Interviews 10 Years Apart: Circumstantial Evidence 96 and yetmorebias 06

SIMON JOYNER: an interview in two parts 2006 (yetmorebias)

We first caught up with Simon Joyner back in the Circumstantial Evidence days and have followed him ever since. We were even lucky enough to release a couple of his songs on some shitty cassettes we gave away with the mag - which have now been put onto the Beautiful Losers compilation for all to hear. Ten years passed and we caught up again to see what's going on... here's part 1 of the 2006 interview...

Where did you go for the 4 yrs between Hotel Lives and Lost With the Lights On?

Was that how long it was? Well, to be honest, the work was done in the same amount of time as usual. I generally record an album every year or year and a half. With Lost with the Lights On I was leaving Truckstop and the record sat in the can for a couple of years while I looked around for a label interested in releasing my records on both formats and making out of print titles available again. I wasn't really in a rush to release the record on a label that couldn't promote it well, so I just did other things and wrote more songs while I found a home for the record.

Who's helping these days band-wise and what's on the horizon for you?

I put an expanded version of my Omaha band the Fallen Men together to rehearse and record the new record. It's called Skeleton Blues and will be out in November on Jagjaguwar. I'd never really worked with a band over such a long period of time before. For most of my records I was performing with people for one week or so, just to make an album and do a few shows before disbanding. I like it that way. But I decided to put a band together, developing the songs over a longer period of time, letting the songs change and grow, before recording. I played these songs with these guys for over a year's worth of local shows before we recorded. Part of it was to see if I could maintain a band or if I really was essentially a solo performer who liked to play with different people all the time. But the other side of it was to let the songs go through a few interpretations before deciding which version to use on the record. It was a new thing for me. I'm usually completely in the moment with these songs, and happy to record them and move along.

I'm really happy with the results. The new record is unlike anything I've recorded before. I have Dave Hawkins on guitar, Alex McManus? on pedal steel and guitar, Mike Tulis on bass, Chris Deden on drums, and Lonnie Methe on organ and vibes. Michael Krassner flew in to produce the record and he ended up playing all the piano. Fred Lonberg-Holm did a string-arrangement for one song. It's a nice little rock and roll band.

Now that the record is done I don't know what the future holds, band-wise. I was just granted a Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts residency and I'm currently working on a series of collaborations with other artists for a double LP project, with each LP side featuring a different collaboration. That will be an artist edition, not released through a label but probably available for order through my website and the distribution end of Jagjaguwar.

I'm going to record the second installment of the singer-songwriter series 5x7" boxset this summer and Jagjaguwar wants to put the songs from both 7" collections on one CD sometime after it goes out of print. So that's a project that will happen some time in the future.

I have too much stuff in the works right now so I'll probably have to stagger it out or risk flooding my little "market".

Is there a reason why the songs have become longer / slower and less folksinger like over the years?

I never was a folksinger. I'm post-Dylan, always have been. Early in my career I was limited to a guitar and vocal approach but even so, the songs were coming from a post American folk revival tradition, as much damaged by the Minutemen as by Leadbelly. Long and slow songs are very much in the folk tradition anyway, so maybe I'm becoming more folky, not less. Much of my kid furious routine was nerves early on. A lot of the songs on Room Temperature, for example, were heavily influenced by early Loudon Wainwright III, an excitable singer-songwriter in the post Dylan mold himself. I still write shorter, faster songs too. The songs are however long they need to be. People's attention spans keep getting shorter and shorter. What do they do with all the extra time they're saving with their impatience? They consume some other art or entertainment in a half-assed way, in most cases. They can't take a walk without making a call. They can't drive a car without checking their bank balance. All this time being saved but for what? If you listen to Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands and you say, "damn, that's a long song", than there is something wrong with you. That should be the last thing that comes to mind. It's like going to a museum and saying, "that painting is so large." It's really beside the point, isn't it? Other people's limitations are not interesting to me. Now if someone tells me I could say the same thing in fewer verses, more effectively, than I'll listen. I can hear that argument.

Is there a sound you are chasing?

Yes, and it changes. With different records I'm chasing different sounds. You never catch it anyway. Chase is a perfect description, it's set up to fail. It's an unconscious thing, but intentional. Deprivation is the mother of all those interesting stories, paintings, songs, etc.... That's why it's much more interesting to hear a band fail to sound like the Beach Boys, but try, than it is to hear these bands that succeed in sounding like the Beach Boys. It's the unattainable that will force people to create something new.

Have you worked hard at having a voice/sound that conveys Authority (a la Leonard Cohen); that needs only a few words to draw the listener in? You seemed to start out with a sort of Greenwich village words-tumble-out-fast approach...

I haven't worked at making my voice a certain way but different songs have required different qualities from my voice at different times, depending on the subject matter, I guess. I sing em like I hear em. Not trying to be Authoritarian. Simon Joyner wants to be your lover, he doesn't wanna to be your boss.

Part 2: September 2006

How autobiographical DO the songs get (e.g. references in songs to Chris and Alex in Athens etc). Are the names kept in deliberately?

I was on tour recently and stayed with this wonderful couple who took me to their favorite local bar. It was a delirious night, we played pool, drank far too much and had a great time, although we almost got in a bar fight with some people who wandered in sober and much too serious. Anyway, at some point in the evening the woman turned to me and said she was surprised I was capable of any levity at all after all the horrible things that had happened to me in my songs. She expected to be hosting a haunted brooding wreck of a man. It was pretty funny. Truth is, I haven't had an inordinate amount of pain in my life. Probably as much as any other regular person who tries to get the things he wants and does what he feels and keeps at it. It's just that when I write about people, what's interesting to me is the struggles they go through and how they come out of it. Sometimes good, sometimes not so good. Right? That's life. Moments of opportunity.

Different people handle important moments differently. I write about them all, not just one kind of man or one kind of woman. I try and write about the other moments too, the levity and the "unbridled" joy, but it doesn't usually make much of a song, sort of "our house is a very very fine house" type of stuff. A hit song, sure, but a piece of crap too. But I can work those moments into a song that has more meat to it too and it helps give the stories more life. Anyway, what people are most affected by is the darker difficult business so that's what they tend to remember and what they in turn associate with me. If that's the case, and if you make the mistake of thinking all the first person narrators in my songs are stand-ins for myself, you're going to expect a much different person than me. In a way, that's good I guess. I mean, like Dylan says, I'm glad I'm not me, right? But those Frenchy philosophers also know that you are who people think you are too, whether you like it or not. I'm not so scary on the surface but sure I'm a brooding wreck in there somewhere and I guess that comes out too sometimes. But I also shoot some pool. Listen to Cohen's "Famous Blue Raincoat" and you really want to think the story is essentially true, a re-telling, because of the line "Sincerely, L. Cohen" and the fact that "Lily Marlane" was a real person Leonard Cohen knew, right, but it's also a songwriting device. I mention people in my real life and I try to draw on the truth of what that person represents >to me but they usually haven't really said the things I have them saying in the song. I take (a lot) of creative license with people's names. It's a strange device because it gives me permission to write intimately, which is what is needed, but the freedom to make up whatever necessary to serve the ideas in the song. For example, in the song "Evening Song for Sally" I have the line "Chris says you've got to lose your head sometimes to save your neck" and my friend Chris never said that, but in my life he's the friend I would go to in one of my crises. It's true I was going through a really rough time, personally, when I wrote the songs on both Hotel Lives and then Lost with the Lights on. My marriage was falling apart and then it ended. Of course there is going to be a slew of ideas and sentiment that end up in the songs that wouldn't have otherwise ended up explored on those records, but the trouble in my life really just led me to dwell on these basic human issues and explore them artistically. It wouldn't be possible for me to write completely autobiographically about this stuff and put it out there for people to hear. You need some distance. I had to use my life as a starting point to write the songs but the goal is never to describe the details of my life in the song. I used my friend Chris' real name in the song so I could tell a truth, but not necessarily my story. Things as they are, are changed upon the blue guitar. Ha Ha. It's kind of a game, a way of writing these fictions but with real empathy. Becoming the characters or using some similarities to my life, when necessary. It's one of those lies that tells the truth, as the t-shirt said to the English professor. In the song "Birds of Spring" I have the line "Maybe we'll visit Alex and Karen down in Georgia come this May, Maybe we're bound to kiss some coastline and say farewell to these haunted plains". My friends Alex and Karen did live in Georgia so that's true, and other things in that song are true, but it's never all true. That line is a direct reference to the Townes van Zandt song Pueblo Waltz where he says "Maybe we'll go to Tennessee, kiss these Texas blues goodbye, and see Susanna and Guy." He was singing about getting out of Texas and visiting Guy and Susanna Clark, but who knows if he was really singing about himself in the song or if he just put himself in there with that line as a little gift to them, an "I miss you guys" message, like Dylan giving John Lennon the little present of 4th Time Around, an alternating "She/I" song to the tune of Norwegian Wood. Sending out a private message in a public forum, it's cool, that's all. I was singing about getting out of Omaha and visiting my own songwriter friend and his wife down south. That line was my homage to Townes' song and it was a way of telling Alex and Karen I missed them. I hadn't seen them in a long time. Townes would sometimes insert real people into a song to give the song some sturdy legs to stand on. It makes it easy to sing those stories when you imagine yourself into a song like that. I like to do that too. So, to answer your question, I do this alot but you should read neither too much nor too little into it, I guess.

The point is you can't trust anyone or anything, so the story or song or painting or poem or whatever is just what it is to you anyway; the history of it, the antecedents and the artifice and the prurient aspects of how the thing came into being are nasty entrance points and not important for knowing or understanding it. If you need to know that Pablo Picasso's friend committed suicide just before Picasso painted the Old Guitarist, in order to get into it, then you're not even in it for yourself, you're lost. However, it is nice to know that Billy Joel contemplated suicide before writing Piano Man, though we might question his timing on that one. I can promise you that if you ever catch me rhyming "Davy" and "Navy" or ordering a fucking "tonic and gin", it'll be before, not after I've contemplated suicide.

Retyping that original interview with you I was interested in how you described the songwriting process: I don't really develop songs. I'm usually just doing something useful, like changing the oil in my car or clearing the wax out of my ears, and the song just comes to me and I just stop what I'm doing and go write it down in a little book I have for such occasions. It comes to me in the form of one lyric, one line, and I write it down and then all the others basically play follow the leader. Its not always the first line of the song; the verses often arrive out of order. Most of my songs are written in one sitting like that, maybe half an hour. After that I just iron out the dreadful parts. As far as the musics concerned, well, I just steal that from people who have more time than me for such inventiveness. I know I'm no Mozart. I cant read music and I can just barely play the guitar, so write a melody and Ill steal it, but so ineptly you'll think I actually thought ofit myself.

Is that still the case? Especially with such a fleshed out sound on some of the recent songs - and have you recorded solo versions of the new songs to see how far they go before being recording with the band?

That's pretty much my method. My answer was a little self mocking but it's true that I keep my music simple. All melodies in everybody's songs are just variations on other melodies. What I was trying to say is that while I can claim my lyrics, I'm aware of how much borrowing is inherent in putting music to words. That's just the way it goes. I can't hear somebody's song without catching melodic references to other people's songs. Of course once you settle on chords and a melody, you can dress it up however you like, and usually that's where the opportunity to make the music your own comes in. The sound might be more "fleshed out" on some recent records, but that's just instrumentation. The songs aren't really any more complex, musically. I always make tapes of the songs done stripped down on a guitar and listen to the tapes and think about what the songs need. I put thought into what the songs need or what they seem to want, but as far as chords and melody go, simpler is better in my book, for my purposes.

Do you feel lonelier now or when you were a teenager growing up in your parents' place?

Less lonely now. Part of being a teenager was having exaggerated sensitivities. Loneliness feels the same as it ever did but when it comes around now it's usually justified.

It is a very careful, mannered sound, The World Of Simon Joyner. Do you feel those confines when you go to make a new album? Do you find yourself thinking 'i can't put that on there'?

I'm not sure I understand what you mean about the sound always being careful and mannered. Different projects require different approaches. I don't think Lost with the Lights On sounds like Hotel Lives, and neither sound like Yesterday, Tomorrow and In Between or Songs for the New Year etc.... With Hotel Lives I did labor over how songs were going to sound. I was reaching for a certain sound and had definite ideas about how I wanted people to play on that record. Michael Krassner helped to achieve that. But with Lost with the Lights On we just did a couple takes and the band hadn't heard the songs until we were in the studio. My new record, Skeleton Blues, is with the Fallen Men and we spread out in a big warehouse space and recorded live. No studio. I've never overdubbed my vocals, preferring the natural mistakes and happy accidents of imperfect timing that comes with playing guitar and singing simultaneously. I dunno. I don't feel confined by anything, honestly. My audience is anonymous to me, I don't know who I'm impressing or not impressing or what they want or don't want to hear from me, so I don't feel any pressure from without, at all. It's whatever the batch of songs sounds like to me when I'm done writing them. Sometimes it sounds like a rock record, sometimes an orchestrated record, sometimes a stripped down acoustic record. It changes.

I don't have any interest in making the same record over and over. I imagine no one really wants to hear the same record over and over, if they're honest about it.

What has been your fave album of recent times?

My favorite album of mine or of other people? I don't really have a favorite of mine, it's always the thing I just finished doing. As far as other people's records go, I'm really excited about the new Ed Gray record, called the Great Late Ed Gray, and there's a new Omaha band called Outlaw con Bandana and they have a vinyl only release called Life Without Outlaw. Great stuff. The not yet released new Refrigerator album is amazing. I tend to drift in and out of the present and past and it's hard for me to think of what I like when I'm on the spot.

If i can be so bold as to quote back your own work "to live on this earth you need two hands / one to crush the weeds that steal your crops / and one to crush your fellow man". Pretty brutal stuff. Is that really how you feel? Did you once?

"...and a woman to tell you when to stop." That's the best part. No, that's not how I feel. That's just the character in the song. I hope you don't think I share the beliefs of all these people in the songs. These characters, they aren't all pretty but they're trying to make sense of their lives, and they come to some different conclusions, some unsavory justifications too. Like you or me, depending on our own stories, I suppose.

Does slowing down the music = more confidence in The Song. Was the pace of the songs in the early days due to how the song was meant to sound or some manifestation of your nerves / lack of confidence in what you were doing?

No, I don't think slowing down equals confidence in the song. Sometimes I just cram too many syllables into the lines and the only way to sing everything is to slow way down. It's always nice when I have a nice terse lyric I can pick up the pace with. I went back and forth in the early days too, say on Room Temperature and The Cowardly Traveller Pays His Toll. I had slow stuff like Grapefruit, Seizure, Joy Division, Montgomery, and faster stuff like Folk Song for Sara, Ruby Slippers, Appendix, Fallen Man. I was confident about all those songs. It's really just a sonic choice, I guess, that I'd make song by song. On my very first release, the cassette Umbilical Chords, I was nervous and unsure and I sped through the songs partially for that reason (partially because I was listening to a lot of Minutemen and other punk rock records too) but by the time I went to make Room Temperature I was feeling confident enough to slow down and have a go at actually singing some of this stuff.

Unconscious Dylan references in song. You ended off the last round of Qs with this line: Simon Joyner wants to be your lover, he doesn't wanna be your boss. Which is obviously a line from a Dylan song turned on it's head (a classic Dylan songwriting technique in itself ironically enough) - did you use that intentionally or did it crawl out of your subconscious?

It crawled out the window of my subconscious, which by the way, it would take a dump-truck to unload.

How many times do you catch yourself putting lines in songs that have come from somewhere else and you haven't realized it - AND have any snuck through without you realizing it until it was too late?

I've borrowed some good lines from bad songs of mine and put them into good songs, but I haven't caught myself accidentally borrowing lines from other people's songs. I do refer on occasion and that's intentional. I'm praying to be caught in those cases.

How deep do the religious hang-ups in your work go? Are you trying to work through something or is it just some kinda mythical imagery to draw upon?

I don't have any religious hang-ups. That may be why it is so interesting to me. It's also a wealthy archive of imagery to draw upon, tools for getting across ideas. Religion is a way to make sense out of life for a lot of people, so I don't shut myself off to it. It's important to note that most religions persuade their members through good storytelling, and whether you are talking Greek and Roman myths, Old or New Testament, Hindi characters, stories of the Buddha, the Koran, the Torah, etc...you have to acknowledge these are great stories and they have human application otherwise they wouldn't be so effective. I'm a humanist like any other fanatic. I'm all for people. Religion is for the people, gods don't have any use for it. I may tangle with other people about cloud movements and what they mean, but I don't disagree that we have to live together and do right by one another. I just stop there while religious people tend to add a caveat that begins with "unless" and rounds out with "...then they have to be removed."

archived: SIMON JOYNER: interview (mid 1996)

An interview that originally appeared in Circumstantial Evidence no 2 which also included interviews with Chris Deden and Bill Hoover. To this day this is still the best interview Ive seen with S.J. so spend some time wading through it

List all the reasons why Simon Joyner is Not Important Music.

Well, Ive always believed that music exists for the same reason that the Sistine Chapel was built; to give people a place to worship. Despite the depth of my belief that this is true (I must confess finding spiritual enlightenment in the music of others throughout my lifetime), I dont think that makes it important. Im talking about worshipping life, not god, by the way, and I believe that the celebration of life in all its manifestations is integrated into all aspects of simply living it, music being just one aspect and no more or no less important than any other. Nevertheless, you might be hard pressed to find anyone to agree with that notion. Im not sure I could even sign my name to it when I think about listening to Double Nickels On the Dime for the first of hundredth time or various other records which are indisputably important to me. Its like Ramon Speed says: youll never know what My First Bells means to me. Youll never know and I cant make you see. So , the thing is that I knew music could be thought of as important but I didnt want anyone to think I thought I was one of those thoughts. I guess I named my publishing company Simon Joyner is not important music because I didnt want to put on any airs, you know. Ive never felt that it was any artists place to tell others to listen to him or her or read him or her or stare prostrate for hours into his or her paintings. Also, its a seemingly pretentious thing to release music under your own name. Its much easier to be in a band. You can always say its a group effort. Maybe I was just fishing for someone to say no Simon, you are important music. No such luck! You know Mark Twain said that its better to remain silent than be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. Tell your readers I was just removing doubt.

List all the reasons why Simon Joyner does exist.

Well thats easy enough. My body has yet to succumb to the laws of nature. My unconscious is very organized, so much so that my blood keeps circulating, my pancreas continues excreting vital hormones, my tissues absorb stress to the body, my lungs have got rhythm etc. All without any effort on my part. What a deal! When the desk in my brain begins to look likt the desk in my room there will be no excuse for my existence and Ill start singing so long its been good to know you in that ¾ time Im so fond of these days.

Was there one song you heard that made you decide you wanted to do this? Does music still mean much to you?

You ask damn good questions. I remember my papa playing Desolation Row for me when I was little. It was fascinating, full of characters doing strange things, and Dylans voice was like, well, how I imagined god to be; in the sense that he really seemed to be an authority in that crazy universe he was singing about. He sang it with the conviction on an omniscient. He could be watching Ophelia go swimming, Einstein dragging the clergy along behind him, and he knew where Dr Filth kept his world. That song made me dream about singing like that. It gave me the desire but it was so completely beyond what I believed was possible that the dream lay dormant for many years. Ahh, what happens to a dream deferred? One day, a friend of my pas named Don played me the song Heroin by The Velvet Underground. Now this was the voice of someone not so sure of himself, and the words werent as cryptic and intentionally symbolic and the images werent obscure. The words were hot impulses, it seemed, and flew out of his mouth in bursts. It was all about desires, not the intellectual desires of Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot fighting in the captains tower, but desires of identity and self-worth. I wish that I could sail the darkened seas on a great big clipper ship. Im going to try for the kingdom if I can What was this if I can business? It was chock-full of wishes and qualifications. Thats when it seemed like a real possibility, songwriting. I thought I could try this. Lou Reed made an incredible song out of naked desire and the frustration of having to rise to an occasion. Dylan had desire, sure, in spades; but lets face it he was the occasion. Of course I couldnt imagine doing this songwriting stuff until I heard someone great, like Reed, who wasnt singing with that unwavering confidence that made Dylan sound like god.

If you feel like revealing such stuff, how does a song develop for you and what length of time are we talking?

I dont really develop songs. Im usually just doing something useful, like changing the oil in my car or clearing the wax out of my ears, and the song just comes to me and I just stop what Im doing and go write it down in a little book I have for such occasions. It comes to me in the form of one lyric, one line, and I write it down and then all the others basically play follow the leader. Its not always the first line of the song; the verses often arrive out of order. Most of my songs are written in one sitting like that, maybe half an hour. After that I just iron out the dreadful parts. As far as the musics concerned, well, I just steal that from people who have more time than me for such inventiveness. I know Im no Mozart. I cant read music and I can just barely play the guitar, so write a melody and Ill steal it, but so ineptly youll think I actually thought of it myself.

Is it a case of having a pile of songs and then deciding which ones need touching up (extra musicians etc) or are they all premeditated?

I pretty much play solo when I do shows and its only when its time to record that I think about the songs in a broader context and decide what kind of instrumentation they need. Thats when I enlist Alex McManus? on violin, Bill Hoover on banjo or accordion, Chris Deden on piano and drums, Joyce Roper for cello needs and others for what comes up. The arrangements are arrived at through a frustrating blend of trial and error. They change so much during this process that they often seem like completely new and different songs to me. Thats all you want to hear by the time youre done recording anyway.

Are the words the most important thing?

Well, I guess if you showed me the typed-up pages of Crucifixion manuscript by Phil Ochs, I would probably have a hard time looking at it and saying its only rock and roll but I like it. That doesnt mean I think its intrinsically better than Wild Thing however. Its all a matter of context. I cant keep my mouth shut so words are really my only signposts. If I had a better voice I would use it a lot more effectively and cut down on the verbiage. You cant imagine what Id give to have written Crazy by Willie Nelson or Only the Lonely by Roy Orbison. Somehow in a two and a half minute window they tear your heart out and put it back together in time for you to sing along with the fade-out. The words are everyones words, nothing extra; all true, to the point, and a voice that goes in through your ears and leaves through your nose. But now its confession time. Ive never cried listening to a song that didnt have words; not a drop. Without the few words Crazy and Only the Lonely do have, they probably wouldnt work. so, yes, the words are the most important thing to me. Yes, Crucifixion is a better song, but you cant whistle to it. Words are very needy things.

Was it deliberate to go from the Dante reference of Cowardly Traveller through to Heavens Gate? Whos your Beatrice?

You give me too much credit for that kind of foresight. No, it wasnt deliberate. Besides, my character bounces off of heavens gate, falls down and then takes the lords name in vain. Thats a far cry from the purified Dante who is granted a personal viewing of the holy trinity. I do, however, think of Heavens Gate as a resolution of whatever my problem was while writing The Cowardly Traveller Pays His Toll. Also, I believe in the idea that there are those who guide us out of spiritually purgatory and lead us elsewhere, somewhere better, like Beatrice did for Dante. Chris (Deden) is my Virgil and Beatrice goes by the name of Josephine.

Is it true: I want to be an honest man, as honest as I can or is it all just varying shades of the truth depending on what day it is etc?

There are varying shades of the truth, sure, but then there are outright lies. The truth is subject to the uncertainty principle. You cant see it so clear the closer you look at it. I would like to be as honest as I can which means, for me, cutting down on outright lies, and expanding the palette to make room for all those shades of truth scrutiny dreamed up. I made that statement knowing that it was just a dream and a wish and Im aware of the battles human nature wages with dreams and wishes. I try to think positive, despite what they say.

Is the new record a departure from the old stuff?

The record I just finished recording (Songs For the New Year) has a bit more instrumentation than Heavens Gate, but not much. Lots of piano and drums and violin and cello. There is some lap steel and pump organ as well. A lot of the songs were written around the time I wrote the last batch, or shortly thereafter, so they have that mood to them. Ive got no objectivity about it yet.

theres a guitar leaning on a marshall stack / it used to sound like the sun on the horizon now I think weve been had (Uncle Tupelo). Discuss.

I cant place this Uncle Tupelo lyric. Im guessing its from their last record, which I never bought, because I have the other three and this doesnt ring a bell. At any rate, it seems hes probably talking about himself and the troubling notion that he isnt sixteen any more and maybe doesnt perceive rock and roll through those innocent eyes. Perhaps the vanishing act his romantic ideas have played on him makes him feel like hes been robbed of his innocence. I dont know. I only wish he had said now I think Ive been had, because for many people discovering the joy in the sound of a guitar leaning on a marshall stack, it feels like the opposite of being had; its more like being saved. I can relate to something at the root of this lyric of course. There was a time when everything I heard, I was hearing for the first time. Thats a wonderful time of discovery, when I was devouring everything I could get my hands on, and one I cant really reclaim. When I find records that Ive been looking for for a long time, it doesnt quite have the impact that it would have had then. That doesnt make me jaded though. I love music and I cant really get enough of it. Im just not innocent about it anymore. This nostalgia can kill you, you know. Its best to not look back if you cant do it without feeling self-pity. And if you do feel self-pity, call it that and dont drag the rest of us down with you. I bought a Zumpano record today and those guitars did sound like the sun on the horizon to me! What do I want some college boy jacking off to me about the working man when I know he hasnt ever had guitar calluses prickling up his soft hands anyway? Thats hard enough to swallow, but then to have that same person turn around and tell me rock and roll is going down the tubes, and all of us are going right down with it for ever believing in it in the first place, its just a load of shit. Thats just my opinion. Now Im all worked up. Im sorry for losing my cool here. I really cant comment on this lyric because to do so would be taking it out of context and unfair to the songwriter. That last sentence was written by the Simon Joyner Damage Control Committee. I really do like Uncle Tupelo, by the way. Especially the songs by the one who doesnt write about labour struggle, scabs, being kissing cousins with Joe Hill, unions, strikes, coal mines, hard work and other things he knows nothing about. I dont know who wrote that last sentence. Now Black Eye, thats a song.

Your backing band of choice.

Either Crazy Horse or the Frantic Elevators, I guess, if this is one of those fantasy band questions.

Do you find yourself simplifying your music as you go, or trying to make it more complex?

I wish I could say that Im making a concerted effort one way or another, but Im afraid Im not. I really havent learned much guitar beyond what I knew to begin with, so that limitation keeps things pretty simple. I dont think that adding instrumentation makes it more complex really. It hopefully hides the fact that I havent really learned much guitar beyond what I knew to begin with. It could be that Im unconsciously simplifying or complicating my songs as I go along but if so, I would obviously be unaware of it. What do you think? I know I used to feel a pressure to learn all those diminished chords and complicate everything but I never could learn them and I think I just setted into A, B, C, D, E, F, G and A minor, D minor and E minor. Thats the short and long of it.

How much of an influence are the following on your songs: alcohol, cigarettes, regret, unrequited love and religion. Is there a god? What does he / she think of Simon Joyner?

Alcohol and cigarettes have no influence. Theyre just scenery, just descriptive. Im more interested in things that have real power to move people into a state of flux, where a transformation or revelation might occur. Regret and unrequited love are powerful in that way and so they have an influence in what I write about. Even if Im writing about a person drinking and passing out, the alcohol is just peripheral while the regret or the unrequited love might be what put him there. I dont empathize with self-destructive people because theyre self-destructive but because something made them that way and I might know something about that something. Acknowledging what is important about a persons story so that it can be addressed in a song makes it possible for writing to be therapeutic, in a way. I used to believe that was rubbish when singers said that music was their therapy. I thought it was more like an ecasion of much needed therapy, but I have since written about myself enough to know that its true. Ive honestly surprised myself by revealing the true nature of my own situation when I had previously believed I was writing a completely different type of song altogether. When the song was finished it was not, for instance, a grudge song or a love song at all, which in themselves usually remain two-dimensional, but sometimes much more meaningful to me. If I wasnt trying so hard to write a good song I dont think I would begin to approach my problems as critically and honestly (or as soon) as I do. I know you didnt ask about that but I just ramble, sorry. Of course not all the songs are about me specifically, but I wouldnt write them if I couldnt relate to them on some level. Oh, I forgot religion. Basically I find religion useful metaphorically. I believe in the desire to seek and enrich life. I believe in the pit of the soul where hopelessness swings. I believe in the journey out of darkness. I can completely relate to these spiritual hungers and still apply them to secular living, the art of living. In fact, as far as Im concerned, its all the more important to fill all the empty spaces in my soul if there is no god. If this is it, make the once-go-round worth all the damages you incur and inflict while youre breathing. For me, I want to understand myself and find some answers to a lot of questions and peace through discovery of my earthbound possibilities; n ot peace through humble resignation to something incomprehensively great. But religion is a powerful motive for others, and so I utilize it for that purpose. In a song like Prometheus I tried to use it to show the ambivalence faithful people feel when they encounter evil in their lives. The desire to strike back at god has got to be great. On the other hand, I also tried to show how corruptible or vacant some peoples faith really is. When they are needy they look to god but not until then, and when god doesnt answer their prayers in a way that they can comprehend they get spiteful. I think the root of this is a lack of pure faith because the truly faithful view themselves as orbiting around something much greater so that even their personal suffering is part of a larger, more important plan, while those with impure faith ultimately, albeit unconsciously, perceive god as revolving around their lives and fitting in when needed. Religion seems to me to be a man-made connection between ourselves and our imagined superior power which we create because we rightfully dont trust ourselves to do the right thing instinctively. Those who see god revolving around us have imperfect faith because they arent able to think of our life as not important. Religion would be awfully poorly designed if we were all able to see ourselves revolving around god. The people who struggle with their faith must occupy the largest percentage of the population because they must believe enough to live justly and humanely, but doubt enough to keep us ahead of him in their priorities. So the saints can lead selfless, generous lives, and the martyrs can go ahead and drive that car loaded to the gills with dynamite into a building in the service of their god while the rest of us think twice and say what no rain? or hey, whyd you let Candice get brutally raped and murdered and left to freeze in a cornfield? or how come I never win the lottery?. If it all boils down to what have you done for me lately? Im sure the human race will continue to continue.

I wish Id written that line we may not cause a ripple but we can sink with grace. Is that how you try to live your life? Antoni Tapies said the art of living: of making life as beautiful as possible which means similar things to me.

Yeah, I guess that is how I try to live my life. Try. It may not be an important life in the long run of humanity but while Im here I intend to make it a good visit, hopefully sharing and learning and making life as beautiful as possible. Thanks for that quote. Also, I may not cause a ripple but theres no harm in trying either. I have no fear of failing, however, because I believe simple lives are just as good as complicated lives. I hope the statement doesnt evoke hopelessness because it wasnt my intention. I am going to try for the kingdom, if I can. The kingdom just varies from person to person. Bob Dylan said on the album New Morning that to have a couple of kids who call me pa and to sit around and catch rainbow trout must be what its all about. Sounds good to me, and coming from a man of no small amount of soul searching.

The Simon / Chris Deden / Bill Hoover story as you see it

Chris and I met back in high school. I used to tell tales to my homeroom class, trying to draw attention to myself. That was before I was shy at all. I told these exaggerated stories because homeroom was so boring and everyone was half asleep anyway. I was just trying to wake myself up, I guess. Anyway, Chris is the only one who ever laughed, no matter how much I hammed it up. He just sat and watched me like an over-serious child watches a clown pop out of a barrel at the circus. I thought he hated me. Then one day as we were leaving homeroom to go to our first classes I started singing the lyrics to Alison by Elvis Costello, and he grabbed my shoulder from behind and I turned and he said hey, you like Elvis Costello?. We became best friends very quickly and in doing so I gradually became a bit more reserved and he, in turn, became a little bit more obnoxious, that is outgoing. We met Bill and other notable Omaha sacred monsters Alex McManus? and John Kulman a few years later when I started playing shows at the late great Kilgores, a bar in mid-town Omaha. I cant remember the specifics but Bill and Alex and John and I all liked one anothers music and we just started setting up shows together and pretty soon it was a regular gig at Kilgores every Thursday night. We packed the place, we really did. All of us were competing with one another. It was expected that we would all bring at least one new song a week to play but we all tried to outdo each other and bring two or three, one of which had to be really good. We sized each other up a bit, drank a bit, and everyone had a bit of a ball. But tragedy hit Kilgores in the form of some M.I.P.s that dealt a severe financial blow to the place. The owner closed shop and then rented it out to a theater troop who renamed it the Shelterbelt theater. It was never the same after that. My chronology may not be perfect but it went something like that. Were all good friends and theyre great musicians so its only natural for me to ask them to help my songs along when it comes time to record.

How close do you align yourself with the Icarus figure?

Icarus should have listened to his papa, Daedalus, who warned him to fly low away from the sun. Icarus was pretty stubborn, thought he knew more than the man who single-handedly invented the labyrinth and the means from escaping from his father. Not very smart on his part, Id say. I feel for Daedelus mostly, because he outlived his son and no-one wants to do that. I try to listen to my father now that Im older and wise enough to know that he is wiser than i. Icarus paid the price for that kind of freedom and went down singing Im forever blowing bubbles. Meanwhile, I suppose, rock bands began cropping up in Crete, adopting live fast, die young credos which included Icarus lives pins stuck all over their torn tunics. Whether I close my eyes or keep them open, I still hear Icarus splashing all around me, every day.