When Bobby Bare, Jr. first formed the Young Criminals'
Starvation League it was but a side-project. It was around 2000, and Bare was
wedded to the big-bucks Immortal Records with his high-octane rock outfit,
Bare, Jr., then known for ballistic live shows and the 1999 rock-radio hit,
"You Blew Me Off."
But, Bare told label brass that he had several songs that
"[weren't] gonna work on rock radio and that you don't want on your rock
record." So, he continued, would it be OK if he hooked up with his pals
elsewhere? Immortal agreed. Bare then teamed with producer Mark Nevers and keyboard
player Tony Crow, both linked to Nashville
mood-twang outfit Lambchop, befriended Bloodshot Records, and the Starvation
League was born.
"I thought I was going to do an acoustic album, just me
and a guitar," Bare says. "Somehow we ended up with a roomful of
musicians. That's how unplanned it was. I guess I kinda stumbled into it."
If Bare stumbled, no better steps could have been taken. The
2002 Bloodshot debut, Young Criminals'
Starvation League, was a new beginning for the artist -- one that a that
traded the guitar assault of his (soon to be former) rock band for a
funny/shocking, shambling/playful, multi-colored effort. It would have seemed
pointless looking back.
But, for as good as the 2002 release is, the new From The End Of Your Leash, while,
slightly less scatological than its predecessor, is better. Bare's newest is an
intimate, wondrously expressive, genre-be-damned affair -- it's AM-radio pop,
it's country and indie-rock and punk and folk and anti-folk and it's none of
those things. It's weird, arty, amusing, sad, soulful, nervous, gentle, spontaneous,
buoyant, beautiful, unpredictable. It's like nothing else.
It's also infinitely quotable. On the cocaine-themed
"The Terrible Sunshine" Bare wraps his resonant drawl -- one of the
most idiosyncratic in recent memory -- around a story that of the all-night
binge: "There's another motherfucker knocking on your door with four drunk
girls who want to score, there's a dangerous dollar rolling up in your hand
while your newlywed waits in bed." On "Visit Me In Music City,"
co-written with his father, Bare takes on with fresh results the often overused
theme of Nashville
as a soulless, corporate music factory. Here, the city is a place where
"we'll drink all night and write songs no one will sing" and
"the world's greatest living guitar pickers can deliver you a pizza or
sell you weed." And from the from-the-gutter anthem "Let's Rock &
Roll" comes the observation: "There is vomit running down the walls,
that vomit don't care where it falls, and that vomit came out of someone, and
that vomit should be cleaned up by someone, let's rock & roll, let's rock
& roll."
Put it all together and From The End Of Your Leash is a powerful, affecting, unkempt look at a life on
the edge. In Bare's case, the edge just happens to be a life spent in the rock
'n' roll trenches, where, sometimes the sights just aren't very pretty. And yes,
sometimes there's vomit running down the walls.
MoMZine editor Neal Weiss brings the mop.
MoMZine: There's
references to Nashville,
coke, being on the road. How much of it is autobiographical?
BOBBY Bare Jr.: Um… all of it.
I've been pretty good about writing only stuff I know about.
MoMZine: You're known
for strong language and graphic imagery. Are there any songs or lyrics that you
yourself found too extreme for even you to use?
Bare Jr.: I did a song about my
dead sister. My sister died when I was nine and she was 15. I did a song about
her. She woke up in our house Thanksgiving eve and had a baby and nobody knew
she was even pregnant. And then she died a couple weeks later. I wrote a song
about that but it's just too sad. I just don't want to sing that. But I've
never shied away from anything. I just don't want to walk through some of that
stuff every single night of my life.
MoMZine: Did you set
out to do something in particular on From
The End Of Your Leash. And, if so, did you succeed?
Bare Jr.: I try to not set out to
do anything except be a slave to the song and cooperate with the producer. I
always compare making a record to doing your hair and makeup and putting on
your clothes in a completely dark room with no mirror. Until you have something
to bounce it off of I really don't know what I've done. There's actually
performing an album and recording it, and then there's the listening part. I
feel real strong that the person who records the album has the worst opinion on
what the album is like or about. How I feel about it is so far away from what
most other people think about what I do.
MoMZine: When you go
into the studio, how much of a song is already mapped out and how much of it is
left to studio magic?
Bare Jr.: The albums I did with
Immortal, the major-label records, they had budgets of like 200-something
thousand dollars, so we would do pre-production for a week, that's just trying
to work the ideas of the songs out for a week, and then we'd go to the studio
and just do basic tracks for a week and then do overdubs for two weeks and then
mix for a week or two. And the first Young Criminals record, which felt like
the most successful I've ever done, we did every bit of that in seven days. On
this album, just like the last one, almost every performance was within 15
minutes after the musicians heard the songs for the first time. There were a
couple people from the road band who had performed these songs before but when
we did the songs for the record we did them almost completely different than
when we did them live so it was pretty much new to them also. So, I guess, no
mapping.
MoMZine: Your solo
stuff does sound much looser than the Bare, Jr. stuff.
Bare Jr.: The songwriting's better
too. The songwriting [on the Bare, Jr. albums] got crowded out by a bunch of
guitars. I still love guitars but… when we play live it's just as loud as the
Bare, Jr. stuff.
MoMZine: Was there a
time when you accepted that your music wasn't for the mainstream?
Bare Jr.: Well I definitely didn't
want to go back to rock radio and try to have hit singles. The stuff I'd be
competing against is very unappealing to me. I'd put so much effort into that
and I was just over it. And it's a whole lot more fun to do what I'm doing now
and not be dependant on rock radio for anything. To not be dependant on radio
anywhere, and Clear Channel, for anything is very appealing. All I really have
to count on is that I can deliver a good live show. And I'll take that on. I
like that.
MoMZine: Is it a
sense of liberation?
Bare Jr.: Being on a major label,
it's like you're in your home town and it's like being a high jumper, and
you're clearing four feet and you're really happy and you're doing real good at
clearing the four-foot bar. And then a record label comes along and gives you a
lot of money and sets the bar at 12-14 feet. And, you're a fool to not try it
-- they buy you the best equipment, the best training, they get you the best
gear to try to do it. But when you go and try to clear it and you fail you look
like an idiot, compared to if you just stayed in your safe little box in
Nashville just clearing four-foot. And it's really nothing you can control, the
whole major-label world. But going back to just trying to clear four to six
feet on your own terms and in your own little sand box, I'm real happy with
that. There's a lot less pressure. When you're on a major label there are
people that are around you whose jobs are to kiss your ass basically, there's
none of those people [now], and that's very, very pleasant. You believe that
bullshit and people that really don't get your music and people that you really
don't want to get your music, it's really pleasant to not have to deal with
that.
MoMZine: So when you
look back on Bare, Jr., what went right? What went wrong?
Bare Jr.: What went right is, they
spent probably almost $2 million on my stupid songs and I got to ride a bus and
we had a hit song in "You Blew Me Off" that did real well and I was
able to buy a house. And we got to do some amazing gigs. The live shows were
heaven. I loved that. And I made a lot of friends and got on the map a little
bit. I'll never ever complain about somebody spending [that kind of money] on
me and my band. And I can't say anything went wrong. Major labels are a bunch
of people tossing turds on the wall as quickly as they can and in the only way
the know how, with the most finesse they know. It doesn't matter who's sitting
there in front of you telling you you're gonna be the next Beck or Beastie
Boys. It doesn't matter how successful these music-business people are, they've
failed a lot more times than they've succeeded. All of them. Clive Davis has
told thousands of people that they were going to be the next Janis Joplin or
Bruce Springsteen and meant it when
he said it. But they don't know. They really don't know.
There's people who know talent but there's so many people
who are so talented… Have you ever listened to Andrew Bird before? The fact
that he's not the most successful person I know just blows my mind. He's got
the look, he's got more talent than anybody I've ever been around, just him as
a songwriter is amazing, not to mention he's one of the greatest violinist I've
ever seen. His grasp of music theory is scary. And once you get into the
business and see these people around you that are so talented and belong
absolutely at the top of the entertainment world, and they're not is just… you
know… Even just to be able to put 400-500 people in every club in America, just
that someone that talented isn't even at that level… It's nice to see someone
like My Morning Jacket be successful. That's where you go, Oh OK. That's just a
case of being a great live band and having a good record to go along with it.
It doesn't matter who's standing in your way. You can't stop a roomful of
people going "This is one of the greatest live shows I've ever seen. No
amount of industry fuck-ups can stand in the way of something that honest and
real.
MoMZine: Do you think
there's a bigger audience out there for what you do?
Bare Jr.: Yeah. I feel as
comfortable about my life show as anybody else and I think I have songs that
would sound fine on the radio next to Cake or…there's all kinds of stuff that's
actually on the radio that I like. There are some songs that, like,
"Valentine," would sound just fine next to.
MoMZine: What's the
biggest surprise when you listen back to the album, assuming you do?
Bare Jr.: Now that we spend only a
week recording a record, I listen to my record all the time and love it, mostly
because it's a surprise. When I listen to "Don't Follow Me" it's got
an Andrew Bird opening and then it has Tony Crow coming in on top of that, it's
the most beautiful, exotic feeling I can imagine. It's like waking up with 15
19-year-olds. Very exotic and beautiful.
MoMZine: You like to
drink. How much does that factor into your creativity?
Bare Jr.: It only brings bad
things. I write almost all my songs before 10 a.m. Alcohol only fucks things
up. [After 10 a.m.], the reality of the day sets in. And really, I only drink
at bars, at night, with my friends, out of excitement and joy. "Oh, you're
here, I'm here, we're all here, yay!" Then I'm blacked out. I can't drink. I get completely blacked
out after eight beers but I have just as many problems in my life due to
alcohol as my friends who can wake up drunk and drink all day. I know people
who are drunk all day long who actually can handle it a lot better than I can
handle eight to 10 beers at night. It's Native American blood in me. I just
can't handle alcohol.
MoMZine: So it's not
like it's part of your creative process?
Bare Jr.: Well, if anything it
creates chaotic situations that I might end up writing about, but I can't write
songs when I'm drunk. I can't do anything except hug everybody and be stupid.
And collect DUIs and go to jail and all that bad stuff.
MoMZine: What's the
strangest description you've ever read or heard about your music?
Bare Jr.: I can remember the best
one, it was "David Lowery fronts Belle & Sebastian." I'm not
gonna lie like most musicians and say "I don't read my press." I do
because I'm totally fascinated about how these songs and what we do in the
studio bounces off other people. It's pretty interesting. Just getting to
record it and listen to it is definitely rewarding. I can't believe I had
anything to do with it. But watching it bounce off other people is really
fascinating.
MoMZine: Do you ever
read something and think, "What are they listening to?"
Bare Jr.: All the time.
Journalists write about the experience listening. And that's just as valid as
performing a song. It's like you're the other dance partner. There's the
performer of the song and the listener. It's like taking a dump on the sidewalk
and people walk by and go, "Oh look it's ice cream." And then
somebody else comes by and says, "Oh it's a chocolate bar." Really
interesting how it bounces off people.
MoMZine: Your father
and Shel Silverstein loom large in helping shape your artistic sensibility. What
one key bit of wisdom that they taught you?
Bare Jr.: Just fearlessness. The
whole take on songwriting is to take a pretty wacked-out idea, push it as far
as you can and then push it even further and then give it a really screwy twist
at the end. Mostly, milk the idea until it's just dead and laying there. You
can always edit out the bad stuff. For "Let's Rock And Roll," I've
got like six other verses for that but those are the ones I used.
MoMZine: Do you have
a particular goal with a live performance?
Bare Jr.: I hate seeing performers
who look like they're just going through the motions. I like when I see someone
perform, it looks like they left a piece of themselves behind that night. I try
to accomplish that. I try to be as soulful and passionate and not half-ass it.
I love performing. As long as there are a couple people who give a shit. Just
one or two, then it's on. You want to dig in a give it the best you can.
MoMZine: You've
become king of the world, what's your first move?
Bare Jr.: Honestly, all I want is
a really nice rehearsal space. I'd get the world's greatest rehearsal hall, the
world's greatest tour bus… that's all I can think of that I really want money
for.
