Tag: Merge Records

Ep. #139: Greg Cartwright of the Reigning Sound

Post author By vish
Post date October 21, 2014

Greg Cartwright is a prolific and influential musician who originally hails from Memphis, Tennessee. Over the past 20 years, Cartwright has established himself as a key and talented figure in the realms of garage rock, punk, and soul music. He has founded inspiring bands like the Compulsive Gamblers, the Oblivians, Greg Oblivian and the Tip Tops and worked with the Detroit Cobras, the Deadly Snakes, and Mary Weiss of the 60s chart-toppers, the Shangri-Las. Near the beginning of this century, Cartwright emerged with a new R&B-influenced band called the Reigning Sound and this past summer, they released their sixth proper studio album. It’s a love and heartbreak-soaked scorcher called Shattered, it’s out now via Merge Records, and has prompted the Reigning Sound to do some touring, including stops at Montreal’s Bar Le Ritz P.D.B. on October 24 and Toronto’s Horseshoe Tavern on October 25. Here, Greg and I discuss living in Asheville, North Carolina to appease one set of a couple’s parents, the long state of Tennessee, living in America, being a local and double perks, assembling the version of the Reigning Sound that made Shattered, it’s good to work with different musicians, what Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys is like and whether he’s respectable, lo-fi and garage rock got all lumped together, turning garage or blues songs into Billboard hits, Auerbach’s solid work as a producer with people like Dr. John, writing new songs about things that happened a long time ago, tragedy + time = great songs, romanticizing rock ‘n’ roll love song structures, Memphis music, picking up on contemporary pop song structures, DJ nights, old records aren’t necessarily going to be good, what it’s like making a record at the otherwise closed-to-the-public Daptone Studios, a small room and smart engineers like Wayne Gordon, the joys of working with an eight-track tape machine, Greg’s grandmother and his family’s amazing record collection, putting his first band together at 12 or 13, trying to find a drummer, underground rock music in Memphis in the late 1980s, the Antenna, meeting the older guard of subversive musicians and being part of a small scene, no grunge in Tennessee, navigating the music business in the 1990s, appearing on Late Night on with Conan O’Brien with Mary Weiss, forgetting how to play a song on national television, the good fortune of finding one’s audience, Merge Records is great and smart and made some prescient moves to sustain itself, making a new Parting Gifts record, the Oblivians in Canada, working with Last Year’s Men, figuring out new material for the Reigning Sound, the song “Never Coming Home,” and then we gotta leave.

Related links: mergerecords.com/reigning-sound vishkhanna.com

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Ep. #101: Steven Lambke

Post author By vish
Post date May 20, 2014

Steven Lambke is a very talented songwriter, singer, and guitar player who often performs under the name Baby Eagle. A founding member of Constantines, Lambke was raised in Cambridge, Ontario and currently lives in Toronto where he manages the You’ve Changed Records label, which has released music by the likes of Baby Eagle, Attack in Black, Daniel Romano, Daniel, Fred & Julie, Shotgun Jimmie, Marine Dreams, the Weather Station, Apollo Ghosts, and will be handling the reissue of Constantines’ Shine a Light in Canada this June 10. You’ve Changed celebrates its fifth anniversary with special roster-oriented shows at Toronto’s Horseshoe Tavern on May 22 and Ottawa’s St. Alban’s Church on May 23. At Steve’s place with Shary Boyle in Toronto, he and I discussed things like what Shary is preparing for dinner, the fact that Steve is in Toronto not in Sackville, Venice to Detroit, border crossing when you’re a musician not crossing to play music, “pfft…co-operative,” is Fugazi some kind of heavy metal, hobbies and retirement, teachers and race car drivers, parental tolerance of super loud novice musicians, learning about Superchunk and Merge Records, Encore Records in Kitchener is the best, whether labels matter and how they curate experiences, Steve’s old job at Soundscapes, the influence of Three Gut Records, SappyFest, and Attack in Black on You’ve Changed, how ideas are executed by the people running the label, the mystery of YCR 004 and CST 100, Dan Romano steps back a bit, Colin Medley made a You’ve Changed Anniversary zine, Steve should write a book or two, oh wait, Steve is publishing a book of lyrics and poetry, how writing songs in Constantines compares to writing as Baby Eagle, song batches, Christine Fellows and John K. Samson are encouraging people, balancing things, quality control and propelling important cultural work, “a field left fallow by a pine stand will grow pine,” more You’ve Changed records are coming out many of which will likely be made by Marine Dreams, the Shine a Light reissue, why the Constantines’ ending and starting up again might’ve been Bry Webb’s call, why Constantines will not be touring, the surprise guest at the Toronto You’ve Changed show at the Horseshoe on May 22 is no longer a surprise to you because you just found out that it’s Daniel Romano and his band, the Marine Dreams song “Constant Love” and then we stopped without really talking about our younger selves learning to play music together and forming bands like Captain Co-Pilot. Next time.

Related links: youvechangedrecords.com baby-eagle.com vishkhanna.com

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Ep. #86: Destroyer

Post author By vish
Post date April 9, 2014

Destroyer is the music-making moniker of Dan Bejar, a very gifted lyricist and musician who originally hails from Vancouver, British Columbia. He has been creating an idiosyncratic kind of pop music as Destroyer for almost 20 years and can also claim membership in bands like the New Pornographers, Swan Lake, and Hello, Blue Roses among others. His latest work as Destroyer includes the lovely 2013 EP Five Spanish Songs and his brilliant ninth LP, Kaputt, which were jointly released by Merge Records and Dead Oceans in 2011. On Friday April 11, Destroyer plays a solo set at the Dublin Street United Church in Guelph, Ontario as part of Kazoo! Fest. Here, Dan and I discuss why, despite living in Spain for a spell, Vancouver remains his home, that year he played SappyFest and first spent time in New Brunswick, why playing small towns is refreshing, how Destroyer has evolved into a ‘heavy touring machine,’ Will Oldham’s interesting tour routes and how Dan envisions a touring pattern of his own, how his solo performance process and execution has evolved, how he and his family moved around a lot when he was growing up and whether or not that impacted his ‘cosmopolitan’ outlook, how bands in the Vancouver scene like Superconductor and Blaise Pascal first drew him to appreciate and play music, what he studied in school and why he dropped out, how Carl Newman’s early work resonated with him, why Vancouver in 1992 was the best irrespective of what else was happening in the Pacific Northwest, Dan’s uncertainty about his band leading skills and his lack of any real aesthetic, the reception to Kaputt compared to previous records he’s made, an update on the Destroyer recording sessions he’s beginning this week and also his two ‘unfamiliar’ contributions to a New Pornographers album due later this year, his interest in enigmas and mysteries, what his ‘words first’ approach to songwriting might say about him, his reservation about engaging with music by younger artists, our mutual adoration of Bill Callahan’s Dream River and Bill Callahan generally, the somewhat unappreciated humour in Destroyer’s songs and how Dan amuses himself as a writer, how this podcast is going to change everything, what material his solo shows have been consisting of as of late, whether or not he might learn to play a Pavement song, my son’s insistence that Bob Dylan and Jim Guthrie wrote a song together called “Colourbook Face,” the Destroyer song “Certain Things You Ought to Know,” and nothing more.

Related links: mergerecords.com/destroyer kazookazoo.ca vishkhanna.com

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