Interview: David Bazan

David Bazan has been one of my favorite artists over the last few years, and has been making solid records for years. He started back in the early 90’s playing drums in a band called The Guilty, later changed to Coolidge, and from there has had quite the career. Aside from Pedro the Lion, he also has played drums and sang back-up vocals for Seldom and has also played with Starflyer 59 and released the drum and synth project Headphones, including other solo material.

The first Pedro the Lion release was in 1997, and was an EP titled Whole. From there his full releases came; It’s Hard to Find a Friend (1998), Winners Never Quit (2000), Control (2002), and finally Achilles Heel (2004). Along the way he threw in various EPs, and picked up different musicians such as Seldom’s Casey Foubert and TW Walsh for various endeavors. In 2005 Walsh joined David in making the first self-titled Headphones record.

In 2007, David’s solo record, Fewer Moving Parts, was re-released through Barsuk, and In 2008 David will be releasing some new material with new project names, such as “David Bazan’s Black Cloud”. I would get all into it and could write about this guy forever, but as happens, I was able to sit down with David and pick his brain about his career, the future, and some other ramblings about nothing…which is exactly what I know you all want to hear.

Indie Schmarm: Fewer Moving Parts was released last year and was re-release in May. Are there still plans for a solo full length?

David Bazan: Oh yeah, I’m working on the solo record right now.

Indie Schmarm: When is that supposed to arrive?

David Bazan: Like the summer time, roughly.

Indie Schmarm: Is the Black Cloud project different from your solo work?

David Bazan: Well with Black Cloud, it’s a difference between where I’m coming solo and where I’m playing with the band, so the record will probably be called “Dave Bazan’s Black Cloud”, and then if I come through with the band, then that will be billed as “David Bazan’s Black Cloud”, and if I’m coming through solo, then it will just be David Bazan.

Indie Schmarm: And who are the members of “David Bazan’s Black Cloud”?

David Bazan: There are no members. I’ll probably try guys out, because I’m making the record alone like I made the EP, and then when that’s done, I’ll try to put together a band to either recreate the record, or just represent the songs in some kind of rock and roll.

Indie Schmarm: You have previously hinted at the possibility of a new Headphones record, is that still something we can expect in the near future?

David Bazan: Yeah. Near future is subjective, but yes, absolutely. I have to put out at least one David Bazan record first, but I imagine it might be in the next year and half or two years.

Indie Schmarm: Is that something you would probably go through Barsuk on?

David Bazan: No no, the main reason why I would be doing another Headphones record is because of the contract with Suicide Squeeze records, whom I love dearly, to do two records.

Indie Schmarm: After that you’d just kind of play it by ear and see what happens?

David Bazan: Yeah I don’t think I’d probably make another Headphones record because now I have more of the freedom to what I want anyways, and so this Dave Bazan record might be you know…be very Headphones sounding in nature, but it might not be, I don’t know. I’ve been wanting to do this other (solo) thing and be a little bit more experimental with the sound, and now I can just let people’s expectations with the Dave Bazan record be way less concrete, and I don’t have anybody to answer to about it.

Indie Schmarm: Do you approach songs differently depending on what project they are for? Or do you set out to write songs for a certain project and then determine the project that it best fits after?

David Bazan: Well the Pedro the Lion and Dave Bazan stuff, is all the same stuff. It’s just songs usually on the guitar. Headphones, I wrote all that stuff on the synthesizer…except “Hello Operator”, that was written on the guitar. “Shit Talker” was written on the piano. But most of the rest of the stuff, “Gas and Matches” and “I Never Wanted You” and “Natural Disaster” and “Major Cities”, these were all things that I was actually sitting and writing on a synthesizer when the songs sort of came out new. With “I Never Wanted You”…you know this song…and the parts are same thing kind of…the song came from those two keyboard lines in the middle and how they interact. So the Headphones thing was unique in that way.

Indie Schmarm: So it sounds like when you started to write it, you had the idea that they were going to be for a separate project.

David Bazan: Yeah, I was trying to write a Headphones record in that point in time. Like I said, with “Hello Operator”, I was maybe going to use that on a Pedro the Lion record, but it didn’t end up working out, so I then orchestrated it for Headphones, so that’s unique. And like I said, “Shit Talker”, it was a piano song….so I guess those two songs were not specifically for the Headphones record.

Indie Schmarm: A lot of past Pedro records, like Control, seemed to focus on certain themes, was this something that you had pre-meditated or was it coincidence that others mistook as a theme?

David Bazan: Well Winners Never Quit was a deliberate theme, Control less so, but by the time I got maybe 60 or 70 percent through writing it, I kind of realized, “Oh, there’s some themes that are similar here, maybe I’ll just finish the record and tie those together with the rest of the writing that I’m doing.” So, with Winners Never Quit, it was very deliberate, with some other ones, less so.

Indie Schmarm: So with Winners Never Quit, it was as far as I took it, it was about a family and two brothers essentially, and about the good and evil within that?

David Bazan: There was a pair of brothers, one who was sort of type cast as the good brother, the successful brother, the other one was kind of the fuck up, and it was really sort of a reverse morality tale that ultimately was meant to poke fun at the stereotypical sort of use of morality and moral success that the Christianity that I was apart of generally growing up…as sort of a non-balance of held up ideals.

Indie Schmarm: You often get some grief from Christian audiences about your lyrical content. Do you ever hear from Christian listeners who actually really like the way you write your lyrics, who appreciate the more controversial topics that you cover?

David Bazan: Yeah, definitely for some people. They don’t necessarily say, “Hey, I’m a Christian, but I really like your thing.” But I get the feeling that occasionally there are people who appreciate it.

Indie Schmarm: What are some of your biggest influences when you began writing songs? Do you still find influence in others music that you see shape your songs in some way?

David Bazan: The Beatles are really the foundation influence. Also, I think church music that I grew up with particularly like hymns and things…some of my favorite hymns I can see how they’ve impacted the way I construct songs. Those are probably two of the bigger…you know, everybody develops their own sense of sort of melody and style and things, and it’s hard to know what all goes into that. You know, I love Pinkerton. It’s one of my top 5 favorite records…it’s pretty mind blowing.

Indie Schmarm: Yeah, that is a fantastic record. Anything come out in the last year or two that you’ve been noticing you’ve been listening to a lot recently? Or more then others?

David Bazan: I really like that first Joann Newsom record a lot. I haven’t come around to Ys yet.

Indie Schmarm: That record (Ys) blows my mind. The Milk Eyed Mender was really really good, but Ys, when I first got it, it just floored me. It’s a whole different ball game. She just took it to another level. It’s one of those records you get, and you put it in, and you just got to set aside like an hour and just take your time with it.

David Bazan: Yeah I like her, and she’s a really unique writer. And I’ve had friends that…maybe it was this way in the press, I don’t know, but she got kind of lumped in with some of my buddies with the whole freak folk thing. They’d be like, “I don’t really dig Joanna Newsom or Devendra Banhart.” and I was like, “What the fuck to they have to do with each other?” One of them is this really sincere unique genuine artist, and this other one is really fine, but a caricature of some previous time. You know I just think one of them is we will be reading about…I don’t know, this is my value system…one of them we’ll be reading about in 30 years and listening to the records, and the other one will just fade away like the fad I think that it is.

Indie Schmarm: I think so too. And I think because they’re on Drag City, well they’re therefore “the same genre”. They do kind of get lumped.

David Bazan: It’s style over content kind of a thing, and I just think her content is remarkable…it’s really remarkable.

Indie Schmarm: What were some of your favorite moments of 2007? You can go musically too if you want to steer that way.

David Bazan: I kind of had my head up my ass most of the year. I got the Deerhoof record and struggled to like it as much as Milk Man, and The Runners For, Apple O’, and Reveille. I didn’t like it as much as those, but it was still a pretty exciting day when I got to pick up that record and sort of put it through it’s paces for the first time.

There’s so much music hitting the fan that I don’t have the capacity to really…in a sense I refuse to keep up with it, not because it’s uncool or something, but just bceause it’s confusing and it wastes time…it wastes my time. I end up going out…and people are saying, “Well someone told me this record’s awesome. ” And I sit and listen to it, and I sit and listen to it, and I sit and listen to it, and then I never listen to it again. Usually if I Just wait two or three years, whatever my friends are still spinning, I go, “Oh, well, I’ll check this record out now.” You know, I listened to the Black Album and the Grey Album the year that they came out, but this year, I’ve listened to those records as much as any records that I’ve listened to…because, I would put on the new Kanye record, and was like, “Well, I’d rather listen to the first one, which is the same way I felt about the second one.” And then it just got me thinking, “Fuck, I want to listen to Jay Z!” You know, those are the records that I go to when I want to hear that thing they started. They’re not tired to me yet, and I don’t know that they will be.

Indie Schmarm: Yeah I totally know what that’s like. I have friends that give me records…and there’s so much stuff that gets spit out, and you read all the websites and the blogs. One person says it’s good, and all of a sudden everyone says it’s good. I actually disagree with a lot of what people say, so it’s good, I get my niche two or three friends who are like, “This is good.” And I’m like, “Ok, I will take my time with it.”

David Bazan: You know, it’s word of mouth. Now that everybody is your “e” buddy, the word of mouth thing is tough to figure out. Someone said it’s sort of like the NME thing, you’re in the UK and you’re reading the paper and it’s like, “This is the best record ever!”…and it’s like…really? The best record ever? That came out last week too. There’s no way that it is, and then you don’t hear about that band ever again, and it’s just all this hype to sell papers and to do all this thing, and I just think, “Well, there are plenty of other ways in which I’ve decided to succeed from culture, and this is just one of the other ways.” And it’s just like, I know that I’ll end up hearing the records that will be important, that are important to my buddies, and if you just pay attention a little bit. So, next year I’ll know what was really happening for me with 2007, but right now I don’t know.

Indie Schmarm: Well, for the record, I think you’re records are timeless.

David Bazan: That would be really helpful if they are (laughs). But whatever, I can’t say.