The Optical Atlas Show

 

Sometime around 2007 I decided I would attempt to bring my Optical Atlas site to the next level by initiating a podcast. However, this was a case of intent exceeding my means. For one thing, I did not live in close proximity to the Elephant 6 collective. For another, I cut my landline (before it was cool), which meant I had to get clever to capture the interviews. These days, I’d use Skype – but for whatever reason I thought a traditional phone call was the way to go. For my interviews with John Ferguson (Big Fresh) and Robert Schneider (The Apples in Stereo) I grabbed a meeting room at work and used the speaker phone, placing my recorder up next to it, and proceeded to make a long distance call. The Robert one was particularly dicey because it was long, and because the door wasn’t soundproof – and my boss was sitting not very far away (and perhaps wondering where I was). When the interview was over I sheepishly slipped out of the room and back to my desk.

There were only three episodes because of these limitations – it was too much of a hassle. (Again, why didn’t I just use Skype?) I think what I really wanted to do was edit them together; that’s where I took the most enjoyment. For example, in episode 1 you’ll hear a snippet of audio I recorded in an elevator, secretly taping some girls chatting while the elevator beeps off the floors. Then Robert’s theme song for the show kicks in. If I could have had someone else perform the interviews, to hand over the raw materials for me to play with later, I would have been more than happy.

And yes, Robert, a big supporter of the site, did compose the theme song, performing it alongside John Ferguson I believe – that’s 2/3 of my show’s total guests! He said it could be credited to The Apples in Stereo. It’s very much along the lines of his “Apples in Stereo Theme Song” that he made for his band’s website a few years earlier. Surely his Apples song “Tin Pan Alley” was expressing a sincere wish to be a songwriter for hire, accepting any challenge to make a catchy melody. Of course I was overjoyed when he volunteered to do the song. (Now I’m remembering – I had put out a request to a swath of musicians asking if anyone would like to compose a short theme song, and Robert answered the call. I think I also asked Bill Doss, Andy Gonzales…I can’t remember who else.)

For the second episode, Jimmy Hughes was kind enough to perform a little Folklore concert in my basement. Joining him are Derek Almstead and Ian Rickert. I think Derek was appalled by my complete lack of preparation for that one – I had a single cheap little microphone and that was it. My half-assed idea would be that we’d create a seat-of-our-pants bedroom recording. Folklore pulled it off.

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Episode 1: John Ferguson Interview (Big Fresh)

Episode 2: Folklore Live

Episode 3:  Robert Schneider Interview (The Apples in Stereo)

Optical Atlas Interviews with Laura Carter (Elf Power) and Zachary Gresham (Summer Hymns)

These are the last of my “6 Questions with…” interviews from Optical Atlas. Laura Carter of Elf Power mentions the band’s collaboration with Vic Chesnutt, Dark Developments, which would be released in 2008. Prior to Vic’s passing in 2009, he toured with Elf Power, and they stayed overnight at my place. While the rest of the band took up the usual spot in the basement, Vic, being wheelchair-bound, slept on the 1st floor couch. I woke early in case anyone needed coffee started, and Vic was already up. We awkwardly sat in the living room together, unable to spark any sort of conversation, until my dogs hopped into his lap. From then on everything was easy. We talked about dogs. Vic could be a bit acerbic, but he softened up. Later I was asking the band to sign the poster from the show, and I asked Vic if he would sign. “It’s an Elf Power poster,” he pointed out, “my name isn’t on it.” He paused. “Yeah, I’ll sign yer poster.” He wrote “Vic” on it. We all ate pancakes together and then they were off (to Chicago, probably). That’s my Vic story.

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Laura Carter/Elf Power: February 17, 2007

Since the band’s inception in 1993, Laura Carter has been the keyboardist for Elf Power, one of the most critically acclaimed bands to emerge from Elephant 6 and the Athens scene in general. But since 1999 she has also been helping to run Orange Twin, a conservation community, record label, and artist’s collective based around a plot of land which is being slowly converted into an eco-village.

1) I’m curious how Orange Twin first formed, and how you came to discover the land Orange Twin is striving to preserve.

We discovered the land for sale, and we fell in love with it and knew it would be a perfect place to start our community. It’s a former girl scout camp about five miles outside of Athens, GA. It’s about 150 acres, 100 of which will be preserved, and the rest of which will be used to build homes.

2) What does it mean that you’ve received approval from Athens-Clarke County for Orange Twin to proceed with its “master plan?” Can you elaborate?

Well, nobody had ever attempted a community like this in Athens before, so we were a little bit concerned about how the county would respond to the idea, but the support has been very enthusiastic. The “master plan” refers to our plan to begin building homes on the land.

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3) Can you briefly describe the history of the community house and its current state of development?

It was a house in Athens that was going to be demolished that we bought for $1 and moved out to the land. It’s a beautiful old house, and there’s currently five people living in it. We’ve had several big concerts over the last few years, hosting bands like Bonnie Prince Billy, Tall Dwarfs and The Olivia Tremor Control when they reunited a few years back.

4) The record label was launched in 2001 and it seems to be thriving, having released records by Jeff Mangum, Elf Power, Gerbils, Major Organ and the Adding Machine, The Late B.P. Helium, Je Suis France, Lovers, and more. What was the initial impetus for launching the label, and who was first involved in putting it together? I’m also curious about how you came to release the Sibylle Baier album, Colour Green.

Andrew and I started the label, initially to reissue the Elyse record, a trippy folk rock record from the late 1960’s that we really loved. Most of the other releases have been from friends looking for an outlet to release their music. The Sibylle Baier album we heard a few years back from J. Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. Sibylle lives near J. in Massachusetts, and her son gave the album to J., who passed it along to us, as he knew we would love it. It is truly a beautiful recording that we thought we should share with the world.

5) What’s on the horizon for Orange Twin in 2007? It sounds like you might be putting out a third Instruments record.

We have new records out by Madeline and the Lovers. Instruments are planning on recording a new record this year, so hopefully that will come out this year as well.

6) Of course, I also have to ask what Elf Power‘s up to.

Elf Power has been recording a record with Vic Chesnutt, backing him up on his songs, which has been a blast. I think it’s going to be a really incredible album. Vic has just finished an album with the Godspeed You Black Emperor! folks in Canada, as well as an acoustic record in Nashville, so I guess this will be the third in his trilogy he hopes to put out this year! We’ll be doing more touring in the spring, going out west for a couple weeks. We’ll also be recording a new Elf Power album later this year, so we’re staying pretty busy!

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Laura photo by John of Diligent Worker

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Zachary Gresham/Summer Hymns: April 10, 2006

Zachary Gresham is the lead singer/songwriter of the Summer Hymns, the Athens-based band that presently includes Philip Brown and Chris Riser (past collaborators have included such familiar Athens names as Derek Almstead of M Coast, Dottie Alexander and Matt Dawson from of Montreal, Adrian Finch and Bren Mead of Masters of the Hemisphere, and about a dozen more). Through three full-lengths–1999’s Voice Brother and Sister, 2001’s A Celebratory Arm Gesture (named after a Mr. Show sketch), and 2003’s Clemency–the band has established a consistently subdued, semi-psychedelic sound, utilizing a unique combination of instruments and an eye toward the album form: no song seems to have a particular ending or beginning until the record stops playing. In the three years since Clemency, the Summer Hymns have been hard at work, and the results should bear much fruit in 2006, as new material will be spread across compilation albums, a Summer Hymns Value Series Vol. 2, a maxi-single, and a fourth full-length album.

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1) How are you progressing on the new album, and when do you expect it to be released?

We are pretty much done with it except for finishing the mixing, which should be done by the end of April. We hope to turn it in May 1st so that it can come out this fall. We’re itching to get back on the road.

2) How long do you typically like to spend on an album before sending it out? I ask because each of your albums has a very cohesive feel, and the songs flow together beautifully.

Thanks. With the exception of Clemency, we’ve pretty much recorded at our own studio so we can take our time. Typically I don’t like for things to drag on as much as we have for this record but generally I just take as long as it takes to make it the record that I want to hear. And usually I seem to write songs in batches, and in this case there have been too many batches to easily focus in on one group of songs.

3) I think we’re both fellow Alejandro Jodorowsky fans, as “El Topo” figures prominently in Clemency, and he gets thanked in the credits. Why did you decide to use this film as a theme for the album? [“El Topo” (“The Mole”), directed by Jodorowsky, can’t really be described, but briefly: it’s a Zen Western from 1970 about a gunfighter who sets out to slay four master warriors who live in the desert; he later seems to die, but is reborn within a mountain, and tunnels his way to the light (and there’s much more). The English dub of the film makes a few cameo appearances on the album, and it influenced the album’s artwork, as well.]

As with a lot of things, it was kinda accidental. When I got that film, I got into it pretty hardcore and watched it a lot. And some of the times it was playing with the sound down low and I was writing some songs on a handheld, and some of it was bleeding through onto the song, and I just got accustomed to hearing some of those things; and then I was inspired by several things in the film, mainly the image of the mole who digs around underground searching for the sunlight, but when he finally gets out from underground he is blinded by the light because he’s been in the darkness so long. On many levels I could relate to that and even wrote a couple of songs directly stemming from thinking about the mole, such as “Wet Mess.” Everyone thinks that it’s about dirty diapers or some sex shit, when it’s just a lament from the mole’s perspective.

4) I try to avoid asking this question, though because the Summer Hymnshave a very unique, hazy, dream-like quality to the music, I will: who do you like to listen to, and what artists would you consider influential?

Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of Bob Dylan stuff from the 70’s and outtakes and stuff. I’ve been digging the new Destroyer record. And I love me some Bill Withers, The Staple Singers, Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding,Larry Norman, etc… I got a turntable that you can stack 6 or 7 LPs and it drops them down, and I don’t think that Robert Wyatt‘s Dondestan has been in its case since I moved last year. Also in that stack is Dylan’s Planet Waves and Paul Simon’s Still Crazy After All These Years. And in the last few weeks I’ve been listening to some Steely Dan Count Down to Ecstacy and ZZ Top‘s Tejas.

5) Do you take a different approach to your songs, or to the band, when you play live?

Yeah, I think so. The songs pretty much have three lives, the life when it’s born with me and whatever instrument I’m writing on, the life that the band brings into it during recording, and then the life after we play it live a bunch. They usually change after playing them live a bunch.

6) Any memorable incidents from the road that you’d like to share?

There’s been a lot of fun times on the road and some of the most memorable I probably shouldn’t share. I love touring and can’t wait to get back out on the road. I would say that the things that come to mind would be staying at Dottie’s aunt and uncle’s farm in Vermont on the Destroyer tour and sitting in their outdoor hot tub heated by a wood-burning stove. And we have had some of the best off days imaginable in Austin, Texas, going to swimming holes and barbeque joints.

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Optical Atlas Interviews with Hilarie Sidney (High Water Marks), Chris Parfitt (Vince Mole & His Calcium Orchestra), and Jim McIntyre (Von Hemmling)

These 3 “6 Questions With…” interviews are with ex-members of The Apples in Stereo, all of whom were around in Elephant 6’s formative years. Hilarie Sidney’s pop project with Per Ole Bratset is The High Water Marks; she left the Apples not long after the interview was conducted. Like Hilarie, Chris Parfitt and Jim McIntyre played on the original Apples recordings, when the band was just “The Apples.” Chris fronts the Elephant 6 band Vince Mole & His Calcium Orchestra, and Jim’s experimental recordings are released under the moniker Von Hemmling.

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Hilarie Sidney/The Apples in Stereo & The High Water Marks: July 27, 2006

Hilarie Sidney has been the drummer and co-singer/songwriter of The Apples in Stereo since the formation of the band, and her voice has been prominent on all of the Apples‘ releases, contributing memorable tracks such as “Winter Must Be Cold” on the band’s debut, Fun Trick Noisemaker, “20 Cases Suggestive of…” on 2000’s The Discovery of a World Inside the Moone, and “Rainfall” on 2002’s Velocity of Sound. After that last album, she found a new outlet for her songwriting skills in The High Water Marks, a collaboration with Per Ole Bratset of Norway’s Palermo. (She seems to enjoy creative collaboration with others, having co-written songs for years with Robert Schneider, and splitting composition duties with Lisa Janssen in the short-lived Elephant 6 band Secret Square.) Hilarie agreed to shed some light on her various projects, past and present, with Optical Atlas.

1) Are you involved in the post-production process on the new Apples in Stereo album, New Magnetic Wonder? Can you describe how this album will compare to the previous Apples albums?

Actually, I haven’t really been involved at all. This is the album that I have been least involved with. In the past I have been much, much more a part of the creative process. I think it is a natural progression for The Apples in Stereo. It has a little bit of everything. I think it sounds great and I think people are really going to like it! The songs are ultra-catchy.

2) I loved Songs About the Ocean. Can we expect another High Water Marks album in the near future?

Yes, actually we are finishing up our new record. It is called Polar, it has 13 songs, and it will be coming out in February. I am really excited about it. I recorded the whole thing myself, and I will also be mixing it. I’ve never done it before, so I’m nervous, but it’s OK because I am not too concerned about fidelity and the technical aspect. It has been a labor of love, and it’s taken us a long time to finish it, since between the time we started it and now, my husband and I had a baby who is now 7 months old.

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3) How did High Water Marks first come together?

Per Ole and I met at an Apples show in Oslo. We talked for a long time after the show. We loved a lot of the same music, so we had a lot to talk about. He gave me a CD of his songs, and I was blown away. We started emailing and decided to record through the mail. The post office was a little slow, and we lost a couple of packages along the way, so we decided our best bet would be to get together for a week and get as much as possible done. Soon after that, Per Ole came to live in the US, and we recruited Jim Lindsay and Mike Snowden to join us on drums and bass. They were the live band, and the record was only me and Per Ole. The new record is all four of us though, so it’s been super cool.

4) There’s a select society of us that are big Secret Square fans, even though there was just a single and a full-length and the band is pretty definitively dead. Can you explain how Secret Square came about, and why it ended?

Secret Square was me and Lisa Janssen. She was my best pal at the time. We worked together, and loved a lot of the same music, and were obsessing over a lot of the same stuff. We used to call in to work together and meet at my house and record on the 4-track. It was such a lot of fun, and we decided to make a 7-inch and then a record. We put out the records and even played live a couple of times opening for TFUL, with Jeff Mangum on drums and Robert Schneider on bass. Lisa moved away, and we fully intended to keep recording and making music, but time and distance never really panned out, unfortunately. I think we both wanted to, but it was too hard.

5) How does the Lexington music scene compare to Denver’s?

Denver’s rock scene is more of a typical big city rock scene, whereas Lexington is more of a small town college-type scene. In Lex, you find a lot more noise, jazz, experimental-type stuff, and although there are plenty of rock bands it seems a bit more diverse to me. I haven’t lived in Denver for a few years now though, so I can’t honestly say for sure. I love Denver, and there is a lot I miss about it, but I find Lexington music to be a little more interesting I suppose.

6) What was the first album you ever bought?

My first album as a gift was Magical Mystery Tour from my big brother when I was 8 years old. I probably bought the Human League record a year or so later… you know, the one with “Don’t You Want Me Baby?” So, yeah, I think that would be it…Human League.

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Chris Parfitt/Vince Mole and His Calcium Orchestra: August 27, 2006

Vince Mole and His Calcium Orchestra is understandably one of the more obscure Elephant 6 bands: its catalog exists entirely on vinyl and cassette. But that seems appropriate, suiting the lo-fi fuzz-rock contained within. Lead singer/songwriter Chris Parfitt spent time with The Apples in Stereo during that band’s formative years, lending his distinctive electric guitar to the Tidal Wave EP, and on tracks like “Motorcar” you can hear the aesthetic of noise that would come to define Vince Mole‘s songs, in particular the heavy, churning “Nothing,” and the exhilarating riff of “It’s Raining in My Mouth” (both on the self-titled single released by Jonathan Whiskey/Happy Happy Birthday to Me). Now Parfitt–who recently reconnected with some old Elephant 6 friends at the Os Mutantes reunion in New York–is planning the return of the Calcium Orchestra (bandmates include Kingsauce members Rich Chodes and Kevin Swope), and obliged Optical Atlas with a brief history of the band and a preview of what’s to come.

1) Can you sum up your history with the Apples? It seems you were in the band for a short period of time, until 1993, correct?

I met Robert [Schneider] in roughly July/August 1992 when he answered an ad my friends and I had put in Denver’s Westword looking for a bass player. That didn’t work out, but he and I hit it off over our mutual love of the Beach Boys and Pavement (among other things). Before long he introduced me to Jim McIntyre and Hilarie Sidney, and the four of us started the Apples. The original idea was to have a kind of quirky lo-fi pop band but with big fuzz/noise guitar atop. To my ears the best Apples recordings were the ones we did straight to boombox in the rehearsal space: rough as hell but they rocked like nobody’s bizness. The backing track to “Haley” on the first EP is from those tapes, incidentally. At any rate, various dramas both within and without the Apples kind of fucked everyone and everything up. My reaction to the situation(s) was unfortunately to crawl inside a bottle of beer. Eventually, after starting to record Vince Mole songs (all by my lonesomes on 4-track…an E6 cassette called Friends, Psychics, Visionaries…Lend Me Your Hair allegedly existed but the sands of time seem to have dissolved all copies…all I have is an old dub myself), I left the Apples, my then girlfriend, and the city of Denver, by popular demand. I headed for Coney Island where I, the esteemed Kevin Swope, and my childhood plague/bass player Rich Chodes hunkered down in an absolute shithole and recorded….

2) How did you come up with the name Vince Mole and His Calcium Orchestra?

“Vince Mole” is the name of a fake actor in a bit from the Firesign Theater record Dear Friends. If you haven’t heard them do yourself a favor and buy all their late 60’s/early 70’s LPs pronto. Greatest comedy records ever made.

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3) The first Vince Mole 7-inch EP was entitled Spend the Future in 1994. From the title can we imply that the recordings actually date back to ’94?

Some of them, yes. “Hitch,” “Droopy,” and “Show Up” were definitely recorded that October in Coney Island. I subsequently moved back to my home state of New Hampshire where we re-recorded a lot of stuff, but nothing could touch those versions for feel.

4) Do you have any particular recording technique that you identify with Vince Mole? It seems that the vocals are usually mixed pretty low and there’s a very loud and raw (and by that, I mean wonderful) sound in the instruments, particularly on the “Nothing” single–probably my favorite of your songs.

A lot of that is just me disliking my voice. Or sometimes my lyrics. But there’s also something to be said for confusion/murk. I dig the buried vocal/meaning. That sense of sort of floating in the sound. Or maybe I’ve listened to too much early R.E.M. and MBV! Not to mention Dinosaur…in fact, don’t mention them…

5) How often do you find yourself songwriting or recording these days?

Not as often as I’d like, but that’s likely to change as my home studio is just about finished, finally.

6) Will we see a Vince Mole album in the future, either a compilation of past singles or new material?

The short answers are yes and yes. The singles comp will definitely happen, but I’d like to finish up the 2/3-done full CD and put that out first. Exactly WHO will put any of this out is anyone’s guess; we may reactivate our once fledgling Former Brothers label.

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Jim McIntyre/Von Hemmling: June 7, 2006

The best way to begin this interview with might be with an extensive excerpt from a band bio of The Apples in Stereo written by Robert Schneider: “I (Robert S.) had just moved to Denver in late ’91 and I met this guy Jim McIntyre on the local commuter bus from Denver to Boulder, where we both attended university. I (being, according to Jim at the time, pathologically friendly) chatted with him daily and he would try to avoid me, as he is not a morning person. One day I asked him what kind of music he liked, and in that heyday of grunge and hard rock he thought a safe way to end the conversation would be to tell me his favorite band: The Beach Boys. Little did he know I was a certified lifelong Beach Boys nut and, as you can imagine, the conversation picked up after that. (I had not met anybody outside of my few best Elephant-6-to-be buddies who ever claimed the Boys as his/her favorite band. Nor had Jim.) Jim introduced me to Hilarie Sidney, his roommate, who also loved Beach Boys and the Beatles too, and also loved Pavement‘s singles, the Tall Dwarfs, the Unrest and other great underground stuff which turned out to be right up my pop-obsessed alley. They were both also heavily into the Velvet Underground, oldies radio, psychedelics/psychedelia, punk rock, and four track recording (also right up my alley). And Jim owned a bass and Hilarie owned a drum set, which they ‘played’ in a bizarre ‘band’ called Von Hemmling with their various friends, including a guy called John Hill. Quickly becoming best friends, we tossed around plans to start a band and a record label.”

McIntyre left The Apples in Stereo early on, although he contributed to all of their singles in the pre-Fun Trick Noisemaker days: notably he wrote “Touch the Water” and “To Love the Vibration of the Bulb” (which in itself sounds like a Von Hemmling title), and co-wrote “Stop Along the Way” with Schneider. (These early Apples recordings were compiled on the superb Science Faire CD on SpinArt Records.) In their Pet Sounds Studio in Denver, McIntyre hung around as engineer and contributor to some Apples records, but his original project, Von Hemmling, continued in the form of a track here, a track there, often during off-hours while other bands, like Neutral Milk Hotel and The Minders, were out of the studio. He released a 7″ in 1997 on Elephant 6, and the J.W. Kellogg EP followed in 1999. It wasn’t until 2005 that the dam broke and a flood of his recordings were heard, on a self-released full length compilation. Among the 26 tracks on Wild Hemmling are contributions from members of Dressy Bessy and High Water Marks, but don’t be fooled–this isn’t bubble-gum pop, but fiercely experimental and painstakingly assembled pieces of art.

1) I’d like to piece together the history of Von Hemmling. When did you first start recording music? Were you in a band prior to the Apples in Stereo?

Well I started recording at 8-9 yrs old with one of the 1970’s-style portable cassette recorders. You could hold the Play, Record and FF buttons down at the same time to make slow speed recordings. The playback would be pitched up, sped up. Great for making sound tales about insect or robot invasions. I was super into doing just that, bouncing from one tape deck to another. About a year or so later I got a 1/4 inch two-track open reel. I’d steal my sister’s tennis racket, tape a mic to it and play “guitar,” adding distortion and sound on sound tape delay. I thought I sounded like Hendrix. I got a Fostex X-15 four-track cassette in high school in like ’84 and went nuts on it until we established Pet Sounds studio (those recordings make up half of the unreleased CD La Guerre Est Meurtre 2002–my masterwork, to be presumptuous and pretentious). Apples was my first band other than three or four shows Hilarie and I did as Von Hemmling in very early 90’s. Those first gigs were all improv, VH live has always been big on improv. I played fucked-up guitars–one with a bridge made out of a coat hanger, another in which the neck had been snapped off and poorly nailed back together. The whole neck worked like a tremelo bar. I’ve always wound up doing things in a naive, isolated way. I obsessed with music and sound very early but didn’t hang out with other musicians until I was in my early twenties. I didn’t even realize there was a standard tuning for guitar until I was 21!

In ’92 in Denver I met fellow Southerner (I’m from Alabama) Robert and his friends Will [Hart, Olivia Tremor Control] and Jeff [Mangum, Neutral Milk Hotel] and Bill [Doss, Olivia Tremor Control] too (I think, maybe I just met Bill’s music then). We (including Hilarie) were all at the same place creatively, starting to take ourselves seriously as artists, and being part of this family strengthened my resolve to pursue my musical idiosyncrasy. The first officialVH release was the cassette in ’93 (one of the six or so cassettes that were featured in the first, and only, E6 mail order catalog). In ’95 I moved into a great space; it was a former fish market and storefront with a couple large rooms and high ceilings. I had a roommate at first but he attacked me and split my head open and subsequently departed, allowing the recording gear to move in. The first time I was in the building, the landlady showing me around, I saw the future. I knew what the studio was gonna be (although I didn’t foresee the head-smashing part). Anyway I started working on the 1/2-inch eight-track in-between the recording of E6 albums and got real busy by myself. The first vinyl release came out in ’97, the My Country Tis of Thee single. I made all the covers myself during the NMH Aeroplane sessions. There are four or five basic designs (they are construction paper), but each one is unique color-wise. Sometime in ’97 I recorded the J.W. Kellogg EP, which came out as a one-sided 12-inch on Eric Allen’s Shrat label. In ’98 Hilarie convinced me it would be a nice change to make a real band with real people.

I’d gone to Connecticut, recorded a couple of my songs with the Lilys and learned I felt confident directing musicians to play my music. I got a fabulous band together, my musical soulmate Rich Sandoval on guitar and a very progressive rhythm section of Dane Terry on drums and Rob Greene on bass. We played some great shows and recorded our stuff. A couple years later Rob left to concentrate on Dressy Bessy so Robert played bass for a year. This version of the band was very adept at four-hour practices in which we’d spend 20 minutes playing and the rest conversating (we did, however, partially record another set of songs). Next I moved to Kentucky, polled the locals to determine the best, most interesting musicians in town, convinced Mike Snowden, John Ferguson and Trevor Tremaine to play with me, played for a year or so, recorded an album’s worth of songs and got too sick to keep the band going (although I was able to compile and release my first CD, Wild Hemmling, an anthology of “singles” ’95-’04). My songs, while roughly executed, emphasize intricate instrumental parts and fairly complex rhythmic interplay. I’ve been blessed to play with some great, attentive musicians.

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2) What prompted leaving the Apples?

The usual stuff. The actual prompt was the distress of a love triangle, but there was more going on. I was having a hard time being an Apple, putting too much time and emphasis into something that was a little too artistically constraining and foreign (creatively collaborative) to me. The band had changed after we parted with Chris [Parfitt, Vince Mole and His Calcium Orchestra] as well. It went from being a four-part rock band to more of a vision of Robert deal. It’s cool the name changed cause the Apples and the Apples in Stereo were really two different entities. Everything worked out for the best because the breakup set the stage for the future. I got to spend my time on my music, we collaborated on the studio and Robert was able to reach his potential as band leader (although Hilarie was the driving force behind the band). The final thing is that I was very emotionally volatile when I was younger (well I guess I should say more emotionally volatile when I was younger); no one wanted to take a chance going on tour with me. People used to be freaked out about my temper and walked on a few proverbial eggshells around me.

3) Little Fyodor [of Little Fyodor and Babushka, and a friend to Elephant 6 in the early Denver years] posted a comment at Optical Atlas that he’s responsible for naming Von Hemmling. How did that come about?

It was a pisstake. I didn’t particularly like it at first, but kept it outta deference to Fyodor. Now I’m comfy with it.

Okay, so we asked Little Fyodor, who replied: “Pisstake? Funny guy. My memory is this, exactly. We’re hanging with our friend, Alan Smith, in his basement room, listening to music, kinda loud. I don’t remember what we were talking about, but Jim says something, and I couldn’t here him clearly and I said, “What’d you say? Von Hemmling?” And Jim rolls over laughing on Alan’s bed (where he was sitting) and goes, “No, I said, ‘Don Henley!’ But Von Hemmling, that’s great! That’s now the name of my band!!” Before that he wasn’t sure what to call his band (which was him and Hilarie). He gave me two tapes of his music before that, one was called Fluorescent Fish, I forget what the other was called. But he or they hadn’t settled on a name. From that moment on they were Von Hemmling. I can’t imagine why he thinks I would have cared if he had changed his mind anywhere from 5 seconds later to right now. It wasn’t my idea, just what I thought he said…Von Hemmling opened for my band two or three times before Robert showed up and Elephant 6 happened…I wanna add that Jim’s a great guy (if funny, like me!) and I wish him all the best!!”

4) My favorite track on Wild Hemmling might be “Carson City”; do you remember how you went about writing it and putting it together? (Or “China Star.” One of those.)

“Carson City”‘s from 1997, it quotes or paraphrases stuff a barber who used to cut my hair would tell me. He was an elderly dude who was really into atheism and making rubber stamps; his shop walls were covered in stickers and stamps denegrating Christianity. He loved talking about cosmology but didn’t know very much about it. He also had an incredible jukebox full of Western swing tunes. The instumental change after the second chorus sounds like a splice/edit, but actually it’s a mute, I loved those mute buttons. I’d pile on the tracks and mute out the main stuff to emphasize significant changes. Rebecca [Cole] from the Minders is the female voice; I forgot to credit her on the CD. Lovely performance by Rebecca. “China Star” (2004) was an attempt to write the stupidest dramatic lyrics possible. The dumbest idea for a rock opera I could come up with was one about a modern first Christmas/birth of Jesus. Mary and Joseph are on the streets of a modern city, desperately seeking shelter. Joseph is a junkie who makes the ultimate sacrifice of foregoing heroin in order to find a place for the Son of God to be born. It’s the whole “omnipotence of God mediated by human frailty” thing. Stupid shit. The title is taken from a Chinese food restaurant in Lexington. It’s east of my old apartment and for a couple of months after its opening I took my riches there and received otherworldly fast food salvation. Then it got real popular and the cooks became overworked and jaded and terrestrially mortal.

My most recent lyrics are formally conceptual. The lyrics to “Fear of Poor Sexual Perfomance” are actually presented loosely as matrices. I approached each verse as a matrix, which is operated on by the underlying narrative. The point was to transform each verse logically, instead of just writing a linear story. The effectiveness of this approach is debatable, but I’m happy with the results. The coda to the song is more straightforward (and makes the title explicit), although ambivalent as to the resolution being suicide or copulation. As for the music, “China Star” really illustrates my harmonic language. Obviously I neither learned nor was interested in standard music theory, just cobbled together my own sound. Too much naivete and Ives influence. And like all E6’ers I love 60’s pop art music dearly so I attempted to create catchy communications with strange foundations. A lotta “China Star” is based around moveable three note guitar chords, using bunches of major triads to produce a fuzzy sense of tonality. Eventually I realized my disinterest in standard theory was founded on my dislike of the standard tuning system (equal temperament). Now I’ve gone all the way to loving the just intonation, although I’m not necessarily interested in writing justly untempered music. Someone should mass produce just guitars. Online I’ve seen people who make their own, setting the frets differently for each string (Harry Partch made fretless guitars and painted the fret boards to delineate the stops [of course we’d need modified tuners as well, and some standardization of pitches]). Adventurous young musicians who want to use guitars should go this route. But please don’t rely on synthesized just tones. That’s a little too ironic to my mind.

vhlaguerrecover

5) You’ve mentioned that you have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome [“CFFS (Chronic Forking Fatigue Syndrome),” on the Wild Hemmling Bonus CD-R given away with copies of the album], and have written a song about it; has this affected your work in music, or has music helped?

Music definitely doesn’t help. All effort makes me sicker. The crux of this illness is an intolerance of any exertion, even mental. The other prominent symptom is an extreme chemical intolerance. The song is about being literally paralyzed by the sickness, or more precisely by something I was taking for it. It took a long time to piece together exactly what has been going on. Right now I’m again doubly fucked up as I’ve had a serious reaction to some other medicine prescribed me over a year ago. Unfortunately it looks like it’s gonna be quite awhile until I’m well again. I’m optimistic someday it’ll happen.

6) Have you retired Von Hemmling, or will there be any new material (or rereleases) in the future?

I’m done with the kinda stuff I’ve been doing, I’m into other things now. I’ll keep the name for whatever creative output comes though, it’s my brand. As for my new direction I want that to be obscure until I finish something, but I’m working when I’m physically able. Rereleases or releases of unreleases? If someone is interested, they can go for it. I did Wild Hemmling myself and sold less than 50 copies before I got extra sick. The rest are in a box at Robert’s house.

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