Interview: Gutbucket

photo by Natascha Rockwin

New York’s Gutbucket opens their latest, Flock, with an aural suckerpunch; a braying, staccato sax squawk. It’s not a polite opening, (the song is titled “Fuck You and Your Hipster Tie;” its sound is appropriately brusque) but Gutbucket isn’t a particularly polite band. The quartet, which comprises guitarist Ty Citerman, drummer Adam D. Gold, bassist Eric Rockwin, and reedsman Ken Thomson, is effortlessly contrarian, and gleefully confrontational.

Drawing heavily from both rock and jazz, the album maintains a punk defiance and a free-jazz sense of possibility, as if its primary mission is to do only those things which others thought, insisted even, were impossible.

• Gutbucket – “4 9 8″
  

Listening to the record, though, and that doesn’t seem so hyperbolic. The confrontational tendencies, the destructive energy — they’re all spent trying to make something new. And isn’t the supposed to be the point of art? To re-imagine the world in bold, daring new ways?

Were Gutbucket arrives with Flock is someplace foreign, but compelling.

Fracture Compound spoke to Rockwin, trying to find out where, exactly, that place might be. The answer: We’re still not certain. But hell, it’s more about the journey than the destination, anyway. Hit the jump for the interview.

Fracture Compound: What does the idea of jazz mean to you?

Eric Rockwin: I’m all for arguing things to death — just ask the rest of Gutbucket — but I’m leaving “What is jazz?” to everyone else. It’s all a matter of where you’re coming from and I’m convinced it’ll never be resolved. It’s a greater divide then red state/blue state. Personally, I think of jazz as the music I loved and played in high school and college, and colors and informs a lot of the music I make now. Though very little of what I do now is jazz (within most definitions of the term), most of it is jazz-influenced.

F.C.: The idea of rock music?

Eric: Another term thoroughly bastardized by the outbreak of sub-genres. For me, it’s about the energy. You know it’s rock when you hear it, but I’m far more interested in the quality than the genre. As anyone with a decent sized record or CD collection could testify, it’s impossible to arrange by genre — always best to go straight-up alphabetical — there’s too much crossover, which is a very good thing (when done for musical rather than commercial purposes).

F.C.: How can the two congeal? Which elements of each do you find the most complementary?

Eric: Jazz-rock, fusion, whatever. These are labels so that others have an idea of what to expect. I’m in the business of trying upend expectations, which I do with varying levels of success. There’s no formula or ratio to it. I get an idea in my head. I write it down and start to fuck with it, keeping the musicians who will be playing it in mind. I want to make music that keeps people — including myself — guessing, but most of us are using the same 12 notes (my apologies to Harry Partch and most of the Asian continent), so it’s all complementary. It all fits. The only ways in which different genres or styles can’t congeal is in the mental barriers we artificially place between them.

F.C.: How important, if at all, is the notion of confrontation in approaching Gutbucket’s music?

Eric: It’s very important. I’ll be bold for the moment and say I speak for us all when I say, none of us are interested in making background music. I’m not so concerned with the reaction I get. I’m more concerned that I get a reaction. I’d much rather have someone walk out and say they hated it, then sit politely, looking comatose, and then say it was fine. “Fine” is a much nastier four-letter word.

F.C.: Jazz typically has a much wider dynamic range than rock, which makes me wonder what rock music could teach jazz about dynamics?

Eric: Well, a good number of jazz bands could look to rock music to reassess the meaning of fortissimo.

F.C.: How important is the element of humor, both in reveling in unexpected motion within arrangements, but also in the way songs are titled?

Eric: There’s no greater security blanket to the insecure than humor. It comes back to getting a reaction. It’s an underutilized tool in most music that I hear or have heard. A dramatic change, whether it be in tempo, timbre, volume or style, is often an effective attention grabber. How to hold that attention is another matter. It comes in part from my short attention span and spending too much of my formative years watching Time/Life infomercials, in which they play only the hooks to songs — five seconds, and then on to the next tune.

Regarding titles, it’s the challenge and gift presented by working with entirely instrumental music. The titles usually fit the music pretty well. I guess if I have a choose between a bad pun and no pun at all, you can bet good money I’ll take the pun. Why spend so much time writing, arranging, rehearsing, performing, and recording a piece to cop out on the title? It’s the only complaint I have with Beethoven. Symphony #5. Really?!?!? That’s the best you could do?!?!?!

When I wrote “The Born Again Atheist Suite,” which is the final three tracks of Flock, I knew it was about religion, faith, and my lack of comprehension of how an individual who is otherwise logical could so easily suspend disbelief. You either question everything or accept everything that your told. You can’t pick and choose — well, at least I can’t. The actual titles for each movement, “Dyslexic Messiah (Where’s Your Dog?),” “Sacrificial Vegan” and “Turning Manischewitz Into Wine,” are word-plays based upon ridiculous things people do or believe in the name of faith and/or religion. I wish I could write lyrics like Elvis Costello, but I’ll settle for titling compositions as well as Charles Mingus. No one has ever beaten “The Shoes of the Fisherman’s Wife Are Some Jive Ass Slippers.” Can’t be beat.

F.C.: What is the creative process like for Gutbucket?

Eric: For me, I usually compose in solitary bursts. The initial idea or inspiration comes really fast. That comprises somewhere between 5-90 percent of the finished material, depending on the tune. Then we start rehearsing the material as a band. Sometimes everything is as intended. Often there’s some rewriting, either a new section, elimination of some non-essential material, or occasionally something more drastic. A new tune is ready to be performed sometimes after just two or three rehearsals.

Others (usually Ken’s) can take a couple of months. We start playing them live and try to be off-page (i.e. not reading the music) as soon as possible. If you’ve got the music memorized, you’ll play better, be able to use your ears more, react and respond to the unexpected, and interact more with the audience. From there, further edits could take place. If not, it could be ready for the studio after we’ve gotten enough performances under our belts.

Then there’s the matter of the recorded versions, which can vary from the live versions. Everyone gets to add their own ideas when we get to overdubs, after the basic track is done. Composer gets final veto rights on anything gets added, though surprisingly, most of the added material makes the cut in some form or another. The second and third movements of the “Born Again Atheist Suite,” “Sacrificial Vegan” and “Turning Manischewitz into Wine” were written almost simultaneously, the initial burst comprising the main themes, but the thematic development took another two weeks.

“Manischewitz” is also a great example of another band member (in this case Ken) taking the tune to a new level. I knew I wanted an unaccompanied sax solo, and I know what Ken is capable of, but until we did this live, the tune had not yet been truly born. Then we got into the studio and Ty layered some guitars, and everyone got to throw their two cents in, so the tune reached a level of maturity that I, as a married 34-year-old father of two has yet to achieve.

All four of us compose for the band, and we all have very different, very strong compositional personalities, and our processes vary. Making four different voices sound like a unified whole is an area that I think we excel at as a band. We love to argue. I think you have to have passion for what you’re doing, and it’s rare that the four of us are ever in total agreement regarding taste in music, food, or how far to the left our politics swing. We’re all strong and stubborn enough to make that an asset rather than an insurmountable obstacle.

F.C.: How was making Flock different from making other records?

Eric: I feel like our identity as an ensemble has evolved quite a bit over the years and this record is a great representation of where we are right now. We have a much better sense of how to use the studio. It was also the first time in which we did the basic tracking together, but then split up for editing and overdubs. It meant some new challenges, but also some wonderful surprises when hearing what everyone added to the tunes for the first time and how that fit with the original vision and conception of the piece. We worked with a great recording engineer in James Frazee and a great mixing engineer in Damon Whittemore and they were absolutely essential in helping us get the sounds we were seeking.

Also, the band, minus myself, has developed varying levels of proficiency with recording. Adam has his own studio, and both he and Ken have separately produced some great records for others. This has increased our comfort level in the studio and given us a better sense of what we can and can’t do. Earlier in our career, we were a live band who made records, but I feel with Flock we’ve really come into our own as a band on record.

F.C.: How clear is the idea of how an album will come together before you get together to actually make it? In other words, how much of the writing and recording process relies on spontaneity?

Eric: The writing is done before we get into the studio. We try to find a theme for the record and that can help us choose the tunes. We often write more music than we record. We’ll also propose song orders before the recording is finished or even before going into the studio. It’s somewhat fluid, so a lot of that can change. The improvised sections of songs are created live. There are usually a couple of solo takes and the soloist decides which performance they prefer. The overdub sessions also provide ample opportunity for spontaneity and surprise. Sometimes my ideas were concrete and other times a bit more vague. Sometimes a mistake can open your eyes to a previously unconsidered road. Structured spontaneity I suppose, not unlike the compositions themselves.

F.C.: What sorts of reactions do you hope your music elicits from listeners?

Eric: If they’re curled up, crying, sucking their thumb in the fetal position, I know I’ve done my job.