It is a good time to be Reid Genauer. With a new Assembly of Dust record, Sun Shot, recently released, and the long-desired reunion of the original Strangefolk members in full swing, one can understand it if the singer/songwriter/guitarist feels a bit unbalanced these days in more ways than one. However, despite the challenges of juggling multiple careers, the musician seems completely relaxed, focused, humorous, and refreshingly modest about everything going on all at once. Indeed, Genauer has balance and direction.
This isn’t always an easy thing to do as Jambands.com caught up with Genauer after a whirlwind series of dates with AOD found the artist suddenly in Austin, Texas with little sleep and the opportunity to discuss his new album with that band, while ruminating on the Strangefolk reunion, and how exactly Genauer puts “creativity to work.” Our modus operandi at the site is to feature those musicians who somehow have managed to forge their own path in an often cookie-cutter music industry. Genauer certainly ranks among the forefront of that vision with an endearing ability to write some fairly timeless tunes, while playing numerous memorable gigs during these past two decades—with Strangefolk, AOD, or, as a solo act. The new AOD album, Sun Shot has a poignant ability to gather together material from various timeframes into one cohesive package. One could say the same thing about Genauer as he continues to create memorable music.
RR: The last time we spoke was around the December holidays in 2010. Obviously, a lot has happened in your life and career since then. I was working on the laptop, and had various tabs open while doing research, and I felt that was probably your life—multiple tabs of work going on all at once. You have two professions, you have your home life, you have the Strangefolk reunion, you have Assembly of Dust, and you also do solo acoustic work.
RG: Yeah, I have a lot of tabs open, for sure, man (laughter)—literally and figuratively. When I turn on my browser, one, two, three, four, five (laughs)—the essential tabs that have to be open.
RR: Let’s tackle some of those essential tabs—the solo acoustic set, which is mentioned on the AOD site?
RG: I don’t know that it’s up on iTunes or not, but it was part of the Kickstarter campaign [which helped fund the Sun Shot album production and release]. One of the things we offered was, I think, ten tracks from a solo acoustic show in Philly. I know it’s for sale on our web site. I am not sure if it has made it up on iTunes yet or not. It’s called My Name is Forgettable [after a line from the song “Cabin John], and it’s just me strumming on a guitar. At some point, it is one of the things I’d like to do, really do, just a solo acoustic record with next to nothing, if not just me and a guitar, sort of like Stephen Stills. I know he did one of those at one point. It’s cool to hear him in that context. Mine is just a bootleg, more or less a glorified bootleg. But, it’s another shade.
RR: You mentioned Kickstarter, and AOD had a successful campaign that was used to fund Sun Shot. How did you initiate that process, and now that it has been somewhat completed, what are your thoughts about using Kickstarter as an important tool for single acts and/or bands?
RG: When it first started happening, I was very interested. I thought it was a great idea, but then, it felt like maybe not something I’d be interested in, and then I sort of lost that, and, of course, Amanda Palmer had so much success with it this year right around the time we were thinking about how to put the record out. I don’t know. I guess, for me, I’ve never had a particularly strong affinity for record labels. Most of the records I’ve done have been independent in one way, shape, or form, or released by an independent label. After doing this for so many years, me and the folks around me all understand what this process is, so it really just comes down to record labels being a bank, more or less. I think that is certainly their essential role. To be fair, there are benefits to have people who are experts in the field helping you, but it’s a trade off, right? You are entering this bureaucratic mess, if you will, so Kickstarter got increasingly more attractive from that perspective.
So we did it, and it was a ton of fun. There was a kind of gaming component of it as to whether or not—it was like watching a boxing match, almost, trying to figure out (laughs) if you are going to make it twelve rounds. The cool thing was the unexpected, which was the money and the process becomes a catalyst for revealing and highlighting and strengthening the connective tissues between you and your fans, in particular, your die hard fans. And, also, it provides a tool in activating the fans, if you will, because they become emotionally invested in each step of the process and interested in the record in a way that they wouldn’t be otherwise. Even as a die hard fan—you get the music, and you think, “I either like this, or I don’t,” but, you are pre-vested, if you will, or pre-invested emotionally, so I think when the record hits, there is a shared pride like there is a new baby in the family-kind of vibe. (laughs) It was great for that.
RR: Did that influence the 50,000 downloads in 50 days decision in any way? I wrote down a number a little while ago, and it’s already surpassed that by several downloads just in a the short time we’ve been on the phone. That’s impressive.
RG: Yeah, it totally is. We picked a number that we felt like we could be whole on. It doesn’t cover all of it, but the bulk of it—certainly the recording costs. On a personal level, I really make music to share the music, and it’s never been about money for me. To know that we weren’t going to be struggling to pay it off was a huge burden to be off the shoulders to begin with, and, then, it liberated us to do that. It’s been paid for, and I’d rather have people share the music and know the music and help us celebrate it than scrape a few pennies together on it.
RR: The recording of Sun Shot itself—a couple of significant things come to mind: the importance of having Ryan Freeland engineer the album, and the studio, One East in New York City.
RG: We’ve worked primarily with a guy named Josh Pryor, and he’s a friend and a childhood friend of Adam Terrell. I expect we’ll do a lot more with Josh. He’s insanely gifted, like insanely gifted. I’ve never seen such an attention to detail. He’s a perfectionist. But, there were a couple of things. One, he is super busy; he does everything from web programming to engineering. Two, I had listened to these records that I love so much and you can hand anyone a reference and say, “I want it to sound like this,” and I’m trying to think of a good parallel, and this is the one that comes to mind: if you look at tennis players, they’re all doing it basically the same way—serving a ball, hitting a groundstroke, hitting a backstroke, and no matter how much you say, “I want to play like so and so,” they have their own style or approach to being a professional in that arena. I think there are a handful of people who still…I think lots of people really respect the production quality of the original recordings, the height of rock ‘n’ roll in the early to mid-70s, but re-creating it is just like, I don’t know, I think it’s just like serendipitous, back to the [tennis] serve, it’s like someone who holds their wrist a fraction of a degree differently and that’s the effect, right? Ryan is a student of it, and he has his own approach, and, so, I don’t know, it’s a quality that I’ve always loved. It struck me; I’m a fan of Ray LaMontagne, and it struck me that all of his records really have that. Not only does his songwriting harken back to those times, but I think of him as a Stephen Stills-like figure of our generation. The music’s got that, and the production quality always did.
So, when I was thinking about this record, and just how the last one was engineered, both musically and technically, it had to be, we had all of these disparate studios and different people. When I die, Some Assembly Required —my hand will be sticking out of the earth with that in it; Josh made that happen. But what we decided was that there was no way we were going to top that, so let’s not even try. Let’s do the opposite, and be very basic in our approach. And that’s Ryan’s deal. He doesn’t cut and paste. He has you play the tune, hit the take, and he tries to capture it as accurately as he can and really capture the room.
You can listen back to those old records, and you have the sense that you’re standing in the room with these people because it has the sense of space and presence. So, he nailed it. He absolutely nailed it. I don’t know. It’s just a cool sound, we’re really proud, and it seems to be resonating with people. It’s also mellower than anything we’ve ever done; there’s a lot more ballads. With a few exceptions—there are guys who just want to be hit over the head with face-melting guitar solos—people seem to be really psyched about it.
RR: Sun Shot has a consistency of sound and depth of emotions that carries through it very well, too. You spoke of the ambience of a room, which is important to me, too, as a listener. How many takes did each track need before you moved on?
RG: Two or three takes each. Most of the performances, if not all, but most of the performances are whole performances. The things that were layered back in were the acoustic guitar because it is hard to do that live—the nature of the instrument means you can’t have all the drums bleeding through the microphone. Interestingly, I went back and started singing a lot of tracks over again and they didn’t have the same in-the-moment feel. It seemed like over-emoting, where you try and be like Aretha Franklin or something (laughter). We went back and listened to a lot of the scratch vocals, and I think every single one of those is a scratch vocal. It was something that we never intended to keep. I was just singing to give the band signposts—a format signpost: where are we at in the song, and an emotional signpost: it’s hard to get into a tune unless you’re really playing it. And we kept them—I’m pretty sure 100%—very single vocal is the scratch. Which is cool. (laughs) I think they were just more natural performances—more nuanced, more relaxed because it was like the spotlight wasn’t on.
RR: In terms of those individual tracks, how did you choose the songs for Sun Shot, and how do you find the time to sit down and write? What is your current writing process like?
RG: Yeah. I think there are three classes of songs on the record. The first are songs that, you know, have been written and in the repertoire and kicking around for a few years: “Lost & Amazed” and “Avenue of the Giants”—those are the two primary examples of that. The second class, and the mainstay, which are songs that were written for the record where I intentionally sat down to write a bunch of tunes like “Vaulted Sky,” “Cluttered,” and “Unvarnished.” The third class was songs that had been written and never gotten played; there are two or three—“Gray Believer” was one that I had written for Some Assembly Required. We didn’t record it, and we’ve never played it live. “Mrs. What You Are” was written a bunch of years ago. It’s a little on the pop-y end of things, I think, for what we do. It just never felt like a top priority. We did it on a whim. John Leccese [bassist] pushed for it, he liked it as a ditty, and it came out well. It’s got a great sort of Clapton-y 70s groove. Those were the buckets—brand spanking new, closet songs that came out (laughs), and then a couple that had seen the light of day.
In terms of process, I don’t know, I just have to be…when I was a kid, and I had nothing else going on, I just wrote whenever I felt like it, whenever I felt inspired. These days, I just have to be more structured about it and carve out time. There’s something that is kind of cool that I was initially frustrated with, but now I’ve come to be comfortable with and understand it is that when you have two or three hours set aside and you sit down because you have to, and a lot of times you don’t feel like you are getting anything done. It is not flowing and it feels like a disappointment.
What’s interesting, though, is that for me, anyhow, and I’ll bet it is like this for most people, is that songwriting is this long stretched-out, lanky process, it’s a lanky process (laughter). A lot of times what is happening in those initial sessions is that you don’t even realize that you sort of planted a seed. Even if it’s just one or two ideas, they stick with you. If you’ve got a melody, or a theme for a song, or an idea, and you’ve captured it, and it’s sort of etched in your head, then you could be out for a jog, or walkin’ the dog, or driving a car, or flying on a plane, or wherever, and it’s there percolating. I find that if you just take the time to quote/unquote “plant the seed,” even if you were disappointed in the moment, it typically bears fruit. And that was something I had to learn how to do because I was more accustomed to sitting down and doing.
RR: And if you only have a structured period of time to work, then you don’t want to have to go back and re-do what you need to do three or four times.
RG: Right, although, I think that is exactly another interesting lesson to learn. Sometimes when it’s not working, either lyrically or some section, you just have to be a man about it, and bail. Instead of being so precious about every utterance that comes out of you, I think it’s helpful to say, “You know, this one isn’t happening right now.” It’s disappointing and it’s frustrating, but it’s more productive, sometimes, to put it aside and let it die. Or re-visit it, and it can come back in some other incarnation.
One of the songs that is particularly popular for us is called “Harrower,” and that was a re-write. It was a song that felt like it had potential, and I don’t even remember what the lyrics were, but they were not particularly strong. I said, “Screw it,” let it sit, and then re-wrote all of the lyrics, and it became something else that is now a mainstay, but I guarantee that had we done it the way that it initially was written, it wouldn’t have had the same power it does.
RR: Three tiers of time for the songs to be included onto one framework of time, which became Sun Shot. That’s obviously a nod to the strength in the songwriting process, but what I noticed was a confidence and conciseness on each song, while also including a few places where the listener can hear the band stretch out for a bit, for example on “Arkansas Down” and “Weehawken Ferry.” Did you insert passages in the song for some space before returning to the main thesis or riff, if at all?
RG: Yeah. “Arkansas Down” was kind of like the scratch-vocal thing. I don’t think we had any intention of having four minutes at the end of the song, or whatever it was, but there was no official ending. We were just kind of noodling. And, if you listen to it, it just captures this great spontaneous interplay, primarily (I guess between the whole band, but really) Jason [Crosby, keyboards] and Adam are having a conversation, and that was just fortuitous. That was really nice.
And, then (laughs), this is kind of crass, but it’s funny. I was talking about both Jason and Adam—we were talking about them this weekend—and, of course, in the live setting, we do have long, extended sections, but, if anything…well, we were talking about them both as dogs who piss on trees. It’s a miracle. You take a dog for a half hour walk, and, somehow, he has enough piss for every tree he wants to mark, as opposed to somebody who has had 19 beers, comes out, and sprays the wall. Jason and Adam are very contained in these creative bursts throughout the record. In the live setting, it’s there, they could do it all night long if they want to, but they don’t. They wait for the moment to mark the border (laughs), so it’s a funny parallel. We were hunched over laughing about that particular reference, but it’s kind of a good one.
RR: That sense of containment, and knowing when, or even if, one needs to stretch out reminds me of “Myth of Mine,” which has a sublime melody, while the entire band is playing quite well together as a unit, much like it does throughout Sun Shot. After all this time, the band has a fresh and tight sound that is remarkable.
RG: We’re mystified by that ourselves. I think in that same conversation at a diner somewhere in Portland, Oregon, we were saying the same thing. It has been over a decade and we’ve found, I don’t know (laughs), we’ve found a stride that feels great, and I think a lot of it has to do with having Jason and Dave [Diamond, drums] settle into being a part of the band, and not these appendages. It just comes with time and they are great and they get it. They are cut from the same mold. But, it’s awesome and it’s really cool. The shows have been going that way, as well. There is just a lot of nuance, a lot of confidence, and you can see it in the crowd. The reaction is strong without having to be a sledgehammer, and that, that’s really where we’ve found something that I am not sure that we’ve ever really fully refined in the past. We’ve always done ballads with conviction and some more nuanced pieces, but this record has, I don’t know, it’s back to the tennis guy with the angle of his wrist—we tweaked our approach in our serve. Maybe, it isn’t fast, but it’s more targeted.
RR: The sledgehammer comment is also telling. There is a subtle power to the album, so I don’t have to turn the volume up to 11 to let it hit me in an obvious way.
RG: Right. Although, I will say this album sounds good loud. (laughter)
RR: Yeah. Unfortunately, everything needs to be turned up loud for me these days.
RG: I like listening to music loud, in general, because you just hear everything, as opposed to a normal volume, where you only hear the snare drum, the vocal, and the guitar riff, right? Loud, you really hear all the dimensions.
RR: You only have a handful of dates coming up for AOD, including a couple shows in New York. Are there AOD dates that haven’t been announced?
RG: Yeah, I think the southern run will be four dates, and, I forget all the timing for all of this, but we have another run in New England that is booked, just not announced, and we’ll keep peppering them in there. Our aim with Kickstarter and with Sun Shot, was to really try and get as far and wide as we could. I think we are going to go back in the fall to the West Coast, where we just were, and do sort of South of San Francisco, like San Diego, L.A., and places down that way, so we’ve got a lot going on, and we’re really enjoying the hell out of it. There is no reason not to do it.
RR: And if it wasn’t enough to enjoy the hell out of all that with Assembly of Dust, you have the ongoing Strangefolk reunion. I suppose it may be difficult to underline your feelings about all of that, but how does it feel to be back with the original group. I believe it is a year this month since everything got rolling again.
RG: Jon Trafton joined us in San Francisco. He and I did an acoustic set, and he got up and played with AOD for half of the second set of our show, and that was really fun. Where there might have been, at one point, I don’t know, people walking on egg shells a little bit, or feeling like their feathers were ruffled, it was just the opposite. It was a really comfortable hang, and everybody was laughing and having a good time. On a personal front for me, that’s really rewarding. I know that Strangefolk still has a community of people who orbit around it, and that was really, really cool to pick up ten years later, and to see all of these faces and personalities come out of the woodwork that I hadn’t seen in a long time, so that’s really fun.
I think we’re a better band than we were. I know that there are those that would beg to differ, and I guess there are things that people reacted to positively that might not be there. Maybe, some of the chops aren’t as blazing as they were in the day, but we’re playing the songs with—much like I described with AOD—more maturity. We just sound less saggy and like the song is driving me and the band, rather than the band driving the song. I like that. We hadn’t been doing it together, and people are bringing their individual wisdom to a context that was very raw and rough-hewn back in the day. Hopefully, we haven’t totally muted that rawness. I don’t think we have, particularly with what Luke Smith brings [on drums]. He brings a lot of intensity and energy to the frame, so that’s been great.
Again, on a personal level, Strangefolk was a time in my life and a musical organism that I’m immensely proud of everything it is part of, so I felt alienated from it all of these years. It was sort of like a man without a country when it came to that, so to be able to re-claim my connectivity and my place in that band is, for lack of a better word, heartwarming. I have the posters on the wall. I guess I didn’t even really realize it. I looked at it with a sort of detachment, like it was somebody else, if that makes sense. I felt severed from it, which I was by my own doing. To have that bridge re-built feels very natural, but also very fulfilling and holistic. All of the pieces are there; there’s not this big gouge in my history. (laughs)
There’s a cool story about that, actually. Amber Trafton, Jon’s wife, and I have gotten to know each other. We really hadn’t because they got together post-[Strangefolk’s] split. Well, you know, we’ve met a couple of times, but never got to know each other. She was just saying that she was experiencing the same thing where she felt, somehow, I think disloyal is too strong a word, but it was just not as relevant to listen to the old tunes and the old records and the old shows, so she never did. She got to know Jon as a person in the wake of all that stuff, and it just wasn’t part of their relationship. So, she’s gone back and listened to all of that stuff, and she had a very similar experience, it was like an awakening for her, and she felt like she got to know her husband in a more complete way. I don’t know; I think that kind of says it all.
RR: Speaking of chunks of time come and gone, I wanted to get your impression of sealing the gap of fourteen years between when Strangefolk last played at the Capitol Theatre in December 1998, and the band’s return to that venue in late 2012. Was that a surreal experience for you?
RG: It was. It’s a great room. I think it was more of a surreal experience just to go to the room. It’s awesome, the sound system is awesome, the crowd is on fire, and, yeah, it was surreal in that those memories feel like it was yesterday. I remembered conversations I had in the green room, and I didn’t remember, actually, that much about the show. (laughs) I remember not being that particularly inspired about it on that evening, but once I went back and listened, it was Strangefolk at its best. It was Ben Collette who chose the show, and he chose well [ 12/27/98—Live at the Capitol Theatre.
[Last year] I felt much more in command of the situation. I remember playing it the first time, and just feeling like somehow it was beyond me. I don’t really know what I mean by that, but I think the band, in general, was like that. We were just not as command of the band; therefore, not as in command of the room. I don’t know, it was just really relaxed and it felt really good.
RR: You had Al Schnier open up with a solo set for those Capitol Theatre gigs, so that must have brought that timeframe back, as well—not like you haven’t seen him in the last 14 years. (laughter)
RG: He’s my rock ‘n’ roll Forest Gump. He just keeps popping up. That added a whole other layer of context and continuity. He was really enthusiastic about the band. He always has been. He’s always been really generous and supportive. It was just another data point. I think we could have done anything, and our fans would have been happy, but it is nice to hear your peer say that you sound all right.
RR: Strangefolk returns the favor with a spot at snoe.down in late March.
RG: I’m looking forward to that. It’s a great festival. We played it with Assembly of Dust before. It’s a high energy gig, and it’s certainly familiar territory for me and the band, but, yeah, it’s going to be a lot of fun.
RR: And more to come. You’ve had a few career milestones over the last year, so I was wondering how you maintain your balance as you segue between various gigs.
RG: I don’t know. It’s what I do and what I’ve done for a long, long time now. There are times when it’s a struggle when I haven’t slept (laughter), like today. There are moments. I just figured it out. I don’t know. It fits together like a jigsaw puzzle, and the pieces are contiguous. I’m not jumping around being nine guys. I’m just one guy doing a bunch of different things that all have some commonality to it, and it really comes down to putting creativity to work. That’s my m.o.
