Though Spanish Gold is pretty much the epitome of a 21st Century festival- scene supergroup, the new band’s three members actually trace their inspiration back to the tail end of the 20th century: The garage-rock-fueled trio specifically cite the freeform programming of MTV’s classic 1986-1996 period as a mutual reference point for both Spanish Gold’s mix of rock, R&B, pop and funk sounds as well as their desire to create concise, but inspired catchy nuggets. Guitarist and lead vocalist Dante Schwebel (City and Colour) conceived Spanish Gold as his longtime band Hacienda was on the brink of falling apart and recruited drummer Patrick Hallahan (My Morning Jacket), guitarist Adrian Quesada (formerly of Grupo Fantasma) to help flesh out his initial sketches. Thanks to a boost from The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, who connected 2/3rds of the band in the first place, the group spent time recording in the Southeast with producer Collin Dupuis (JEFF the Brotherhood, Bombino). The sessions resulted in Spanish Gold’s full-length debut South of Nowhere and a new project that all three members of the group are determined to make more than a side-project. Jambands.com spoke with Dante and Patrick while the three musicians were fleshing out Spanish Gold’s future.
Let’s start with the origins of Spanish Gold. Dante, you and Patrick toured together as part of Dan Auerbach’s solo band in 2009. At what point did you start writing material for Spanish Gold and bring Patrick and Adrian into the fray?
DS: We formed Spanish Gold in 2012. I was always working on stuff when I was at home. At the time I was in a band called Hacienda but I felt like we were finishing up and going in different places with that band. We’re not really sure whether we felt like continuing. You know, we were kind of a hard road band for five years or so but around that time we were in transition and we all had a bunch of material. I was always writing songs and working on songs but I didn’t really know what to do with them. That’s always the hassle or the predicament that songwriters find themselves in. With the material being sort of like garage rock songs, I couldn’t really quite figure out what to do with them. I knew it didn’t really sound like some of the garage rock stuff I had been doing previously with Hacienda. I am always working on all sorts of projects. I’m actually in Toronto now—we’ve been here for a few days doing rehearsals for City and Colour and we’re about to start a Canadian tour. So we’ve just kind of been held up in a club here doing rehearsals for the last few days.
So when the first idea came up for Spanish Gold I called Adrian. We had known each other and I thought he could lend something to this batch of songs pretty easily. I called him and we demoed a few things and each session got us to another step. Once we got to the point where these songs were taking shape, I said, “Man, I know a drummer!” Patrick and I played together when we both backed up Dan Auerbach on his solo stuff several years back. So I said, “I know a drummer that I think would be perfect for it.”
Dan gave us the key to his studio in Nashville and I invited Patrick and Adrian. That was the first time Patrick and Adrian met yet we ended up cutting about half the record in four days or something. So by the end we said, “Let’s make a record out of this and see what happens.”
Patrick in certain ways 2014 has been your year off the road while My Morning Jacket works on a new record. What were your initial impressions of these songs and what made you decide it was worth dedicating a good chunk off your vacation time to this project?
PH: Well, Dante and I kind of always kept tabs on each other. He and I had hit it off from the get go on that Dan tour, and I always had it in the back of my head that he and I were going to do something at some point. We just always had good chemistry on stage.
He called me to tell me what he was doing with this side stuff he had been working on. We were talking on the phone and he told me he was working with this guy from Grupo Fantasma, whose is a killer producer, and we got together and worked on some demos. At that point, he didn’t even know what he was going to do with it then. I was just excited for Dante so when I got the call and he said, “Hey do you want to get in on this?” I said, “Yeah” because it sounded like a fun little recording project. My thought process was like, “Sure, I’ll meet you in Nashville with people I’ve never met before and see what happens.
But when I met Adrian, we pretty much just instantly hit it off. I think we approached things in a like-minded way. The three of us really synced quickly in the studio, and I think that’s why we decided to keep it going—it turned into something more than just a tiny little side project. It had grown legs because the chemistry was real and you can’t fake that.
When the project was originally announced there was a very specific description of Spanish Gold’s sound. A particularly revealing quote said, “We kept finding that we had a lot of the same reference points during the recording. It became evident that we were still children of the MTV era. We grew up with MTV when it was still a music channel. The way that the programming crossed genres from R&B to hip hop, rock, soul and pop music is how we approach records. It’s an album of all those styles. Like watching a random hour of MTV programming circa 1986-1996. It’s a nod to Michael Jackson, Dr. Dre, Madonna, the Beastie Boys or Tom Petty, all with a Texas border town setting. It all adds up to a fun listen that you can keep on repeat.” At what point in the creative process did you totally dive in the classic MTV-era?
DS: We were all coming from different bands and every band has a different personality based on the people that are in it. And something that we all had in common just in conversations and you know you go get a beer after you work in the studio and you’re kind of trading an iPod, everybody’s listening to somebody else’s iPod at different times. We were all of that era. We could all recall these songs and it would make everybody immediately reminisce about what it was like to be 14 again. One thing that was great about MTV during that time was that they played every genre—even Tom Petty was on MTV at that time. They would follow up Tom Petty with Dr. Dre and that kind of mentality about how to program music is something we really felt a connection with. I think MTV had a lot of trust in people at the time because it wasn’t so uniform. It wasn’t so much about choosing this demographic over that demographic and, if you were like any of us, MTV was probably on in your household about 20 hours a day. You got exposed to everything, whether it be MTV Raps, Headbangers Ball, Alternative Nation or 120 Minutes. So when we were making the record and once we were about six songs in, someone would say, “Well, this song doesn’t really sound like that song and that song. I said, “Yeah, that’s kind of the thing.” It’s almost like you’re playing a great mix tape with different styles.
In a sense that early MTV period was a natural precursor for what’s going on now in the music industry, where between the iPod generation and the festival mentality, all these different genres exist comfortably right next to each other. It is more common for people to look at their tastes as a mixtape instead of saying, “I only like rock or I only like R&R or hip-hop.”
PH: Yeah, I agree. I think definitely, with this record, the similarities between the songs come about because the same three people are playing the instruments. Those are the links between the songs and the style. But song to song there might be a rock song, a more funk song, something more straight ahead or something more intricate. But either way I think it’s time for people to just…I think it’s good for bands to give people more credit and say, “You can handle this.” I don’t think it’s super weird to have variety. I think the main thing all those artists on MTV had at the time was that they were all really catchy. You could sing along with all these bands pretty quickly, and I think that some of that gets lost in maybe some of the indie rock stuff now. Some of it’s pretty forgettable here and there.
When it came to recording the Spanish Gold album, it sounds like Dante had a pretty good sense of the songs when he started this project. In terms of the recording of the album itself, did you find that you pretty drastically rearranged the songs when you went into Dan’s studio or did you remain pretty sympathetic to the original arrangements?
DS: It was a bit of both. Some songs are more completed than others.
PH: Some were more ideas that turned into actual songs. The final product came out of working them out over a period of time.
DS: Yeah and there’s always a thing where you bounce an idea of another musical or maybe you might try something different that sticks. It was just three of us most of the time, so we could try stuff in a number of different ways and then pick you know like, “Man that one is firing off really well,” whether it was maybe the original thing or just you know. So it was a little bit of both.
PH: The songs kind of tell you what they need. You just have to get out of the way of a song and let it guide the process. It’s going to tell you whether it likes being heavy or slow or fast. It’s just like we were kind of being serviced to that process.
In terms of the actual recording, I also know that Jim Eno from Spoon had a hand in this. At what point after your initial sessions did you bring him in?
DS: We brought Jim into the mix because we wanted to mix a few songs to start trying to get some label help to pay for some things because a lot of this was out of pocket. We didn’t end up using him because we weren’t finished with the album yet and we had what we needed to get from him just because we were going. We ended up going back to the original engineer, Collin Dupuis, at Dan’s Studio Easy Eye Studio in Nashville. Collin helped us find the initial sound and everything and for continuity sake we decided it would be best to work with him. We already had a great existing relationship with him we went back to that studio to finish and he came up to Louisville for a session at Lalaland. [The album credits Jim Eno and Sam Patlove (The Octopus Project) as additional engineers.]
Dan was something of a godfather to this project in that the first time you toured together you were part of his band and he gave you the facilities to hash out the blueprints for Spanish Gold. Did he have any advice for the sessions that kind of lent any particular weight or did he leave any particular thumbprints on the album?
DS: From a personal standpoint, Dan’s always been kind of like a big brother to me. He’s always been really encouraging. Dan produced all the records that I’ve worked on with Hacienda. So our relationship kind of kept developing through those records. It’s pretty collaborative. So when this came about I basically sent him demos and said, “I’m thinking of doing this and what are your thoughts on it?” And he basically told me that he believed in it, liked it and thought it was definitely worth pursuing. When you get that kind of encouragement from somebody who you respect it’s pretty simple to say okay. I think for any artist to step out and try a new project you think to yourself, “Do I really want to devote this much attention, money, effort and time?” But he basically supported me and said, “Yeah I think it’s good enough and I think you should definitely give it a go.” So that was the main thing and that kind of gave me the confidence to give it a shot. He was really supportive and generous with us and let us go into the studio and work.
PH: I don’t want to downplay Dan’s role but I don’t really think he was much of a godfather figure. He’s like a friend and a confidant. I think either of us would have done the same for him if he was in this position and if the tables were turned we would have done the same exact thing for him. His involvement with my relationship with Dante is strictly that of a liaison. He put two like-minded people together because we’re like-minded with him.
DS: Yeah I think this is sort of a perspective thing. Obviously Patrick and Adrian have their respective careers. Patrick has been playing with My Morning Jacket for so long and Adrian was in Grupo Fantasma. He actually didn’t know Dan at all, really. But almost everything I’ve worked on has been because of Dan or somehow involved with him. So there is always that connection and he definitely is somebody I go to for advice and somebody I kind of bounce something off of and say, “What do you think man?” But yeah he wasn’t involved in the studio with us while we were cutting tracks or anything.
Shifting from the studio a little bit to the live show as you guys kind of whip that into shape, besides kind of bringing these songs to life, do you have any other thoughts on how to present this material? Are you guys going to add in any covers to kind of flesh out the set or is it going to be kind of let this list exist as it can with music?
DS: We will definitely represent the record as best we can and then we’re probably going to have some fun with a cover here and there. We did a version of the Ghetto Brothers’ 1971 hit “There Is Something In My Heart” that we released as a special 7” for Record Store Day. The original album was reissued a few years. We’re all big fans of that record and we were able to do a cover, which was pretty cool. So we’ll do stuff like that. And some high energy, we’re pretty high-energy people for the most part. If you’ve seen Patrick live it’s pretty high energy. I imagine will bring that.
PH: I would just like to add that we would like to focus on this band and this band only. I don’t think we have any reason to ever bring other band’s stuff into the mix. We really believe in this project, that it has legs of its own and I think it’s going to be fun to watch the recorded world go into the live world and see what comes out of it.
Finally, Patrick, last year My Morning Jacket toured with Bob Weir as part of the AmericanaramA traveling festival. You performed together regularly and reprised the collaboration in Mexico earlier this year. What were your takeaways from playing with him?
PH: The first time we played with him it was like playing with someone who is so fearless onstage. He has something timeless about him and a very useable discovery mode the way his brain works. He’ll just jump out there and do anything. It really taught us to loosen up. We were already pretty loose but, it was amazing to watch him go and just go with anything and just take direction and give direction. You can tell he’s a natural collaborator.
