RR: Right from the top, Living Room begins with “Bikes,” after, literally, a “One Two Three” count in, and I wrote Ween meets alt country about that track.
JC: We wanted to create the vibe of when you can imagine riding around with your buddies back pre-adolescence and all that great stuff when the world was a lot simpler, and there weren’t all the expectations of adulthood. It is sort of a nice, reflective piece. That’s probably one of my favorite tracks on the record because of the way that we recorded that. It was really a great recording. Krojo, in the drum booth, is counting out “One Two Three” before the song, with a cell phone going off, and somebody closing it. It’s kind of funny because I think Karl was in the bathroom doing the vocals, and that was his phone, and Krojo’s in the drum booth, and the bass and guitars are in the main room so we can all play to tape together. Then, there’s all the sweetening that I do later—(laughs) that’s what took the five years.
RR: “Unity” is the single with a reggae feel to it.
JC: The whole reggae thing is big with Karl because he used to be in a reggae band called the Natty Love Joys, so he’s got a big reservoir of reggae. We just love compin’ reggae. There’s nothing better than sitting back on a hot day and listening to some reggae. For a bunch of white boys, we just hope we can do it right. (laughs)
RR: The ‘sweetening’ you referred to definitely works on that track.
JC: I’m using a Moog Taurus pedal, which is creating some of the synth sounds. [Cinninger scats the synth sounds from the “Unity” track] I’m using some nice, old, analog synths. The Moog Taurus II is kind of like what Rush would use, a floor modular synth. You just step on ‘em and blow up the room.
RR: The title track features the band stretching out into a unique arc and has an almost Simon & Garfunkel pop ballad quality.
JC: That’s one where I’m standing in the middle of the room and playing a tambourine to try to hold everything together. Everyone is basically listening to the tambourine and playing. The tambourine goes throughout the track, and that is really all I’m playing in the song. It’s like lead tambourine, bro. (laughter) If you listen to the song, the tambourine keeps the song moving and pushing forward. It’s weird how effective a good ole tambourine part can be.
RR: Yeah, I think you may be the Hendrix of tambourine players on that track.
JC: Yeah, man, I’ve got it covered. I’m doing session work. You can call me whenever. I’ll do it. People’ll pay triple scale for tambourine work. (laughs)
RR: “Dose of the Real World” has elements of rockabilly and country.
JC: That comes into the crazy Ween mentality with the vocals and the sound effects. There’s a lot of beck and call with the sweetening and treatment of sound—I’m trying to beck and call the situation that Karl talks about with a physical sound. You hear all of these sound effects happening in between the lyrics. I said, “How are we going to make this song pop and be kind of weird?” because it was just kind of a country/bluegrass tune, and all the sound effects came later, and made the track pop.
RR: “Temptation” features a dub vibe.
JC: Yeah, we wanted to keep that thing flowing because even the previous record, Partyin’ Peeps has that same dub-like quality. I think that’s an ace in the hole for us as far as a style. We definitely like kicking back on the dub reggae. I love the backbeat on that song. Krojo’s got a monstrous backbeat. He’s like the Charlie Watts of jambands.
RR: I was impressed that there are not a lot of Umphrey’s textures to the songs and yet, your personality is very paramount on the tracks. Perhaps, it is a nod to your sophisticated tastes, but there are also patient, self-contained solos on the record.
JC: A lot of that is that when I’m tracking guitar solos they’re usually done later, so I can be by myself, and hope for the best. I can’t necessarily log a bunch of takes—you know, the old way where you’ve got to wait around until you’ve got the right take, and that’s the one. A lot of it is that it might take me three hours to nail the right feel of a particular solo, and I’ll be like “that’s it. That’s the one. That’s as far as I’m going with it. It’s done.” It is a slower process for me when I get those better results when it’s more of a patient, mature style of playing. It’s very opposite of what I do live—a studio treatment guitar like, you know, a Steely Dan guitar player that lays those colors like Larry Carlton, or someone like that. That was what I was going for throughout the record—not to be over bossy, but to subtly have my fingerprint in there.
RR: Let’s talk about some of the tracks where you did open up your playing, and offered some different variations on hard rock styles. For example, there is the heavy fuzz tone on “Cold Beer at Mickey’s Pub.” I love the live sound of that song.
JC: Yep. It’s crazy. Funny you mention that because what I did is I wanted to emulate the sound of a nasty, trashy old punk club, so what I did was that I would re-amp the drums through a Vox amplifier, like a guitar amp. I would take the kick drum, and send it into a guitar amp, re-mike it, and then send it back into the recording unit, so the bass drum doesn’t sound like a natural kick drum. It sounds trashy. I ended up doing the same thing with the snare drum. [Cinninger imitates the sound of a trashy snare drum] It’s like a classic old technique of getting a trashier sound out of a clean sounding drum kit.
And I did the same thing with the guitars. I would crank up an amp on 10, and put condenser mikes in the room, not close mikes, but mikes from afar, so it gives you the sense of space. We wanted to create that little punk club vibe on that one.
RR: And the band went to the other end of the spectrum on “Lust,” which went from metal to prog to stoner rock all in one song with some great layering.
JC: What was cool about that song is that right at the end of the Tahini sessions five years ago, we were getting ready to pack up, and I said, “Come on, we’ve got one more song in us.” Karl goes out into the yard, jots down a few chords, and writes a few lyrics—because they have to head back down south because they were leaving—so he managed to squeeze that song in, at the end of the sessions, write it all in the moment. It was great. We all threw our ingredients in, and I really wanted to…that song was the hardest to mix because of all the dynamic textures. Again, I’m not doing everything in Pro Tools; I’ve got to mix live on a console, so even something like the mixing side of the record is a performance in itself. That’s actually one of my favorite guitar tones I’ve ever gotten—the end solo out; it’s one of my all-time favorite guitar tones I’ve ever laid down to tape without a doubt.
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