass off. I just had no idea what I was getting into, nor did I know how to build things, I learned how to fabricate very early on. I had to do a lot of studying. It came really fast, and I started to get it.

ET: So at Cooper you were doing everything—painting sculpture and drawing?

ND: Yes, except I didn’t paint. I was looking at my friends’ work and it was so much better it was fucking embarrassing so I just stopped painting. I worked on films, 16mm films, and I took a bunch of drawing classes. Drawing to me was central—they had the Drawing Center in New York and I would always go down there. To me drawing was the best way I could get out my ideas along with film, and photo. I was trying to do photography but I’d be in the darkroom and—the whole F-Stop thing—I just couldn’t take a good picture! I knew what I wanted to take, but I failed miserably.

ET: Do you still draw a lot? I have only seen paintings.

ND: Yeah I draw all the time! I think you have to draw first before you can paint. Even after you paint for a while, it’s always important to go back to drawing. There are certain limitations to drawing that make you a better painter. But for me drawing is a very important part of the process in terms of line.

ET: You were saying earlier how you feel archaic the way you paint so traditionally, but I saw these abstracts you did on linen, with purple shapes. A complete departure for you.

ND: That’s the thing. Making a film is so different than making a painting, but your presence is there. When I did those paintings I was at the hospital, at Cedars Sinai taking care of a relative, and I was trying to work on an upcoming show and I didn’t know what to do with these linen canvases I had prepared. And there were all these Ellsworth Kelly paintings in the hospital—it was crazy! They were amazing. Nobody was painting because of the election and the political climate was crazy. I knew I had a show coming up and it was going to be during the election. I was so overwhelmed about what was going on and how everybody was reacting that I just felt like the paintings I was making before were just not relevant. I’m very nervous, I’m a shy kind of person, and none of the paintings I had done before were ever really shown.

So this was my first show. Even at school I never showed. I was one of those kids who would smoke cigarettes in the back and just show films. It was very hard for me to come to that decision to make these really formal paintings.

ET: Was it also to test yourself?

ND: Yeah, like asking myself, “Am I full of shit? Is regurgitating these very old-style type paintings, reminiscent of the 60s or formalism—do they still apply now? Or are these just mediums to say what’s going on right now?” For instance, somebody today could make a map of England using an ancient old style, but it’s still relevant. Like folk art is relevant too, it’s just a different style. I wanted to change my style.

ET: I was wondering what pushed you to do that?

ND: Because a lot of the art I made before was rebellious against what I learned at Cooper, which is very much about craftsmanship and about each line being extremely perfect. It was a very German education. The paintings I was making when I first started showing with a gallery were a total rejection of everything I had learned. And

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that was very hard for me to do. It was the first time I was given an entire room, so I wanted to make the Nobody exhibition (October, 2008, Roberts and Tilton Gallery, LA.) very cohesive and peaceful. They were very much inspired. I worked really hard on those paintings and I really thought about how they fit in that particular space. I was trying to think differently. But as soon as the show was done I was running back to my old style. There is comfort in that.

ET: I have heard that you are an astute observer of art history. What are some of the historic references or parts of history you are interested in?

ND: I went to a Singer-Sergeant show when I was fifteen and remember walking away totally blown away by the scale and the perfection of the brushwork. I really like early Gorky and De Kooning, as well as Freud and R.B. Kitaj. Viewing the newer painters like Lisa Yuskavage and Lisa Ruyter, Hernan Bas, Daniel Richter has also been influential to me. I went to the Met a

Isis, 2009, Oil and acrylic on linen with rabbit-skin glue, 48x48” Casting Call, 2008, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 60x62”

lot while I was in college. I would see myself as a broke collector in an imaginary world collecting things I can’t afford. I would run over to the galleries uptown and pretend I was some fancy collector buying art with pretend money. I love that galleries are free. You know I just saw the Mona Lisa for the first time? It’s so corny, but my dad who’s a lawyer—we were in Paris and I was bummed out in the hotel room, and he says, “Lets just go to the Louvre.” And he, the one guy who I thought never gave a shit about painting, took me to see the Mona Lisa! To me, the paintings in the Louvre were just—they made me think I don’t know shit about art; there is so much studying I have to do. I wish I had time to just look at every painting.

ET: My first trip to the Louvre, I hated it. I thought, “I hate this old art!” I want to see the Impressionists; I want to see Picasso and Monet. Now that has flipped. In Paris there is so much Impressionism, it’s so printed and reproduced, and part of popular culture. So when I went back to the Louvre, the religious paintings from the 1600s and the Renaissance paintings spoke to me much more. I see that in your work.

ND: Yeah, I’m not trying to make a pretty painting. A lot of the old painters had a really funny sense of humor. The trompe l’oeil where they put a fly on the painting or something that is not supposed to be there—it’s hilarious. And that’s conceptualism well before Duchamp. What’s awesome about old paintings is that they are communicating the exact same things people are communicating now. You can make a painting now that can compete with TV and film. It’s not a dead medium. If I can still get something out of an old painting, then I can make a painting now and someone can still get something out of it much later. I see Caravaggio and am amazed. I really like [James] Ensor. Balthus is my all-time favorite.

ET: That is something we have in common! What draws you to Balthus?

ND: The sense of humor of the painter, and of course the young girls. Its so funny because there is this trend of “youth culture” and he was very much making fun of it, or exploiting it. And the way he paints, the way he lived his life. For him, like Kitaj too, it was also very much about composition. Look at some of Balthus’ street scenes.

ET: Did you graduate from Cooper?

ND: No I didn’t. I got kicked out or asked to leave. I was a huge pothead, and I couldn’t write. There is this Walter Benjamin book, Arcades Project and Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities, I read those book over and over, and I was just so stoned I

40 Acres and a Unicorn, 2007, Acrylic and gouache on canvas, 30.5x26.5” American Sterile, 2008, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 52x60”

couldn’t write. I was incapable of putting it into words. So if you fail a certain amount of courses, they kick you out. After that I just started working in restaurants I moved to Brooklyn and started painting again. I was trying to paint just like Balthus, but with black characters. Everything was really flat. They weren’t good; I could never get things the way I wanted to get them. That’s always been an issue with me. Wanting to say something and it coming out totally different when the painting is finished. And then it becomes more about the paint, or trying to fix that painting as opposed to me being a master of my materials and telling the audience exactly what I mean. Sometimes I feel so fucking amateur.

ET: You were recently chosen to be part of the 30 Americans exhibition that the Rubell Family organized during Art Basel Miami Beach last year.

Were you already in the collection? Or did they choose you especially for the exhibition?

ND: Yeah they had bought something at ArtLA in 2007, and had inquired about more paintings. I didn’t know the premise of 30 Americans—it wasn’t until much later that I discovered it was a celebration of contemporary black art. I felt a little like I was put into a box but then again, it’s the Rubell’s, so I felt very honored. I almost had a heart attack walking into that show. I had never really shown before, Nobody was my first show. I had looked at all these artists before, and here I am with them, among the ranks. The response was varied, people were nice, but then people were honest too.

From the artists in the show, to the collectors and gallerists, there were so many people in one space at one time that it was kind of incestuous. It was too much. But at the end of the day, I don’t give a fuck what anybody says. To me, the privacy of making a

Museum Guard Fishing, 2009, Oil and acrylic on linen with rabbit-skin glue, 48x48” Another Balcony, 2009, Oil and acrylic on linen with rabbit-skin glue, 48x48” Messenger Multiples 1, 2008, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 30x40.25”

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painting is what it’s all about. I hope my paintings are still around in a hundred years so I don’t have to explain any of it. I won’t be there to explain it for you.

ET: Did that show put you on the fast track, are things happening for you?

ND: Kinda—not really with the economy right now. I still have to pay for my canvases; I still have to balance everything. And with me not being really sure of where I want to go and what I want to say, it’s never a fast track. It could be a fast drop. I have to stay focused and not forget where I came from. Not forget why I love painting. Sometimes I can get really distracted. I’ll be reading artnet and such because I’m a fan; I’ve always been a fan even before I was making work.

ET: But reading all that can be poisonous.

ND: It’s so bad! I have so many friends who were so much better painters than me that just don’t paint anymore—it’s scary.

ET: Trying not to get burned. Are your paintings autobiographical?

ND: They are a joke on me usually. My life has always been like that; I’ve always been the youngest. They are not necessarily from my life. They are a mix of things like an old painting I might like and something I’m obsessed with at the moment, like a barbecue. There will be points when I’m so obsessed with an object. I’ve been

The Last Barbeque, 2008, Oil on canvas, 60.25x52” Candyman, 2007, Acrylic and gouache on canvas, 24x36.25x3” (opposite) NO-OD for Me, 2008, Acrylic and oil on canvas, 60.25x50”

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so controlled to think sculpturally, so I just want to paint it and get it out of my head. Things will really come to me—a family member will come and give me a photo, or I’ll turn a page and just riff on something I see. It will just come and it’ll get out all the hatred—not to be corny—but it will get out all the bad emotions that I used to drink away or fight away. It’s a real release.

ET: Have you ever painted a white person?

ND: Yeah! [Laughter] I painted one painting, and there is one white person. It’s funny because I paint white people better than I paint black people, I don’t know why; the whole irony is that I haven’t sold a painting to a black collector yet. But for some reason after looking at all the art in museums, books, etc. it felt absurd for me not to paint black people, and a lot of these paintings are based on old black movies—this is Paradise in Harlem (pointing at a series of somber, in-progress paintings staked on a table in a hallway) which is an all black cast back when you had to have an all black cast, there couldn’t be any white people in the film. Galleries weren’t much different at that time—it’s a riff on that. If I’m buying art, I’m probably going to buy a black person, even if it’s a white photographer. If you take a picture of a black person, is that considered black art? I think it’s still black art. But after a while it just becomes this certain aesthetic or decoration. It’s like lampooning black art sometimes, but I take it very seriously. Everything is so limited within black art; you get the same voice, and there is so much room to make fun of that. They won’t do that in films. But I can make a painting that can get the feel of that, because so much of it is really bad. It’s either about rap music, or you know, there is no in-between, there’s no normal shit. There are a couple of things that are over the top in my paintings, but for the most part I want it to be really boring.

TEXT BY JAMAL DUVAL / PORTRAIT BY R. DELGADO It’s 2009, as you know, and the bread is thin—but it feels good out here, free and looking forward with a new broadened perspective… And since nothing is actually free, and we can’t all have the luxury of being blessed with a job these days, we got to look at the upside. There’s finna be a lot more time for hanging around the house, that’s for sure. And what better way to spend time while you’re laid out? Especially if you own an old Zenith with a busted VHS deck, or have a standard definition T.V. and no UHF stations. Seems like everyone is kind of holding back right now, but it is our intention here at the QVR to bring you more. More videos from the Quarterly Video Review, and we’ve got an abundance this issue. A healthy surplus of individually unique, socially conscious films presented right here.

Tough times call for strong videos. Enjoy.

Five Easy Pieces (1970) Bob Rafelson Five Easy Pieces? A solid film shot out in Bakersfield. Tale of a gifted/ tortured, descendent of wealthy intellectuals, decides to head north upon receiving news of his old man’s health. The objective is an attempt at reconciling their differences. Tag line: “Walking away from all that is expected of him. He rode the fast lane on the road to nowhere.” What!? You don’t even get taglines like that these days.

Young Jack Nicolson works these sort of low pressure manual labor jobs, holds down fort with his old lady, likes to have a drink, maybe gamble a little and chase women with his dude, another young 30something. On occasion they take their broads out, hang out in diners, maybe go bowling, you know, nothing major. But when he hits the road, his woman forces her self into the mix and they set sail. Kinda got the dynamic of, say, Billy and Wendy in Buffalo 66. Bet everything was all bummed out and banal like that in the 60s. No naive romantic ideals here.

Belle du Jour (1967) Luis Bunnel In France during the 60’s I guess you would pay a prostitute to kiss her on the mouth. Weird right? Man, this movie is hectic. This aristocratic, paid couple has been married for a while and the dude, Pierre, feels bad for wanting to consummate their vows, or something. The thing is, though, Severine’s really freakish but hasn’t figured out how to channel it yet, so dude’s all worked up but really kind and patient. Until one afternoon in the cab ride home, Severine learns form her friend that a girl they knew from highschool got turnt out, and like a light switch, Severine is turned on. Belle de Joure, man, the fate of the two will surely move you. Rent it tonight and watch it with your old lady.

No Man’s Land (1987) Peter Werner Similar to the initials in his name, D. B. Sweeny plays the key role of an undercover Donnie Brasco style informant. Police chief Randy Quaid is trying to take down a ring of pimped out Porsche thieves. Under cover D. B. takes employment at a local garage, gets in pretty tight with the guys, and befriends big boss man himself, Ted Varrik.

They race cars, boost cars, pop bottles, pop tags, spend money and socialize. Rookie cop D.B. quickly learns how to boost $80,000 cars for fun and for profit. It even gets to a point were they boost three Porsches in one afternoon while riding around in a stolen Porsche.

Made it look so good I had to go and strip the housing from the steering column in my ride.

Bad Dreams (1988) Andrew Fleming Member of a 1970s religious cult and the sole survivor of an assisted mass suicide awakens from a fifteen year coma. Though she can’t immediately recall any memory from the tragic event, she is committed to a psych ward similar to the ones in A Nightmare on Elm Street. Man, I love when a movie falls into the lineage of other awesome already existing films. Like, say, Richard Lynch from God Told Me To, returning to the screen in here as Harris, leader of the mid-70s religious cult, baptizing followers in gasoline. In Bad Dreams he’s trapped inside of another burning building. Then you also got Dan, the pre-med student from Stuart Gordon classic ReAnimator, featured here in this fine film as Dr. Karmen. Did you catch that? It’s sort of like the back-story for these characters exists within other movies, building upon the unified myth. Also starring Ralph, the dude from Summer School, Sy Richardson as the agro cop and lead actress Jennifer Rubin from Dream Warriors, another must-see for any true 80s horror video advocate.

Songs From the Second Floor (2000) Roy Anderson Lennart is assigned the task of laying off 1,000 employees. A boss exec holds no accountability and is simultaneously working on his tan indoors. A city locked in gridlock. A taxi driver who takes everything to heart. A magician who’s a failure.

A conference in the board room bent with the intent to determine why the employees can no longer afford to work, and a whole lot of disenfranchised folks take to the streets, literally fighting for better times, because in times like these you have to struggle for every crumb.

The Loveless (1982) Katherine Bigelow This picture is what you call “ragged,” you know, way beyond tore up. 1950’s greaser outlaws get caught off on a small stretch of highway where they drink 10 cent bottled pop, smoke, dine and stretch out. Tag line: “Sworn to fun loyal to none.” I like how old boy, Willem Dafoe, calls money “scratch.” It also features the younger sister from the Stains movie (recently out on DVD); not Diane Lane and not Laura Dern but Jane Berman, man. Not one to be taken lightly.

The Shining (1980) Stanley Kubrick The Shining was shot and filmed in the negative ratio (1.37:1) with the entire negative exposed. They had the crop marks masking the top and bottom of the view finder, so the shot was composed with that 2 to 1 ratio for viewing in theaters. So, when you see this movie in wide screen, the whole top and bottom third of the frame is missing. Now, say you got a copy of the Shining on VHS, or you were to catch it on cable somewhere in the 90s on an old standard def T.V. set, what you would be seeing is closer to the whole image. So in a literal sense you would be getting more, which is what we here at the QVR intend to deliver. More videos for your viewing pleasure and more of them, enjoy.

Near Dark (1987) Katherine Bigelow By this point it should be recognized, anything Katherine Bigelow got her hands in is gold.

Near Dark has probably one of the cleanest police shoot-outs in movie making history. VampiresVS-the Kansas State Patrol in broad daylight, behind a burning blanket, and into a murdered out Dodge Econoline with the windows duct taped up. Pretty note worthy cast here, too; all the actors on the box cover were in Ridley Scott’s Alien.

Also features the savage kid from Rivers Edge, and the dude whose lady died in Drugstore Cowboy.

Day in and day out this movie is winning.

The Wild Life (1984) Art Linson Someone told me recently that this hadn’t yet been released on DVD, and I was like hmm... Sucks for you dude. Guess you didn’t get to see the part where they put the poodle in the microwave. You didn’t even know that they went and made a sequel to Fast Times at Ridgemont High? Yeah man, totally, but instead of Sean Penn they got Chris Penn and your boy Eric Stoltz, along with Dennis Quaid, Rick Moranis, Young Lea Thompson (Marty’s mom), Jenny Wright from Near Dark, dude from Repo Man, uhmm, Wyatt from Weird Science. The end is the beginning of the school year, I mean come on, how brilliant is that?

Favorite line: “Mom says you came home with beer on your breath.”

Possession (1981) Andrzej Żuławski I’d say this one’s right up there with, like, The Shining or even John Carpenter’s The Thing. Starring Isabelle Adjani (Nosferatu) and Sam Neil in this painfully polarizing tale of love and deceit, so effective it kind of hurts. There are two U.S. versions available, but what you need to do is get the full length, un-cut, widescreen, version from Vestron Video, it’s the copy with the two theatrical trailers at the end.

Otherwise you might have the cut version, and that’s no good.

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Manhunter (1986) Michael Mann Manhunter is one of those movies that makes Michael Mann the man.

Any film that opens with a sleeping person getting a flashlight shined on ‘em is going to be heavy. They got Hannibal Lecter all posted up in a cell with his socks on, young Tom Noonan as Lecter’s protégé’, the Tooth Fairy, a sociopath who murders families in their homes. A tranquil tiger with a heavy heart.

Even forensics specialist Chris Elliot gets his background props.

Made in USA (1988) Ken Friedman Here’s another cutty old buddy flick with Adrian Pasdar from Near Dark alongside a QVR favorite, Chris Penn. Kind of nice how everything’s pieced together, kind of like a photo scrap book/roaming travel log thing.

A little reminiscent of several other old road flicks, but hey, there you go, tried and true. Gotta hand it to these dudes, some serious hi jinks ensue, weather it’s fucking around, boosting or philosophizing, there’s a message. Tuck: “Why did the punk rock chicken cross the road?” Dar: “’Cause he was headed to Trestles Beach.”

Foxes (1980) Adrian Lynne Man, my store would have all kinds of video sections, but this one would get a category all to it’s own.

Gotta respect what they’re doing here man, young teen delinquents, all female crew, trying to look out for each other. Kind of like Lean On Me meets Stand By Me, tied in there with a few cool Hollywood landmarks. And if you’re down for Jodie Foster in hectic youth rolls and movies with long titles like The Girl Who Lives Down the Lane and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Any More, it’ll be refreshing to get it in short for once: Foxes. The photography looks good and uses some pretty impressive natural light. It even has old boy from Charles in Charge doing some downhilling with the assistance of some late 70’s styled skateboard stunt choreography. Not a bad look.

Falcon and The Snowman (1987) John Schlesinger This is a great movie, and it’s also one of the videos I like to keep categorized in a neat little stack along side titles like Bill and Ted, Cheech and Chong, Harold and Maude, Tango and Cash, Reuben and Ed, umm... Harley Davidson and the Marlbro Man, Bonnie and Clyde, Curt and Courtny, Tupac and Biggie. Favorite line: “No, I am not, I am a tourist. I am a business man.

I am a republican!” Look out for Lee and Boyce, The Before And After Pictures, Expatriates In Paradise.

Speed Freaks Video (1989) Toney Roberts Pretty epic video right here, and a good one to have a back up copy of. Speed Freaks, Freaks On Display was released when I was in junior high. Cool thing about this video is as a Speed Wheels video it features a long roster of rippers: Grosso, Vallely, Dressen, Knox, Blender, Hosoi, young Danny Way, Natas, GSD, Magnusson, Ron Allen, Jason Jesse, Thiebaud, Salba, the Godoys.

I always liked how it would show the wheel the rider preferred right next to his name like, “I ride 60mm OJ Street Razors 92a.” Cool titles, clever inserts, good skating, always rad to see people skate the streets of S.F. and not many videos show footage from Psycho City in it’s day.

All pluses. Lunar Power, Moon Tan, Moon Burn, Hellen Keller.

Dogs of War (1980) John Irvin Come on now, you can’t just sit around watching 80s bikini movies like Dangerous Curves or Bikini Car Wash Company all day. People will never take you seriously. Naw, man, you want to be watching movies that are more like this. Movies about mercenaries and arms dealers.

Movies with Christopher Walken in them. Solid, impactful movies about covert wars, foreign affairs, and how governments subvert public interest. Movies like Dogs of War, Salvador, Apocalypse Now, you know, Falcon and The Snowman, I mean Deadline, Deer Hunter type movies man. Get it together.

Murder One (1987) Graeme Campbell If I were to watch a movie about step brothers, it would probably be more along the lines of a video like this. A couple of convicts on a cross country crime spree, as told from a 15 year old boy‘s testimony.

Also happens to be one of those rare situations where the director seemingly manages to really suspend viewer disbelief. Nothing seems too over the top, fake or exploitive — the characters feel all too real. Henry Thomas’ narration is perfect, too; the kid is a natural, and gives a convincing performance as a mellow young teen burn out. You’ll be psyched to see him outside of the likeable characters he’s played in prior films like E.T. and Cloak and Dagger.

Wild Palms (1993) Katherine Bigelow Director of Point Break, Near Dark, and The Loveless, Katherine Bigelow goes for it with this extraordinarily off beat Twin Peaksesque 4hr made for television mini series. A multinational corporation attempts to take over America while small pockets of resistance attempt to hold out against rampant technology. Created in the early 90s before there was Photoshop or the internet, Wild Palms brings an uncanny vision of the beginning of the twenty first century. Mood poisoning, mind control, and virtual reality, look out.

Menace II Society (1993) Hughes Brothers There’s simply not enough strong hood cinema with that detailed inside perspective. Tired of that old informant eye view, I’m talking real deal, raw, uncut, no kid gloves, man, this what it looks like. Menace brings it in a real way while delivering a pretty bulletproof message: “whatever changes you need to make, you just do it”— the message is survival— “the hunt is on and you are the prey!” When Pernell talks it almost echoes, say, like, Rusty James in Rumble Fish, or how they used to talk of the gangs.

Strong performances from Spice 1, M.C. Eiht, and Too Short, too.

Alley Cat (1982) Edward Victor You really need to view this one on the big screen in order to fully appreciate the nuances and subtle qualities of this touchstone vengeance flick. Alley Cat should be viewed as a reference point by which all other street vigilante movies are measured. Perfect in every way, it possesses an excellent balance of street crime, swindling crooks, sweaty cops, vicious hoods, imprisoned women, corrupt judges, tormented elders, bad lines, foul language, and a little bit of nudity.

All necessary ingredients for any successful independent subgenre film. Other worthwhile vengeance videos: Don’t Mess With My Sister, Ms .45, and Straw Dogs.

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BEEF PROFILE

The day I got the Black Dice Assignment, I had my first bee profile, a blood test to determine bee allergies. The phlebotomist who drew my blood mislabeled the vial, so they tested for beef instead of bees. Weird life details of the insect variety proliferated while I worked on separately interviewing each Black Dice member, Bjorn, Eric, and Aaron, over a one month-period. After the beef profile, I got a gnarly spider bite hunting morels along the Hudson River. It was then I realized that Black Dice are less spidery than communal, like bees: of a hive mind. Their music sometimes sounds like a mutant queen bee hissing commands or navigating honeycombs. Bjorn Copeland, who is also an exhibiting artist, actually makes sculptures resembling beekeepers whose colonies have rebelled: figurine mounds stung by colored map tacks.

Black Dice is a band, but eleven years in, they see it more as a lifestyle. It’s an attitude, a neighborhood crew. They did name themselves after a Brooklyn gang, after all. Their music, video, and artistic efforts, at best, showcase aggression and use humor to undermine it. The infamous reputation that precedes them—for live sets that, in early days, resulted in serious violence, or at least cleared rooms—is hilarious in comparison to their gentle, friendly demeanors. They each have a sharp wit and genuine desire to experiment for the advancement of culture. Seriously, they’re that committed. Their uncompromising approach to art and music-making stemmed originally from an anti-sellout, punk ethos, but has developed into a wish to further world sonic conversation. American music has been changed by Black Dice. Half the one-sheets I get in the mail promoting new bands credit Black Dice’s influence. They’ve expanded definitions of music by challenging listeners to experience sound with more than their ears. While psychedelic bands did that, Black Dice makes sounds that are rougher, more discordant, and based on sounds coming out of the present tense. Maybe it is part chop-up and reassembly, part pushing the gear’s limits. Listening to their new release Repo, I’ve been thinking that Black Dice is a mirror, an enlightening force.

Hisham Bharoocha, one of Black Dice’s founding members, and the band’s drummer up through their album Creature Comforts, puts it this way: “I love their music because it’s the most original electronic music out there. Elements draw you in but repulse you, because you can’t even understand what the elements are. At their [Repo] listening party, I couldn’t even guess how certain musical parts were made. That’s when you can really see how your mind works: it starts comparing sounds to things you’ve heard in the past. And when you can’t find them, it gets weird. When you can make a truly original sound, it’s the best.”

Black Dice are historically tied to the RISD Fort Thunder scene. Formed in Providence in 1999 under the influence of hardcore scene and RISD bands like Lightning Bolt and Forcefield, they did not live at Fort Thunder but played many shows there. In the beginning, Eric and Bjorn Copeland, brothers from Brunswick, Maine who ended up in Rhode Island, created Black Dice with Bharoocha and bassist Sebastian Blanck. When they relocated to Brooklyn upon graduation from art school, Aaron Warren took Blanck’s place. Their history is earmarked by a sizable vinyl catalogue, each release gorgeously designed and decorated, including seven full-lengths, innumerable 7-inches and 12-inches, as well as split EPs with members of Animal Collective, Wolf Eyes, Erase Errata, and more. Eric Copeland also records epic solo records, and collaborates with Dave Portner as Terrestrial Tones. His most recent effort, Aliens in a Garbage Dump, may well be a warbled transmission from outer space. This prolific posse also made a now out-of-print collage book with Jason Frank Rothenberg, Gore, during the summer of 2006 when they recorded Broken Ear Record in Australia.

Live, Black Dice is a band that I never tire of seeing. They fill each venue with a certain magnetism that complements the space while punishing it sonically. I wear ear plugs. I haven’t seen many fights break out; rather, I see audiences transfixed, or people inventing abstract dances. Once, I saw a lady seductively twirling with water bottles in each hand, as if the bottles were batons. I’ve seen boys robot dance, girls pogo-jump, and there’s always head banging. People clench their teeth, close their eyes and look upward, swing their hair from side to side. Why does their music make humans act this way?

It’s so great. While the band claims they don’t improvise much, each set is so dynamic that I come away each time with different feelings. Sometimes it feels like whiplash, sometimes I feel like making out. This is, in large part, thanks to Danny Perez, the director and video artist who tours with the band and performs live video projections. His videos are gory, monstrous, processed color blasts based on repetition and variation that meld patterned imagery into ever-changing visuals. I’ve seen Black Dice play more than any other band.

An accurate, all-inclusive historical feature on the band, by Andy Beta, has come out recently in the inaugural issue of online magazine, Self-Titled. For readers who want a detailed history, that’s the piece. For ANPQ, my aim was to capture their character, their senses of humor, and to show how their minds drift like their music. Here, they speak about what they make and how Black Dice is a “vibe” and a way of life. I pieced together interview snippets collage-style, as a tribute to their aesthetic.

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TEXT AND INTERVIEW BY TRINIE DALTON PHOTOS BY JEFF WINTERBERG AND JASON FRANK ROTHENBERG ARTWORK COURTESY BLACK DICE

Performing inside of Peter Coffin’s Perfect If On show at Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York, 2002

1. HOW TO MAKE SOUNDS

Trinie: It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around how your music is made.

Aaron: I make a lot of sounds in studio, put them on the sampler. Some of what I bring to the band is loopbased, but now I’m into designing and processing sounds in studio. That’s how we can get melody out of one sound. Animate it. For Repo, we recorded maybe a third of the tunes ourselves. Composing is slow. If the vibe is good, we get a lot done. If there’s no vibe, it falls apart.

Plugging pedals into boards is only step one. Around 2000, when I first started playing boards and pedals, Geologist and [Dave] Portner were already playing the board, Wolf Eyes too. I took a sound mixing class at NYU, and by mistake this teacher fed-back through a board. It was the coolest sound ever.

Bjorn: I like the fact that [our sound] isn’t super understandable. Traditional Western music is still egodriven. Someone takes a solo, all that. We’ve dissolved it. Our instruments are hard to pull apart. I take pride in how we’ve learned how to get sounds out of this stuff.

Instead of sax and drums, we have a bunch of junk.

T: What’d you play on Repo?

Bjorn: I used Gavin [Russom’s] box, which is two filters and a ten-step sequencer. It kind of works like a synthesizer, you can turn the resonance up on the filters so they oscillate. I borrowed Noah [Lennox’s] Dr. Sample. I used pedals, Dr. Sample, and a guitar. It was simpler and less nerve-wracking than fixing the suitcase all the time.

T: What was in that suitcase?

Bjorn: Just a wall of knobs, toggle switches, and lights.

I love playing with it, but it was having an impact on Aaron and Eric. They’d get nervous. On Repo, we’re more like a rock band. At this point, Aaron mostly

uses new shit from Guitar Center, so he knows it will work. He uses the older filters to get samples, but he doesn’t have to bring everything on tour. Our songs are not like, hit play and add from there, sequence out the parts. It’s all done actively. There might be a beat made with a sample, played through effects, and a vocal yelp. So when that changes it’s not changing because the sampler changes it, but because we change it. That’s why it’s hard for people who like rigid dance music to get into it.

T: You play mostly guitar right?

Bjorn: Yeah. Basically, Eric and Aaron play old, 80s electronic drum set-ups and loops that they write instudio beforehand and will jam on. It’s not just a loop though. It doesn’t make sense until you push this down at this second in the loop, or hit this drum pad—those signals are sent between us. Eric sends me signals and I send him signals. We’re all connected.

T: What kind of signals?

Bjorn: He can take my guitar and dub the shit out of it. Or he sends me a drumbeat on something so it’s synched up with his part. But I’m the only one taking the snare, so the snare goes through my shit, so it’ll be like: This is a snare, hitting a delay, twice, hitting a guitar part, then that goes through a sampler. So we can all share. It’s not without its problems. If you fuck up, it can go through everybody’s set up. Like if you hit a clunker note, and someone else is taking your signal and has a shitload of delay on it, then it can get weird.

But it’s fun figuring out ways of doing that. We’ve never done anything that isn’t entirely based on our interests, which makes it a challenging band to follow in some respects. We’ve never done anything with an audience in mind, but then we resent it when people can’t make the leap with us. (laughs) T: How do you signal each other? What are your cues?

Eric: It depends on what someone else is doing within a practice. We make set lists based on what we can play

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in what order. We can go from that to that, or you guys can bullshit around while I get out of this. It’s very down to earth, how we make those decisions. We don’t share sounds too often. Bjorn and Aaron have a chord between them in one or two moments, and actually, Aaron may take some of Bjorn’s stuff to give it a bass presence. I’ve always been isolated.

T: You played guitar before Black Dice then started Dice just with a mic. Did you always have sampler boxes and pedals?

Eric: I borrowed something from Bjorn that boosted everything, you could turn it on and off and it made things feedback, but not like a distortion pedal. It was some custom thing. Then I started playing a cymbal with a contact mic. I think someone lent me a delay pedal, and from there I got a mixer. Since then, it’s been that. There are a number of things to go into it, but everything goes into this and gets treated before it goes out. With Repo, I did more mixer-to-mixer stuff.

Aaron builds sounds in studio for his sampler. I don’t have a sampler. I still use MiniDisc players because you can loop them. A lot of stuff I work on, I’ll put onto a MiniDisc. It’s not ideal, something can break or batteries [die]. Because of that, I’ve been trying to play my mixer like an instrument, so it sends out more than tunings. It goes out of that SEND and into a channel, and you turn up the SEND volume, and that creates a tone. Then you can do whatever, you can turn the EQ in a certain way and it’ll go through notes. You can turn it on and off and it’ll be a beep but if you out the delay on it that becomes a rhythm. Then you can change the pitch and it goes eh ho ho eh and it becomes really expressive.

T: So you have pretty good control over the melody.

Eric: Now I have more. Yes and no. It all starts very remedially for me. But that’s why for this one I didn’t wanted to break free from MiniDisc. I love them, but I don’t want to use them. I’m too paranoid. I may lose a disc on a trip, or get wasted and drop it. I carry them

with me everywhere. I’m careful, but this body of work, I took it back to a minimum. It’s reliable.

T: Then you plug that into amps? Power amps?

A couple bass amps?

Eric: Bjorn needs monitors to give him some of me, but in an ideal world, we can get by the way we are, and we’ve worked hard to set that up. I love having a professional sound system though. I like loud music.

T: Did you let sounds pile up or clean the mental space out before starting this new album?

Eric: For me this record was different. I was trying to master this simple thing instead of spreading myself thin with a bunch of non-related sounds. Usually, I throw it all out there and see what sticks. But for this record, I didn’t want things to be distant sounding production-wise. I didn’t want a bunch of reverb and delay. I’ve been saturated with that. I feel the same way about color right now. I’m so saturated in colors that I don’t respond. Everything has this multi-tiered reference. Something black and white to me all of a sudden isn’t about emphasizing differences but about homogenizing them, and I appreciate that. Shapes and shades.

have to turn like ten knobs in certain positions, and it became really hard. In the last four years, I’ve been getting away from that style.

T: [Eric], you used to be the only vocals.

Eric: No. I guess in the first body of shit, yeah. I don’t know how I even started playing anything else. At some point, Bjorn supported it being something else and I was grateful. We were all into exploring, right when Aaron joined. I only had a microphone, and no one really cared. That’s always been a good thing.

We’re lucky to be dealing with people who don’t give a shit about a lot of stuff. Sticking to one thing. Aaron dropped the bass to play a fucking champagne bucket with a mallet. He dropped the bass to play a tape machine. His part was to turn it off and on because it made these crazy sounds that he liked. He traveled with this antique, reel-to-reel tape machine! I was like, “That sounds good.” But it would have been a hard sell for some people.

T: Do you write out compositions?

Bjorn: We went through phases when we wrote things down, I kept notebooks to diagram songs. They started out as X’s and O’s and lines drawn, and after school, I started making pen drawings that were zoomed-in examinations of how textures overlap based on that way of notating. Now we just practice until we know it back and forth. Plus, we don’t play old stuff. I may be able to play one or two songs off Beaches and Canyons.

I don’t have any of the gear left—I sold my guitar, KAOS pads, some of the amps, half the pedals.

T: It’s funny that Aaron got into that because he comes from a hardcore music background.

Eric: But Aaron was also the kid who would eat acid and go work in the high school office. Or he’d be on tour, then have to sell blood, but then they’d steal gas anyways because the dudes spent the money on cigarettes. He’s one of the weirdest dudes ever, he’s super open. He’s into everything. We played this show in Dublin once, and it was really bad. This older woman, who was probably fifty, was throwing pennies at us yelling, “You suck! You’re the fucking worst!”

And she went up to Aaron, and was like, “I was making music like that forty years ago.” And he was so cool about it: “Oh, dude, really? I’d really like to hear some of that.” She said, “You sycophant.” He said, “No, seriously. You’re right, it wasn’t really one of our best shows.”

T: [Aaron], you started as a bass player, then started playing pedals and boards. How do you keep track of your sonic vocabulary?

Aaron: Yeah, we’ve gone through so many phases. In the Gore book, there are some notes like that. Pedal settings. We got into these complicated settings, we’d

T: Does he always take a neutralizing position?

Eric: He’s an incredible neutralizing force. Strangely, a friend of mine does astrology, and she was looking at ours. She said, “You and Bjorn are strong earth signs, and Aaron is this water sign.” That makes sense. He’s like a dormant lake between two big things.

(clockwise, from above) Performing at The Den, underneath Two Boots Pizza, New York 2000. Photo by Jeff Winterberg Performing at Mighty Robot, Brooklyn, New York, 2001 Performing at Brownie’s, New York, 2001. Photo by Jeff Winterberg (opposite, from top) Gore excerpt, 2005 8.5x11” MM collaboration with Jason Frank Rothenberg Performing at The Continental, CMJ Festival, New York, 2000. Photo by Jeff Winterberg

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2. WILD REPUTATION

Bjorn: It’s tough. We started playing exclusively to young people in punk venues.

T: Meaning they would go along with whatever?

Bjorn: No, you’d be surprised. In places like Providence, Baltimore, or Seattle, little pockets where people go nuts for weird music, kids were into hardcore, but we weren’t really straight hardcore.

There was something different about us, so those kids got vocal. There was a lot of animosity. We definitely had bottles thrown at us. There have been full-scale brawls where we got punched in the face.

T: Did you keep playing?

Bjorn: Yeah, we did. In Milwaukee once, it turned into a fistfight between fifteen people. Some dude was kicking Aaron in the face while he was on the ground.

Some other dude was dragging me around by my hair.

You have your instruments on the whole time. (He makes a Jimi Hendrix guitar motion.) It was always like that. If you showed up somewhere wearing tight pants, you got called a fag. A lot of people were stoked by the end of the show, though, because we were aggressive. As a result of this, we’d get totally shit-faced to play. Eric, especially, would take whatever anyone gave him. In the most out of control situations, people did get hurt. Eric threw bottles and cinderblocks at people.

T: Cinderblocks?

Bjorn: Or he’d go up to people and kick them in the balls as hard as he could. It was over the top. He would go more agro than they could. It’s an old tradition, that Germs-y idea. Eric was sixteen. All the other bands in Providence, there were playing these great, fucked-up live shows. There was no separation between what was going on and the music, and it was unpredictable.

Music was freaky, the performance was freaky, and so people would get hurt. To us, that was the model.

We never aimed to be friends with everybody. It wasn’t about a positive vibe, and that’s not what people gave

us when we started. I’m sure if at our first shows, everyone offered us drinks and joints, and gave us high fives the whole time, the trajectory of the band would have been different. But in reality, the first show was at a crowded party. Two kids fell out a window and one of them died.

Nothing was easy. Providence wasn’t about playing goodtime rock and roll, so the bands who were our models besides Lightning Bolt, Forcefield, or Landed, were Men’s Recovery Project, Mukilteo Ferries, Behead the Prophet No Lord Shall Live, and Worst Case Scenario. Those last two were from Olympia. They were the fucked up bands, it was no joke, they weren’t doing it to get popular, they just had no other outlet. There’s always been a bit of a wall, because you want to be aloof to what people think but it’s hard to not care if people don’t like what you do.

T: Black Dice was never about getting a positive reaction?

Hisham: That’s true, but we’re still humans. We want to communicate. It was a cool challenge, to stick to your guns. We played so many shows where we’d get boo’ed and heckled, shit thrown at us. We opened for Yeah Yeah Yeahs at the Hammerstein, and the good thing about being the drummer was that I could hide behind the drum kit. The other guys were like, “That was pretty rough…”

We had early shows, like in Milwaukee, a basement show. We heard through the Internet that these straight-edge kids wanted to beat us up because we were junkies, and we were like, “What the hell are they talking about?” The second we started playing, someone started punching Eric, and it turned into a massive brawl. Maybe we were playing with The Rapture. It was pretty funny. We had to stop and the show got shut down. Basty [Sebastian Blanck] pushed some guy and he took it really personal. Push people, or back into them. Basty got punched in the face. I remember always being ready to jump off my drums.

T: Did you get banned often?

Hisham: We were banned all the time in Manhattan. We got blacklisted from Princeton. Eric and Sebastian would go nuts, Bjorn too. It’s really fun to look at videos and photos because we were totally going off, and it was sincere. Trying to get the audience riled up. We were all really bummed when we broke something.

In Chapel Hill, we broke a club window, so we’d gotten paid, then had to give it right back. We survived though, and could always pay for gas. Those were fun days, making the Black Dice presence felt. We could only play shows at The Cooler and ABC No Rio. We started using more amps and blowing the power. It was way more straight, super loud, many frequencies blasting at once. The sound had to do with our practice space. Early days weren’t super loud, just noisy, but it started getting loud when we got a practice space. It was high-volume, and the power of the frequencies was consistently brutal.

T: What were you going for with the brutal sound?

Hisham: Trying to make the music physical. That was part of the reason for getting so in people’s faces while performing, to make people feel uncomfortable so they could judge the music that way. We wanted to make that similar impact with the sound. I always wore earplugs. It was supposed to be physical, and I expected people to wear earplugs, so they could feel it more. It was about feeling.

T: [Eric],You have a reputation for being the most wild.

Eric: Well, I wasn’t playing an instrument, so…I’m thankful nobody got more hurt than they did. One night I flipped a bottle off an amp, and it beelined for the bass player’s face, right under his eye. He went down, [and] I was like, “Oh fuck I took out his eye,” but it was millimeters away. It ripped open his skin and all this fat was hanging out.

T: Fat from his cheek?

Eric: The cut was really deep. We were playing at Johns Hopkins, though, so some pre-med student was like, “It’s fine, just put pressure to it.” He was fucked up for a week. I was lucky it didn’t go into his eye, though, or his mouth, his teeth. I don’t even like thinking about that shit.

3. PYRAMID

T: Did you start making music to communicate with people or because you liked fiddling with gear?

Bjorn: I liked records in high school. Our neighbors got us into the Ramones, Cramps, the Cure, Cult, Echo and the Bunnymen, you know, shit like that. Eric had already been in a band, and we’d play. But it was more in a Beat Happening kind of vein, figuring out how to make sounds. Beat Happening was one of my favorite bands, but the songwriting is so good, the lyrics are so good, the amateurish qualities work in this favorable way. It wasn’t a language I was good at. It was more fun stomping on a pedal and making a huge racket. People were surprised when they first saw us in Providence, because they expected something way more poppy. Eric and I had put out cassettes and singles in high school and college, of bedroom-recorded pop stuff, so people knew that. A lot of Providence bands, the dudes in Providence, and a handful of women, they’d all been in bands before, and they all seemed tight. Everyone was a proficient musician. It was intimidating.

Lightning Bolt are kind of like superheroes. They’re like a new version of Rush in the best possible way, super technical, rocking out. None of us could play like that.

They influenced us because their vibe was fantastic. It opened it up. Forcefield were even better at times, like drones.

T: Did the sonic patterning in your songs, how they diverge and come together, come from Forcefield?

Bjorn: Definitely. Mat Brinkman for sure. ZZ Pot, we always play that in the van.

Eric’s pretty vocal about that three-person notion. That it’s the basic number… it’s complicated.

T: The golden triangle?

Bjorn: Three things are a self-supporting structure, there are potential for three relationships between the sound and us. When we work on songs, Eric wants to accomplish a few tasks at once. A rhythm can be providing a counter-melody, for example. You can get into the numbers aspect, but structurally, you need three base points to stand erect. We talk about the music visually when we’re working it out, and the three-sided pyramid makes sense. Hearing each corner as a corresponding part. Join relationships in a physical way, and you have a freestanding entity.

T: These are Jazz tendencies, right? The trio, the passing off of parts through cues…

Bjorn: It’s not a genre I know a whole lot about, and I associate that more with musicianship. But the longer we play, the more those formal ideas kind of make sense. I can’t tell you what a bar or a bridge is. I would never want to lose sight of the fact that it’s still a punk band because we always figure out how to do it ourselves. We keep this rough, fucked up presentation that has always prevented Black Dice from being in an avant-garde music store section. I can understand why someone would put it in with the Edward Froese records…in the classical composition section. Twenty years ago, there’s a chance we would have been in the electronic section or in modern composition with Philip Glass. For us, that academic placement has never been interesting. Though we’ve been lucky that fine art places embraced us.

T: What’s the deal with the pyramid, the power of the threeperson band?

Eric: I don’t know much about numbers. It’s an idea that’s close, but I’m just learning stuff like that. But there was a huge change in dynamics going from four to three. It made everyone step up their game, sort of.

4. GARAGE BAND APPROACH

T: What about beat and rhythm? Are your song structures about rhythms diverging and reconvening?

Aaron: Yeah, I’d agree with that. The band could be a lot more musical. It’s really hard to bring mixers, pedals, and samples to life. To make it sound like a tune.

That struggle makes it fun and when it works it’s really unique sounding.

Performing in Brisbane, Australia, 2005. Photos by Jason Frank Rothenberg

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T: How do you personalize a mechanical sound?

Aaron: It depends on how you approach it. A lot of people now who play guitar don’t care about tuning it since they use it as a noise instrument. Mic and pedal, or now in the past years, a lot of people, mixers and pedals, that’s a huge genre too. A lot of it is improvisation. It’s out there. What we’re most interested in is using those approaches but turning it all the way back, making it into a fucking Troggs song. A three-minute, really tight, punk garage song. But using non-garage band instruments. It took us a long time to get interested in that, which is where we’re at now.

T: Are you a garage band in your approach?

Eric: It feels like the world got stuck in this rock and roll ideal, and it gets rehashed every couple decades. Not that I want to go off on rock history. But the further back you go, the less it even matters. People just made music before there was a world brain going, making ultra-sophisticated, didactic music. Classical music was the pinnacle of this one way of thinking. But on the opposite side of the world, like another hemisphere of the brain, there was a different musical expression. It’s all the same thing. If you put that universality into a 20th century context it becomes something different to me. I like garage music, and I mostly listen to modern music from the last 50 years. But I’ll hear some traditional music, recorded in the ‘60s, that’s 3000 years old…

T: Like Secret Museums of Mankind?

Eric: Yeah, a field recording of pygmies or something.

I don’t really understand it even though I can get into

it and like it. Ultimately, I feel like a lot of people who make stuff get stuck in an era. I really like Harry Smith. I don’t understand a lick of it, but I appreciate that he was working with this idea of a world brain. This is what we’ve completed. It’s not about reaching a pinnacle, or this being better than that. Everybody creates something new, and even you’re a new thing, a new expression of creation. That’s a freeing idea to me. Then, whatever I do is fine in the big scheme of things.

T: Right. You can only make art if don’t have the self-critical side shutting your creativity down.

Eric: I had to work at finding that idea, and I didn’t understand it until I felt it emotionally. You can’t make every song on every record to be everything you ever wanted to say, and that’s not the point. Geniuses achieve that with masterpieces, but I like people who just participate in the world, like that painter, Paul Laffoley. He makes huge, cosmic diagrams. I like that someone can start with simple ideas, then build on them and be responsible with them.

T: Not so much during Repo, but on Load Blown, Matt and I were really into Congotronics, the Konono thumb piano stuff. We compared Black Dice to African music. Some primitive approach, even though you build sounds in this planned way.

Naïve is definitely the wrong word here...

Aaron: Definitely not naïve. It would be totally annoying to adopt that attitude in a place like NYC. With access to every kind of music and media, to pretend you don’t know where certain sounds come from would be disingenuous. It’s not

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like we don’t know what African music sounds like and that we have elements of that in our music. We’re completely aware of it. But the approach, I do get into that. Those dudes have limited budget and means, and they make something cool anyway. I like to adopt that approach myself.

T: What about calling it an intuitive approach?

In African funk, the song is structured but the improvisational jam is spiritually intuitive.

Aaron: I like African bands that sound like James Brown but have fucked-up instruments, and elements of native music.

In our sense, we’re some middle-class white kids, using some African approach, trying to make a Led Zeppelin song.

That’s the idea. It’s not straight-up appropriating, but we do listen to that stuff and enjoy it.

T: Do you try to make sounds that work different senses? I guess that’s psychedelic.

Aaron: The closest I’d get to that is the vibe. When it’s going good, it’s indescribable and it’s not about the key, though I’m sure that plays in. When that totally crucial, elusive, mysterious quality is working, it’s all good. It’s about being in the same mood, and the physical feeling of the sound when it’s really loud, affecting your body. That vibe goes for writing songs and for performances. But I don’t’ really think of the music in those terms. In the past, when we were trying to really break loose and conceive the music, there were times when we’d build a pyramid part of the song, stuff like that. It’s not how we’re working now. We do talk about visual projects, like video, but we always find ourselves getting back to nuts and bolts approach, meaning we have

to play each other what we wrote, and then decide if we like it.

We talk a lot, and we argue. We’re all contrary dudes in some way. We approach things vaguely and conceptually, but it’s deeply personal at this point. In the end it has to sound good.

T: Does Repo have a structural concept?

Aaron: The last three records were about being more rocking, more catchy tunes, anthems. We had the Repo title before the record was done. It was tough sounding, aggressive, it has bad connotations but if you flip it, it can be positive if you’re doing the repo. It’s badass if you’re on the underside of the equation. We’d be working on something and we’d stop and say, “It doesn’t sound Repo.” That’s as far as we’ve gone, ever, with having an overall vibe. We always have a rough idea at the beginning and it turns out some other way.

T: Are you a noise band or a psychedelic band?

Bjorn: I have no idea what noise is. I mean, Lightning Bolt is called noise but they’re totally drum driven. There are people who deal with harsh, abstract sounds, power electronic stuff.

Psychedelic is a term we never, ever use. We readily embrace principal ideas behind it, but it registers a specific point in history. Those ideas are not necessarily forward-thinking.

It’s also pretty topical with a romantic sheen. I always liked theidea that you could make music that would affect people like a drug, instead of writing something about drugs. I would say our band is about those psychedelic ideas even though I hate that term.

Music can induce a feeling. You can make people sick, make them have seizures, make them euphoric, make them feel like they’re floating off the ground, make them scared. I like that it’s such an immediate dialogue. Maybe that dialogue is one-sided!

Going back to your question about why we started making music, I think it’s because underground music was a really romantic idea in Maine, because there was nothing like that there. We needed to tap into other parts of the country.

T: I thought you said there were psych and experimental music festivals all through Maine?

(Bjorn met Dave Auchenbach, who produced the first Black Dice single, when Auchenbach’s band, Small Factory, played a Maine festival.)

Bjorn: Only recently though, and I romanticize the hell out of it because it reminds me of being a kid. I remember going up there and talking to this kid who runs a noise section in this curated junk shop called Strange Maine. Right upstairs from that is Time Lag, which sells mostly 60’s psych. It’s awesome, these kids only know local bands. I was like, “Have you heard this Merzbow box set, or Gerogerigegege?” They’d have no idea, but they knew all the local dudes. That’s so cool.

T: Preserving local culture is such an ancient idea, and it’s hard to pull that off in a city. I like the naïve approach that can come out of small town life.

Bjorn: I do too. I went to school and was formally trained as an

artist and was not trained as a musician, almost to the point where I refuse to learn anything about music, and it makes me wonder if art school study was worth it? As someone who’s seen a lot of music and art, I think people who are trained really appreciate the naïve approach. All the stupid things you get caught up on. The main idea about the new record, for us, was the need to take stock in what it was we liked about music when we started. Approach it like we’re a new band, so things would happen really fast. Drink a brew, and someone’s like, “Wait, play that track, and I’ll start that right .here!”

The best parts of my day, at least, were playing with those guys. For Repo, we played almost every day for a year. It was cool to celebrate the fact that we have this band that we can do anything we want with. We can put out a rockabilly album next year. That would be weird, but if you take the step, in a few years it may not seem out of place.

5. ALIENS AND GHOSTS

T: Are you into aliens? I’m thinking of the hand on the cover of Hermaphodite. Are you making music channeled from another planet?

Eric: There are strange Maine alien things. Those were always exciting, same as ghosts. When I first meet somebody, I like to hear their ghost stories. At some point I fell into this body of books full of some New Age and some super fucking outthere ideas. Some of it’s appetizing, and some disgusting. I definitely take the idea of being an alien seriously. Whether or not I can prove this position, I think about the possibilities of this perspective. It’s amazing to think that none of this is mine. [Eric gazes out the window.] When I think about what’s out my window, as me, I get really opinionated. But as an alien, everything is as weird as everything else. It homogenizes things, and that makes me feel better. The other way of living is about following a path that gets narrower and narrower. I don’t know where that gets you. The more I read and learn about other people who learn, it’s a secret way of participating and connecting the ideas. The idea of looking at a plant and seeing mathematical equations is appealing to me. Have you seen UFO’s?

T: I used to hunt them, go to Sedona and camp, and draw what I saw.

Eric: Ghosts?

T: I lived with an old lady who died in the house.

Eric: My mom and dad used to find me downstairs with all these cards. I’d sneak out of bed, take my cards, and wait for this woman. She taught me how to play solitaire. I was two or three. I’ve always been a night person, consequently.

I remember one time, when I was around five, I walked out of my house and went to my neighbor’s house and watched them sleep. By the time I got home, my parents had gone to bed and locked the door. My dad found me asleep with my

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hand through the mail slot. You know, downtown Brunswick, midnight…I remember being really afraid of vampires.

Ghosts were the big thing then, and aliens have become more academic. I like that scary feeling. The house we grew up in is definitely haunted.

T: It comes through in what you make.

Eric: Sometimes I think it really does. But I don’t know if I care to emulate what I read or something.

T: Did the hauntings influence your music? Being in a room alone with a four-track?

Eric: I think more about this hidden thing. I think about how language hides stuff, and when you make music, things that are normal in music are hidden but more approachable. I studied hidden ideas in college. I’m not talking about visual things like ghosts, but something that can exist without it being pronounced or obvious. Covert.

T: It seems obvious that different levels exist. Even time zones astound me. You get off the plane and you’re in an alternate universe.

Eric: When you have to work hard to find something, it becomes a little treasure. It becomes more of an obsession for me than it probably should. I don’t give that much time to most stuff. I plow through movies and music, and only some shit registers. But the shit that registers is the stuff that’s from some extreme world.

T: Is the band a way to process or churn back out what’s you’re plowing through?

Eric: As a working method, it’s become that way. We’ve had times to meticulously sit down and go through stuff, but A) I don’t want to do that anymore and B) I don’t think we have the time to do it now. We treat everything as if you can plow through it, but I hope we can still appreciate it. The idea of will has always been a fence.

6. VOLUME

T: Do you aim to make the loudest show possible?

Aaron: When you record you can’t do that, but live, yeah, definitely. We plateaued a bit with that, though. When we play at good clubs with an awesome PA then that can be enough.

That’s more about having greater control over greater range of frequencies. With our gear, it’s midrange, brash sounding, blown out, it’s pushed, it doesn’t sound like it’s the highest quality. When you become a more pro band, you accept that the venue will determine how loud and good your music will be. And you get to the point when you can afford your own PA. On stage, it’s a little less loud than our practice space. We like it to be as loud as it is in practice, so we can be in the zone. We generally have no idea if it’s loud in the audience. There was a period when we decided it was time to get pro, only playing at good clubs with good PAs. But sometimes it’s cool to play at a

place with no PA, if it has a good vibe. We’ll fucking play the best show, regardless of the PA and the vibe.

up. There’s a coarseness and texture that we’re into, but we can still make it a really crude tune.

T: That’s a positive attitude.

Aaron: That might be more of a personal attitude. It’s taken a long time. You go through years of knowing nothing about PAs and rooms, then you get to a point where you care a lot about the monitor mix. Now, my philosophy is to just stay in tune with Eric and Bjorn.

T: How do you stay on key?

Eric: We don’t have any keys. Bjorn sometimes will have….

A big step in the band was when I brought something in that had a melody. After a month, Bjorn was like, “I can’t figure this out.” I said, “We need to fit it.” It ended up being something liberating for him. But for instance, with his guitar, if I bring in something melodic, he has to adapt, and if he brings in something melodic, I usually don’t try to make something melodic.

T: What about volume? A couple times I saw you this past year, you guys were so loud that people had to leave.

Bjorn: Yeah, once we stopped beating people up, we still have this interest in maintaining control over a space. Anything that makes people question what their involvement is. You have to know you’re being affected by it, even if it’s annoying.

We try to push it as far as we can so there’s an impressive, sizable quality.

T: Is that was Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound was about?

Bjorn: His idea was to get this full, lush sound so everything was doubled and tripled up. But our music just doesn’t sound very good when it’s not played very loudly. We used to have trouble getting shows in places that had PAs, or if they did have one, they resented us, so it made sense for us to build up to something comparable. There have been at least fifty shows where they turned the PA off on us. So our volume became a defense mechanism.

T: What was the most fucked up place you played in?

Aaron: For years, we played houses, Elks halls, places with no PA, so we got big speakers. If we played a club, the sound guy would turn the PA off. They were total dicks about it too, that’s just the vibe out there. Eric started using this distortion pedal for the vocals, and people would be like, “No way you’re plugging that into the PA.” When you’re playing to 100 people or less, the room will be small enough where our shit sounds fine. Now, we could probably have smaller gear, but it’s a garage band approach even if we play Central Park. We’re self-contained on stage. We have a sound guy, but not a monitor guy.

T: No matter how loud you are you have to be in a certain key, right?

Aaron: Yeah, you’re supposed to. But I don’t fuckin’…

T: It can change every time but you have to just be together?

Aaron: Well, it needs to be in a key. It needs to sound right.

Even an untrained musician knows that. A garage band can figure out if they’re playing in the same key. It doesn’t matter if you know the names of the chords but you can hear it and tune in. I mean, we’re beyond that. That’s something we struggle with all the time. Eric and I use loops and pre-recorded stuff, and Bjorn has a stringed instrument with notes. So working that in, plus Bjorn plays guitar according to patterns. He strums in some order, then presses two pedals…It’s really physical for him. Everything can sound awesome but if it’s not in the key, we have to figure out how to incorporate that guitar part or alter the pitch. Using pitch pedals has opened things

T: So there’s no conflict?

Eric: There’s stuff on Repo that are made within this internal feedback mechanism, and with that I know two of my notes need to relate. And I can do that even if they’re not the same two notes. It may be different every night live because of that, but with enough volume it doesn’t matter. (laughs) T: How do you stay in key?

Bjorn: We all have pitch shifters. That’s what enables me to make simple melodies.

7. MUSICIANS FOR LIFE

T: What is your life’s goal?

Aaron: I’d just be psyched to not have to work at a job, to spend more time on music and videos. To have time to make some shitty collage. I feel too much economic pressure. This is more an attainable goal and a dream. I’m psyched at where I’m at right now, as a guy, and I’ve been doing exactly what I want since high school. I just see how it could be bigger. If I could get my situation 15% better then I’ll be set.

T: Is your motivation for making music communication? Are you social?

Aaron: I don’t know. Ever since I was early teen, when I started listening to rock, I thought records were the coolest things ever. I had fantasies about how to do a record, the artwork, without having any idea of how to play an instrument. When I was 15, I got a guitar for $50, and taught myself to play with this book of Metallica tablature.

T: Master of Puppets?

Aaron: Yeah, that was it. It got me psyched. But I never had discipline to play a whole song. Then, I bought this rack mount delay unit for $30 at a yard sale. Literally, it’s pretty close to how we make sounds now. After that, I’d try to play some Zeppelin tunes, and I’d throw on the delay, and be psyched.

For the most part, I just like to jam with a delay. I love making weird sounds.

T: Are you a musician for life?

Eric: I never wanted to play music for a living. Even now it’s become something bigger than just playing music, it’s about managing multiple things. I think of it as problem solving in this one way. Having independence to figure things out is attractive in any job. That’s what I want to do. I studied other stuff in college, Religious Studies and English basically. I

February 21, 2005, Dice Practice Space, Brooklyn, New York. Photo by Jason Frank Rothenberg Performing in Byron Bay, Australia, 2005. Photo by Jason Frank Rothenberg (opposite): Gore promo poster, 2005 22”x17” MM collaboration with Jason Frank Rothenberg

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wanted a foundation for the really important stuff. I read a ton.

T: Is Black Dice a tension release, an escape, or a place to generate chaos?

Eric: It’s my vocabulary. I’m not always the best at it, but I recognize that I’m not trying to deal with musical ideas.

I’m just speaking for myself here. Creating something is a responsibility now. The more I make music, the more I take it seriously. I’m not trying to make a statement, but it’s a place to make a world and where you can do what you want to do. That means sometimes creating chaos and sometimes escaping.

There are times when we’re up there flipping everybody off, and there are times when I’m really emotional. That’s the weirdest place to be. It’s happened a couple times when I’m up there, and I’m like, “This is rad, I’m having a really good time, it sounds great, people are psyched.” You lock it in. I don’t have tons of moments like that. The last time we played Market Hotel was like that.

T: You were, like, born to be a musician.

Aaron: Kind of. With T-Tauri, my first band, I put everything on hold to be a gnarly dude and tour the world, but one of the dudes got a bad drug problem. And I wasn’t going to play to teenage kids with some junky. It seemed lame. I decided to go back to school, and applied to NYU for film. I came to New York with no intention of being in a band, but there were only six weeks while I was not in a band! When I checked out a show Black Dice played at NYU, they were really hardcore.

I was still looking through music with a West Coast lens. I thought, “They’re kind of like a California band from two years ago…they’re pretty good but they’re not the most original thing.” But it was totally exciting compared to LA, where it’s not exciting to see a band. It’s always so calm. I was psyched about the crowd.

T: Was hardcore popular in Providence too? The sitting in the middle of the room and having audience crowd around you?

Aaron: Yeah. Every show between 1990-2000, if it was DIY, had no stage and the band set up on the floor. My old band was playing in a loft, and Dice played a lot of shows like this as well. People sitting down. It was a strange time. Music was extreme and fast but kids acted like it was a folk show. It wasn’t about kids going nuts. It was about the performance.

That was cultivated in the late 90’s. My old band had played in Providence, and I’d seen Mindflayer, Lightning Bolt, Forcefield, Men’s Recovery Project. Those bands were confrontational. I knew that was where it was happening.

We had a lot of people in common, and I needed a place to live. Hisham and Bjorn were the coolest people I’d met, and Hisham invited me to crash at their place. They had a huge loft. I ended up crashing there for like, nine months. Sebastian decided he didn’t want to play anymore, and I started jamming on the bass with them. That’s how I joined the band. I had no idea I’d play for this long.

T: How do you avoid sounding retro when you’re using ‘80s gear?

Bjorn: It has to do with recognizing that everything

has the potential to sound good or bad. A cheap thing may be the appropriate sound. We never had the musical chops, so we couldn’t emulate music styles from a trained point of view. The equipment, for example drum pads, are meant to be used with a certain drum brain. If you don’t know that, you just set them up in this way that works. So it’s a combination. It’s like making a painting. People use the same brand paints, and the same manufacturers for linen or canvas, but the proportions and paintings change. We have no interest in sounding like what’s out there. None of us romanticize one period in music history. Sounding like Led Zeppelin now doesn’t make it as cool as Zeppelin then. It’s about their vision at the time. Sounding like someone else is a humongous waste of time. Of course, we listen to stuff and love certain parts. But we don’t have the same instruments, and we have a thrown-together setup. There are lots of bands now that have that setup, tables full of pedals, lots of amps and shit, who make abstract music. Usually I’m kind of bored by it. But that has only happened in the past couple of years.

T: When I first saw you play I had no idea what you were doing. You may as well have been playing behind the curtain of Oz. Bjorn: Electronic music has a different history in Europe. People listened to dance music in high school dances there, and you’d get your ass kicked if you played techno where I grew up. In Europe people have been slow to understand rock music through electronics, though, because they have dance music history. Doing live shows there disproves something about what we do.

The first few times we went to Europe people would come up and say, “We thought you were an electronic band.” We are but we have a fuckload of amps! Here, it wasn’t cool for indie bands to be electronic.

T: No way. American indie bands were coming out of the VU idea of having the most basic equipment and playing only three chords. Seeing how much you can squeeze out of the most compressed elements.

Bjorn: You don’t have to have crazy gear to make your band sound original, but there is some shock value initially, one impenetrable layer. That’s what changed a lot in the past few years.

Kids coming from a hardcore, punk background who are finding out about noise, discover that the vocabulary of sounds are not so dissimilar to what you hear on Hot 97, reggaeton, or hip hop stations. The gap is getting smaller and smaller. It’s interesting. Especially because music is so divided into sub-genres, like kids are all, “I like hardcore, but only that Gravity hardcore, not that NYC thug shit. I like dub-step but I don’t like jungle.” I don’t even know what half those terms mean. But now, most new bands have some keyboard dude, or guy with a KAOS pad, MPC, deejay, it’s an interesting time as a spectator.

T: Hisham, what about your history and relationship with Japanese noise?

Hisham: I was into metal and punk, and indie: Dinosaur Jr., Nirvana, Boredoms and their side projects. Through them I got more into power electronic noise, like Merzbow. I’d go to Japanese record stores and find the bands on Alchemy. I was into Ruins. Crossover stuff, heavy but abstract, with vocals that didn’t have lyrics. Eye [Yamatsuka] was blowing my mind.

Video stills from Kokomo, video directed by Black Dice, 2007 Video stills from Glazin, video directed by Black Dice, 2009 Gore excerpt, 2005 11x14” MM collaboration with Jason Frank Rothenberg

T: Your collages often have a curved or wavy line cutting diagonally across the grid.

Bjorn: I like the idea that you can communicate through making different movements happening simultaneously.

In Tokyo, I could go see all that stuff. I didn’t know what it was called. I just started to get pedals and got into the sounds. I played around in my room on the bass, making feedback sounds, and my brother would come in and ask me what the hell I was doing.

Then I moved to the States.

Japan was so tightly structured, and I knew how American art schools worked. So I thought I could meet cool people here as well as make visual stuff. It was exactly what I imagined it to be. But the scene we created in Providence ended up being more influential than what we thought. We didn’t know it would be influential. A lot of noise stuff now, because of samplers, you can do a lot without gear, but the sound quality is different. Even if kids want to emulate something in the past, you can’t do it without having the same equipment. I have a similar reaction to noise now, because it sounds to me like they made it on the computer. But some bands are way more original, like Ponytail.

T: Does that idea unify everything you make?

Bjorn: When you work collaboratively with people for so long, you get in tune. Even when I’m not playing with them, the comments that come from our music still come into my other work. Whether it’s sound, images, or patterns. That’s the visual component to the band. I can make something specifically for the band that isn’t subject to this critique. It’s really freeing after a formal academic situation.

T: So you and Hisham did all the visuals before? Gore was the first time you recruited Aaron and Eric to make collages?

Bjorn: Aaron has a visual background through film and punk flyers. When Eric started doing his solo stuff, he got confidence from realizing that making the book was like the music. I like what they do, because they do stuff that has a roughness that I wouldn’t think to do myself.

8. VISUAL ART

T: I feel overwhelmed by the power of art when I can see how many times something has been re-done because it shows the obsession.

Bjorn: You know that drawing I was working on all month? I hacked it up into strips. I’m never happy unless I re-work something over and over again.

Once you start looking again, there are decisions you don’t make if you don’t do it.

T: You have to take risks, or you’ll never know if it could have been great.

Bjorn: Plus, you’ll hate yourself. There were only like two drawings that turned out the way I planned them, and they’ve been my least favorite. There was no surprise. I like it when the things are not quite working. Compositionally, since I make it on a grid, it can’t be all forcibly laid out.

T: Would you say the visual part of the band is equal to the music? You’re scanning stuff as we speak. (Aaron is surrounded by piles of photocopies.)

Aaron: It took me a long time to get into that.

Hisham and Bjorn had gone to art school, and Eric and I were into the band. That changed with Gore.

It was agreed we’d all work in a visual capacity. Eric and I were like, “What are we gonna do that’s not just a weak version of what Bjorn does?” But once we talked about an approach, I tried it and the fucking things I did were so crude. That was our first real group say in how something looked. And on Gore, we worked with Jason [Frank Rothenberg] too.

T: Same with the Repo book?

Aaron: Once I get into the black and white zone, everything gets easier for me. “Fuck it, I can make a flyer.” We did the “Kokomo” video, more collaborative stuff. I got into music this way too. I just do something I don’t know shit about.

T: Do you measure those grids?

Bjorn: I cut the paper out into 2” increments, and cut those into 1/4” squares. Then mark it off along the perimeter T: You’re making your own graph paper.

Bjorn: I should just Xerox that shit.

T: But it has a better quality if it’s handmade.

Like the Altria Design book versus Ara [Peterson], who makes the patterns all by hand.

Bjorn: Once you have a grid in front of you, it’s easier to see the logic. There’s a lot of leniency in making a pattern, little side things that make drawings work.

T: When I write or make a collage, I try to make it dumb or ugly. Do you do that?

Bjorn: I definitely like it when it’s fucked up. There are so many perfect examples of straight stuff and it’s not where my ideas go. A lot of things I like have an element of chance, where it wouldn’t be duplicable.

Whatever you work on, you should push it as far as you can. I like tension and glitches. I used to be embarrassed of how sloppy a guitar player I was, but

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Eric, Aaron, and Hisham were fine with it.

T: People on the outside don’t know that what you have in your head is different than what comes out. So they like it for what it is.

Bjorn: Yeah, like I listen to live recordings of old stuff, and I remember trying to play like a machine, being focused on rhythm, and those are the most boring recordings. The most successful performances were probably when I fucking dropped a pick, then there was a lull, and I came back in. But if the ego’s in there, I try harder to make the challenge work, and I need more time or perspective before I can fuck it up.

T: That’s the whole premise of the band, though right? Balancing control with chaos?

It’s not improvisational, but at the same time there are lots of sounds that aren’t planned.

Bjorn: Let’s say your making a checker collage out of red or blue paper and whether you’re using straight red or straight blue, or magazine bits that are slightly red or blue, it’s the same thing that you’re communicating. But on the bits from the magazines, there are more information from the photographs than in the straight colors. That’s the baggage that you use when you use recycled things and loops built on MiniDiscs and rack mount delay. It’s a different science. It’s not about pure, pristine sound like you’d hear on the hip-hop station. You get the scratches, the hiccups gear made. Some pedals, when you push them down, there’s a millisecond pause before the effect kicks in. Or when we record the fingers moving along the strings, it’s different than hearing a Celine Dion song, where I’m sure everything’s super gated so you don’t hear those noises. Those flaws give sound character, and it’s a more realistic approach.

I don’t want to spend my time making shit perfect.

My house, my studio, my clothes aren’t perfect. For Kraftwerk, maybe they were meticulous dudes. That rigid quality in their music came through. But for us, we can’t even keep our clothes clean, our gear is covered with shit, beer, dust, and weed smoke. Once you realize you’re not Stockhausen and you’re not going to get a two-day sound check, you use the gear you know.

T: I never thought of gear architecturally.

Bjorn: Our gear is like furniture. We throw it up on stage, and it makes it comfortable. The video projections detach me from what’s going on in a way I really like. I mean, when you’re in the audience, you don’t care if someone breaks a string or has to leave to take a piss, but on stage it’s easy to put pressure on yourself, to do ideas as best as we can.

Not at all for lack of looking, but I was a fan of Will Oldham’s music for a while before I ever saw any sort of interview with him. I even felt like a relative latecomer to his music. He released his first single, “Ohio Riverboat Song,” under the name Palace Brothers in late 1992, and while my best friends in high school were converts shortly thereafter, it took until 1995, the year he released his first sort of breakout record, Viva Last Blues, for me to fall hard. By the time I finally did see even a short talk with him, he had already released a formidable body of singles and several albums, amassed a significant die hard following, and I, and I’m sure every other member of this following, was so excited at the prospect of some new insights into the artist. But even then, few were to be found. I think it was only one page long, and included just a few quotes, no Q&A to speak of.

It revealed very little, far less than his records, which were all performed in the guise of various characters. The article talked about how he was from Louisville, Kentucky, which everyone knew by then, and about how he didn’t like doing press, which everyone had to have gathered by then, as well. But the article did have one small little kernel, one insight which, as a fan and someone that also makes music, would resonate in my head for years: When asked about an idea of “alt country,” or the movement of indie bands making new retro-Americana music, to which many people were awkwardly trying to lump Palace Brothers in with, Will Oldham said of his music something to the effect of: “They are just songs. If you think of the most basic, pure concept of what a song is, that’s what these are supposed to be.”

Fast forward to the spring of 2008: I still loved Will Oldham, and in spite of the fact that we now had several friends in common I still knew very little about him. One such friend, Dan Koretzky, runs Drag City, the label that first released Oldham’s records in the early 90s and which continues as his main label in the US to this day. Dan mentioned to me last spring that Will was a fan of this magazine, and that he would like to give us an interview. Not his first interview, but it seemed the first interview that he offered of his own volition, and where he would purportedly be glad to discuss anything, to tell the whole story. Not only was I going to interview someone who I was sure that I would never interview, but I was getting to do the first interview that he wanted to do.

Due to our schedules it took a few months for the interview to actually transpire, and just after a dear friend and a favorite photographer to ANPQ, Todd Cole, flew to Louisville, KY, to shoot Will Oldham for us in the house where he grew up, which his mother had just moved out of. Due to magazine deadlines and schedules that were already set in place, though, it has taken this much longer for the thing to run. Now, fast forward a little further to January of this year: I am finally sitting down to transcribe the interview, but first check my email and see this press blast from Drag City, “Will Oldham is finally ready to do press! Anyone can interview him! Here are the dates…” Really? When we sat down in September Will had mentioned that he had just recorded a new record, but he didn’t mention the press push that would ensue. Why would he? He may not even have realized it yet, that

just after our talk he would be doing so many more. Or maybe he did and ours was like a warm-up, or even the first of what I’m thinking may be a new openness to talking about his craft.

I didn’t realize it, anyways, and I’m glad that I didn’t. I didn’t really know what to expect but of course was elated to find that the Will Oldham that came over to my house in September of 2008 was kind, friendly and incredibly open and giving. I have read a few interviews over the years where the writer prefaces Oldham’s total unwillingness to cooperate. This was not the man I spoke with. We sat at my kitchen table and I asked him questions for hours. We laughed, and we got into his history. We did the interview that I was sure I would never do, and I think from our hug goodbye that it was a total joy for us both. I think we may have even parted as friends.

I often refrain from writing about music because I hate the pressure of describing an artist to someone who has never heard them, of selling it. With paintings, photographs, etc., we can show reproductions at least. But a singer? I know that there are a lot of signifiers to Will Oldham’s output that are often referenced, but I realized after our talk that we didn’t touch on most of them, like the time that Johnny Cash chose to record a cover of his song “I See a Darkness” or about his most recent adventures in film (he starred in Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy (2006), and Wendy and Lucy (2008), as well as R. Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet: Chapters 13-22 (2007)). We didn’t discuss the fact that his younger records relied more on the drama in his voice, while more recent recordings reveal a practiced veteran, his voice a richer, matured instrument— fitting for a songwriter who is admittedly more focused on his singing than his guitar playing. We didn’t talk at all about the way his body moves when he performs, contorting body and gaze from gentle and privately inward light, to arguably maniacal, exaggerated exclamatory grin. I have heard that he never made a hit record because he didn’t want the obligations that that would bring, but it didn’t come up on this day. We talked about name and identity play, noting that he released records as Palace Brothers/Palace Songs/Palace Music until 1996, and then as Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy from 1998 until the present, but we didn’t discuss where the names, Palace Brothers/Songs/Music or Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, came from. Of course we couldn’t discuss the majority of the at least 12 proper full lengths and, at least 30 singles and EP’s that he has released.

How could we? Will Oldham has been releasing records and performing since the early nineties, and I have been thinking about those recordings and performances intently most of the time. As such, I think my approach was to ask him things I had always wondered, in hopes that it would not only answer some of my burning questions, but also expose underlying truths to his motivations, to create a portrait of his artistic process for anyone who is a fan or even for someone who has not heard him yet, which, of course is something that you have to consider in a magazine. If you already care about Will Oldham, I think you will care about this conversation, and I hope that he and I created something that was worth your wait. If you have never heard Will Oldham, I suggest that, A) you look for his records— knowing in advance that there are significant arcs of emotion and technical approach over the course of his output, and given that, you should give chance to more than one before you set an opinion; and B) that you read this interview, as well. After all, it’s right here. You don’t even have to wait for it.

Brendan Fowler: You put out your first record fifteen years ago, it was the single?

Will Oldham: The single, “Ohio Riverboat Song/Drinking Woman,” I think it might have come out fall of ’92.

BF: You were how old when it came out?

WO: Twenty two, twenty three?

BF: Were you recording songs for a long time before you started putting stuff out?

WO: I had recorded some songs on my brother’s 4-track before that and that summer I was living in Bloomington, Indiana, with a friend who was in the audio program at Indiana University so we’d just say, “Lets go record some music.”

BF: Is that where the first album, There Is No-One What Will Take Care Of You, was done?

WO: Most of the time we used remote stuff, remote 8-track cassette units just in spaces—the album was recorded in two houses in Kentucky, one in Meade County, one in Louisville.

BF: From the start you seemed to be surrounded by a group of Louisville musicians who were already sort of established, like the guys from the band Slint, did it feel at the time like your older friends were ushering you into this world?

WO: Well, those guys were my peers, age wise.

BF: So they were really young when they started.

WO: Yeah, and they’d already been in a bunch of bands before Slint.

BF: There was a time early in your career where you were known for putting out so many 7” singles, but by the late 1990s you began putting out far fewer, seemingly in favor of proper album releases. Was that a conscious thing?

WO: In a lot of ways I’ve never kept very informed of what’s going on—I do more now, but definitely when I started making these records I was so far out of touch with what was going on so to me it made sense, making 7”s. I thought that people still made 7”s, and some people did, somewhat at the time, but I was just making them because I thought that that’s just what you do. When we were recording that summer in Bloomington I put packages together to send to people to see if they wanted to put out a 7” and I sent it to Matador because I had known Gerard Cosley from when he ran Homestead because Squirrel Bait was on Homestead, in the 80s, and to Homestead because I had known Ken Katkins, he put out a King Kong record, and to Drag City because someone had given me the [first] Silver Jews 7” and it looked amazing and sounded amazing, and Interscope.

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BF: Yeah, going for it.

WO: I mean, it wasn’t really going for it because there was a woman from Louisville who worked at Interscope, so I wrote her a letter, “Maybe you’d want to put out a 7”?” And I was fully serious. And she wrote back a nice letter saying “I don’t think it’s something we can do, but good luck.”

BF: That’s really nice she wrote back.

WO: Yeah, cause Gerard and Ken didn’t write back—at all. Dan [Koretzky, Drag City founder] wrote back and said, “We like this stuff, you got any more?”

BF: That was early Drag City.

WO: That was early, I think they had done Royal Trux, the really great New Zealand comp, I Hear The Devil Calling Me, the Pavement 7” and 10”, Silver Jews 7” and Smog and maybe a Mantis 7” or something. But at that point I was out of touch. I hadn’t heard Pavement. A friend had played me some Royal Trux, but I didn’t connect it. I was listening to music from the library at that time, so it was really all a learning process at that point.

BF: Did you go to college?

WO: I completed a total of five semesters at Brown over the course of four years by going for a semester then leaving for a year, going for a semester then leaving for a year, then I completed three semesters in a row and then I got a three hundred dollar check for the first 7” and I was like, “I don’t have to do school anymore.” It was very nice.

BF: That was ’93.

WO: Basically, December ‘92/January of ’93 we were working on that full length, I got the check and I was just like, “I’m not going back.” I had a place to live lined up and everything, I had planned on going back, but then it was, like, forget it.

BF: When was the first live show?

WO: We played the first Palace Brothers show right around when the record came out. I think we played at Derby Time and we also played at the first Big Star reunion show in Columbia, Missouri right in that spring of ’93. Then I think the first tour was actually a European tour with Rian Murphy from Drag City playing drums, Dave Pajo, my brother Paul and then this guy Enrique Prince who was an older street fiddler who I had seen playing on the street in New York and it seemed really exciting. It seemed like his playing was exciting and we could learn something from him, so I asked him if he’d like to go on tour.

BF: Did you learn?

WO: Yeah, definitely, it was pretty neat, traveling with him. He and Murphy didn’t get along very well, but I think it’s nice to do things beyond your capacity to understand them, to force yourself to understand them.

BF: Did you love touring in the beginning?

WO: No. No—I think I only got to really like it starting in the year 2000, maybe in the last seven years or so. I started to really identify the issues with touring and say, “Well, why does that have to be there?”

BF: You can clear them out. But you were touring for a while before that.

WO: Yeah. Yeah, and every once in a while we would hit a good stride, but it was always just such a—it still is—a huge undertaking. But then it seemed more like just going blind and now if there’s a problem at any point in the day I feel like I have a bag of tricks.

BF: (Laughs) You’re equipped.

WO: Yeah, I know we can go swimming, or get the right drugs and turn it around.

BF: You’ve always rotated your backing bands. Was that a conceptual decision from the beginning?

WO: Yeah, I mean, A) it seems completely inappropriate to tie your fate to the fate of a bunch of other people inextricably to where you’d be, like, “We’re gonna have breakfast lunch and dinner together most of the time for the next decade.” (Brendan laughs) There’s only one person in your life who you should do that with. It just sounded nightmarish. But also just the idea that at any point on a tour or in a recording session you can always fall back on knowing that you’re learning something from somebody, but if you’re always playing music with somebody and spending all your time with them, then they’re not going to surprise you, they’re not going to teach you anything and you’re not going to teach them anything. It’s just like, “Yeah, yeah, why don’t you just do that, okay cool, that sounds good.” Also it’s nice to play with people who have lives that are constantly refreshing themselves and re-energizing

themselves and you meet up for a while and then spread out again and come back together.

BF: Do you wind up meeting up with people to play again years later a lot?

WO: Yeah. A lot, yeah. I just played with Josh Abrams, a bass player out of Chicago who I toured with once in ’98, ’99 something like that, and then hopefully this spring we’ll tour again with the Australian Jim White playing drums.

BF: He’s my favorite drummer on the planet, by the way. Is it true that in the late 90s you re-recorded Viva Last Blues with [his old band from Australia] Dirty Three?

WO: No, what it was was that two records later—it was Viva Last Blues, Arise Therefore and then it was decided that me and The Dirty Three would make a record together— BF: Called Palace Rose? (laughs) WO: No. Did you hear that?

BF: Yeah, that’s why I’m laughing, my friends and I were some nerds!

WO: It was supposed to be called “The Sugarcane Juice Drinker” or something, that was the name of the record—at that point I didn’t know, you know, Arise Therefore didn’t have a [band] name and I never liked the idea of having to have a name and then finally I was just like, “Okay, I have to have a name and it will be Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy.” In most of the arts people don’t have to have a name for what they do, right?

BF: Do you mean like acting, painting?

WO: Exactly, acting, painting. In music arts you have to be a person, then you have a name, then you make something.

BF: Like a band name.

WO: Exactly. So we went to California and at the time Warren [Ellis, violinist in Dirty Three] was a total fuck up and he lost his passport, got his passport stolen, or left his passport behind the day before he was supposed to fly to the session and that kind of threw things off a little bit because we booked a studio in Northern California, everyone was flying there. We were playing, but it’s just, like, is Warren going to get here? He was apparently trying to get there, so does that mean we need to leave musical space for him? So we recorded the music and mixed it and Warren overdubbed his parts and I took it to Chicago and played it for Dan and he was like, “This sounds great” and right then when we were sitting there [I] was just like, “No, it doesn’t sound great at all, this should never come out. Fuck this.”

BF: Was it re-recordings of the songs from Viva Last Blues?

WO: No, it was half the songs from the next record, Joya. Drag City had paid for it, it was like ten thousand dollars, which is a lot of money [pauses] I had ten thousand dollars and I was like, “I’m going to buy this from you so that you can never put it out and that I can forget about it.” But it was kind of devastating.

BF: What did the other three guys think? Was it just the four of you on the record?

WO: No, cause you know, I’d never met any of them. I’d met Mick [Turner, Dirty Three’s guitar player] once in a bar—this was all correspondence stuff— BF: And not email, just letters.

WO: Totally, no, no email then! (laughs) Although, we had some version of the Internet, I was living in Iowa, cause I remember there used to be Chugchanga, remember that? It was a music-related Message Board, but I don’t even remember what the computer screen looked like at that time.

BF: It was probably just two colors still.

WO: It was probably just two colors and how did you open messages? I’m sure you didn’t double click things.

BF: We had one friend in high school who was the liaison to that world [the early Internet] and his job was to get the Pavement bootlegs. He would trade cassettes in the mail with people he found on message boards. That was how I first found out that the Internet existed. Brian Weitz, he’s in Animal Collective now, and he was actually the one who came into school one day and said, (in a whisper) “Okay, so there’s this Palace Brothers/Dirty Three record where they cover all of Viva Last Blues.”

WO: Wow. Yeah, I mighta heard that somewhere. Even then, I was feeling like, this is kind of interesting but I feel dirty already using it.

BF: Were you reading stuff about yourself?

WO: I don’t think so very much, all I remember was people describing Dirty Three shows along a tour and now that’s a given, whereas at the time it seemed kind of (pauses) BF: It seemed illicit.

WO: Yeah, and it was kind of interesting and it was very informative, but was it the kind of information that we deserved to have? I think that was something that I was wondering.

BF: This box is telling you these things. It felt very voyeuristic.

WO: Exactly, because it’s an uphill battle but I still feel like a live show is a private space. The audience pays for the privilege of being in this private space and you travel to a place because it’s different from the place you were before. So it still seems strange to me—I mean, even show reviews are kind of strange—but people doing cell phone videos and things like that, I don’t want to forbid it because I’m all about free will, but at the same time it does feel like some kind of violation.

BF: Have you had many situations where people try to release bootlegs of your work? I feel like you’re probably a very bootlegged dude.

WO: Maybe so, I know there were a couple really cool bootlegs around the late ‘90s, there were some really neat ones that would collect the 7” stuff or certain live shows and generally the ones that I saw were really well done, the artwork looked great, so that was kind of a thrill. I think bootlegs in general are pretty great. I mean, I can’t think of an instance where a bootleg has really hurt anybody.

BF: I was thinking more to the end that it is infiltrating that space of the live moment.

WO: Yeah, but then, you know it’s like that Leonard Cohen song “Paper Thin Hotel” where to his ears he’s witnessing the kind of destruction or morphing of a relationship that he thought was sound or solid or private and it’s like that

(left and opposite) Will Oldham, in Paris, France. January, 1999. Photo by Laurent Orseau (previous) Will Oldham in Louisville, Kentucky, December, 2008. Photo by Todd Cole

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there’s a certain liberation that comes with anytime somebody violates that space, cause then you think, “Well, that’s another thing I can’t control. That’s cool.” (both laugh) It feels good to know your limitations, then you can stop trying or modify your trying. If it’s really important you can say, “Well, it shouldn’t be that way, I’m going to ask these people to stop making this one bootleg just because I think that stuff should remain how it was,” or you can just let it go. But bootlegs, I think the first time I went to New York was the first time I saw bootlegs. Bleecker Bob’s or, what was that place, Third Street Jazz, they had amazing vinyl bootlegs, and I was just like, “What are these records!? I’ve never heard of these records before!” And I’m buying them and taking them home and it was so exciting. Someone had pressed vinyl of a live show or studio outtakes of somebody, but they were done by fans, so it was all about what they’d love about the artist in the first place, so they’d try to make a cool cover with a cool picture with the best sounding recordings they can get.

BF: Did you ever see the people who had the mics split up attached to their glasses?

WO: Yeah. I remember when Harmony was making that Julien Donkey-Boy, most scenes were shot with multiple cameras and two or three people might have eyeglass cams. The scene where they’re riding the bus, I think, with the dead baby, that was shot with eyeglass cams just to get the [real] people’s reactions, and they would have people following in the car with release forms so if they got a good take then they’d have to catch up with the bus, get on the bus and get release forms signed by everybody who’s riding the bus.

BF: They had a lot of stuff happening. It was amazing.

WO: Yeah, except that it didn’t revolutionize anything but yet it was totally revolutionary.

BF: It kind of happened into a vacuum even though everybody knew about it.

WO: Kind of everybody knew about it, but a lot of people still have never seen it in the world outside of our community. They’re just like, “Oh.” You’re like, “I’d really recommend it.” They’re like, “Oh, okay. I’m gonna watch The Wire now.”

BF: (laughs) Have you watched The Wire? You spent some time in Baltimore.

WO: I just watched the first season, then I went back and watched The Corner, which was before The Wire—the same creators and some of the same actors—but it was a miniseries, six episodes.

BF: What did you think?

WO: (long pause) The Corner’s just street life, whereas The Wire is cop life and street life. I don’t know. (pause) It’s really good. I would drive around those neighborhoods and wanna know what happens in the boarded-up houses, because something is happening in those boarded-up houses, and so in that way (long pause) you know it was good to have access to something more in terms of those streets, having walked them and driven them. I think they were all on the east side and my neighborhood was just a half-mile north of all that stuff. It was kind of heavy over there.

BF: Baltimore is heavy.

WO: Yeah, every third block is one thing and three blocks later is a completely different thing. It was cool seeing The Wire and The Corner and seeing the choppers, because once a week you’d see the choppers flying low and shining lights on the alleys behind your house, trying to find the guy running away from the cops.

BF: How long did you live there for?

WO: I owned a house for two years there.

BF: You’ve lived kind of all over the country.

WO: Kinda, yeah.

BF: Have you lived on the West Coast ever?

WO: Here for less than a year in ’89, last spring I lived in Sausalito, CA for three months.

BF: You do acting stuff again.

WO: Yeah, sometimes, it’s just when it works out. If it’s gonna be a weird headache, like when Harmony was making Gummo, I was living in Iowa at that time and we didn’t really know each other, I think we might have had some communication. He was like “You wanna play this part in this movie?” I said, “It looks interesting,” and he was like “Yeah, well, we’ll just have to send someone to you and put you on tape and let the producer”— and I was just like, “No (pause) no thanks,” like, I don’t do acting for a living, I do music every day—if you wanna take a chance that’s fine but if you don’t that makes sense, you know, people do that for a living. And his producer, or the assistant to the producer called and was upset and said “Even Tom Cruise would have to go on tape for a part” and I said, “Well, cause that’s his job. I really mean no disrespect, I would just get depressed if some movie person came to my house and wanted to put me on video tape and to feel like I was going on trial or something like that and to feel like I have no basis for”—you know, like, an actor would prepare, “This is how I’m gonna do this tape thing, and I’m gonna do it right and I’m going to make these choices” and I don’t have that worked in anymore.

BF: At one point you did.

WO: Yeah, more so.

BF: Before the recordings.

WO: From nine to nineteen, basically, I was just acting.

BF: Which movies?

WO: Matewan, and when I was living here [Los Angeles] I was in the Baby Jessica TV movie that was shot in Bellflower.

BF: And you were coming from Louisville, so you were really having to pursue it.

WO: Well, in Louisville there was a really good theatre scene in the 70s and 80s, specifically—theatre is still there but it seems to be like other repertory theatres around the country where it’s old people go to see plays, and you hear about the avant garde director of the day coming to Louisville to direct a play and it’s just, like, whoah, you know, not pushing anybody’s buttons, and again, it’s just old people sitting there.

BF: Do you still go a lot?

WO: I’ll go sometimes. I went a couple weeks ago to see Glengarry Glen Ross with William Mapother who is from Louisville and is now famous for being on that TV show Lost and is a cousin of Tom Cruise. And my mom goes regularly, so she was, like, “Do you want to go to this play?”

BF: I remember liking it.

WO: I remember liking the movie, and I thought, “That will be neat to see.”

BF: Was it?

WO: It was on some levels, seeing how they added more scenes in the movie, but the theatre was really something else when I was a kid. They had this New Plays Festival that was kind of a worldwide big event where people would come from all over.

BF: Did that lead directly into you making films in other places?

WO: Yeah, cause I was involved with the theatre stuff there and John Sayles’ casting person saw me in a play in Louisville and that’s how the Matewan thing happened. And then when high school was over I went to a semester of college at Brown and hated it so much and was back in Louisville and there was an actor who said, “I just moved to Los Angeles, you should move to Los Angeles.” I was like, “That sounds good.”

BF: How did your new investment in music and that type of performance transition out of the stage and screen performing?

WO: The acting thing, especially coming out here and meeting casting people, agents, and things like that and just being like, “I don’t recognize what is cool, I don’t recognize what I was hoping for.” There’s a lot of things that I didn’t enjoy about acting in my teens and I just thought it was because I was “in my teens, and the next thing is going to be so much more interesting” and it was just worse, so much worse. And then for a while, for a couple years I was just completely like, “I don’t know anything, I don’t know why I’m on this planet,” cause that’s what I thought I wanted to do and it was the opposite of what I wanted. (pause) When I was first here I lived

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in Hollywood with some friends from Louisville and they had a little recording studio set up in their closet and one day one of the guys was like, “Lets write a song today,” and I had never done any music or anything like that and then later I was living with my brother in Virginia and he was like “What are you going to do today?” “Go to the library, I don’t know,” [and] he was like, “Why don’t you record a song, why don’t you write a song and record it?” Okay. So I did that and it started to pick up where all those other things had left off in terms of putting something together, writing something that has to do with an emotion and expression but has to be structured, but still also involves voice and text and things like that. I was like, you know, (pauses) I can get my rocks off with this.

BF: Did you approach it as a character thing in the beginning?

WO: Yeah, yeah, yeah, especially—most of the songs on that first Palace Brothers record are all full-on character things.

BF: Has that felt a constant?

WO: Once I got into making Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy records I started to try to make it so that I’m always on the line of character and non-character so that I can deceive myself as well, like in performance or in writing, or on a tour and just say “The Earthbound being has dissolved and this is all true.” And once you get in a groove on tour that works, it’s like “Okay, gotta fill the van up with gas, make sure everyone’s eaten, check into the motel,” once you do that a few days in a row that becomes second nature and you can just be the imaginary person.

BF: Do you ride out whole tours in character in that way?

WO: Yeah, to some extent.

BF: Even the time off stage?

WO: Yeah, kinda.

BF: It’s crazy how little time is actually spent performing on tour.

WO: You want to be a fully realized person who’s fully present—partly because it’s what the audience wants but also because you want it as well—and who doesn’t have the relationship to a responsibility that a normal human being has, that has a different relationship, so that nothing is routine, basically. That it’s all new, all the time.

BF: Before you go into a tour do you find yourself drawing from a reoccurring character who has evolved over time, or does each tour kind of feature a new character?

WO: There are different kinds of tours and different kinds of performances but for the most part since Bonnie came around the idea is that it’s re-entering the same basic character space of somebody who is also aging and maturing but in a non-human way.

BF: Did that exist during the Palace days?

WO: It did, somewhat, but that was all an education process. Then it would be really fragmentary and I might at the end of a tour or recording or single performance of a song just be like, “Whoah, that really went somewhere,” but I would have no idea why it did or how to get back to it necessarily, and so it was more all over the place then. And it was also all over the place because I couldn’t have faith, necessarily, that I was going to be able to financially write another record, or creatively write another record cause it was still all new. Like, “Okay, I made this record but that doesn’t mean I can make another record, it doesn’t mean there’s going to be an audience for it, doesn’t mean that I’m going to have the ability to do it.” But after a certain point of time you can say, “Okay, I’m going to hesitatingly call these givens, that I’m going to be able to make another record, so if that’s the case, then what can I do?” Ah, with confidence and faith I can do a lot more ever than I could ever before, those were the things that were lacking before. It was like, “I’m going to put it all into this” and then betting at a roulette wheel and then walking away before it stops spinning, and never knowing—having six months later someone call you, like, “You did great that night! Why did you leave?” (both laugh) BF: Joya was the first Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy record?

WO: No, now it’s retroactively a Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy record. It was a Will Oldham record, and that was one of the most desperate—because I had failed with the Dirty Three record and was really really depressed about that and thought, “Well, I’m gonna try again.” I used to live in Birmingham, Alabama, I wasn’t living there anymore but my brother still did so I went to his house and [Dave] Pajo came down and we were gonna make the record there ourselves, just he and I, and after a couple days working I was just like “Shit man, this isn’t working,” so I called Dan, like, “Yeah, I think that’s it, I don’t think there’s

anymore records coming” (laughs) He’s like, “Really?” I was like, “Yeah” I was actually kind of super relieved, like, “Hmm, now I have my whole life ahead of me, what am I gonna do with it?” But then he was like, “What would it take?” And I was like, “Someone else would just have to take over the coordination of the recording,” and he was like, “Well, me and Rian [Murphy] can do it,” so we went to Chicago and made that record. But it was still just like, I don’t know, what do you do? Also after having made a record like Arise Therefore which was with my older brother, David Grubbs and Steve Albini, who were all three really huge heros and influences and people that I loved personally, and musically on so many levels, so one some level I was like, “Well, that was that, I mean, why make another record?”

BF: You peaked.

WO: Yeah. (pause) Exactly. And it was just like, when you peak, God doesn’t turn the light off (Brendan laughs), you know? And I think it’s kind of neat when somebody stops and stops forever, forever ever, but if you can’t guarantee yourself that you’re going to stop forever then you shouldn’t stop at all because you’re not going to be good when you try to do it again, cause then you won’t have practiced. So it was just, like, well, there’s too much stuff, too much great interactions with friends, with colleagues with audience and getting to put songs together, getting to go to weird places and make music there, whether it was a studio or a show. It would be irresponsible to give that up just because that’s what I feel today, you know? That’s not a good feeling to trust. But at the same time, I was like, “I don’t know how to sell records, what do you put them under? I don’t understand the machine, the publicity machine.”

BF: Was the idea with Palace to change the band name every time from the start—every record was a different thing, right? Palace Brothers, Palace Songs, Palace Music.

WO: Yeah, kinda.

BF: You were always the primary person.

WO: Well, except for everybody else who’s involved with any given performance or recording.

BF: But you were the connection.

WO: I brought everyone together and it seemed like it was important to identify the difference between things for everybody’s clarity, for the people working on it, for the people listening to it. And still coming from acting and thinking, like, a play is always a different name, you go to the theatre the next time you’re not going to see “this presenting this play,” you’re going to see a different play with a different group of actors, or a movie, you know it’s always different. I was thinking, “How do you do that with records?” And you can’t really do that with records. It’s not a bad thing, but at the time it was an obstacle. How can I make records that are like movies or plays or books?

BF: What was the moment that you thought that the Palace legacy was done? How did Arise Therefore come to be?

WO: With Viva Last Blues, that seemed like at the time for me that that was a supreme achievement. It took so much work to get the different kinds of people there and it was such an incredible group of people. And part of it was also thinking, “From now on, it’s really experimentation.” The 7”s were experiments but I tried to be more confident about the [full length] records. But from then on I was like, “I think the records are going to be experiments, too, and I like all this Palace music so I don’t want to tarnish it, I wanna leave it to be what it is and I’ll make other things. If I fuck up with the other things I don’t want people to be, ‘Oh that’s that shit.’” (laughs) BF: Arise Therefore is maybe my favorite record ever made by anyone.

WO: Thanks. I love it so much.

BF: And it’s always been sort of a mystery. I mean, it wasn’t a secret, but it was like, “Okay, now there is a name change, or it supposedly doesn’t have an artist name attached to it, but it is the guy from Palace and there is a drum machine and the lyrics are so gnarly.” It was way more raw, subject/character wise, than anything before it, right?

WO: Yeah, exactly. Which has happened a few times because when I’m working on the songs, once it starts to take shape, I just start to feel psyched that a song is taking shape and I forget what it is about, you know, like seeing that Irreversible movie.

BF: The one where the person is beaten in the head.

WO: Oh yeah, there’s lots of—people are like, “Oh, that’s so harsh,” but when I saw it I was just so excited because it was really great.

BF: You’re seeing the craft.

WO: And I know it would be worthless without the content, but I really come out of there just elated at the possibilities and just like, “Oh my god I can’t believe they put that much work into telling this story.” So with Arise Therefore, I thought, “We’re gonna make this really warm, rich sounding, really warm record. It’s going to be so inviting to people, it’s got this really optimistic sounding title, Arise Therefore.” And even while making it, it was so exciting when the sounds would come up, Ned [Oldham]’s parts and Grubbs’ parts, I was like, “This is so exciting, so positive, so positive.” And then started to listen to it and realized—(pause) or other people listening to it and saying “There’s nothing positive about that.” (laughs) BF: I think that’s why I like it so much, it’s so dynamic, but still spacious, it’s sort of disorienting.

David Grubbs’ piano parts are so optimistic and beautiful, they come in and then— WO: It was so exciting. I had no idea what Grubbs was going to play, I just thought, “Yeah, he can play piano, it would be really interesting to do a session with him.” And since then I’ve heard him do other piano parts with different musicians and it has the same chord voicings and rhythms, but at the time I hadn’t heard anything like that. It was just like, “Oh my gosh.” It was so fun because we would just record all that live except when we would have to do an overdub because someone was playing two instruments on a part, or something like that, so singing along with those parts was really so fun.

BF: Would you play along to the drum machine live, or would you have the drum machine already dumped in to the recorder?

WO: No, play along with the drum machine, we had it coming out of an amp but I think we might have split the signal so that we had it direct and an amp signal. And then it had a foot switch to start and stop it and I was Will Oldham in Louisville, Kentucky, December, 2008. Photo by Todd Cole starting and stopping the beat, you know I’d be like, “You ready guys?” And I practiced with the drum machine a lot. I tried to get Britt [Wallford] to play drums on that record and back in those days he would always get excited (opposite) about what people said, “You wanna play something?” and then, invariably he’d call at the eleventh hour and Selected Palace/Will Oldham/Bonnie “Prince” Billy record covers, all he called me a month before the session and was like, “You know, I don’t think I have anything to bring to the released on Drag City. session,” which was his mantra at the time. He had zero confidence, crazy. (left to right, top to bottom) BF: How long did it take you to come to the drum machine idea once he cancelled?

Joya LP/CD 1997, Ohio Riverboat Song/Drinking Woman 7” 1993, There WO: Not long, I think probably a day. I was really excited about playing with Britt and there isn’t somebody else— is No-One What Will Take Care Of You LP (revised cover) 1993, Horses 7” 1994, The Mountain CDep 1995, Days in The Wake LP/CD/CS 1994 (pause) like, I would say that Britt and Jim [White] are probably the two most unique drummers that I know of, that I’ve ever heard. So you don’t really want another drummer then. And also this childhood fantasy realization Guarapero: Lost Blues 2 LP/CD 2000, Arise Therefore LP/CD 1996, Every of playing with my brother, Grubbs and Albini, I was thinking, “Well, who’s gotten more heart out of a drum Mother’s Son 7” 1996, There Is No-One What Will Take Care Of You CD machine than Albini?” (Brendan laughs) Those Big Black records! (original CD cover) 1993, The Mountain Low 7” 1995, In My Mind 7” (split BF: Totally! with Rising Shotgun) 1997 WO: That’s one of the things that I love him for, the drum machine, so I bet he’ll accept—he cannot criticize and he’ll accept it (Brendan laughs) and he’ll know how to work with it.

Lost Blues and Other Songs LP/CD 1997, Lie Down In The Light LP/CD 2008, Hope 12”/CDep 1994, Strange Form of Life 12”/CDep 2007, Ask BF: And he did.

Forgiveness 12”/CDep 2007, Black/Rich Music 12”/CDep 1998 (Originally WO: Yeah. titled (Songs Put Together for) The Broken Giant and included as free CDep BF: So the name thing— with first edition of Arise Therefore in 1996) WO: Arise Therefore didn’t have a[n artists’] name. We’ve stickered it all different things, at that time we put a Palace sticker on it, then we put a Will Oldham sticker on it after Joya came out, and now I think it has a Bonnie Days In The Wake LP/CD/CS 1994, Ode Music 12”/CDep 2000, Superwolf ‘Prince’ Billy sticker on it. But once you take the sticker off, it doesn’t have a name.

LP/CD (with Matt Sweeney) 2005, Almost Heaven 12”/CDep (with Rian BF: Where did Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy come from?

Murphy) 2000, Patience 7” 1997, Lay & Love 12”/CD single 2007 WO: I think I had just done a tour with Mick and Jim and Liam Hayes who was on Viva Last Blues and in [the Little Joya CD single (came with first pressing of Joya) 1998, Agnes, band] Plush, in Australia, it was really really fun.

Queen of Sorrow enhanced CD single 2004, Cold & Wet 12” CD single, BF: Were you touring for the Viva Last Blues material?

Bonnie “Prince” Billy sings Greatest Palace Music LP/CD 2004, Master And WO: I never associate a tour with a record.

Everyone LP/CD 2003, Happy Child/Forrest Time CD Single 2003 BF: Really?

WO: Yeah, and it’s always mystified me when people say, “Oh, that was that tour,” and I’m just like, “Maybe? I Mr. Jew 7” (as Silver Palace, long fabled Palace/Silver Jews collaborative don’t know what you’re talking about.” The tours are always different musicians and— band) 2006, Get On Jolly 12”/CDep (with Marquis de Tren) 2000, The Letting Go LP/CD/DVD-A 2006, I See A Darkness LP/CD 1999, Viva Last BF: Have you never done that where you took the band on tour who played on the record?

Blues LP/CD/CS 1995, I Gave You CD single (with Matt Sweeney) 2005 WO: Never.

BF: Really?

Cursed Sleep 12”/CD single 2006, Beware LP/CD/Ultraload 2009, Brother WO: Yeah.

Warrior 7” (split with rainYwood) 2002, Ease Down The Road LP/CD 2001, BF: Do you ever do the thing where you take the band on tour and then you make the next record O How I Enjoy The Light 7” 1995, Summer In The Southeast LP/CD 2005 with them?

WO: I just did that for the first time just now. Just got out of the recording studio using the same musicians that we just traveled with in Europe and I thought, “Well, this will be an interesting experiment,” because people do that sometimes.

BF: Did you all play the songs on tour?

WO: No, we didn’t play them until we were in the studio. But I thought it would be really cool because we would have established relationships with each other, musical relationships and that that would be a neat thing to work off of.

BF: How did it go?

WO: I think it went really well, (laughs) I mean, it’s still so fresh.

BF: That will come out in the spring?

WO: Yeah.

BF: Did Shahzad [Ismaily] play on that?

WO: No, when I met Shahzad I was touring with Alex Neilson, the drummer, and we did some shows with Dawn

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McCarthy as Fawn Fables, which was Dawn and Shahzad. One day during sound check Shahzad started playing bass when Alex and I were sound checking and it was like, (in hopeful tone) “Do you wanna just play with us?”

BF: (Laughs) He’s so good.

WO: He’s so good. That night it was basically like, “Here’s our set”—and he’d never heard any of the songs—“and so probably these four songs would sound good with bass, and then these three.” He was like, “Okay” and that was it. He would come on when it was time for him to start playing with us and that’s when he would learn the songs and he was great.

BF: That drummer is excellent, too.

WO: Alex.

BF: He looks kind of young?

WO: Yeah, he’s pretty young, getting older every day.

BF: Obviously there is no one answer to this, but where do you find the people you play with? Where’d you find Alex, for example?

WO: You know Ali Roberts, Alistair Roberts? There was a record, No Earthly Man that he asked me to come and be in with the sessions, co-producing or whatever that vague thing means, but Alex was on those, and we got along really well during that session and I kept in touch with him after that.

BF: Are people referred to you a lot?

WO: (long pause) Maybe, but it really just goes in one ear and out the other if that’s the case. (Brendan laughs) And also often times people will say, “If you ever need a bass player/if you ever need a guitar player,” but that doesn’t really click, usually. There was one guy, his name’s Daniel Smith and he now makes records as Begushkin, he’s out of New York and he came to a show, I think in Baltimore, once, and after the show said something like, “I’m a really mean finger picker, you should have me play with you sometime.” I was like, “Alright,” cause he seemed like such a freak, and I did and (pause)— BF: (Laughs) Was he mean?

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WO: He’s unique. (Brendan laughs) Yeah. He’s a unique person. He’s a very interesting musician and person. But, [usually] yeah, it’s just seeing people, or hearing a record or seeing a show. I remember hearing Faun Fables for the first time when we were on tour pitching tents in the back yard of some dude and he was like, “You guys wanna smoke out before bed?” So we came into his living room and he put this CD on and completely freaked me out, scared me so bad in such an exciting way.

BF: Have you ever worked with or encouraged someone to play who is a “nonmusician,” like the way it happened for you when you were young?

WO: Mmm hmmm, yeah. Sometimes it works. There’s been a couple times, like on the Greatest Palace Music record and on the session that we just did D.V. [DeVincentis] plays saxophone, and he’s not a professional saxophone player, but we needed some saxophone, so it’s like, “Lets have D.V. come in.” In this session he came in one day, did one of the songs, and then the other one he couldn’t play in tune, which is not an issue that you run into with a regular musician, it was like, “Come back tomorrow,” and he came back the next day and he was in tune (Brendan laughs), so—but with musicians you say, “You’re not in tune,” and they say, “I know, let me fix that,” and it’d be fixed. It was neat going to Nashville for the first time and working with musicians who are the most incredible, intuitive, skilled, fluent musicians that I’ve ever played with.

BF: Heavy professional.

WO: Professional, heavy professional.

BF: When was that?

WO: The first time was with Master and Everyone which was just me and my brother Paul playing and then overdubbing where it was like, “Yeah, it might be nice to have a female voice” and Mark [Nevers, the engineer] would call up the musician’s union and say, “Yeah, we’re looking for a female voice,” and he’s like, “Describe what you want,” and I say, “Somewhere between Sandy Denny and Dolly Parton,” and they just gave us a list of numbers. We call, a woman comes over and just blows your mind (laughs).

BF: And every person is that good.

WO: Yeah, but she was magic.

BF: Did she tour with you guys?

WO: No, she’s from a different planet. (Brendan laughs) The next time I saw her, which was a year later, when we were doing Greatest Palace Music, she said, “I got more hits on my website from singin’ with you than from anything I’ve ever done,” and she’d sung with Alan Jackson, Reba McEntire, and stuff, but always as this backup singer and in popular country music world, like popular music of most kinds, the musicians do not matter, it’s the personality and that’s it. But in this more whatever, more independent—or, with this different kind of audience, people often times do pay attention to who’s playing on the record. But that didn’t make her think, “I’d like to do more with you,” it was like, “I’m glad I came in for this hour as well, now where’s my hundred dollars?” To her it didn’t mean—that wasn’t success, it was just interesting that she got recognition, but it had nothing to do with what she wanted to do in her life. And then she sang a little bit on the Lie Down In The Ligh” record and now she’s selling real estate and she says [it’]s to support her singing habit.

BF: How old was she do you think?

WO: I bet she’s forty, now.

BF: Who was Mark?

WO: Mark Nevers, he’s a Nashville engineer who did the Master and Everyone, Greatest Palace Music and Lie Down In The Ligh” recordings.

BF: So you’ll go back to people. When you start to work on a record, do you usually have the body of songs first and then think about who would be good to make it with you?

WO: Well, I find that once the songs are a little less than nebulous, then I think, “Now I have to start thinking about how these are gonna be realized,” because to play with the kinds of people that I like to play with, it often times means calling them three months to ten months in advance to say, “Might you be available to do some touring or some recording?” I wrote Jim [White] about touring in March maybe a month ago, because I would just want him to be sure that he knew that that was my ideal, and to see if he was interested. And also, before we even started working on this record I was thinking about Jim and starting to write song ideas and also set structure ideas for this tour next year, which will change somewhat, but I think it’s all—little bits, you know.

BF: So since it’s not “the tour for the record” it’s kind of like you have records that you conceptualize and tours that you conceptualize and so you have two bodies that are independent from one another.

WO: Totally.

BF: That’s great.

WO: Yeah, it’s nice.

BF: Did you always feel that freedom?

WO: Yeah, always.

BF: You toured with a drum machine after you did Arise Therefore, though, didn’t you? (laughs) I’m sorry!

WO: See, I don’t remember when that was (laughs), but at one point I toured with a backing tape—I went to the local music store and rented a couple of keyboards that had drums on them and made a backing tape for a set.

BF: Did you play that alone?

WO: I played that alone, yeah, but another part of a tour is who you’re traveling with and I was traveling with the band Run On, and I always think of that tour as playing against that cassette with Run On having played just before and us all traveling together, cause in the end you come away with having spent all this time with these other musicians and seen their set every night, it’s inextricable. Your time onstage is 24 hours a day the whole time.

And it can be so great—once I realized that it was like, “Okay, I just have to plan for that and always be traveling with people that you want to be around twenty four hours a day, for better or for worse, for that period of time.”

BF: Have you done many tours alone, playing alone?

WO: Not many.

BF: Have you ever traveled alone when you have played alone?

WO: About a year ago I did a tour alone, but thankfully Sir Richard Bishop played all the shows, too, so it was the two of us traveling together, we didn’t have any tour manager or anything, we just traveled together in Europe and it was definitely the saving grace, because I don’t like playing alone, I don’t like touring alone, except when I’ve done a couple of these in-store and radio station tours. The first one was on the West Coast a number of years ago, and those are super fun to travel alone because you can’t fuck up because no one is paying to see anything. And then just anything can happen if you’re traveling alone in those situations cause usually you play those in the afternoon, so that means mornings and nights you don’t know what’s gonna happen, don’t know where you’re gonna sleep, don’t know anything about what life is gonna be like. Then it’s fully 24/7 Bonnie, there is no other identity. It’s pretty exciting.

BF: Because you’re having to negotiate with people in character, kinda?

WO: Yeah, kind of, like, if the in-store starts at 4:00, I get there at 4:00, so that I can just walk in and start playing right away and there’s no chance for anyone to say, “Oh, you know we met a long time ago” or “I know your cousin” or anything like that because you don’t want to be there, you want to be fully “Boom” right into the song, you don’t want to remember anything about an accepted reality, you don’t wanna share an accepted reality with anyone until after the show, because then the shows become part of the accepted reality, and you can pretend that that’s when life began, was an hour ago. (laughs) BF: Would you wind up staying with people a lot?

WO: Staying with people, or not sleeping, anything.

BF: Do you record digitally? Has your experience of recording changed in this millennium?

WO: Of course it has, yeah. Some people like to record some things to tape, and then they have different times in which they like to dump it to digital, vocals and drums on tape, or all instruments on tape. But most things do get dumped into Pro Tools. To me, it’s like, whatever an engineer is comfortable with is the best format. My brother Paul has run this studio for the last ten years or so in Shalersville, Kentucky, we’ve done a lot of recording there and at some point Tape Op [Recording Magazine] sent a journalist out to interview him, talk about his studio, got there and they were just like, (long pause) “Where’s all your tape machines? Where’s your gear?” He’s like, “I’ve never had a tape machine, I’ve never recorded analog.” And they were blown away because these records that they were admiring the sound of, they just assumed that the aesthetic was gonna be analog, and it isn’t, the aesthetic is just making a good record. They can make shitty sounding analog records and they can make shitty sounding digital records.

BF: Did they feel duped?

WO: I think there was a little disbelief at first and then, you know, “Well, shit, I gotta make the best of this, I gotta turn my head around a little bit.”

BF: That’s how change happens. Have you started putting out albums closer together the last couple years?

WO: I’m not sure. Maybe? (laughs) BF: You don’t just decide to make a record on the spur of the moment, at this point—they take planning out.

WO: It takes planning out. These two full lengths will be kinda close to each other— BF: Lie Down In The Light and the new one? Wait, does the new one have a title yet?

WO: Beware—from June of 2007 to June of 2008 I didn’t do any touring or any shows, so that just meant there was more time to put songs together.

BF: You had two ready to go.

WO: Well, we recorded Lie Down In The Light and then didn’t do any shows for the next eight months, so I spent all that time and all that energy just writing songs instead of putting a band together or touring or whatever.

BF: A few times you’ve changed album titles after the albums come out, like Days In The Wake wasn’t called that at first.

WO: Yeah, in the last couple days I was thinking about changing it back.

BF: The last couple days?

WO: Yeah. (Laughs) changing it back to “Palace Brothers.”

BF: A lot of your records have been, like “first copies come with a bonus thing.” Is that the label or you thinking about what would be a trip to do?

WO: Most of the time that’s me and [Drag City’s Dan] Koretzky thinking what would be a trip to do. You know, the bonus things had to do with the direct sales accounts, all the independent stores, they pay 75 cents or a dollar more than the distributors pay, cause they’re buying it directly, and the distributors have to mark it up to the price that the direct buyer would pay.

And also, knowing that there’s a certain kind of record buyer who goes to those stores is a different kind of record buyer who would be more excited about getting something like that, but also [we] would be sort of like, “Thank you for dealing with us, and therefore we’re going to give you something that the other stores don’t get.” But what can it be? It’s gotta be something that we think would be a cool gift, that would last, as well. That’s the most fun thing about working with Drag City, is being participatory in everything.

Cause there’s opportunity to have fun in almost every dimension of putting records out, you know, whether it’s promo or it’s designing the CD label, whether it’s choosing paper stock for a poster or how big the poster’s gonna be, or anything, or what’s gonna be the preview download mp3 now before the record, why not make that into something cool?

BF: [Comedian] Neil Hamburger commercials for the albums.

WO: Neil Hamburger commercials. I think it was Master And Everyone, when people started doing streaming previews of the record, so when we did it we did it with Neil Hamburger speaking over the song (both laugh) so that people could hear the song but, but Neil Hamburger was talking over it.

BF: He was making jokes?

WO: I think he knew his job was to promote the record, but by then end of the song he was promoting his own record. (both laugh) And people were so angry, you know, (mock screaming) “Why would you do that? I wanted to hear the song!” Well then buy the record, it’s coming out in three weeks.

I feel like all the stuff we’re talking about, all the aspects of making a record are exciting, (pause) and it isn’t for a lot of the general music listening public, a lot of that stuff completely falls by the wayside, it’s totally incidental or totally non-existent. And so, in part I also feel like a lot of the audience are

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Will Oldham in Oslo Norway, January 2000. Photo by Frank Tønnesen Will Oldham in Louisville, Kentucky, December, 2008.

Photo by Todd Cole.

people who are insiders, cause they’re the only ones who are gonna get a kick out of any of this stuff, but Dan and I were talking recently about the joy of the release date, as a fan, you’re sitting there waiting at the record store, and you don’t want it to be a digital download, or someone to hand you a bootleg CD beforehand, or be in the know. It’s so great when it just hits there. You know a record is coming out on Tuesday May 7th, I remember in the old days calling the record stores, like, “Is it in yet, is it in yet?” The weird records, like SST or something like that, even a release date didn’t mean anything in Louisville, Kentucky, you know? Cause when was the record store gonna get it? When they got it. When they got it from their distributor or whatever. So part of it is thinking, “I hope there is an audience among people who are involved with all different levels of music production,” and trying to keep some kind of the magic about it for those people as well as the broader audience that have other jobs as house painters or computer programmers or whatever it is that people do.

BF: What do you think about the fact that more people hear music now, even though less are paying for it or even trying to acquire the actual physical copy?

WO: I may be completely wrong here, but I don’t understand fully how it’s different from all the tape trading that I did as a kid. I’m sure I didn’t buy most of the music that I listened to growing up. I bought music all the time [but] I would always look for the cheapest way of getting it; I always knew when the new Ramones record came out that I could go to the local comic book store and they would have cut out radio promos for $2.99, you know, and I was psyched.

BF: And you loved the record.

WO: And I loved the record, and sometimes I would buy a new copy of a Ramones record, or whatever record. But I don’t feel like—(pause) I feel like the people who notice it the most are the people who attempt to count on the revenue of a format, or of a distribution system, “It’s all fucked,” when, you know, obviously if people are charging $50, $60, $80, or $250 to see certain shows, obviously music is not suffering. People wanna see music, they wanna hear music, and most people, as long as you don’t price it ridiculous—I feel like if you like music you don’t wanna get the scummy shitty free thing, you wanna be active. It’s like voting: it means more if you are involved with the process. So sometimes that means buying a record. I think most people know that, “I don’t wanna just sit here and freeload.” Unless you just don’t have any money, in which case I’d rather have you freeload rather than not listen to the music. Have a record, whatever.

BF: What about the changing of albums that are already out? Is it a freedom, or is it an “ah, I can’t decide,” anxiety thing?

WO: It’s more a freedom thing. I mean, some things you can change and some things you can’t change, so you might as well change the things you can change, you know, so you don’t get hung up on the things that you can’t. (Brendan laughs) And also, it’s really exciting, in a nonmalicious way, to be a revisionist historian, because it’s neat to think of the possibilities. And it helps you, also, when you’re reading the newspaper think, “Okay, I changed the artist name on this record that came out in 1996, our president has changed this piece of information with the same lack of conscience that I’m changing this thing which actually means nothing to most people.” But other people can change things that actually are important to other people with the same “Oh yeah, I think I’ll just change that: I never said that,” or, “I did say that,” or, “I didn’t do that.” (pause) So it helps you feel like you’re participating in history.

BF: (laughs) Totally!

WO: You’re active. The only way you know how something works is when you do it yourself.

BF: I wonder, you’ve lived all over America—kinda— WO: Kind of.

BF: Have you felt— in the course of your career—invested in exploring this country

as an active exploring this country?

WO: Sure, and the world. It’s not not feeling comfortable among any group of people—it’s not that I feel disconnected from people, but I do feel disconnected from groups of people.

BF: Like local scenes?

WO: Kind of like anytime people are gathered together I don’t feel like I belong there. But I know that I share a lot with lots of people, so part of it is feeling like if I don’t keep moving around I’m going to get isolated because that’s the only way to find all the different people that you have things in common with and can relate to. Other than sticking in one place and gradually alienating yourself from everybody because of the differences, just kind of keeping moving so you’re reminded, “I’m not the only one that thinks this, or likes this, or feels this, or appreciates this, or hates this or can’t stand this.” And then the ulterior motive is also seeing, “Well, who do I have a potential musical relationship to,” whether it’s someone I could work with or someone who might like a record that I made, because I feel like there’s potentially people of all ages all over the world, but I don’t think that it necessarily has a wide appeal, or an appeal to big number of people, but lots of different individuals, I think, and they could be anywhere. The cool thing is finding them in places that I wouldn’t have thought before, to find them. And sometimes I might even meet someone and think, “Oh, they might like this record that I made, but I’m not even going to try to figure out, I’m just glad to have met this person and figured out that they were potentially somebody that I could be making music for.”

That’s exciting, because people run into dead ends all the time, and they say, “I just did what I could with this,” or, “There’s no more good music,” or whatever people say that it’s and end to something, and there’s no reason for there to be an end to something until your consciousness is at an end.

BF: Have you been living back in Louisville for a while?

WO: Around the time of making Master and Everyone I was living in Baltimore, I had my house in Baltimore and drove to Kentucky to make that record with my brother Paul—and again, that record failed in its original concept, so that’s when I started working with Mark [Nevers], cause I called [David] Berman, I was like, “That guy you worked with in Nashville, you think he might be available? Should I give him a call?” He said, “Call him.” But my plan was to leave my house in Baltimore, make this record and then move out to Los Angeles again and live closer to the ocean and maybe just take care of myself for a little while, but then I met a lady in Louisville and thought, “Well, I’ll just sit here for a little while.” And it’s more expensive than Baltimore but it’s cheaper than most places to buy a house in Louisville, and I spend however much, three to seven months a year there.

BF: Does it feel more like home base because you grew up there?

WO: It feels like home base that I have an intense, sometimes overwhelming network of friends and family, to the point where I never know when I venture out if I’ll run into somebody and how I will know them, and that kind of can be overwhelming at times. But since our dad died a little over two years ago now, I feel very tied to it because my mom’s there, living alone. But I’ve spent enough time in other places that every place really feels like home. Louisville does not feel more like home than any other given place and I’ll often feel in the strangest places this overwhelming sensation of security will come over me and I’ll be like, “Oh, this is what it feels like to be home.” But I might be in Kansas, passing through and all of a sudden I’ll just get this feeling like, “Oh, I’m very very comfortable, I feel very in my element here. I wonder why? I don’t know why, but this must be what it feels like to be home.” It’s just a random thing.

BF: It’s a nice thing.

WO: It’s a wonderful thing.

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Craig Stecyk can be a very difficult person to contextualize. He is certainly no stranger to the spotlight—he has spent equal time as artist in front and as documentarian behind, but it seems Craig has really sought a life for himself messing around somewhere in the scaffolding structure upon which the spotlight is perched, or even behind the trailer where craft services sets up shop, talking to someone about the factory where the spotlight was made.

And yet it is a crazy understatement to say that Craig Stecyk may be the only person alive to have played such pivotal roles in the disparate developments of surfing, skateboarding, graffiti, contemporary art and even hot rod culture—yes, Craig is that guy in both the documentary and dramatized versions of the film Dogtown, he was Animal Chin, it was Craig’s tags from the 70’s that inspired New York’s Zephyr to name himself after a surf team, and aside from the incalculable trickle-down influence from the former categories, Craig has shown in galleries and museums internationally. But he will downplay all of this. Craig will deny things. He speaks at great length and in very complicated code and he somehow knows everyone there is to know so in the course of speaking, he can and will link any number of people to any one story, wiggling others into credit as he wiggles himself out. As such, his conversation is perhaps the best model for his career, his life, his circuitous path through the history of the world. And the amount of gorgeous, thoughtful, rigorous work that Craig has done with no audience in mind or even in sight, well what better way to learn about it than from one of the only people to have seen it.

I must admit, when we decided to do a Craig Stecyk interview there was a certain communal hesitation that it might come out hard to read, that the charm associated with hearing Craig’s in-person whirlwind would be lost in transcription. But somehow, just as Craig is prone to surprise, he was particularly clear on the day that we conducted this interview. And, of course, the way that he did dance around certain topics, that actually said more about his life and his practice than anyone else could say for him, anyways.

TEXT BY BRENDAN FOWLER / INTERVIEW BY BRENDAN FOWLER, ED TEMPLETON & AARON ROSE IMAGES COURTESY THE ARTIST

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BF: Your art has had a lot to do with location, where did you grow up?

CS: Ocean Park, which is positioned between Santa Monica and Venice.

BF: And you grew up involved with the ocean?

CS: Well, it was kind of out in front, yeah.

[Laughs] I had no sense of geography, I was afflicted with a coastal kid’s logic that had everything located on the other side of Pacific Avenue as being the same place as New Jersey.

BF: When do you think you started surfing?

CS: People in my family and vicinity surfed so I was in the water since I was very young, contentedly riding inflatable surf-mats, borrowing boards, diving etcetera. When I was twelve and discovered girls, I suddenly needed to own a surfboard due to its perceived attendant status.

My father hoped that this was a good idea, because it would stimulate me to get a job and learn about working and whatnot. Instead I decided to win a contest on KFWB radio where they gave out a free surfboard to promote the Surf Fair. Unfortunately, I won ruining my initiative for life. Getting something for nothing distorts your perceptions.

My luck runs on the good sign of wrong.

BF: Did you grow up around art?

CS: There was an contemporary arts community around Santa Monica, Venice and Ocean Park and Los Angeles had museums. Our immediate neighbors were painters while my father was a photographer and my mother was a ceramic artist. As a result I had access to equipment and materials for doing photographic stuff, kilns, clay,

paints , brushes etc. One of my early paramours lived in Stanton MacDonald Wright’s old studio.

It had sculptural friezes recessed into the walls.

No wonder I became so aesthetically confused that merging of Eros and modernism…

BF: So you had sculpture, painting and photography…

CS: Yeah, all that was there. Besides having been a practicing photographer, my father was involved in automotive culture, meaning modified cars.

Spray guns, welding torches, grinders and body hammers were all about. George Barris was a business partner of his. So I grew up knowing people like Sam Barris, Von Dutch, Dean Jeffries and Ed Roth inadvertently. My family would go off to car events. Yearly the big deal was the Oakland Roadster Show. It was there that I first encountered John, Mike and Barry McGee. The kids of the builders would all screw around together, Roy Brizio, Chip Foose, the Tognotti’s, the DiNapoli’s and Gejeians of the world.

Ironically I later ended up interacting on projects with many of them.

BF: Was graffiti – and my conception of your growing up experience was that you were marking stuff on the street – the first thing you were excited about in terms of art?

CS: Due to legal constraints I have to articulate that I absolutely possess no knowledge of any criminal behavior. There have been questions raised about my alleged activities in the past and I am happy here to clear up any misconceptions. A 1974 piece in Rolling

(from top) Another Small Fire—Ruins of The Flying Dutchman Ocean Park Pier, 1968 Jeff Ho, 1975 My life in the Garden State revolved around my fiends like Michel Vunod, Carl “Tinker” West and Bruce Springsteen, 1968-69 (opposite) Rigid Frame 1936 Harley and Side Car, 1974

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Stone done by the esteemed writer Eve Babitz purported that I had a propensity for painting on assorted concrete surfaces. This was due to a complete misunderstanding. In fact I made very prosaic recordings of urban landscapes. Some authoritarian types took that the wrong way and it has been problematic for me. Nonetheless Eve Babitz was an inventive writer and I valued the experience of dealing with her. Eve was an influential muse to many on the arts scene such as Ed Ruscha, Jim Morrison, Walter Hopps and Anthony Entin Friedkin. Her Godfather was Stravinsky and Julian Wasser did a famous photographic piece of her playing chess nude in the Pasadena Museum of Art with Marcel Duchamp. She told a great story with fervor and compassion and I always had fun with her. You can’t blame an artist for being inventive or for the public’s misinterpretation of their work.

Los Angeles has an outdoor mural culture that extending back through Siqueiros, the Spanish to the indigenous first nations people. The Tongva and Chumash did a lot of pictographic things. We would go back into the canyons and mountains that abutted where we lived to see the outcroppings and caves adorned with indigenous petroglyphs and shamanistic images. So really powerful pictorial and geometric art was in place long before any of the interlopers arrived here.

And When the Spanish came they did these amazing “we were here” markings in beautiful, florid calligraphic script. Their religious art also decorated the missions and the casas of the rancheros. Around town, in Venice, Santa Monica

and all parts of LA everybody had their own individual hand. Someone who was inculcated in the aerosol arts could make a single mark and it would be identifiable as their own. ­I was aware of that hand and diligently studied the archetypal forms.

Ed Templeton: If graffiti was your first step into art, did you see it that way? Were you thinking you were making artwork rather than just destroying things?

CS: I always thought of it as painting. I wasn’t affiliated – I was just a random guy. But there were gente in my immediate vicinity who were absolutely, como se dice?

– jumped in, sabes?

To me it is all basically outdoor graphic expression. I think it makes everything look better and enhances the human aspect of many rather impersonal public spaces. I think the city looks more interesting with marks. Well-done pieces can transform mediocre architecture and forlorn wastelands. Our cities are blighted with abundant commercial advertising that has no particular aesthetic value. What’s the difference between a painting hung in a museum and another that happens to occur on the outside of a museum anyway? The preceding are not particularly deep ideas. Planting trees, picking up trash, feeding the hungry, public music performances etc. all help make things better for everyone. It is interesting to me that there is such a pejorative attitude about graff. Aren’t the people entitled to decent free expression?

The Venice Pavilion, Belmont Tunnel/Talouca Yard and the May Company parking lot at the Los Angeles County Art Museum were all extensive spontaneously generated unrestrained expressions of outdoor art which have been destroyed. Knowledgeable critics from around the world recognized these sites for their intrinsic art and historic value. They were unique and irreplaceable cultural resources. We all suffer from their loss.

In my situation it just seemed like a logical thing to do. I knew scenic artists through my parents who painted 5-story high sky-scapes. Walls were just more surfaces to paint, as valid as any other medium. I was probably more tuned by guys painting cars, and all that tangerine, candy-apple stuff. Drawing on walls made sense.

And to a certain extent it was legal because when the 10 freeway went through it bisected a part of the city next to the district I lived in. There was a two-block wide swath which was miles long of abandoned houses. So I would go in there and there were endless materials for the taking. That’s where everybody dumped stolen cars, abandoned bicycles, urban refuse and got rid of whatever they didn’t want like the occasional body. It was comprised of house after house after house where the government had used the power of eminent domain and bought the owners out. So you’d get anything in there you wanted. I’d go in there and cut holes in houses so you could see through to the next wall, and then cut the next hole, and the next hole and then pretty soon I had four or five houses in a row where you could see through them all because I’d cut windows in them. It never occurred to me that this was inappropriate behavior because they were all being torn down and it was a DMZ. You could do anything you wanted in there – and there were all aspects of the human experience going on in there which benefited from the jurisdictional ambiguity of the locale.

BF: You were just experimenting…

CS: One day I found an abandoned ’49 Mercury and I wanted a little piece of trim that was on it – I’d return every day with nobody to there to help me and disassemble these cars to get the pieces I desired. It demonstrated how things worked. As I found more dead cars I began combining the elements into little tableaus.

Nobody cared anyway, the stuff was all crap, the discards of Los Angeles. When I was little when the 405 went through and they punched through Sepulveda Canyon and decimated the wilderness up there. I recall seeing these shell shocked deer wandering out of the Conejos onto the tarmac. Then a few years later they created the I-10 and it was good for us, as I was mobile and old enough to ramble. So the environs went from being a community into a ruin and ended up as this monstrous new concrete thing. We did everything you can imagine up there, the full range of the rights of passage. We used to skate up there. I rode the onramp of the unfinished 10 right onto the 405 which was operational. All that celebratory manhood – all that “I’m a badass with a good style” shit was over the second I rolled into traffic. They’re flying at 65 MPH and you’re on a skateboard, which feels fast to you but you’re actually pretty much standing still. I’d get hit by the concussive blast and knocked off my board. Only did that a couple times. You know the first time its actually kind of heroic because you go down and you’re surprised and improvising.

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1970, Dogtown Pacific Ocean Park, 1968 Dora, Malibu, ’66 (opposite) Boards Kevin Ancell, CRS, Terry Nails, chopping top end on Main St, Ocean Park

BF: You spent a long time doing that…

CS: That abandoned freeway transitional thing, it was endlessly adaptable entertainment for a couple of years. I just thought it was great to go smash stuff and make holes in the walls, there wasn’t anything intended. If you walked into a garage and there were cans of spray paint there with an endless canvas as far as you can see. You’d start out with a room, then a house, then the next house, then the house behind it you know. You’d punch holes in the fences and it was a rabbit warren of people just out there running.

And you had to be careful because there were also amoral apex predators out there. Pyromaniacs, child molesters, rapists, perverts, thieves, dealers were actively intent on perpetration. It was interesting what the project did to the social dynamic because it ended up bisecting the city. At a certain point you never saw the people on the other side of the freeway again. People on the same street were neighbors and then the government comes and puts this thing in the middle. The freeway became the new boundary.

An urban mountain range. People now could not easily interact with one another. An attitudinal generation in America at that point was considered to take place probably every two to three years, (I would say it’s much quicker now, its probably more like six months now.) You’d be tossing a ball to somebody on a street that a week later doesn’t exist anymore. A massive concrete dike was erected in the middle of it. The streets didn’t go through anymore and the town in its intended form had disintegrated.

BF: I heard at some point some things about surf culture rebelling against surf culture, like showing up at a surf contest with some inland town’s logo, Encino or something?

CS: Oh god, East Encino! How do you know about that?

BF: Basically Encino was in the valley, it was super not cool and you wrote East Encino on your surfboard…

CS: Yeah, we did do that. Actually there were a number of people, a sort of sub-set, a non-declared alliance that seemed to mark its turf with East Encino. I don’t know anything about that because there are still some very angry people who are in the district attorney’s office. They have risen through the ranks and apparently those unknown people had thrown up East Encino on their front wall and they remain somewhat agitated about it. But yeah, people

thought that was odd. The worst thing in the world was to go to Malibu or La Jolla with a surfboard that said East Encino because it wasn’t funny. It was aberrant behavior.

BF: It was a reaction. It seems at some point you had integrated into the elite surf set of the coast and then – was that like an early social disruption thing?

CS: [prolonged laughter] A very shallow personality affect of psychological traumas and the attendant acting out, yeah, it was problematic. Of course none of this was ever proven, nor that I knew anything about it. What they do to you when you are a suspected juvenile offender they say, “We better test you.” Then they test you and say, “Oh he’s a chronic under-achiever!” My situation was compounded by the temptation to just go out the classroom window and crawl out and go do whatever I wanted. I had studio space in the back of Dave Sweet’s shop on Olympic. My devotion to seventh period Algebra was conflicting with my art jones. Then as a truant I was dispatched to the psychologist’s class where I ended up meeting all these other guys like Stuart Ziff who ended pioneering the special effects processes that made Star Wars possible. Those kinds young men and women were incarcerated in there at “the bad art kid class.” Several people in there have gone on to be very prosperous. Stuart and I are still friends so I can mention him. Maybe it worked on some level, I’m not certain.

BF: I’m struck by these actions you did in the past, which now in the light of today are these really amazing conceptual art interventions, but at the time – my understanding is that when you were doing it you were doing it very genuinely as playing around or messing with people or working stuff out.

It didn’t seem like you were aspiring – like the cutting of holes in all the houses, years before Gordon Matta-Clark was cutting holes through houses, and you’re just a kid…

CS: Punching holes in anything. You punch one hole and you notice you can punch another, and then you notice they line up, and then you notice at a certain time of the year with a low sun you can actually watch the light and it will tell you where to put the next hole. I was so clueless I never figured out that you needed a piece of string or surveyor’s instruments. I could have had a quantum

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breakthrough. I think we were just meandering and screwing up. I mean other people did exactly the same thing in the same space and they ended up being professional mechanics, doctors and lawyers.

I’m taking the cars apart and I’m so clueless and backward, I think you’re supposed make little tableaux’s out of them, and these guys are going, “Oh my god look at that, that’s an Iskenderian racing cam…” Or playing doctor with the neighborhood girls. The lawyer kids are still arguing , so I reckon nothing changes.

BF: What about the bomb thing? The bomb on the beach. You were a teenager and made a fake Russian bomb and buried it at low tide?

CS: I took it out at a minus-tide at midnight and placed it in the sand. Then when the it got revealed in the morning and it had Russian markings on it…

BF: On Labor Day weekend, a big holiday when lots of people would be on the beach.

And it had an waterproofed alarm clock inside it that emitted a ticking sound.

When you came out in a jumpsuit and removed it publicly it must have been quite a performance.

CS: That was considered aberrant social behavior at that point.

ET: Was this something you were doing completely on your own? Or did you have a group of friends that you would sit around with a think up ideas like this and go do them?

CS: People will always come watch somebody jump off a cliff. There are aspects of both. The “torpedo” was a 250-pound practice bomb that sat out in front of a surplus store on Pico Blvd which I think David Pussinger or somebody had stolen. I inherited this armored albatross, and planting it at the beach seemed like a superb thing to do. Curiously, years later the bomb may have ended up in Baron Hilton’s pool. It’s unfortunate that unthinking agents allegedly cracked his concrete pond through their prank. I feel bad about that, particularly when I stay at the Waldorf which his family owns and where I still receive very good service. Proper disposal of a work of art is a big responsibility.

ET: Did the bomb achieve the social manipulation you hoped it would?

CS: Yeah. the Lifeguard Captain had me thrown off

the beach for life for that one. It’s too bad. If I’d been a normal person I could have taken the life same experiences and become a lifeguard.

By now I would have had a fine career and be retired. There are a number of guys who did that who are adept fine artists and have nice studios in Baja. I had no social skills whatsoever then, nor do I now. I can see how it was alarming to some observers.

ET: I’m fascinated with the departure point from being a kid to conceiving of these sorts of schemes, I know you were surrounded by artists, but this is something different. What is the genesis of this type of creation? What makes you this way? That could be a loaded question.

CS: [Laughs] Being the only non-catholic in a Catholic school and the corporal punishment, and the physical beatings? I don’t think that had any effect.

ET: But to take those experiences and turn them into creation – you could have just as easily ended up in jail.

CS: It’s not that easy to get into jail, you have to work hard. In Catholic school I think the two main goals were the priesthood, or being a nun married to Jesus. So I chose to drop out and go to Hawaii. Which I thought worked really well. It was warmer there and they had pagan gods that were older than Jesus, Allah, and Buddha. The Polynesians brought their gods with them to the islands when they arrived.

ET: I suppose it’s an unanswerable question…

CS: I was just trying to keep myself entertained I think.

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Casting process and installation (opposite) Bronze raccoon affixed to roadway with epoxy. metal, squirrel (following spread) Streetable Art, Neon Cougar, 1969

ET: I understand you were a surfer; I get that. But then planting a bomb, that’s genius.

It would be amazing if was done tomorrow.

CS: I never thought of it like that. The bomb was a proactive physical form which encouraged me to place it into an ambiguous atmosphere. Once I realized that it would look good in the context of the water I merely carried things out. The Cyrillic markings made it read better and helped reinforce the faux meaning.

Surfboards were around and were easy to get.

Having sanding and shaping tools accessible in my home made the transition to building them easy.

Perhaps it was inevitable that I would also paint on them as well.

My father was a photographer so I took all his cameras and used them. After I wrecked every one of them he said, “I don’t have any more cameras for you to break. What are you going to do now?” This was another one of those teachable moments. So I elected to pick up recyclable soda-pop bottles on the beach for a couple years because you could get two cents a piece for ‘em. That deposit money became a pawnshop Pentax camera. My thinking was that way I’d stay in the beach environment and I wouldn’t have to get a job. At that time I thought those decisions were rational.

ET: There’s a certain line of prankster-ism involved with what you were doing. There’s

the bomb, but then the casting of road kill also has a prankster vibe to it. But who is the audience? I mean who sees that? Maybe a city worker comes by with a shovel and tries to pick it up and realizes it’s a sculpture, but that’s probably it.

CS: Having seen my father and his associates manipulating metal in their work I probably subconsciously gravitated in that direction.

Foundry work made sense to me as you could create genuinely permanent forms. But why ask permission, why submit to a process that I did not need adhere to? I got to the point that I could build whatever I wanted. Since I was paying for it all myself and was not interested in selling it, why not put it out into environments and let the public test the viability of the work? Impermanence is interpretative. Somewhere I have no doubt that sculptures of mine continue to exist. The materials as evidenced by Greek and Roman bronzes will last for centuries. I picked a different path—you fail inwards.

BF: How did the casting stuff work? The stuff Ed mentioned, can you explain what you were doing?

CS: I think the idea was to go out and make stuff, without going to the meetings, and without going through all the stuff – you know you could make a sculpture and you could put it in a museum but you have to be ale to get the permission to put it there, and my theory was – it’s like surfing, you could get on the team, you could win contests and do all that stuff to justify being sponsored, or you could figure out how to make the boards yourself. I’m not cutting against competition. I think once you start making the stuff yourself that’s a different impulse. There is a certain amount of control and you don’t need the permission to do anything because you’ve already completed the whole circle. So then you get into metal casting and it became important to figure out how you make these things. You start out with a little hole in your backyard, melting lead soldiers and making ingots, and you work outward from there, you end up with a blast furnace, and you end up with friends like Eric Swenson and Fausto Vitello who are in a naval facility making industrial castings.

You end up being a foundryman with no constraints and pretty soon you’ve got access to cranes and derricks and you can make bigger and bigger pieces.

If you figured out how to make it then you gotta do

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something with it so the most direct path was to just go put it out on the street. I never really cared what happened after I put it out there. So we would bolt them into the street. I applied cast metal plaques to building facades. Stuck run over animals to the highway, I thought they were incidental victims of technology and deserving of monuments. I thought the Road Kill pieces were equivalent to Greek or Roman heraldic monuments. Instead of making statues of guys and putting it up in the park I thought why not make statues of dead animals–and they’re beautiful forms, the way they are squished.

So I’d go out and skin them, take their insides and make a sand-mold on the spot, and pour the metal and put the skin back on and epoxy it to the roadway. I never realized it was a hazard – you know in life people will always come after the fact and tell you what was wrong with everything you were doing.

Of course by then you’ll be on to something else.

ET: You would make the cast on the spot and you would have to go to a different place to pour the metal?

CS: No. I had a portable blast furnace. A whole bastard technology that was devolved to do this.

Of course with these same skills, I could have been creating high value commodities – you know the metal is the same price no matter what you do with it. You’re taking 356 prime aluminum or Everdur Bronze and you’re turning it into things. I would scavenge junk off the streets, just recycling stuff to get enough money to buy an ingot , go make the sculpture, put it on the street and never thought about what happened to it. One day I was with Swenson and Vitello and we were in a yard purchasing some old steel girders and there’s a junk man from the bay area whose got one of my pieces.

The fellow’s harvested the thing I put out the night before, it’s probably eight in the morning and he’s already cut it up and he’s recycling it for the scrap value. And I thought, “There’s my audience.” How perfect. What symmetry.

ET: So you would just snap a picture and walk away.

CS: Sometimes. A lot of those installations didn’t even get recorded as the point was just to see it. To produce sculpture and place it in an active context without a lot of formality. A University of California Northridge install was interesting, as I got to work with a Richard Neutra building, I don’t know if they interfaced well together…

BF: One of the poles?

CS: Yeah. I think that one was about 24 feet tall.

BF: What did the pole sculptures look like?

CS: They were totems, fully detailed and segmented columns which were modeled after giant bamboo stalks. They were often elaborately painted and had beautiful, simmering surfaces. The Neutra thing was funny because years after the fact I ended up getting acquainted with his son and wife. In 1958 Richard Neutra had designed the CSUN art department which had giant inside-outside sliding walls and a pristinely naturally lit gallery space. This was one of the most advanced physical art facilities anywhere although it was not appreciated by many critics of the time. Later through a combination of circumstances I ended working out of the Neutra studio building in Los Angeles, where Dion Neutra still maintained an office and archive.

BF: Did it pierce the ceiling?

CS: Well, I visually violated the architecture. I didn’t irreversibly hurt the building. It was interesting because my round vagrant line pierced right through Richard Neutra’s beautifully conceived masterpiece cleaving his planeular canopy. Dion was a tolerant and understanding soul. He never once castigated me for my transgression, rather he attempted to educate me about alternatives to the folly of my ways. On occasion he would take me over for tea with his mother Dione at the VDL Research House overlooking Silverlake. I was greatly informed by the experience of viewing such items as Neutra’s family home movies, the master’s original drawings and other primary artifacts.

BF: Do you travel around with a camera most of the time? Or just sometimes? Do you think you get that from your dad?

CS: More times than not, I’ll have one. Although if I make a statement like this, I’ll want to not have one.

BF: After looking at some of the images today, they seem like the product of always having a camera – Getting to know you a little bit now is the only way to understand your experience in the world. Because growing up I knew, “Craig Stecyk did this and this.” But what’s his trip? It’s not like Ed Templeton’s, “Pro skater, lives in his house, paints…” Which is kind of understandable. But you seem to be everywhere. Like the shot of the car accident on the freeway…

CS: Dumb, Blind Luck. You know, if you stand there long enough, something’s gonna happen. Or if you move fast enough, it’ll look like something’s happening. I don’t take the pictures for any particular reason. I sketch the same way. I make lots of bad drawings everyday day too, but they’re not intended to go anywhere. And if you can avoid having to sell the pieces or getting involved in that then there’s really no reason to – in my case I don’t think there’s any compulsion to finish anything which I think is very frustrating for a lot of people.

I have benefited immeasurably through collaboration as my associates bring my efforts to a conclusion. Individuals such as Dora, Phil Frost, Tom Adler, Kevin Ancell, Susanne Melanie, Art Brewer, Barry McGee, Jim Heimann, Takuji Masuda, Kenneth Anger, Boyd Coddington, Drew Kampion, Zach DelaRocha, Jon Theodore, Antonio Colombo, Giorgio DiMitri, Jeff Ho and Skip Engblom all have more to do with my success that I do.

BF: What about your theories about how military technology had a lot to do with informing sub-cultural advances?

CS: I think there’s a definite trickle-down effect, especially in California where the military technological complex has remained an active influence. Research in communications, composite materials and innovative fabrication methodologies that were fostered by the military/aerospace combine can be seen impacting contemporary culture. The Internet, computer’s, modern surfboards, skateboards, snowboards, hotrods and off road racers all owe much of their forms to it.

I initially became aware of this effect when I worked for Dave Sweet who was the first person to market polyurethane foam surfboards, which are arguably still the dominant board building material of choice.

In situ bamboo poles (Totems) Cast aluminum, California State Northridge (opposite) B/W military pictures, 2000-2009

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BF: Did he get this from the military?

CS: He came up with it on his own formulations and proprietary construction techniques. I’ve talked with Dave Sweet a lot, and also Joe Quigg who did early advanced materials stuff early, and I knew Dave Rochlen pretty well.

We discussed all about the breakthroughs they helped initiate in surfboard building which centered around hydrodynamic principles, composite skins and light weight cores. All of them had worked with Bob Simmons, who had worked in military plants. Rochlen’s dad was a VP at Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica and Sweet had an uncle who labored there. Simmons in turn was introduced to surfing by Gardner Chapin who was Miki Dora’s step-father. Chapin was experimenting with composite materials and is said to have possibly interacted with Howard Hughes and Charles Eames during WW2. During this interlude Hughes was building the wooden Spruce Goose plane and Eames was designing plywood casts.

Gard taught both Simmons and Dora about surfboard construction using advanced materials. Tom Blake and Jameson Handy had also helped pioneer the usage of composites in surfing and their work was known to both Gard and the military. Chapin was a mysterious genius who’s eccentric behavior may have been a calculated ruse intended to obscure his clandestine experiments.

Surfer’s were aware that something was going on with waterproof lightweight materials but the stuff was restricted. These were high-level military protected secrets. Joe Quigg tells about going to Dow Chemical, resin companies and whatnot and getting investigated for being a German spy. Because it was during world war two it was all top-secret restricted access information back then. Popular culture also benefited from the war indirectly as after the conflicts conclusion there were surplus stores all about. There you could get functional military attire for really cheap, jeeps, backpacks etc. and then People would restructure them and personalize them.

Things like the first synthetic multistrand ropes hitting the market helped foster the outdoor equipment industry.

Cut off army pants created the defacto surfers baggy short.

Beatniks absorbed navy pea coats and wool sweaters into coffee house attire. Bikers appropriated cheap leather tanker and flying jackets as their own gear not to mention their modification of surplus Harleys and Indians.

ET: You always mention the desert. You seem to be in the desert a lot. I always wonder what the hell are you doing out there?

CS: The beach provided wide expanses of empty space and unrestricted horizons. Now the oceanfront is more congested and crowded than it used to be. You used to be able to go to the Ocean Park Pier when it was still a standing structure in 1968, somewhere around there, and could rent a little office. You’d go pay the guy 35 dollars a month or whatever and get a small room. They had different sizes but we were on the low end of the economic spectrum so we’d go in there and get what was basically a closet for cheap. Art types discovered that if you went through the back of the spaces there were doors, that opened to these large auditoriums and soundstages that were on the pier and surrounding that was the Pacific Ocean. That was a lot of adaptable free space. Then the pier began burning down with increasing frequency. I think they had 200 small fires there in a single year.

BF: Was it arson?

CS: I’m sure it was. The authorities claimed it was. You still meet different people in local bars who claim, “I’m the one who burned down the Ocean Park pier.” Well if there are 200 fires in a year period it’s burning every couple of days! That’s a lot of pyromania! Because of this miscreance you could discover all of this amazing burnt stuff. I’d go out there and run into Gordon Wagner, Jim Ganzer, Michael McMillen, George Herms, all of the assemblage guys picking all these wonderous things up. You’re talking charcoal pier pilings, what’s better

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than that? They weigh a lot, but you could make a mark for a couple of blocks with it if you used it for drawing.

So I think the desert is offers the same kind of thing psychologically because when you go out to the desert it’s unrestricted—you can get into as much trouble out there as you want. You can walk as far as you want until you drop dead. The challenge is figuring out when you need to turn around and come back. Getting lost is your ticket to eternity. It keeps you honest to have an underlying sense of consequence.

ET: That’s what I’m wondering. What kind of trouble are you getting into? Is it photo based?

For all I know you are out there casting cacti and leaving them where no one will find them just for your own personal amusement.

CS: [Laughter] I’ve cast cactuses before! I’ve done rocks, cactuses. There’s not any structured behavior, its more just a free place you can work, and work ideas out.

ET: You casted a rock before?

CS: Yeah. I did time capsules – some of which looked like rocks – and would go put them in places. I would take a photo after it was done so it was like a time recording sort of thing. I did a bunch of those.

ET: So they are out there right now for someone to discover?

CS: Its not a tremendous technical achievement to make a believable rock that has a waterproof cavity that’s got art or ephemera inside, and put it out on an isolated island that’s uninhabited in the Krakataus. It’s easy to install it there but I don’t know if anyone will ever find it. I used to dump bronze torsos in the ocean because I thought that was kind of a direct way to replenish all the ones they pulled out of the sea that the Greeks had lost.

ET: Was the bomb on the beach one of your first art actions?

CS: No. I had finger-paints and could never manage to make them look like anything. Just like all the other kids.

ET: My point is that from the bomb until now you have been doing this stuff…

CS: Well you do stuff every day whether you want to or not. [Laughs] I’m just filling time, are you kidding me?

ET: But creatively! That’s why we are interviewing you. I mean you make these time-capsule rocks made of metal that you put in the desert that literally no one will ever find. Aliens, or whatever cockroaches evolve into will find them when we are long gone.

CS: That’s why you use lifetime materials. [Laughter] I don’t know where it goes. I always took photos to record stuff. That’s probably coming from people like my father who used photography in his work. As an adult I was surrounded by a lot of professional photographers. It was regarded as a professional skill.

ET: Photography wasn’t seen as art.

CS: Certainly Ansel Adams had practiced it as such in Los Angeles, as had Edward Weston had lived in Santa Monica Canyon. I knew Horace Bristol and Tom Blake through David Rochlen and Dr. Don James lived close to me, so I was aware of photographic theory as they articulated it.

ET: You were approaching it as more utilitarian?

CS: I saw those guys, but just because you have a piece of paper and a pencil doesn’t mean what you do is necessarily fine art. You could make a piece of art, but you can also make a notation or a recording or something. I never had any intention to present any of it. The only reason anyone knows it happened is because maybe a very small percentage of it got placed in a magazine. How does a skateboard picture get in Surfer magazine? Because Steve Pezman the publisher asked me if I’d give him one of Tony Alva. A picture would be taken, and the undeveloped film would be given to TA on the spot He’d send it to the magazine who would process the film and print it. Those pictures are remembered because they happened to get published. On my end there was never any thought about it after hitting the shutter. The photographs that never get seen are all the ones that were taken for the myriad of quinceañera’s, weddings, funerals or picnics. The gigs like, “I’ll swap you a sandwich for a photo of my restaurant” and those kinds of visual barters when you’re working your way cross-country. Maybe those “lost “ ones are the better pictures, I don’t know.

ET: The other night you revealed to us that you were a house photographer for the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium…

CS: Yeah, I was for an indeterminate amount of time. I shot hundreds of gigs there and at clubs across the southland. More than I could ever possibly recall ET: You shot the Doors.

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Skull poster, Sweetwater, Nevada Bite That Hand, 2009 La Linea (opposite) CRSIII, 2009. Photo by Susanne Melanie Von Theodore’s Cymbals, 2008 ‘57 Les Paul, 2009

CS: I shot the Doors before, yeah. All that dinosaur shit, Cream, Buffalo Springfield, Jeff Beck, Them. And later through X, cowbilly, the Stooges, DJ Quick, Kid Frost, Ryland Cooder, and the BooYaa Tribe. It helped my social life tremendously because I had access to all the gigs. If you were gonna go see music every night anyway, you might as well be on the crew. The only place I ever ate then was off the craft services tables backstage.

ET: How is your archive? You seem relatively flippant about keeping track. Do you have any record?

CS: My time is generally devoted to what I’m doing at any given moment. I’d rather go forward than look back. Keeping track of whatever happened upriver isn’t something I do often.

BF: A lot of it was lost right?

CS: Long lost due to acts of God, the hand of man, the wrath of women and the wearing of time. Floods, fires, earthquakes, wrecked relationships …A lot of the stuff I never had in the first place. The “famous surfing/ skating pictures?” If I took a picture of a rider and he wanted it, I’d give him the picture. I didn’t distribute them otherwise as a rule so it was rare for me to make a print. If a pilot wanted, I’d let magazines take the film and that was the end of it. I didn’t ever see the film again. Maybe if we searched around and called everybody that might have stuff, I guess I could now find maybe thirty percent of what I have shot over the years. I was an itinerant image maker that loved to shoot random shit which I had no particular interest in.

We used to work our way up and down route 66 – it emptied out on the beach at Santa Monica Boulevard and went all the way to Chicago. People would travel up and down it making a living any way they could.

I washed dishes, worked in wrecking yards, painted signs but once again I reverted to harvesting castoffs.

If you knew how to scavenge and salvage stuff you’d get by. Right now I could take you to places out there where there are still thousands of 1968 vintage pop bottles, they’re like a great alluvial fan deposit. The roadway would move every few years. There could be the 1936 alignment or the 1942 version and they’d be somewhat close to each other, so you walk out a quarter mile into nowhere and there’s still crap left from 1950 on a section of abandoned highway. You could go out to certain places where accidents habitually occurred and there would be arroyos where the cars had always landed. Up until the 70’s you could go out there and locate the carcasses of 30’s Fords, 40’s Chevy’s and stuff. You could remove the parts off these feral abandoned cars. A ’32 Ford radiator that was free for the taking in New Mexico would bring 50 or 60 bucks in Pomona at the swap. I saw one in yesterday and they wanted 800 dollars for it. If I saved them all I would have been better off! We would go cut steel out of a car and drive it to a big city and sell it for scrap, a penny a pound was the typical rate, and that’s how you’d get your gas. So you could go out and harvest your way, some people would wash dishes or work in a gas station for a few weeks. After that you could go to places like Seligman, Arizona and rent a flop. It’s all flattened now, but you used to be able to go to towns like Ludlow and rent places quite reasonably. Or find ones along the road with the windows blown out and you could just post up for a while. A little stone house on the prairie so to speak. It’s a good way to do art. Route 66 ends up in Chicago, which is a fabulous town, we used to work our way to Chicago and come back. It’s arguably some times the best art town in America.

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Aaron Rose: What about those rumors that you are an agent for the CIA? You have shot pictures of a lot of strange military things and aircraft.

CS: That’s ridiculous. I cannot even spell CIA. Also I do not have a plausible cover story. I have never been where I could not go, and I have forgotten everything I never knew. My life does not have any particular purpose or intent. Random coincidence exists, I can’t explain what never happened or I can’t understand.

And I wouldn’t be inclined to discuss any such events if they ever took place. A photograph is not any more accurate of a record of things than any other piece of art. People get confused by media and popular fiction.

Just because I got blown up by a RPG in a cave in Afghanistan in a movie doesn’t mean I am really dead.

AR: Are you trying to avoid detection in your work for aesthetic reasons?

CS: It’s nice to be remembered and I’m appreciative of the support I receive. But being forgotten via not registering with the presentation process in the first place does not bother me. In a way if you see what I’ve done it’s a failure. I prefer things that merge into the environment. The anonymity of a faded poster on a phone pole in the middle of nowhere intrigues me. I am fascinated by their disintegration . Art impulses that are bought, stolen, squandered or surrendered are all equally valuable to me.

In the realms of creativity, Miranda July pretty much does just about everything! In addition to other things, she is perhaps most well known as an accomplished writer, performance artist, musician and film director. She was raised in Berkeley, California by intellectual hippie parents. As a teenager she discovered the legendary all-ages/punk club Gilman Street, where at the age of sixteen, she staged her first performance, which was based on mail correspondence she had been having with an imprisoned murderer.

This eventually led to more performances, then a series of musical projects (released on Kill Rock Stars), then to directing experimental short films, then a feature film, Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005), which among other awards won the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Hot on the heels of that, she released her first book of short stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You as well as diligently working as one half of the partnership (along with artist Harrell Fletcher) in Learning To Love You More, an online community creativity workshop which has manifested itself in exhibitions and a wonderful coffee table book. All the while, July has continued to write, direct and act in performances, and she is currently working on a new feature film as well as writing her first novel. So, as I said she does just about everything.

The accomplishments listed above, however, are not really why you are reading this particular article. While the list is impressive, and most definitely article-worthy, we found out quite recently that in addition to all the other stuff Miranda July has going on, she has been delving quite seriously into the realm of fine art. What? You might ask. Does she ever stop? That’s certainly what I thought, but after hearing from her over dinner recently exactly what she’s been doing in that field, the prospect of an article on these new projects seemed too interesting to pass up. You see, not only has Miranda July been making art, but she’s been asked to take part in this year’s Venice Biennale, which is not exactly some little gallery somewhere. It’s a big deal. And like everything else she does, in true “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing so go for it” D.I.Y. fashion, Miranda is bringing the goods. This time in the form of an outdoor sculpture installation titled “Eleven Heavy Things.” So if you’re a fan of her movies or books, please excuse us. There are plenty of other places to read about that stuff.

This time we’re talking about art…beautiful, heartfelt, ambitious, and challenging art.

Her words speak to the testament of embracing opportunities, rising to the occasion, struggling with mistakes and remaining true to a vision. All of which I feel are core to any creative practice. Enjoy.

INTERVIEW BY AARON ROSE / IMAGES COURTESY THE ARTIST

Aaron Rose: OK, this is going to be a very fine art-based interview.

Miranda July: Ok. I hope I can do it. I don’t know anything about fine art.

AR: Something that I find very interesting about you and also that I feel is very unique to you in relation to other people in the creative fields, is this idea of being a multi-disciplinarian. Why do you feel the urge, or why do you think it’s important to create visual art, to write, to make films, to make music, to do performances? Most artists find their place and stick to it, while it seems like you are always pushing— MJ: Well, I used to for a long time just say, “Oh I don’t even think about it,” but with this “art work” that I’m making, which is being presented in a sort of very “for real” setting, it’s kind of forced me to be like, “Well this is a real whole other thing!” That means that now there’s books, there’s movies and this is art and if you want to count performance or whatever, but there’s at least these three things. And I actually did go through a slight crisis of like— AR: Like what am I? MJ: No. I never feel like I have to choose, but I actually felt like kind of like, “Is this pushing my luck?” or, “Is this really part of my work?” “Do I really care about this?” I’ve never questioned anything that I do in that way before—but I think to be honest I was just a little bit daunted by…well you know you can do anything as long as no one sees it you know? Or very few people see it? So you don’t have to feel justified or have an argument behind it. But it’s a question you have to answer by doing it. Each allows a different kind of pleasure. Maybe pleasure is the wrong word, because sometimes it’s just the pleasure of scoping into layers of pain or doubt or uncertainty that only this medium can do. So the one answer is that in the beginning I really didn’t think about it. Maybe like a lot of people we know?

AR: You were just making stuff.

MJ: Yeah it’s like no different from how you’re dressing wacky and you’re decorating your room or anything in the field of, not even really art, but in weirdness?

AR: Creative living?

MJ: Yeah, creative living…which has been totally acceptable. I guess in the beginning there were no industries, it was all so un-commercial that there was no one from the outside saying, “Well, what’s the market for this?” You know? So that’s how it all began for me, but I think it’s continued because it feels good. You know I was kind of worried about the idea of making art, but then when I was actually carving the letters and making all these decisions and touching the clay and painting, I was ecstatic!

AR: It felt natural to you?

MJ: Yeah it felt natural and kind of a real pure joy! A joy that all the other things I do have also, but you know when you’re not basing it around any kind of reputation or confidence in yourself or anything it’s a rare pleasure.

AR: Why do you think it is that you feel the need to do all of these things?

MJ: Sometimes I think it’s as immature as—you know when you see someone doing something really cool? Like tap dance or do skate tricks or something? And you’re like, “I wanna do that!” “Maybe I could! Maybe I’d be really good at that!!” You know? And actually I’ve tried to do both those things that I just mentioned and I’m not good at either of them. Not that I haven’t tried…not for lack of effort. So there are a lot of things that I’m not doing, that I’m not subjecting the world to. You know I’m never that good at citing influences and stuff, but that doesn’t mean I’m not a fan and that my enthusiastic fandom isn’t at the root of what propels me. It’s just a little non-specific. Like in the case of this new art. It started with this group show that I was asked to be a part of in Japan. The Yokohama Triennial. Now I could have made a video, or a sound thing—

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AR: Which is probably what the curators were expecting— MJ: Yeah exactly. But because I’m that kid who wants to always do new stuff I was like, “Art show? I wanna make some art!” So at first I had the idea of this fountain and the curators actually really liked this fountain idea. And I actually made it! It’s in the other room! It was this crazy experience in fiberglass and it was sound-sensitive, so it went up and down according to your voice.

AR: Wow! MJ: Yeah, that was the idea anyway. I do try to break into things that I know nothing about but it doesn’t always work. I had spent all this time and money and there was only

Japan, and there were all these interesting artists there, and I don’t know, I thought it was really cool! I was influenced by that experience. I was like, “Everyone is so smart!” and, “Art has no rules!” so that was really appealing to me. It was also in sharp contrast with my experience with the movie I was trying to make in that moment, so I was in a good place to appreciate another world.

AR: How does this experience of being embraced by the art community, in whatever way, shape or form that is— MJ: Well I don’t necessarily know if that’s happened yet— AR: I understand that, but the fact that you’re exhibiting in Venice says

like two weeks left before I had to ship this thing to Japan and I realized, “This is not working at all!” In fact, other art in the show would have gotten wet if it was near mine!

Plus around the same time I saw the list of artists for that show and it seemed quite serious, some very impressive artists and so I couldn’t just do something that was “not quite good” so I really quickly under duress thought of the idea for this hallway. The point of the fountain was more than just a fountain. It was about people yelling to make the fountain go up and hit this ribbon and I really just wanted people to yell in the museum and have a reason to without me being there to tell them. So the hallway was kind of similar. They will walk down this insanely long hall and that experience will implicate them because I’ll speak from their point of view walking down the hall.

AR: Before we go on, tell me more about that piece. It’s called The Hallway right?

MJ: Right. Well I think I just thought of a long hallway that’s lined with signs, fifty signs, jutting out from either side. So you weave between them, reading them as you walk.

That was just a visual idea that came to me. And I remember I sat down in one very bleak moment and wrote. You know just typed out the whole text. That’s really just my experience writing…a feeling, which is really at the core of everything I do. I do that a lot.

AR: Did you have a preconceived notion of what you wanted that text to say?

MJ: No. You know I was having a feeling about…you know I have a great fear of being stuck in a job or a relationship or a life that feels like a trap, like I’m just going forward because there’s no other options? Which is funny because my life is so free…but I designed it that way because of this fear. So I often feel that way despite what’s really going on. It’s easy for me to have that feeling, so the hallway gave me the opportunity to create a space where other people have that feeling.

AR: So you were working out some personal issues?

MJ: Yeah. Totally personal, it was cathartic to write that. All the signs were painted.

Actually the whole floor of my studio was covered with all the signs, which then had to be flipped over and done in Japanese. Yeah and so I said, “I need this long hallway,” and they actually built that for me along the back of this huge museum and it was really nicely done.

I was just so pleased. So I just shipped the signs and went there for the opening and they had done a great job. Suffice to say, that impulse to try something new kind of led to the next project. And it’s so easy to feel so wrong for trying something new? Especially when your first effort doesn’t work out. Sometimes I can be like, “Why didn’t I just stick to what I know how to do?” I guess I’m just saying, for the record, that if you can push through that, you can almost come to enjoy that discomfort.

AR: I find that if I’m afraid to do something then that becomes a big impetus to do it. Do you have that as well?

MJ: Yeah. It’s sort of like a thorn in your side. I remember also going to that opening in

something. Obviously someone with some power in that world believes in you— MJ: I guess in my head I think, “You mean the podium on which I will be ridiculed?” (laughter) AR: No really! How has your experience working within the structures of the art world differed from your experiences working in film or publishing? Also what about the audience? The audience for art is so different than say the film world. What do you think?

MJ: Well I don’t really know yet! This is all truly like, we’ll look back on this interview and say she really had no idea what she was getting into. I mean seriously, each thing I do—like for example, I’ve made all this work, which cost some money and now it all needs to sell.

And I don’t know if it will! And it’s not yet for sale! It hasn’t even been priced yet. You’re catching me between moments. But I will say that when I was invited to be in the Venice show, the thing that was sort of confounding to me was that it was such a big show, and yet by my standards no one would see it. I mean, I’ve never been to the Venice Biennale!

None of my friends have. My parents haven’t, nor will they! You know? It’s a big deal, but I believe in accessibility. I’ve always worked for that. Books and movies are cheap and it doesn’t matter where you live, you can find them, and that’s a very big part of what I do. So I was like, “What can I make for this show that will inherently become available, by design, to more people?” So these pieces I’ve made—yeah, they’re objects, but they’re objects that people will hopefully want to stand on and pose with, and because of the way the world is now, you just want to take a picture! You know? Like, “Why would you do that funny thing that’s a little embarrassing without taking a picture?” Plus, you’re in Venice, which is tourism central. You’re already taking pictures of everything anyway.

AR: Totally.

MJ: And then what do you do with pictures? You put them online. So I was just like, “That’s the work!” And I think I don’t even have to have a website. You know what I mean?

AR: They will just end up on random blogs and Flickr pages— MJ: Yeah. I think it’s already done. I don’t even have to say to do that. All I have to do is make the objects that infiltrate that. I’m kind of excited about that aspect. It’s silent and invisible, but it’s something that I’m waiting to see. Then also I can’t imagine that, as the artist, well it seems kind of unsatisfying that someone could look at a piece of art—and even if you were right there with them you can’t really tell what they’re thinking. They don’t have to do anything. It’s so quick. You can’t even control the length of time you know? So that’s why I think I made a thing like The Hallway, because you’re committed to the experience.

AR: It’s structured.

MJ: Yeah. It’s structured and I’m setting the pace. And for the sculptures too, there will

Making The Hallway (photo by Eric Hoyt) Ill-fated fountain (photo by Eric Hoyt) (opposite) The Hallway, installation views, Yokohama Triennale, 2008.

Courtesy of the Organizing Committee for the Yokohama Triennale. Photo by Yoshinaga Yasuaki Triennale. (previous) The Hallway, installation view, Yokohama Triennale, 2008.

Courtesy of the Organizing Committee for the Yokohama Triennale. Photo by Yoshinaga Yasuaki Triennale.

Pedestal for A Daughter (photo by M Blash)

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be some kind of result that I can see. I guess I’m just not as cool and patient as another artist. You know if you just made paintings you’d have to have made your peace with this stuff. Or you just only count on reviews! But the popular response is the response I’m interested in.

AR: It seems like everything that you do, in some way, has an interactive quality to it. That seems very important to you. Maybe with the exception of film, which is very passive…

MJ: Not that I haven’t tried! But in film it quickly heads into Rocky Horror Picture Show territory or something.

AR: Why is interactivity so important to you?

MJ: You know I did this performance that my next movie kind of came out of, where I cast people from the audience in it. So this idea of creating things that have holes for other people to perform in is not new. I guess I look back and even before Learning To Love You More, all the performances I did had an element of that. I guess everything comes back to that feeling of being in the audience, I think of myself in the audience, you know, feeling like if I’m liking it and I’m nodding and going like, “Me too! I so get that!” But I want to say, yeah, not only do you get what I’m doing, but you’re really here! You’re no less existing than I am.

AR: Like this is us in this room!!

MJ: Yeah, here we are, doing this interview, and this is only right now! You know? So how do you get at that? That present moment. That’s like a tool that performance has—because they’re all really there with you. The more ways you can point at that and get people to break out of that movie they’re playing in their head, even if it’s just a step to the side that they wouldn’t have done, or laughing when they hadn’t planned on laughing or like in this new piece, people will wear things that may slightly change the way they usually think of themselves.

AR: Is your motivation for including the audience in these things coming from a desire on your part to feel connected or to connect the world? Is there a political/spiritual motivation behind it? Or is it just about getting an emotional reaction for the piece?

MJ: Well I don’t ever think, “We’re all in this together.” I definitely have a sort of grandiosity about things sometimes, but this is kind of its own thing. It is the work. If there is a spiritual element it’s my experience of the world and of the unexplainable quality of it. You know, echoes where there shouldn’t be echoes and a certain kind of resonance. I’m trying to get at that. All we have to work with are these real things that we can all see. That’s what we have in common, so it’s about using those things to try to express the other thing. It’s always kind of changing too. It changes as I get older, but it’s not like I’m saving the world with this nor is it, like I ever think, “Oh if I could get this kind of reaction…” It’s funny—I’m always amazed by how flat and one-dimensional everything I do is.

Like a story really is just words on the page. A movie is just a movie. Because what I feel like I’m doing, I feel like it is operating in like six dimensions! I guess in order to have that feeling, some of those dimensions have to happen with another person. You know? Like if they don’t happen it is just a story.

AR: Let’s talk specifically about the installation you’re working on for the Venice Biennale. First of all how did the opportunity come about?

MJ: Well I was in another group show that Daniel Birnbaum, the curator, did called “Uncertain States of America.” He did that with Hans Ulrich Obrist. And he was one of the curators for the show in Japan. In Japan he mentioned that he was something about the Venice Biennale, but in passing. He suggested maybe the fountain would work there. I remember thinking, “I bet he’s saying that to every artist.” Very dubious, like that’s a good line, right? Although I did go and Wikipedia the Venice Biennale. And then coincidentally, a few weeks later I was in Venice with Mike, teaching a class. So suddenly I was there and I thought, “Well, the modest thing to do is to assume that he was just kidding and that I’ll hear if I’m in this big show, right?” But it also seemed like, well, “Is it really his job to remember every single artist? To know that I’m here? Isn’t it my job also to be like, “I’m here!” So I wrote as unpresumptuously as I could like, “Guess what! Of all things…” You know? So he replied saying as long as I was there did I want to do a site visit? And I was like, “Do I ever!”

AR: But this is before any kind of formal invitation?

MJ: Yeah. So I’m walking around with curator’s assistant, doing this “site visit,” and I’m like trying to figure out from the assistant like how real is this?

Meanwhile I’m like making sketches in a notebook as if I’ve ever done this before!! You know? And I’d pause and say something like, “This is an interesting space.” Which was real, the spaces were interesting, but I was also just sort of copying something I had seen in a movie or something!

AR: You’re hilarious.

MJ: So then I tried to think up some idea, and I came up with a handful of false starts. Meanwhile the curator was still focused on that fountain idea. So I’m thinking, “God, what if this whole thing is predicated on the idea of this fountain that doesn’t even actually work?!” But I kept at it and sent him a few weird sketches using different spaces and—and then in a flash I came up with the idea that I ended up doing. Often when I’m trying to think of an idea it helps to be really literal. I was in a kind of painful friendship and I wanted to show the friend what I was feeling. Like I wanted to take them around a space and say, “Look, this is the amount of worry I have over this thing between us.” And point to an object. In a kind of dumb, clumsy way I could help show them exactly what I was feeling. Which wasn’t exactly what I ended up doing, but that was the basis of it.

AR: It’s an outdoor installation?

MJ: Yeah. It’s in an enclosed garden.

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Top row, left to right: Studies for Eleven Heavy Things, Pedestals for Guilty Ones, Pedestal for Daughter, Lace Shape, Burberry Shape. Second row, left to right: Three Hole Tablet, Shape, Two Faced Tablet, Drawing for possible Tablet, Pedestal for Strangers (opposite, from top) Pedestals for Guilty Ones (photo by Ron McPherson) Pedestal for Strangers (photo by M Blash)

AR: Let’s talk about the pieces. There are some that are pedestals.

MJ: Yeah, the pedestals. There is a set of three that say: “The Guilty One,” “The Guiltier One,” “The Guiltiest One.” Then there’s one for two strangers to hug on, and there’s one for a daughter to stand on.

They all have text on them, so if you’re standing on one you have sort of a caption for yourself, which will reveal something different about everyone. So there are those and then there are ones that you stick your head into. One says, “What I look like when I’m lying” and the other side says, “What I look like when I really mean it”. Then I made one that you stick your legs through and it’s really complicated and it says, “In dreams I levitate and you are amazed” and I loved that one! It’s so true. But when I actually got down to it with the architect in Venice who makes sure everything is structurally sound, that one seemed really dicey and not that safe, so I changed that one for the one you stick your finger in and it says, “This is not the first hole my finger has been in nor will it be the last”.

AR: So dirty!

MJ: Yeah. I sent photos of them to my mom and yesterday she wrote back that the finger one was her favorite one and I was like, “Really?”

AR: Ok, so what is this fascination with holes?

MJ: Oh the holes!! Well it’s not just my fascination!

AR: Ha! Yeah I guess we’re all into them!!

MJ: I guess I’m literally trying to make spaces for people to put themselves into. I do that in everything, even in writing. So, it’s fun to actually be able to make real holes. We made different holes and tested all of them. I was working with all these really big guys, so I was like ok, there’s the maximum finger size!

There’s one piece that just has three holes and there’s no text and I guess that one just sort of bridges the world between the shape pieces, which also have no text, and the text ones. I didn’t know what the Three Hole Tablet was about when I made it. I just kept saying, “Oh and then there’s that one…we’ll see.” But in the end I kind of like that one the best.

AR: It was pretty bold to go to all the trouble of the fabrication of the piece on a whim. The other pieces all feel pretty resolved.

MJ: Oh yeah! I actually wasn’t really sure about it until we took pictures of it right before we shipped it.

It doesn’t really look like anything unless someone is in it and they weren’t installed yet, so it was a little awkward getting in it—but it was so cool! Your arms and legs are isolated so cleanly. I don’t know; it’s still mysterious to me.

AR: Let’s talk about the shapes. The shape pieces are possibly the most confounding to me.

MJ: Well you know I’ve actually been doing things like that for a while. Like the pink shape, if you see the short movies I made before Me and You and Everyone We Know, they all had shapes in them. These floating, flat shapes. In fact, Me and You did too and I cut it out of the script.

AR: Where do they come from?

MJ: They’re kind of like a clunky way to just—well they’re a hole almost. They’re a hole for the spiritual or just the non-verbal. Like all the stuff I can’t do in writing no matter how much I try. And people can’t do it because we’re just us—but it’s around us.

AR: Why did you choose the Burberry, lace and pink patterns that you did? They’re really weird. It’s weird art. It’s great art! But it’s fucked up.

MJ: I mean they each mean different things! Like the Burberry, it’s like making fake money, even counterfeit money has a little bit of the power of the real thing.

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AR: Did you paint the patterns?

MJ: Yeah! Burberry was a real piece of cake compared to the lace which took like fifty hours to paint or something.

AR: What is the significance of the lace?

MJ: That was the first one I did. I drew it and I guess I’ve always liked veils and headdresses. When I was a punker I used to wear them. But I will admit as I was painting it was hard not to think about the fact that I’m also getting married. When I was conceiving the piece that couldn’t have been farther from my mind, but it was like I had created a reason to hand-paint the lace of my wedding veil. It became this sort of tortured ritual. Then the pink one I see really as just going back to the original idea of the spiritual thing, which is also creativity, which brings people together. That’s why the pink one has two holes. I’m just making all this up after the fact, by the way. Someone pointed out recently, and I do not like this at all, but they were like, “It’s a baby on its side!” If you turn it upright it’s like a baby in the womb.

AR: Whoa!

MJ: I was so disgusted. I was just like, “No! I’m not a 35 year-old woman who is making subliminal baby art!”

AR: Let’s talk about the materials. You worked with some very heavy materials in creating these pieces.

Did you choose these more industrial materials to make it more “art?”

MJ: Well probably in my mind this was like a “cartoon” version of art. Like a sculpture garden that you would see as a child.

Like Henry Moore or something. I don’t feel like I get that many external challenges, and the few times I have, I feel like it really inspires me to do things to the fullest. I mean there were points when I was just like, “This is crazy!” I could have done anything! Even if I wanted to try a new form I could have made a little painting…that I could have mailed! I mean just figuring out the shipping and crates—it was all totally new to me. Yeah and how you get enough money, getting a fabricator, getting a bid and then how it’s actually made? That was all a fascinating challenge to me.

AR: Talk about the process a little bit.

MJ: I was very lucky that a few months before, a gallerist, Jeffrey Deitch, had gone to this little Learning To Love You More exhibition at the Journal Gallery in Brooklyn. At the time he said, “If you ever want to do a show…”

AR: So you had already pitched your idea ?

MJ: I had already pitched this idea to the Biennale and they were like, “Great! Go figure out how to do it!” They didn’t have any resources for this, it wasn’t like Japan. And meanwhile the economy was tanking and I realized that project, by the second, was getting more unlikely. But from making films I’m not daunted by having to find money, it’s part of the job. And was lucky—I showed the sketches to Jeffrey [and he] hooked me up with this guy Ron McPherson, who’s a fabricator. So I went out to his place in Sun Valley. This big, many-roomed warehouse.

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All photos this page work in progress shots by Ron McPherson (clockwise from top): Double Pink Thing, Lace Shape, Burberry Shape, Three Hole Tablet, Three Hole Tablet, Two Faced Tablet, Two Faced Tablet, Finger Tablet.

Painting shots: Lace Shape, Painting Lace Shape, photos by Miranda July, making Burberry Shape, photo by M Blash

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AR: Does he have a long history of working with artists?

MJ: That’s all he does! He’s very good. He wants to know everything. Like why the heaviness? He gives me a million options on how I could make the letters, how to get the quality I want. He works with his son, and a handful of these big dudes. So if I kind of got something set, like the look of a pedestal then they could replicate it.

AR: Did you sculpt them yourself?

MJ: We did tests to get the sizes, and of course I kept changing my mind. Then we got the right ones and then he made them out of steel, covered them in clay and I worked the clay with them. So I would be like, “That’s too smooth, this side is better and what I really like is that rounded corner,” stuff like that. We worked until we had the same language. But each step is really a process of figuring out what the right way to do it is. Which is interesting to see. I mean I could have made a sketch of the lace on a piece of paper and they could have projected that onto it and painted it themselves. That was talked about at one point. But then I was like, “I think I can just do it.” There was lots of talk about paint. It’s a whole different world. You’re wanting to pick paint that can be restored easily. Then we would have to send sketches to the architect in Venice to show how we were going to install it.

AR: So this is all very new for you—dealing with issues of structural integrity?

MJ: Oh my god, we would have these conference calls! And I would get off the call and feel like I had just come back from another planet.

AR: Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems that in almost everything you do it always comes back to writing. There are a few pieces in the new work that are simply object-oriented without text, but still text plays a pretty central role, even in these sculptures. Do you think that is because you started as a writer?

MJ: Well, I started with writing things to perform. You know the fiction stuff is fairly recent. For each performance there would be many pages of stuff I was saying as different characters. So I think it feels very agile to me? If I had started truly in fiction, I might think of words differently. I would only think of them as the ones on the page. But for me they’re instructional, sometimes they don’t even matter because no one ever sees it; it’s just for me. And before all of that I was just writing in my journal. So yeah, I guess that’s the thing—I’d like to think that there’s something that’s a craft that I’m good at besides just a sort of general willingness and I am beginning to realize that in a pinch I can write.

Although with this piece I am using words in a very familiar way, and maybe I’m hoping, if I have enough words around, people will get the general vibe, and that will give me some room to do things that don’t have words?

AR: That was my next question—did you feel like you were going out on a limb?

MJ: Definitely! That’s what felt most exciting to me.

AR: Let’s talk about multi-tasking again. We both do so many different things—you’re making art, you’re directing films, doing performance, writing novels—and this is a question that I’m often asked, so I thought I would ask you. I’m curious how you manage to get this all done? Is there a Miranda July method?

MJ: Ha! Well first of all I plan it so that everything is at different stages of completion. For example, I just started writing a novel…so that’s really hard, bizarre work, but meanwhile I’m trying to make this movie that I’ve been trying to make for a couple years, so that work is all business, phone calls and meetings. And I just finished the Venice stuff, so that’s moved into the press world…so I kind of prioritize each day according to the quality of my energy. So at the beginning of the day I write, with the Internet unplugged. Because that’s

Video stills from Haysha Royko, 2003 Miranda July performing in The Swan Tool, Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland, Oregon, 2001. Photo by Harrell Fletcher Miranda July performing in Things We Don’t Understand and Definitely Are Not Going To Talk About, March 1, 2007, The Kitchen, New York, New York. Photo by Tim Barber (opposite, top to bottom) Miranda July performing in Things We Don’t Understand and Definitely Are Not Going To Talk About, March 1, 2007, The Kitchen, New York, New York. Photo by Tim Barber Audience members perform backstage during Things We Don’t Understand and Definitely Are Not Going To Talk About, March 1, 2007, The Kitchen, New York, New York. Photo by Tim Barber

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when I’m best. But in the bottom half of the day there’s interviews, movie stuff, meetings with actors, all these things that if I were to do them all day I would feel like shit at the end of the day. My sense of self really comes from having done something creative. So I have to prioritize that. But the larger thing is that I’m pretty free and usually these are all self-imposed deadlines. You know, I’m also, in between all this, trying to figure out how to make a living, so I’m like, “Ok if I sell this book than I’ll have money to live while I make this movie that’s not going to pay me anything.” It’s kind of a game where the things that seem like they should make money don’t actually make money. And there’s no one behind the scenes—no manager looking out for how this is all going to work out.

AR: You’re really running all this yourself?

MJ: Yeah. I mean I have an assistant and we meet near the end of the week cause, just as the quality of my attention decreases throughout the day, the week is the same.

Like Monday is the best day and by Friday it’s like questionable whether I’m actually even writing.

AR: So you think the key to your sanity is blocking out time?

MJ: Yeah that, and I dream big, long into the future and talk a lot about it. I really love systems actually. I have to keep myself from just being completely entrepreneurial and opening a t-shirt shop or something. That seems fun too!! So yeah having those kind of long-term dreams and invoking them makes them real. So many people I know are just the opposite. They’re like, “Don’t talk about it!” They’re superstitious and think if you talk about it, it wont happen you know? So, I don’t know, whatever works.

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A few years ago, I was turned onto a website which archived the history of the Chicago-based street gang, The Gaylords... I was immediately mesmerized, not only by the stories of the gang itself, but by the immaculate attention to detail which surrounded everything the group did. The Gaylords reached their peak in the 1970s and 1980s, but still continues to this day in a much smaller faction. During their heyday, they were a force to be reckoned with on the Chicago streets. From their menacing graffiti murals to their brightly colored “war sweaters,” to their unique use of hand drawn, cheaply produced business cards, The Gaylords were quite simply a gang like no other. They were undoubtedly a group of hoodlums, but they executed their dastardly deeds with a true sense of style.

In 2005, a book about the group titled, Lords of Lawndale: My Life in a Chicago White Street Gang was published by the small press, Author House (now published under Wasteland Press). Written by ex-Gaylord Michael Scott, the book chronicles quite beautifully the daily life of a young man trying to find his way on the rough streets. It is our pleasure to publish some excerpts from the book here along with photo documentation and examples of ephemera from the life of the gang. Please note that while we understand that some of the statements made by the writer herein as well as some of the images displayed may prove offensive to some readers, they do not necessarily reflect the views of this writer or this magazine. We publish them simply as an honest documentation of a true American subculture.

—Aaron Rose Texts reprinted with permission from Michael Scott Images courtesy of www.gaylords712.com

Through the gracious will of God, I am glad that my lucky ass is able to recall that hot summer morning of July 5, 1984. I was standing alone on the dusty northeast corner of Fullerton Avenue and Ridgeway Street, just trying to do a quick survey of the entire block before I started my journey down it. I could hear the busy traffic on Fullerton right behind me. So this is it, the place where the Gaylords hung out.

That sweltering summer was a thrilling time in my life; I was a member of a Northside Chicago gang, “The Gaylords.” No, we were not a group of horny homosexuals or associated with the Lords of the Dance. The Gaylords’ name was created decades earlier when the word gay hadn’t a damn thing to do with same sex partnerships.

Personally, I think the original name was created back then because it described a cheerful mood, a light-hearted spirit. Considering the beer drinking and weed smoking that numerous Gaylords had done throughout their history, I should say light-headed spirit instead. If the original, rough and rowdy, Gaylords could have foreseen that the word “gay” would take on a whole new meaning in the future; I’m sure they would have changed it from the beginning.

The Gaylords were well known, having a heritage that could be traced all the way back to the Greaser gangs of the 1950s. The circulating urban rumor was that they were originally a softball or baseball team sponsored by neighborhood businesses; a brotherly, social athletic club. Then they transformed themselves into a gang. I don’t know how that happened. Maybe some of their guys got disgruntled over a major loss and decided to physically beat some members of the other ball team with wooden bats. Possibly then they became aware of their true calling.

In 1984, the Chicago Police Department estimated that there were around 120 gangs in Chicago. Some of these gangs were considerably larger than my group.

However, the Gaylords were listed as the biggest white gang in the city. There weren’t too many white gangs banging on the streets. We were sort of a rarity and for sure the minority. You never heard much about white gangs as “Menaces to Society,” although we fit the profile. Black and Spanish gangs weren’t the only ones wearing gang colors, banging, shooting or getting arrested out on those mean streets of Chicago back in 1984. We tore up our ration of shit as well.

My nickname, or what people called me was “Rocker.” You got a nickname one of two ways, it was either thrust upon you or you made one up on your own. I obtained mine on my own. I was a scrawny, small, white guy with a pointy little nose. Because of my appearance, the Gaylords initially wanted my nickname to be “Mouse.” Now, nicknames are kind of important, as this is how everyone refers to you. I didn’t agree with the title of Mouse. That’s like calling a fat guy Whale. I can just envision people hearing the nickname of Mouse and having a mental picture of a tiny guy scurrying around for morsels of food in an alleyway. Fuck that.

I sat home one night trying to conceive a new nickname for myself. As I was pondering a label I was listening to the radio; really jamming, getting into the music.

I started thinking deeply about how music moves and soothes the soul; how it can make someone happy when they are sad, sad when they are happy. Instantly, I wanted a name that coincided with that general idea. A Radio DJ suddenly came on the air, he blasted out something energetic about, “All the Rockers out there.”

From that moment on I had the nickname that I wanted; there was a moving vibe about it.

Since my nickname was a reference to music, I want to state for the record that some of the music that I was listening to, or “Rocker’s Picks,” around this time period were: “Shook Me All Night Long”-by AC/DC, “99 Red Balloons”-by Nena, “Shout At The Devil”-by Motley Crue, “Cum On Feel The Noise”-by Quiet Riot, “Tainted Love”-by Soft Cell, “Every Breath You Take”-by the Police, “Space Age Love Song”-by Flock of Seagulls, “White Lines”-by Grandmaster Flash and we can’t forget Judas Priest, Def Leppard, Michael Jackson and Ozzy Osbourne hits.

Gaylords, like many other gangs in Chicago, advertised their gang affiliation through roughed out graffiti, emblems on shirts, tattoos and other creative ways. They even had boastful business cards. Unlike most business cards however, the Gaylords didn’t list a phone number, just their physical address; their hangout location.

Lots of gangs in Chicago created cards. Like me, a lot of people actually collected these cards; something pretty wild to show off to your friends.

The way that the Gaylords were producing these cards was by going to a professional printing business, laying out a design and putting in an order; freedom of the press at work. A week or so later you would find Gaylords coolly handing these creative calling cards out to different people as they bumped into them. An example of text that could be found on these handouts could be, “THE ALMIGHTY GAYLORDS OF BELDON AND KNOX” for the loud headliner. Then there might be a brag-batch of some members’ names, adjoined by a stabbing-away logo as well.

The Gaylords’ logos are a simple cross and a Maltese Cross with flames torch-shooting out of the four corners. The Maltese Cross is an ancient symbol of protection and honor dating back centuries. To all the Gaylords, “Cross is Boss.”

On my first Gaylord card, that I had printed up, I had a Maltese cross branded as the centerpiece on it. Because guys from Sayre Park, like Chip, Polack and Ape were constantly coming around the game room by Beldon and Knox, and our brotherhood was tight, I decided to have 500 white cards honoring our two respective hoods printed up. The cost was around twenty dollars. Not too bad to get the word out. After this little venture, I found that I liked designing cards to be printed.

Eventually, I found myself designing another card. I eagerly wanted this card to be different than most that I had seen; more of a unique keepsake. After pushing different ideas around in my enthusiastic head, I decided on honoring four deceased Gaylords, titling it “REMEMBERED ALWAYS.” On this particular piece, I listed the names of the four deceased Gaylords: Tesse, Wizard, Tiger and Chief. I had never personally met any of these guys but their individual stories inspired me. This particular card turned out to be very popular with the Gaylords.

One day I was in the game room by Beldon and Knox, flirting with some giddy girls who were deep-seated in a plastic wrapped booth, when suddenly all these guys bursted in through the front door. One of them proudly announced that they were Gaylords from Kilbourn Park; he introduced himself as Sly. He had dark hair, a pointed nose and came off like a hard ass. Without wasting any time Sly shot out a cockish, “Hey, you guys in here got any of those Gaylord cards with our brother Wizard on them?”

I heard stories that Wizard was caught up on the railroad tracks behind Kilbourn Park by a trespassing, rival gang. He managed to stab two of his assailants before the rival group wrestled the knife from him and stabbed him to death.

Taken aback and honored that these guys came all the way from Kilbourn Park, to inquire about some cards, I scooped a handful out of my pants pocket. In excitement, I responded to Sly’s question, “Yeah, I do, I made them.”

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A hyper Sly replied back, “That’s cool. Let me get some.” I produced the handful of cards as Sly and his craving crew grabbed them up with starving eyes and hands.

After a couple minutes of small talk, the boys from Kilbourn were on their way back to their hood with the tribute cards that I had made listing their deceased comrade. Way Cool!—That was my first time meeting any Kilbourn Park Gaylords.

I knew the cards would be a cool memento with the Gaylords, but I didn’t realize that there would be such an interest that they would be pilgrimaging from other hoods to obtain them. Days later, I met two Gaylords from turbulent Palmer Street who also wanted some of the cards. One seemed wolf-raised; Joker. His partner was a medium-sized stocky Native American called Lil Man. Both of them seemed rough-minded; probably generated this hardness from the very hood in which they hung. I was really enthralled to be meeting all these wild characters.

I really knew that I was in the card business when a week later two more Gaylords, around sixteen years old, peddled their way on bikes for the memorial cards; their guy Chief was card-listed. These two hood-travelers had a steady sureness as they introduced themselves. Toker was a thin white guy, with a short, but full crop of brown hair who was smoking toughly away on a Newport. Sting was a little stocky, with a self-induced stuck out chest. He was this suave spanish guy. Not all Gaylords were Caucasian; about ten to twenty percent. These members were Americanized: Mexican, American Indian, Puerto Rican or other non-White heritage.

My personal life outside the Gaylords was pretty hectic. My parents were divorced and I had tried to live with them both but shit just fell apart.

Now, I’m not going to start composing lyrics and singing out about a rough childhood. I was not some damn emotionally disturbed musician. Also, I’m not going to sit here with a long story of child abuse because there was none. I wasn’t raped, molested, starved, tortured or anything that traumatic. I can’t be my own shrink and analyze myself. But simply put, my parents and I just didn’t see eye to eye and I was out the door at seventeen years old. To sum it all up, there were no good or bad guys, we just didn’t get along.

As far as school was concerned, I was a rebellious, little punk bastard who couldn’t sit my hyper ass still. I got ejected from Prosser Vocational High School, and landed down in a special educational program at old-bricked Kelvyn Park High School. My time there didn’t last long either; I was chased out by a bunch of illgrinning members of different Spanish gangs that controlled the school and despised the Gaylords. So much for my education in the Chicago School system.

Without a doubt, that school was screwed up, there wasn’t much advancing going on in there. As a matter of fact, some of the real advances that were actually being made in there were by the principal himself. Truth be told years from now, in 1987, he would be sentenced to 15 years in prison for pressuring five different students into performing sexual acts right in the cubical of his office.

Once I dropped out of school, I guess that I was just a mixed up kid, from a bit of a messed up home, going absolutely nowhere.

After all that craziness, I went to stay with my insane Grandma. She looked like that crazy old lady Maxine, the one with the black sunglasses and the dog on the Hallmark cards. She delighted in swearing, smoking, being Irish and romanticizing about gentleman-General Robert E. Lee. Many times she would walk around the house in her bra and didn’t care what onlookers thought; she was a bit bonkers. One minute she could be very kind to people, the next she could start a fight in a store with another woman over nothing. I loved her, regardless.

When I moved in with good-old Grandma, I realized that her compressed apartment was located just two blocks away from Ridgeway; where those two Gaylords, Sting and Toker, hung out at. Within days of moving in with my Grandma, I ventured over to Ridgeway Street to survey it.

That’s how I found myself standing out in the summer heat of July 5, 1984, on the corner of Fullerton Avenue and Ridgeway Street.

After staring hard for awhile, I finally decided to stop bullshitting around and start strolling north up Ridgeway. I hoped Sting and Toker were around. I was edgy as I started my little trip down the block, for I heard this place was a war zone and I didn’t know really what to expect. Maybe that’s another reason that I wanted to check this place out. I was an urban pirate looking for adventure.

One dismal day Loko and I walked to Wrightwood to hang out. We arrived early in the afternoon, sat around and waited until others showed up. It was slightly breezy out and it looked as if it might rain.

Later on, Lil Jap, wearing his thin, black hooded jacket, joined us. He was overly excited. He had a nifty cap gun with him, said that it was extremely loud when fired; surely it would scare the hell out of somebody if we fired it at them. The three of us checked out the fake gun as Lil Jap, with the adage of hyperness, gave us some amusing scenarios of what it would be like to actually use the gadget against someone. Easy-going Spy came walking down the block. He was wearing his worn-down U.S. Army shirt, blue jeans and black high-top Converse. We shook hands with him; it was good to see Spy, he was righteous company.

Lil Jap finished toying around with the fake gun and put it away in his pocket. We bullshitted for a bit, then Spy produced a can of spray paint. We had a mutual idea.

We decided to go up by Jenals dance club and spray paint in the alley right behind it. That was where our adversaries went to smoke or drink while they attended the club; a special party nest. Graffiti often drenched the walls behind the place, derived from gangs like the Maniac Latin Disciples, Latin Lovers, Spanish Cobras, Imperial Gangsters, Latin Stylers, Latin Eagles or other rival gangs. It was a weekday and Jenals‘ volume was totally shut down, we didn’t expect any real trouble.

The four of us made our way through our hood toward Fullerton. We approached the alleyway that ran right across Ridgeway, train track style. Here, we turned right and entered the grimy alleyway system behind the north-side of Fullerton. This pocketed path would take us straight up to the backass of Jenals. In a few minutes we were behind the backsides of stores, which were filled with nasty metal trash cans. These were the minnie-dusty loading areas of stores like Grocerland and Saxon’s Paints.

The familiar sound of the plastic cap being popped off of the spray paint can echoed slightly in the alleyway. Along the way, we wrote over any graffiti done by the Folk gangs that we spotted; wild dogs in the alley that sporadically pissed to mark our territory. I know that every day citizens despise graffiti, but gangs are motivated to do the ancient-practice. It’s a very powerful deterrent. It helps keep other gangs out of your hood or let’s them know to watch their asses, because your gang just might be around.

Imagine for a moment, being lost in some spooky-dark woods and you come across a sign that loudly reads, “NO TRESPASSING-PRIVATE PROPERTY-VIOLATORS WILL BE SHOT”. You know from this point, from the posted message, that it’s important to stay the hell away. The same theory relates to gangs and their graffiti.

The walk took about ten minutes to reach the alley directly behind Jenals. Right behind the presently shut-down boombox was an outside showroom of congested graffiti. We took inventory of all the maddening writing; spewed out on wooden fences, brick walls and the side of a nearby house.

We were curious to read what the other gangs had to say about us through their graffiti. It was basically the same old crap. They glamorized themselves and disrespected us by floating the word GAYLORDS upside down or simply splattering out GLK, meaning that they were Gaylord Killers.

This crooked collection of artwork needed to be redone. You said to yourself, “Yeah, right. Whatever. Fuck this shit.” And then you made your move.

Awesome!—With no rival interference, we now had the exciting privilege of desecrating the back-side wall to their groovin’ castle. We proceeded to leave our mark on the back of the music hall and other choice spots. A couple of us went to scope out the area. We had to watch the guy’s back who was painting; on the lookout for cops and such. Within seconds the smell of the colored-metallic mist hitting the brick wall filled the air.

The entire repainting job took under ten minutes; it is easier to destroy than to create. Us Gaylords came here on a hit-and-run mission to blaze up the place with our flame-throwish paint can; we succeeded; a crowning achievement for King Loko also. After hitting the walls with our runny representation, letting it be known that we were there, we headed back toward our hood; the fantastic four.

I was extremely on edge, and I’m sure the others were too, but there was no turning back for any of us now. A confrontation was going to happen whether we liked it or not. We couldn’t abort our mission to Koz Park. A clash with them was seconds away as the car crept up slowly and halted at the stop sign kitty-corner from us.

We were visible now and I’m sure that we had their full attention. Their car stopped for a few seconds, then went slowly forward at idle-speed, rattling up close to us, almost curb side service. We were facing the driver’s side of the car and we could see each other up close.

The door behind the scruffy driver instantly flew open and we immediately recognized the person getting out to confront us. It was that psychopath Cyco; he pierced us with his cold blue eyes. Then he shot a quick glance to the right and left of the entire street before he exited the car, to make sure that the coast was clear.

I knew that none of us standing there could take Cyco in a one-on-one fight. Now, he was pulling some object out, and there were three others sitting in the ratty car to back him up.

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I had heard a disturbing noise about ten minutes ago, and had awakened out of my light sleep with wired-spring action. After intensively scanning around, I didn’t find anyone; not even nightmare-master Freddy Krueger. The coast was clear. I assured myself that my mind was just playing tricks on me. Whether I was scared or not, I had to catch some shut eye. If someone came out and caught me here, what would be the worst scenario? I’d probably just be chased off as usual.

I was curled up on a dirty hallway floor inside an apartment building. I was laying in-between closed wooden doors; entrances to individual apartments that tenants resided in. My actual bedding was a tightly nailed down, pancake-thin rug, that bore a tacky flower pattern; faded because of being time traveled over. This particular building was the same one that Lil Jap and his dad had lived in; presently my sleeping quarters for the night After giving up on my paranoia, I finally laid back down, closed my eyes and slowly drifted off to a sound sleep.

I had been doing this for weeks now. I spent most of my days holding down the hood with the other Gaylords, then all the fun would die down as people slowly ran out of steam and disappeared one by one. When there wasn’t anyone left but me and the echo of an empty night, then it was that dreaded time once again to start searching for a place to sleep.

Sometimes, another Gaylord would offer for me to crib at his house but that lasted only for a night or so. Buzzbrain and Mikey, a Ridgeway associate, even generously offered me their old broken down cars behind their houses to use as places to stay. These were the motels that I normally registered with for the night, but when it got cold out, I needed better accommodations. A warm hallway was usually my place of choice..

Some of these dismal searches for a place to snooze became memorable journeys of their own. One time, I journeyed all the way to Harlem Avenue. I found a spot over by the Maurice Lenell Cookie Company; a deluxe metal vent on the right side of the building. The vent blew out warm air that smelled like scrumptious cookies. I laid under the vent, rolled up into a ball and slept there in cozy comfort with sweet dreams.

One unbearable and degrading night, I stood inside my Grandma’s apartment building hallway knocking on her dark wooden door; pleading with her for shelter. After I heard her stern voice on the other side, stubbornly deny me access, I gave up on my attempt. I slid down her closed door and fell fast asleep.

In the dead hours of early morning, I heard my Grandma briskly unlock the door. Then she jerked it open to see if I was still in the hallway, which I was.

She busted me lying uncomfortably on the dust ridden floor. Delirious and extremely tired, I glanced up at her. A lit Pall-Mall cigarette dangled from her tight-lipped mouth. Her hair was an absolute mess as she mumbled some obscenities through the cigarette smoke. Glaring angrily at me for a few seconds more, she then quickly closed her door. Returning moments later with a bucket of cold water; the door flew open and the cold water poured right on top of me. I jumped up off the floor in fucking disbelief. I was soaking wet. Grandma finally demanded that I leave the building at once, which I promptly did.

Added to my decision to leave was the fact that Cindy, a part-time lover turned forced upon situation, was pregnant, and soon I would have a precious, premature daughter to worry about. Life is so strange.

During my last days visiting Lawndale, I was open to the possibility of staying, if others had some new plans, but none were forthcoming. Cocaine also had entered our hood; I didn’t see how we could realistically function as an organized group with diversions such as drugs around. The newborn drugscene felt like the breaking up of a famous rock group. Band members start losing their focus and their minds, and it all end-crashes. Many years from now, a retrospect of the split-up band is given, as estranged members are seen in isolated MTV interviews pointing to the faults of the others.

Over all, Lawndale was no longer home. Home was being sold off to some new owners with foreign interests and it was time for us to escape. Spanish immigration was changing the entire area, and once the winds of change start to strongly blow it’s too much to bear.

ALL WORKS COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND FOURTEEN30 CONTEMPORARY. PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRIAN KENNON. FOLLOWING PAGES: WAITING, 2009, ENAMEL ON POSTER, 27X41”/ X WAS NEVER LIKE THIS, 2007, ENAMEL ON POSTER, 27X41” / PLAYBOY #3, 2009, ENAMEL ON POSTER, 24X36” / NOT YET TITLED#3, 2009, ENAMEL ON POSTER, 24X36” / FEMALE BREASTS, 2008, ENAMEL ON POSTER, 24X36” / FOOLIN’ AROUND, 2009, ENAMEL ON POSTER, 27” X 41”

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I am always interested in people who appear to live in a world of their own creation, totally removed from popular culture, oblivious to it. Even the most cursory glance into the world of Not Not Fun reveals just such a place. Run by husband and wife team Britt Brown and Amanda Holzer, Not Not Fun maintains an incredibly hectic and prolific release schedule, every release is packaged with care and their very specific vision. You can feel them on each release— their hands were there, stuffing, folding, spray painting, sewing, and packing it all up one piece at a time and sending it out into the ether. I can always spot a Not Not Fun release from a mile away when I’m in one of the better stores. I sat down with them over one of Amanda’s amazing raw vegan meals and got a little history from them.

TEXT BY CALI DEWITT / IMAGES COURTESY NOT NOT FUN

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What drove you to start NNF? Amanda Holzer: When I think back to those days almost five years ago when we decided to start the label I remember the feelings we had were not lofty or epic, and yet now I see them as such. [Back] then it was a thing to do, to be creative, to play music, to make crafts, to involve our artistic friends— but from this vantage point, I want to say, too, that we felt the need to reach out, to take advantage of the underground aesthetics of Los Angeles, to find like-minded people and start a community with them. The goals were all very small—because we never dreamed it would turn into what it has—but still they were bigger goals than most had. To spend all of our time, extra money, creative energy, and love on this project, that’s how we went into it. Actually—pretty lofty and epic (laughs).

Britt Brown: Also, for what it’s worth, the entire venture was unambiguously Manda’s idea. There was just a plain, regular evening where she was like, “I think we should start a record label.” I guess I was skeptical at first; it was never something I had ever even dimly foreseen myself being involved with, but as anyone who does it knows, running a record label is a highly addictive habit. Once NNF started becoming real I just fell totally in love with the whole process, the mechanics, the universe surrounding it.

Do you find that running a label as a married couple is romantic? What part did the Not Not Fun extended family play in your wedding?

A: To do anything creative and artistic as a couple has a bit

of romance built in. We share a lot of successes together and get to have some moments of pure joy and satisfaction between us, not to mention taking part in some pretty serious group hugs. But the real romantic time comes after you’ve worked hard, played your set, released the records, run to the post office, updated the website, dealt with the bad mastering job/layout design/printing mix-up/angry email, when you sit back and try to remember you’re still a married couple who love one another. It’s hard to put the work down when you love it nearly as much as you love each other.

We had an amazing wedding that was tailor-made for the vintage Not Not Fun fan. Dean Spunt, the endlessly good guy, deejayed for us between sets by Mika Miko, Abe Vigoda, Hello Astronaut Goodbye Television, and Jeff and Greg Witscher from Rainbow Blanket and Secret Abuse. It was one of the early times I hung out with Bethany Cosentino, who would soon be my sister soulmate in our band Pocahaunted.

Grace Lee from our band Barrabarracuda, Roy Tatum from our band Quintana Roo, Kat Kelly from our band Knit Witch, Bobb Bruno our long time producer and magician, were all with us. Alex Brown from Britt’s band Robedoor even catered the party. We were lucky to be surrounded by so much love coming from such talented people.

B: Our wedding was off the chain. I’m not sure people are even supposed to have that much fun when they’re getting married. And to have the NNF family be involved at every level was really special. Mike Vidal from Abe Vigoda and Kate Hall painted this amazing canvas mural thing that was draped

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across an entire wall, and the kids from HAGTV even played a song during our actual wedding ceremony! It felt really moving to have people you respect and love so much be part of such a huge personal event like that.

You are an extremely prolific label. How have you managed to organize putting out nearly 200 releases and playing in many of the bands on NNF, not to mention organizing tours for the bands you are in and others you work with?

A: We do it ALL the time. That’s really the only answer. We work on it when we have day jobs and weekend jobs. We work on it during holidays and even sneak in a few meetings/ emails during vacations. It consumes us, we put all of ourselves in it. And Britt’s a genius. He has never ending amounts of enthusiasm and dedication. I, on the other hand, have to be coerced a bit. If you dangle a Pellegrino and some dark chocolate in front of me, I can be made to work on Valentine’s Day…two years in a row.

What are your dreams for the future of Not Not Fun? A: I just want to be able to devote my full time to this record label for the rest of my working life, pay bands tons of money, publish more small-run art books, release some hip hop, rap, trip hop—maybe have one of our songs in an iPod commercial with Justin Long, but he has to really like it and not just be pretending to like it.

B: Ditto. We want to hire everyone we love, all of our friends, to work for us and with us so they don’t have to look for jobs in this jobless world.

BY ALEXI S RO SS

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Terry Richardson, Metal Head Kids, New Jersey, 1996 (opposite) Naomi Harris, Thriller, Michael Jackson Trial, Santa Maria, California, June, 2005

A PORTFOLIO IN FOUR PARTS CURATED BY EMMA REEVES AND AARON ROSE

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Alain Levitt, Cab, Lower East Side, New York, 2000

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Alex Hoerner, Rochelle Vaughn and Keria Garrison, Houston, Texas, September, 2005 (opposite) David Ransone, Alex and Poppalardo, Stanton and Allen, New York, 2006

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Wow, what a year.

A year?

Well, almost.

First, please let us start by saying “We’re sorry…”

We’re sorry to all of our subscribers—especially our subscribers—and anyone who has been waiting with baited breath for this issue since last December, 2008. Yes, December was when we released our last issue… and it’s early September, 2009. Wow. That thing with the economy is, of course, the primary reason for this delay, and while we all know that that thing has not quite passed entirely by any means, it has improved enough and we have done some re-shifting on the internal side and it seems like ANPQ is really not over. Not at all. Fingers crossed we’ll even have the next issue out even faster than usual and then we’ll take it back to our usual quarterly schedule from there… but we’re pretty much positive that there is a “there,” and a very cool “there” to boot.

Now let us say “Thank you!”

THANK YOU (!!!) to all of our Subscribers! You are an incredibly patient bunch, and it is increasingly for you that we are able to make this thing. Thank you for waiting for this thing!

And the wait: just as you waited, as we waited, the articles waited. Our cover story on Will Oldham started out as somewhat of a funny race against the rest of the print media world (see the intro for more on that) and our article about Miranda July was actually timed to come out as a slightly early preview of her contributions to this summer’s Venice Biennale. But alas, are either any less worthy now that something so fickle as press cycles (which we really try to ignore anyways for just such reasons!) or exhibition schedules have moved on? We’ll leave the judging to you and your co-judge, time. Please be fair.

Conversely, our Black Dice feature was intended for the next issue, but Trinie Dalton delivered it early so we decided to pack it in here as some semblance of a bonus for the delay.

But we’re of the opinion that every article is a bonus, just as that sentiment goes that every day is a bonus. Here’s to a hope for more bonuses all around!! Truly, all around!!

Until next time…

ANPQuarterly Volume 2/Number 3 Publisher PM Tenore Editors Aaron Rose Edward Templeton Brendan Fowler Layout/Design Casey Holland Contributing Writers Trinie Dalton Cali DeWitt Michael Scott Clark Rayburn Jamal Duval

Contributing Photographers Todd Cole, Jason Frank Rothenberg, Jeff Winterberg, Alexis Zavialoff, Tobin Yelland, Laurent Orseau, Frank Tønnesen, Rasi Delgado, Craig Stecyk III, Susanne Melanie, Naomi Harris, Alain Levitt, Alex Hoerner, David Ransone, Terry Richardson, Brian Kennon Contributing Artist Alexis Ross Special thank you to: Wendy Yao, Becky Stark, Joe Butera, Akiko Watanabe, Lindsay Charlwood ANPQuarterly is published four times a year by RVCA Corp © 2009 RVCA (All rights reserved). Printed September, 2009 on Crumple Street in Gardena, California. Reproduction in whole or in part is strictly prohibited by law. Opinions expressed in articles are those of the authors. All rights reserved on entire contents unless otherwise noted. Artists, photographers and writers retain copyright to their work. Every effort has been made to reach copyright holders or their representatives. We will be pleased to correct any mistakes or omissions in our next issue.

ANPQuarterly™ is a Registered Trademark

(opposite) Bobbi Woods, Fun with Dick#4, 2009, enamel on poster, 27x41” (front cover)

Will Oldham in Louisville, Kentucky, December, 2008. Photo by Todd Cole

(inside front cover) Miranda July, The Hallway, installation views, Yokohama Triennale, 2008. Courtesy of the Organizing Committee for the Yokohama Triennale.

Photo by Yoshinaga Yasuaki Triennale.

(back cover) CR Stecyk III, 2009, poster

960 W. 16th Street Costa Mesa, CA 92627 PH: (949)548-6223 info@rvcaanpq.com