Under The Rotunda

Deerhoof changed my life. I know that may seem like a pretty rash statement, but it’s true. It was on a warm night in 2005 that I saw Deerhoof live for the first time, and it changed my perceptions of what music was exciting and interesting. They were the band that got me into indie and alternative music, and I’ve never looked back. With this in mind, it was with great excitement that I was able to sit down with a few members of the band a few weeks ago. This was just before they killed the Middle East Downstairs with a blistering performance, of course. It may be three and a half years later from when I first saw the band live, but they are still one of the best (for me, the best) live band I’ve ever seen in my life.

Deerhoof’s latest album, Offend Maggie, continues in their tradition of jarring, exciting indie rock, and it’s right on par with the rest of their ever-growing discography. Their lineup has changed in the last few years, with guitarist Chris Cohen leaving and guitarist Ed Rodriguez joining. So, how did this change their songwriting process, if at all? That’s what I wanted to know. With a smile, drummer Greg Saunier commented, “The question assumes that we have a writing and recording process. Which would be nice, maybe. But I wouldn’t know. Every song on this album and on every other album had its own unique process. Ed would bring in a song, a scrap of paper saying something like ‘C#, E, B’. I’d be like, Okay, this is your song? You know, very pitch oriented, very oriented towards harmony. But with no idea with what the structure was going to be. Is this a loud song, a quiet song, a rocker, a ballad, is it slow, is it fast…oh, I don’t know!” Greg laughs with Ed as the two of the them recant their scattered songwriting process. As an outsider of the band, it seems to me that Deerhoof certainly do have a songwriting process. Perhaps it’s more organic and experimental than more bands, but then again, Deerhoof are a bit more organic and experimental than a lot of bands. Greg picked up where he left off. “It’s just really, really open ended. That was something I’d say was especially different this time, we got to work out a lot of these songs as a group, playing full volume in a practice space. Which probably doesn’t sound very earth-shattering, but it was not a usual method for our band prior to this record. For whatever reason, we tended to do stuff in a more abstract way, we’d kinda figure stuff out in our head. Or we’d figure it out in the process of recording. So John would put down the guitar part, I’d put down the drum part and see what happens. And then we’d work on mixing and editing it in a computer for a couple months, and then we’d have written a song. Or maybe we’d write the song totally on guitar, but never plug in and never hear what it sounds like as a loud band until the day you first walk on stage. Day one of the tour, it’s like, Oh, I guess that’s what it sounds like. A total disaster!” he says with a laugh strong enough to knock the wind out of you. “This time it was different. This time we actually practiced and worked it out at full volume.” Nodding in agreement, guitarist Ed Rodriguez jumped in. “You could bring something in and everybody would immediately be really creative. It’s really great, because you might have something where you’re convinced it’s finished. You bring it in and realize it wasn’t even close to being finished. All the ideas start going in and you get really excited about it. That was one of the great things about working like that – it was continuously energizing. The whole writing process, there was never a down period where it got to be a chore or when the ideas started slowing down. Every single day it was like, Oh, how about this, how about this, how about this, how about this? Eventually, I think it was more trimming out the excess of ideas. Getting things down to what really needed to be there. I think that’s what gives the impression sometimes of jumping from idea to idea really, really quickly. But that misses the whole process, maybe when we first wrote it, it was ten times as long. A lot of it is just getting to the skeletal idea, getting across a feeling or whatever we’re going for.”

It was clear that Ed, while new to the band, brought a lot to Offend Maggie. He certainly brought a lot to the show that night, upholding Deerhoof’s reputation of stunningly energetic performances. He talked about his addition to the band’s music, both old and new. “I think in every single version of the band, nothing was set in stone. One person might be playing a part for months, and then all of a sudden one day it might make more sense for the other person to play it. When I came in, we went through songs that we decided to play, I listened to the records, and then watched YouTube footage and some live stuff that John had given me – to hear what he was playing. I listened to that, and listened to the record to say what wasn’t there and what he had worked into his guitar playing. That was the point we started at. John and I – while our playing is very similar – we definitely approach certain parts differently. So a lot of times it will just get switched back and forth to see how it changes. A lot of the chords will be changed into different octaves, or a note will be taken from one part to another part just to see how that changes the spectrum.”

Deerhoof have been going strong since they formed, although they make it clear that they don’t always know what they’re going for. Still, they have an amazing way of diving in with all they’ve got, and the result is almost always spectacular. They are also some of the most creative and innovative musicians out there, and they’re often sitting right on the cutting edge of the music industry. For instance, they were giving away their music online years and years ago, way before the internet and music bonded to the point they’re at these days. Greg explained their initial reasoning. “Anytime you play a city you’ve never played in, it’s very likely that there’s no record store that has your music for sale, and basically the internet would be literally the only possible way that anyone would have ever heard your music or found out who you were. It happens so many times that we go to a city for the first time – whether it be in the U.S. or anywhere in the world – somebody would come to the merch table and they’d want to buy the record because they couldn’t get it in their city, but they got our free mp3 somewhere. Actually, maybe the hard part now for a band is the fact that if you were to give away some of your mp3s away, you would not be unusual – you would be like every single other band! And I mean, with every single band giving their mp3s away, you’re kinda stuck for a way to be noticeable in any way. So we gave up,” he says, laughing. Also with a smile, Ed said, “It’s really strange, people will come up all the time and be like, ‘Oh, I got this song for free, I still wanna give you money’ and have two dollars in their hand or something. You know, there’s a reason it’s there for free! People still feel like they want to help, they want to contribute. It’s very bizarre, really nice though…” Here, Ed showcases Deerhoof’s humility. Even though they’re now an incredibly popular and successful band, every single member of the group is kind and humble. Before the interview, while hanging out with guitarist John Dieterich at the merch table, I saw the perfect example of what I’m talking about. A content and happy fan bought a t-shirt and handed John two twenty dollar bills, saying “You can keep the change.” To which John jumped, saying “Thank you, but that’s ridiculous.” Even as the fan insisted, John thanked him and got him his change.

In their career, Deerhoof have seen a lot. I guess that’s bound to happen when you’ve been around for as long as they have. You get opportunities to score films, tour with bands like Radiohead, Wilco or the Flaming Lips, and even have one of your albums turned into a children’s ballet. Come again? you might be asking yourself. Yup, that’s right. In case you didn’t read about it a few years ago when it happened, Deerhoof’s 2004 album Milk Man was turned into an elementary school ballet by a Maine school teacher. Just how did this unlikely match happen? Greg explained the whole story. “It was almost completely without our participation. Maybe a month after the album came out, I got an email from a perfect stranger named Courtney who had bought the cd, said she really like it, and said ‘I think that this album should be a live ballet, kind of showtune for children.’ It should be turned into a ballet, was basically the upshot of what she was saying. I thought it was a very nice email, and it was very nice of her to write, and I told her so, I didn’t actually think it would ever come true. But at the same time, in my mind, I felt very lucky and very proud because we had originally intended Milk Man to sound like a musical or a theatrical thing – slightly campy, sometimes doing things that sound bad on purpose a little bit, I guess that’s what camp is – slightly showy, not really so real or raw. Less like a rock band and more like some studio musicians anonymously putting together these parts to construct these showy, glitzy sounding songs. The other thing is that we had thought of it as music for kids. The drawing of “Milk Man” already existed and the name already existed, but the artist – Ken Kagami, who created it – provided us with absolutely nothing in the way of a backstory or anything to go on for coming up with lyrics. So Satomi started basically from scratch and created a whole story. In her idea, it was very much a child’s kind of story, a fairy tale-like character, “Milk Man”. So in my mind, I was like, Wow, I can’t believe somebody picked up on this! Now that the CD’s out, it’s not like we sent out a press release saying ‘This is our Broadway release for kids’. For somebody to see through the Kill Rock Stars, indie rock, “okay, it got reviewed on Pitchfork” – this indie rock universe that was supposedly its home, its pigeonhole, its genre. And somebody saw, to them, that’s not what it was. I was like, Wow! But, of course, I wasn’t expected it to come true. It was two or three years later, she writes back again, and says ‘Hey, I’m a school teacher now, I’m ready to do that ballet.’ I’m trying to remember, it was three years earlier… Oh yeah, I remember you. And she was serious! I’m like, What are you talking about?!” he says with a laugh. And it was like, ‘Okay, well let me know if you need any help transcribing the music.’ And then I got an email a week or two later, ‘Okay, we’ve started our first rehearsals!’ I’m like, What?! ‘Oh yeah, I finished it.’ And she had completely transcribed the entire thing, just from the CD, and rearranged it for banjo, this drummer who was hitting cardboard boxes, her boyfriend was playing a guitar that sounded exactly like John’s. She was doing everything: participating in the dancing, singing lead vocals, choraling the kids, playing bass, playing keyboards… There was a church reverend on trumpet, there was a church reverend from the next island over – this was in Maine – playing clarinet, there was a 12 year-old saxophone player who was just beginning and only knew how to play a C major scale – which, concert would be an Eb major scale, for all you Berklee types. I mean, it was totally incredible. She said, ‘Okay, well you guys should come out and see the show.’ So that was the extent of our participation, we showed up for dress rehearsal the day before the show. We had a few minor suggestions, but what’re you going to do? You’re seeing your whole piece get performed before your eyes with all these kids, and we were all just dumbfounded. We were all in tears, just so moved that it happened. And they did such a beautiful job. The gym teacher was the choreographer for it, just a complete genius in finding ways to find something that fit both what seven year olds are able to do on the stage and something that fit with whatever kind of weird music this is. It worked absolutely perfectly. I think she went out on a major limb to put this thing together, and it’s just totally the kind of thing that, on the one hand, should never have happened, and on the other hand, so should have happened. It was just absolute smiles all around. Everybody loved it, the entire town came out and watched this thing, and it was amazing.”

“In a day and age where something like art or music or dance has gotten flushed down the toilet in public schools – all I know is if I didn’t have music in my elementary, junior high, and high school… if I hadn’t had chorus, and if I hadn’t had concert band, obviously I wouldn’t be doing this interview right now. I probably wouldn’t be doing anything, I don’t know what I’d be doing!” Well, thank goodness Greg did get into music. For me, and for many others, Deerhoof is a band like no other. I’ve enjoyed following their career in the past decade, and I look forward to keep up with them in the next. I’m always on the tip of my toes to hear what they’re going to be up to next. With a band like Deerhoof, anything goes.

Deerhoof - Chadelier Searchlight (from Offend Maggie)
Deerhoof - Wrong Time Capsule (from The Runners Four)

Labels: Interviews