Getting It Together
The Backing Of A Major Label Allowed Brandi Carlile To Refine And Expand Her Sound On The Story
originally published January 23, 2008
Brandi Carlile
Brandi Carlile wanted to make her second album The Story capture the feel, the sound and the emotion of her live show. Just how far she was willing to go to meet that goal is apparent in one of the more flawed moments you might ever hear for a major-label album released in these days of ultra-sheen and studio polish.
On the second chorus of the album's title song, Carlile digs down to hit what is a powerful, high note, and her voice cracks - and not just a little. Most mainstream artists would have viewed it as a vocal train wreck and reached for the ProTools, but Carlile (and her producer, T-Bone Burnett) realized she had inadvertently captured something special - even though Carlile had been intent on nailing a perfect vocal.
"I realized about halfway through that the band was killing it!" she says. "They were playing so good, and I knew that I shouldn't make a mistake because I didn't want to ruin it. So I started to get really intensely determined to nail that vocal. And right before that scream I was like, 'All right, fuck it, I'm just going to bring it!' I went to hit that note and my voice cracked and I was like, I almost started laughing, like 'Oh, goddamn it' and stopped the song. But I kept going… and T-Bone was like, 'We should keep that vocal forever!'"
It's by no means the only moment on The Story on which Carlile let a less-than-perfect take become the finished track. "We left hundreds of flaws," she says. "If you look at some of those old Beatles records, you can hear mistakes. You can even hear them talking, 'Oh man, I made a mistake,' and the Beatles are still going and nothing stops. And there are places where the tape obviously cuts out. It's so cool. People don't want to hear you be perfect. Nobody wants to hear that."
Carlile had set her sights on capturing the feel of her live show well ahead of the recording sessions for The Story, as circumstances had made such a goal impossible on her 2005 self-titled album.
She didn't have a record deal when the first album was recorded - a deal with Rick Rubin's American Recordings fell through - and this forced the Seattle native to record songs between tour dates whenever the opportunity and finances allowed.
Carlile even decided to hold onto some of her best songs because she didn't know what kind of release the record, eventually picked up by major label Columbia Records, might see.
"We decided to pool money together [whenever] we could over the course of a year, very little at a time, and record what we thought were our B-sides, our not-great songs, our good songs, but not like the ones on this record," Carlile says.
The Story, as Carlile hinted, contains what she feels are her A-grade songs. In fact, all but three of the tunes on the album - "Josephine," "Losing Heart" and "Cannonball" - had been in her live repertoire for some time.
The Story turns out to be a comfortable follow-up to Brandi Carlile, as she sticks largely to the melodic folk-pop sound that defined the first album. But Carlile is right in saying The Story has a stronger set of songs. "Wasted," "Turpentine" and "Cannonball" are all first-rate ballads. And the moments when she does rock it up a bit - as on the stellar title track (cracked vocal and all) and "My Song" - add a welcome bit of juice that the first album lacked.
"This album might be a little more rock than the last one, but only because maybe we didn't have the means to make the last one as rock," she says. "I mean, there are songs [on the first album] that are acoustic only because we didn't have the money to have a drummer or we weren't able to set up in a room where we could play live, or we didn't have a studio, we had a practice place. Those kinds of things kept us from making the last record like this record, which is what we wanted to do all along."
Producer Burnett and Carlile decided to record The Story live in the studio, with Carlile (on guitar and vocals) joined by her core bandmates; twin brothers Phil Hanseroth (bass) and Tim Hanseroth (guitar), session drummer Matt Chamberlain and cellist Josh Neumann all playing together, a move that gives the album a palatable sense of spontaneity and emotional urgency.
"We could all see each other in the room," says Carlile, who is touring with the same instrumental lineup on this current tour opening for the Indigo Girls. "It's just a slamming performance, y'know what I mean? I really am of the school of thought that at least in my band, when we record a record we should try and strive to sound like the live show rather than playing a live show that sounds like a record."
WHO: Indigo Girls, Brandi Carlile
WHERE: Classic Center
WHEN: Thursday, January 24, 8 p.m.
HOW MUCH: $25
I Hear You Knocking
A New Album Of Remixes Offers Lotus A New Context To Explore Its Open-Ended Rock Sounds
originally published January 23, 2008
Lotus
Some might feel honored to be hailed as "one of the jamtronica scene's reigning princes," as Lotus recently was on jambands.com. But that awkward portmanteau draws a guffaw from bassist Jesse Miller. "Jamtronica! If I read that, I'd be like, 'No way am I going to see this!'" he laughs.
Miller, one of the instrumental band's main composers, sounds loose and relaxed - as well he should. Lotus is fresh off the boat, literally, from five days of paddling around on some barge, playing alongside Michael Franti, Toots & the Maytals, Galactic and the Yonder Mountain String Band. It's called a Jam Cruise, and Miller describes it as "more oriented toward people who work a normal job, and this is their chance to get away."
I truly wonder what piña-colada-sippin' office drones and aging moneyed stoners would have to say about Lotus, especially since Miller himself isn't totally sure how to describe it. "I always say it's dance-oriented rock music, y'know?" he says.
The instrumental quintet's ouvre is a weird one to be sure. Part icy clacking plastic, part earthy organic improv, there's a cyborg quality to the group's grooves and compositions. For example, on 2006 studio album The Strength of Weak Ties, listeners were apt to hear Miller's ropy bass guitar in one stereo channel, an interlocking skronky synth bass in the other, and acoustic and electronic percussion commingled throughout. That and the band's overarching elegance of purpose give Lotus a progressive feel, like a less psychedelic cousin of U.K. veteran act Ozric Tentacles.
But with toeholds in electronica, post-rock and jam music, do the bandmembers ever worry their music might fall between the cracks?
"I still worry about that," Miller says. "The jam scene is more readily open to listening to anything, and that's somewhat where we got our start, so we're pretty embraced by that scene, even though we definitely try to cross over. I definitely think we get written off by the more indie scene, even though I think a lot of our music sounds much closer to that," he says, citing indie-oriented instrumental groups such as Tortoise and Explosions in the Sky.
"For instance, the band's been based out of Philadelphia for over five years, and we haven't seen a drop of ink," says Miller, despite playing large, sold-out club dates in Philly and New York. "The papers are interested in what's the most hip, hyped, blogged indie band, and Lotus does fall between the cracks there."
Arguably, though, Lotus didn't exactly come from the birthplace of hip. The band got started in 1999 at Goshen College, a tiny Mennonite liberal arts school in Indiana, where Jesse Miller and guitarist Luke Miller earned music degrees and met up with drummer Steve Clemens, percussionist Chuck Morris and guitarist Mike Rempel. "Right after we graduated, less than a week later, we moved out to Philadelphia with our sights set on touring more," says Miller. "I think we did more shows our last year of school than we did last year, but it's obviously on a bigger scale now."
Currently that scale includes a steady diet of outdoor festivals and club dates (and yes, the occasional Jam Cruise). While Miller says the festivals can be great - it's "a real rush to get in front of a crowd of 10,000 people" - the band's able to stretch out into larger exploratory improvisations at the clubs. In fact, two CDs comprised of such club recordings were released by Lotus last year as Escaping Sargasso Sea.
However, the band's current tour, which brings it to the Georgia Theatre on Friday, Jan. 25, on a bill with collaborator Michael Christie's world-beat project Telepath, is promoting an entirely different sort of recording: the brand-new Copy Paste Repeat: Lotus Remixed.
"It's a project that we've wanted to do for a long time," says Miller, who himself handled some of the reworking; some of the remixes date back to 2004, when the band released the album Nomad. "It was a really good opportunity for us to let artists either that we knew from touring with or respected in some other way, take a crack at our music and dissect it and put it back together," he says.
Fans, too, can try their hand remixing "open-source Lotus" at www.lotusvibes.com, where the band posted full studio tracks for the song "Bubonic Tonic" a few weeks ago.
"If you have GarageBand, it's real simple: everything pops up right there, and it's all arranged," says Miller. "You don't need a lot of technical know-how to get in there and start moving some things around."
Lotus, meanwhile, has been moving some things around in Philadelphia, tracking a new studio album with engineer Bill Moriarty, who's recently worked with Man Man.
"It's more of a rock sound. The electronic element is definitely there, but we tracked a lot more of it live instead of building the parts one by one," says Miller. "It's songs without lyrics. I know everything's kinda like that, but it's definitely structured more like songs."
Perhaps with that new focus the indie scene might take a little more notice, welcoming Lotus into the post-rock fold from the fringes the band has inhabited - and expanded - for so many years.
WHO: Lotus, Telepath
WHERE: Georgia Theatre
WHEN: Friday, January 25
HOW MUCH: $10
Sophomore Sweetness
A Long Time Coming, The Whigs' Second Album Mission Control Looks To Push The Band Even Further Into The National Consciousness
originally published January 23, 2008
Mike White
The Whigs
It's December 2006, and you're The Whigs. You regularly sell out venues in your hometown. You toured the country in support of your first record. Ahead of you lies another trek across America, along with dates at massive festivals like Bonnaroo. You're armpit-deep in the process of writing your second record. And you can't compose songs quickly enough for your new record label, which is eager to fly you to a fancy studio in L.A. so that you can perfect your album with a big-name producer. It's December 2006, you're The Whigs, and you're busting your tail.
You're busting your tail, and your bassist - one-third of your band - quits. How in the hell are you going to finish your demos and get back on the road without the only bassist you've ever had?
If you're Parker Gispert, The Whigs' vocalist and guitarist, you simply push on. "The night Hank [Sullivant] quit, [drummer] Julian [Doro] and I were coming home from a practice," recalls Gispert. "We were under a pretty good time crunch as far as recording the new record, so we didn't have time to stop and find a permanent replacement or anything. We just tried to keep going in terms of solving only one thing at a time. Sam Gunn [Iron Hero] came in and did the touring, and then Craig McQuiston [The Glands, The Tom Collins] came in and helped us with writing some of the bass lines. There would be one half of the day when we would be practicing with Sam, getting ready for the tour, then the other half of the day, rehearsing with ourselves and sometimes with Craig, and sometimes with Adam [Saunders, of The Pendletons], trying to write songs for the album."
And if you're Gispert, you're keeping your composure. "I didn't feel in over my head," he says, "but I definitely wasn't relaxed. I was working pretty hard every day. I haven't really felt in over my head or uncomfortable in any scenario, because we've taken this all upon ourselves – it was us wanting to tour, us wanting to put out a new record."
Mike White
Indeed, for The Whigs, Athens' tightest and most melodic power trio, hardship has been a given since Gispert and Dorio's false start at making music together in 2001. The two had been jamming together since high school, but their plans to form a band while studying at the University of Georgia were quickly disrupted. "I got really sick after I graduated high school," says Gispert. "I had to miss my first semester of college. At that point I was in Atlanta, and Julian was in Athens, so we would just talk on the phone and talk about the things we wanted to do."
After Gispert recovered, he and Dorio hooked up with Sullivant and jumped headlong into writing songs and playing shows. Like most upstart bands, The Whigs met with a little approval and a fair helping of disinterest.
"Our first show went really well," remembers Gispert. "We played at DT's, and we played a lot of the songs that ended up on the first record, and it went well, and people were drinking at the bar and dancing, and it was a fun night. The second show we played was also at DT's, and there wasn't really anybody there… When we started the band, we wanted to do the things that bands do, and one of the things that bands do is play shows when there's nobody there. We weren't really discouraged when we played the second show and there weren't as many people there."
Before long, The Whigs became a big draw for Athenians who appreciated punchy, accessible rock. Once college graduation - the point at which touring nationally would be a viable option - was only a year away, the gentlemen recorded their self-financed first album with vintage gear in an abandoned frat house. Give 'Em All a Big Fat Lip was released independently in 2005, by which point The Whigs had built a strong regional following and had begun attracting national attention.
Comparing the band to The Replacements and The Beatles, Rolling Stone named The Whigs one of its Ten Artists to Watch for 2006. In the summer of that year, the band signed with ATO, a major label subsidiary with a small roster of artists who are more interested in credible careers than chart success. ATO re-released Big Fat Lip in late 2006 and will release Mission Control, The Whigs' second album, this month.
The backing of a well-endowed label and a growing fanbase haven't caused Gispert to feel as if The Whigs have fully arrived, though.
"The only way that you can make it is to satisfy yourself," he says. "If you play to 500 people but you're not satisfied with your show, it doesn't matter how many people were there. You just got to keep it on the level of satisfying yourself, and then everything that happens after that is just a fun thing to watch."
Compared to the rest of The Whigs' fast-paced, surprise-filled career, the weeks spent polishing Mission Control in July 2007 were restful. The band tapped a friend, Adam Saunders, to play bass, thereby keeping an unknown session player out of that role.
They also worked with renowned producer Rob Schanpf, who proved personable and stimulating.
"He worked with a lot of artists - Beck, Guided By Voices, Elliott Smith - that we respect," explains Gispert. "He was our choice. ATO talked with us and did a good job of just finding out who was interested in making the record. Rob was interested in working with us, and we had met him up in New York and Los Angeles, and after hanging out with him a little bit, he just seemed like the kind of guy we could work with, someone we could talk to… He makes you feel comfortable. For someone like us who recorded their first record in a house, he does a good job of just creating an environment in which you feel comfortable just trying out whatever ideas you have, where no idea's a bad idea."
Which parts of the album are most pleasing to Gispert? "Julian did a really good job with his drum tones. He definitely had lots of options and was able to get his drums to sound the way he wanted them to sound… I think I sang more on pitch on this record than I did on the first record."
Both observations are spot-on. Mission Control follows a similar blueprint to that of Fat Lip, but Dorio's crisp percussion sounds (and dramatic fills) and Gispert's sharpened rasp make The Whigs' new batch of rough-and-tumble pop songs a touch more nuanced and focused than its predecessor.
"I really like the first record," says Gispert, "because I feel like it was an adequate depiction of where the band was. We didn't have anybody who could pay for us to make the record, and we couldn't afford a producer or to work in a studio, so the way we recorded it was very primitive, and the performances that we kept were just primal, and not slick and perfect... We'd like to record a lot of records, and I feel like if you listen to them chronologically, you'd probably listen to Fat Lip and say, 'That was the first record' - which it is. So to me, that means we accomplished our goal."
As for Mission Control, "We're kind of honing in on who we are and what we do as a band." In other words, The Whigs are becoming who they already are.
Don't think for a moment, though, that The Whigs' second record is a gussied up, Brian Wilson-esque slab of pristine pop. "I'm sure [making something like Pet Sounds] would be fun," muses Gispert, "but I don't see it happening anytime soon. It doesn't really seem appropriate." Right now, The Whigs only record songs that will translate well into their meat-and-potatoes, three-man concerts.
"Even the songs that have horns are songs that we play live without horns. We know they can hold up when we play them as a three-piece, so when you get into the studio, you don't think twice about adding horns or pedal steel or something, because you know that once those things are not there, the song stands on its own. That's a reflection of how we write songs. If we're playing in a practice space and we're saying, 'This song would be great if we had two other guys playing piano,' then it isn't going to get very far because there aren't two other guys. The songs that end up on the records are songs that I've generally shown Julian with just an acoustic guitar. Hopefully the melodies and the layout of the song are enough to carry it."
Since The Whigs are at this point more invested in playing live than cutting expansive albums, Mission Control isn't a coherent "statement" with a prevailing theme or consistent tone. "The general mood might be a little all over the place," says Gispert, "but records like that are the ones I'm a fan of anyway, records that tend to have a lot of different moods and stuff… Just any record that I enjoy, like Beatles records, Stones records. On Stones records, there will be a country song, then a couple of rock songs, then a real slow piano song. Or someone like Elliott Smith, he'll have a couple of waltzes, then he'll have a rocker, then he'll have a slow acoustic guitar song. Realistically, we definitely listen to all different types of stuff. It's not like we listen to AC/DC 24-hours a day. We might listen to an AC/DC record, then a Leonard Cohen record."
For Gispert, this approach to album-making is consistent with his commitment not to over-think the music he makes. "There isn't something that we're definitely trying to do and can fall short of. You write the songs that you write, and then you go in there and try to record them in a way that makes you happy. We're happy with the way the record sounds. We're happy enough to leave L.A. and satisfy ourselves, which is all you can hope to ask of yourself."
With a promising sophomore album under their belts, a slew of Southeastern shows in their immediate future, and more extensive touring on the horizon, The Whigs have plenty to look forward to. But there are still plenty of potential listeners to convert, and The Whigs have had a difficult time building an unstoppable buzz in either the underground or the mainstream. For all the ecstatic reviews in their press kit, The Whigs haven't yet blown up, largely because they're difficult to pigeonhole, and therefore difficult to market.
"People will just try to put you into a category," Gispert says. "We made the first record ourselves, and we released it ourselves, and we were in college. So I guess some people would say that we were college rock, or that we were indie rock because we were working independently. And we're not really competing with Nickelback or interested in radio… We don't worry about [not finding an audience], but it's definitely a reality. I don't think we're commercial enough to be on mainstream radio, and I don't feel like we're quite eccentric enough to be on college radio. I don't really know where the band falls in terms of that stuff, but that's kind of always been something we've had to deal with."
"It's a good thing, though," he adds quickly and confidently.
Fortunately, The Whigs are working with a label that's content to watch them develop organically.
"I felt like the songs on the first record were strong. We realized we wouldn't be recording them in a great studio or anything, so we tried to focus on getting strong songs and strong performances, and I think that's probably what the label – you know they're going to be working with us for a few records, so our relationship with them is based more upon the songs that we write and not really on the recording style or any of that stuff… We looked for a label that we could develop with. If you look at bands throughout the history of time, The Rolling Stones put out a few records before they made their best music. Same with the Beatles. Most bands that I'm a fan of are bands that have developed and had a career… It's always interesting to see how a band develops over time, over five or six records, and that's kind of the band that we want to be, and that's what we communicated to the label, and that's kind of the way that we're approaching it, and the way that they're approaching it."
When Gispert talks about the long view, he's at his most enthusiastic. Although he approaches music more like a skilled craftsman than a tortured artist, he forges a strong persona.
"I don't know if we have a gift to give to the world, or if the world were to even be conscious of the gift we were to give them. You put yourself into the music, and you're satisfying yourself. People just got to get presented with us, for better or for worse. That's what we're trying to do – be honest with ourselves and present ourselves.
"I think about going to a concert with someone like my dad, who might not be in touch with music in 2008. If he sees four guys from Georgia playing some British Invasion rock and feigning British accents, he senses its phoniness, and he doesn't need to know anything about music to be pushed away by something like that… Bob Dylan's voice isn't great because he's an opera singer or something. It's great because it's his voice, and he sings with his own voice, and that's what to me is attractive about people and musicians alike.
"With making music, we're trying to be more and more ourselves, and try to figure it out. It's like a self-exploration kind of thing. Usually the best albums are when a band fully realizes that moment. That's what makes it fun to listen to that band's three albums before they hit that album."
Mission Control is good, but The Whigs' defining moment is probably at least a couple of records away. For now, though, they've got a steady bassist - Ken Deaux, who joined them on their last tour. The band plays the 40 Watt Club for the first time since the middle of '07 and then heads up to New York for an appearance on "The Late Show With David Letterman" on Monday, Jan. 28.
WHO: The Whigs, The Ginger Envelope, Dream Girls
WHERE: 40 Watt Club
WHEN: Saturday, January 26
HOW MUCH: $10
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