(from The Black Dirt Sessions available in June from Partisan)

People often wonder how a 23-year old from Providence, Rhode Island, can write such profound country-influenced songs. Maybe it’s because John McCauley III—Deer Tick’s front man and main songwriter—didn’t find his “calling” until hearing Hank Williams, Sr. Maybe it’s because he was a depressed eighteen-year-old, living in a cold apartment in New England who drank to stay warm, resulting in the songs on War Elephant and (more recently) Born on Flag Day. Sure, both records have the classic country themes of heartbreak, drinking, and more heartbreak and drinking, but of course, no one can actually call it country since the band is young and the songwriter is from New England. In talking to McCauley during a journey across historic Route 66, I found that at heart, Deer Tick is meant to be a traveling band and country is just traveling music—whether from Brooklyn to Providence or Sante Fe to Lubbock, its songwriters can’t stay in one place for too long. Let’s cross out the labels they’ve been stamped with—freak-folk, alt-country, indie rock, and the like. Let the music (and McCauley) do the talking. This interview by Ilyse Kaplan.

How’s the tour going so far?
John McCauley III (guitar/vocals): It’s special. I don’t know if it’s special in a good way or a bad way, but it’s special. I think it’s been like a tragic comedy of a tour. I don’t know how to really describe it. It’s a romantic tragic comedy. I guess it’s just the boozing and the good times and the hanging with old friends and the really long annoying drives and the shitty food. I think it’s making us all go crazy.
How has the response been to the new album? Or would you even still consider Born on Flag Day a new album?
John McCauley III: Hell no. That is old news. No matter what’s out we always get ahead of ourselves with our live shows anyway. We’re playing a lot of unreleased material. It’s exciting for us. We play some of the songs in our live set but I don’t want to get too bored with the album. We’ve been playing mostly stuff off Flag Day, I guess.
I know you guys don’t consider it new anymore, but probably some readers still consider it new…
John McCauley III: Hell yeah—it’s still a baby of an album. The first half of the record is really fun to play live. As for the second half, it’s fun to do “Friday Xiii” whenever we have Liz [Isenberg, guest vocalist and musician] but she’s not on this tour so we’re not gonna be playing that one.
Everyone is always talking about this interview you did with Brian Williams from MSNBC for his BriTunes webisode band interviews.
John McCauley III: Yeah, it’s annoying.
I think you shocked him at the end when you said, ‘My life will change when a girl calls me and says “John, I’m pregnant.”‘
John McCauley III: That was actually right at the beginning of the interview—it really broke the ice. Whoever edited that thing did a really horrible job. They decided to pick the most uncomfortable and boring parts of it for the video. We sat down and talked to him like real people for about a half hour and it was really fun. I don’t know who put that thing together but there’s definitely some more interesting and more comfortable things that went on in that room. I guess the whole idea of us getting together with Brian Williams is kind of awkward anyways. He’s actually a really nice guy. He’s a big music fan. It was pretty cool to get to hang out with him.
I know you guys are from Rhode Island. I’m a New Englander as well. When I was in high school all I saw was emo or hardcore kids.
John McCauley III: Really? I missed that.
I heard you had some involvement in the New England noise and experimental scene, which I must have missed.
John McCauley III: I guess I was involved in it. I went to all the shows or whatever. I think a lot of the qualities in our [Deer Tick’s] live show are just feeding off of the qualities that I witnessed as a young kid at these noise shows and shit. I wasn’t really part of the scene—I was part of the audience. I was in a band that played a few shows at unconventional warehouse venues but it just wasn’t my calling.
So did it take you until you were eighteen to find your calling? When you heard the Hank Williams Sr. record Gold?
John McCauley III: No. I was really into it, though. Aside from playing music and being in bands, I was really a songwriter. Hank introduced me to the whole song-writing universe.
What was the first song you ever wrote?
John McCauley III: I wrote this really really shitty song when I was like ten. It was an all inclusive holiday song. It was like ‘Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, Happy Kwanza,’ dumb-ass song. I can’t remember how it went. I remember a couple years ago, finding this notebook from when I was ten and being so embarrassed by everything that I wrote. I tore out every page.
What was the first song you wrote that you were actually proud of?
John McCauley III: I don’t think I’ve ever taken that much pride in what I’ve written. I don’t know why. I guess compared to my all-inclusive happy holidays song, I’m way more proud of the Deer Tick stuff.
Unfortunately, there’s also already a holiday song that is an all inclusive holiday song. We used to sing it in chorus. Have you ever heard that song?
John McCauley III: At this point in my life, I try to stay as far away from holiday music as possible.
Understandable. Do you still live in Brooklyn?
John McCauley III: Hell no. got out of that place. I didn’t really spend much time there between the band and our shows. It just felt like a waste of time and energy trying to live there. I made the drive back and forth between Providence and Brooklyn so many times that I got so sick of it and knew it was definitely time to leave. I never felt like a New Yorker when I was there.
Why do you think living there for such a short time caused people to lump you in with the Brooklyn indie scene?
John McCauley III: It’s just because we’re young and we play small venues. I have absolutely no indie rock sensibility, whatsoever. I like rock ‘n’ roll, I like folk, I like country music, I like blues and I like Nirvana. I think it’s pretty stupid to call us an indie rock band. I guess that’s what we are in a sense but it’s not what we look like. I mean, I guess you can call Husker Du indie rock—essentially that’s what they were, a rock band that was on an indie label. Until they got picked up by a major. That’s the funny thing—a lot of ‘indie rock’ bands are on majors. I don’t really know what the fuck indie rock is.
How would you describe your band?
John McCauley III: I’d call it ‘one euphoric night with a gnarly ass hangover.’
What happened in your life to make the lyrics you write wise beyond your years?
John McCauley III: You could over-analyze the shit out of it. Where I’m coming from, I really believe that anybody could do it. You look at ugly shit and you try to find something beautiful in it. I guess that’s what I try to do. With songwriting, I don’t aspire to anything. I wait it out until the song comes to me, I don’t try to force anything. I don’t think I’m wise beyond my years—I think I’m just patient with my song writing.
You said War Elephant was more of a collection of songs you’d been playing for quite some time. What about Born on Flag Day?
John McCauley III: I’ve never conceptualized a record or thought, ‘Oh, this song would go well with this one.’ Some of the songs on Flag Day are actually older than the songs that ended up on War Elephant. It just came down to what I wanted to record and what I had time to record. That tradition [of using songs accumulated over the years] will be continuing for the third record but for the fourth record we’ll be fresh out of old material. We’ve been trying to work on a bunch of new songs over the past few months. The fourth record will be really cool because it will be adults playing adult songs, not adults playing kid songs. I’m definitely not as angry anymore. My new songs are more light-hearted but are really sharp. There’s a dark sense of humor to it. We’ve been listening to a lot of ‘70s and ‘80s albums. It’s like that Tom Petty lyric: ‘Let’s roll another joint.’ You’ve gotta loosen up a bit before writing that sad, dark, masterpiece.
So there’s no reason why your songs were sad and dark? Was that just where you were in life?
John McCauley III: I was depressed, I was doing a lot of drugs, I was obsessed with this girl that didn’t like me, I didn’t have heat in my apartment. You know how cold a New England winter is. Everything just seemed really bleak and kind of meaningless. I wrote from that state of mind for a long time.
Did you use music as your therapy or a way to wallow in that feeling?
John McCauley III: I think it was just my only option. It could do anything. It could make me more happy or more sad. It could be self-help or self-deprecation. Music can be all of that and it was all of that. Music for me now is just a really enjoyable thing based on where I’m at with life.
Did you find it more enjoyable once your band came full circle and you got the other members? Once it wasn’t just you anymore?
John McCauley III: For sure. It’s a lot more fun just having that chemistry that comes with the band. You get into trouble, you have all these stories to talk about. Music kind of became good times with this incarnation of the band. We try to write songs together. Some of it is fruitful. Some of it doesn’t go anywhere. With the band I think our biggest focus isn’t how the songs are written but how they’re presented.
Anything you’d like to leave readers with before we close the interview?
John McCauley III: I’d like to quote the late great Warren Zevon and say, ‘Enjoy every sandwich.’

AQUARIUM DRUNKARD PRESENTS DEER TICK WITH DR. DOG AND PEPI GINSBERG ON TUE., APR. 27, AT THE MUSIC BOX AT THE HENRY FONDA THEATRE, 6126 HOLLYWOOD BLVD., HOLLYWOOD. 9 PM / $22.50 / ALL AGES. GOLDENVOICE.COM AND AQUARIUMDRUNKARD.COM. DEER TICK’S THE BLACK DIRT SESSIONS WILL RELEASE IN JUNE ON PARTISAN. VISIT DEER TICK AT DEERTICKMUSIC.COM.

—Daiana Feuer

Download: BLK JKS “Molalatladi”

(from After Robots out now on Secretly Canadian)

If one more person compares BLK JKS to Vampire Weekend, we might explode. This South African band writes pop songs, rock songs, slow tunes and fast tracks; they get proggy and they jam. There’s a great amount of variety on BLK JKS’ latest album After Robots, but the only thing the band imitates is the sound that reality transmits through their nimble fingers. Guitarist Mpumelelo Mcata breaks it down for Daiana Feuer.

Mpumelelo Mcata (guitar): I forgot my sunglasses on top of the guitar amp there in Los Angeles. It was sucky—they were a gift.
Do you lose many possessions in your travels?
Mpumelelo Mcata: Yes, it happens all the time! Sometimes your mind, sometimes your heart, sometimes your sunglasses.
When was the last time you lost your mind?
Mpumelelo Mcata: I think it was Philly. I am not sure how long ago that was. Maybe I haven’t found my mind yet. The concept of time has been warped. Meeting people, various people, and life on the road, always on the road—you lose your heart and your head. It feels pretty schizophrenic. The days go by like day after day with hardly any rest.
Is that a dream come true? Would you rather be in a studio or a stage?
Mpumelelo Mcata: I like being around sounds and making music and just around art in general outside of music. It’s cool to have these kinds of problems. I don’t have a particular preference—as long as I’m doing it, it’s alright. But in the van for so long, driving for so many hours is what it is. Being in the studio, pressed for time, is what it is. We always have these things to keep us grounded. A little bit of cramped, a little of this and that. Broken amps need fixing. We never really step back to look at what’s going on from outside and say, ‘Well, this is all well!’ The situation, though—how can I say it? I am happy to be in it.
As a musician, do you find sounds or create sounds?
Mpumelelo Mcata: Finding or creating? Receiving. Which is different from those two in some ways. It’s all out there and finding requires one to be looking and looking may be a bit difficult to do in a sincere way. Not saying it’s impossible. But it’s hard to be looking and still do honorable work. I think receiving is key and hopefully one can communicate what comes to them truthfully and be an honest voice. There’s a lot of information trapped or stored in phonics, you know? Besides what musicians put in the lyrics and also what is said in interviews. A lot of stuff is just said in between the sounds—as in between the waves. I am sure music is a form of communication.
How do four different minds or receivers create one sound together?
Mpumelelo Mcata: I think one of the first points that we’d have to—I don’t want to say understand because that’s also a conscious in the mind thing—something that we have to feel is that all is one already. Once the American comedian Bill Hicks said all matter is energy condensed to slow vibrations. There is no such thing as death. We are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. So! That is the basic idea. We are one already. So the individual is allowed to exist completely. We find that conflict to be interesting—experiencing ourselves subjectively. That is the point. If everybody felt this way in the world maybe the world would stop breaking up. Maybe not. Maybe this is just part of the human condition. But we need to accept all parts of ourselves. I think that’s what we do in the music, as schizophrenic as it may seem.
There sure are a lot of sounds going on in your album. A lot of directions. I was intrigued by the emotion and the musical shifts in your song ‘Lakeside.’ What’s the story behind it?
Mpumelelo Mcata: ‘Lakeside’ is basically—OK, all the songs have a bit of a backstory, but ‘Lakeside’ is basically about the taxi industry. ‘Lakeside’ and ‘Taxidermy’ follow each other on the album but ‘Lakeside’ is about this young boy-man-kid who is caught up in a taxi accident. The taxi rolls off the freeway and lands up next to a lake. In his head, he has been trying to escape the city—Johannesburg and the mundane situation that he lives in. And he is very imaginative and kind of in some ways it’s autobiographical on our part. Living in the confusion of Johannesburg. And so he imagines his taxi as a UFO and he imagines himself as having been caught up in a crash-landing situation. It’s a terrible thing that has happened. People are bleeding. He is lying outside on the grass. People are suffering. But at the same time it is a beautiful thing that his mind is doing in the song. That’s basically ‘Lakeside.’
That’s a heck of a story. Does a song that comes out of a story lyrically influence the music as well or is that worked upon separately?
Mpumelelo Mcata: With ‘Lakeside’ it was definitely the music first. We didn’t know what that song was trying to do. We were jamming and somehow it kept coming up in those different directions. So what you hear on the record in the beginning—in the rehearsal room, ‘Lakeside’ was really that Molefi, Lindani, Tshepang, and myself fighting against each other and pulling the song in different directions. Like, ‘We can’t stay here—Molefi’s gone over there so we have to follow him.’ Or, ‘We’re going to follow Tshepang and see what happens.’ That was the nature of most of our rehearsal room sessions. Coming to the center, running to and from all four corners and meeting at the end. So—sound first. Then we listen back to the take and everybody thinks about what it means to them and then we discuss it and feel it out and it comes out lyrically if it’s going to be really elaborate—if that happens. Sometimes it’s just we’ll breathe over it and that’ll be it. Like ‘Molalatladi.’ For that song, the lyrics happened immediately as the music. It’s a different purpose.
What would you like to get out of this experience that will nourish you as artists? Aside from getting to play and seeing the world?
Mpumelelo Mcata: I mean, we’re getting in touch with our faith, more in touch with our faith, which is this miracle. Us being alive, you being alive as Daiana and floating in outer space. To us it is really a miracle. People like to intellectualize or coffee table talk about bands but for us, it’s like—we’re here, we’re together. You can either like a band—you can walk into the room or walk out. People like to say this band sucks, that band sucks. I wouldn’t even say that even when I wasn’t in a band because at the end of the day, who knows what? We’re all just here. To get into different cultures and to see how people react to the sound which is created out of a South African context, us receiving signals and those signals going through our filters. Out of Johannesburg, we’re presenting them to the world, we’re going to Japan—it’s going to be super interesting. And it’s always excellent to see people’s reactions, whatever that is. To us, the fact that the conversation is even occurring in the first place is the point. I think we’ll get a lot from that. Who knows, maybe one day we’ll be like the Brazilian Girls—writing songs in many languages about different places. Our context right now is what it is. This is our introduction to the world.
What’s the last thing that made you smile?
Mpumelelo Mcata: The last thing that made me smile? I know the answer to that but let me mine my thoughts for a second. Let’s see! You know what always makes me smile? At every show the people coming up saying, ‘We like what you do.’ That’s always a pleasurable thing. That makes me smile that it touches them. It makes me smile when the media makes negative comments about our songs. It’s funny because we have the same conversation before we make the song but we go for it anyway. Or when we see something someone says and this guy has no clue whatsoever. That makes me laugh. The whole journey, enjoying the journey makes me smile. Not pining for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow but enjoying the rainbow—that’s what makes a brotha smile.

AQUARIUM DRUNKARD PRESENTS BLK JKS WITH THE GROWLERS AND MACK WINSTON AND THE REFLECTIONS ON THUR., OCT. 15, AT SPACELAND, 1717 SILVERLAKE BLVD., SILVERLAKE. 8:30 PM / $10-$12 / 21+/ CLUBSPACELAND.COM. BLK JKS’ AFTER ROBOTS IS OUT NOW ON SECRETLY CANADIAN. VISIT BLK JKS AT BLKJKS.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/BLKJKS.