(August 2009) Douglas McCombs may be a piece of the backbone of the revered experimental rock group, Tortoise, but recently he’s become the flesh and blood of some of his own artistic endeavors, particularly his latest collaboration with guitarist David Daniell.
“We never really talked about it,” McCombs explains. “We just kind of started playing and that record was a result of us sitting down together and playing, not much else.”
Daniell, a guitarist from New York City, moved to Chicago, where McCombs resides, and the two fell into artistic step immediately, says McCombs.
“David and I just realized when we met each other that we had certain interests in common and, once we started playing together, we realized that our aesthetic choices and the way we play individually sort of compliment each other,” he reflects.
The new album, Sycamore, is a complete departure from McCombs’ other experimental work in a variety of ways, but the element that makes the work most unique in light of his other collaborations is that the album is almost completely improvised and intended mainly for live performance.
“I think in a live situation you probably get a little more intense and a little more dramatic with the crescendos that we build up and things like that,” he explains. “I think in the recording studio we were a little more self conscious about doing that.”
Daniell and McCombs recorded several versions of each improvised track in order to decide which one they thought possessed the most artistic clarity. Some songs were faded out and shortened to make them more succinct, according to McCombs.
“It’s also a lot more responsibility to make a record of this kind of music. Doing it in a live situation, you’re just playing and there’s nothing else you can do. It either sounds good or maybe it fails occasionally,” he says. “When you’re trying to make a recording of it, it’s about trying to make it do something or have it be moving through some sort of narrative. It just takes more responsibility.”
The only truly composed piece comes from a nylon-stringed guitar on the track, “Vejerdela Frontera,” where John Herndon, the drummer from Tortoise, plays a jazz-inspired guest role.
“Once you play something on a nylon string guitar, it almost automatically evokes something flamenco-ish,” McCombs explains. “I think that everything you experience comes through somehow in your music or what you do. I wouldn’t say I’m particularly an aficionado of that particular type of music, or that’s what I aspire to play, it’s just that particular instrument on that song sort of evokes that in a way.”
McCombs original influences strayed far from the flamenco or jazz realms. As a skateboarding teenager growing up in the 70s in the Midwest, McCombs found that he was interested in underground music. After seeing Devo perform on Saturday Night Live, McCombs found his way into the world of punk music. Noticing that some of his skateboarding heroes wore their favorite punk band logos on their helmets, McCombs found solace in the rebelliousness and off-the-beaten-path nature of his new-found music choice. His esoteric interests are often reflected in his compositions to this day.
“Most of the music I play I don’t specifically set up to be difficult or something that won’t appeal to people. I want them to be into it, but it still just kind of ends up a little bit on the fringes of mainstream,” he divulges.
McCombs himself tries to keep up with experimental and underground groups, mainly in the Chicago area, but says that over the past several years the rock group, ZZ Top, has fascinated him.
“As I’m getting older, I’m searching around for other musicians who have sort of aged gracefully, and I think ZZ Top is a good example of that. I think they are a band, just three guys, playing music and they’re still awesome and they’re in their 70s, or whatever.”
McCombs hopes to continue to grow as a musician and, with this most recent artistic collaboration, to tour and to perform live shows outside of Chicago.
“Most of my other bands, take a certain amount of preparation, you have to make sure that everybody knows all of the material: Like, when Tortoise goes on tour; Tortoise is pretty well-rehearsed, but even now, if we haven’t played for a month or something, we have to practice to make sure that we’re all up to speed on the material,” explains McCombs. “And with David and I we don’t have to worry about that, we just go play a show. And every show is different. They’re all improvised, there isn’t really a lot of stress involved, so it’s a really easy thing to do.”
Sycamore is out soon on Thrill Jockey. [Purchase]
