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Built
to Last I caught up with Doug Martsch recently by phone from his home in Boise where he was getting in promo-mode for Built to Spill's upcoming tour in support of their new album, You in Reverse. Here are excerpts from our phoner.
You had a detached retina in February. Was that a major setback? Yeah, we cancelled our April trip. It just healed up like a week ago. It was pretty intense and it still is. I had to keep my head at a 90-degree angle 24 hours a day. I had three weeks of that and then I had a patch for three weeks. It's healed now but unfortunately there's some scarring on my retina and one of the scars is right in the center of my vision so everything's distorted for that eye. I feel lucky that I can even see at this point. The new album is your first one in five years. Did you approach this album differently? They're all approached in their own way. We had Jim Roth who had played guitar for us live and we wanted to integrate him. We spent a lot of time just jamming at my house, recording the jams, just trying to figure what kind of music we were even going to make. When we were recording it and mixing it, it was real collaborative between the band and Steve Lobdell, the producer. I guess that's the main difference between it and other records, is that it was the most collaborative. I spent less time working on it by myself than I usually do. Brett Netson played on it as well. He kind of joined the band as we were in the middle of recording. He went out with us and decided he would join the band. In recent pictures I've seen of you you're sporting a serious patch of facial hair. Still got it? That's gone now. That got shaved, then I grew it back even longer. When my retina was detached it was super long. I was already feeling claustrophobic with my patch on and the beard made me feel even more claustrophobic so I shaved it again. When we last spoke in 2002, when Now You Know came out, you were exploring the many textures of blues guitar and you joked that the next thing for you would probably be reggae guitar. Have you realized a reggae phase? When we were jamming, writing songs for this record, we played a lot of reggae because everyone likes it. Scotty's a really good reggae drummer. One of the reggae-type things we jammed on we turned into a song and we played it on our last tour. It's called "They Got Away." We'll probably be playing it on this tour. We're going to record it for our next record. You have projects on the horizon? Yeah, we do. I'm done with [You in Reverse]. I haven't thought about it or listened to it in months. On this tour we're going to be playing in Portland, and then we'll have a day off and we're going to mix one song that we didn't finish for this album and that will be the start of our next record. We thought it would be fun to try recording in short sessions instead of this project where we worked on it for so long in one studio. We thought it would be interesting to focus on a handful of songs in a handful of days when we're fresh off tour, and do it at different studios, too. You said you hadn't listened to You in Reverse in months. Is that intentional, to keep the music fresh for a tour? I've listened to it a lot. There were times when I got really bummed out and didn't know what to think about it and was really disappointed, and then when we got it sequenced and edited and mastered I listened to it a bunch and started to really like it. I kind of just put it away on a good note. Since I hurt my eye I haven't listened to it. I was afraid it might sound bad to me again and it would really bum me out. This may be the most important question of all. What's your favorite pizza topping? Mushrooms. Actually, the most important topping to me is light cheese. Too much cheese ruins a pizza for me.
Built To Spill, Brett Netson, The Prids. 8 pm, Monday, 6/19. WOW Hall, $16 adv./ $18 dos.
Destination:
Jazz Station The operators of Eugene's Jazz Station took a big chance a year ago when they opened up the club, but so far it's proven to be all they had hoped for. John Crider, one of the club's founders and a frequent performer, says he doesn't know of any other jazz club that's run in the same manner as the Jazz Station, and that's partly the reason for its success. "Overall, the past year has been amazing," Crider said. "I started it with two friends last July, thinking that it would probably last a couple months, someplace to put on jazz during the summertime. To my surprise, it's gotten a lot of support from other people and it's survived a year, doing extremely well for a nonprofit." Crider's vision for the club was of a collectively operated place that was open to the community through modest monthly memberships. At varying levels of membership, musicians have access to the club to practice, see shows put on by other local musicians and schedule their own gigs. The funds go to pay rent and utilities, not to line an owner's pocket. For a nonprofit organization with no advertising budget, the hardest part, according to Crider, has been getting the word out about the place in general. It's the vibe of the Jazz Station that's helped it grow through word of mouth. The members put on the shows, and because there's no alcohol or food, it's a true listening room. Seeing a show there is a very different experience than what people normally get. "It's not a bar. It's not a restaurant. It's actually a place where you go and listen to music," Crider said. But it's not just local musicians who support the Jazz Station — non-musicians have fallen in love with it too. "The audience, when they find us, feels like they've found a special place and they come back," he said. Jaki Su Ellis, a local woman with her own "hard-driving, danceable, blues and rock and roll" band who regularly practices and performs at the Jazz Station, said there's no doubt in her mind that the club has been a boon to Eugene's jazz community. "I don't think it has made a difference, I know that it has," Ellis said. Shows start earlier in the night, making them more accessible to people who have day jobs. Because the club is located on a busy downtown street, it sees a lot of walk-in traffic. Thanks to the no-alcohol policy, the venue has no age restrictions, and Sunday afternoons are reserved for jam sessions open to all ages, especially young, budding musicians. "And the other thing is," continued Ellis, "people can sense what I call hustle, sales hustle. That the club is a different place to be because you can come in there and, of course, you have to pay for your cover but no one's hustling drinks, no one's hustling food. It's all about the music." That cover charge is a modest $5 and gets you a night of music from local musicians who cover the vast ground between blues and jazz. Ellis, who has sung behind Natalie Cole, believes the supportive environment and non-competitive atmosphere allows everyone's musical talent to blossom. "People who, let's say, may not be as highly skilled as other musicians still get a chance to perform. They get that learning experience without having to be in show business for 20 years, and it's a very safe environment. You make a mistake and no one's going to criticize you," she said. Crider said the sense of community in Eugene's jazz scene wasn't missing before the Jazz Station opened; it just wasn't nurtured. "There was a definite need for just having free space," he said. "And non-competitive space in a couple senses of the word, not competing against other musicians, but also when you're putting on a show, you're not competing against a restaurant or bar, businesses which have other purposes, really." Ellis also feels it's "magical" that kids hang out along that stretch, and she said she sometimes invites the street kids in, giving them peanuts and a drink if they seem hungry. "I grew up in Greenwich Village, and I don't think it's wrong for kids to hang out in the street," she said. "I think it's wrong for people to break things and curse and be disruptive, but there's a lot of music that goes on on that street. We have our doors open." Singer Showcase. 7:30 pm, Saturday, 6/17. The Jazz Station, $5. 68 West Broadway.
The Surreal Life
In a world saturated with slick, overproduced albums by bands who willingly sacrifice personality for commercial success, it is refreshing to know that acts like Ramon and Jessica are making a go of it and finding an audience. Based in San Francisco, this duo offers unabashedly original songs with appealingly raw, unselfconscious execution. Their music can be slow and repetitive (think Philip Glass played on a toy piano), and their lyrics sound like they were blurted out when waking up from a dream. But bands like this don't hook audiences with toe-tapping rock 'n' roll appeal; they do it with the power to provide that rare feeling that comes over you when you experience something truly unique. Having said they are unique, it is painful to try to compare Ramon and Jessica to anyone else in an effort to locale them within the music scene. They themselves have chosen Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell and They Might Be Giants as acts to whom they'd like to be compared. These are baffling choices to me. The closest thing I can come up with is your savant-like college housemate who could get up with his guitar and improvise crazy songs that stopped people in their tracks. He made you want him to get famous because he was so obviously a genius, but really he probably still lives with his parents. Except there are TWO people involved here, which makes the coordinated quirkiness even more remarkable. I don't think Ramon and Jessica are savants, but I do think they are musical souls who are lucky to have found each other. Ramon and Jessica play 8 p.m. Sunday, June 18 at Cozmic Pizza. — Adrienne van der Valk
Unsung No More Slaid Cleaves has a knack for writing simple, unpretentious story songs about simple, unpretentious people — you know, the kind of people best described by the wonderfully colorful term "folk."
He writes about folks trying to live life the best they can, just simple, uncomplicated ordinary lives, as if such a life is possible. It's not an easy thing to accomplish. Nor is it easy to write songs about "folk." A too earnest songwriter runs the risk of turning "folk" into icons of stoic perseverance, which in and of itself contains a level of built-in condescension. The other route, taken by the worst of "new country," is to make the sometimes baffling ignorance of "folk" into some kind of heroic virtue. Yee-haw. Cleaves' songs avoid the former and steer well-clear of the latter. His people are just folk, and his stories about them don't try to go any farther than their storylines warrant. He lets his words, sung with his pleasant, no-frills delivery, speak for themselves. For his latest CD, Unsung, Cleaves returned to his roots on the open mic circuit and recorded an album from songwriters who have impressed him over the years. As the title implies, many of the songs on Unsung are not well known. Many have yet to see commercial release. They are songs Cleaves first heard at late-night song swaps, open mic nights and on self-released CDs and tapes. "Even if it was a great song, it didn't always click with my style," Cleaves said. "I was also looking for songs that put a catch in my throat or a tear in my eye. If a song moves me in that way, it usually means I can do a good job singing it." Slaid Cleaves plays 9 pm Thursday, June 22 at Sam Bond's Garage. $12. — John Ginn
Sicker Than Your Worst Hangover Death metal is spreading like a virus through the woodworks of Eugene. It permeates every single bar and theater with the raging, thrashing and ripping-your-ears-off volume the genre is known for. Since 2003, Domesticide has been waiting for the chance to attack with their grindcore-influenced sound. With two demos under their belt and the start of production on their 11-track debut full-length album next month, they'll be joining those already established in town. "We're a little bit of Napalm Death, Slayer, Brutal Truth and more," says vocalist and guitarist Terry Geil. "We're not quite as frenzied as those guys, but we definitely like to keep a little grind in there. It's a lot more complex in terms of the songs, and since we've grown as a band so much the past three years, we're writing a lot better music." The band began as a side project between Geil, who was part of Northwest death giants Victims of Eternal Decay, and drummer Pat Wombacher, who was Geil's bandmate in Sullen at the time. They teamed up with bassist Kevin Warren from Piker and formed a grind band that later became the brutal quartet (after adding guitarist Ryan Rook). Their sound is fast and features some face-melting guitar riffs with bass-heavy drums typical of most death metal music. The vocals are a mixture of a growl and a yell, creating a dirty, middle-of-the-road noise that sounds plain nasty (in a good way) at times, especially when the band gets into their darker lyrical themes of religion, war and politics. With all this evil, gritty sound, the band is a perfect complement to Eugene's Sickfest II, playing this year at the WOW Hall with Eugene's finest death metal bands Necryptic, In the Name of God and Vexium. Dig in for the long haul because you'll be thoroughly dominated when these guys are through. Sickfest II, featuring Necryptic, In The Name of God, Domesticide and Vexium, 9 pm Thursday, June 22. $7. — Dan Hoyt
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