excess bloggage

Venice Is Sinking Interview 06/03/08 Member Interviewed: Daniel Lawson (DL) – vocals/guitar/trumpet/principal songwriter Interviewer: Matthew Kagler (MK) MK: Hey Dude, thanks for doing this. So, what's going on in the world of Daniel Lawson today? Where are you and what were you doing one hour ago? DL: I'm actually at home sitting at my dining room table drinking some Mexican beer and typing on my laptop. An hour ago, I was at a bar called Little Kings in downtown Athens, listening to Lucas's DJ set. It's around 1:30 in the morning and my stomach kind of hurts. MK: Tell us about Venice is Sinking's origins. ViS was initially a one man band project, right? How did you meet the other folks who comprise the remainder of ViS? Did you always have the male/female vocal interplay in mind when you formed the band? Did you seek out a viola player or was Karolyn's inclusion just a brilliant stroke of luck? DL: Well... Venice started as more of two man band project actually. I was involved in a 4 track tape trading/recording project with a friend from Philly while I was in high school that used the name Venice is Sinking. I think we made a few cassette albums that sounded like early Sebadoh mixed with The Cure - only whinier. Nothing terribly exciting ever happened with that stuff, but I have used the name ever since. After high school, I moved to Athens with my girlfriend to go the University of Georgia and we tried (and failed) to start a band several times. Actually, the songs 'Tours' and 'Undecided' were around back then. Karolyn was friends with my girlfriend and we asked her to play viola on some recordings we made on my computer one spring break. I remember being really proud of how they turned out, but I imagine they'd sound pretty crappy to me today. Anyway, somehow Lucas heard the songs and liked them so we asked him to practice with us a few times, but nothing really came of it. I don't think Karolyn had even met Lucas at that point and I am sure that they never played together. Later on (after my girlfriend and I broke up) I started attending these impromptu jam sessions that my neighbor Alex was hosting at his house across the street. Somewhere along the way those sessions morphed into more formal band practice and eventually into Venice is Sinking. Steve was the last one to join - he refused to do so until after our first show. MK: How long did you guys play out with a full lineup before going into the studio and laying down Sorry About the Flowers? What was the recording process like? Once it was in the can, were you satisfied with album on the whole? When you look back, if you could re-do anything about Sorry, what would it be? DL: We actually hadn't been a band for very long when we went into the studio. I think all of us were pretty excited about recording and wanted to start making an album as soon as possible despite our inexperience. The creation of Sorry was a very long process and was spread out over a pretty strange time for us personally. Karolyn's brother died in the middle of making the record, Karolyn and I started dating somewhere in there, people were finishing up degrees - a lot of shit was going on. Lucas's friend Chris Bishop engineered the sessions, and we drove out to his house in Commerce, Georgia off and on for over a year. The department of transportation was in the process of widening and re-routing highway 441 at the time, and for that reason each trip out there was completely different. Sometimes there would be these giant piles of burning pine trees on the side of the road, sometimes buildings and barns would vanish completely form the landscape - it's hard to explain - but by the time we got around to mixing the album the trip out there was completely different from when we started. The sessions got pretty weird toward the end as our engineer started to go off the deep end a little. He went on tour with elf power and the summer hymns at some point during mixing and came back with all this prescription codeine that he bought somewhere in Canada. He was trying to distill the Tylenol out of it in his freezer to make it more potent. He was stealing gasoline, he was recording all of his phone conversations, he was threatening to sue three different people over what I thought were pretty minor offenses and he was drinking a lot of caffeinated beverages - it was bizarre. He really liked our album though, and became sort of obsessed with it. He basically hijacked it for a time during mixing. I can remember him spending like 2 or 3 days trying to integrate this weird animal noise into part of ‘Pulaski Heights’ that he had recorded off of a PBS nature show in the other room. You can hear it on the recording if you know what to listen for. All in all I remember being really happy with how it turned out sonically and I realize now that lot of that was because of Chris - we honestly didn't really know our way around a studio just yet. MK: We read a rad Flagpole article on the eating habits of ViS on the road. Have you guys toured extensively? Any fist fights/ drunken screaming matches/ gnarly public toilet experiences that went down on the road that you would like to discuss? DL: We've toured the east coast and mid-west some and done a ton of weekend shows in the southeast. There was a time when were playing almost every weekend in some random town within a days driving distance. We haven't had any fist fights yet, though one time in Charleston I dropped Karolyn really hard on a concrete floor. I drunkenly threw her up into the air for some unknown reason and she didn't land so well. The 3" heels she was wearing didn't help the situation, but it was totally my fault. MK: Ok, I know this is kinda lame, but everyone here at Tag Team World International HQ want to know how you sacked up and managed to keep the band together after you and Karolyn broke off a long term relationship? That must have at least seriously affected touring? I mean, must have been a pretty heavy time for everyone in ViS? Do you guys just laugh about it now? Inquiring minds want to know! DL: I honestly don't know how we weathered that situation at all. That time in my life is still a little bit blurry to me to be honest. It was definitely pretty terrible to be around us for a while. When we split up it wasn't very amicable and my gut reaction was to quit the band. Lucas and Steve both told me on separate occasions that they were not going to allow the band to break up just because Karolyn and I had and somehow we pulled through. The same day Karolyn and I broke up James and his long term girlfriend called it quits too - so tensions were pretty high all around. We played a show in Athens two days after and then had to do a small tour up to North Carolina and Kentucky later in the week. The circumstances made for very awkward van rides for sure. MK: Where and when did the best ViS show (in your opinion) go down and why does it stand out? Tell us about some of the more 'interesting' places you've played? DL: It's hard to say actually. There was one show at the 40 watt here in Athens that stands out for me. It was Alex's last show as our keyboard player and James was joining us for the first time on stage - just sort of jamming around on trumpet. Alex was moving to New York the day after the show and the night before he we hit the town pretty hard. The evening ended with me tripping and falling down on a concrete sidewalk and scraping my arms up pretty bad (I still have scars). I also had a severe allergic reaction to something that night and my eyes were swollen completely shut when I woke up the next day. I literally could not open them or see out of them and I remember being pretty terrified by that. By the time sound-check rolled around I could open my eyes a little bit, but I still looked very strange and puffy. I borrowed these purple sunglasses from Karolyn and played the show sitting down all bloody and swollen. Someone had given me some narcotic cough syrup for the pain and I remember starting every song much slower than normal - I think undecided got stretched out into a 5 or 6 minute jam or something. It was a memorable show for me, but maybe not our best. The weirdest place we've played was probably the Elberton Twelve County Fair. Our time slot was between some racing pigs and some sort of teen talent or weight lifting show. The stage was set up in the livestock auction pavilion. No one was really that into our set, but watching the racing pigs and riding all the rusty carnival rides made the trip worth while. MK: All of the members of ViS have pretty interesting day jobs. Can you give us a run down... DL: Lucas - is getting his second masters in instructional technology and working as a publicist for Team Clermont James - is studying music composition at UGA and works in a campus computer lab Karolyn - is a biochemist doing vaccine and cancer research and is also a bit of a slum lord here in town Steve - operates a printing press Jeremy (our new bass player) - runs a yard maintenance business Daniel - works as a landscape architect / planner MK: Team Clermont/ One Percent did a pretty extensive press campaign for Sorry upon it's US release (i.e. there's a shitload of press). What is the stupidest thing ever written about the record and who wrote it? What press piece do you feel really captures the record? [we'll link to whatever you answer if possible] DL: My favorite thing written about us is not about the record at all - it's about our live show. I should warn you - it's by far the meanest thing ever written about us... http://ericbroz.blogspot.com MK: You just finished up your second long player, AZAR, with Scott Solter over at his studio in North Carolina. How did you meet Scott? What was it like to work with him? Does he really make a decent fish taco? Fresh water fish tacos? Trout, catfish? DL: Scott was recommended to us by my friend and Lucas's co-worker Jon Polk. At the time I was obsessed with the idea of making a record somewhere far away from Athens and Scott's new(ish) studio in North Carolina seemed a little more reasonable than say, Sweden. Plus, everything that I heard that he recorded sounded fantastic. It really was pretty amazing to work with Scott. It’s hard to explain, but he just really just seems to understand what it takes to make rad records. AZAR would have been a very different album if we had tried to make it without him. Scott is actually not the biggest fish taco fan that I know of (you must be thinking of Steve) - but he did eat a lot of sushi when we were up there. MK: AZAR is a very different album than Sorry? Intentional? Now that it's been mastered and everything, think you got what you wanted from the end product sonically? DL: I don't think any of us set out to make a AZAR a big departure from sorry at all. It's just a reflection of where we were as a band and as people when it was recorded. This was our first record with James and he brought a lot to the table musically - not only as a keyboard player but also as a horn player and songwriter. Sonically I think we made the record that Lucas and I wanted to make, but it might not be the record that Karolyn, Steve and James wanted to make. MK: How did you go about writing AZAR? Was it a collaborative effort? DL: It was certainly more of a collaboration than Sorry was. We were much more of a functional, democratic band when we recorded it. At the beginning of the Sorry sessions Venice is Sinking was my band in a lot of ways. I wrote most of the songs and had final say on a lot of the arrangements. With AZAR, a lot of the songs were brought to the rest of the band in a much more unfinished state and we would all fill in the gaps together form there. Also, unlike Sorry, Lucas and Karolyn both had a pretty active role in the lyric writing part of it. I mean I didn't write a single line in the song 'Iron Range' - those lyrics are all Lucas. Nothing like that happened on sorry really...I mean James even wrote the song AZAR which turned out to be the melodic foundation for a lot of the album. So yeah, it was certainly more of a collaborative effort this go around. MK: What's the scoop on the (scotch fueled) live album ViS just recorded at the Georgia Theater in Athens? How did that come about? What are your plans for the album? Tunes off Sorry/ AZAR, new tunes, covers? Expanded lineup? How much scotch did the band actually consume? DL: I think the band ended up drinking a full case of Dewars over the course of the week long session. To be fair the engineers and a few friends helped us polish off some of those bottles. The idea for the project was born one night when the owner of the Georgia Theatre was helping us load out after a show. He told me that he would really like for us to make a live album in that room. He mentioned the cowboy junkies record, ' The Trinity Sessions' and talked about doing something similar with one microphone. Naturally, I was really excited about the prospect, but since it was like 3 in the morning, I sort of assumed he had a few drinks and wasn't completely serious. Anyway, I emailed him a month or so later about a potential gig and asked him if he had thought any more about making a Venice is Sinking album at the theatre. He wrote me back the next day with all of these plans - telling me David Barbe had already agreed to engineer the session, that they were looking into renting a console and some special stereo microphones from a place in Nashville and asking me if we would be free the second week in may to record it. We were all caught off guard at that point - I mean we weren't even finished with AZAR yet! It wasn't the kind of opportunity that you pass up though - so we agreed. We had no interest in approaching at the sessions as a typical "live" record. Honestly, I don't think there are a whole lot of folks who would be interesting in hearing the definitive live version of a song like 'Undecided'...you know? We had a few songs that didn't really fit on sorry or AZAR that seemed like good candidates for the album. We also had a couple of covers we had been doing live for a awhile that seemed like they would work too. Lucas and I spent several nights bashing out some new stuff as well. A lot of the new songs ended up being very different from the tracks on AZAR. They are a lot shorter, faster, simpler and poppier. In many ways they feel like a direct reaction against the type of slow, intricately orchestrated songs we labored over on AZAR. MK: What album is sitting in you CD player right now? Be honest... DL: I am actually listening that first Paul Simon record solo record right now. The one where he's wearing a giant parka on the cover. I'm not sure what's its called (self titled?) but it's a good. MK: Seen any good flicks recently? DL: No, not really. I've been re-watching episodes of 'the wire' this week. What that show was able to accomplish is incredible to me. MK: Where is your favorite place to pound brews in Athens? If I want to get a decent patty melt next time I'm in the Classic City, where should I go? DL: There's a bar called the Manhattan on Hull Street - they make the best drinks in town by far. Patty melts are tougher. Your best bet is probably waffle house for consistency, but I'm partial to huddle house's version because it has two patties. MK: Lucas (ViS drummer/ Big Gray frontman) seems like a total character and I know you guys are bros. Tell us your favorite Lucas story? DL: There are so many! I'm not sure if I could tell any as well as he could. Maybe you should ask him. MK: What are your impressions of China? Looking forward to coming over and gigging once Tag Team sort everything out? Anything you really wanna see/ do once you're over here (please say chicks!)? DL: I have to say I am pretty curious about the food. The food and the train travel both seem very exciting to me.

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