Download: The Cave Singers “At The Cut”

(from Welcome Joy out now on Matador)

Pete Quirk and the Cave Singers are touring with Lightning Dust—whose Amber and Ashley Webber contributed to the Cave Singers’ new Welcome Joy—and recovering half-written songs from dim memories og singing into phones in 7-11 parking lots. Quirk speaks now about riding bikes into rivers and Kid Rock’s lackluster Myspace discipline. This interview by Rachel Rufrano.

I’ve heard that your new LP, Welcome Joy, is named from the Keats poem ‘A Song of Opposites,’ about loving both the good and the bad, especially when they juxtapose each other. Is that sentiment something you try to achieve with The Cave Singers?
Pete Quirk (vocals/guitar): I guess that’d be appropriate. I mean, I think that it’s kind of inevitable that you address both and I think we try to do that.
Welcome Joy seems to be a lot more optimistic, whereas in Invitation Songs—even where the songs were upbeat—there was something darker laying just beneath the surface.
Pete Quirk: I think we were in a brighter and more positive place while writing Welcome Joy. A lot of the songs were written in the summertime as opposed to the winter—we did write outside a lot more instead [of being] stuck inside the house because of the rain.
The song ‘At the Cut’ sounds so influenced by Lindsey Buckingham, even the way you project your voice. Who do you hope people will hear in your music?
Pete Quirk: Well, I don’t know. I’ve always listened to Lindsey Buckingham and Fleetwood Mac and stuff like that. It’s funny because I never thought my voice sounded much like his, but I get that a lot, which is definitely a compliment because he’s got a great voice. But he’s an influence for sure. That’s just what I sound like.
Even the little ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ on that song though…
Pete Quirk: The little yelps and everything—it’s just something to do instead of singing words or sitting through breaks, using your voice more for rhythm than carrying a message. I don’t really try to sound like anybody because I think if you try you just end up sounding bad, you know? I think in other bands it was different because I was trying to sound like someone else, whereas now I’m just trying to sing as honestly as possible.
On ‘VV’ there’s a really simple and sweet chord progression but your voice is so gritty that you’re able to hint at something more. Do you think you utilize your voice as an instrument?
Pete Quirk: I try to! For me, the writing process is a lot of me and Derek just kind of riffing. He’ll start a guitar melody and basically I’ll just try to figure out another line where my voice can be an additional melody instead of singing exactly what he’s playing. I want to somehow carry a message, but I also want it to sound good so it can be its own line without words—it can sound like an instrument. It’d be nice to just read some amazing poem, but it’s got to sound good, too. It’s hard to fit a lot of words in there, but that’s the fun of it. Trying to figure out something that’s half comprehensible.
Your songs seem to build as they go along and it’s almost as if they’re becoming complete as you listen to them. I was wondering what the songwriting process is like for you guys.
Pete Quirk: On Welcome Joy there’s a lot of different approaches. Usually Derek and I or Marty and I will go downstairs to one of our bedrooms and Derek will play something. I’ll just basically scat over it, for lack of a better word, and just kind of make up a melody which is usually half-English, half-gibberish and then I’ll go back later and write out lyrics that kind of go along with the melody I found.
Is it important for you to have the melody before you write the lyrics?
Pete Quirk: Yeah, usually. Maybe I’ll have a couple lines written, but I find that when the whole thing is written out it just sounds like it’s being read. I like to find different words or settings when we’re just kind of jamming.
I’ve read that growing up in New Jersey has really influenced your songwriting, but how do you think Seattle has influenced you?
Pete Quirk: Seattle has changed me a lot in terms of songwriting. I’ve lived here for way longer than I thought I was going to. I met Derek here. Seattle is a cool place because it feels free and mellow and you can kind of just do what … do what you feel like. That doesn’t sound right …
You can do whatever you want in Seattle!
Pete Quirk: [Laughs] I don’t know, yeah. Some people do! I just like it here. I feel comfortable here. I lived in Philadelphia before I lived here and that was rad, but I was in my twenties—total mayhem, you know? Jumping into garbage cans and riding our bikes into the river. Which I guess we still do here but, I don’t know, I just like it here.
When I saw you guys at the Echo in December 2007, Derek was playing bass pedals. Why did you guys choose the pedals over a bass?
Pete Quirk: It fits better in the van! No, Derek just found them on Craigslist and one day he just had them on the table and I came home from work and was like, ‘Whoa, we should try and use those.’ I like them because I like droning sounds and it adds a sort of big bass pulse. For me, it’s nicer than just a bass.
It’s been two years since Invitation Songs. Did you spend a lot of that time writing the new songs or did they just kind of come to you over time?
Pete Quirk: We just always write because that’s what we like to do. It’s not like a chore. We really enjoy writing songs because we’ll just hang out and play music, but then we’ll go outside and drink beer, go to the bar and have a shot and bullshit, and then go back and keep playing. But over the two years we wrote about 80 different things. Not all those were songs, but they were ideas like, ‘Oh, remember when we recorded that thing in the 7-Eleven parking lot on your phone?’ and stuff like that. But we’ll go record and narrow those things down to an album’s worth.
You guys have been ‘up-and-coming’ for a while now. I think I even saw ‘Elephant Clouds’ on a Starbucks mix.
Pete Quirk: Really? That’s cool. As long as we’re not on some U.S. Army compilation.
You mean you guys don’t want to be in those recruiting commercials with Kid Rock and Three Doors Down?
Pete Quirk: [Laughs] We’re trying to get some kind of thing going with Kid Rock, but I don’t think he answers his own MySpace messages, which is a problem. So we’ve been having a hard time.
Are you happy being the ‘buzz band,’ or do you look forward to playing bigger venues in L.A. at some point?
Pete Quirk: Well, I’m happy and I try not to think about it too much. In terms of ‘buzz bands,’ I don’t feel like we’re very buzzed—not that I can tell—but it seems like people are slowly [catching on]. Hopefully the people that come to our show want to come because they have a connection with our music and that way we can connect back and forth. That’s the way I am with music—I like to go see a band because I know and like their music and not because they’re some huge band I’ve been hearing about. It’s fun to play in front of a lot of people and I’m not against that, for sure.
What are you listening to right now?
Pete Quirk: I’m listening to that Fever Ray album, which I think is really good. Her lyrics are really amazing. And it’s really creepy. I’ve been listening to that at nighttime a lot. I’ve been listening to Tinariwen, which I guess came out a couple years ago. And I’ve been listening to John Lennon’s Mind Games, which is one of my favorite records.
Are you where you want to be as an artist? I know all three of you seemed to move on to the Cave Singers for something more acoustic, so are you looking to do anything different now?
Pete Quirk: I just want to keep making albums and find out how they differ from one another. As far as playing music and being an artist, I couldn’t be happier where I’m at. I never thought I would be at this point. Starting in the bedroom with Derek and one guitar I bought at Salvation Army on a whim to now where we’re going on tour and we have two albums out. It’s pretty crazy to me.

THE CAVE SINGERS WITH LIGHTNING DUST AND BIG SEARCH ON THURS., OCT. 1, AT THE ECHO, 1822 SUNSET BLVD., ECHO PARK. 8:30 PM / $12 / 18+. ATTHEECHO.COM. THE CAVE SINGERS’ WELCOME JOY IS OUT NOW ON MATADOR. VISIT THE CAVE SINGERS AT THECAVESINGERS.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/THECAVESINGERS.

Download: David Serby “Don’t Even Try”

(from Honky Tonk and Vine out now on Harbor Grove)

David Serby was a punk kid in Orange County and then an insurance adjuster in L.A. and took a long time and a lot of lumps to become the country singer he is now. He performs monthly at dark bars with old photos on the walls and he has just released his third album Honky Tonk And Vine. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

If you wrote a song called ‘Blues For An Insurance Adjuster,’ what would it be like?
Oh good Lord. That would pretty much be if I wrote a musical for the movie Office Space. When I was doing insurance I had the back of my cubicle backed up to a big window and I went to my boss and said, ‘Can I take this back thing off because its got this big beautiful window here?’ He said no, so a friend of mine who was next to me brought his little Leatherman tool kit in and hung around ‘til everybody was gone and we took it off and put the back of the cubicle in the storage facility bin back behind a big crate and nobody ever said anything. I don’t think they ever noticed.
What was the most productive creative work you ever got out of those experiences?
I think that you figure out who you are by figuring out who you’re not. You put these clothes on and go, ‘This doesn’t feel right on me.’ When I started working there, my life was completely upside down and that job was really the only thing I had to hold on to. I was probably about six months into that job and my friend who I met there was quitting to go to graduate school back in New York—he said, ‘You hate this job—why don’t you just quit right now and we’ll take three months off and we’ll drive around the country? You can bring a guitar.’ I said, ‘I can’t do it—my life has been a mess for so long. I can’t.’ I was still hanging on to that cliff—I hung on to that cliff for another six years before I actually let go.
Are you more of a risk taker now?
Definitely. It’s a completely different world. I let go of that cliff and I just said, ‘You know what? The game is rigged.’ I don’t want to turn into an anarchist or anything but this whole capitalist system is not really set up to encourage freedom of thought and art. And if that’s what you want to do, as soon as you realize that the system is not set up to really help you or encourage you and that you’re going to have to figure out your own path and make your own rules—as soon as you accept those things, life becomes a hell of a lot easier.
Are these the same sentiments you were talking about in your old punk band?
Kind of. The things I was railing against then—being a cog in a machine and all those teenage things you’re pissed about, like having a number on a social security card and all that bullshit. But you do come full circle. You rail against it and then you graduate from high school—I remember feeling instantly ancient. Just old. And thinking, ‘How did this happen?’ And then it was another 10 or 15 years of realizing that just because I was older doesn’t mean I had to be older. I went to high school in Orange County so that was like in ‘78 and in ‘82 I graduated—there was a lot of great punk rock going on in Orange County at that time. I used to see Mike Ness hanging around. I saw Agent Orange more times than I can count! And the Adolescents and TSOL and all those bands—I saw them in high school gyms, I saw them in Elks Clubs, I saw them at the Lodge in Fullerton—I saw them everywhere. There was a lot of great art happening down there and all of that stuff was cool. But my family had country records and I remember I would play the Johnny Cash Live From San Quentin record all the time and I would listen to a band like X—I remember getting that first X record. I got the first X record and the first Blasters record on the same day and I went to my friend’s house and I put it on her record player and listened to it and just stared at the artwork and was completely blown away by that stuff. That stuff is completely folk music. It’s folk music like it’s people talking about what’s going on in their life and on the street. They’re talking about people who are making it day to day. They’re kind of like historians—especially a band like X, they were just brilliant historians. I love that band.
Guy Clark says you have to leave a space in the song for the guy who’s listening to be like, ‘Hey that’s me…’ Is that something you try to do?
One of the things that I love most about country music is that people identify with it. It’s very common language—a very conversational art form and I think people connect with it because they do see themselves in those songs. If you’ve done that and somebody can listen to a song and recognize themselves in it, then I think you’ve really managed to do something special. That is kind of what I try to do. The thing with country music is that people make fun of it because country music talks about ‘my girlfriend left me, my wife left me, my dog died, my pick-up truck’s broken down…’ But you know what? That shit happens to people! It sounds simple, but it’s not simple—it’s not easy to do that. I remember reading an interview with either Jakob Dylan or Tom Petty—a reviewer wrote about how the songs were all three chords and they were all conversational and how the songs were too simple and he said, ‘Look, if being simple were easy everyone would do it.’ Except for the ones about being in prison—although I’ve been in plenty of metaphorical prisons—I don’t think I’ve ever heard a country song that I haven’t identified with. That’s the brilliance about it.
What’s hard about writing a simple song for you?
You have to pick out the little things. My friend said, ‘My husband is always on the street—he’s always working on his car and he should be in the house working on other stuff, if you know what I mean.’ And I thought, ‘That’s like a universal man-woman experience.’ And I came home and wrote this song ‘Better With My Hands’ about a couple that is falling apart—which I know something about—and a guy who doesn’t know how to talk about what he’s feeling—which I know something about. The fact that I was talking to this woman and she was saying the same thing was happening to her—well, you know, there’s something that I haven’t written about and if it’s happening to me and it’s happening to her then it’s happening to millions of people all over the world. The key is to try and tell it in a fresh original way—it’s tough to be simple when you’re trying to be different.
Harlan Howard would do the same thing—just listen to people talking in a bar.
There’s a song on the record called ‘I Only Smoke When I’m Drinking’ and twice in a week somebody tried to bum a cigarette off of me and both times I said I only smoke when I’m drinking. And the song ‘Permanent Position’—I was talking to my friend at the Cinema Bar about how great it would be if Rod—the guy who owns the Cinema Bar—would pay us to drink beer because that’s pretty much one of our favorite things to do. I’m not the only one who wants to sit in a bar and get paid to drink beer, I’m sure.
What’s the big story you want to tell? What’s on your mind that you want in a song?
That’s a good question. I’m in a good place in my own personal life so I’m kind of looking outward more. The first record had its own story, but for the last two records I kind of moved away from that—what I really want to do is look at other people and their lives. The world needs good art right now—it needs good stories.
What makes you say that?
Well, I don’t know—this place is a wreck. The middle class is disappearing and people are so hypnotized by pop culture that they don’t see it. I look at my sister and her husband who have gone through tough times. I watch people struggle and it seems that it’s people who shouldn’t be struggling. It’s people whose families that for generations, their lot in life has improved—and now this generation, everything has gone backwards for them. There’s a movie called The Interpreter with Sean Penn and Nicole Kidman and there’s a line in that movie—‘There are no more countries, only corporations.’ And it’s that. The corporations don’t give a rat’s ass about the people in this country. It’s the death of the middle class, the Wal-Mart economic model—it’s all that stuff and it’s the effect that stuff is having in people’s lives. That’s what’s interesting to me.
What do you think about that strange kind of split in country? That part of it is so stand-up-for-the-little-guy and yet it’s used to market Wal-Mart and expensive trucks?
I know—I agree with that and I don’t think that it even registers with people. I really don’t and I think it’s the hypnotic effect of pop culture. I went off to Stagecoach a couple weeks ago and there was the Palomino stage and it had some big acts that drew some people over from the main area—the bands had a more independent aesthetic and were more country-based like Dale Watson and Jim Lauderdale. And there were sadly not big crowds for them. I spent almost the whole weekend in front of that stage. Late on Sunday night, the wind kicked up and it was kind of cool and I walked back through the main stage area in the middle of Kid Rock’s set and he was playing a Queen song—I think it was either ‘We Are the Champions’ or ‘We Will Rock You’ and there was supposed to have been 50,000 people in attendance but there wasn’t more than 250 people over at the Palomino stage. At that time I think it was Jim Lauderdale and Dale Watson headlining, who I think are just brilliant contemporary country song writers and the other 49,999 people were over in front of that main stage and it was like a drunken spring break over there. I’m not making a value judgement but it’s completely different from old school country and how that art form was historically approached. It’s more like arena rock and pop music and those two fan bases don’t really cross-pollinate.
Is ‘Get It In Gear’ really about helping a girl get naked photos of herself back from a drug dealer? What happened?
I have no idea what happened to that girl. I knew her many years ago and kinda had a thing for her—kind of like the moth to the flame thing. I met her in junior college. You see those things happening and the signs are not good, but there’s a fascination there and you get to a certain point where you either jump off the cliff or walk back to your car right away.
What’s something you walked away from that you’re glad you left behind?
There was a whole bunch like ten years ago. I chose to go a different way professionally—I chose to go a different way in my relationships and I chose not to wallow in self-pity and depression and to try and use that. There is a tendency to kind of wallow in your bad luck—I think as an artist you probably should do a little of that because that’s how you connect with things, but the key is not getting so destroyed that you can’t do anything. I read an interview with Oliver Stone and he talks about going through a period in his life when he was having substance abuse problems—he said even when he was his drunkest or his most drugged-out or whatever, he got up every day and he wrote. There is a real saving grace in creating art. If you can force yourself to do it when you’re down, it will lead you to the light at the end of the tunnel.
Whenever Harlan Howard went into a bar, he’d always take the barstool closest to the front door—what is your preferred barstool and why?
I would take the farthest barstool from the door—but the one that had the view. I like my bars as dark as possible but I also like to be able to see people come and go. I like to watch people when they don’t know they’re being watched—you get an honest read on what people are doing and how they’re reacting to folks. I love to do that. I told somebody recently that I love to sit in airports when the flight is delayed. I just like to watch people. I might sit by the door but then you gotta turn around—if you’re over there in the back of the bar where you can see the whole deal, that would be my place.

DAVID SERBY ON THUR., JUN. 18, AT THE PIKE, 1836 E. 4TH ST., LONG BEACH. 9 PM / FREE / 21+. PIKELONGBEACH.COM.DAVID SERBY’S HONKY TONK AND VINE IS OUT NOW ON HARBOR GROVE. VISIT DAVID SERBY AT DAVIDSERBY.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/DAVIDSERBY.

LIMITED NUMBER OF RESERVED SEATS JUST MADE AVAILABLE FOR STAGECOACH: CALIFORNIA’S COUNTRY MUSIC FESTIVAL

ON SALE THIS FRIDAY, MARCH 27

A limited number of reserved seats have just become available for STAGECOACH: California’s Country Music Festival, Powered by Toyota set for Saturday, April 25 and Sunday, April 26 at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, CA. Beginning this Friday, March 27 at 10:00 AM (PT), STAGECOACH fans will have access to these reserved seats starting at $299. Beyond a guaranteed spot at the Mane Stage, these seats also include access to the VIP area with all the amenities (extra shaded areas, couches, additional upgraded restrooms, and food and beverage vendors including a full bar), along with a commemorative STAGECOACH chair.

STAGECOACH: California’s Country Music Festival–set for Saturday, April 25 and Sunday, April 26 at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, CA–will once again play host to an impressive lineup featuring some of the top talent in the country music world today including headliners Kenny Chesney, Brad Paisley, Reba and Kid Rock.

The updated STAGECOACH line-up (as of 3/25) is as follows: Kenny Chesney, Brad Paisley, Reba, Kid Rock, Little Big Town, Miranda Lambert, Poco (Richie Furay, Jim Messina, Rusty Young, Paul Cotton), Charlie Daniels Band, Darius Rucker, Earl Scruggs, , Lady Antebellum, Reverend Horton Heat, The Knitters, Jerry Jeff Walker, Ricky Skaggs, Ralph Stanley, Kevin Costner & Modern West, Pure Prairie League, Lynn Anderson, Doyle Lawson, Jim Lauderdale & The Dream Players, Peter Rowan Bluegrass Band, Danielle Peck, Dale Watson, Zac Brown Band, The Duhks, Waddie Mitchell, Randy Houser, Hot Club of Cowtown, James Intveld, Sacred Cowboys, Maxim Ludwig and the Santa Fe Seven, John Linn Band, Christ Stuart and Back Country, The Infamous Stringdusters, and Greensky Bluegrass.

Reserved ticket prices start at $299 for a full weekend of entertainment. In addition, a limited number of general admission tickets, camping and RV packages are also available. To view a complete breakdown of available ticketing and onsite camping/RV options, please visit www.Stagecoachfestival.com.

STAGECOACH is produced by Goldenvoice, The Messina Group and Moore Entertainment Group. For up-to-the-minute information on STAGECOACH, visit www.stagecoachfestival.com. STAGECOACH is sponsored by Budweiser, PlayStation and CMT.