Herewith, the Songwriter Conducts an Interview with Rachel Flotard of Visqueen

By Kasey Anderson

By now, you've heard any number of people fawn over Visqueen's phenomenal album, Message to Garcia. Perhaps you heard the folks over at NPR rave about the record, or maybe you read a reviewer somewhere (here?) falling all over him-or-herself to heap praise upon Rachel Flotard and company's collection of songs paying homage to her late father. If you're lucky, you caught one of Visqueen's blistering, visceral sets somewhere out there in wherever it is you are. At any rate, you're aware of just how good Rachel Flotard and her band are.


Me, I first saw Visqueen five years ago at the 3B in Bellingham, Washington. Kim Warnick, who is no longer with the band, was on bass, which delighted the hell out of me as I was a massive Fastbacks fan. But then, as now, it was Flotard's songs that caught, and kept, my attention. Rachel writes Rock ‘N' Roll songs, which to some, suggests some kind of simplicity an a certain level of immaturity. Unfortunately for those narrow-minded folks, Rachel doesn't quite fit that mold. Sure, there are celebratory tunes (and one would argue that a good portion of Garcia celebrates life, rather than lingering on death), but there's nothing simple or juvenile about them. Rachel Flotard is one of the best writers in Rock ‘N' Roll and, if you're not already aware of that, you're going to be very, very soon.


In between gushing emails from me about how much I dig her band, Rachel and I talked a bit about the Beastie Boys. Specifically, Licensed to Ill and, more specifically, "She's Crafty."

 

You performed the tune at a talent show, right? What were the other contenders and how'd you narrow it down?


In high school, my friend Janine and I had to pick a song for our freshman chorus final. We thought we were real wise guys and busted "She's Crafty" instead of some "Wind Beneath My Wings" action.


Keep in mind, this is 1986. And I almost had the Licensed To Ill plane tattooed on my face. Every 15-year-old in suburban New Jersey was singing "The New Style" and "No Sleep "Till Brooklyn." They were just skaters across the bridge from us having parties and throwing pies. For me It was as if Def Jam threw a huge pie on our entire high school. We had our moms packing our lunches AND taking away our best porno mags.

We almost did "Hold It Now, Hit It," but someone got high and lost the coach whistle. What a bunch of A-holes.  I can recite every word of that album. Today, probably.  It's hardwired. I'm glad.

 

Do you feel like there's something--or some things --specifically East Coast about that record? I hate to get all anthropological about it, and I came to that record later, via Check Yo' Head, but I can't help but feel like, on the West Coast, that first Beastie Boys record was always just background noise at frat parties and shitty clubs--people didn't really much deeper in to it than that. But, to me, it has always been more visceral than that--a lot of misdirected (or maybe properly directed) angst, and wit, and rebellion. But maybe I just have a tendency to make everything more academic than it needs to be. Am I way off?
 

Licensed To Ill, to me, is the silhouette of the tri-state area.


It's like a map of the east in my head.  But then so is Paul's Boutique. The coolest thing about those albums, in retrospect, and maybe because I was 17 or so, was that they became a language. If the person next to you lost their mind when "Shake Your Rump" came on, you were friends. That's it.


I loved the super-flyness of it. It's "Johnny Ryall"...  The Beastie's have EVERYTHING. They are masters at what they do, and their discography twenty years later feels as familiar as penciled-up kitchen wall growth chart at your parents house. For those of us at a certain age, they're a lucky Polaroid.



Why didn't the Beastie Boys get written off as sophomoric white boy rap? I don't think about License to Ill that way, but maybe that's just retrospect and knowing that Paul's Boutique was next. For you, at the time, what made them more than just a punchline?

The whole thing was different. It was a movement. Even though it was ‘86, and they had a frat following and it was a little too "Girls," and MTV date-rapey, there was something going on that was NOT sophomoric white boy rap in any way. The effing sampling alone made the whole world split open. Rock and Rap fused.

They were on tour with Public Enemy when I saw them. It was my first ever concert, I was scared shitless and had THE BEST TIME.


Capitol Theatre, Passaic, NJ. Their stage prop was a giant 50-foot penis that came up from the stage floor. The hardcore band Underdog opened. Effing Joey Ramone walked out at one point. I said "Who the hell is that? He's tall."  At 15 I knew this was a force. I went to see them at MSG a few years later with RUN DMC on the Together Forever tour. Even thinking about that arena while I type this gives me a contact high. It was OUT OF CONTROL amazing.

The Beastie Boys seem like such amazing people now. Fathers, Brothers. I think that record is their Freshman year, as it was mine. And they grew up. And rightly went all Tibet on their asses. I love them so much.

 

Kasey Anderson is a songwriter, singer, dog owner and bacon enthusiast from Portland, Oregon. His three albums, Dead Roses (2004), The Reckoning (2007), and Nowhere Nights (2010) have earned plenty of praise from critics (No Depression, USA Today, The Onion, and right here at BLURT) but, unfortunately, have not as yet yielded the Swedish Fish endorsement Anderson so badly desires. If you'd like to have Kasey Anderson sing, play harmonica and strum a guitar at you, you'll find him on tour all spring and summer (dates and info available at www.kaseyanderson.com).

The thing about music is, whether you like it or not, it envelopes your brain. It is at times mathematical, poetical, political, historical and, you get the idea. A lot of –ticals at play here. I hate to lean so heavily on a cliché but how many times have you heard the words “soundtrack of my life?” Probably enough that you just cringed reading them, right? Understandably so. Platitudes aside, the fact is that most people can identify certain songs, albums, and artists with particular periods in their lives. Put on a record and sense memory kicks in. Suddenly you’re back in your first apartment, trying to figure out where to hang your weathered, signed-by-Fred-and-Toody Dead Moon poster, listening to “Old Shoes and Picture Postcards.” Or something like that. Point is, for better or worse, some songs are just ingrained in our memories, inseparable from our experiences. They are (go ahead and cringe again) the soundtrack of our lives.

That’s what this column is about. The songs that made lasting impressions, and the people they made the impressions on.  For as long as Blurt will allow me to, I’ll be interviewing fellow songwriters, journalists, novelists, actors, comedians, friends, and enemies about the songs that burrowed into their memories – about what the songs might mean, and what the songs mean to them. They will be interviews, in the most technical sense of the term, but, if I do my job right, they won’t be the kind of interview you’re used to.

The folks kind enough to lend their time and song choices to the interviews, you’ll have heard of (Jason Isbell, Matthew Ryan, Peter Case and Bill Janovitz, to name a few), but me you may not have. To that end, I’ll keep it simple. I write songs and make records. Maybe you’ve heard ‘em, maybe not. For the purposes of this column, that’s really neither here nor there. My job, as it applies to Blurt, is simply to allow some of my favorite artists and writers a platform to discuss some of their favorite songs. Where it goes from there, is up to them. Or, more accurately, up to the songs.

Hopefully I’ll see you around.

Kasey Anderson
Portland, Oregon
April 5, 2010

Yes, Dave Holmes was on MTV. Yes, you're remembering correctly. He "lost" the Wanna Be A VJ contest to Jesse Camp in 1998, but was subsequently hired by MTV anyway because somebody had the good sense to realize that, while Jesse's batshit persona was charmingly annoying, Dave Holmes actually knew a good deal about music. Holmes probably could have worked for MTV in some fashion forever (God knows many have tried), but moved on to a variety of gigs, including but not limited to appearances on Reno 911, Best Week Ever, and FX's DVD on TV. While, for better or worse, Camp has been written off as a disposable product of the ‘90's, Holmes has remained a relevant, intelligent, and charming Pop Culture commentator and humorist, finding a new generation of fans via Twitter (link:  http://twitter.com/daveholmes) and Tumblr (link:  http://myyearofeverything.tumblr.com). Along with his numerous televised activities, Holmes is currently working on a book, the process of which is chronicled at his Tumblr blog.

The process of narrowing down one song to discuss with Holmes was arduous as there is an enormous amount of crossover between our respective record collections, but the song that kept coming up was "Stuck Between Stations," from the Hold Steady's Boys & Girls in America record. Seeing as how a new Hold Steady record is on its way, that seemed like an appropriate enough choice.

Kasey Anderson:  Was this song a "JFK moment" for you? Do you remember the first time you heard it, did it make an immediate impact, etc., or was it a song that gradually worked its way into your life until it had burrowed in and made an impact?

Dave Holmes:  Boys & Girls In America was one of the first albums I downloaded right at the stroke of 9pm Pacific time the night before its release. I was a big fan of Separation Sunday, I had seen them live a couple of times, and I was teenagery in my anticipation for the new one. And I think I listened to "Stuck Between Stations" 15 times before I moved forward. In fact, according to my iTunes, it is the most-played song in my library. I probably listen to it most while running; when I was training for the NYC Marathon, I put it on my "training playlist," timed for the exact moment at 13 miles when I become delirious.

KA:  I love and hate that "downloaded at the stroke of 9pm Pacific time" has replaced "picked up at the stroke of midnight at [insert record store]." What is it that the tune would do for you at the 13 mile mark? Restore sanity or make delirium more tolerable? It's such a frantic song, lyrically and musically, that it could really go either way, but "soothing" is certainly not the first word that springs to mind when I think about the Hold Steady.

DH:  Thirteen miles is when my energy really starts to flag, and a song like "Stuck Between Stations" just picks me back up. Plus the endorphins make it easier to imagine myself performing the song in a packed and rowdy 3-to-5,000-seat theater. (Anything larger diminishes the intimacy I like in my imaginary concerts.)

KA: Who is your backing band?

DH:  California Dreams, obviously. No. It's an ever-changing assortment of old friends who used to want to be in a band but are now bankers. There's something really exciting about this wave of bands made up of regular working guys in their 30s (The Hold Steady, Wormburner, Action Toolbelt). I imagine this is what black teenagers felt like when Grandmaster Flash et al came out.

KA:  I guess the first and most obvious question about the song itself is, do you think that Sal Paradise was right? Do boys and girls in America have such a sad time together?

DH: Boys and girls in America do indeed have such a sad time together, and boys and boys and girls and girls don't fare much better. (If I ever do a one-man show, I'll call it "Boys & Boys In America," so let's all hope I never do a one-man show.) The active ingredient in the sadness is revealed a couple of seconds later, in one of the most succinct and devastating lines ever: "Crushing one another with colossal expectations." Now THERE'S a line I could have stood to hear in my early 20s.

KA: Ditto. And I could probably stand to hear the line occasionally now, though I've crossed the threshold into my 30's. So, is this a cautionary tale to you, or is Finn saying, "this is something we all go through because it's something we all HAVE to go through?" Say you had heard the line in your early 20's, would it still have hit home and, if so, would it have been advantageous to avoid some of that sadness and disappointment?

DH: I think I went into relationships expecting these poor gentlemen to just make everything right for me. I think if I'd heard this line at age 23, I might have realized I needed to do a certain degree of that work myself. Actually, no- I still would have been an idiot. But the lesson got learned nonetheless.

KA:  The thing I like about Finn's writing in this song in particular is that there's a sort of fatalism to it without being especially pessimistic. There's a push and a pull. "There was that night we thought John Berryman could fly / but he didn't, so he died." In one couplet he sort of sums up the grand delusions of youth and art and contrasts them with the reality of life and death. If I were in my early 20's and heard that song, it would have sent me spiraling into a month-long depression. But hearing it at 26 or 27, it just sort of hung there and reminded me of a time when I thought John Berryman could fly - when hero worship and ambition were boundless. Do you think Finn is too fatalistic or is he just being a realist?

DH: There's a definite undercurrent of disappointment running through this song, a sense that the things you want in your youth (fame, love, booze) can't sustain you forever. For me, the key line is "He was drunk and exhausted and he was critically acclaimed and respected." It's not BUT, it's AND, which suggests that acclaim and respect are injuries. That line blows my mind.

KA: That, to me, is what makes a great line great. The difference between "and" and "but." Do you agree with Finn's assessment of acclaim and respect, at least in that context? Are they, to some degree, albatrosses that lead to a compounding, albeit different, set of colossal expectations?

DH: Acclaim and respect can make a man think he's getting called up to the majors, where everything is going to be easier and better and shinier, but everyone everywhere is confused and frightened.

Plus, recognition can insulate a person from actual human connection. Once you're published- or put on TV or played through stereo speakers or whatever- suddenly there's a character out there with your name who looks and sounds like you, but isn't exactly you. Sometimes you get confused as to which one you're supposed to be, sometimes people are attracted to the public, published you who doesn't really exist. Relationships get crowded and confusing and become critical injuries for poets and sensitive types like John Berryman. (Some just become their fake selves, and you can see examples of this kind of soul death on reality TV literally all day long.)

KA:  This is something Springsteen has addressed a couple of times, mentioning that THE Bruce Springsteen wouldn't allow Bruce Springsteen to visit strip clubs, which, evidently, is something Bruce Springsteen liked to do on occasion. Because of that rift between public and private personae, when private Bruce Springsteen acted out in defiance of THE Bruce Springsteen, private Bruce tended to go overboard in his misbehavior. Or so the story goes. The thing is, at some point, Craig Finn became THE Craig Finn, right? I'm curious as to how he reconciles those colossal expectations he is now saddled with. Have you ever had instance where you caught private Dave Holmes behaving in a way THE Dave Holmes wouldn't approve of, or vice versa?

DH:  A good friend of mine met Craig Finn recently, and went into insta-gush mode, as would I. As the story goes, Craig waved it off graciously and asked my friend about HIS band, and they had a nice, long conversation. So it seems like Craig's got his head on straight, which is what happens when you get recognized a bit later in life. Of course, this tracks perfectly with the THE Craig Finn in my mind. It's a hall of mirrors.

My career didn't pick up until I was pushing 30 either, so I haven't really had to wonder who the real me is. Sometimes if I'm working on a live shoot for a long time, I find it hard to switch off the quip machine, but that's just a mild annoyance for my boyfriend.

KA: From a purely musical standpoint, the song is very cinematic and sweeping - I suppose this is why the default comparison is the E Street Band. For me, that makes as big an impact as Finn's lyrics. From note one, this song is huge. If it had just been Craig Finn reciting lines over somebody fingerpicking an acoustic guitar, would the impact have been the same for you?

DH:  Yeah, I'm not interested in hearing a stripped-down version of this song. The driving-ness of the song is a perfect counterpoint to the weariness of the lyrics. To me, it says, "No, things don't work out the way you want them to, but you can still go on joyfully." Life is long and weird and sometimes really sad, but we're all in it together. That's kind of what Hold Steady shows are all about, and that's why I see them every chance I get.â�¨â�¨I am fucking crazy about the Hold Steady.â�¨â�¨So here's the disappointment that this song reminds me of: In 1989, I graduated high school and had myself narrowed down to two colleges: Boston College, which I had gotten into, and Holy Cross, which wait-listed me. Because they didn't like me as much, I decided I HAD to go to HC. (This pattern would repeat throughout the next 21 years.) I got into Holy Cross in August, and spent the next four (and a half) years adrift in a sea of boozy self-hatred in a college full of sportsy lawyery New Englanders. Had I gone to Boston College- had I just known myself a tiny bit better- Craig Finn would have been in my class. How we would have GOTTEN each other back then! The late-night conversations about music! Regrets, I've had a few.

Kasey Anderson is a songwriter, singer, dog owner and bacon enthusiast from Portland, Oregon. His three albums, Dead Roses (2004), The Reckoning (2007), and Nowhere Nights (2010) have earned plenty of praise from critics (No Depression, USA Today, The Onion) but, unfortunately, have not as yet yielded the Swedish Fish endorsement Anderson so badly desires. If you’d like to have Kasey Anderson sing, play harmonica and strum a guitar at you, you’ll find him on tour all spring and summer (dates and info available at www.kaseyanderson.com), or if you’d simply like to read on as Anderson discusses various songs with other artists, writers, friends and cohorts, you’re in the right place.

Official Site: www.kaseyanderson.com
MySpace: www.myspace.com/kaseyanderson
Facebook: www.facebook.com/kaseyandersonmusic
Twitter: twitter.com/kaseyanderson