ERIC: Something that interests me about the band is that you are all visual artists as well. Do you find certain aspects of music and art that you find appealing in both?
SAM: I don’t really think about it that much, but I have a feeling that one or the other would be a lot different if I didn’t do both. If I painted all the time and didn’t make any music it would probably effect how I painted or vice verse. Maybe not how it looked or sounded--usually when I start doing one or the other it’s because I’m ready to stop doing one for a while.
ERIC: I know when working with different mediums like printmaking and painting you’ll tend to bring things from one to the other, so I was wondering if you ever find that happening with music?
SAM: Yeah, I don’t know... it’s a nice idea. I could say that it does, but I wouldn’t know how to decide what it is. I like listening to music best when I paint and that process of listening is important.
ERIC: What sort of artwork are you making now?
SAM: They’re sort of smaller abstract paintings, geometric. I haven’t figured out a good way to describe it, that’s all I ever say... It’s incredibly meaningless.
ERIC: Are you interested in structure, mood...?
SAM: It’s a combo of the two, I mean I have a certain way that I deal with things that’s sort of evolved. I keep in that same direction all of the time. I guess there’s no real style consciousness, but it’s implied.
ERIC: In the last record [The Fawn] it seems like you used a lot more drum machines, electronic instruments and things like that, is that something you’ve carried into a live setting?
SAM: We brought Marv Greenburg along [also played in Coctails] to play keyboard parts. And we had, up until last night, for some of those tunes on The Fawn, a sequencer with some of the drum machine and sample stuff. It crashed. This happened minutes before we were supposed to go on, so we kind of panicked. We played most of the songs anyway.
ERIC: How did the use of those things come about, just sort of the natural progression of things?
SAM: Yeah, but it came out of certain limitations, like we knew we wanted to record at John’s [McEntire] studio, but it’s limited in that it’s a eight track studio. But if we used sequencers and drum machines and all that we could have as much stuff as we wanted going on and then we saved the analog tracks for whatever. Because I liked to do at least two vocal tracks, not that I’d necessarily keep them all, but in terms of the process of working I like to have at least three open tracks to deal with. The other part is over the summer before we went to record I got a keyboard that had a little drum machine and I started coming up with tunes based around that and then kept on going.
ERIC: So you’d start with the base of the songs around programmed stuff and then...
SAM: Not in all instances, but in a couple of them we’d use the new approach and then use it based around guitar...
ERIC: Like in “The Argument?”
SAM: That one is sort of half and half. The first song though is a keyboard song basically, well that was the initial seed of it.
ERIC: One thing I really like about the album is the sort of blurring the line between rhythm and melody. That’s a pretty approach. (long pause here. The interviewer’s lack of preparation becomes even more apparent.) (blah, blah-we briefly get into perusing music instead of going the traditional post-college career-route.)
SAM: I highly recommend not working.
ERIC: You went to college and everything?
SAM: Yeah, I went to art school for four years.
ERIC: So when you finished, did you decide to just go with music and stick with that?
SAM: Yeah, right when I got out of art school I sort of stopped painting, but I kept doing the music. So now I do both. I end up doing more music than painting, but I was in a band in art school, Shrimpboat, and that’s where we started.
ERIC: Was it tough not going the career route for a while?
SAM: Well, I worked, but I wasn’t into it. I hardly work now at all, I do this stuff. I think it’s been like two years I decided--well I work sometimes.
ERIC: What do you do when you work?
SAM: Usually construction or carpentry, drywalling, that kind of stuff.
ERIC: So you’re still waiting for the day where you can just do music and paint?
SAM: That’s sort of what I do now, but it’s not because I make a lot of money. I make enough and I have little or no overhead so I can get by and not work, so I feel pretty lucky that way.
[end]