Howe Gelb has spent the last 18 or so years fueling the Tucson, Arizona band Giant Sand, collaborating and recording with OP8, and has recently released a solo record called Hisser that was recorded on his reel-to-reel 4-track in his adobe house. Hisser proves Howe as a great songwriter and also as a master of capturing "vibe" and "feel" in the realm of recorded music. I shoveled my way through the phlegm of my first fall cold, drank a cup of coffee and called him at his home in Tucson. We ended up talking for almost 2 hours about his new record, some history and recording philosophy of Giant Sand and OP8, and yes, of course, the desert.
How's the desert?
Deserted.
You talk about the adobe house that Hisser was recorded in. How relevant is this place?
The sounds that I get... um... adobes... well, they're pretty ingenious, structure-wise. The old ones are the thickest and with the tallest ceilings. The old one I used to live in had a lot to do with me even buying a house, with the lack of right angles, because I realize the virtue of the sound in a place like that. You know, I'm akin to it. It just makes good sense for every day conversation or living; breaking glass sounds better. They feel better. When I was in Chicago a few months ago I heard that Steve Albini lined his new studio with adobe.
Really? So in terms of your record, am I hearing the adobe?
You are probably hearing the sound of the room, the tone. Fortunately the less sophistication you have with recording, the more natural and room-like sounds you're gonna get. You use fewer mics, cheaper mics and put mics in technically wrong spots.
Are you spontaneous when you are recording? Or do you think a lot about it?
No. I like to forget about it as much as possible. I have mics set up so when the notion hits you in the middle of the night you can just walk into the room, push down the button and just start playing... and capture something. I think this is very inherent in many songwriters. You get a song idea on the way out the door, late for something, going to work, picking the kid up, somebody is waiting for you somewhere, and then advertently you get a notion for a song. If you have a Walkman around normally you'll throw it down. The result of that over the years is that I've lost the cassettes. I just filled up cassettes without ever learning the songs... just with these notions. So one way around it is you have it set up on 4-track to capture it on tape... you can go back to it later. That's what I tried to do with Hisser. Like "Shy of Bumfuck", they were ideas that I literally threw down really quick when I was walking out the door, the kid was outside, the door was open, and I just turned on the tape deck as if it were a giant walkman and quickly put the song down and left. You don't ever get moments like that on big studio recordings. Because you are always there for intended purposes. I like that off-handedness. I think that off- handedness even lends itself more to the room. The more you don't think about things, and DON' T think about recording, the more you can actually get what I think are the most honest recordings.
A lot of Hisser seems to be almost like it was a super-8 camera going. You can't erase Super-8 film, so you just turned it on, caught a feeling, printed it and watched. Did that come easily on Hisser?
Hisser is a licensing deal. If you get a real big recording deal you get a large amount of money to deal with. Which includes a large amount of people to deal with. That way of doing things is ok, there are certain advantages, but it's just not so instantaneous. So with licensing deals there is less money involved. The money for them (V2), that they spend, drops down to next to nothing. I just have the freedom of recording for next to nothing and doing whatever I want. So a lot of Hisser is just the allowance of me not having to deal with the "loop" (of big label bureaucracy) and to keep pushing some frontier in instantaneous recording.
That seems like the ideal of recording...
I know it is... and it only took me about 18 years. (laughs) Yeah, it seems like the nightmare of recording deals is dealing with people who don't care about music. Business people... Everyone has an adoration of sound or melody. Whether or not you fit in that camp, or whether or not you make a mess that they can relate to, you just want them to be moved by it. Then there is a connection and you feel good about everything. The lines of communication are now opened.
Was Hisser recorded first and then presented to V2?
No. I started doing what became Hisser mostly in light of John and Joey's Calexico adventure. A few years ago things got weird... like 1996 and parts of 1997 were really fucked up years for a lot of people. A lot of that was happening around me and with me in the middle of it. And there were like five insane situations going on at the same time and it just took me away from everything. So in the interim John and Joey started having their own troubles with Friends of Dean Martinez so they were recording in their house. We all live in adobes. Joey lives across the street where we all had lived at one point singularly and now it was Joey's turn to have it and he started recording in that place and that's where most of the Spoke record was done. More evidence to the wonderfulness of adobe. So anyway, they had something going on and I was able to completely be removed from everything. and say, "Well, maybe it's time to set up a little four-track in the living room." So I did, and I started coming up with these little bits and pieces. They were all way too slow and mopey. I Did that for about a year and then it started changing, there was a little more spark in life and in the material. So when I realized I was coming up with this record I approached V2 with this notion.
A lot of really great records have come out of Tucson lately: both Calexico records, OP8, Hisser, Richard Buckner's Devotion and Doubt. There is something about the vibe and warmth of all those records that feels really good. My friend and I call it "desert core." Do you think the desert is really influential?
I think that whatever choices you make along the way, how ever you decide to live, whatever you end up going through while you live there, will influence what will happen next. Like in the next year. So in a sense... if I had never lived through a flood in Pennsylvania I might never have wanted to come out to the desert where there was no water. Whatever... I wasn't aware of it at that time. Turning John and Joey on to this place, did a lot for them being able to find sounds they liked or tapped them into some form of imagination. I see Joey taking a lot of different parts of things that already exist and mixing them up. If we didn't move down here, would he have made sounds like on the Calexico record? I doubt it.
Sometimes in order to fuel creativity you have to ditch the notions of being a "band" and just make a record out of it. Is this what it was like for the OP8 record?
Yeah. It was a better blend. The whole idea was really a chance for us to come to the table on equal terms instead of having to deal with seniority like in Giant Sand. It was burdensome. When someone new comes into the band I don't know if they are going tobethereforayearortenyears.SoifI assume that they are an equal member of the band, what I have learned is that I am setting myself up for disaster. Because I want it to be more of a unit. If you don't know their staying power and they end up becoming a big part of the sound and they leave, then you're kind of fucked. When Giant Sand formed in 1980 it was an equal membership. One by one we split and by 1983 that didn't exist anymore. That notion always seemed the most appealing. Like R.E.M. or U2 that had all got together at the same time and stayed together.
Does this seem like an impossibility these days?
No, it did with Giant Sand though. Slowly I was able to figure what or what not to do to find the next idea that would feed some form of record or inspiration or sounds. Or whatever. Then when John came in 1987 it was like the band kept changing now and again and then I verbally offered up a partnership saying "you know this could be great, to start all over again." To only having a drummer as a full partner. So with me and John doing a two piece thing. It was great. So free. And then from that point Joey came into the mess a couple of years later. Didn't know if he was staying or going. And then right when, 4 years down the road, "We're ready to initiate ya." That's when he started, more than ever, picking up side projects. I mean they were all related. They were all things we had become involved in. That was part of the wonderfulness of the credo of Giant Sand, was the coming and going. Whether it was Victoria Williams coming and sitting in, or Lucinda Williams sitting in, or Julianna or anybody...
It still seems that way, like it's a "cooperative."
Yeah. The other thing with Giant Sand was the fear of incorporating too many sounds by too many other people, and then if they weren't around what would you do? OP8 allows us to come to the table as equal, 25% partners. It makes it easier on ya and also more effective. Because it just isn't so heavy-handed. I think the result is really cool.
So does this mean that the new Giant Sand record is a "project?"
No. You have four working bands within this one band. Finally. Depending on the moniker we're playing under you have to be psyched about that band. Otherwise, it'll be unfocused. So if it's one of us, its just me, if its two of us its Calexico, if its three of us it's Giant Sand, and if its four of us its OP8. But the tricky part is letting the other shit go enough, to then come in and trick yourself into thinking "Oh yeah, all we have going on right now is Giant Sand." So it sounds like it when you record. Right now we're having open discussions in the band about this because if that can't happen then there is no point in doing it.
Do you still have touring to do as "Howe?"
That's sort of set up as an open door where I can jump in and out of that when I know I have free time. Or when I know for certain that Calexico will be gone. Normally when Calexico plays its just the two of them. The irony is that Joey is playing the exact same guitar that I used to play when John and I were a two piece and he's playing the exact same amp.
What? Did you lose a bet with him?
When I saw him using it and it sounded fine, you think "Cool." But then in the next instant through your head you think "Am I dead?" And it's totally his own spin on it. You know his assembly of what he's heard through the years and what he's discerned that he likes. Which is what everybody does and they put together their own thing. But it was part of the surreality that it happened during those trouble years. One particularly bad night, I went to this little gallery downtown, I knew that they were having something in there and I walked in and John and Joey were playing in the corner, and the first feeling was like,"...Ah... warmth, comfort, home, friends, family." And then I go through and the brain starting deciphering things a little bit differently... "Wait a minute. That's John playing the exact same drumset we played as a two piece, Joey playing the guitar and the same amp. What is twisted here? It sounds like the same tones that we got!" The certain vintage of those things sounds good, just like the adobe walls do. But it was Joey's slant on things. It was weird.
Yeah, John has a way. His kit. Whatever. There is just something about the way he plays.
Yeah, John has a poetic delivery. He has a real knack for tone that he acquires with vintage.
Those drum sounds on the OP8 record are incredible. Your record has great sounds too. Especially the tune Grandaddy backs you on...
Yeah. The Grandaddy thing was a good evidence of us... me then getting something back from John. The advent of trajectory. You know, we get stuff from each other. That's why we hang together. Being with John allowed me one stoney day to trip over this drum set that was for sale outside this second-hand clothes store. I realized there was something about it that felt like tone... like something. I ended up buying it for $200.00 and it turned out being this really old 50's Ludwig drumset that when John saw it he couldn't believe it. I was like "Yeah, man... it just felt like you were there." He helped me set it up and it was in the corner of the room. So when Granddaddy came in they just used those drums.
Did you use that kit on all the other drum tracks?
Yeah. I had that kit over at Wavelab when Winston played on those piano songs.
What is that sound on the beginning of "Explore You" and on the OP8 record? Sounds like the tape starting up or a laser or something?
Yeah. Its the tape starting. I did it intentionally 3 times. I had the pedal steel player Neil Harry, who I've used since the 80's but you've also heard on the Calexico records... that's another thing....
Ah...there the incest continues.
Yeah... but I had Neil just sustain a chord on the steel (because I was just recording that at the time... it was just me and him in the studio). So I started up the machine and I said "Ok try it one more time" and I rewound it and said "Ok just try it once more" and rewound it just a little less and did it so you got that "Boing, Boing, Boing."
In an interview with Craig Schumacher (@Wavelab) a friend did a few months back he talks about the train that goes by. Its the same train that's on your record, right? I mean are you guys all neighbors or something?
Yeah we all live pretty close. We all live in the old section of Tucson which is downtown. Well his studio is down here... an old warehouse. Yeah, you hear that train. When you're blessed with the train coming in just right its like a cross between a free horn section and trajectory being on your side. Lining in and mixing so well. There are so many times when the train goes by and you're like "Oh... if we could've just been recording that right then..." So I kind of forced the issue and went out there and recorded it going by and came in and with the Walkman and put it on tape intentionally. Hoped it would sound like you wanted the train to happen right there. Like a horn section.
Hmmm. The desert.
You know I remember you bringing up the whole "desert" thing before. I remember for years always talking down the effects of the desert on the sound.
How so?
I always figured it would be so fucked to um, to say you play "desert rock". It always sounded so stupid. To just blame your sound on where you live. I don't know why I feel that way...
You still do now? I mean it's too late... ha.
I definitely used to make it a point of saying " Don't blame the desert on our crap...If we lived in New York it'd be the same." I mean I was born in Pennsylvania. I just feel more comfortable living in the desert. The flood was in 1972 and that's when I started coming out here...moved everything out a few years later. But now I think, I told Joey this the other day, that you come here from California, from the coast, and you're totally sounding like some Italian representation of a Western. and that's cool. Because it's sort of screaming at this point. instead of saying,"Yeah...[mopey voice] we play desert rock", it's just like "YEAH. Here's some Desert Rock for ya'!...BBRRRLLLLAAMMM!"
Yeah, funny, Portland is like the opposite of a desert. It rains nine months out of the year! Not to be cliche' but your stuff just feels like a desert. Even from the photo on the cover of Dreaded Brown Recluse; the car on a lonely, abandoned desert highway.
Yeah, but something that kind of woke me up to the point that it doesn't matter or feel bad anymore if it's Desert Core or Desert Rock or Desert anything. Life is too short to think it's cool or not cool. Somewhere along the way I realized... you know as you get older you kind of figure a few things out... ha... whatever it is, somebody has to refer to something in a category. It always seemed like the first instinct to a category is to rebel against it. It's in the very core of whatever rock is. But somehow it makes sense to them... and it doesn't mean that you know more about what's going on with your stuff than they do. So it's become a favorite pastime of mine lately to basically drop the issue. To be "Yeah, you're probably right, it probably IS desert core." Another thing that sort of backed me up on this somewhat is whenever you run into someone that is older and talk to them (because the older you get the less you run into people that are older and are still around). Like we just got done recording the Giant Sand record: we did half of it here in Tucson with John Parish and that was really cool and we did half of it down in Memphis with Jim Dickinson.
Who's that?
He used to be a session player for some of the early Stax recordings and he produced the third Big Star record. But for me... he played piano on "Wild Horses" on [the Stones'] Sticky Fingers. He's got a legacy. So we were talking when he came out here, when we're going to possibly use him as a producer, and he started talking about the sounds of the region. And he was talking about Memphis like a snake oil salesman. Almost like a swindler. Talking about how the sound sticks to tape in Memphis, because of its moisture. He said "It's too dry out here. You won't get those sounds out here." [He sings...] "You gotta come to Memphis!" And I couldn't call him on it. I mean, if you're going all the way out there and spending some coin to record with him it's because you're believing what he's telling you. You don't doubt it. And I've listened to the Memphis stuff and the Tucson stuff and there are some weird differences... and what it is exactly?... you can tell me and you'll be just as right as me.
My friend and I want to come to Tucson and just feel it. So if you see two drunk guys asleep on the street, or with our heads to the dirt, that'll be us. We'll be listening to the "sounds" of Tucson.
