I’d advise you to not attempt to look into any sort of discography of Centro-matic frontman Will Johnson. By the time you tally up the albums he’s done with them, add in the output of the band’s mellow alter-ego South San Gabriel, throw in Johnson’s solo projects, and his work with everybody from the Patterson Hood-led Screwtopians to the Monsters of Folk – and take in that most of it has all happened since 1995 – it’ll make you nervous. Very, very nervous. And I’m not going to get into Johnson’s work as an artist, the most recent example of which graces the cover of Candidate Waltz, the latest “Centro-matic release”: https://jambands.com/reviews/cds/2011/06/21/centro-matic-candidate-waltz
For a man who seems driven by his art at times – and a fascinatingly intense performer in a live setting – Johnson is nothing but a laid-back Texas gentleman to talk to; modest as all hell and tickled to talk about his music. We recently had the pleasure of chatting for a bit on the eve of Centro-matic hitting the road to support the release of Candidate Waltz.
BR: First of all, Will, I hear you have a wee little new baby in the house, so I’m going to talk real quietly –
WJ: (laughs)
BR: – and if you need to hang up and tend to things at any point, I completely understand, buddy.
WJ: (laughs) Extremely considerate of you; thank you for even acknowledging – I appreciate that. I think Momma’s got it under control for the time being, so we’re all right. But I’ll certainly tell you if I have to go. (laughter)
BR: Well, I had three of my own – the greatest kids in the world … but sometimes you have to double-team them, you know? (laughter)
WJ: Yeah, sometimes things crop up and you have to stop everything. It’s totally true.
BR: How many does this make for you?
WJ: Just one.
BR: Oh, wow – well, seriously: congratulations, man.
WJ: Thank you very much. It’s a very exciting time; very exhilarating and thrilling – but I’m sure I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.
BR: And just think of the song possibilities coming up.
WJ: Yeah, exactly. That’s a good point. (laughs)
BR: It’ll be like, “I gotta jot that down …”
WJ: I know – on pieces of napkin and paper, stuffed in your pockets with tons of notes on ‘em.
BR: And corners torn off Pampers boxes.
WJ: Right! (laughter)
BR: Before we talk about Candidate Waltz, I wanted to ask you: do you still have your old, trusty, brown Telecaster Custom? I saw some video taken at a recent show and you were playing a red-bodied Tele that I didn’t remember seeing before. Is that new to you?
WJ: Let’s see … it sounds to me like you saw some clips from a show we did in Barcelona, Spain.
BR: That’s right.
WJ: And the reason I was using that red Tele was because the airline did not bother to get our guitars, effects pedals, cables – anything – to us in time for the show. I had to borrow that red Tele. (laughs)
BR: Oh, no …
WJ: Oh, yeah. (laughs) The show had to go on; the place was full and the airline just couldn’t pull through, so we were using gear we borrowed.
You’re right, though: usually I use the brown Tele or an old Epiphone Dot that I’ve souped up a little bit and really enjoy. The old Tele is in fine condition, but I typically don’t travel with it to Europe because it’s now 35 years old and I just don’t trust the airlines.
BR: Ah – I’ve never known just how old it was.
WJ: Yeah – it’s a ’76. It’s gotten to the point where I feel like I’ve pushed my luck with it as far as the airlines go. It feels like a cat that’s lived its eight lives and I don’t want to push it. (laughs) I travel to Europe with other guitars now – just for preservation’s sake.
BR: I love the sound of that thing; I’ve always felt like you had such great control over the power of it. I figured somebody else could pick it up and it would take right off out from underneath of them, you know?
WJ: (laughs) It does have some interesting nuances and some very subtle little powers that still surprise me to this day. I’ve known the thing for a long time and it still emits certain sounds and certain tones that continue to surprise me. I guess that tells me that the relationship with the guitar remains healthy, you know? (laughs) It’s just like a good friend or something: they continue to bring you joy and surprise you in new ways.
BR: Ah – that’s cool to hear. Well, I could talk about Teles all day – we’d better move on to Candidate Waltz. Did you have a focused period of writing for the album?
WJ: I did. The majority of it happened in the summer of 2009. It goes back a little ways, but I did write the majority of that record in the same session. It was sweltering, sweltering hot and I was living in this little town here in Texas called Bastrop. I just set up all my gear in the kitchen and could go from station to station as I demo’d up the songs. And all that writing pretty much happened in the span of maybe two weeks.
BR: I’m assuming you primarily write on the guitar – acoustic usually or electric?
WJ: I write some on the electric, for sure. Most of these songs, however, were written on the bass guitar.
BR: Really?
WJ: Yeah, I really got into writing on the bass at that time because I wanted a less-comfortable approach. Also, I wanted to peel things back a little bit and leave more to the imagination; leave more to the relationship between the rhythm section and the vocal rather than layering up a bunch of guitars. I enjoy doing that, but we do it all the time and for this record we knew we wanted to take more of a “peeled back” approach – relying a little bit more on tension rather than release.
We sometimes have a habit of blowing the doors wide open with ride cymbals and layered guitars and that’s fun … except we wanted this record to embody a little bit more restraint and a little bit more tension, rather than the overall explosive, loud release.
Writing on the bass guitar led me down a certain road … it changed some of the decisions I made vocally and some of the thoughts that we had as far as the drums. It gave the guitar more of a different role; it put it in a slightly secondary position, which is exciting. It changes your writing somewhat, you know? It put me in a less comfortable situation, which told me I was learning something, which is a good thing.
BR: Cool. There’s no question that it’s a Centro-matic album, but at the same time, there’s a different vibe.
WJ: That’s what we wanted to try for – and I’m excited to hear that you feel the same, because that’s what we were going for. It’s nice to know that it translated.
BR: Matt Pence does – what? – quadruple duty on Candidate Waltz as drummer, co-producer, mixer, and doing the mastering. How do you feel – or do you feel – that his role as percussionist affects his approach to production?
WJ: I do think that Matt’s role as drummer – and as engineer – and as co-producer – and as mastering engineer – and as the band photographer, as well – he’s a master photographer – I think that all those roles combine to help him understand and see the music with very, very clear eyes. Matt’s pinpoint vision with our music has a lot to do with the fact that he does get to experience the songs as time goes on from different vantage points, you know? We all try to do that, because we all play different instruments – a lot of the time on stage we switch off a lot.
We’re not all chops players, necessarily, but I do think that our want and our ongoing need to experience our music from different vantage points – be it on guitar or bass guitar or drums or through the window as an engineer – has helped us understand it a little bit better. Hopefully, it’s added to the longevity of the band and has allowed us to have as enriching an experience as we can with our music. I definitely think that Matt is the force that drives that approach in so many ways … he has to listen to those songs so many more times than we do. (laughter)
BR: I hadn’t thought about that.
WJ: Oh, yeah – he really does … and he knows them inside and out, so therefore I think that inevitably improves his musical skills.
BR: Scott Solter co-produced Candidate Waltz with Matt. Had you guys worked with him before?
WJ: No, we had not. We’ve wanted to for a number of years, but we couldn’t make our schedules really align. I’ve done solo tours with Scott several times, but the band hasn’t worked with him until this record. We got to be friends back in 2004 – I worked with him for three or four days’ worth of recording one time in San Francisco when I sang and did some backing instrumentation on his wife Wendy’s record. Matt was a real big fan of Scott’s, too – it just seemed like the time was right to involve him and I’m extremely glad we did. He’s great, great, great to work with.
BR: Cool. Well, if you’re up for it, I’ll just start ticking down through specific songs and we’ll talk about things as we go.
WJ: Sure – I’ll give you the best I can. God knows I can’t remember it all, but … (laughter)
BR: Fair enough. “Against The Line” kicks the album off with those stark, stark guitar chords against that percolating sort of … it almost sounds like a synthesized didgeridoo or something …
WJ: That Pink Floyd-sounding thing at the beginning? (laughs)
BR: Yeah!
WJ: That’s a Moog pedal. We got that synched up with a click track and then Matt and I cut our parts live. I was playing the Moog pedal through the guitar – just by fingering the root notes – and Matt was on the drums. I had a scratch vocal going just to give him a little bit of a reference point, and we laid our parts down at the same time to kind of create the spinal column of the song, so to speak.
BR: Now that you’ve told me about writing on the bass, it makes sense. It was hard to imagine a song like that in its birthing stage on an acoustic guitar, you know?
WJ: Yeah, that was one of the ones that developed from a bass line – and then I got that little guitar riff that you hear at the beginning. The rhythms kind of started to dictate the form of the song, as opposed to an overwhelming, obvious vocal melody … that came a little bit later.
BR: Is there a usual formula for you – riffs first or lyrics first? How does it usually happen?
WJ: They usually happen at the same time, actually. That’s one of the rare occurrences where it didn’t, but it usually all has to come together at once. I don’t do the best job at writing a riff or a chord progression and then coming back to it. I kind of like to make the cake once, you know? (laughs) I don’t often let it simmer and then come back to it – the meaning may diminish as time goes or I’ll just get preoccupied with other ideas or other songs and move forward. It all has to kind of come together at once.
BR: “All The Talkers” is like a little mini-opera; it’s like a tale of musical victory. I guess that comes from having been there on your part, right?
WJ: I think so – from both respects; both as performer and as music fan. I’ve seen it from both sides. It’s always fun when you can feel the room kind of turn and get with the band after mostly ignoring them (laughs) for the first part of the set. I think we’ve all kind of experienced that: where we go down to the club on a Tuesday night just for a beer or whatever and you happen to run into a band that knocks your socks off. You remember that moment even years later. You don’t always remember the band’s name, but you always remember the moment when the room kind of solidifies and it becomes a shared experience between band and crowd.
That’s one thing that doesn’t quite go out of style as much as things change in the music world. The communication of humans to humans through music is pretty electrifying and can always be a surprising and wonderful thing … and that’s what that song is about.
BR: I’ve been in positions playing music live where you have to say, “Let’s just play for ourselves here.” And usually when you do that, it takes some sort of load off or restriction off of you. I feel like we’ve always played better by doing that.
WJ: Sure. I know a lot of bands have played their best shows when they were tired or even pissed off at each other. (laughs) And sometimes that can turn into a really productive and beautiful thing. (laughter)
BR: Love the fade at the end – it sounds like Mark Hedman is gently nudging the bass notes out of an old upright.
WJ: Doesn’t it? I think Mark was palm-muting to get that tone.
BR: My first-blush listening note on “Iso-Residue” was simply “Jay Bennett.”
WJ: Oh … wow.
BR: It struck me on the initial listening like one of Jay’s great power pop pieces – the way the keys chase the vocal; and then there’ll be a little blast of guitar that comes and goes … it made me think of him.
WJ: I’m flattered that you put it that way. Jay was a good friend and one of the most consistent pop songwriters I’ve ever known. He might’ve even distantly influenced “Iso-Residue” – it was written right after he passed. There’s a good chance I had him on my mind when I wrote that song.
Other than that, I don’t have a whole lot to tell about it … it’s just a simple pop song, really. I was excited that it said what it had to say in about two minutes and fifteen seconds. (laughs) The chorus was the first piece of any substance that arrived and I kind of rounded it out from there.
BR: The lyrics to some of your songs at times will read of desperation or a broken soul – but then when you listen to the actual songs, they come across sounding almost wistful or sweet. I’m not sure how you do it, but you do. “Estimate x 3” is an example of that: the lyrics read fairly harsh, but the tune itself is like an up-tempo do-wop number.
WJ: Yeah; that song definitely has a feeling of being hollowed out – and even some desperate moments, I guess. But at the same time, I wanted it to keep a hopeful melody and not come across too heavy-handed. “Estimate x 3” was written on the guitar, I believe. It’s not a soul song, but I definitely wanted it to be recorded in kind of a soulful way with a little reverb and a roomy-sounding guitar – not unlike an old Eddie Hinton record or something like that. The end part kind of opened up with the little falsetto wandering line and the handclaps and everything … that’s the thing that kind of took it over the top. It was just a fun pop song.
BR: My note on “Only In My Double Mind” says, “The biggest drum in the world.”
WJ: (laughs) That was written on a distorted bass guitar. I had a bunch of overdrive pedals and I was running the bass through a Blues Junior amp to make the rhythm track. Then I wrote the music over that. It came together really, really quick.
BR: Another note: “A wall of sound, but it’s way in the back of the room.”
WJ: Definitely. (laughs) It was fun for us to try, because it was one of the few situations during those sessions where we did say, “Okay – let’s create our usual wall of distorted guitars.” But it was a real fun one, for sure. I know it sounds like we’re just beating the crap out of everything, but there are hardly any cymbals in the song. We were going for this more kind of “60s psychedelic” sort of thing where we relied more on the floor tom rather than beating the crap out of cymbals.
BR: I mentioned the Tele earlier; your solos are always interesting to listen to and you have a good handle on your tone. The solo midway through that song is a good example: there’s no fat; you get right to the marrow. It may be a smaller amp that’s cranked, but on the record it comes across as hideous amounts of power that you’re able to keep reined in … but if you didn’t keep the heel of your hand close to the strings, the thing would explode. (laughter)
WJ: Well, I’m glad you think that. (laughs) A lot of people think we record with these giant amplifiers in the studio, but we don’t. We’re recording through very, very small amps, cranking them up all the way and putting minimal effects on them. A lot of times we rely on the natural overdrive of the amps – maybe there’s one or two pedals involved, but mainly it’s a case of very small amplifiers cranked up to the hilt.
I’m not the kind of player that can play a fancy 32-notes-to-the-bar guitar solo anyway – I rely on big, long notes that hopefully make their own music as the thing starts to feed back a little bit.
But, yeah – we’ve always gotten what we think are the best results in the studio by using small amps so far.
BR: Do you have some favorite go-to amps?
WJ: A few. Early on – say, from ’96 to just a few years ago – we used a little Fender Pro Junior. I mean, the thing’s got two knobs on it: “tone” and “volume” – that’s it.
BR: Don’t you just love stuff like that?
WJ: Jeez – I really do, you know? The thing just gave us what we wanted in a lot of situations. And then there’s the Blues Junior that I told you about earlier. Sometimes we move up to bigger amps like a Reverb Deluxe or a Vibroverb or something like that.
We’ll stack up a big wall of amps and just flip them all on in the morning when we come in the studio to let them warm up. They’ll just be sitting there with their tubes glowing while we go down the line from amp to amp to amp, plugging and unplugging the guitar until we find what we want for a sound on a particular song. That’s what works for us.
BR: Great – don’t change a thing. And don’t be worrying about the “32-notes-to-a-measure” stuff, either.
WJ: (laughs) Well, I might as well not, because I’m not ever going to play it. (laughter)
BR: There’s a live vibe to “Solid States” – was it cut live?
WJ: I believe that’s one of the ones Matt and I cut live with his drums and my guitar right out of the gate. That’s another one of the songs written on distorto bass with a little drum track. I wanted a real, bouncy, almost “Werewolves of London” feel to it, which is, I’m sure, very obvious. That’s what we were going for.
BR: “Shadow Follow Me” has a cool mix – Scott Danbom’s piano is so delicate, yet it’s right there in front of everything.
WJ: Yeah, isn’t it? (laughs) We talked about that a lot during mix time. Much of the record was mixed long-distance with, you know, hundreds and hundreds of e-mails talking about mixes … it’s a difficult way to do it, I must say. That piano you speak of came up a lot in our conversation. At first we were a little nervous about having it sitting right there in your ear, but now I’m glad that we did. It’s such a sparse part and the notes that Scott played are so important and so crucial – but also so minimal – that we agreed to have it that high up.
BR: It works well – it does just what it sounds like you were after.
WJ: It’s a pretty simple collection of sounds that aren’t all heaped up on themselves. It becomes really important to make sure that the few elements that comprise the song speak exactly in the best way that we can make them. Scotty made the song in so many ways – he’s really the hero of that one, in my opinion.
BR: Nice, nice work.
WJ: I’ll pass that along; he’ll be happy to hear that, man. I think he’ll be proud of that.
The next track, “Mercedes Blast”, sounds like a warning.
WJ: It’s a little more playful in the word construction – a little more abstract and angular. We definitely have done that in the past. It’s kind of an address – and a slight indictment of a type of person. It’s not unlike “Iso-Residue” in the sense that it was just a pop song that wouldn’t go away. I just kept messing around and messing around with it; by the time we got in the studio, I wasn’t quite sure if it was even going to be on the record … it wasn’t a slam-dunk candidate.
But I rely on the guys’ filtering abilities greatly. A lot of the time, I may think something is just a mediocre demo but those guys will encourage the pursuit of the song … and rightfully so in the end. It turns out being one of our favorite songs on the record – it’s happened in the past. They know that I lean on them pretty heavily when I come in with a whole bunch of stuff and my brain’s kind of scrambled. They can maybe see things a little more clearly at that point; it’s like walking into someone’s house for the first time and see things that maybe the inhabitant doesn’t see. That’s kind of what that situation’s like.
BR: I always get a kick out of things that give the listener a little peek behind the curtain – like the last few seconds of “Mercedes Blast”. The song ends, but the amps are rumbling; there’s a little touch of drums; there’s a little bit of Crazy Horse guitar skronk … who made the decision to keep the tape rolling?
WJ: (laughs) We all did. The record is pretty tightly wrapped, for the most part: it’s only nine songs; it’s pretty short; and it’s fairly terse in certain sections. I guess we collectively wanted there to be a little bit of looseness and a glimpse of us getting sounds and messing around – a slight feel of what it’s like to sit in the studio with us. You hear a lot of that stuff, man – there’s just a lot of skronk and a lot of noise. We decided to keep that on there mostly to loosen the record up just a little bit.
BR: It’s a cool little moment. The only problem with doing it is – it’s like that little flurry at the end of Neil Young’s “Cinnamon Girl” – people are going to expect you to do it live.
WJ: (laughs) We’ll take our chances, man – we’ll take our chances. (laughter)
BR: And then we get to “If They Talk You Down”, which closes the album. That is such a powerful piece … it really is. And of all the emotions that get doled out in the course of the album, that song – to me – ends things on a note of encouragement.
WJ: Yeah, it definitely does. That’s another one written on the bass guitar. The bass and the vocal melody kind of went hand-in-hand in a way that might have turned out differently if it had been written on an acoustic or electric guitar. The bass kind of pushed the vocal in that direction and gave it more of a percussive sort of cadence. At the same time, I knew that I wanted it to be a big sort of “Matt Pence ending” – I wanted him to usher the record out in the way that he does. The cool thing is, he did all that in one take.
BR: Wait – the drum part is just Matt in a single pass?
WJ: Yeah. (laughs) It sounds like he somehow sprouted two extra arms, doesn’t it? We cut that together, set up so that we could see other and communicate through a window. I remember watching him while we were doing that take – I was trying to concentrate on my part, but I was totally in awe of what he was doing. It sounded like there were an extra couple of arms in there, the way he was doing things. But that’s one drummer playing that … I saw it myself. (laughs) It’s kind of crazy.
It was an unusual song for us, but exciting all the same – a good way to end the record. I’m really looking forward to playing that one live.
BR: Oh, man – look out for flying drumsticks. (laughter) So that’s next, right? Get out there on the road behind this thing.
WJ: Yes. Our other band, South San Gabriel, will be going to Spain in mid-June to play a one-off show. The timing is pretty terrible, but the occasion is important to us – we’ll be playing a Vic Chesnutt tribute show. We’re in Spain on the 18th of June and get back just in time to start the Centro-matic tour in Nashville on the 22nd. It’ll be hectic to fly over and back for the one show, but it’s something that we’re looking forward to doing.
BR: Any plans to get together with Patterson Hood and the Screwtopian lineup in the near future?
WJ: I don’t think so for right now – the Truckers are in full swing – full record mode – and so are we. I’m sure we’ll get together again before too long, though.
We’re trying to link up some stuff with the Truckers for the fall; our bands haven’t toured together since 2004, I believe. Both bands will be off for the most of 2012, it sounds like, so it seems like if we’re going to do it, we should take our opportunity soon. I’m really hoping that comes together. Regardless, there’ll be a handful of other projects coming up in 2012 and into 2013. (laughs) I can’t complain.
BR: And don’t question why it all happens – just go with it.
WJ: Exactly. (laughs) I feel fortunate to participate in so many cool musical projects. I cannot complain in the least.
BR: Well … it might be a function of being halfway decent at what you do, man.
WJ: Well … thanks. (laughs) Sometimes I don’t know … I get going so fast and get my head down working so hard that I’m not sure I feel the same way. (laughs)
BR: Well, you deserve whatever comes your way.
WJ: Thank you.
BR: Look, we’ve been talking quite a while; we must be getting near a diaper change or something. (laughter)
WJ: Yeah, I think there’s one coming up pretty quick, so I should do that.
BR: Will, thanks for taking the time to do this.
WJ: Absolutely. Thanks for the conversation; it’s been great talking to you. Hopefully we’ll see you out there along the way.
