Earlier this week local arts magazine and champion City Arts announced that they’d be hosting the first ever City Arts festival this October at venues around Seattle. But don’t let the word “first” trick you into thinking this is some amateur event, for their inaugural festival City Arts has crafted a line-up filled with national, international and local talent that rivals established festivals like Bumbershoot and Capitol Hill Block Party.

Just take a peek at an abridged list of the line-up:

Belle and Sebastian / Blue Scholars / She and Him / Big Boi / Gogol Bordello / Blitzen Trapper / The Vaselines / Roky Erickson / Brother Ali / Foals / Dum Dum Girls / Macklemore with Ryan Lewis / The Weepies / Fresh Espresso / The Head and The Heart / The Maldives / Sera Cahoone / The Atomic Bombshells / Brent Amaker and The Rodeo / Tilson / Star Anna and Her Laughing Dogs / Head Like A Kite / And Many More …

I chatted with Leigh Sims from the Festival this week and she told me what initially was an idea for a singular event to celebrate the beginning of “the fall indoor arts season,” blossomed into a full-on festival because there were just so many great ideas flowing. Not only does the October date separate this from most of the summer-based Pacific Northwest music festivals, the spirit of collaboration and creating once-in-a-lifetime events is also distinctive. At the fest you’ll have a chance to see Belle & Sebastian at Beanroya Hall with strings, Head Like a Kite with The Atomic Bombshells and Brent Amaker & the Rodeo for a rowdy sexy night and an all-star local hip hop show featuring Blue Scholars, Macklemore, Mash Hall and Fresh Espresso, plus out-of-towner Brother Ali. And that’s just a few … you’ve also got The Weepies with The Head and the Heart, Roky Erickson with The Maldives and a promising event called “Poetry and Hip Hop Church.”

Wrist bands go on sale tomorrow for the festival and I’d pay the $125 for VIP Access to guarantee entrance to the big events.

The Whore Moans ::: photo by Abbey Simmons

Tomorrow night at Columbia City Theater marks the end of an era and the beginning of a new one for the Whore Moans. The band will be taking the stage for the final time under their perfect punk rock pun name and playing the songs that made them one of Seattle’s favorite rock banks for the final time, before being reborn as the Hounds of the Wild Hunt.

Changing their well-known, eye-brow raising name has been a difficult and unpopular decision for the band. Internally, the decision caused the Whore Moans’ biggest blow-up in its five year history, threatening the friendships that bind the band, and for a day, they even broke-up. Externally, fans and internet trolls alike have loudly questioned the bands decision to change their name, labeling them “sell-outs” and punk turncoats.

There is no doubt that with the decision to change their name, the Whore Moans/Hounds of the Wild Hunt are facing an uphill battle that they are bringing upon themselves. It is a fact the band is keenly aware of. Sitting on their back porch after band practice this week, bassist Ryan stopped the conversation silent by saying, “Let it be known this is a scary decision.” His band mates nodded in agreement and took deep swigs off their dwindling beers. With the weight of the five years they’ve dedicated to and succeeded with a name that has felt at times as much as blockade as an entry point for the band, leaving the Whore Moans behind wasn’t a sudden or easy decision. In fact, the band almost changed their name before their first LP was released.

As a long time fan and supporter of the band, I wanted to hear from the Whore Moans in their own words their reasons for changing the name, why they chose The Hounds of the Wild Hunt as their new moniker and what we can expect from the final Whore Moans show. Here’s what they had to say.

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So, why change the name?

Jonny: “We’d all been frustrated by the name, for various reasons, save Jason, for years. The main reason is once we had some respect for what we played and it was more than a joke, it was more than about me wearing short shorts and a sweat band and talking about punching God in the face, it was hard to be known by that pun, that joke.”

Ryan: “The more our lives revolved around it, the name spoke less to what we were doing. We were playing these new songs and it seemed absurd that these things we had poured our hearts and souls into …. it almost seemed funny that the title of those things, that were so real and serious and important to us, were being presented under the title, The Whore Moans. It felt like I was wearing a clown hat.”

Jonny: “And to then be constantly matched with other bands, no matter where we played and no matter what they sounded like, who had joke names: Butt Problems, Rape Door, Penetrator, Loaded Revulvas, Ugly Fat Kids …”

Ryan: “If a town had a band with a really funny, shitty, usually sexist name — we would be paired with them — no matter their music had anything to do with our music, just because of the name Whore Moans.”

Nikki: “It was a good name. It was good to us. It got us a lot of attention. It was part of the reason Rolling Stone paid any attention to us, they led their review with something about the name. But it came with a lot of baggage, not only for people who wouldn’t listen to you because of the name, but those who would had expectation about what a band called the Whore Moans were going to sound like.

We started to ask, what if we didn’t have this name? Would we still be being paired with bands called Rape Door or Butt Problems? I didn’t want to have to explain or justify it any more.”

Jason: “On tour we had to prove our talent night after night. And night after night we did and people would tell us they liked us in-spite of our name. It was fun proving people wrong.”

Nikki: “It was fun, but we’ve done it.”

Jonny: “Over and over and over again.”

Ryan: “Plus … every drunk guy, in every town we’ve ever played: ‘Hey, how do you make a whore moan?’”

Nikki: “That is our personal ‘Free Bird.’”

Jonny: “We know every punch line to that joke. Never hearing that joke again would be reason enough to change our name.”

The entire band nods their head in agreement.

To read the rest of the interview …

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The Moondoggies at the Blue Moon ::: photo by Abbey Simmons

In between playing shows with Blitzen Trapper and sending us postcards from the road, The Moondoggies sat down with internet radio site Pandora at the Bonnaroo music festival and ended up talking mostly about the Blue Moon of all things. We love hearing our favorite dive get name checked to start off an interview almost as much as we love the fact that Kevin is still wearing his flannel despite what is sure to be sweltering Southern heat and humidity. See for yourself:

Welcome to the first edition of “Sound on the Sound Radio,” otherwise known as “Justin Ripley is one of the funniest, most prolific guy we know and when he has an idea, we happily play along.”

When Justin, lead singer of Salmon Thrasher and Showbox sound guy, proposed recording a podcast for Sound on the Sound with Rooftop Vigilantes, a raucous rock band from his hometown of Lawrence, KS, we said “of course” and kept our fingers crossed. What we got back was like a delightful Christopher Guest take on an NPR interview gone horribly wrong … complete with monotone voice-over, momentum halting questions and a moment of dead air courtesy of a passing ice cream truck.

Unlike the sludgy grooves of Salmon Thrasher, Rooftop Vigilantes offer short anthemic blasts of rock that are at once bright and fuzzy. They’ve been described as a “very drunk Fugazi” and that sits well with me. Or as Justin put it, “One of the main unfortunate things about your band, well there are a lot of unfortunate things, but the main one is you’re completely amazing and that’s all I’ve been listening to the past three months, but yet, you’re band will probably never be successful.”

Listen for yourself and then check out both Rooftop Vigilantes and Justin Ripley (as frontman for Salmon Thrasher) this Saturday June 12th at the Sunset. If you have any requests for which band Justin interviews next for Sound on the Sound, leave them in the comments … we loved this initial podcast so much, of course we asked him back for more.

Sound on the Sound Podcast 01 - Justin Interview’s Rooftop Vigilanties by soundonthesound

Before we talk about the future, we have to talk a little bit about history:

1938. 1 Sheridan Square, New York City. Cafe Society opens its doors. It was a cabaret theater and jazz club that highlighted African American performers in front of an integrated audience. It is the first club of its kind in the United States. Billie Holiday debuted “Strange Fruit” on that stage and legends like Lena Horne got their start there. The slogan of the club? “The Wrong Place for the Right People.”

2005. 1325 East Madison Avenue, Seattle, WA. A local hip hop show at Chop Suey. Jennifer Petersen (of Sportin’ Life Records) and Sarah Walczyk (of Powerful Voices) meet for the first time. It is not a pleasant meeting. In a vicious cycle that should sound familiar to every woman reading this, Jennifer and Sarah’s introduction and initial impression of each other was marred by a dynamic that pits women against each other rather than encouraging camaraderie and that encourages competition and mistrust rather than community and communication.

April 23, 2010. 1001 East Pike Street, Seattle, WA. Cafe Society opens its doors again. Organized by dear friends Jennifer Petersen and Sarah Walczyk, the reborn Cafe Society is a monthly salon to celebrate female artists of every genre and to encourage conversation and appreciation between women. It is an event by and about women, but not just for women. Just like its namesake, it is about breaking barriers and celebrating art, all while having one hell of a party.

Jennifer Petersen and Sarah Walczyk ::: portrait by Abbey Simmons

Last Thursday I sat down to talk with Jennifer and Sarah, the women behind Cafe Society. I couldn’t help but share my excitement for the event with them, and now with you. While there are other “Ladies’ Night” events around town, none of them have the intention behind them that Cafe Society does. This isn’t just a party: this is a movement. It’s a conscious effort with great creative intent to encourage conversation and interaction between women who might not ever speak and to highlight the talented ladies who make Seattle tick, both on and off stage. It’s not just a great idea. It’s necessary.

The idea for a new kind of Ladies’ Night came not only from Jennifer and Sarah’s own less than warm introduction,  but also from Sarah’s job at Powerful Voices: a non-profit that seeks to nurture adolescent girls into strong women. While working with teenage girls, Sarah says she realized the social drama of being young and female hadn’t eased. “I have the same issues with teen girl drama at 35,” she says. Jennifer, who runs into her share of drama as a female business owner in a male-dominated and male-exalting industry agrees. “You know why you put female lobsters into a pot instead of male lobsters, right?” I don’t. Jen goes on. “Male lobsters help each other out and build a ladder, clawing each other out of the pot. You know what female lobsters do? They drown each other.”

Cafe Society is about turning the “lobsters in the pot” analogy on its head, and that starts with Jen and Sarah’s relationship. Sitting in their company, with these two strong and smart women, it is clear that they have served as ladders–not weights–for each other. Cafe Society seeks to do the same. It is a night by and about women, but not solely for them. (The fellas are invited to celebrate too.)  It’s about leaving the drama, ego, and assumptions at the door and feeling your best, whether your best finds you in sweatpants or a cocktail dress. It is about sparking a positive vibe and a conversation with someone you’ve never seen before. It is about checking all your thoughts about ladies’ nights, dance parties and your fellow females at the door and embracing those things that connect us: friendship, music, and community.

Cafe Society starts celebrating this Friday at Sole Repair. The first night event will feature musical guests Marissa (of Sportin’ Life Records) and DICE. Both ladies will perform shortened sets, allowing for plenty of time to converse, create and celebrate.

I’ll definitely be there to celebrate Cafe Society and in the spirit of it all, be sure to say “Hello.”

The David Bazan Band ::: Photo by Josh Lovseth

[In August,  Abbey of Sound on the Sound sat with David Bazan for four hours for a feature story on Bazan and his new album 'Curse Your Branches' for Sound Magazine. Because four hours worth of interview cannot be contained in a 2,000 word feature, we're sharing some of the previously unused material here on Sound on the Sound; not only to preview Bazan's homecoming show this Saturday at Neumos, but to provide insight into the events that spawned Curse Your Branches.]

David Bazan is a man who’s been defined by his faith for as long as he can remember. As Pedro the Lion, he sang openly of the trials of reconciling faith with doubt and sin, equally contemplating one’s present and future existence through the lens of an utter believer or one who is struggling with the consequences of that belief. Bazan’s decade long journey with Pedro the Lion ended in 2004, at a point when Bazan’s faith in God seemed irretrievably crippled by doubt. He could no longer be Pedro the Lion, standard-bearer of Christian indie rock to the masses. As the weight of his doubt grew, he escaped into alcohol and the rock n’ roll lifestyle, while the depth of his internal turmoil became a palpable reality to those around him.

His belief, and therefore the band, had never existed in a vacuum. His wife and family were devout Christians, as were his devoted fanbase and friends. In 2003, just about a year before Pedro the Lion ended, his best friend TW Walsh joined the band as it’s drummer. It was then that  things were coming to a crashing head.  Bazan’s telling of the events that became the song ”Please Baby Please” from his long-awaited solo debut album Curse Your Branches, provides a window into that difficult moment and what it took to right himself:

[My wife] Anne started to get really worried, and Walsh, and a bunch of other people did. I mean there were promoters who would call my booking agent and ask, “Is Dave Okay? Because he’s been coming through here for years and we’ve never really seen him like this.” So there was definitely an intervention on the table. That didn’t happen, but they were pretty worried.

And at that point I was like, okay, okay. I’ll stop drinking for a month. So I stopped drinking for like a month, and then when I started again, it was just back to the same thing. At that point it was pretty functional, where it was maybe twice a month I would basically go on a bender. And it was when most of the time when I had a ride home. Some of the time it wasn’t and I’d have to get a ride home and pick up the car later.

And there was one bender in particular, the song “Please Baby Please”  basically makes a reference to. TW Walsh dropped me off at home, in the downstairs bedroom because he didn’t feel like carrying me up the stairs after he’d already cleaned puke up out of his car and changed my shirt because I’d thrown up all over myself. And he called Anne and woke her up and said, “Dave’s downstairs, you might want to keep an eye on him.” So she brought me upstairs and almost lost me over the banister because I was in and out of consciousness. And she was up with me all night, in her mind, convinced that I wasn’t going to make it. And I really don’t know what the reality of that is, she thankfully isn’t experienced with alcohol poisoning. Just when I woke up the next morning, which actually I think is the lyric of the song, and she was sitting on the bed and just was like “That’s it. You’re done. There’s no way for this to move forward if you don’t do something different.”

And two days later I went on tour, and I agreed not to drink on tour, which as the time line indicates was the first basically sober shows I’d played in several years. And it was in that time period where I kind of decided okay, you DO perceive that God exists. You’d like to be able to suspend that assumption, but it’s not an assumption at this point. You perceive that he does, for better or worse. And you have to admit that to yourself or there’s going to be some pretty big problems you don’t know how to control. So I was able to admit that to myself and for me that was a really good step in the right direction. I don’t know what the outcome of that will be, but ultimately in the mean time it was good practice at being honest with myself. I couldn’t adopt any arbitrary posture, I had deep convictions one way or the other, I had to be true to those even if there was a lot of contradiction. And after that, that compulsion to get blacked out just was gone.

Though he did eventually come to a place of personal peace,  his friendship with TW Walsh was probably the gravest casualty of the dissolution of Pedro The Lion. Though Walsh (who now lives in Boston) and Bazan are again close friends  (TW’s band The Soft Drugs opened for Bazan on an East Coast date this fall), in retrospect how Pedro the Lion ended still troubles Bazan.

I had genuinely wounded him. But then it got so fucked up and complicated, because I didn’t mean to do anything. There was nothing overt where I made deliberate decisions to fuck him over. It was all a wake of destruction that I was unaware of, or that I wasn’t doing intentionally.

We had such an intense relationship and the success of that relationship was based on the functionality of my business. And I fucked all that up. And it’s still… it may be the biggest regret of my life. I’m finally getting my shit together and putting in the appropriate amount of time for the band to work. And the hardest part of all of that, is why couldn’t i have done that when Walsh was living here? And why couldn’t I have done that when he had the opportunity to be in the band? It kills me that that opportunity is for all intents and purposes, just over.

It really kills me. But at the same time, we’re both really glad at this place now that we’re in. And on the record, on the credits I was so proud to write: Recorded by Bazan in his basement. Mixed by Walsh in his basement. Because that is the essence of what we were trying to do for the whole time [with Pedro the Lion] and we just couldn’t do it, because by the time he came on full time the writing was already on the wall and nobody saw it. But it was my doing. [His participation] is a really sweet aspect of [Curse Your Branches].

While Bazan’s position on God remains uncertain from day to day, where he used to be paralyzed by contemplating that fact, he now accepts that his view may always be evolving.

You know, I’ve been doing the religion thing and thinking about it hard for a lot of years. And I also know a lot of really smart guys that challenge my thinking. So I guess that now that I’ve played the [Curse Your Branches] songs forever, and have gotten really comfortable with them, and then further that they’re out in the world and I’m starting to get feedback on them. I do feel like at the very least, they hold up on some basic level. I think that the problems with the story of Christianity that are implied in the tunes might have answers to them that I just don’t know, but they are genuinely big question marks for me, they’re not just surface issues. I feel like they are fundamental flaws that I’m curious that if someone has the answers. I’d love them to email me.

Curse Your Branches artfully document’s those questions about faith through Bazan’s own eyes and his own history. Make no mistake, his songs are deeply autobiographical, yet he frames his struggles in such a way as to be accessible to the religious, the former-religious, and the simply “spiritual” alike. The hopes and fears of parenthood and providing for a better more harmonious future for one’s children transcend denominational and cultural lines. He’s expressing the universal human need for safety and righteousness of purpose here, and what purpose could be more righteous than fighting for the safety of one’s own child. I can identify deeply with the compassionate criticism he’s expressing about topics that popular music rarely dares to dabble in, and even as a staunch and long time Pedro fan, I’ve got to say these are the most impactful songs about religion and life Bazan has written yet.

David Bazan and his new band wrap up their nationwide tour at Neumos this Saturday November 7th. Say Hi and the Sea Navy are opening. Find tickets online via TicketsWest.

The Sea Navy ::: Photo by Sarah Jurado

The Sea Navy are playing a record release show, tomorrow, Friday August 21st at the Sunset Tavern in Ballard with Battle Hymns and The High Strung. With the long-awaited (at least by me) release of their latest record Memory Matches next Tuesday August 25th, the Sea Navy have revealed yet another collection of short sophisticated pop songs out of the mind of front-man Jay Cox. The output of a year and a half of work, this time around Cox had his drummer Jordan Cumming to shoulder the weight of recording and mixing and the result neatly bottles the sometimes overflowing bursts of energy the band exudes on stage and then some. Through clever production and a determinedness to be what they are, I think with this new record they’ve set themselves among our city’s finest examples of heart-on-sleeve pop.

Jay and Jordan responded to a few of my questions about the new album and where they’re at right now via email, with sometimes slightly snarky answers.

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SOTS: The previous Sea Navy record came out before the current lineup had been able to form. This record found you playing many of the songs as a band long before committing them to tape. How did that change the song creation process for you this time around?

JAY: It changed the process to where the people recording/playing the songs are the ones that wrote the parts (for the exception of certain parts of “Rodeo”). We were able to make this record as a band and not “people playing with Jay.” Up until meeting both Jordan and Stuart I had missed the feeling of operating as a band and I am very happy at where we are at in our development. It has a long time since I felt so excited towards what a “band” was able to create and play. I’m so glad that the three of us function so well and I can’t imagine having written these songs with any other players. I don’t mean the previous comment as a negative comment on former members of The Sea Navy but more that having a stable lineup and having people equally invested made the whole process more comfortable and less rushed or on borrowed time.

SOTS: You guys’ bread and butter is the short form pop song. Not a song on this record tops 3 minutes. Is that result of an increased pace in general over the last record, it is even a conscious thing or does ’shorter’ just seem to be the natural length for the songs you guys are creating right now?

JAY: I think maybe 1% of the songs I have ever written have been over 3 minutes. I never worry/think about the length of the song. I think there is enough going on in each song to where the listener will not feel ripped off.

JORDAN: We play for as long as the song needs to be played. We could make the songs longer but then practices would run longer and that’s the last thing we want.

SOTS: One of the pitfalls of such a short time can be that the songs start to be indistinguishable from each other because there is just less time for melodic theme development. It’s something that I think you guys have avoided pretty well with this record. Was there a concerted effort to step away from any formula? It seems rarely is a turnaround simply a turnaround, there are lots of vocal tricks to add some character, and the guitar “solo” moments are just as energetic as Jay’s freak-out moments on stage amount to.

JAY: We have no formula. However it should be said that two out of three members of the band operate on the metric system. There are a lot of aspects of the songs that we will not try live but I think it does capture the character of the band well.

JORDAN: We did quite a lot of experimenting production-wise for this record, but that didn’t spawn out of an effort to step away from any formula. Making a record should first and foremost be fun…. and we had a lot of fun making this record. Going into the studio we had no idea that we would be adding so many layers to these tracks but after listening back to the basic tracks, we realized there was a serious lack of micro korg…. and the possibilities soon became endless.

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Israel Nebeker of Blind Pilot at Sasquatch ::: Photo by Josh Lovseth

[Blind Pilot is opening for The Decemberists and Andrew Bird at Redmond's Marymoor Park on Friday July 17th. Tickets are $35. ]

Just a year ago Portland-based Blind Pilot was releasing their critically acclaimed LP 3 Rounds and A Sound and biking their way down the coast, their instruments fastened to the back of their two-wheelers, playing tiny local stages or busking when there were none available. This spring and summer has found the band in a new role: opening for established bands on some of the worlds biggest stages.

In March at SXSW they were included in an NPR live showcase at Stubb’s, broadcast alongside the Avett Brothers and the Decemberists. In May they were tapped to tour the U.K. opening a stadium tour for The Counting Crows and the Hold Steady. Now they’re currently revving up to spend select dates the rest of this summer splitting their time hitting festivals, supporting Gomez in large rooms or the Decemberists in amphitheaters.

Needless to say I had a few questions regarding this kind of drastic transition, about how the band enjoyed Europe and whether they felt they’ve been able to succeed in this new setting. Lead Singer Israel Nebeker was frank about the challenges, and completely humble in the face of unexpected success.

Yesterday I caught up with Israel via cell phone as the band was driving through the eastern reaches of Oregon on their way back home from a date in Boise.

SOTS (Josh): Let’s start on your recent trip to the U.K. So the last time you were in London, you were busking on the street, right?

Israel Nebeker: Yeah… that was the last time I was in England. That was quite a while ago.

SOTS: Did you find any time to step away from the tour and do a little busking for old time’s sake?

Israel: We did. Yeah. It was really fun. It definitely was a good break from arenas. Those are really fun too, but it was nice to kind of like feel a bit grounded again, and add some perspective to the whole tour. We particularly had a really great time in Scotland in this really small town, that we were not planning on stopping in. It was just really beautiful. There was like one gas station, one hotel and a pub and an antique store and that was the whole town. And we bartered a hotel room in exchange for playing at their bar. So yeah we had some time to branch out.

SOTS: There were just four of you I understand.

Israel: Right, for the Europe tour. And right now we are doing six.

SOTS: Did you feel a little naked in those big rooms without all of your other instruments with you?

Israel: Yeah. I guess, at first. Eventually we made friends with it. It got to be really fun actually. It’s such a massive sound. You hear yourself better coming off the back wall, and that just seems like miles away instead of right up on stage. It’s such a huge space and it echoes so much. But eventually that got to be kinda fun.

SOTS: Do you think there might be an intimate element that might be lost? I think is part of what I like so much about your music, is that there is some intimacy going on. And maybe the bigger rooms don’t really show that as much.

Israel: Yeah, I think that was part of it at the very beginning, is feeling that loss. We had to approach it a little differently, and just kind of make friends with the space, and just kind of keep it intimate at least for us on stage. I think you’re right though. Once you get to that level, you lose a lot of intimacy, and everything you do feels telegraphed, like your one a play stage, rather than just bringing honest music to people. It’s just hard to get away from on that level.

SOTS: It seemed that you started the band and you were riding around, and you were probably able to look into every single persons eyes that you were playing to.

Israel: Completely.

SOTS: Now it’s a sea of people.

Israel: I miss that a lot. But I’m always really impressed when sometimes certain bands or certain performers are able to make you feel like it is an intimate space, and there is and exchange that is an intimate thing going. With the people make the music and people listening to it. I think it’s totally possible to do on that level, but I think we’re still getting used to it.

SOTS: What sort of element of your music do you think resonates with people. Why do you think you guys have started to get some attention?

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Portrait By Abbey Simmons

[Ed. Note: Shane Tutmarc plays tonight at 8pm, the early slot for tonight's Sunset Tavern edition of Noise for the Needy. Also on the bill is Widower, Jack Wilson and his Wife Stealers and Adam Stephens (of Two Gallants) and his band the Finite Plan.]

Earlier this week we posted the first section of this interview, where we discussed the winding path Shane Tutmarc has taken to get to where he is today. In this second edition of the interview, we cover Shane’s new course adjustment, and it’s result, an LP titled Shouting at a Silent Sky, which was released today on iTunes.

In the last portion of the interview, Shane discussed the reason he let go of his longest running project, Dolour, saying that it no longer represented who he was as a person. With his latest release, Shane has synthesized his own experience, his family’s musical legacy, and the help of some experienced musicians, into a record that completely represents Shane Tutmarc, personally and musically.

He says, “I feel like the goal of songs should be to be able to connect with people and to relate with humanity. There is a place for every type of song, but I feel like, at least with me, a goal is to always be true to yourself. And if you’re true to yourself than people can relate.” And Shane has succeeded, because we most definitely relate.
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SOTS: Do you consider yourself a songwriter or a story-teller?

Shane: I think the song part of it is as important to me. Though, I’m totally in love getting around writing devices and structures. And I’ve definitely, through the Dolour era and the Mercies, tried a million different approaches. To me the joy really is finding a new way to get it out. And I know that if it was just strictly story telling, it wouldn’t be as important to me as the craft part of it.

I think phrasing is a big thing. Like Bob Dylan. Just the way he phrases things makes me aware that when you’re telling a story, there’s a million different ways you can tell it, and so much of it from Sinatra on down comes down to how they place those words. I think with Dolour it was a lot like “Here’s a melody written out that I am singing.” Whereas from the Mercies on it’s been “How do I want to say this” as opposed to “What are the notes that I’m singing?”

Which to a lot of my pop songwriter friends that I knew through the Dolour phase have no idea why I’m doing what I’m doing now and hate it, and think I’m doing the wrong thing.

SOTS: What do they think you should be doing?

Shane: I guess following their dream of what I should be doing or something.

SOTS: Is that part of what’s on this album? The sense that people think you should be doing something else? But you don’t.

Shane:

So definitely through the Mercies it was kinda of a battle. You want to make a record that your friends are going to like, but I don’t think I was pleasing too many of my friends.

It was interesting how it kind of, it polarized. I don’t think I took to many Dolour fans with me with the Mercies stuff.

SOTS: You’ve grown and you’ve aged.

Shane: I definitely feel like I don’t know that person that wrote the Dolour Albums. Thomas Mertin later said that about his first book (his autobiography).

SOTS: Are you embarrassed by some of it?

Shane: I did the best I could. But I feel like I would constantly get myself to the edge of the cliff. An escape. I would be in a dark mood, and maybe write a song to get me out of that dark mood. Running from reality in a lot of ways. Pop music to a certain extent says “Everything is all right.” Folk traditions, or blues, or even rock generally speaking says “Everything is not alright.” And I think it was that turn that I took with trying to stay in those moments that might be painful but might also bring some truth. That’s what kind of led to this collection of songs.

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Kerry Zettel of See Me River ::: Portrait by Josh Lovseth

[This Friday, June 12, See Me River plays the Crocodile as a part of Noise for the Needy, with Grand Archives and A Curious Mystery.]

Noon. By the roller coaster. As I sat in a sunny cluster of picnic tables amidst the Fun Forest at Seattle Center, Seagulls circled and screeched overhead while curious tourists gawked before entering our town’s shiny tome to American music (and science fiction) the Experience Music Project.

This was where I was to meet up with See Me River front-man Kerry Zettel to talk a little about where his hardworking band was at right now. I had a few questions swirling in my mind that had been unanswered surrounding the transition of his focus to See Me River and the resulting dissolution of Das Llamas, a provocative rock band that I thought just wasn’t getting enough deserved attention. But I also had questions about what seemed a change in his songwriting attitude for his new band as well.

As our half-an-hour in the sun came to a close, and my questions were drying up Zettel remarked, “I think to not put as much effort into the lyrics as you do the music is to insult the listener.” It was an encompassing and revealing comment about just how serious Zettel takes being a musician.

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SOTS (Josh): I was starting off listening to your latest [The Great Unwashed EP], and the first thing that came across as interesting was “The Great Unwashed.” Was that directly inspired by the whole Obama experience that we’ve been having?

Kerry Zettel (KZ): Well… yeah?

SOTS: Was it written before or after he was elected?

KZ: It was written before. I guess what was going on around me, and my environment probably inadvertently affected the lyrics of that song. It’s just one of those things that you can get done if you put your head to it.

SOTS: It seemed very much a song of that moment. You’d said you recorded it in December… Maybe I was drawing too much of a direct line to it.

KZ: That’s the great thing, how everything is open for interpretation. Even stuff that is specifically about stuff people have misread, or whatever.

SOTS: I’m sort of interested to see your take on this, because it seemed like when you were doing that last Das Llamas record, it was a little more “disaffected with my fellow man.” This is a flip-flop of that.

KZ: Right. Absolutely. I definitely went from being massively frustrated with humanity in general, to just being stoked that people wised up. I would absolutely say that. That whole EP is about change, whether it be negative or positive, I just felt like it was a good time for that to come out mainly because there was a lot of change going on at that time.

SOTS: Especially since you played on that word ‘change’ in “The Great Unwashed” in that first section. I don’t know if you had like a real direct interaction with somebody who was homeless or something like that…

KZ: Every day. To go to work or just walk down the street, is always a weird interaction. I understand everyone faces their own personal battles, maybe you’re bipolar and unable to whatever… but there’s different things you can do to take control of your own life, whether it be through the resources provided to you, creating your own. So I just think human life is such a precious thing to waste it on not doing anything with your own.

SOTS: Does that feed into your own work ethic at all? See Me River is playing shows constantly…

KZ: Oh absolutely. Right. It’s just a matter of getting it done. I’m here, I may as well do something.

SOTS: One thing I also noticed as a difference between this new record and the older records, maybe because this is the first studio recording See Me River, was that… I think the old records it felt much more organic. And I was trying to figure out why that was. I think maybe you didn’t use a metronome much on the first couple records and this time you used a metronome.

KZ: Absolutely. Chris Common, the guy who recorded it is really anal about timing and pitch. Which is cool, that’s the reason why we went with him. Because we don’t have the best timing. Not to mention, for Time Machine, the drums were done as an afterthought, where as regular recording you do the drums first. Until Time Machine was recorded, we didn’t really have a lot of drums on stuff. And then Kellie got a lot more active as a drummer for the Great Unwashed.

We actually have an album that we’re working on right now, that we’re hoping to record in September. We’re doing pre-production on it in August in Montana. It’s written.

SOTS: Doing it with the same people?

KZ: Oh yeah. We’re going to go with Chris again. We already have some studio time booked to do some stuff. Cause the plan record eight to ten new songs, and then take maybe three songs off of the EP.
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