You’ve said your solo album was a way of taking creative control. Why was that important for you in the context of not only [your band] Daughters, but you personally?
I don’t have that warrior gene or whatever that is. I don’t want to be a leader. As I get older, I’ve discovered that when I look back in a reflective way at my life, I’ve always been very much an isolator. As much as I’ve always wanted to be embraced and for people to like me, I’ve never wanted to be part of the group. So, to finally find myself at a point artistically where I don’t have to be part of a group, it probably meant more to me on a personal and cellular level, where it was like, “It’s time for me to just do this thing that I want to do.”
How did you arrive at that point?
It sprung probably a lot from publishing poetry. I’ve had a decent amount of work published in the last few years—just writing and being totally alone and having a book published, it’s completely on me. And I’ll say that when rereading my first book, unfortunately that’s entirely on me, because in hindsight, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.
So to finally just be completely alone and do this thing that was mine, and not have to talk to somebody about t-shirt designs or run anything by anybody or “Who do we want to tour with?” There was no debating or anything like that. This is completely mine. I’m going to make the decisions, and if anyone doesn’t like that, that’s just too bad. And not in a megalomaniacal, “I must control all things!” way or everything is under my heel. I just wanted to do my own thing. I had done it artistically with writing and I felt like it was probably time to do that musically as well.
Would it be fair to call the album exploratory? When you went into the studio, you didn’t really have any material, right?
Well, I had written 30 demos in GarageBand. I had sent a couple over to some of the musicians involved but then I just thought, “I don’t give a shit about any of this.” I want to see what we can all do in a setting where I just let everyone let go and do whatever they want. We’ll see what—if anything—works, and we’ll take it from there. I wanted it to be very, very freeform. Not that I compare myself to Ornette Coleman or anything, but I was sure there would be something in there if we didn’t overthink it. Let’s just do this right now.
I think a lot of people would be terrified by the prospect of going into a recording studio with no material and just winging it. Why do you think that way of doing things was appealing to you?
Oh, I was terrified. It was scary as shit. There were certainly times where I thought, “This is probably a bad idea. I should have planned this out, and this isn’t going to go well.” But at this point in my life, I’ve been making music for two decades—more than that, actually. It’s just time to do something new. With Daughters, everything is very thought out and planned and there’s a lot of debate that goes into what we’re doing. We try things over and over again. We try it this way and then we try it that way, and then we try it this other way. I just wanted to have the complete opposite experience in the studio—and it’s the way I’ve always wanted to do it. I’ve always enjoyed that attitude. Like when the MC5 were like, “We’ll just go perform our album live, press record and release it that way.” That was something I always wanted Daughters to do, but that was just never going to fly. There’s so much going on that you couldn’t just perform all willy-nilly.
I wanted to experiment in the studio and have it be a place where there’s some people hanging out and just, “Let’s fucking see what this does. I’m going to try this thing—let’s see if it works.” And if it doesn’t work, you just kind of go, “All right, it didn’t work out.” But we’ve got five, six days to do this. Maybe subconsciously there was a desire to rely on my experience as a person who’s been doing it for so long to say, “Can I just go in and create this and not overthink it and stress about it? Am I even capable of doing that?”
In hindsight, it was a wonderful experience. I’m really glad I did it. But then you sit on a record for a year and you start to think, “Oh, we should have done more with this, and should have done more here and this didn’t really work.” But I anticipated that’s how it was going to be. Hemingway said, “The first draft of anything is shit.” This record is kind of like a first draft, for the most part, and at some point I’m going to look back at it and think, “Well, this didn’t work, but I’m ecstatic to have had the experience.”
I think that’s a great way of looking at it. Improving as a musician or an artist or even just a human is often about learning from mistakes, right?
Well, I try to be a realist—creatively, anyway. I accept that the first book I wrote is not good. When I listen to [Daughters’ debut album] Canada Songs or some shit, I think, “I don’t know why you people are holding onto this like it’s some kind of crown jewel.” To me, it’s a whatever record. It just seems really not very well thought out. It’s 20-year-old men flailing about. But that works for somebody.
For me, I look back at it and think, “Yeah, I don’t really give a shit about this. I’m happy about the experience but this is not something that interests me at all.” It’s probably easier said by a person who helped create it, who had to hear those songs over and over again. But anytime you create something, you’re going to have a completely different experience with it than anyone else is going to have. I think that’s obvious and clear to everybody. For me, the album is not good. I don’t ever want to hear that shit again. But some people think it’s the only good thing we did, or the only good thing I’ve ever done. It’s up to the individual to make that decision for themself. I’m not interested in trying to hold onto that or recreate that or to keep anyone’s attention. I just want to do the thing that I want to do and hopefully people will pay attention.
Behind the scenes, you’ve been to rehab and you’re in therapy. Do you see your solo album as part of that process? Is that all one process?
This is just what I do. Other musicians will talk about how cathartic it is to perform onstage. I’ve never got offstage after a show and thought, “Man, I got to sweat that out.” Or “I got to scream about this, and now I feel a lot better.” I never feel better. I get onstage, and then as I get offstage I just think I’ve either failed or I’ve entertained. But I never go back to my bunk or the hotel and say, “Yeah, I really processed that shit.”
There’s no relief for me from any of that. It’s just the thing that I do. I’m not expecting this to change my life. Me processing this or that isn’t dependent on music. That shit is just separate. This is the thing I do creatively because I need to do it, because I just have to do it. I have to perform and do all this shit. I feel this compulsion to do it. If I didn’t do it, I don’t fucking know what I would do with my time, but I certainly wouldn’t be in a worse place emotionally or mentally.
If I didn’t spend two decades of my life doing this, I’m sure I’d be in a better place financially. I wouldn’t have had such phenomenal access to drugs and alcohol had I not done this, but to say I never would have become an addict is ridiculous. I mean, that’s what I grew up like. I was an addict long before I was playing music. I’ve worked other jobs, and as much as it’s frustrating and annoying and terribly unhealthy—I mean, my body is completely destroyed—I’m glad I’m doing this and not laying fucking tile in some prick’s bathroom. Or roofing in August, you know?
You’ve said you consider yourself more of a performer than a writer. Why do you feel that way?
I don’t know why. I really can’t explain it. I am much more comfortable trying out an idea onstage than I would be to sing in front of [Daughters members] Jon and Nick. There’s something about that more intimate thing that feels almost more like you’re being analyzed or judged. If I miss a cue when I perform onstage, it doesn’t’ matter because it’s such a savage experience. It’s very primal. I don’t even need to be in perfect tune. I can be losing my voice.
The last tour we did, I had a bulging disk in my neck. I was in awful pain. I couldn’t sit up, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t lay down, and it hurt to swallow. I did the whole tour like that. It was a fucking awful, painful experience. But to go onstage and feel like, “Well, I can still perform—maybe not at my best, but I’ll try.” And then I’d perform and be like, “That was fucking great.” I would think, “Even if I’m not in my best shape, I can do this. I know that I can do this.”
But when you’re in the studio recording and you’re under that microscope, there’s an expectation that you do it right—and I don’t know how to do it right. I don’t know how to sing. I don’t know how to breathe and sing from my diaphragm. Sometimes I do it, totally unintentionally, but I don’t fucking know how to do it. And that’s scary for me. It makes me very uncomfortable and nervous. But performing and being onstage is very natural for me. That’s just where I feel comfortable.
If you put a fish in water, it swims. That’s me onstage. If you took the fish and put it on a bicycle, he doesn’t know what the fuck to do. That’s sort of how I feel in the studio. “You want me to pedal? I don’t have legs. I don’t really know what to tell you.” But I’ve accepted that this is just what it is. I would give anything to be able to sing like Scott Walker, but I can’t do it. I’ve accepted that I’m not Prince. But I can perform. I know how to do that.
You made a name for yourself as an unpredictable frontman in the early days of Daughters. How much of that was a conscious decision on your part?
When I was a kid, my brother had a VHS copy of this Alice Cooper performance, and the theatrics were just wild. He gets his head cut off and the executioner is drinking the blood. I just thought it was so fucking cool. And then at some point I saw somebody else get onstage and sing a song, and I was like, “This is it? I’m just supposed to watch you sing this song?” That did absolutely nothing for me.
Then I got into punk and hardcore, and everybody was wild and it was really exciting. It wasn’t sitting around the dinner table talking, it was people going wild and shit got crazy. So I started dabbling in the shit that I found exciting. Like there was a thing in the ’90s where people were playing without shoes. So I’m like, “Oh, I’m supposed to take my shoes off?” I was trying to figure it out, but it always felt like I had to open up more when I’m playing. It felt like a really good opportunity to just indulge in chaos, and I recognized that it was really fun and exciting for people who were watching. It was like we had an experience together. It wasn’t like you came in and I’m sitting on a stool singing like Simon & Garfunkel, as much as I love that shit. So I had to find my place and it just took me naturally where it was supposed to.
Were you able to leave that mentality onstage, or did it carry over into regular life?
I don’t know. I think maybe people expect me to eat broken glass or hump their leg or something, but I’m not that fucked up. It’s not like I’m this type of person onstage and I’m another type of person offstage. George “The Animal” Steele was a popular wrestler when I was a kid. He’d rip open the turnbuckle and eat the stuffing. But people would be like, “I met George ‘The Animal’ Steele and he was such a nice guy!” Yeah, of course—because it’s an act. It’s like watching a movie.
But I think there’s a distinction between acting and being onstage in a band. I’ve never gone onstage and been like, “I’m going to act all crazy because that will look cool.” It’s more like, “Here’s a place for me to indulge.” I can do things that are totally acceptable onstage but not acceptable to do in your own life. But I kept my circle small and acted like a fucking degenerate in my normal life, which became a way of figuring out where my people were. Luckily for me, what I was doing onstage was encouraged and became accepted, so it allowed me to become even further who I already was.
Alexis S.F. Marshall Recommends:
“Satan Says” by Sharon Olds
The plays of Sam Shepard
Gérard Grisey’s “Vortex Temporum”
Hiroshi Inagaki’s Samurai Trilogy
cold showers
This post was originally published on The Creative Independent.
