Vending Machine Interview

Delusions of Adequacy: The songwriting on The Chamber from Here to There seems to be very intricate, but in a spontaneous kind of way. It seems that nearly every song has little added touches, an extra bridge here or an unexpected chorus there, that sort of catch the listener by surprise. Do you make a conscious effort to make your songwriting unpredictable?

RG: I'm glad you noticed. I try not to make any two songs sound the same. I'm all over the place (probably to a fault). It's fun to pack a lot of shit into a 2-3 minute song. Short crazy songs are the most fun.

DOA: You've said before that your songwriting is somewhat off-the-cuff and that you were making a more conscious effort to develop your song fragments into full ideas on The Chamber from Here to There. What caused that change in your approach?

RG: I've had a 4-track for 10 years or so, and have been making tapes for that long. With my first CD, Unleavened Bread, I just wanted to get a lot of that stuff out. Most of it was recorded before I really knew how to write a decent song. The songs on that one are more like sonic sketchings. With Chamber, I was still taking the same approach to recording but just trying to at least write the guitar part before recording the drums. Communicating what you're trying to say musically in a three-minute song is real hard. Most people can't do it, I'm not sure I ever will. I guess that's what keeps me going.

DOA: What is the one thing that you make an effort not to do when you are making an album? Conversely, what sort of album do you see as being ideal?

RG: I try not to spend too much time on one part. I feel like I get weighted down if it takes four hours to play a guitar part. I usually just stop if I can't get something to work. When I come back to it in an hour or week or whenever, I can knock it right out. Most of the time taking a step back is the best thing you can do.

At the time of doing Chamber and Unleavened Bread, I was into albums where one person played most or all the instruments. Prince's Sign O' The Times, Money Mark Push the Button, and Sly Stone's There's A Riot Goin' On are three of my favorite albums and they play most of the stuff throughout.

On the flip side, though, I've had a great experience with Big Ass Truck when we last recorded. We did it quite the opposite. We only had two songs before we started recording our latest CD The Rug. We collaborated on all the songs in the studio, and it was the first time that we've made a complete recording like that. It was scary and exciting not knowing what was going to come out of it.

DOA: How would compare your songwriting process on your solo albums to when you're writing songs with Big Ass Truck? Is there anything you would put on one of your solo albums that you wouldn't consider putting on a Big Ass Truck album?

RG: Not really. I considered most of my early 4-track songs as possible BAT songs. Whenever I would write I would do so with the band in mind. Again, not so much songs, but riffs and vague song ideas. BAT started out as 'groove-oriented', but as we put out more CDs, we are doing more varied stuff. I feel like we could record anything if we set our mind to it. One of our strong points is being able to capture a certain feel.

DOA: Some of your songs, like "8 til Late," "Chocolate Guitars," and "Sand it Down" contain imagery and construct scenes that seem strange by contemporary songwriting standards. What inspires your songwriting?

RG: People and places. You can find inspiration sometimes in the most mundane things.

The "8 til Late" and "Chocolate Guitars" are completely opposite in perspective. "8 til Late" is all true. The "8 til Late" is a convenience store right around the corner from my house. It has changed ownership a bunch of times. The hours of the store have changed but not the name.

"Chocolate Guitars" is complete absurd fiction. I'm not sure where it came from. I don't think I ever wrote the lyrics down, just had the music and the words just came.

DOA: A track like "Natural Neighborhood Chair" seems kind of surreal and hallucinatory lyrically with a kid being turned into a tree stump that other kids sit on, yet when presented as such an earnest piano ballad, it becomes strangely humorous. Do you ever find yourself writing simply to amuse?

RG: For sure. If you can't entertain yourself than it gets boring. ZZZzzz.

DOA: The Chamber from Here to There contains a lot of stylistic changes, from a more stripped-down folky presentation to lo-fi rock and funk. Who would you cite as some of your songwriting influences?

RG:
Who: Neil Young, Prince, Sly Stone, Dukes of Stratosphere, Pixies, New Edition, Beatles, Radiohead, Bob Dylan, The Band, De La Soul, REM, Beck, Meters, Pink Floyd, Falstaff, Talking Heads, The Zombies, 666 Mafia, Bowie, Rolling Stones, Cornelius, Elvis Costello, Ross Rice, Nick Drake, Bon Jovi, Hawd Gankstuh Rappuhs MC's Wid Ghatz

What: Business section of the newspaper, hearing what inspires other people to write a song or create art (no matter how ridiculous), and free time.

DOA: Do you think your songwriting approach differs from that of your peers?

RG: Somewhat. I don't feel like I've written a song until after I've listened to the recording of it. Most people seem to have it pretty concrete before they start.

DOA: Who are some of the artists/bands whom you've been listening to lately?

RG: Neutral Milk Hotel, Grandaddy, Built to Spill, Snowglobe, Brad Pounders, new Radiohead, Port Huron Statement, The Orb (on groovetech.com), Mr. Oizo, Reigning Sound, Shuggie Otis, kexp.org, and wfmu.org

DOA: Finally, if I were to walk through "the chamber from here to there," where would I end up?

RG: A cookout in my backyard.

Interview by Matt Fink

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