Gingersol likes to get lost
. Multi - instrumentalist/producer
Seth Rothschild talks of recording as "an escape and a little bit of a
joy… [with] a good child-like quality" while his longtime collaborator, singer/guitarist
Steve Tagliere, says it's a search for the "magical moments." "It's
like nothing else," Tagliere shares. "I can get lost in it, love it,
and feel like I'm 18 again listening to [the Who's]
Live At Leeds."
Such escapism can be heard on all three of the band's albums
since the duo teamed up in Los Angeles five years ago -- 2000's Nothing Stops Moving, 2001's The Train Wreck Is Behind You, and the
new Eastern. At its best, Gingersol
makes an upbeat sort of sad pop -- they've long called it
"happy-choly" -- that explodes with imagination. When
sliced-and-diced, it rocks like the Replacements, pops like the Beatles and
tantalizes with inventive, kaleidoscopic hues that at various turns suggest Sparklehorse,
latter-day Wilco, and the slightly-mad pop approach of the E6 collective. Yes,
it's a good place to run to.
However, in the case of Eastern,
Gingersol's not just hiding out because, well, that's what artists do. Eastern ups the band's emotional impact ten-fold
with something called reality, namely, the demise of both members' marriages. As Tagliere sings in "None Of My
Friends": "Bite your tongue and find the keys and pull the car around/There's
no more talk of loyalty or why your eyes burnt out/I tried to be a friend to
you I tried and it was hard/You had your chance." Escape…meet therapy,
self-examination, and, one can only hope, healing.
Eastern hits you
like an arriving N'orEaster. If Gingersol is bundled up and riding out the storm
until the return of bluer skies, so is the listener. And here's the rub. After
years of not being able to get arrested in Los Angeles,
it took a move to New York
for the group to finally gain some momentum. Tagliere had relocated with his
then-wife in 2001 and the newly-single Rothschild followed a year later. The
pair soon teamed with NY-based Rubric Records (Mary Lou Lord, Bevis Frond,
Green Pajamas) for a national release of The
Train Wreck Is Behind You. And now, the table is set for Eastern. Thus, with its release,
Gingersol has finally ascended to a spot in the indie world where people just
might take notice. Meaning, the group's most soul-baring music is the music it
must take to the public. As MoMZine editor Neal Weiss learns, there's no
escaping it now.
MoMZine: Define "happy-choly." It's a great
word.
STEVE TAGLIERE:
It's a good description for what we do. We have very upbeat pop songs, but in
general I think there's a melancholy to the material. The happy part is, I
think that there is a thread of hope -- underline "optimism" -- in
there in general. "Happy-choly" is sad pop songs that I think
ultimately, when you hear them, they're comfortable. They make you feel good.
There's a being-able-to-relate element and it's not just doom and gloom.
SETH ROTHSCHILD: It's
kinda like you're sitting next to a guy in a bar and you're having a beer,
you've had a hard day but you're still talking to him and laughing about shit.
To me the band that most encapsulates the idea of it is probably the Beach Boys
because a lot of times you have these lyrics that are sort of child-like and
the melodies are all happy and bouncy but there's just this undercurrent there
that is melancholy -- probably in that case subconsciously. Big Star sort of
has that too.
MoMZine: Did you set
out to do something different with Eastern?
And if so, did you succeed?
ROTHSCHILD: Well, quite simply, with Train Wreck… we had been playing with a regular band and we were
safe and cozy in our little [San
Fernando] Valley towns and it was very geo-centric
experience. half of the songs we did as a live band so that made the recording
process a certain way. And this record -- and this is all the unconscious
stuff, all the stuff you can't help -- we made while both of us were moving at
different time periods and it was recorded in five or six different rooms in
four or five different states. So the process was totally different. It was a
disjointed, fragmented thing. My only goal was to record another record. I
didn't set out to do anything specific. But I think this record feels like what
it felt like to be living in that time period. It feels like a record in the
sense of the world -- a record piece of time -- because even though the songs
pre-date the recording, some weeks, some months, I think it's that the feeling
of being that disjointed over such a long period of time, that the songs feel
like thematically. It's the one time that the feeling of recording a record
equally matched what the sentiment of the songs were and they complimented and
helped each other.
TAGLIERE: I would add that I think this record, what we
were going through in our personal lives, which also directly related to the
process as far as living in different places and recording it in different
rooms and all of that, I think this record was less comfortable. I think there
was a determination that had to get us through on this one. We recorded in a
wallpaper factory with horrible fumes, extreme heat and nausea. It was an iron
man competition.
MoMZine: It seems those challenges brought forth a
good record. Is this a case of artists having to suffer to make good art?
TAGLIERE: I'd just assume not suffer anymore. It's
been a really painful last few years for me and I've come out of it with a lot
of material but I've had a lot of good years with great material too. So, for
me, I think the record captures some of that, which is good and cool, but it's
kind of a mixed reward, I guess. You have a song that turns out really good and
you're happy with the performance but it's a bummer contextually.
MoMZine: Is it therapy?
TAGLIERE: No. In fact, it's gonna be hard to sing a
lot of this stuff on the tour. My material, for the record, dealt with trying
to keep my marriage going, and I didn't want it to end, and it's now ended
since we finished the record. And I think in a lot of the songs there's a hope
of trying to keep it going. Now that it's over they feel different.
ROTHSCHILD: This
is actually the first record that we finished where I didn't feel like it was
great when we finished it. I feel like a baby bird trying to break out of an
egg and maybe there's a big bird sitting on top of it, so I can't. We literally
moved recording spaces and homes over the time it took to record the record
five, six, seven, eight times. So there was just zero comfort in making the
record and zero of the things that from an artist standpoint, progressing as a
recording artist, I would liked to have taken it further. I'm not dissatisfied
with it. But as Steve said, I'd rather not have any more difficulty in
recording or in relationships. I feel like when you're writing or recording
material you can conjure feelings without necessarily being right in the middle
of them.
MoMZine: From the outside, it sounds like an album in
which you two reconciled that Gingersol was not a band in the traditional sense
but more of a two-man project.
ROTHSCHILD: I
don't think we consciously said, "OK, it's just the two of us." I
think everything has sort of evolved. Without giving away what we're gonna do
on the next record, I think it will specifically answer that question. So stay
tuned. But seriously, we know how to work together really well and I think
we'll approach the next record differently. I think this Eastern comes out almost five years to the day that we met each
other. I think we've got to the point where we kinda know how it works. I'm
looking forward to sitting down and having those days where it's inspired
recording and fun.
MoMZine: Your move to New York and it seems that things finally
started happening in terms of the band's career. How pivotal was the
relocation?
TAGLIERE: I think
sometimes change is really good, just to hit some new territory and fresh faces
and meet some new people, and there's a certain new-kid-in-town thing that's
really good. And I think that there's some luck that happened to us and I think
that we were prepared for that. We've met some really great people here and
there's been a lot of good opportunities that have come from the transition.
We've been able to tour a lot, we can get to a lot of cities quick, which is
kinda tougher out of L.A.,
and I think that's helped make the circle a little bigger.
ROTHSCHILD: I
don't know, just based on New York
-- and I don't want to start anything -- but it just seems like there's more
people going out to hear music. We'd only been in town for six months when our
label officially releases Train Wreck…
and we had a huge crowd at CBGB's to come see us. I don't know what the
difference is. We'd play in L.A.
and sometimes we'd have a decent crowd, sometimes we wouldn't. It just seems
maybe there's more people going out to see music. Maybe it's more concentrated,
maybe it's easier to get around.
MoMZine: Outside of music, what's the most glaring
difference about life in New York compared to Los Angeles.
ROTHSCHILD: Everything.
TAGLIERE: New York, I really think
it's the greatest city in the world and I think it's a really tough place to
live. I don't really live in New York, I live
in Brooklyn…
ROTHSCHILD: I
live in Queens…
MoMZine: Does the new album sound like New York at all to you?
ROTHSCHILD: The
record sounds weary to me, like I felt making it. A lot of that was from
physically living in New York as opposed to [in L.A.] having all the recording
gear in my back yard and Steve could almost walk over to my place. Not that I
begrudge living in New York, it's cool, but last year was the hardest winter
they've had in like 10 years and I moved back just in time for it. Going over
to the recording studio where I was going to either catch pneumonia on the way
or lose brain cells breathing in wallpaper glue or possibly get the Junta virus
from the mouse shit all over the place… It was just weariness that was specific
to living in New York.
If that comes across, it's just a physical reality of living in New York and recording in Hoboken or wherever.
TAGLIERE: I've
lived here almost three years and I can safely say -- and I exaggerate but this
isn't an exaggeration -- I haven't had peace of mind for three years. And I
hear that on the record. So I don't know if that's fair to say that that's New York, that's my New York experience. I don't want to
complain about it, I think this is a great city. I'm not blaming, I'm not
bitter, it's just that my experience of late has been really trying. It's just
been really tough. In some ways I feel really proud of us and of me personally
to be getting through it. We've overcome a lot and it's nice to be talking
about the record that we made. That's really cool. We're coming through. There
is a light there. But it's been tough. Without being a baby about it, that's
the long and short of it for me.
ROTHSCHILD: The
things I love about New York,
the couple times I haven't been working and gone out in the last month happened
to have been in a snowstorms. And both nights the city just died. There was
just nothing going on. And it's amazing. To have a city like that shut down and
sort of give itself over to children, really, because even when you're an adult
and you're walking through the snow it's pretty magical. I had a couple of fun
nights, and to get back to your question, do you need to suffer to create good
art, I don't know the answer but I do know that on those two nights in the last
month where I walked from the river to the Lakeside Lounge in the snow which a
bunch of fun people to have a beer, I didn't feel like writing a song that night.
I felt like having a snowball fight and having a beer.
MoMZine: Talk about this wallpaper factory.
TAGLIERE: We
answered an ad for a rehearsal room in Hoboken.
We were grateful for the room but it was not ideal at all, taking gear up
really narrow stairs and it was not to code or anything.
ROTHSCHILD:
Toilet was overflowing all the time…
TAGLIERE: There
was human feces within feet of where we were working. Horrible fumes from this
wallpaper factory… some days Seth would be working in July in 102 degree
weather…
ROTHSCHILD: …with
no ventilation. And we were cohabitating with rodents. They would come in,
sometimes I would turn up the bass to get them to run back into the wall.
TAGLIERE:
Sometimes they would sit on soundproofing foam that we had put on the walls.
We'd given them names...It's funny to look back on it but there's a broken window in
our room during winter last year, we're all bundled up to rehearse like we're
gonna play in the snow. It's stuff I'm not used to. I grew up in California and sometimes
my mom would tell me, "Take a sweater."
ROTHSCHILD: When
we decided to get out of there, the record still wasn't done. We moved the
stuff to the basement of my aunt's house in New Town, Pennsylvania, you know, cinder blocks, not
much character. And my aunt would ask me, "How can you record down here?
It smells a little musty." And I'm laughing, it's like we were breathing
in mouse shit everyday. This is awesome.
TAGLIERE: We had
one mouse that we called Mr. Jingles, from The
Green Mile. He died the day we moved out. He would come visit us a lot and
we think he overheard us talking about moving out, and the day we came to move
our gear he was dead in front of our door. I'd like to think he died of a
broken heart. He lived a great life though. And, you know, we do that thing
that the hip-hoppas do, you know, whenever we're drinking a beer we pour a
little on the ground for Mr. Jingles.
MoMZine: It seems like Gingersol's just getting
started. Any thought to the band being late bloomers?
TAGLIERE: No,
I've been making great music forever. And I know Seth has also. We have a
really good combination with us working together and I think that with all of
our experiences we're able to utilize that and get the music out and get it
heard. I think our audience is growing and I think the horizon's looking good.
But I also think, at the same time, what we're doing together right now, I'm
really proud of it. Up until I met Seth everything was pretty straight-ahead
and we've really been able to create really interesting sounding recordings. I
think that if I wasn't me, I would really like it. It would scratch the itch
for something new and what I also liked about other things.
MoMZine: You're
finally on the road regularly. Is it everything you hoped for?
ROTHSCHILD: Being
on the road is sort of like an oasis, it's exciting and I find it to be fun. I
can't imagine, I've heard rumors that the Ramones hated each other but still
toured for the last however long they toured, and I can't imagine that
scenario. I don't think I'd want to sit in a van if I didn't have fun with the
people I was playing with. I feel like, with having the help of a label, and
having a publicist and all that sort of thing, now it feels like the beginning
to me, almost. It feels like we've done a lot of work recording and playing to
get to where we should be now but now it feels like the beginning of what we're
going be doing.
