Keeping up with The Joggers

On one of the few brilliantly sunny days that Portland had experienced in many months, I sat down with Ben at Tully’s Coffee on Broadway. Eating a bagel with cream cheese and tomatoes, we discussed issues of genres, touring, the “T” Zone and making Hummer ads.

 

This might be too personal for a music interview, but what do you listen to when you’re just hanging out at home?

[Laughs] A lot of rock – not a lot of hip-hop though. The only stuff I really like is Wu Tang Clan. But I listen to everything. Darrell [Bourque; bass] and I are both ex-college-music geeks, so you know, anything we can find really. A lot of indie rock, classic rock, not a lot of metal, but we’re not opposed to any form of music at all, there is just certain things we don’t necessarily seek out.

You guys seem like very loose and funny people, or at least your web site might lead one to believe that. Has that quality contributed to the songs or to the personal aspect of the band at all?

I think all the bands we admire didn’t really take themselves seriously. I mean the cliche is: the band doesn’t take themselves seriously but they take the music seriously. We try to work really hard on our music, but the bands that we like always seem to have a good sense of humor about them.

Who exactly are you thinking of?

Pavement, Frank Zappa, Sebadoh, and in even more subtle ways, bands like Deerhoof; I feel like they [Deerhoof] have a very strong sense of humor, but it’s not as blatant as those other bands, it’s a more subtle thing. It’s just this overall feeling of enjoying the music and having a level of relaxation about making music. I mean all the good bands are fuck-ups on some level or another [laughs].

How does Portland fit in with that? Portland can be very loose and relaxed but it can also be very elitist, surly and, for lack of a better word, “hipsterish.”

Portland can be a lot of different things. I think that many years ago Portland was this oasis of people who were not concerned with music that was made at a corporate level, and I think that has kept up and the tradition of homemade music is still very strong in Portland. And that’s one of the greatest things about this place. Some of the styles of music that are associated with homemade music have fallen in and out of fashion.

Like lo-fi for instance.

Yeah. That was something people were into for a while, and then they got less interested in it and then they get more interested in it and that shit just waxes and wanes. But that demeanor of not caring about what happens to the music, just enjoying making the music, that is very much a Portland quality that I really like. But at the same time, we’re trying to make music that people can connect to.

Which is interesting because, for instance, the first time I listened to Solid Guild, the music was slightly abrasive, and not particularly accessible. But on further listen I discovered the melodies and those connections to the music.

Do you think abrasive music is harder to -?

Well, going back to Deerhoof for instance. Deerhoof is a great band, but many people get turned off by the noise aspects of the songs.

I think it depends on your criteria, because I know a lot of people that would say that Deerhoof is by far one of the poppiest things they have ever listened to.

Well, OK, The Runners Four maybe, but I don’t think albums like The Man, The King and The Girl are all that poppy.

It’s all relative. I mean if all you listen to is John Cage and you know, a lot of noise bands, Deerhoof is very palatable.

That’s very true. So then how would you describe your music?

The best word I’ve heard used to describe it is “eventful.”

Eventful.

Yeah, I really like that. I mean, I don’t know, it’s really hard.

I think that The Joggers just enjoy making music.

Yeah, but I mean you can always recognize on some level what you’re trying to do. I mean, it has two guitars, it has bass and drums, and that may seem obvious, but a lot of people don’t even think about that. You don’t have to do that permutation, we’re choosing to continue to use a combination that is just now becoming a traditional combination. It’s not an innovative grouping of instruments, but you can still do innovative things with it, like what Deerhoof does. But in 20 years, it’s going to become like folk music, you know? For instance, there are jazz places where people go and – I’m going to overstep my bounds here, so I don’t want to –

Go ahead, it’s just an interview.

[Pause] For the music, they get started and they have an arc that they –

Jazz music?

Yeah, jazz music moves through melodic progressions, and when Charlie Parker came along with the chromatic scale, from that point on, the so-called innovators grew more and more abstract until you reach a point today where it’s all over the place. You have some people doing this traditional jazz, and you have other people doing really atonal stuff, but I don’t know, it doesn’t seem – I don’t know. I do know that certain words connote genres of music roughly, and eventually those genres reach a place where people feel that that style has run its course and innovation is going on elsewhere. For instance, hip-hop. Maybe people are already starting to feel like the music roughly associated with hip-hop has already passed its prime, and maybe it passed its prime 10 years ago, in terms of it’s ability to innovate within that form. But I think it’s a really big question, because I think there is a decentralization of pop culture right now; particularly with the internet, and MySpace where they have something like 900,000 bands. So how can we even talk about genres anymore? There are so many different people doing so many different things, that it’s almost an obsolete terminology.

Sure, it becomes more difficult, but I believe that it is an inherent quality in humans to have a need to classify things and maintain a semblance of order.

It’s absolutely a tendency of human beings to try to group things together.

But it becomes very na퀨͌�ve in regards to music.

Absolutely. It just doesn’t work. You talk about different genres, and you start listening to bands and they’re so different that it just doesn’t make any sense. There are a few things that are more of a waste of energy than trying to figure out a right word for a band, it’s just what that band is at that moment in time.

Let’s talk about the label briefly. You’ve been on StarTime for both records, and I am curious if they sought you out, because there does seem to be a StarTime sound, or at least a number of the bands have similar musical qualities.

Well, we were fans of the first couple of StarTime bands that came out on that.

Like The French Kicks.

The French Kicks and The Walkmen. And we were influenced by those bands by the time we got going with StarTime. Isaac [Green; founder of StarTime] is a really supportive guy and he has been very good to us, and that’s why we continue to work with him.

So I imagine that you get a lot of control over your recording and producing then.

Yeah, total control. I mean who knows, maybe if we came to him with something from a completely different place than where we came from before, he might not like it. But it’s a good label for us. All we care about is that we feel that the people who we are working with are excited to be working with us and are able to invest some resources to our cause.

Can you elaborate on the “T” Zone? How did that come about exactly?

We get very cooped up being in the van all the time, and tennis is a great way to let off some steam.

Do you play doubles?

No, usually not. Jake [Morris; drummer] is the best, Darrell’s pretty good, and Dan [Wilson; second guitarist] and I are not so good. But it’s a lot of fun, and it breaks up the day nicely. But we only get to do it about once a week on the road.

Do you ever play in Portland, when you’re not on the road?

Not usually, maybe when the summer comes.

On the web site you have a section called “signature moves.” What are they exactly?

They can’t be described, you just have to see them.

So they’re part of your live show?

They’re actually part of the “T” Zone.

I see.

They’re all on-court, hazardous movements.

So it’s likely that no one would ever see them except for the band or the possible alienated passerby.

That’s not true. I feel like we have a chance of becoming kind of like the Harlem Globetrotters of the tennis world if we keep on practicing. And it’ll probably be a lot more successful than our music is.

Speaking of the “T” Zone and letting off steam. This is The Joggers third tour in the last year. Do some of the songs on With A Cape and A Cane, which I’m sure still makes up the majority of your set, ever get tired?

Yes it does.

Then when do you decide that it’s time to take a break, or record something new?

One of the biggest battles is trying to find time to come up with new material, because a lot of bands that are smart keep their whole repertoire active, that way they are able to play anything that they’ve written and that gives you a lot of depth in terms of every night’s performance. We’re not as versatile as that. We usually have about 13 or 14 songs that we try and draw from, and that’s really one of the most frustrating things right now, trying to write new material, but we’re slow writers. Every night is different, every night you play the songs differently, and you try and embrace the nuances of it every night. But even still, you get bored. It’s an awful thing to admit because people come to see the music that you wrote and you want to be able to play it as best you can, and that’s what we try and do every night; but when you play “Little Kings” 35 nights in a row, I have to admit that it gets a little old. I think that we wish we had a larger repertoire.

Do you guys ever perform cover songs to try and fill that gap?

Sure. Right now we’re doing “Long Distance Runaround” by Yes, that’s going to be on a compilation put out by Arena Rock soon. We used to do “Tattoo” by The Who, we did a Heart song called – what’s their big hit?

“Barracuda”?

No, not “Barracuda,” not “Crazy On You” –

“Magic Man”?

“Magic Man”! We did that for a while.

Did you play it with an extended instrumental period?

No, not really. I mean, honestly, I feel like it’s so much fun just to play covers that, who knows, maybe we’ll just become a cover band soon. We love [Led] Zeppelin too.

I was going to ask if you did any Zeppelin covers.

We want to, but the vocals are so hard to do that we just play the guitar parts, and even those we butcher.

But isn’t the point of covering a song to make it your own. For instance, you should play “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” Joggers style, not Robert Plant style.

Yeah, but we’ve had difficulty playing songs that are an alternate form of those songs that has any vocal merit.

I suppose, especially with Zeppelin, it’s difficult because fans are so used to the songs that their expectations are going to be very high.

I mean with Page you can sort of approximate, but Plant’s vocal range is really –

Phenomenal.

It’s certainly out there.

You brought up “Little Kings” a while back, and I was going to ask a question about that song. Cowbell has become really popular in the last few years –

And that’s all thanks to us [laughs].

Exactly. “Little Kings” came out way back in 2003, and it has some mighty sexy cowbell on it.

I’m sure Jake would appreciate that.

So how do you decide which song gets cowbell and which doesn’t? Is all the percussion up to Jake’s discretion?

Pretty much. When we’re writing a song we talk about all the different parts. And I might come up with a very, very primitive idea but it’s nothing close to what it becomes after he takes it. Usually he comes up with all the percussion ideas. There’s no group vote, it’s just what he decides is best.

Do you think the new album is more acid-jazz reflux than the old album or less so?

More so in an Eastern sense, less so in a Western sense.

Continuing with the new album, I do think it is stylistically different. I think Solid Guild was unabashedly in your face and it had more urgency to it, but With A Cape and A Cane is more of a mature, more contrived effort. What difference do you see in the two?

I think they’re different, but I have a hard time verbalizing the differences. It’s just a different place in time, and we used samples on With A Cape and A Cane, and we probably won’t again just because it’s so difficult to implement live. We always try and follow our musical interests at the time, and we’re very musically promiscuous people so we love to try different things and I would like us to try even more styles and set-ups and arrangements, and be more adventuresome. I think if the band has a job – and it doesn’t – it is to pursue what they find most interesting. Whatever the fuck that is. The band shouldn’t really be too concerned with how it’s received, and I’d like to think that that is something we try and do.

Along with the not so concerned about how –

And that’s not to say that we don’t care, we just don’t get caught up in all the criticism and reviews.

Sure, take it with a grain of salt. But, for instance, a lot of critics think that you are chalk full of barber-shop harmonies and that comment always seems to get thrown in with criticism. But the only four-part harmonies that I can recall are on “Back to the Future” and a little bit on “Neon Undercarriage.”

So that is a perfect example of journalistic plagiarism. Because it is true that we use shape-note vocal harmonies, and that’s taken from the American shape-note musical tradition – you can look it up on Wikipedia, I won’t describe it – [laughs] and we use that because we thought it would be cool to incorporate that into a song. Then when it [Solid Guild] came out, one or two writers thought that was the most salient aspect of us, and henceforth people have plagiarized those two articles over and over again. And it’s demonstrative of how lazy I think most people are. I’m not saying that wasn’t something people should have written about, but –

There are a ton of other aspects to focus on.

That’s our hope. It’s not that we don’t like those songs, but that’s just one part of what we’re doing. We hardly did any of that on the new record.

Whatever happened to “The Devil Wears Earplugs”?

You see there is a constant struggle in the band between Darrell and Jake – who like to play a larger group of songs, and me – I don’t like those songs. I get really tired of certain songs and so I’m always trying to write a new song, and it’s not that those guys aren’t, but their tendency is one of “let’s keep this group of songs active.” And if I don’t like one of those songs, I’ll just kind of –

Filibuster it?

Well, I’ll just not want to play it, and that’s one of the songs that has fallen out of favor with me at present. Who knows, maybe in the future we’ll play it again. But that’s an example of that. That’s a song that they like, and want to play more, but there remains some internal strife over that issue. And the same thing goes with other songs too.

What other songs?

Most of them [laughs].

Really?

Yeah, I mean, I have a very hard time liking any of the stuff I and we as a band come up with.

So at this point it sounds like The Joggers really need to get off the road and write some new songs.

But it’s always that way. I’ll write something, but I’ll dislike some aspect of it, and I’ll want to move on to other stuff. That’s not to say that I disown that material, but I think that general disgust with what I’ve written before is part of what keeps me writing and wanting to improve. I think that’s a healthy thing, but if taken to far –

It could turn you into a very prolific band.

Or a completely immobile band.

You guys have been on tour for a long-ass time, so –

You want to know where we’re at right now?

Well, not so much. I mean that’s kind of trite question, and you’ve pretty much already told me anyway.

Well we have a new guy in the band. Dan has been with us for about a year, after Murphy Kasiewicz [previous second guitarist] left. Dan didn’t record With A Cape and A Cane with us, he joined us after that. And basically, we’re all looking forward to getting off the road and writing new stuff. I am hoping that we’ll have an extended period of time to go home and record. I also have another group with Darrell that is kind of off and on, it’s called Cage and Gems, and it’s actually older than The Joggers. It’s all finger-picking guitar and other instrumentation and that’s something that I have wanted to resuscitate for a while.

So after The Joggers came out it just disappeared?

It’s very hard to find the time to have two bands. So that’s the only issue, is finding time to do it. It’s not that we don’t want to do it, or we are not as interested in the material, we just haven’t had the time to do it.

I’m all out of decent questions. Do you have any last comments about the tour, or the album, or The Joggers?

Um … not really.

Maybe “Tully’s makes good coffee.”

No, we won’t do any endorsements.

Have you guys ever been hit up for those?

There have been people who have approached us about using our songs for stuff, and it’s something that we are not totally for or against.

So if the right offer came along you might –

If Hummer comes along and wants us to write a song, then yeah, but that’s the only person The Joggers will work with. [Laughs.]