In case you missed it, frog released a sublime album earlier this year. The gents were kind enough to respond to some of my questions about Kind of Blah and I learned some new stuff about Judy Garland!
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| Credit: Andrew Piccone |
1) What’s your deal with tragic lady celebrities? First Nancy Kerrigan and then Judy Garland?
I’m
not really sure! Nancy Kerrigan was a personal thing; if you’re my age
and you grew up in the US, it was a very intense media event when she
was attacked and then won silver. The song was a reflection on how a
huge news blitz like that becomes warped by your memory until it becomes
something very personal, very tender, mixed in with all your crushes
and family vacations.
I wrote Judy
because I learned about her connection with the stonewall riots and her
status as a gay icon in the 50’s and early 60’s, when I only knew her
from Wizard of Oz and Meet me in St Louis. Something about it was very
moving! She’s also one of my favorite all time singers. I was thinking
a lot about Fred Astaire, Hollywood, Judy in the 40s-60s, what they
meant to the country as a whole; Also who knows what was really going
through my head? I try not to think too much about what I’m writing
about, if it feels right then it goes on the record. If I overthink it I
end up throwing it out.
In answer to
your question, I think the country in general has an obsession with
tragic lady celebrities, including my mom, so my songs about them are
more because the environment I was brought up in had them splayed across
every magazine cover, poster, etc. than any ingrained quality of my
own. It just felt right to sing about them.
2)
Your music is extremely layered in its approach. How do you construct
the music in your compositions? How do you two generally approach your
songwriting?
come about in lots of different ways. Sometimes they come to me
fully-formed, other times I’m forced to squeeze them out like juice from
a lemon. I write most of the songs, and all the melodies, lyrics and
so forth with Tom arranging them, and sort of molding them and helping
grow them into frog songs. Sometimes the songs
are written in 30 seconds with me just playing some chords and singing
some melodies with Tom in the practice space, sometimes it takes many,
many months/years.
through a lot of revisions, but what it became was an dark, minimalist
record that we tried to keep as bare as possible in arrangement,
instrumentation, and theme. Lots of songs were written before we
decided to do that, and most thrown out, but some were reworked to make
sense in the album. My favorite song on the record is the final,
secret track, and it was actually the catalyst for me to make the record
so dark because it came out so good.
think that part of having a long career in songwriting and record
crafting is keeping your process fluid and not falling into any pattern
or routine with it. If you keep making songs in the same way, you’re
gonna come out with the same songs again. You should pick a different
route to work every day, you should run in a different place every
time, you should keep finding ways to be surprised by yourself and your
environment, otherwise you’ll lose the ability to look at anything in a
new way. All great artists constantly strive to innovate, not just to
be further ahead of other artists, but to be further ahead of their old
work. It’s gotta be fun, otherwise why not get a job in a Manhattan
tech company 40 hours a week. (full disclosure: Me and Tom both work at
the same Manhattan tech company 40+ hours a week)
3) I was genuinely struck by how “New York” this album is. Was this conscious on your part?
think this was probably the first time I’ve been able to write good
songs about NYC, because I’ve been here so long that my impressions of
it have settled in my mind and subconscious enough for me to be able to
draw on these kind of images. To me, New York records always have a
dark edge to them, sort of like the noir feel that many films about the
city have. Its very easy to paint your characters in between the
girders and post apocalyptic elevated trains because with a little
imagination, things that are infuriating and depressing about living
here become evocative backdrops for story lines and characters to
develop.
Mostly, I think the period of
my life where I was most melancholy was when I was single and living in
Astoria and working in midtown, and for some reason most of this
records’ songs draw on this part of my life. There is a special kind of
loneliness that I’ve only really experienced here and that seems very
particular to the city, and all the songs are firmly rooted in this
feeling. Just like Sinatra, in the wee small hours, schmaltzy type
stuff. To be honest, the record is mostly about my life struggling to
make music here, and trying to find meaning in a life where you have no
money, no success, and no time to work on what you want to do. This
goes out to Manhattan, the island of Staten, Brooklyn and Queens they
livin’ fat and the boogie down, enough props enough clout, ill will r.i.p. yo I’m out.
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