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Upcoming Shows
Roadside Graves
w/Bart Budwig
FRIDAY, Aug. 6, 9PM
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Stereopathic on Hypem
Feb
23
The Stereopathic Interview
If I could find the time to write more, Stereopathic’s readership would have, by this time, been subjected to a lot more semi-literate posts on Metuchen, New Jersey’s Roadside Graves. The band released my favorite record of 2009, My Son’s Home, a sprawling and ambitious 18-song record dense with beautifully-detailed characters and stories related via singer John Gleason’s bourbon-throated rasp. Since I still don’t really have the time to write, I’ll spare you any further rock-critic-journalist hoo-hah. “Writing about music…” goes the oft-quoted (and rarely attributed) aphorism, really “…is like dancing about architecture.”
Well, a few months back, when 2010 was still just a glimmer in 2009’s eye, I asked John Gleason to dance about the architecture of the Roadside Graves. The man was good enough to spend four hours (including a soup-and-Family-Guy break) typing out his answers. He didn’t flinch, and the results are well worth reading.
This interview goes out to y’all on February 23rd, the day the Graves’ first long-player, If Shacking Up Is All You Want To Do, is re-issued by Autumn Tone Records of Los Angeles, California. In another month, AT will drop the band’s new extended-player, You Won’t Be Happy With Me. At the end of the interview you’ll find some songs and more links to all the aforementioned.
How autobiographical are your songs? Or, put another way, who are your songs about?
50/50. Even split. Let’s imagine listening to a song about a guy who drives a ’93 Chevy Malibu (his wife’s grandmother gave him) on the NJ Turnpike every day for an hour to teach elementary school, drives home, reads, drinks bourbon and showers. Basically that’s my reality. If I was Nicholson Baker or Raymond Carver I may be able to make that interesting to other people. I can’t, so instead what I grab on to are the thoughts I have while driving that hour to and from school. Should I just hit this car next to me? Does the band I’m listening to have a secret Christian agenda? Why did I not shave for work? Are indie bands not trying hard enough? How many fingernails are scattered along my dashboard? Did the toll collector just brush my hand a little too long? How upset will I be when my dog dies? Why do puppet creatures look better than CGI creatures in movies? Should I stop drinking coffee? I imagine most people have similar thoughts so I try to inject my thoughts into the fictional characters in the songs, or if the song is autobiographical I add some white lies, functional fibbing. I explain to my second graders every year the difference between a fib and a lie, simply if your Mom asks you how her hair looks and you say “beautiful” even if it doesn’t then that’s a fib, everything else is a lie! I’m insecure and miserable most of the time (I was on Accutane twice), I hope that comes through in the songs, I can only assume that most people feel the way I do. If they don’t then they are probably content with what’s on the radio and answer a question like “What kind of music do you listen to?” with “Oh, whatever’s on the radio”. I’m so jealous.
Related to that, what’s more worth singing about: yourself, or other people? Which one is more interesting to you as a songwriter?
My goal I guess is to create a song about someone else who thinks/feels something in a way that other people can identify with, and the only way to achieve that is to allow yourself cautiously into each song, regardless of the subject mater, and to create it in such a way that it feels original yet still familiar enough to be welcomed and warranted to be played again.
I have no interest anymore in writing songs solely about myself, I’m convinced I’m not a good subject despite that lately most people think that everything they do is worth displaying to the world. You get trapped, if you read daily online about strangers basting a turkey, finishing a paper, complaining about traffic, or providing the address of the coffee shop they are occupying you too will feel empowered to share the mundane. Shit, I’ll admit just a few weeks ago I went on Twitter and wrote about how much I love ice sculptures. That’s not necessary. But that’s where you start. As a songwriter you need to self-purge then evolve. After a year or two the amount of whisky you drink is no longer a subject worth exploring.
Any thoughts on what makes something worth singing about in the first place?
Anything that someone might find offensive.
A lot of your songs have a palpable background texture to them—it’s not difficult to picture your songs in a particular setting. Perhaps that’s because we hail from the same region and we’re about the same age—and so I’m able to picture it quite clearly—but perhaps it’s because you still live (near) where you grew up and that has trickled into what you do. Do you feel rooted where you live? If not, do you feel rooted anywhere? Either way, how does that affect what you do in RSG?
Well I tried to leave a few times. I’ve been lucky enough to visit places that I would have called home: Savannah, Madison, Reno, and Montreal. I even had a teaching job in Las Vegas, but New Jersey is a cuddly and ill-mannered beast and I’ll never leave. Besides the obvious turmoil of leaving family and friends I believe there is a certain pride bestowed upon those who grow up and live in New Jersey and I’d hate to lose that. I feel rooted because I can identify with the chaos of the Turnpike, the choices of a good late night diner, the comfort of walking a downtown, the liberalness of the people, the half price colors of the thrift stores, and the nearness of the cities. We are small, crowded, over-taxed and passionate. We constantly have to defend our state when traveling/touring the country. It shows in the songs. We are constantly trying to prove ourselves as a band, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Do you love New Jersey? I’m not being ironic—there are parts of Jersey that I myself love (western Hunterdon County, Delaware River, Pulaski Skyway & environs). Tell me about something you dig about where you’re from, something that makes the place yours.
I’ve lived in Metuchen, Hightstown, Mount Holly, and Haddon Township. Each had their own something to love: rivers, Indian restaurants, bridges, train stations, bars, county libraries. Funny you mention Pulaski Skyway, I must have drove that road every weekend in high school to get to Maxwell’s in Hoboken to see any band on the record labels I loved like Simple Machines, TeenBeat, Merge, Dischord, Shrimper, etc. There is nowhere to pull over on that road, always imagined I’d die on the Pulaski Skyway.
Atlantic City is easily my favorite place in New Jersey. It’s a sad place. Grand casinos that are always two years behind Vegas run along the boardwalk and marina yet the rest of the town looks lost and forgotten. My father and I spent a lot of time together shooting craps when I lived with him. I met my wife there at a dance club called the Casbah. I’ve only danced a handful of times in public, outside of weddings, mostly because of the obnoxious amount of alcohol it takes for me to forget that I’m dancing. But that night it worked, she bought me a beer and said she loved Nick Drake and Bruce Springsteen. It’s the place I drive to and walk the boardwalk aimlessly when I can’t figure something out or am feeling a little too frazzled by the world.
What aspirations do you have for the Roadside Graves? Is this the sort of thing that’d lure you away from teaching for a time?
Maybe? Depends. I hate being away from home and I enjoy teaching. It would have to be too dumb to say no to. For example: If say Bon Iver, Will Oldham, Kris Kristofferson, Nick Cave or anyone I truly admire wanted us to tour with them. Until then we are a very small band. It’s thanks to blogs like yours that anyone out of the Tri-State area recognizes our name. Our last tour we played some shows to roughly five people. It’s also quite disorientating to travel the country in a van eating Ramen noodles. You fall back on habits you thought you could control. You sit for hours. You look like a criminal. I’d like to imagine that I could continue being in the Roadside Graves and still teach second grade.
I called you a lapsed Catholic in my best-of. You laughed and wrote, “I can’t help it, I was born that way.” Did you have the usual Irish Catholic upbringing-and-then-departure, or does your iteration of this story have any peculiar twists?
Well, when I was young religion wasn’t a choice. You were born into it, as simply as saying I was born in New Jersey. My parents went to church every Sunday and sent my brother and I to Catholic School. I hated it, only later did I find out that both of them hated going to the school too when they were young. Again it wasn’t a choice. I was an altar boy and my brother sang in the choir. On the first day of First Grade I received detention for spitting on someone’s shoe, in third grade we put a kid’s head in the toilet and flushed, in Sixth grade we had peeing wars under the bathroom dividers (who ever got the most pee on the other kid’s shoes won!), in eighth grade I was suspended for writing a story that involved a boy and a dog who fall into a fantastical puddle filled with naked mermaids. It was hell and I fought to get out. My parents divorced, and then I had my choice and began public high school. I haven’t been to church since. My mother explains that church was there to teach us boys morals. I’ve obsessed over that in many songs, it seems so strange that parents rely on religion to teach right vs. wrong. Are they worried their own failures have made them incapable of being a model? Is the thought of God’s punishment just scarier than Dad’s hand? So yes I’m a lapsed Irish Catholic, and eager to break the cycle when I have a child of my own someday, until then my three dogs are free to worship as they please.
Related to that, how does your Catholic background affect what you’re doing in RSG? How has that influenced you (or anyone else in the band, for that matter). There are the things you’re aware of, and the things you aren’t, of course, but give it a shot.
It soaks it. Ah, the guilt.
I don’t think the rest of the band cares about religion much. We’re all confused by the world at large, and busy keeping each other sane, and showing up to practice each Sunday.
Are you a good reader? What do you take away from other art forms—for instance, y’all name-checked Deadwood as an inspiration for MSH—when you write a song? Does literature figure into it at all?
A good reader? I’m an avid reader with an insatiable appetite, but I’m a poor reader, I need to re-read to comprehend and I can’t retell a plot accurately. I should have been a librarian and tended bar at night. I like to read three to four books at a time (currently: Book of Genesis by R. Crumb, Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman, No One Belongs Here More than You by Miranda July, and Swamp Thing Book Two by Alan Moore) possibly because I’d rather not be alone with my thoughts, possibly because I have ADD, but even more so because I find books, movies, and music so satisfying. My Son’s Home was loosely inspired by a Steinbeck novel and Jeremy and I are currently writing songs based on the Outsiders, but above all I admire and consume because I am a fan.
Any bands out there that you care about, or that you think RSG could learn a thing or two from? You ever gonna do the Wilco avant-noise thing? You list a lot of groups like The Band, Dylan, Springsteen as influences, and it shows… So, what is it about that music that makes sense to you, that is something you want to keep going?
I care almost too much. Each morning I listen to a new record before work. You can always learn something. The Court and Spark were an influence on our last record, especially their record Witch Season. Richard and Linda Thompson’s I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight is a continuing influence, it could be the only perfect record I own, there are no flaws. We were fortunate enough to play with Megafaun twice. I’d say easily the best band we’ve played with and the most important to watch closely. They have an uncanny ability to be engaging, unusual, and welcoming to their audience. A lot of indie bands look good but seem uninterested in what they are doing. Megafaun make a point to connect with their audience by including them in singing, playing, and simply allowing themselves to show that they are too enjoying the music they make.
If we ever make a noise record I would want it to be catchy. Not sure if that’s possible. But I’d like to leave the possibility open just in case. We try to change each record slightly, enough to keep us interested in experimenting with our sound.
Writers tend to list us as being influenced by the Band, Dylan, and Springsteen and those are accurate, but we are not limited to them or necessarily trying to sound like them, we are humble enough to know better. Though we do give Bruce a nod twice on our new EP the piano intro to “Demons” and the reference to Tunnel of Love (my personal Bruce favorite) on “Hearts”. Inside our band are six members with scattered musical influences. Some of the band doesn’t even like country/folk music and would prefer Talking Heads and Lightning Bolt. My initial vision of the band was Peter, Paul and Mary drunk, or the Clash covering the Magnetic Fields. I like sad songs I can sing along to with in the car.
RSG’s first record is shortly being re-issued, and there’s a new EP imminent. What signs of progress—musical, lyrical, maturity-wise, outlook, anything—do you see when you compare the two records? Speak for yourself and for the band as a whole…
Our first full length If Shacking Up is All You Wanna Do is diverse in subjects (Jesus makes pancakes, suicide, Utah has tragic and beautiful bartenders, a creepy motel owner watches a girl die) but clearly set in a simple country and folk landscape. The new EP You Won’t Be Happy With Me is quite the opposite. The music is dynamic and diverse and pinches between many genres while the subjects of the songs are simply about relationships and marriage.
You said in an interview with Stereogum that you’ve tried to be a positive male figure in your students’ lives. What does a positive male figure look like? What are you measuring yourself against when you think about that? What, in particular, does an American man have to fight against in order to be that man?
Oh man! Before I even attempt to map out what a positive male figure may look like, please let me make a quick disclaimer: I fail at about all I am about to describe, we are talking ideally here. When I originally said that I was thinking in broad strokes, imagining that for my students I could represent an adult male in their life who actively gave a shit, listened intently, admitted mistakes, and spoke to them honestly and openly. Beyond the curriculum and the expectations of administrators and parents you have a responsibility to be real to these kids and to attempt to understand them. Each child should be treated differently, as every adult would like some consideration for what happens outside of work, each child comes to you with their own set of outside factors that influence their behavior and learning styles. If a seven year old is coping with his father leaving I would hope I could offer some words, some compassion, and create a classroom atmosphere that provides a temporary escape from the realities at home. I always hated school, I try to remember that when I teach. A positive male figure is humble, accepting, concerned, aware, forgiving, patient, and entertaining. I’m measuring myself against the failures of my teachers and my father.
Thank you for reading.
Listen to the Music!
Demons
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from the forthcoming EP, You Won’t Be Happy With Me (coming 3/23/10)
Jenny Jump from the newly-reissued LP (as of 2/23/10), If Shacking Up Is All You Want To Do…
West Coast from 2007’s damn good No One Will Know Where You’ve Been
Lift Up The Gate from the best record of 2009, hands-down, My Son’s Home.
The Roadside Graves on Myspace. I’m sure they’re on Facebook, too, but, well… eh.
Buy the music!
Autumn Tone Records’ Roadside Graves page
emusic.com has two different pages (you’ll need to sign up)
Insound may love vinyl more, but they do sell the CDs
…or you can go to dumb ol’ Amazon.
Comments
4 Responses to “John Gleason of the Roadside Graves: “Above all I admire and consume because I am a fan.””
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very interesting interview,from a very talented singer/songwriter
Best interview I’ve read in a whileish.
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