Stream: Kronos Quartet “Nihavent Sirto”

(from Floodplain out now on Nonesuch)

Kronos Quartet connect the severe to the serene with four sets of strings and a preternatural sense for ceremony and resonance. They will be performing several shows this month including work by Harry Partch, Frank Zappa and a commissioned piece by film composer Tom Newman called “It Got Dark.” This interview by Dan Collins.

You just played with Terry Riley at Disney Hall last month, but he actually wrote an album for you a few years earlier, right?
David Harrington (violin): The Cusp of Magic. That’s a piece that Terry wrote for Kronos and the great pipa player Wu Man. And it’s a marvelous amazing piece of music. The pipa is the most classical of all Chinese plucked instruments, and I think Terry found a way of fusing the sound of the Chinese pipa and the sound of Kronos in such a magical… it kind of turned Kronos upside down because the first movement starts with me being the drummer! I’ll never forget the very first time we played it in concert. It was so weird to be in the role of the drummer, and I play a bass drum with a foot pedal and I have a shaker—a big peyote rattle. So I really am using both arms and legs. And then in the second movement, I suddenly pick up my instrument after kind of controlling the pulse for ten minutes, and I saw how different it is to be a drummer and a violinist because I had to be both on the same piece! And then a couple of the movements of The Cusp of Magic use kids’ toys. I’ll never forget when Terry came over to my home—my granddaughter was about one year old at the time and we sampled the sounds of a bunch of her toys, and they ended up becoming part of the piece. And then to do it live, we needed some of those toys—ha ha! Though I did promise her recently that she’ll get her toys back sometime.
Kronos Quartet has worked with a lot of rock acts. You recorded a piece for David Byrne’s film True Stories. And you did a cover of Television on the Elektra Rubaiyat compilation. And you did a Dead Kennedys song, ‘Moon over Marin…’
David Harrington: We never covered the Dead Kennedys. We did ‘Purple Haze.’
Oh, I’m thinking of ‘Marquee Moon’—I got my moons mixed up! But you certainly did a lot of covers. Is that how you made your mark? When did you know that you’d arrived?
David Harrington: Oh, I don’t know that we’ve arrived. We’re still in the process of getting where we’re getting. It’s one of the things I love about music—there’s so many things that can be done, and that it’s possible to be part of. I love the fact that nobody owns music. None of us own it. We just get to participate in it and share it. And that’s about all I know about it. I’m just one of those people who’s really happy being a musician.
I hope so—you guys have been together for thirty-six years! But for the last few years, you’ve been woman-less in your quartet. Is it a different dynamic?
David Harrington: Well, Jeff has been in Kronos since the last five years. I mean, when the group first started in 1973, it was four guys. And then Joan Jeanrenaud joined in 1978. So for the first five years, it was all guys. Or the first four years I guess—there were several changes of membership initially. It’s definitely different. And it’s interesting—Jeff Ziegler grew up hearing Joan play in Kronos, and Jeff and Joan are friends now. She’s a marvelous person. As a matter of fact, Joan is going to join us in a couple of weeks. We’re doing a quintet piece by a magnificent Russian composer named Vladimir Martynov. Vladimir has written a piece for Kronos plus an extra cellist, and I wanted to do something with Joan again—so this is it!
One of my favorite experiments I’ve heard from you guys recently is a piece you did on your 2009 album, Floodplains. It’s the piece from Kazakhstan, ‘Kara Kemir.’ It starts off sophisticated and intricate, and then gets simple and driving, folky—almost punk rock. It sounds genre-bending to my untrained ears.
David Harrington: That’s another great thing about music. However it sounds to you is the way it sounds. It’s like everybody has their own vocabulary with music—their own personal relationship. Everybody’s their own expert.
What was the name of that composer again? Kuat Shildebaev?
David Harrington: I can’t remember his name at the moment, but I first heard that piece on this very obscure recording that was made in Hungary. And at that point, the album didn’t even have the name of a composer on it. So it took some research to find out who had actually written the music.
The Green Umbrella showcased Gyorgi Ligeti’s Aventures and Nouvelle Aventures last year around this time. Have you ever performed any Ligeti?
David Harrington: We did the Hungarian premiere of Ligeti’s first string quartet, actually—that was written in 1950, I think. It was not played in Hungary until we did it in the eighties. We’ve played both of his string quartet pieces.
But you’ve done the opposite side of the spectrum, too—you’ve played with the Dave Matthews Band. Why would you do that?
David Harrington: You know what? He called us up and he knew all of our albums and he was incredibly conversant with our music. He’s a very good musician. We got into the studio, he knew exactly what he hoped would result, and we just really liked the music and the group, and we had a very good time.
Have there been some artists that you thought about working with and you eventually decided ‘maybe this is just not right for us?’
David Harrington: People decide that kind of thing all the time. Fortunately, there’s enough music in the universe, so there’s plenty that’s going to feel great. What I’m finding is how many things there are that I really can’t wait to do in the world of music. For me, the days just aren’t long enough. I’ve been a Sigur Ros fan since the first time I ever heard them. I just think they’re a wonderful group. We’re working with Bryce Dessner who’s in the National, and I think that’s a tremendous group. I mean, it’s interesting—for me, it’ll take me a few hours to tell you all the music that’s in my iPod! There’s a wonderful group that’s coming over from Sweden called Hurdy-Gurdy. We’re bringing them over for our perspectives concerts at Carnegie Hall in March. This is a group of two guys who play hurdy gurdy. And they make this music unlike anything I’ve ever heard before—beautiful, wonderful, fascinating… awesome!
What’s the most mind-blowing collaboration you’ve ever done?
David Harrington: Probably our most recent collaboration, a week ago. We just did our next piece with Wu Man—we premiered a piece called ‘A Chinese Home,’ and it featured an amazing video by Chen Shi-Zheng. And I spent several years getting the music together for this piece. There were a lot of amazing different instruments that we all played—basically, it was a theater piece! We were also acting. The whole piece explores the idea of home, and homeland, and it was inspired by a visit to a 300-year-old Chinese home that was brought piece by piece to the United States. Everybody that saw the show in New York said it was the most mind-boggling thing they’ve seen us do.
You’re still based in San Francisco—but what’s the one thing L.A. has hands-down better than San Francisco?
David Harrington: They definitely have a better baseball team!

THE KRONOS QUARTET ON TUE., DEC. 1, THUR., DEC. 3 AND FRI., DEC. 5 AT THE WEST COAST LEFT COAST FESTIVAL AT WALT DISNEY CONCERT HALL, 111 S. GRAND AVE., DOWNTOWN. SCHEDULE, PROGRAM DETAILS AND TICKET PRICES AT LAPHIL.COM. THE KRONOS QUARTET’S FLOODPLAIN IS OUT NOW ON NONESUCH. VISIT THE KRONOS QUARTET AT KRONOSQUARTET.ORG OR MYSPACE.COM/KRONOSQUARTET.

Stream: Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears “I’m Broke”

(from Tell ‘Em What Your Name Is out now on Lost Highway)

Black Joe Lewis is a Texas soul shouter who would have been at home on Sue in 1966 but finds himself instead on Lost Horizon with his band the Honeybears. He’s opened for Little Richard but his favorite rock ‘n’ roll band is Rocket From The Tombs and he loved Star Trek right up to the point J.J. Abrams got hold of it. He speaks now from a parking lot in Tennessee. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

What was the number one pawned item you saw when you worked at the pawn shop?
Black Joe Lewis (vocals): Probably guns or tools. It was an interesting job. I kinda walked out on my boss at the one that I worked at most of the time. He was—do you watch The Simpsons? The guy who made up the Simpsons characters saw him and made up the comic book store character.
You worked for the actual Comic Book Guy?
I swear to God, dude. Red pony tail, bald on top, beard—his butt crack always stuck out. He was a total asshole but he wasn’t a comic book nerd—he was a gun freak. He was like in his forties and he lived with his parents still because he was in debt because he had so many guns. I was like, ‘How many guns do you have?’ ‘Last time I checked, over 80.’
Did he have a special gun that he was uncomfortably in love with?
Yeah—he had this old Smith and Wesson revolver. Like a fucking Old Western six shooter. And he did this thing every weekend where he dressed up—like a Renaissance fair—dressed up like Civil War and cowboy characters and they’d go and show off their shooting skills. He was a fucking dork—such an asshole. We hated each other. It was just me and him and we worked there all day long together. It was at the same time as the first Bush and Gore election was going on. I was like 18 and it was the first time I was going to be able to vote. And he was a hardcore Republican and I wasn’t and we’d sit there and argue all fucking day. We just didn’t like each other—he was so conservative, man. He would sit there and argue about every little thing—like race, politics, everything. He was a dick.
Did he have a single redeeming characteristic?
Uh.
He was kind to small animals?
Nah, he got shot in his hand. That was kinda stupid too. He was a dick, dude—a total Texan Republican. I walked out on him one day. I just couldn’t stand him and I told him I was gonna put gas in my car and I got in my car and never went back.
Is that what led to the song ‘I’m Broke’?
No. ‘I’m Broke’ is just about your average person who is having a tough time.
I noticed in that picture where the band is in Star Trek uniforms, you’re wearing the blue of the science-medical officer. Why not gold or red?
Why I went to blue? In the last picture? The last one is because we lost all the shirts. I had the original yellow and I’m just a big Star Trek fan from childhood.
What’s your favorite episode of the original series?
Probably the ones with Khan. He was insane. The guy that played him, Ricardo Montalban—I just thought he was a really good actor. Him and Shatner together—Shatner would just drive him nuts, like in the movie too.
Do you think that you have to have a nemesis in your life to really attain your full potential as a creative person?
It’s hard to say because I’ve had people that I couldn’t stand and I tried to catch them. But now I don’t really try to hate on people too much. Well—since you’re talking about the Star Trek thing, my ultimate nemesis is J.J. Abrams. He straight up ruined the story of Star Trek. I wanted to throw my drink at the screen. I was pissed. There’s never gonna be a continuation of what it should be—Star Trek’s dead, man. When I saw previews for the movie, I was really excited. I was thinking it was gonna be awesome and everybody was saying J.J. Abrams wrote Lost. I went in there and I was fucking pumped and then it was like Melrose Place—a bunch of teenagers.
What is the essential thing about Star Trek that he missed?
The biggest thing is he blew up the planet Vulcan. You can’t have Star Trek without Vulcan. And Spock and Uhura were hooking up—that would never happen. In the older series, the characters were so much more professional—like military. Like hardcore guys. In this one they’re making jokes and running around.
Do you run the Honeybears with that Starfleet discipline?
Not really. I tried.
It seems like every chance you get you wanna say something about 8-Ball and MJG. Per their album Comin Out Hard, what’s the hardest you ever came out?
We did this thing at our last show in Austin where the bass player played in a wheelchair the whole time. And at the end of the show, I healed him—like the dudes on the Christian channel. The preachers. And he jumped up and spun around—everybody loved it. And then this guy back home—one of the writers—he didn’t want to write about it and so he wrote about every band but us. I was like, ‘Man, you couldn’t write about the wheelchair thing?’
But you got Barack Obama talking about you.
Exactly. I want to try to meet him one day. Isn’t he a Bob Dylan fan? I didn’t catch all the bands he liked—I remember they were talking about the iPods.
If you guys covered a Rocket From the Tombs song, which would it be?
In my old band, we did ‘(I Want You To Know) What Love Is.’ We never really started doing that in this band—I don’t know why. I love that band a lot. It’d probably be that one again because I already know it and then—‘Ain’t It Fun’ is always good.
So you’re a Peter Laughner fan?
Oh yeah. Rocket From the Tombs and the Dead Boys is my favorite rock ‘n’ roll ever. The greatest rock ‘n’ roll.
What screamers are closest to your heart?
Definitely James Brown. Bunker Hill—he’s bad ass. I guess you’ve got Little Richard, too.
Did you meet him when you played with him?
No, he was in a really, really bad mood. I didn’t get anywhere near him. He was complaining about everything on the stage. It was almost like a comedy show. He started bitching about Pat Boone stuff from the fifties.
The great ‘Tutti Frutti betrayal?
He made everybody but their camera’s away in the crowd and then he kept saying how Asian people have pretty skin. And he was like, ‘Y’all like my boots?’ I wanted him to play ‘Rip It Up’ but he never did.
What’s the nastiest thing you can say in a foreign language if you have to?
When I was in Holland they taught me how to say, ‘Bitch, I love you.’
What’s the dirtiest record in your collection?
The dirtiest record I’ve got is probably one of Eazy E’s.
How soon do you think you’ll get around to naming that record after Nat Turner?
Hopefully next one.
Any other revolutionaries you’d like to mention?
Karl Marx is always cool. Che Guevara. I’ve been reading a lot of that Howard Zinn book—I’ve been learning about it a lot. They were all like the guys who were early in the movement before it had corruption. Like Karl Marx wrote it from his prison cell or whatever. Later on when people got power, they start getting crazy.
What kind of song would you write if you found out you only had a year to live?
I would write a song about Canada. No one cares about Canada.
You once said you wanna be the black Elvis—are you still working on that?
Yeah, I’m still working.
How close are you? Are you the black Carl Perkins?
No—I don’t have any money yet!
If you end up coming into a million dollars, what shape do you want your swimming pool to be?
The shape of a butt.

BLACK JOE LEWIS AND THE HONEYBEARS WITH EXTRA GOLDEN ON MON., AUG 31, AT THE TROUBADOUR, 9081 SANTA MONICA BLVD., WEST HOLLYWOOD. 8PM / $15 / ALL AGES. TROUBADOUR.COM. BLACK JOE LEWIS AND THE HONEYBEARS’ TELL ‘EM WHAT YOUR NAME IS IS OUT NOW ON LOST HIGHWAY. VISIT BLACK JOE LEWIS AND THE HONEY BEARS AT BLACKJOELEWIS.COM OR ON MYSPACE AT MYSPACE.COM/BLACKJOELEWIS.

Download: Handsome Furs “Radio Kaliningrad”

(from Face Control out now on Sub Pop)

Handsome Furs are husband-and-wife team Dan Boeckner (also in Wolf Parade) and Alexei Perry and their new album Face Control blends classic rock riffs with a techno beat. They have been to many places you have never heard of. Alexei takes time out from a day at the beach to do this interview. This interview by Tom Child.

Are you in America now?
Alexei Perry (synth/drum machines): We’re in Vancouver now, actually. Basically in the last week we flew from Bucharest to Portugal to Montreal to Chicago to Vancouver. It’s wild, I have no idea what time it is. It’s beach time, actually. That’s what Dan just said. We’re sitting on English Bay right now. We used to live in this area, so we’re having a bit of a beach date. It’s gorgeous. Yeah, it’s beautiful. I have a bikini on. It’s nice.
I don’t think I’ve ever conducted an interview with someone in a bikini before.
I get very little downtime, so I’m eating it up.
What inspired you two to first form Handsome Furs?
I think it happened pretty naturally really. We were both living in a pretty small place and we ended up just sort of working on each other’s stuff. Dan was editing a lot of my stories and we bought a drum machine and started working stuff out together on that. There’s no big story about it, really. We just enjoy working on projects together I think. And also we really wanted to do a lot of traveling together. That was a big reason for starting our band.
How did you first become interested in being a writer?
I’ve been writing since I was a little kid. I think my dad would say that it started when he was telling me stories. He always used to come up with stories when I was falling asleep and I could never fall asleep because I was always fascinated. He would try to throw in new words for me—words that I wouldn’t know. So I would always sort of leap onto each new phrase and ask him all about it. I’ve just always loved words and I’ve always written and it’s always been the most important thing in the world to me.
I read that a poem you had written when you were 13 was submitted by your teacher without your knowledge and was published in Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul…
I hate that people know that story! How embarrassing.
I was just wondering if you’d received any residuals.
Yeah, that was actually kind of a weird story for me. I was, I think, 12 or something when I wrote that and the teacher submitted it. The poem actually got completely lopped in half and I was really unhappy about it. But to my 12-year-old bank account, $300 was pretty awesome. And I continue, to this day, to get a lot of fan mail from prisons around the world. So that’s something.
I did a search for your name on Amazon.com and the three books that came up were…one of them was Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul, and the other two that popped up were Thomas Canby’s From Botswana to the Bering Sea—My Thirty Years with National Geographic and Mike Toth’s Fashion Icon: The Power and Influence of Graphic Design. Do you find any cosmic significance in this?
That’s perfect! That’s great. That’s all the things I love. Messed up teenagers, fashion and travel. I’ve been published in a lot of compilations and I hand bind things and sell things at little stores and galleries. I have a collection that I want to work on getting published. I just haven’t totally had the time to make it happen yet, but I’m working on it.
And you sell your books at the merch table on tour.
Yeah, those are some of the funner, lighter kind of things. It’s a good way to get words out there. I’m not one for having things online. I’m kind of a neo-Luddite. Me having this cell phone, actually…I just got it three days ago and I still don’t really know how to do anything on it and it’s the first cell phone I’ve ever had. I still write on a crappy old Underwood typewriter, so I’m getting used to the real world.
The music of Handsome Furs seems to express some sort of anxiety about our increasing reliance on social interaction through computers or digital technology. What aspect of this trend is most troubling to you?
Well, to be totally honest, there are good and bad things about it. For us, because we’re trying to play in a lot of different places, the one lovely thing about our music being available everywhere by the Internet is that people like in Belgrade have access to it, where we otherwise don’t have distribution. People can listen to our music and find out about us that way, which I think is great. It can all be used for really great things. But there’s a lot I find troubling about it. I think people don’t have the same experience that I did listening to music growing up, and waiting for release dates and going down to the local record store and actually getting this thing in your hand and enjoying it the whole way through. So I think that’s a sadness. And I think there’s just so much that’s available that people don’t take the time to get really devoted to bands anymore, which is unfortunate. And it’s not the way that I experience things. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe it’s just as good, but for me it’s a totally foreign way of listening to music or appreciating anything really. It’s the same reason why I don’t want to make my writing available online because I don’t want it to be read that way. I want people to sit down with it and actually take time with it. I think that’s been lost and that’s terrible.
It’s really hard for me to get into reading anything of any length or impact online.
I know—I have no patience for it. I can’t personally do it. And I find you can tell. Maybe I’m hypersensitive to this kind of stuff, but I can really tell the difference between blog writing and story writing—like when you’re writing in a journal or whatever, is so totally different. There’s not a whole lot of craft. There’s a lot that gets lost when you live exclusively in your computer, I think. I’m fortunately not one of those folks, so I get to appreciate things in really great ways.
Would you say that you and Dan have an equal level of distrust of these sorts of technologies?
I think so. Like I said, I think we both see the stuff that’s good about it and the stuff that sucks about it. I think Dan feels the same I do. He’s sitting beside me. I can ask him. How do you feel about technology, baby? He’s shaking his head. He’s reading the paper. That’s how he feels about it. We’re sitting on the beach reading books and the newspaper, so…
When you two are writing songs together, how does the process work?
It’s different for every song actually. We both work on different parts separately and then flesh them out together. We’ll come up with riffs or drum machine patterns and then bring things into the studio and try to make sense of it all. But I think we both do a pretty equal amount of all parts of it. We both do lyric writing and drum machine programming. I don’t do any guitar, but I’ll have ideas about it. It’s a pretty natural thing and we’re pretty fortunate because we live together and work together and travel together so whenever we have ideas we get to get them out pretty quickly, just because we’re together. So that part is really nice.
When you got your drum machine and synthesizer, did you have a specific sound you knew you wanted? Or did you buy the equipment first and then figure out what sounds you liked?
It was a combination of the things that I ended up getting being cheap because I was totally broke, and you know, I had a lot of friends recommending different things to me that were a lot fancier and a lot cooler. I’m not terribly hip, you know, so for me I just wanted the drum machine to be really tactile and something I could play live. I have no interest in using computer programs and stuff to do that, because I know you can just press play and play along with that, but for me, it’s a lot more interesting to be able to trigger things live. I guess those were sort of my reasons for getting the things that I got.
You and Dan met at a telemarketing job. Do you have any telemarketing horror stories you care to share?
It was a nightmare the whole way through. The place were we worked, we were selling basically bogus business directories to old ladies taking care of crumbling businesses, especially in the southwest of America.
Any terrible stories?
Well, you know, like cokehead bosses, stuff like that. But we made it through pretty unscathed just because we were in it together. We tried to spend as many hours as we possibly could making out in the elevator rather than being on the phone. But we got fired for that kind of behavior.
A lot of bands absolutely hate touring. How do you think you and Dan are different, personality-wise, from other bands where that’s their least favorite part of the business?
I understand why a lot of bands hate touring. It’s a grueling lifestyle. And I think the more people you have involved in any project you do, the more difficult it can be. I know that for Dan and I touring is relatively painless because it’s just the two of us trying to figure out where to have dinner or what museum to try to check out before sound check. So the same challenges that exist in other bands, we don’t face. We’re also such a compact band. We have such little gear that we can travel in a car or trains or planes much more easily than other bands. We don’t have those same sorts of hardships. And a lot of other people don’t like being away from home as much as Dan and I do. I could be on the road forever. I feel so fucking lucky to be able to go to the places that we get to go. I never, ever though that that would happen for me. And traveling has always been such a huge deal to me and what I wanted to do most in my life, so I can’t take that for granted. Whereas a lot of other people, they want to spend more time at home, working on other things, which I totally understand. But Dan and I both come from kind of meager backgrounds, not having a lot of money, and we both like to work really hard at what we do. I just feel tremendously lucky to meet the people that we do in the places that we get to go to. It’s the best job in the world.
What’s your favorite place you’ve been?
There are a lot. I’ll just go with the most recent one that was really touching for me. We just spent a week in Bucharest and I have never felt more alive in any city. I think there is so much going on there that is incredible. It’s a very unusual city. It’s got 300,000 stray dogs and a lot of people living with very little. It’s the most densely packed city in Europe and it just feels like people have so much will to do so much, no matter what they have and I find that just incredibly inspiring. We met so many writers and artists and musicians while we were there that were just doing really incredible things. It was eye-opening and I loved every minute of being there. And it was also hot and filthy and the architecture is both beautiful and horrible. It’s just got an incredible and exciting nature that I can’t wait to go back to. I’ll go back there as soon as I can because I think that there’s so much good that’s going on. But there’s a multitude of cities that I hold dear to my heart. We’ve had incredible times in Helsinki and Moscow and New York and I like L.A. and I don’t know—there are a lot of places I really really love and a lot of places that I never would have known I would have loved, you know? We played in Klaipeda and it was a really, really cool place, so…who knew? It’s a really small little city on a port right near Kaliningrad and I never would have heard of it unless we were playing there. We’re trying to get to China and Singapore. We haven’t played anywhere in Asia and I’m tremendously excited about doing that. We’re trying to figure out playing in Beirut and Istanbul. The truth is I want to play everywhere we possibly can. I want to go everywhere, so name it, and that’s a place I’d like to play.
What is the most unlikely place you’ve found yourself playing?
Probably Klaipeda. It was totally bizzaro. It was a very, very strange place and the venue we played was really weird. It felt like we were in Russia, but in small town, middle-of-nowhere Russia. There was a lot of money at the club and a lot of security and face control and all that jazz. It just felt totally foreign, like I’d never been to any place like that. There were all these sunken submarines that you could still see in the harbor and that was really cool. That place was a real surprise and I loved it.
Have you or Dan ever found yourselves victims of a particularly harsh face control policy, either literally or metaphorically?
Coming into your fair country, yeah. We did actually face face control while we were in Russia, but on a pretty light scale. We tried to go for lunch, totally midday, at a buffet place and there was a guy who face controlled us and we were fortunate enough to be with this girl named Anja who was working with the promoter and she luckily talked our way into the place. As far as other kinds of face control, yeah, the harshest I’ve probably faced was trying to come to the U.S. without proper visas and getting denied. Yeah, that was a pretty shitty experience. Those wounds have healed and everything, but that was a pretty lousy day. It was really, really hard on me. I mean, for about nine hours, I basically thought I was going to jail for ten years. Yeah, I did a lot of crying that day.
On behalf of my country, I apologize.
Oh, it’s not your fault. I think we’re not much better up in Canada. It is what it is. Those borders are tricky. I wish things would get a little easier, especially for musicians. The laws should be a little different. It’s not like we’re coming down to steal your jobs. We’re just coming down for a few days to play shows that generate you more money.
You and Dan had composed a list of tips for successful touring as a couple for Anthem. Are there any updates to that since you wrote that?
The truth is, for that thing, we wrote about nine pages and told them to choose whatever you want, so if you want me to send you the list, I have a much more complete list. It was really long and they had to edit it. Yeah, we’ve got lots of advice.
Maybe this is too personal a question, but has it always been smooth touring with Dan?
Yeah, it has been. We travel really easily together, and we both like what we do so much that we don’t really hit too many snags along the way. Our only grievances are not getting enough alone time or quiet time to ourselves. You’re always doing something while you’re on tour, whether it’s sound checking or whatever, there are always a lot of things you have to be on top of. And we manage the band ourselves, so the business-y stuff we have to do on the road…yeah, there’s very little that we’ve had that has been hard. I think we’re pretty lucky. A lot of bands face problems that we don’t have. It’s pretty easy.
You’ve said you can’t be afraid to get injured while you’re onstage. I was wondering what the worst injury you’ve sustained in service to Handsome Furs has been?
Well, I’ll tell the most recent one just because it’s funny. It’s not actually my injury, it’s Dan’s. We were playing in Belgrade in Serbia and Dan got yanked off the stage by an awesome amount of moshing fans, which was so great. It was so awesome, but he got pulled offstage and he sort of hit his forehead on the monitor as he came down and didn’t realize that he got a pretty significant gash on his forehead. So he got back up and started singing and he was just completely covered in blood to the point where all the guys and girls who had pulled him offstage basically ran from him in horror. ‘Holy shit, he’s covered in blood!’ So that one was pretty good and he gets to say that he bled in Serbia now.
You’ve said that your experiences in Eastern Europe and the Balkans shaped the themes or sounds of Face Control—what kind of music were you listening to you while you were there?
They listen to a lot of shitty techno, but it’s kind of awesome because it’s a lot of stuff from the ‘90s that’s really nostalgic for them. So you go into these clubs and to my ears, it sounds like garbage, but these songs have actually changed people’s lives. So we listened to a lot of that. I think that was influential sonically. We just wanted to create something that was really immediate because what we were finding with the people we were meeting was that people would joke a lot about life being shitty and the only relief from it was being able to dance it away or listen to music, so I wanted to, in some way, give that back. So I wanted to make something that was more danceable and beat driven and heavier. I feel a lot of kinship with that. Life is not always what you want it to be and sometimes the only thing you can do is make yourself feel good. And dancing is nice, it helps.
Is that a particularly uniquely Eastern European attitude? ‘Life sucks, let’s dance?’
Well, it feels that way sometimes. Maybe it’s just the people we’ve met. I know that when I go to shows in North America, it can be quite different. People aren’t necessarily there for the same reasons, just to feel joy. Sometimes folks are there for a lot of other reasons, whether it’s to be cool or whatever. At least with the shows we’ve played, I feel that people in Eastern Europe were there for the right reason, and that’s just to try to find joy. I know that sounds really cheesy, but there’s something great about that.
On your bio on the Sub Pop site, it says that you are simultaneously a political band and not a political band. What’s your interpretation of that?
It was an Icelandic journalist who wrote that, and I think that’s a pretty apt description of us. I think we want to comment on the world we’re having to deal with but I don’t have any political agenda and I don’t have any good answers. So as much as I want to talk about the things that I find unjust or dissatisfying, I don’t have any of the answers. I just want to be able to comment on them.
Did you stay at the Hotel Arbat and if so, how did you find the accomodations?
The Hotel Arbat is hilarious. It’s actually owned by Putin and it’s right on the pedestrian street called Arbat. The facade of the building and the lobby is totally grandiose. There are chandeliers and everything’s marble and plush velvet curtains. Then you go into your room and it’s sort of shabby. It’s got industrial soap and the perks that you’re expecting to find aren’t there. So it’s an awesome juxtaposition of being very showy and yet it’s probably the same soap they had during Soviet times. You’re using it to shower off under terrible water pressure. When we were walking down Arbat, I saw an enormous amount of wealth…wealth that I’d never really seen on those kinds of levels. Really crazy, crazy money. And on that street, there are women who have made their homes in port-a-potties. So that was a pretty wild thing to witness. But I mean, I love it, I don’t mean that as a negative and you see that sort of divide between rich and poor everywhere, but it was such an extreme level I found it pretty mind blowing. And I also thought it was really cool that the dogs can navigate the subway systems.
They actually get on the trains and get off at their stop?
Yeah. It was amazing. We entered the subway and the cars are pretty old. A lot of them are still these wood lined cars. We saw these packs of dogs that get on and off at the right stops. They really know where they’re going. It was hilarious. And it’s funny because I think there’s something valued by the people of Moscow. People love that there. In one of the main stations we were in, there were all these statues of dogs that you rub for good luck.
I was reading in another interview that Dan said ‘Handsome Furs Hate This City’ was at least a tiny bit inspired by L.A. What happened to you here and is there anything I can say to help change your mind?
We don’t hate L.A.—we don’t hate L.A. But we did write that song in L.A. That’s the only reason. That song isn’t about any particular city, to be honest. We did a number of shows opening for Modest Mouse when we were just getting started and we wrote that in the dressing room before going onstage in front of a couple thousand people and it was one of the scariest things I’ve ever done. I’m not used to performing in general. I mean, I am now, but when we started I was. I’m a very solitary girl and so it was a strange thing for me, an incredible challenge. That’s the only reason that song has anything to do with L.A. I like L.A. There are things, of course, I hate about it, but we’ve always had really awesome times there.
Is there a city that just really seems to get Handsome Furs?
There are two. I think that’s a hard question to answer because every night is different and every time we play in those cities is different, but the two places I’ve played where I felt most conceptually understood or whatever have been Belgrade and Helsinki. The crowds have been really really really good there. I don’t know why, they just somehow get it on a gut level.
If you could open for any band in history, who do you think would be best matched with Handsome Furs?
I don’t know. That’s tricky. There are a lot of bands I like, but then a lot of bands I just think would be cool to open for. I’d like to open for Tina Turner. I don’t know, that’s too hard for me.
That would be a good match. I wouldn’t necessarily have thought of that.
I’ll stick with that then.
You and Dan both seem to be very open and honest about all sorts of things in your life, from drug use to your relationship. Have you ever experienced any fallout from being that honest in interviews?
Well, yeah—we try to be as frank and open as possible because that’s what we’re trying to do with our music anyway, to be honest about everything we’re doing. My mom hates that I smoke in press photos. There have been some things that people have said negative things about, but I don’t really care. There have been a lot of things said that were untrue, but I think for the most part, we can back up whatever we’ve said in interviews. Anything that’s been said negatively, I don’t really care because that’s who I am.
Not to take up anymore of your beach time, but what is the viscous zombie fluid from the ‘I’m Confused’ video composed of?
I don’t even know exactly what it was, to be honest. I think it was toothpaste and cake mix and baking powder. It was disgusting. And actually at the end, when Dan spits it in my mouth, he was supposed to wait for his cue, but it was so gross for him that he ended up spitting early, so when I’m choking in the video, that was real. It was like, ‘Woah, my God, I wasn’t prepared for that.’ And it totally stained our teeth and skin for the next couple weeks, so we just looked like hell.

THE HANDSOME FURS WITH THE CINNAMON BAND AND THE MONOLATORS ON THUR., JUNE 11, AT THE ECHOPLEX, 1154 GLENDALE BLVD., ECHO PARK. 8:30 PM / $13-$15 / 18+. ATTHEECHO.COM. THE HANDSOME FURS’ FACE CONTROL IS OUT NOW ON SUB POP. VISIT THE HANDSOME FURS AT MYSPACE.COM/HANDSOMEFURS.

Stream: The Sadies “Stop The World And Let Me Off” (with John Doe)

(from Country Club out now on Yep Roc)

The Sadies are Canada’s magnificent responding echo to California country and just finished a set of shows with Black Mountain. Their new album (featuring John Doe, one in a long line of Sadies collaborators also including Andre Williams, Robyn Hitchcock and Jon Langford) is out now on Yep Roc and drummer Mike Belitsky speaks now before the van goes tearing away southward. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

Why do people call you ‘Snake’?
Mike Belitsky (drums): It’s kind of really not as tough as it sounds. I don’t know if you ever saw that movie Escape From New York—Snake Plissken is in that movie and I moved to Toronto from New York and the Sadies’ road manager was like, “What’s his last name—Plissken?” Because my name is Belitsky—he’s like, “Plissken from New York? Snake Plissken!” So they started calling me ‘Snake.’
I’m glad it didn’t have anything to do with human anatomy.
No. Well, I mean—that’s a story for another magazine.
Do you still have the same ‘64 Ludwig kit that you used to sleep inside the kick drum?
I do still have it. I practice on it and I keep it in my basement now.
What kind of dreams did you have when you were inside? Was it like a return to the womb?
Pretty much. I think I did it mostly because I was so psyched. It was a bit of a Christmas morning kind of thing—I didn’t get ‘em for Christmas but it was like that to wake up and be so excited that I had something new and I wouldn’t even have to go downstairs. They were just right there—my head was inside of them.
From ‘Snake’ to ‘sweet’ in like two seconds. How many times have you thrown up on your own drum set?
Once. Have you heard about this? Is that why you’re asking? It was some food poisoning, I was feeling really sick and it was opening up for Whiskey Town when we played as Neko Case’s band. They were psyched. It was my kit, not his, and I was just thinking, ‘If I can just get through this set, I can go back to the hotel and crash out.’ But I couldn’t make it to the end of the set. I counted in the first song and right on the one I threw up.
But you came in on the one?
I still came in on the one—I just came in with some extra vomit.
Have you ever broken two laws at one time?
I have and I got arrested for it.
Did they charge you for both of them or did they give you a break?
No, just one of them. That’s the problem—if you do two you’re going to get caught for doing one of them. Stick to one and you’re doing alright.
What is the most number of laws you broke at one time?
You know, probably no more than three at once—but none of them were anything crazy. Like breaking and entering or drinking underage, that’s the worst I ever did—and the breaking and entering was in an empty warehouse. I mean, you have to drink somewhere when you’re 16.
You’re really growing into the ‘Snake’ nickname as the interview progresses.
Hey, man, you’re bringing out the badass in me—asking me about my criminal record.
Have you ever visited the Sudbury Nickel in person?
I have. It’s big. It’s like five stories high. It was funny because I drove through there a bunch of times before I ever saw it so I was kind of excited. Humbling? No, not so much but definitely a bit of a closure of a chapter. I’ve always wanted to see it and I saw it so now I can move on. I can move on to giant dinosaurs in the Midwest.
What’s the next landmark you’ve got to cross off on the list?
I kind of want to see the Chrysler building in New York. I also want to go to Madison Square Garden. I saw the Stray Cats there but I don’t remember it. It was just really dark. I want to go to a sporting event there.
Hockey, by chance?
Yeah, I’d love to go see hockey there.
I found a quote by [guitarist] Travis [Good] where he says during all the lifetime of the band you guys have just kept speeding up. Is that true? How does that weigh on you since you have to be the guy to put the speed in it?
It’s kind of true. I’m conscious of it—I remember shortly after I’d moved to Toronto to join the band, I realized how fast and good of guitar players those two guys were and at the same time I had injured my wrist—so in order to get through rehabbing, it made me focus on rudiments and by focusing on rudiments I was able to increase the speed at which I was able to play. I was very conscious of not wanting to be the reason why we were playing the songs slower.
What are you guys playing in the set right now? Everything?
We do a pretty wide variety of our recorded repertoire. I don’t think there’s any record that we don’t do at least one or two songs from. Naturally it’s a little bit more leaning towards our newer releases but there are some staples that haven’t ever gone away. There’s stuff for everyone. There’s been a pretty big style change from record one to now and if you like one kind you wont be left in the woods not hearing that type of music.
If anybody shouts out for Pink Floyd are you going to play it?
Maybe. We do a couple of numbers by them. We do ‘Astronomy Domine’ and ‘Lucifer Sam,’ but yeah—we love that Piper At the Gates of Dawn record.
Of all the folks—like John Doe, Jon Langford, and Robyn Hitchcock—who have crossed paths with you, what sort of wisdom have they passed along?
I don’t think anything like word-wise, but the one thing that I find to be the most recurring quality in all those people is that they are really on the level. And if it’s not going how they want, they will speak their mind and not try to pull a fast one on anybody.
So what’s the lesson there? ‘Don’t fuck around’?
Yeah, that’s pretty good. You know—just be really upfront with people whether it’s about business or music. Unfortunately it’s a music business and that can be alienating to people in partnerships and it’s really important to be upfront and on the level about not only making the music but also the other side of it, too.
Is it true you guys all have your own separate iPods in the van?
We don’t really do a communal listen—we tend to keep it kind of individual. Every now and then somebody will hook their iPod up to the main stereo and share. The bands that we probably agree on are the Ramones, AC/DC, the Byrds, Love, Johnny Cash. Then there’s stuff I like that nobody wants to hear. I really like that AM ‘70s pop. Yacht rock seems more like Kenny Loggins and Messina and shit like that. I never really liked that too much. I’m more kind of like Poco-y stuff.
What is your most beloved California record?
I really like Forever Changes by Love—I think that was probably recorded in California. Dallas turned me on to that record and I really like it a lot. I don’t know if it’s my all time favorite, but that’s the one I’m listening to the most from California.
If you only have five minutes to make a good impression on Andre Williams, what’s a good way to get him going?
He really likes talking about women, for sure.
Any specific aspect of femininity?
I think he doesn’t discern. He likes all parts and anything that is woman. But he’s a great guy—I really love the guy. From the time that I spent with him there is not a day that goes by where somehow I don’t reference him or something he said.
What is the latest that you’ve ever stayed up with him?
All night. We were on a tour bus together, so that sometimes just happens. You get on a schedule where you’re working at night and you wind down after the show and everybody is just there. We had some great all-night bull sessions and he’s a great guy.
What’s it like to watch the sunrise with Andre Williams?
It’s incredible. I loved it. He’s really, really special. I think it might even be on videotape somewhere too. And it was in Sweden to top it all off, so that’s pretty neat.
How much of your wardrobe has rhinestones on it?
I don’t think anything, me personally. I’ve got some fancy snaps though—they kind of look like jelly beans.

THE SADIES ON TUE., MAY 26, AT SPACELAND, 1717 SILVERLAKE BLVD., SILVERLAKE. 8:30PM / $10-$12 / 21+. CLUBSPACELAND.COM. THE SADIES’ COUNTRY CLUB (WITH JOHN DOE) IS OUT NOW ON YEP ROC. VISIT THE SADIES AT THESADIES.NET OR MYSPACE.COM/THESADIES.