Stay, Unwind, Relax, and most of all Enjoy!
Interviewed by Quintin Cushner
This is an interview I did with David Berman, via telephone. In my
infinite wisdom I neglected to write down any questions beforehand.
This resulted in me sounding suspiciously like Matt Pinfield. But
David was more than patient with answering my questions about his
excellent new album ("The Natural Bridge", Melody Maker's #18), his
life and his tastes.
So, where did you record the album?
It was recorded in Hartford, Connecticut, at a Studio called Studio 45.
It's in an old nineteenth century Colt gun factory. It's a giant building
that's four blocks long and three blocks wide. The studio's in one
little part of it.
Wasn't it originally going to be recorded at Easley Studio with the
guys who you recorded the last album with?
Yeah, but that didn't go right. It took a few more months, and I got
some other people. And we wrote some new songs.
I remember seeing Rian Murphy (who played on the new album) on a
Palace album once.
He's played on almost every Drag City release. He's worked with the Royal Trux
, Smog, Plush, Edith Frost, and almost everyone on the label. He plays
drums for everyone. He produced the smog album Wild Love, and the new
Edith Frost record. He's just really smart about things like that, and
he's a really good person to have around. He's very funny and very entertaining.
Didn't two guys from New Radiant Storm King play on the record?
Yeah, Matt and Peyton. I've known them for a long time, they were younger,
and I knew they liked the music. And they were willing to play on the
record without letting any New Radiant Storm King leak into the music, and
I knew they were good enough to prevent that. I mean, if I played on
someone elses record, I couldn't help but sound that way, because I'm not
that versatile. They know how to play in many different styles.
Did the amount of experimentation on the first album reflect who you
were playing with at the time?
On Starlight Walker, things were written in the studio more and
it was a much looser atmosphere, but this time everything was in place
beforehand. This album is a lot more straight-forward in a sense. I mean,
it's pretty middle of the road as far as instrumentation goes. It's not
very experimental at all, but that's sort of what I wanted.
Did you set out to make kind of a country album?
No, that's just sort of what I could play. I don't align myself with that at all.
Do you buy into that whole Wilco/Sun Volt sound?
Not at all. I think it's sort of empty in a way. It can be good. I think Wilco
can be good, but for the most part, those bands are sort of like a shtick.
But you don't feel the same way about Palace?
I can see that. But in Palace that I like there's modern reference that
makes it not like an exercise in parody, or recreating a sound so many bands do.
I mean, there's a band for every single period in musical history now,
and their sole purpose seems to be stimulating someone else's sound. I
guess it could be fun or something, but I really don't see what the
purpose of that is.
Your music seems to be routed in the south. I mean, someone from
New York City would not have made that last album.
That's true, but I don't think it's like country music, because country
doesnt talk about robots or computers which I have no problem referencing.
I don't try to pretend to live a life I don't. I don't write about living
on a farm, because I don't, or alcoholism, because I'm not an alcoholic.
Do you view yourself as a Southern musician?
Not really. I think that's just a state of mind. I don't believe that what people
call the south exists. It's a very self concious thing. Most southerners
don't realize that they are one.
But if you listen to stuff like early REM records, there's a real sort
of unique southern charm.
Well, that's a nice thing. But Michael Stipe was really subconcious of mythology building.
I mean, that's great and I loved it, but I'm also skeptical of using
regional characteristics to inject automatic romance into your music.
And if I do, it's a weakness. I'd rather rely on real things and real life
, instead of mental concepts that are passed down and only exist as mental concepts.
You still have a historical appreciation, though. I mean, your publishing
company's called Civil Jar.
I love history. But you can't let that take over. You have to hit a balance.
That fascination was a lot stronger in me when I was young.
Have you been doing any non musical writing, like a novel or something?
No. I do write, but it's usually just in my notebook.
So you never view writing as a vocation?
No. It's really hard to make it one, and I could never write a novel.
I don't have that kind of attention span.
Do you view it the way some people view golf, as a hobby?
It's more like breathing or eating. I try to write every day, to get
things down because I have a horrible memory and if I don't write them down
they're gone.
Did you write a lot of songs for the new album?
No, I'm more of the type of person who works on one song
for a long time. I don't write that many songs, maybe
fifteen or twenty in a year. In the early stages I know whether
I'm going to ditch it or not.
Is Drag City promoting this album as heavily as the last Palace
album? Do you have an active part in the promotion?
They do their thing. They send out x amount of CD's, and sit
back and hope to get some bites. They don't do any advertising, which
is fine by me.
Are you planning on touring?
I don't really have time. It takes so much away from what I like to do
everyday, which is just to write.
You never had any Beatles fantasies?
I did before I started recording. But then I saw that it takes a lot out
of me to write a song. I don't really... the idea of playing the songs over
and over again doesn't really appeal to me, because I like to keep liking
them. I probably haven't listened to Starlight Walker in two years.
I can hear them in my head, if something calls it up. I like that better.
So you're ruling out playing live?
Yeah, at least until the next album. It seems like you're supposed to do it.
I mean almost no one doesn't. Maybe I like being contrary, being ornery.
Are you working a day job?
Not right now. I should be looking for one.
You're living in Virginia now. I read, in an interview, that you
were considering moving to Texas.
Yeah, it's where I used to live. I wouldn't live in Dallas again.
There's nothing there for me anymore. Austin is a nice place to live
but it seems so nice that everyone wants to live there.
What are you listenning to right now?
I bought this album by the Buckinghams called Time and Changes.
They're a sixties chicago band. And I've been listenning to this Fading Out
CD on Drag City. It's my friend's hardcore band. He recorded it ten
years ago.
The guy I talked to at Drag City said you were asked to join Fugazi.
What's the story?
He's crazy. He called to tell me about the interview, and my friend Gene said
it was Guy (from Fugazi) asking me to join. He said we were going to call it
"Younguyzee" or "Jewguzi" or something.
What's the future of Drag City?
I don't know what the future of Drag City is. There was talk about moving
the label to Orlando, Florida, a couple of years ago, but that sort of fell
through. I see Drag City having a lot to do with Hollywood in the next
ten years. Dan's always reading biographies of music executives.
There's a real thin line of irony at Drag City, instead of the
sort of farcical attitude a label like Matador has.
The irony of Drag City is much more artful or something. It never borders on
fake and it's always entertaining and reaching for another level. I think that
can be confusing or alienating to some people, because they don't understand.
The label catalogue is really good. I can't think of any other labels who
have been as consistently good.
Do you buy into the idea that labels can represent something or do you
think they're sort of a necessary evil?
What do you think?
Well, I think it's kind of fun to read through the Drag City or Matador catalogues,
and imagine being Gerard Codloy or something. But a lot of people I know think of
labels as something to use.
Labels like Drag City and Touch And Go treat their artists so nice that they surprise
the bands constantly with their ideas. They always support whatever you do. They pick
people who they'll never have to doubt or second guess.
Do you have a contract or do you just tell them when you have an album to put out?
Exactly. You could tell them that you wanted to make only a hundred copies, or that
you never wanted to make a record again, and they might be upset, but they would always
respect your wishes.
I read that you went to New York City after graduation. Did you have any goals there?
I wanted to get my real education that you don't get in school. You learn a lot in that city, that's
for sure. You learn how to take care of yourself. I didn't know what I wanted. I wanted to have fun.
I had some sort of formless ambitions, and hope that something would come out of it. I mean, you
have to believe in yourself to move up there and work some shitty job. You have to have a feeling that
something's going to happen. It does seem like when someone takes a risk and moves there, something
good always happens. Their dreams come true.
You don't seem to have any neurosis in interviews. Is that some kind of facade?
I guess so. It's just nor becoming or appropriate to talk about your problems.
It doesn't stop a lot of your more succesful peers, like Billy Corgan or someone, from
talking to Tabitha Soren about his bandmate's heroin problem. Do you think less of someone
like that?
I'm of two minds, because I don't respect people who lie in interviews either. I don't think you
should offer it up, but you should be pretty honest about the truth of your life. If your
putting out records at that level, you should at least express those things in the context of
the songs, and maybe explain why you made such a depressing record or something. You should at
least acknowledge it. It's sort of sick when people use it for therapy. That's when you know that
people have no division between their private and public lives.
Is your moderate celebrity unsettling at all?
It's really hard to wrap your mind around something like that. If you put out a couple of records
it's affecting so many peoples lives, so many more lives than your real life affects. It's like an
amputation; it's seperate, but it's like a photograph in that it leaves so many imprints behind.
It's not as disturbing as I thought it would be. I like the idea that people are hearing what I
have to say or else I would just do it for myself.
Do you have any regrets about working with the Pavement members your first time out?
I mean you were referred to as 'Professor David Berman' in the Drag City catalogue.
I hate that. I was so mad about that. It was irritating to me. But music writers need an easy
context or angle.
What do your parents think of all this? I mean, your sort of in limbo between famous and
not famous.
I don't think they understand it. I think it's sort of a new phenomena. Fifty years ago,
before the proliferation of magazines, it would be hard to have ten thousand people from
around the world know who you are. The specialization of music or books or scientists with a kind of
low wattage fame level. My parents are like, 'how can people know who you are in like Europe, but your not
making a great living or something'. That doesn't click for them because when they were growing up it
wasn't really possible.
Do you think that's punk's greatest contribution, the fact that you don't have to be
Led Zeppelin or something to be a musician?
It's pretty amazing.
Did you listen to punk rock when you were a teenager?
Yeah some. A lot of hardcore turned me off though. I like the stuff that had more of a human
face. I didn't like british punk rock at all. It was really the post hard core that I fell in love
with, like the Meat Puppets.
Do you want your audience to feel empathy for you, or do you want them to be sort of nodding and
winking with you?
I'm not seeking empathy for me. If I listen to Sebadoh or something I get the feeling that's what's going on,
and it seems like sort of a con to me. I do want to stir up feelings in people, whether it's just through
identification with them, but I definately want the focus to fall on the listener, not on me.
I do joke around, though. That's my way of levitating any kind of seriousness that's going on. It's a
knee jerk habit that I have. I don't feel comfortable being completely introspective, or serious and personal
, and I certainly don't feel comfortable just being ironic. The only way I can balance this is to just
go back and forth, and hope that they don't cancel each other out. And hope that they illuminate
each other.
You're someone who doesn't write very literal songs. Do you
feel like that gets in the way of the message?
I think I feel uncomfortable laying out a literal, linear message. I
like to write things in more of a scattershot way, with the message
being intuitive. I don't think I throw out a complete web of words
which have no meaning. I think everything has a meaning on a sentence level.
Not all of them strung out on a page together, but individually each
sentence does have meaning, in that when they're all cobbled together, the meaning
may be intuitive or the feelings the only thing that's transmitted.
It's like contradictions along the way. Everyone's full of contradictions;
we do it everyday. The only thing that makes that ok with me is that
there's a consistency there, in that there's one eye and one mouth. Even
if it's one person contradicting himself every other line, there's
continuity in the idea.
A lot of your lyrics are almost like bumper sticker ideas, in
that they're so idealised.
I just think that way and I don't follow through on ideas. I let them lie.
I usually ruin ideas when I work them through, and I think that's why I could
never write a novel and why I don't write story songs with a beginning,
middle, and end. Sometimes, I just like to rest on a single statement
and let it happen from there, like throwing seeds out or something.
Both albums have instrumentals. Why does the last album have an instrumental
in the precise middle of it.
The instrumentals in Starlite Walker were there before I knew what
the reason for them was. This time, I knew what the reason for it was,
which was to serve as a kind of oasis, like a break or rest from the
barrage of words.
Are the Silver Jews just you and whoever works out at the moment?
I think that the Silver Jews will always be either me, or me, Steve, Bob, and
Steve. But I don't even know if I'll make another record.
Are you able to quantify your albums? I think this one is much more coherent.
Musicians always say their last one is their best one, and I think they
believe it, and it's like, "I've listened to the last album and you have
to know it's better.". I think this is a much more consistent record,
but in the last album, there were some moments of complete filler that
weren't that hot, so when a good song would come on, it would gain from
what it was sitting next to. It's not something to seek because then you
just have these filler songs, but it's an effect that's nice.
It's weird having an artist talk about filler as a good thing.
Maybe I'm just rationalizing it. But that record was so real that...
if you're gonna be real, then you can't be consistent. The consistency of
a record like this one reveals all the work that went into it, and the choreograph.
But there are songs on Starlite Walker that are clearly drafts, and
I like the documentary feel to them.
Do you plan on releasing a single?
No, because when I used to really like a band, I would buy the single
and play the single to death. Then, when the record came out, I couldn't
listen to it the whole way through, because the single would be more warn in.
I'd end up taping the record without the single.
Aren't you interested in taking this record to the next level?
I feel like I'm doing my part by releasing the album. I don't want to
put it in peoples faces, I guess.
Do you feel like you and other Drag City bands, like Smog, would
be a lot more successful by reaching out to sort of a VH1-type audience?
I think there will always be something about my music that will be
off-putting to someone. There's a certain lack of musicianship going on
that will always hold it back, which is fine. I'm not trying to be
anything else than what I am.
When did you start playing guitar?
When I was twenty or twenty one, a friend of mine sold me a guitar for
fifteen dollars. I've been playing guitar for nine years, and people who have
played guitar for six months are better. I'd like to be better, but I've
always been a slow learner.
You seem to buy into things associated with conservative culture, like horse racing.
I've always been uncomfortable with whatever is considered to be
radical culture. I'm much more comfortable at a college football game
than at the Cooler in New York City. I'm more into reimagining everyday life,
and I like to be around it so that I can work on it. You won't find more
bad art anywhere than the Lower East Side of New York City or San Francisco
because there's no challenge, since everyone around you is affirming your nose ring.
It doesn't strike me as being the frontier. The frontiers are in the
suburbs, or at a horse track, as long as you have the mind to reimagine things.
But a lot of people enjoy the fantasy of imagining themselves the
Warhols factory or whatever.
But that all took place at a certain time. If I lived in the fifties and
was the way I am now, I would have been hanging out with Communists and
sculptors and stuff. But in the time that we live now... I mean, my parents
use the same kind of humour that my fringe friends use.
Do you take pride in the fact that you and your friends are everyday people
who avoid that kind of false weirdness?
Yeah. I don't feel that the Nine Inch Nails or something works on the frontier.
When the Butthole Hole Surfers were in their prime, up to "Hairway to Steven",
it was beautiful, and they did it so well and changed so many lives, including
my own. But that's over. What's weird to me is shifting things an inch,
instead of going for the extreme. There's a french word, decollage, which means
this tiny change in perspective that makes everything seem so strange.
And that means reworking common everyday things and nudging them a little bit.
I don't think that writing about UFO's is interesting. The weirdness is
so built in, and it's not even weird anymore because it's so dead in the
water.
You never had a sort of punk rock, screw the world, attitude?
Yeah, I sure did. Growing up in the eighties, it was like a different world.
If you went and saw Black Flag or the Meat Puppets in1983, that was a
real underground world. People who went and saw those bands- there were
like a hundred in every city- were expressing their anger at the world
through the way they dressed, and they were standing out and really taking some
shit for it. Now it's so accepted and ther's nothing to rebel against.
I don't understand anymore, when I see kids on the street all fucked up
in the way they look, and stuff. What's their target anymore?
They must be the most popular kids at school. I mean, you'd get your ass kicked
to have your hair bleached, not like that was a noble thing, but there was
something serious and hard about choosing that life.
But even before this whole Nirvana thing started, you always seemed
smarter than the average punk.
Well, I liked punk music and with Nirvana, even though I recognised the sound, it
was pretty dumb. If you're really cold- it's hard to be now becqause you're supposed to
worship Kurt Cobain or something- it's just what critics have always liked, like the
stooges, which is like dumb rock n' roll, and you're not supposed to be smart.
You're supposed to be feeling and adolescent, and what cuts the lifespan
of most rock bacds is this adolescence, and once it's gone... it seems
like rock n' roll can be a million different things, and I wouldn't say
it's not allowed to be anything, but I think it can be smart too. And then there's
the problem with bands that were just smart, and that doesn't appeal
to me either. I don't see any problems with smart and having feelings. It seems
like, in art, you have to choose one or the other, and I always felt that
you could be pretty honest and open about your feelings, and still have ideas
at the same time.
Do you feel like you're part of some kind of tradition in rock n' roll?
I don't know who I relate to in a lot of ways, in what I want music to be.
Right now, I don't feel any amaraderie with other bands at all.
Do you ever feel like it's kind of a foolish pursuit, being twenty-nine
years old and in a rock n' roll band? Do you ever wake up and feel like being
anmd accountant or something?
All the time. But I think that's why I think it's important that I not
be a rock n' roll musician, and that I'm not a rock star. I'm just me and
I jst play music. That's why I don't want to play live, because then it
really does become a part of your life. I'm almost denying the fact
that I'm a musician by not playing live. The person you hear on the
records is a musician, but I have a seperate life and I want to keep
that going.
So you don't view music and writing as any kind of vehicle for yourself?
No, because I don't see any end in sight. If the reason for putting out a
record is just to keep a carreer going, well I don't believe in the
career; it doesn't exist for me. The record doesn't even exist until
the songs come around again.
Most musicians would have you believe that music is their life.
Well, it really isn't for me. I mean, I love music, but I've never loved
it less than I do now.
You don't view yourself in any kind of context at all, even as a human being?
I try not to. It happens sometimes, and when I start to feel that way, I get really
uncomfortable. That's why I don't like having a job because then you're that
thing, for a little bit at least.
But even when you don't have a job, then you're a kind of Bohemian.
That's only in someone else's eyes, though. If you start to view yourself
as a musician then you start writing songs as a musician and you start
writing about music. All bands do this. Wallace Stevens was one of the two great living
American poets, and was also an insurance executive and had nothing to
do with the poetry world. He might give a lecture at Harvard every five years,
but otherwise he had almost no contact with other writers. An he was completely
distinct and totally uninfected by what can be a real ghetto.
Who did the artwork for the lateast album?
This guy Mike Flood, who also puts out his own records. He's had
two seven-inches out and they're pretty amazing records. He's a really
optimistic inspiring person. He'll say things like, "I think people are
getting more poetic as time goes by." He just thinks that music can be
so much more than it is and that's really inspiring to me. So many people will
tell you that it's all over and electronic music is the wave of the future, but that's
just lack of imagination if you believe that. People will always need
human interface through music.
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