Chris Lee interview from January 2005.
Since writing for Spin and now releasing records, what's next?
"I'm planning to make more records. I imagine I'll keep writing songs and recording them as long as I can. I'm learning to play piano and picking up a better understanding of the traditional language of music. I've become bored with my punk-inspired, self-taught, primitive technical level. Intuition is of course of paramount importance, but only geniuses can get away with complete ignorance of the grammar of their given field. I want to have every tool possible to express myself. I'd impose restrictions on myself by choice than by necessity.I also think I'd like to get deeper into record production, the technological side of things, really get on top of the physics of acoustics, the physiology of how we hear and how our bodies react to music, as well as understaning the principles of electrical engineering, even though that stuff doesn't come very easily to me. I'd at least like to understand more than I do now."Writing for Spin" actually sounds more substantial than it was. I wrote one review for them in the late 90s. There was a period when a fellow named Simon Reynolds was the reviews editor, and he assigned stuff to a number of writers, myself included, whom he knew from a British magazine we all contributed to called The Wire. He was also a fan of a little magazine me and a bunch of buddies published in college, called Tuba Frenzy."
What was it like to play along side Cat Power?
"We had a very memorable gig with Chan and Calvin Johnson in Olympia Washington at a venue called the Capital Theater. It was one of those magical nights where the audience and environment was just perfect and we played a great show for them. That coincidence only happens once every dozen or so gigs, and it's what makes performing professionally worthwhile. All the bad nights, bad crowds, bad spaces are forgotten for awhile. Olympia is a pretty special town, definitely worth a visit if you find yourself in that part of the country. (Capital Theater is) a huge old movie theater, but the shows are held with the band set up "backwards" -- in other words the 200 or so people were standing behind the stage, and behind the performers was the ascending seats of the theater, the balcon, etc. Very unique atmosphere, you can probably imagine."
Is there any parallel from the books that you read to the songs that you write?
"If you mean are the songs influenced by things that I've read, sure. But it's in an indirect and oblique way -- what I've read makes me a certain kind of person at a given time, and that person (who is constantly developing and changing over time) writes the songs. I've very rarely been able to write specifically about anything, without sounding too deliberate and forced.I think if an artist opens his subconscious and trusts its flow all kinds of interesting things emerge that are perhaps identifiable after the fact. Or at least that apoproach seems best for me. There are plenty of writers who excel at being literal and autobiographical and topical. Woody Guthrie, of course; John Lennon, Curtis Mayfield, and Billy Bragg also spring to mind. I've never been good at it, so I try to stick to what I consider my own strengths.Reading for me is the ultimate nutrient. Nothing compares in terms of food for the soul. Music primarily engages our more visceral aspects, as does cinema. You don't necessarily have to think about what's happening to enjoy it. Literature demands a singular, and to me more sophisticated, healthy, vital type of engagement."
While playing South By Southwest were you able to take in any of the shows?
"We've been down there several times now and I have been able to catch some other gigs. Perhaps the worst performance I've ever seen in my life was in Austin, in fact, by Billy Bob Thornton. He had people not just booing, but screaming, cursing, *begging* him to stop. We had to swing against a current of people were heading for the doors just to view the trainwreck. For the finale he insisted on playing *drums* on the Isely Brothers' "It's Your Thing"!! Just to twist the knife. Then the Yardbirds played. It was quite surreal.Usually we're either in and out in the same night, or just have to do too much running around to get to our own gigs to be able to catch many other artists. I can't say enough about Austin, though. One of the greatest cities in the country. And my favorite contemporary songwriter, Will Johnson, who I'm proud to call a friend and touring companion, lives there."
What differentiates your upcoming album from your previous three albums?
"I'm taking my time, experimenting with some new processes, trying not to fall back on the same techniques I used for the others. I banged the first three out very quickly and with the songs barely sketched out. Usually the band had only played them a few times, if ever, and sometimes they were hearing them for the first time, especially lyrically. That can be a fun, spontaneous way to work but I'm trying to avoid that this time around, to shake things up if nothing else. See what I come up with having a longer gestation period, and the players and I having a more solid grasp of the material before we start to record. There are some different players invloved, and some songs I have been developing simultaneously with different lineups. I'm also singing and playing on some other folks' records, which I hope will give me some new ideas to bring back into my own stuff. The first three albums to me are pretty much a single work, and for now a closed chapter. I want to take what I learned from making those, both the successes and especially the mistakes, and put it towards writing stronger material. I'm trying to broaden my scope, think of what I'm doing in the context of 100, 150, 200 years of English-language songwriting. From Robert Burns to Stephen Foster, George Gershwin to Hank Williams, Smokey Robinson to Bob Dylan. Try and figure out what animates all of that, and what, if anything, I can do to possibly contribute to that heritage."
