JR: Do you have a personal favorite VU song?
SM: There are a lot of good ones. I always thought that “Beginning To See The Light” was pretty cool. It’s a positive song but there’s something a little creepy about it to me. I like the ballads. They could write really heartbreaking songs like “Stephanie Says.” It’s like, “Oh man…”
JR: “Stephanie Says” is so different from their other songs.
SM: Yeah, and that’s cool. They weren’t afraid to write a depressing song, which is just so rare.
I like all of the phases of the Velvets, like the aspect of the caveman drumming from the earlier stuff. Moe Tucker would just bang on a floor tom and a snare drum for fifteen minutes straight, over like feedback jams—that’s so cool and that’s something that we’re going to be going for, representing that spirit, at Sullivan on Saturday.
JR: You’ve been playing with a ton of people recently. Can you give me a rundown?
SM: I’m going to be making an album with my friend Serena Jean in January and that will probably feature a lot of my friends. I’ve done a lot of playing with her and Marc Friedman from the Slip and Ricc Sheridan from Earl Greyhound.
JR: How did you meet Serena?
SM: That’s a good question. I think we met on a rooftop at 8AM at Jazzfest in New Orleans like seven or eight years ago. We’ve been friends for all those years, but in the last year she came to me with a batch of songs that she had written, and we started playing little gigs at this place in New York called the National Underground, where we’ve become sort of the house band.
JR: Is Gene Ween Band still happening?
SM: It’s not happening, at least for right now.
JR: What were some of the highlights of playing in that band?
SM: We did a run down south of maybe 15 shows in just over 2 weeks. And we were like really really turning into a band and the music was really happening. We’re all harsh tough critics of ourselves and have very high standards for ourselves—and there were nights where all four of us would come off stage and would be looking at each other going, “Wow, I would have liked to have seen that.” As far as one particular story or night, I don’t know. I’d just say that that southern tour was really fun and really special, actually.
JR: What was your favorite place to play on that tour?
SM: We did a gig at a place in Atlanta called the Earl and it was by a long shot the smallest place that we played. Top to bottom start to finish really really nice. We came off stage and Aaron was like “I want to hear that show.” That was the only time that I’ve ever heard him say that. [ check out a recording at: www.overheadground.com/GWB/mywimpy.html ]
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