1998-09-08 The Island Ear
Interview With John Linnell
By Daniel Kline, The Island Ear, September 8, 1998
The Island Ear: Why a live album now?
John Linnell: We've had a band for about the last five years and we had the material. We also had a lot of live recordings. It's kind of a formal exercise for a lot of bands, but there's really a demand for it.
Personally, we wanted a document of the type of shows we've been doing because we've only had a band for the last third of our career. When we played as a duo, we were not a band you would have wanted a live recording of. Too much of what we were doing was on tape already.
IE: Now that you're playing with the band have the songs become more free-form?
Linnell: That's what's different about what we're doing now. There's a lot more improvisation on stage. We never used to be like that except for the talking between songs. That was the part of the show that was casual and different every single night. That's where we would, as the say nowadays, "keep it real." The songs were relentlessly the same night after night.
IE: And that changed with the band?
Linnell: Almost diametrically. It became a very free kind of thing where we could play a song at any tempo we wanted to. We could stop in the middle. We could really change it up a lot and we've taken advantage of that more and more. There are a couple of songs that are explicitly improvisational. "Spy" has a section which is completely different every night.
IE: Do you plan for what you might do during a song like "Spy?"
Linnell: It just happens on stage. There are a bunch of hand signals that everyone knows, but it's not that involved.
IE: Is it more fun to play that way?
Linnell: Yeah, it's really different, not the kind of thing we would have been inclined to do. But we've really grown into that and that was part of putting out a live album.
IE: Is that how the bonus songs on Severe Tire Damage came about?
Linnell: The tracks at the end of the record, which aren't listed, were all completely made up on the spot based on titles of The Planet of the Apes films.
IE: Why Planet of the Apes?
Linnell: It's hard to explain why that seemed interesting. I think it's something that seems particularly of a time and has a real strong set of cultural baggage. It was also just a catch-all, a way to identify a bunch of songs we made up on stage. That was the only real point of it.
IE: Are you a fan of the Apes films?
Linnell: Not really. The thing that's a little screwed about the songs is that we could never agree on what the actual titles of the five movies were. We wound up with six titles for six songs, but one of them is a fake. We don't know which one. I think it would be real easy to figure out, but we never bothered before that album was finished.
IE: Do you work out a lot of songs before recording them?
Linnell: Some of it. But, we're still very into pre-production at home and taking a composer-y approach to songwriting. We tend to do a lot of the arranging before anyone hears it. Before any of the other musicians hear it we try to come up with a sound and an arrangement.
I'm personally very into writing bass parts, though I know that's sort of annoying for bass players. There's this whole ethos in rock about everybody getting to make up their own part. But we tend not to do that.
In a few cases we have little jams where people crank out stuff. Sometimes things evolve over time when we start playing it. People slip things in, they make up other things and that becomes the way it goes.
IE: Has touring changed through the years?
Linnell: It hasn't gotten any easier, but it's not any harder. That's what the record title refers to, how driving around forever burns you out. We've been doing this for so long, that even though it's difficult we know what to expect.
There's a lot about it that's great. We like playing and we like travel. You get to meet people in a different way than when you're just a tourist. We actually have a commercial reason for being there, so we get to meet people involved in the cultural scene wherever we happen to be.
IE: How do you decide when to use humor in a song?
Linnell: I don't think that's a decision we really make. We try not to be too pretentious, so there's somewhat of a light-hearted vibe that comes across. Often when we're doing something that is perceived as "funny" it's because we're writing about something that isn't funny. Humor can be a way to address things that are kind of bleak.
IE: Is your image as a quirky, "novelty" band a misconception?
Linnell: Yes. I would like to go on record and say that we are not a novelty band. We're just doing our own thing and its not useful to say that it's in this category or that category. I like things that are novel, but using that term to define a song doesn't really tell people what's going on. It's also a turn off or an excuse not to take the music seriously for some people.
IE: Do you find that your fans are especially devoted?
Linnell: I can't really compare us to other bands. But, I notice a lot of familiar faces in the crowd. I'd made an educated guess that we have a pretty loyal audience. One proof of that is that we still can go out and tour. We're no spring chickens anymore. We're getting on and we still draw crowds. We benefit from having an audience where people find the experience of seeing us worth repeating.
IE: Was it hard for you to change the way you performed?
Linnell: Well, the first shows we did as band to me were really pretty awful. We didn't have it together at all, it was pretty chaotic. Pretty early on I discovered ear plugs which actually helped a lot. I couldn't hear myself singing for the first few weeks we played with drums.
IE: Do you see any scenarios where you go back to being a duo?
Linnell: I don't think we're prepared to go back to playing with tapes. As a full-time thing that's not what we want to do next. We have been discussing getting some robots together.
IE: Robots?
Linnell: We haven't quite figured out how to do that yet, but I'm not saying it won't happen.