DB- You mentioned that Logic appears on “Captain America.” How aggressive is his presence on that track?
CG- You hear him all the way through. His presence is known from the first second of the sound. Whether you recognize it’s him or not, that’s another story. He doesn’t so much play a lead instrument but he makes really important accents all the way through. It’s pretty cool, he’s such a nice guy. He came down for a few hours and we just blasted around and did some fun stuff. He worked on a couple of songs but this is the one that really fit and we wanted to use it. He did some some stuff on “Rise” as well but there are only a couple of small things that we actually kept in there. As far as the song goes, I think it really works for “Captain America.”
DB- Let’s move away from the studio and talk about your live shows, in particular the dynamic between yourself and Al. I noticed you mentioned recently that some of your guitar leads are not predetermined and occasionally one of you just jumps in and steals them. To what extent does that actually happen?
CG- Where you literally poach somebody else’s good time? (laughs) No, it doesn’t happen to that extent. We don’t steal it but if one of us has a really good idea and is really excited about something, he’s going to push for it as much as possible. Al is one of those people, who if he’s excited about something he’s going to do whatever he can to follow through with it. I’m the same way. You need to have a sense of humor about it. Literally poaching off someone else is a bad way to go about it and everything’s going to suffer. Generally we figure out, stylistically if it makes more sense for Al or myself to do it. A song like “Okayalright” the groove is really Zeppelinesque and the solo looks for something like that so he’s perfect for it. It depends on the circumstances and the style of the song and what’s going on. Sometimes whoever had the first idea kind of moves in and sets up house.
DB- Having said that how often do either of you come up with something on the spot and just step in?
CG- It happens quite a bit. A lot of it is really spontaneous. In terms of changing the feel of something that’s usually a completely spontaneous thing where it depends on everything else that is going on at that moment. Segues are not typically predetermined. Come to think of it, a lot of the time there’s poaching (laughs).
It really depends on the dynamic of what’s going on. It happens it about thirty different ways, so it’s hard to explain but if you’re on to something good everybody makes a little way for you. That’s true for everybody in the band. If you take the initiative and you have a good idea everybody will usually try to support it as much as possible. That’s fun because you have to think on your feet and listen really carefully. That’s some of the most exciting stuff for us because you’re taking a big chance that it might be a train wreck but generally it isn’t if everyone is listening really carefully. We’re all pushing for the same thing which is a big release- coming up with this concise statement and having five people contribute it without talking. It’s pretty wild.
DB- Jumping back to the studio, to what extent do your recording sessions give you ideas or directions that you can implement in the live setting? Or you do find that the studio is a medium onto itself?
GC- When you play the songs live sometimes you have ideas and then by the end of the night you’ve forgotten a lot of the good ones. We don’t have the luxury of being able to pick apart all the best things that we come across every day. In a critical listening sense it helps to isolate all of the details and all of the building blocks. When we’re in the studio there are a lot of creative ideas that couldn’t have been a accomplished so easily just by talking about them before we go out and play. There have been major overhauls of songs and instrument changes that we definitely want to continue with afterwards. For instance in “Rise” and “The Faker” there’s a lot that could be going one especially between Al and myself- our rhythm patterns can be more interlocking. By simplifying them a little bit and making sure that they fit perfectly, we actually get a more powerful piece.
DB- In terms of re-examining your music, how challenging was it to rearrange the songs after Jim returned to the band? [editor’s note: last year former drummer Jim Loughlin, who had performed with the group from 1992-995 before leaving to play with Yolk, rejoined moe. on percussion and sundry other instruments]
GC- Even though there was another personality involved, everybody knew Jim because he’s #2 [editor’s note: Chuck’s description of Jim as #2 is not an excrement-themed scurrility but rather moe. parlance for identifying its range of drummers. Vinnie Amico, who joined in November of 1996 is #5]. It’s easy because Jim was around when we wrote the songs for Headseed so he’s known those songs longer than Vinnie. So Vinnie’s dealing with Jim’s history and Jim’s dealing with the fact that the way we now play them with Vinnie, they’ve become different songs. To a certain degree those songs have changed over time and everybody’s reacting to that.
I think Vinnie approaches the instrument differently because he doesn’t have to fill the space that he once needed to because Jim is also there. I think the two of them complement each other amazingly well. They make each other play better than they did individually because they challenge each other all of the time. Jim challenges Vinnie to be a better kit drummer and Vinnie challenges Jim to be a more tasteful percussionist. Everybody benefits from it.
DB- How did you make the decision to bring Jim back to the band?
CG- For a while we talked about adding another instrument. It definitely makes everybody approach things differently and look at things from a fresh perspective. We talked about adding a keyboard player and I wasn’t amazingly psyched with that at the moment. Actually Rob brought it up because Jim had been practicing playing flute and he knew how to play acoustic guitar and he also could play the xylophone-type parts. We thought Jim could kind of be the stunt guy to do these different accents where they were necessary and maybe make each song a little more unique and get some extra ideas across. Rob brought it up while we were rehearsing in Maine. So we called up Jim, got him there in a couple of days and we started playing. The whole thing happened quickly. It pretty much worked out right from the start and it was fun to have him back.
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