Nate Kinsella Birthmark
Are you calling from Minneapolis? I’m actually calling from outside Minneapolis? I grew up in Minneapolis... Yeah, that was one of the things I was going to ask you about. I know you lived in Illinois and then moved to MN when you were 10 and lived in MN for a while, where did you live in MN? I first lived in Plymouth, which is like a suburb of Minneapolis, like 2nd ring/3rd ring suburb. And then after that we moved to Maple Grove, which is crazy now. It’s like a giant strip mall. I don’t know if you’ve ever been up there, but it’s kind of crazy. When it was still being developed, it was cool because there was a ton of empty lots and gravel pits, like my backyard was a giant gravel pit, so I could just hang out back there. I went to high school at the Arts High School in Golden Valley, right off of Olson Memorial Highway. Then I moved into Minneapolis and lived there for...It wasn’t very long. I only lived in Minneapolis a year before moving. Moved to California after that for a little bit. It’s funny you mention living in Plymouth and Maple Grove because I actually grew up in Plymouth and Maple Grove. When I was looking at the liner notes for the early December’s Architects albums, like to see who played on which albums, there were people that played on those albums, that I went to high school with. Really, who?! Do you remember Sean Hancock? Oh my God yeah! You know Sean? You know how you’re like in school and you know people from being in class with them, but don’t really hang out outside of school. It was kind of like that. Nate Holtz went to the same high school I did, but he was like a year ahead of me, but I was friends with one of his friends Chris. Nate Holtz is a very close friend of mine, actually we still email and talk all the time. What was Chris’s last name, I wonder if I recognize it? Chris Wells? Holy shit! (laughs) Oh my God, Chris Wells. I met him in 6th grade. We would go to CCD together, like bible study and we would be really mischievous. Holy shit man, that’s like one of the oldest friends I have. I don’t know where Chris is now, do you know what he’s been up to?
Last I heard he moved to California, but I don’t know what he’s doing out there. Which junior high did you go to? I went to Osseo Junior and then Maple Grove Senior. Right when they opened Maple Grove Senior, like that first year, I went to Arts High School. We would’ve like just missed each other. I went to Osseo High School for my sophomore year and then junior and senior at the Arts High School. Wow, that’s insane! That’s so cool! I didn’t realize that you lived in Maple Grove and Plymouth, but I know that you were friends with and played with Nate and Sean. I was thinking back to when I was in high school hearing about what they were in and how close in proximity I was to it, but I wasn’t involved in it yet. It’s just weird how close it was. Yeah, absolutely. Sean was like a musical genius savant when he was like 12 years old. He got me started playing guitar. I would go over to his house after school, and we’d turn on MTV and he could sit there and listen to any song that was on and he would play it. It was just amazing! He totally blew my mind. I started hanging out with him and playing guitar together and stuff, but I didn’t play guitar before I met Sean. He was the one that really got me into playing. I remember these bands that Sean played in; Tugboat and another one called Berkshire. Yeah, I played drums in Tugboat! Berkshire, I don’t think I was ever in that band, that was after I switched high schools, but they kept playing and they were really good. I remember thinking that they were really awesome and it was kind of a shame that they didn’t...I don’t know, well who’s knows why things don’t happen for some bands. But they were really good! You said Sean got you interested in playing guitar, did you have any interest in playing music before that or is that kind of how it all started? That’s pretty much when it started. 6th grade, meeting Sean and he played guitar and he was really good at piano too. I had a cousin, not Tim or Mike, but on my Mom’s side of the family that also played guitar. At all the family gatherings, he knew a bunch of Metallica songs and I would just sit there and listen to him play and that’s kind of how that started. People around me were into it. That’s when Nirvana was super huge, my sister was into super cool music like Jane’s Addiction and a bunch of different bands. I just started getting into music and that’s when it started, around 11-12 years old.
Skipping ahead a little bit, you’re also known as a multi-instrumentalist, how did you go from just doing the drums and guitar to learning a bunch of other instruments? I think that I can play the drums and I think that I can play the guitar and I can play the bass, but as far as like anything else that I’ve played, I’m not really competent, I’m not really confident in my abilities with any other instrument. It’s just that it’s always been fun to pick things up and see what could happen. It’s amazing that if you just spend a few weeks with an instrument, you can really kind of fake it a lot of the time and make something happen. I have a cello and I played that on Joan of Arc recordings and if you layer enough of them, it actually sounds pretty passable. I bought a clarinet and the songs that I was recording it over happened to be in the same key that the clarinet is in, like B Flat, so I just got really lucky on that one. It’s just more of kind of being interested in and having the time to play around with it. You guys played in Decembers Architects for a while, why did that band end? I moved to LA after we had spent a year recording this full-length, and then right when we finished it, I moved to LA. That’s kind of why we stopped. I think that full-length was really fun to do. I haven’t listened to it in a while, but I think it’s kind of insane. It might be really hard to listen to. Was that the full-length album that was later released in 2006? Yeah, it had like a really long title, I can’t remember it. Nate Holtz actually came up with the title. (ed. note: album title is ,Apiary Ennui And Curiosas. The Brew Shakes) For Antibodies you went to Kickstarter to get funding, why did you choose to go that route? Before that I had always funded it myself which ended up taking a really long time. I like to be able to sort of act on hunches and ideas right when they come up. Where the previous album that I did, the Shaking Hands album, I spent like 3 years on that and when I’d have an idea like “Oh I wanna record a choir singing this thing, that’d be so amazing” and then I’d have to work at my crappy job and save up money for months and go into the studio in Chicago and get a group of friends, do the song, then bring it back down. It was like to actually act on every idea that I had took a really really long time and I couldn’t do things right away because I had to save up the money and then go do it. That led to a lot of second guessing. When you’re acting on impulse, you can be like “Oh yeah, that’s great! This what I’m doing right now is perfect!” But when you’re like “Oh I had this idea 2 months ago, why did I think this would be a good idea? I wish I could remember what was happening when I thought this was a good idea”. Then you end up stuck somewhere spending a bunch of money in a studio trying
to figure out this idea you that you had and why it was cool a few months ago. It took a really long time, so having the funds there immediately at my disposal really made it a lot easier just to follow through with things immediately and just get it done. Do you think you will go the same route with future albums? I’m not so sure. Only because I don’t know if it’s the sort of thing you can do more than once. I’d have to look into it. Like I don’t know how many bands have done a Kickstarter campaign, made an album, then done another Kickstarter campaign to do another album. At some point it seems like it kind of becomes silly. I just don’t think that it’s sustainable to do things that way, but it seems like it’s sort of acceptable right now to do that and since I hadn’t done one before, I could get away with it. I had people that were excited about it. Polyvinyl was excited, which gave me a lot of confidence, like, oh maybe I can do this thing if Polyvinyl is behind me. My family was very excited, my wife was into it, so it seemed like a good idea. I don’t know if I would do it again, I’m still not sure. When I see Kickstarter campaigns, I always look to see what you get for pledging the highest amount, were you surprised that someone actually paid the $2,000? I was surprised that somebody did it, but then it was actually my dad who did it. (laughs) It wasn’t a total stranger. He was worried that if you don’t hit the goal you don’t get any of the money, so he was worried about it. My parents were talking about it and my dad and I will often...we’ve been know to sing some karaoke songs together. We’re both into music, so he pitched in to do the recording. We haven’t had a minute to do yet, but I am looking forward to recording some sort of duet with him. I think that would be super fun. That sounds really cool! Would that be something you’d release to the public or just keep it between friends and family? I think I would leave that up to him with what he wanted to do with it. He’ll have it for family probably. I don’t know who would be interested in it, that’d be kind of funny if anyone was. You’re currently living in New York, what brought you out there from Champaign/Urbana? We had been living in Champaign/Urbana for about 5 years and my wife, who finished up all the school that she was going to do, we kind of just had an opportunity to leave. There was really no reason for us to stay in Champaign. We just sort of brainstormed places we’d like to go live and I never thought that I would actually move to New York. It was just one of those things that you have in the back of your head, like oh yeah maybe I’ll do that someday, but I probably won’t. One of those ideas. We just decided that it was a good time to have another adventure before we have any kids.
We’re pretty mobile right now and she’s got a job where she can work from home and I’ve just been sort of freelancing, which is low commitment, so we can move around and still squeeze the last years of our youth dry. Try to get the last of it out before we start a family or something. Do you get more chances to play live in New York than you did in Chicago and it’s surrounding areas? Not really, I don’t really know many people here. If I were in Chicago, I’m sure I would playing a ton. I’d be playing way more than I am now. It’s hard to move to a city and not really know a lot of people. I have a lot of acquaintances and a lot of friends here, but you kind of have to be busy all the time to pay your rent here. No one has really got a ton of free time on their hands to like “Oh we should get a drink”. It’s actually really hard to find a minute to get together, because everyone is just so busy with their lives. I’ve just been working a ton and I haven’t really looked into playing in the city much, but I do have one show coming up in May. Then I’ll be doing an East Coast tour in August. Other than that, I haven’t really pursued playing here. I tried to get together with some friends, but everyone is just so busy. It’s hard to do. That’s the Antibodies record release show your having in May? Yep, May 9th. It’s going to be at the Stone which is cool. It’s John Zorn’s venue. It’s just a room with a very small P.A. It’s kind of like a no frills performance space. I’m excited about it. I read that you’ve been on couple overseas tours and tours to Japan, but you haven’t really had any tours in the U.S.? Yeah that’s true. For Birthmark, we’ve been to Europe twice and did a couple 2-3 week tours in Europe, but I haven’t played in the U.S. at all. I’ve done a couple shows in Chicago that were kind of disastrous, but I kind of don’t like playing alone. For this tour coming up I have some how managed to pull together an ideal band, it’s really awesome that I got these players to come with me. I’m going to have all really close friends of mine too. I’m Kristina Dutton playing violin, Tomeka Reid playing cello, Andra Kulans playing the viola and my friend Luke from Champaign/Urbana playing drums, my friend Tim from Minneapolis is going to be playing guitars. I sort of have like a super group in every aspect, like personality wise and playing wise, everyone is like a gem. It’s going to be great. How does your music translate over to a live setting, is it pretty much the same as it is on the record? I’m trying to do that for this show at the Stone. I’ll have a string quartet and we’ll have a vibraphone and a marimba, drum set and guitar and bass and odds and ends to recreate it. This album seems like it’s easier to do then some of the other ones. This album
is easier to recreate a lot of it. That’s what I’m going for, we’ll see. In the past when I’ve played alone, I’ve tried to rearrange everything and make the songs totally different and sometimes it doesn’t work at all. I’m just excited. I know the songs that do work how they are, so I’m glad that I can just play them how they are and that’s going to be it. There’s not going to be any weird versions that don’t quite work. You mentioned earlier that it took 3 years to do Shaking Hands and Antibodies only took 4 months to do? Yeah, it was quick. Why was it so quick to do it this time around? It was mostly that I had some songs that I didn’t know what to do with and I couldn’t get the recordings to sound right. Some of the songs on Antibodies, I just couldn’t get them to sound right, they would’ve been on the last album, but it just wasn’t happening for some reason. I had a few, a little pool of songs to pull from and then I basically just set it up. I just organized it so I would spend 10 days at home recording with my friend Jason Cupp who came down to Urbana and set up a little mini studio. He did all the recording, like I didn’t even touch anything. He worried about all that, which took a huge load off my shoulders. Every album that I’ve done previous to this, I’ve been the one pushing the buttons and making sure everything sounds good. I could just think about the music, which was really nice. We recorded for 10 days and then I had 6 weeks to work with all the stuff we recorded and build songs out of everything. Then he came back for another 10 days to mix everything. And then a week after that we moved to New York. So I had a definite window of time that it had to be done, which really helps. There was nothing I could do, I listen to the album now and I’m like “Oh man, I should’ve changed this, I should’ve changed that”. But it’s done and I did that on purpose, I did that to myself on purpose, so I would just complete something. I didn’t want to do another album that would drag on forever. With your past albums where you worked alone, was it harder to do everything yourself with second guessing and stuff? Yes, absolutely. It can be really rewarding when something is working, when you put something together that just feels so good to listen to, it can be really rewarding. Like a magic trick. I feel so lucky that I can do this thing and entertain myself, that I really get some serious joy out of it. I feel so lucky that I even have that in my life at all. It can be nice to have other people around. You can share that joy with someone, with some people, with some friends. There are things to enjoy about doing it either way. There’s frustrating road blocks for both ways too. There’s no ideal way to go about it, it’s just like how you are feeling at the time and how to choose what you want out of it. Do you want something you can absolutely
call your own? Then that’s what you should do. If you’re looking for an experience with your friends, which can be really amazing too, it all depends on what you want. Did you enjoy playing in groups with Make Believe and groups like that opposed to recording by yourself? I don’t know if I enjoy one more than the other. I guess I just enjoy them in such different ways. In Make Believe, that band was just super fun to play in. We definitely put a lot effort into making sure that the live show was fantastic. We were playing as best as we could and we would practice constantly and we would tour all the time. It was also physically exhausting to play drums. It was really great, I really enjoyed it, like having like a runner’s high afterwards. Physically, I’ve never been more in shape than being on tour in Make Believe. Lots of people drink really heavily or don’t eat well while on tour, but we would go to Whole Foods in the morning and just try to eat as healthy as possible. It was a really great time. But recording alone...I just felt like I wanted to pursue just a personal endeavor and just see what I could do by myself. There are lots of things that I wanted to experiment with that couldn’t really done in a band. Make Believe had sort of lost steam and it just wasn’t as much as a priority. That happens with bands, the romance dwindles a little bit and that’s a good time to walk away from it. Do you think you guys would ever record any more as Make Believe or do you think it’s dead for now? I don’t know. If we did, we’d probably all switch instruments or do something. It wouldn’t be anything like Make Believe. I’m sure Sam (Zurick) would still play guitar, but it’s something that we’d all have to be drunk at the bar together to figure out. I’m not ruling it out at all, it’s totally possible that we would all end up in a room together playing. That actually sounds like it would be a lot of fun. It’ll probably happen at some point, whether it turns into something that we put a lot of effort into or a little bit effort into, it’s hard to say, but that would absolutely be fun. So let’s say that Tim gives you a call tomorrow morning and says “Hey, we’re getting the band back together” would you jump at that chance to do it again? I wouldn’t move anywhere, but I’d definitely fly to Chicago for a week over the summer and then maybe again a month later or something. I’d make it work, I could fit it into my life, I could figure out a way to make it work. Everybody knows that Tim and Mike Kinsella are your cousins and they’ve been in a number of popular bands, do you think having Kinsella as a last name has helped you get a little foot in the door to
the indie music world? Yeah, I think that it has. Even as simple as that, having the name on it, people will be like “Oh I know that name, which guy is that? Why don’t I know this guy? Was he in Cap’n Jazz? No? Ohh?” (Laughs) I think that it’s the name that people know, so I’m sure it’s helped. You played in Joan of Arc and played on some of the Owen albums and singles that were both on Polyvinyl, now that you’re on Polyvinyl, was it something you knew would happen at some point? I had always hoped that it would. It was just a matter of timing. Those guys are releasing a lot of really great stuff. Every time I would finish something, I would kind of toss it there way be like “Interested, maybe this time?” I didn’t want to bother them, but I guess it just sort of worked out this time. I’m not quite sure why they decided to do it now, but it’s awesome, I’m really excited about it. It seems like you’d be a good fit on their roster. I think so. They have a lot of different kinds of bands, it’s a good mix. They don’t have like one thing happening. The have Deerhoof and XIU XIU and Joan of Arc and Owen and Asobi Seksu. It’s eclectic, it’s all over the place. They do have a pretty eclectic roster I think, they kind of have a band for everyone. Yeah, that’s true. It’s not like....I’m trying to think of a label where every band sounds the same, like Victory Records or something. Do they do that? I think with Victory has more of the assumption of what it’s going to sound like. Like if you hear a band is on Victory you’re going to assume its either hardcore or ska. Yeah, or like Fat Wreck Chords, it’s going to be all pop punk bands, there’s no doubt about it. You went back to college to take some music theory classes is that right? Yeah, I went to recording school right after high school, but I never did a Bachelors Degree, so I always wanted to do that. When we were living in Champaign/Urbana, I started taking classes down there and started taking theory classes and learning how to read music finally. It was great. Did those classes help with learning to play other instruments? It just kind of gives everything a framework. It helps to think about it in a different way. It’s really fun to think about the relationships between different frequencies or notes. It fun to think about things in that way as far as intervals. From playing music for so long, I feel
very comfortable with it, but then to all of a sudden learn all this grammar and learn all this theory behind it, it really blew everything wide open for me. It was really fun to have something so close to me like in music and to all of a sudden see it in a totally different way, it was like...I was going to say something really rude like having your wife do a complete make over or something (laughs) That’s really great, but it’s like something you’re so familiar with and all of a sudden there is a totally different light shined on it. What do you have planned now that the album is coming out in a few weeks, what do you have planned after the album release show? We have the show and then the east coast tour in August. After that, I did get into Brooklyn College here, so I’ll probably take some more classes. At some point it’d be fun to try to write another album, but I just don’t have any time anymore. It’s too bad. I’ll try to figure that out. Maybe over the summer I can get away for a little bit and try to get some writing done. I’d like to try and do some music for films, short films, nothing too big to swallow. That’s always something I’ve wanted to get into. It’d be fun to meet some people here to play with, nothing serious, it could just be improv shows or anything. I kind of miss playing with people now, it’s been a while. That’s pretty much what I’ve got planned for the foreseeable future.
Interview with: Nate Kinsella facebook.com/birthmarkmusic Polyvinyl Records polyvinylrecords.com Photo: Chris Strong