[EDITOR'S NOTE: Welcome our newest writer, Rahawa Haile. Her articles are best read if you imagine she has a British accent, because she does (occasionally, it's more of a twang when she sings, really).]
If you’ve yet to hear Crystal Antlers, I can’t say I blame you. The “crystal” prefix was 2008′s alias for “Shitty McShit Shit And His Shitstorm Band.” Rest assured, however, the Antlers are solid. Maybe even supersolid. Their songs are well-crafted and gut-wrenching in the best possible way, and let’s be honest — it’s refreshing to see a soulful, noisy band use their abundance of technical proficiency as something other than a masturbatory aide.
We caught up with lead singer/bassist Jonny Bell last week as he waxed poetic about chimney sweep attire, his stance on illegally downloaded music, and the non-psychedelic aspects of his (arguably psychedelic) band. Guitarist Errol Davis makes a brief appearance, takes 30 seconds to derive the perfect noodling:non-noodling ratio for musicians.
There’s some acid involved. And clouds. And chicks. (No one gets laid.)
Buddyhead: So what’s on your plate these days?
Jonny Bell: Just got off chimney sweep duty. On my way to band practice. We’re back in California now. Have a week to ourselves and then off to Europe for about a month. Lots of festivals. Looking forward to playing with Health and Deerhunter and Black Lips.
BH: Still with the chimney sweep business?
JB: I’m still with the chimney sweep business. Get to wear a top hat and everything.
BH: How very Dick Van Dyke.
JB: You have no idea. It gets very hot up there. Sometimes we even have to sing for the customers, or things like that. Seriously. Sometimes if it’s an old lady or something and they really want us to do it we’ll sing. We occasionally work together.
BH: It’s funny you should mention playing with Health and Black Lips; they’re slated to play one of the Williamsburg Pool Parties together. You definitely would have fit in much better there than you did last week with the Dirty Projectors and Magnolia Electric Co.
JB: Tell me about it.
BH: Speaking of which, I noticed you had a different organist at the pool party. Where’s Victor [Rodriguez] (the original organist).
JB: We played with Victor for a few years, but he had…other…priorities. He also wasn’t a US citizen, which caused a lot of problems for us traveling overseas. So we found someone else that was a good fit — Cora Foxx, our new organist.
BH: Do you think your music more fitting for darker venues or outdoor shows?
JB: I prefer playing dark venues, but i think playing big shows will be a good chance to get a lot of exposure in Europe. It’s nice playing festivals because we get to see a lot of our friends in other bands. A good chance to catch up with people. It’ll be our third time in Europe. The U.K. was a bit mundane last time around because it felt like we were playing the same show every day, but we love playing in the U.K..
BH: You called Crystal Antlers “more punk than psychedelic” in an earlier interview. Were you mincing words because a lot of what we refer to as garage rock or garage psych today used to be called punk in the late 1960s and early 70s?
JB:I don’t call us anything, really. We used to all be in punk bands, we operate kind of like a punk band. I don’t think we’re a psychedelic band.
BH: One of your bandmates calls himself “Sexual Chocolate….”
JB: He doesn’t go by that anymore.
BH: You guys are often on the road. Where does most of your songwriting take place?
JB: I write the songs everywhere. In the van. On the road. In the middle of Iowa sometimes. Parts of “Andrew” were written in the middle of Iowa. Some of the stuff I’ll write at home in Long Beach. Because we’re traveling so much we just have to write wherever we are. I just need a guitar, or Casio keyboard or something. And a boombox.
BH: A boombox?
JB: I record everything onto a boombox. I have cassette tapes of my entire life.
BH: Like memoirs? Chord progressions?
JB: Yes, audio memoirs, in a way, but mostly notes to myself and notes for songs.
BH: As a result of these notations, do the lyrics frequently come first or the music?
JB: Sometimes a little of each. It’s usually best when written at once, you know? “A Thousand Eyes” was all written at once.
BH: I always got that impression from “Parting Song for the Sky” off your EP.
JB: Actually, that was the first recording we ever did. It was a remix of our first single. We recorded that when Errol was 17, sort of before we even started the band. Three piece. Errol, Kevin, and me. Everyone else came in bits and pieces. Victor came a little while after that was recorded. Errol left to move to Thailand about 1.5 years ago and that’s when Andrew joined the band. Then Errol came back. Now we’re us. We all grew up together, played together. That kind of thing.
BH: Are there any special circumstances that allow you to do what you do? Clearly driving around in a vegetable-oil-guzzling van with considerable mileage helps. Anything else?
JB: It’s been a real struggle; basically everyone lost their jobs because we started going on tour a lot and as a result they lost their apartments as well and everything. So we had to pull together, and we’re all spread pretty thin. But all we care about is playing music together. I guess because everyone is so committed to this we’ve somehow been able to make it work. Even now. I’m still working every day I can, and then going to work on music.
BH: You toured with the Cold War Kids…why? Were you received well?
JB: We were received OK. Good exposure. Depended on the city. I think we’re maybe too abrasive or too confusing for some of their fans.
BH: It doesn’t take much, not for their fans.
JB: There were some shows where it sort of came off very well and we were able to make it work. It was nice to play with those guys, they’re also from the same town, and we didn’t know them before the tour but it was cool that they were really big fans and wanted to take us out on the road. Interesting looking at the mainstream.
BH: How so?
JB: They had a giant tour bus, everything seemed very sterile, you know?
BH: Is that in line with your aspirations?
JB: I don’t think so. The way we’ve been touring now is great. Doing everything on our own without tour managers, driving ourselves, doing the vegetable oil bus thing.
BH: Tell me more about Michael Reich, the guy who directed your “Andrew” video. You’re scoring some film for him?
JB: Michael Reich has a website called Videothing. He’s been doing this target video style, short videos of bands, and it’s really cool what he does. Now his video performances include live editing, switching between five different TVs at once of five different bands. Says something about his attention span….
BH: You beat me to it.
JB: He went on tour with us in Europe and performed.
BH: And the “Andrew” video?
JB: Andrew was filmed almost entirely in the van on our first European tour by Michael, and also during that time we were working on a feature-length film. He scripted this film about us going on our first European tour. He would write scenes for different people. Anyway, we’re going to do the soundtrack.
BH: For this scripted film of your band on tour when your band was on tour?
JB: Yeah! Should be out early next year. We’re writing new music for it.
BH: How does the score sound?
JB: It’s a lot of music we’ve worked on that didn’t really fit on the album, more ethereal, instrumental type stuff that would work better with a movie score situation.
BH: Is the soundtrack collaborative?
JB: It’s collaborative, but i write most of the music. I’ll usually write lyrics and chords and then we’ll sort of work on arrangements and details.
BH: Are you happy with your latest LP, Tentacles?
JB: Look, all we wanted to do was make an honest record. Thought the best way to do that was put ourselves in a really intense situation, so we recorded the entire album in a week.
BH: You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.
JB: Really. We mixed everything at this studio called Closer in San Francisco but not with Ikey Owens (Mars Volta keyboardist/producer of Crystal Antlers’ EP) due to conflicting schedules. Tentacles wasn’t produced at all. It’s just us playing our songs and our friend Joe recording them.
BH: There appears to be a lot of despair toward the end of Tentacles, particularly with the last three tracks, “Your Spears,” “Swollen Sky” and the gargantuan “Several Tongues.”
JB: It’s pretty despair-ridden, I guess. “Swollen Sky” is about a friend of mine that was killed by the police. He was my first roommate. It was a really unfortunate situation where he got shot by the police and killed right in front of his parents. So that song is about that and abusive authority and how sad the whole situation was. “Several Tongues” was about everything we were trying to make that record, and also a little bit about Native American culture and language.
BH: Which aspects of Native American culture?
JB: Errol and I study South American and North American culture a lot, particularly as it relates to Native American history. All of our songs sort of had a certain meaning when I wrote them, but they always kind of change. I’ll notice certain things when I’m playing. Like in the middle of a show, I’ll notice connections that weren’t there or the meaning is different.
BH: That happens to me when I listen to “Andrew.”
JB: Exactly. Like on the song “Andrew,” I’m always noticing how it relates to things in my life. When I wrote it it was sort of about someone else I knew who had also died at that time.
BH: Another death?
JB: Yeah, but as we were playing/touring I was sort of thinking about how “Andrew” related to what we were going through, struggling through to play music. Then Andrew [King], one of our guitarists, was showing us this Daniel Johnston song he really liked, “Pot Head,” and I was thinking about how the lyrics were getting at the same thing.
BH: Do you have a favorite song to play or sing?
JB: “A Thousand Eyes.” I like to play it a lot. I really enjoyed writing that song and that whole process. I really like the lyrics and the vocal melodies and stuff, and it’s also not too difficult for me to sing. Even if I lost my voice I could still sing it. Some songs are really difficult for me to sing. “Swollen Sky,” for example. Part 2. I’ve lost my voice a few times, and it’s something I’m always battling on tour, but Ive learned a lot of different ways to make my voice last longer.
BH: Like health-related choices?
JB: Well, I had to quit smoking, for starters, and I don’t drink at all when I’m on tour. I do a lot of vocal warmups and stuff. I studied choir in college and high school and Baroque singing, so I do all those warmups and things. It helps me sing in my very improper way for Crystal Antlers.
BH: Wait. You sang Baroque music?
JB: For years.
BH: You sang Baroque music, and now you sweep chimneys when you aren’t howling on stage?
JB: I’m destined for the black lung. I saw a story about us once, where they were saying that I was a liar because we weren’t really chimney sweeps or something like that.
BH: Did you spit soot in their face?
JB: I would’ve. I should, if I ever see them.
BH: So what’s next? Do you have a home/label now that Touch and Go is a thing of a past?
JB: We’re sort of homeless, but we were homeless before Touch and Go and we were just fine. Right now we’re going to continue doing all the things we’re planning to do. Like working on the movie with Michael, and working on our next record, and another 7″ to put out. We may work with another label, or we may just do it on our own.
BH: I heard you guys were practically Luddites when it came to computers. Do you even own one?
JB: I caved in and got one, yeah. But the Internet is the problem. The Internet is the reason why people can download anything they want for free. They have a choice of whether they want to pay for music or not. But the Internet is also the solution, because there aren’t enough people buying records to support the middleman anymore. Maybe enough people will buy records directly from the bands so maybe the bands can survive. We sell stuff, everything sells pretty well, but at the same time, in the whole record industry people aren’t buying music anymore, not the way they used to.
BH: So are you for or against downloading music, illegally or otherwise?
JB: I’ve never really downloaded music illegally much myself. I think illegal downloading is just the inevitable scenario. There’s nothing to be done about it, but the record industry — everything about it was this old model screwing every artist over. In a way, downloading is sort of putting the power back in the hands of the bands and consumers. The bands can put their music up for free if they want. We also sell just as many records as we do CDs, but vinyl is so expensive to make that the markup is half of what you make on CDs…but i would definitely prefer to have vinyl most of the time, and it’s clearly what our fans want.
BH: Who’s behind your album art?
JB: Janet Beeler, our friend. She lives in Philly, but she used to live in Long Beach. When we went on tour in Philly we went to her house and stayed with her, and I never knew she was an artist, but we saw all this beautiful artwork all over her house and she had part of the cover of tentacles lying around. She had this big paint thing she was doing. The thing on the cover is actually six feet tall; it’s huge, and it’s just dried pieces of paint. I’m not sure how she did it exactly, but I think she painted the rest of the background and pieced it together somehow. We sent her the music and told her to come up with something, and we got the Tentacles cover.
BH: Do you read your own reviews?
JB: I never read our reviews. Maybe if we’re sitting at someone’s house somewhere, maybe I’ll take a look at one. I try not to look. I just don’t want to know what people think about us, I can find out based on how people react to how we were playing, but I don’t want to change anything based on what someone says in a review.
BH: Did you enjoy performing at the Williamsburg Pool Party?
JB: Our manager reads reviews, and everything he read about that show is positive about us, but everyone was saying it was a super hipster event and that everyone seemed like they didn’t care.
BH: It was. They didn’t.
JB: But we’ve had lots of really great shows there before. It was fun, and we were able to be there. It’s such a treat when we get to fly out just to go to a show for a weekend. It’s actually kind of like a vacation.
BH: Do you have any significant “touring band” gripes?
JB: A lot. I don’t know if i really want to get into it. It’s frustrating how fickle everyone is, you know? And the way everything works is just so…high school all over again.
BH: I fucking hated high school.
JB: Yeah, me too. And everyone is full of shit. I remember when we first started playing and we were talking with Owens, and he said this is just like high school. There aren’t as many bands and people as you think there are, and before you know it you’ll know everyone. A bunch of social groups. The more we play around and the more we meet people in the music industry the more I realize how true that is.
BH: So this band manager….
JB: Yeah, our manager is our friend Phil. He booked a show for us once and he really liked us. He kept getting calls from people trying to book us for other shows. And we set up shows a few times before he was just like, “Do you want me to help you guys?” And he’s like the same age as us and he’d never managed any bands before, so we just worked together for a really long time trying to figure out how to book a tour and everything. It’s cool because a lot of people we’ve worked with were kind of just getting started.
BH: Even Owens.
JB: Owens, when he produced us, had only produced a few bands before. That EP was one of his first projects. Phil is just out of college and working a regular job, but now he actually knows what he’s doing being a manger. So far we’ve paid him the same as a band member, basically. We’re all just doing this thing together. It’s a really interesting time for us musically, especially with having a new member and a new energy in the band and having a sort of open-ended opportunity for another record label.
BH: Well thanks, Jonny –
JB: Wait, I just ran into Cora and Errol [Davis] (guitarist). Are you on acid, Errol? Yes?
BH: At band practice? Are we still going with the whole “not a psych band” thing, because –
JB: No, I’m at the park. Hold on.
(hands phone to Errol)
Errol Davis: Hello?
BH: Hi, Errol.
ED: Did we meet?
BH: Yes.
ED: Were you cool? One of the cool kids?
BH: Definitely not.
ED: Good…I think I remember you.
BH: Is this how your practices usually go, lying in the field? Tripping?
ED: No, it isn’t practice unless we can look for shapes in the clouds.
BH: No clouds today?
ED: It’s actually a pretty clear day right now, so no. No clouds. But you know what? It’s nicer in Long Beach than it was in New York.
BH: Too hot?
ED: So fucking hot.
ED: So…Hey, let’s talk about something fun.
BH: OK. Like chicks and stuff?
ED: Totally! Let’s talk about chicks.
(awkward silence)
ED: Yeah, I like that about them, too.
BH: I didn’t say anything.
ED: What?
BH: So tell me, as a guitarist, about how you approach these songs.
ED: I try to string everything together and add a little bit of emotion. A noodle here, a noodle there.
BH: A-ha! So you’re the noodler on the album!
ED: I try not to noodle too much! Maybe a 1:2 ratio of noodling to not noodling. It took me a while to figure out, but now I think that’s the perfect ratio for us. It’s interesting every once a while to hear people do that.
BH: Do you also carry a boombox around with you when it comes to writing new material?
ED: It’s a lot easier to write when I’m at home than when we’re on tour because there’s all this monotony to deal with every day. Like getting to the venue. Sound checking. Eating. Well not eating. I love eating.
BH: Do you have a favorite guitar?
ED: Actually, I want to send a shout-out to the guitar that got stolen and the guy who stole it. Our gear got stolen right before the start of the last tour. We had our stuff at Damian’s house and someone broke and took all the guitars, amps, and some other stuff. It was a Fender Jaguar. At least we got to travel.
BH: And now? Excited about your upcoming European tour?
ED: I’m really excited to go to Poland. I think I have distant relatives there. I’m going to try to find them. I don’t know how big Poland is…but I’m going to look for them.