interviewed by J Kaw
Page 3
J K: Let's go back to those days. When did you and Jeff started doing tape music at home?
W C H: We were in high school. We got a job at the college radio station, K L P I.
J K: Louisiana Tech.
W C H: It was really life-changing. We had access suddenly. In a year, I was doing the Punk/ Hardcore show. Started off with Big Band. There was a library back to '68. "Wow!" We started getting into Free Jazz. There it was!
J K: Around that time, when you were still in high school, you were not just making songs at home, on cassette, but the more experimental stuff as well, teaching yourself how to make musique concrète.
W C H: Yeah, without knowing that.
J K: When did you become aware of that kind of music - Stockhausen, Pierre Henry, and so on?
W C H: Well, it took until after I left Louisiana. I remember trying to find Stockhausen in the mall. There was nothing of course. There was, in that same town, in Monroe, there was a small shop. Bill [Doss, of The Olivia Tremor Control] got John Cage, Indeterminancy, the two C D's, there. That helped change the mind. Music From the Body, Ron Geesin and Roger Waters - Jeff got that somewhere. That's musique concrète. Plus, all the elements that make up what I grew up with - Pink Floyd, Frank Zappa - they used that kind of stuff. I just didn't know the proper term.
J K: Many still think of Elephant 6, and they'll refer to The Beatles, The Beach Boys. But they won't refer to Frank Zappa or Pink Floyd or...
W C H: Faust.
J K: The White Noise, The United States of America... more of a fusion of popular music, songs with...
W C H: ...Sound-crafting, floods of different things.
J K: That was always at the forefront.
W C H: For Black Foliage, for sure.
J K: Even with The Giant Day E P, it's pretty cut-up.
W C H: That one came naturally. On my part, I was saying, "Let's do this jump-cut kind of shit."
J K: Only with Black Foliage then is there more of a willful looking-back to those artists, trying to do something similar.
W C H: And to try to move it on somewhere. That's the thing: in the middle of a perfectly-crafted pop song, to drop it in a bunch of bees, things like that.
J K: Even in the current cultural milieu, with Animal Collective or Atlas Sound, there's still this notion that if a group is popular as a Rock band does other kinds of music, that it's just dilly-dallying.
W C H: Like Radiohead?
J K: They get away with it more because it's seen as a turn toward Electronica. If you give people a good story.... But if you say it's all mixed together all the time, there's no switch to and fro, there's no great story here about rejecting Rock 'n' Roll...
W C H: I personally want both bands I'm involved in, The Olivia Tremor Control and Circulatory System, to be Rock bands - Psychedelic Rock bands even! With trippy effects for your mind. Whatever - sonar effects for your brain dazzles.
J K: For the brain lizards.
W C H: There're just sonar effects for the brain lizards! I ask you: are these Rock bands or not?
J K: They are.
W C H: I think so. I want them to be, and I need to make up for that if they're not. It's not Kiss.
J K: Well, "Detroit Rock City," it's not musique concrète, but it comes close. Is it Cranberry Life Cycle you're going to put out? It's you and Jeff.
W C H: I wish, it might come out.
J K: What about the things with Will Westbrook? There are recordings there you'd like to put out?
W C H: Yeah, totally. We're going to piece it together. It was basically done. 28 tracks. He agreed, just needed a couple of pauses.
J K: What about Wet Host?
W C H: Yeah, he has a finished thing... called The Fixed Document.
J K: Those might come out on Cloud Recordings?
W C H: Homemade style.
J K: C D-R releases.
W C H: That was already done. I knew about The Fixed Document. I think he couldn't find it for a long time. Now that he's gone, we found it. I remember hearing it quite a few times in the background. It's an observation book. I don't know what he wanted to use for the cover, but he has so many photographs. I'll try to use something from the same period.
J K: Were there duo projects with John or Bill similar to those with Jeff and Will?
W C H: I lived with Bill at the time of the Cranberry Life Cycle, at what we called the Hazel Street Wonder Studios and Ice Cream Factory.
J K: That's in Ruston?
W C H: Yes. Bill was either at school or working... so Jeff would came by, then Bill would show up...
J K: So Bill is on the Cranberry Life Cycle recordings as well. The stuff you and Bill did together just flowed into The Synthetic Flying Machine, The Olivia Tremor Control?
W C H: Yeah. Cranberry Life Cycle was just a fun project for us. Jeff and I, from a few years before that, had gotten to the point where you don't even have to say anything. Bill and I really don't either, but a certain communicative thing was happening with Jeff.
J K: You and Jeff had been making music together longer.
W C H: Yeah. We met Bill through Robert Schneider [of The Apples (in Stereo)].
J K: In high school?
W C H: Yeah, my last year in high school. He was in college, he's older.
J K: He and Robert had known each other longer?
W C H: Yeah, he and Robert had been in a band together, Fat Planet. Some originals and some covers. The couple originals, I'm telling you, were great.
J K: They've never been released?
W C H: No, but I'm pushing for it. "Warm Milk and Chocolate" is one.
J K: You and Bill, when you've played together recently, or when you've played with Robert at the Marbles gigs, there's been this revisiting of older material.
W C H: That noboby else even knows.
J K: Similar to how you've used the "Woodpecker" song on this new album. There's the fact that there's this huge library of recordings to draw upon ever seem like a burden to you?
W C H: Yes, that's why I included them when I handed the music over to someone else. It was exciting to see, for one, that I loved the product. And... I know something like "Woodpecker" so well, but what's it going to cut into? Is it going to fade into something?
J K: Does it discourage making new recordings?
W C H: No. I just amass stuff. I'm just adding stuff.
J K: It never ends.
W C H: It's confusing maybe, for my bandmates. "Pick 12 things, or 16 things even."
J K: This relates to the aging issue. You were bogged down by The Olivia Tremor Control breaking up. The band had gotten a lot of attention fairly quickly in 1996, only then to have not as many people like Black Foliage as much - they wanted something more accessible. While dealing with Will Westbrook dying and M S, to have this growing collection of recordings to choose from, it was a lot.
W C H: It became too much for me, to be honest. I was glad for the help. I thought that some of the other recordings that weren't the full band might be better. I couldn't stand up for that. "Hey, I like this one that's just me." That's ass-y!
J K: With Nesey, you did the same kind of thing as with Charlie. Was it more of a finished product at that point?
W C H: No, same deal. "Make something out of this."
J K: You and Charlie decided upon the first half of the record?
W C H: Nesey switched some stuff around on the second part of the first half.
J K: So when he came in, you had a rough sketch of what the first half would be like.
W C H: He had an idea, as it stands now, a story running through it.
J K: A story about you?
W C H: Maybe it's me. You have to ask Nesey. I can't... I don't want to go into it because it may or may not be me. He placed them so that it was a story. A story of a person going through... then on the second side, they're questioning... at the end, "anchor yourself in the sun" - the last thing, "Signal Morning." It's beautiful.
J K: So Nesey put the songs in such a way that...
W C H: It helped tell my story - part of my story, part of our story.
J K: Well, I wanted to look more closely at the lyrics, first album as well as this new one.
W C H: To me, the Olivias into Circulatory, I can see something throughout the whole thing now. It could be reinterpreted, like I said with Zappa. But I love what happened. Nesey should get credit for that.
J K: It's hard for you to separate the Olivia stuff from Circulatory System, much like you can't separate the band recordings from those you did on your own, or older recordings. There's no point to it really.
W C H: But I'm getting back to normal, in my working methods, to where I might want to step in and say, "I like this one better."
J K: What do you think you write about, literally? Lyrically... There's a lot about time. History, nostalgia perhaps.
W C H: It's me questioning, but I believe in it truly, that there are other dimensions. It sounds so silly!
J K: Other temporal dimensions, at the same time as... ?
W C H: As now. Yeah, we could've... not we, we didn't fight World War II. But it could've ended up a different way. You can walk out and get hit by a car, or I can walk out down the road. There's different things that could happen.
J K: It's more like alternate histories, potential histories.
W C H: Kind of.
