Fabulous Brooklyn quartet PROVAN recently released their terrific 6-track mini-LP "The Conquering Pain Act" and are recording their debut full-length LP release with Lilys/ Pernice Bros producer, Michael Deming. Totally smitten with their hypnotic guitar emissions and tough, catchy pop, Whisperin' & Hollerin' linked up with JOE KELLY (guitar/ vocals), BILL LUTZ (guitar/ vocals) and bassist MARC BENDIAN for a chat to celebrate.
I guess it's probably ancient history to you now, but I'm really into the six tracks on your debut 6-tracker "Act Like You've Been Here Before" having only just recently heard them for the first time. It's an excellent record. Do you still feature songs from it in the current live set?
Bill: "Red Shirt" was in nearly every set until recently, and most of the other tunes were replaced by stuff we like better some time ago. I would personally like to be able to whip some of the older songs out on a whim, but I suspect Colin would like to take a page from the Khmer Rouge and declare this to be "Year Zero," eliminating all of our past history. Genocidal madman that he is.
Marc: We try to think “good/bad” rather than “new/old.”
Joe: Recently Marc’s been lobbying to bring back “Superbuick.”
You've had a few line-up changes in the rhythm section department. How long has the current PROVAN line-up been together?
Joe: Colin joined early on in the spring of 2002 and Marc joined later on in the summer. Colin and original bassist Mike Keaney had played together in The Conformists, a sneering pop three-piece -- Liam Gallagher fronting the Attractions -- and Bill and I had always loved his style. He’s a confident player. It just so happened that Colin had just returned from a few months in Amsterdam at the same time we were looking to fill a vacancy. Mike left to play full-time with Collider, a New York pop-punk band, and we acquired Marc who had just arrived in NYC from Philadelphia. I was a fan of his last band, Thousand Year Egg, and it’s been a great match.
Marc: This is the first time I’ve had the opportunity to play in a band that I’ve been a fan of. Everyday is Christmas for me.
I really love the song "Let Down (February 1965)" that opens the recent "Conquering Pain Act" mini-album. Without wanting to attack the song's mystique, what's the significance of the date February 1965?
Joe: In February 1965 the Beach Boys recorded their vocals on the single version of “Help Me Rhonda.”
Bill: Malcolm X was assassinated in February 1965, but that's got nothing to do with Brian Wilson.
Marc: My older brother is convinced that it’s about the day of his birth. Really.
How did you achieve the dissonance that features on the same track? It sounds so eerie. It's something other than guitar FX surely?
Joe: I played my Fender Jazzmaster with an E-Bow [a small hand-held magnet that turns itself on and off rapidly, pulling then releasing the metal guitar strings and creating a smooth, synthesized tone (see Robert Fripp’s solo on Bowie’s “Heroes”)]. I ran it through a delay pedal two feet away from a deafeningly loud amp. The song was written in the studio and the guitars were recorded live in one take.
Bill: Actually, that track was performed entirely a cappella.
I take it you're the main lyricist in the band, Joe? There are really intriguing images in your songs (and they're often very vivid), but are the songs mostly characterizations or are some of them autobiographical? Songs like "Let Down" and "Idiot Lines" would maybe suggest so...
Joe: Both songs came out of a fairly dark time – a difficult relationship, consuming anxiety. I had developed fainting spells and was obsessing about disease and identifying with the ill. It was a difficult time for the band as well.
Bill: If you've ever seen the movie "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte", wherein Bette Davis is driven mad by her evil cousin (Olivia de Havilland) and her cousin's boyfriend (Joseph Cotten), who have designs on the family fortune, you will understand the relationship between Joe Kelly and the other members of Provan. We try to exacerbate Joe's neuroses so he keeps writing interesting lyrics for our songs. We believe that someday this may be profitable.
Joe: Thanks kids.
What exactly is an "octavecat" that's used on the song "William Lee"?
Joe: The Octave Cat is a small analog synthesizer from the early 70s with a three-octave Keyboard and a hundred switches and dials. The Cat we used is owned by our friend and engineer, Dan McKay, and is damaged in some way -- you turn it on and all hell breaks lose. It squeals and buzzes. We didn’t so much play a synth part as struggle to control the machine’s random emissions. I ran through endless takes rather than cut and paste the part together from the highlights of prior versions. What you hear is one, continuous pass through the song, recorded live.
Obviously NYC is (rightly) always regarded as one of THE great rock'n'roll cities in the world, but it's been particularly hot in the UK press since The Strokes came through. I think they're good, but I'm not sure they're as great as people keep insisting, but has the extra attention focusing on the city been beneficial for you and bands in the city in general? Is it easier to be heard at all now?
Bill: New York City is considered one of the great rock 'n' roll cities of the world, as it is considered one of the great cultural cities of the world. Unfortunately, very few who live here give a shit about culture, and very few really give a shit about rock 'n' roll, massive hype notwithstanding. On the other hand, the city is lousy with bands, and we crawl all over each other like rats, to mix vermin metaphors.
Marc: One of the things that I often think about is that NYC has had a couple of rock or pop musical explosions – punk, obviously, and before that the Brill Building.
Bill: The Brill Building exploded?
Marc: But if you think about it, most developments in rock came out of places other than New York despite the fact that NYC is a music industry hub. There have been important jazz scenes, avant garde movements, high culture music, but I think that not that much has come out of NY in terms of rock music when compared with, say, painting or jazz. Rock bands in New York are too busy working on shit other than their music.Life here is so connected to other non-musical stuff -- the art world, the fashion industry, and the media industry. Who’s actually in the fucking rehearsal room working on ideas? Not enough bands. They’re all distracted. At the hairdressers. They’re shopping for clothes; they’re not saying “Hey, is this song ready?” or “Does this need a bridge?” That’s all boring, unglamorous stuff.
Joe: Does the Strokes phenomena help bring new rock music attention in general? Sure. It was certainly helpful for guitar bands -- a return to songwriting and playing. But in NYC I think that the only “movements” that occurred since the Strokes were Electroclash, the whole keyboard and skinny-tie fashion thing, and the neo garage scene. At the end of the day it’s a wash, really.
Marc: Regardless of the attention, we still have to come up with good songs of our own.
At a slight tangent, whether we like it or not, we all live in a post 9/11 world now. Has the tragedy made a huge difference to life in New York in general and has the atmosphere changed again since the Gulf War began? A lot of European cities are certainly pretty tense...
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Bill: A lot has changed in NYC since September 11, 2001, but in less obvious ways then you’d think. We may see National Guard troops at Grand Central Station, and there may be more cops at my local subway station, but I think London has a much more visible security operation. I think people here are generally anxious, but are not all that open about it. It's the tough, jaded New Yorker thing, I suppose. On the other hand, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has just announced a budget plan calling for layoffs and massive service cuts, so things will get worse, and won't be getting better for quite a while, even without new terrorist attacks. I think that's true throughout the US.
Joe: Not to make light of your question but I think we’re all feeling the smoking ban more than the 9-11 thing [last month NYC instituted a smoking ban in all public places – bars, restaurants and clubs, most notably]. Everyone I know is out of work so the economic effects of the terrorist attacks shouldn’t be understated. People are feeling fucked-up and anxious.
Marc: It’s unsettling to see guys with M16s on the subway. I just want to take a fucking train, you know? But I’m O.K. now with the Dirty Bomb. Very small blast radius. The shit cloud won’t make it to Brooklyn.
On to something a bit more creative. How did you hook up with Michael Deming to produce the new album. Judging by what I've heard so far, it sounds like a marriage made in heaven, but were you a fan of his previous work with the Pernice Bros etc? I love "The World Won't End"...
Bill: Joe called me at work one day with a list of studios and engineers he had researched. He was running down the pros and cons of each of them, and said, "there's this one place in Hartford that's not so expensive, and they've got good equipment, and I talked to the guy on the phone, and he sounds pretty sharp. His name's Michael Deming." And I said "What, the Lilys guy?" I was a big fan of their "Better Can't Make Your Life Better" album, which Deming did, and also the first Pernice Brothers album, so I was really eager to work with him.
Joe: I recall Bill squealing like a schoolgirl. I’m a huge Joe Pernice/Scud Mountain Boys fan as well. He really writes marvelous songs.
You've been up to Hartford to record, if I have the facts right. Have you enjoyed the change of scene from NYC?
Joe: Working with Michael has been great but Hartford, Connecticut is a living hell. They’ve got these “blue laws” so you can’t buy beer after sundown on a Saturday, or some shit like that. If you want to drink on a Sunday you’ve got to plan, like, three weeks ahead. The place is desolate -- there are two major universities but somehow there are no kids out on the street. We did meet some cool local bands, though.
Bill: I love living in New York, but I also love getting away from it whenever possible. Hartford, however, is pretty hard to take: it is depressed and depressing. One night in Hartford, Joe and I stopped into an Irish pub for some post-session food and drink, and the jukebox was playing an Irish folk group performing a song about Woodside, Queens, New York, which happens to be where I grew up. I thought "I am in the worst town I've ever been in, listening to people sing fondly of the second worst town I've ever been in."
I really like the four songs from the sessions I've heard so far, even though I know they're not finished. Songs like "Chemistry Man" and "Whispering' Thin" are spacier and maybe a little more mellow to my mind. Has recording in a different place and the input of a producer changed the way the songs sound dramatically? Or were they totally complete when you went in to work on them in the studio?
Bill: Although our songs were completely written and largely arranged before we went into the studio, Michael Deming did have a tremendous effect on the actual sound of the material. He contributed a great deal in the way of textures and flourishes. Some of the things he added that I find absolutely thrilling may not even be noticed by the casual listener.
Joe: "Whispering Thin" was virtually unchanged from our initial demos, but Chemistry Man was extensively manipulated. Our arrangements for all of the songs were fairly well settled, but, as Bill said, Michael Deming had a great impact on the timbres and tones of the instruments. Michael is a great fan of extreme equalization. He has an amazing ability to project how harsh sounds will fit together in a future mix. Quite a few of the sounds on the album were absurd; extreme - listening to the bits in isolation, you really couldn’t imagine how they’d fit in anyplace (Bill’s solo in Chemistry Man with the fucked-up chiming keyboard part, for instance). But somehow things come together in an otherworldly and interesting way. Mike really forces you to strive for quality – a perfect take, perfectly recorded.
Have the album sessions finished yet and when will the completed album be released?
Joe: The production master was completed this week so we’re currently shopping for a label.
Marc: Anyone wants to buy it they can come and license that motherfucker into the ground. Get your licensing on! Is it not true?
Finally, do you intend to undertake a lot of touring on the album's release? Do you all work full-time in music?
Joe: Rent is absurdly high in New York City so we all have day jobs, except Marc who seems to get by exclusively on cigarettes and alcohol.
Bill: We would definitely like to tour, whenever and wherever we can manage to go. I personally live to travel, even by the degraded means available to a touring indie rock band.
Joe: Yeah, we fully expect to play more out-of-town shows. I’d especially like to get over to the UK in the near future as I think our music might be appreciated a little more there. English audiences have always seemed more attentive and less jaded to me.
Marc: Yeah, England! I’m a big Spurs fan … and we’re gonna lose record sales to Arse fans because I just said that!!
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