Neal Morgan’s Impulsive New Record a Raw Delight

You’re likely at least a little familiar with Neal Morgan, even if the name doesn’t quite ring a bell right away. Fans of Joanna Newsom or Bill Callahan will recognize the name as belonging to the drummer responsible for holding down percussive duties on their respective tours the last few years, as well as on record–notably Newsom’s Have One on Me, and Callahan’s Apocalypse. But Neal Morgan, the solo artist, is something of an anomalous alter-ego to the drummer heard on those recordings. His 2009 debut solo record, To the Breathing World, premiered a symbiosis of voice-and-drums-only compositions, created largely from first impulses to a cassette boom box in his Portland, Ore., garage. The result was a unique, primal offering of polyphonic voice melodies cooing over sometimes-frantic, sometimes-structured drumming. For his newest album, In the Yard, Morgan has also added a spoken word element, a new passion he hopes his work evolves naturally toward.

The self-released In the Yard is out Jan. 24, 2012, with distribution help by Drag City. Morgan is returning to the Sacramento area on the heels of the release, and took some time to speak with Submerge regarding his muses, his music and his hatred of poetry.

Is there anything special about getting into the mindset of making a solo record for you, as opposed to your more regular gig of drumming for other people and being part of a unit?
Well, everything I do is based on first impulses. So even arrangements I’ve made for Bill’s music or Joanna’s music start as first impulses and then it goes from there. But those first impulses when I’m arranging for someone’s record are based on some amount of conversation in advance–what they might be hearing for a particular piece and talking about the piece itself, and then arranging for that. I guess having a blank slate is the major difference.

What draws you to want to create on that impulse, and to have the final product be a really improvisational vibe?
For my own artistic enjoyment, it’s most fun to just be playing and just to do it without thinking too much and editing while I’m working. I tend to like listening to records where it was clearly the first pass that someone made at something. I always love my friends’ demos more than their records, for example. Really early on, I didn’t know how to make music of my own. I thought, “Well you make some demos and then you make a record.” Why make demos? Just make it. Get in the garage and just start and end up in something. Not always, but most of the time I love the thing that happens first, when I wasn’t thinking, the fresh impulse. But after a certain point, I’m a heavy, heavy editor. I spend 20 percent of the time tracking and then 80 percent editing. It definitely flips; it goes from being this impulsive thing into this heavy cerebral experience.

Of the songs that aren’t improvised like “Father’s Day” or “The Evidence,” how do you reconcile getting into the mindset of arranging or composing those songs that are more structured?
Sometimes the first thing you did is just exactly what it needs to be. Sometimes that’s just what happens. There’s a need for further tracking and re-recording of initial impulses. There are a few moments like that on this album, like “Father’s Day” happened fairly quickly. Those initial impulses really just kind of happened. But there are a couple songs on the second side, one in particular–“Thinking Big”–I’d had that drum beat kicking around for a really long time. I decided I wanted to make a highly structured composition. But then the two spoken word pieces [“On Tour,” “I Stand on a Roof”] happened after I thought the record was done. I went away [on the summer 2011 Bill Callahan tour] and came back, and [the record] was very clearly not done with fresh ears. I recorded those in 20 or 30 minutes. It was exactly what the record needed, and I finished it right then.

Sometimes you have to take a step back and give it space…
Yeah. Do you know the painter Philip Guston at all? There’s a response on the record to him, and his painting is on the cover. I think about him a lot and read a lot of his writings and interviews. He talks about being led during the course of painting, and I think that happens. As these things start to show themselves, they kind of tell you which way to go.

What is your recording process like? I read you recorded some of the album on a boom box.
I have a cassette eight-track, and an old boom box that has a microphone. I have a digital program, but I’m not good at any of that stuff. I just wanna hit record and play. Side A [of In the Yard] is really a foreshadowing of what the next record is going to be. Side B is really a wrapping up, I think, of a lot of the ideas that started with the first album. The next one’s gonna be spoken word.

You mentioned you hadn’t really done any spoken word before. How did you get into that?
[I was] in Atlanta [with Bill Callahan], and I was opening the show there. I had just written something that I really liked, but I didn’t really have a melody or anything like that to sing it. I decided just to say it. I just tried it and I loved it.

Was it liberating? It takes a lot of confidence to release music that’s based on first impulses, but also to speak naked words that aren’t under the veil of a melody and just saying it.
Yes, it did feel that way. I think that maybe that’s what continues to draw me to spoken pieces. The next record will be that, because you’re right–it’s the barest of the bare. That show, for me, was an incredible show. My shows are almost always improv. I’ll just decide to play a song at the drum kit one night, or instead I’ll just sing that song. This was a night where I did four or five really new things that I’d never done.

What topics interest you most to write lyrics or spoken word pieces about? Is that also coming from an impulsive source?
I have a notebook, and I’m often writing. You write when an idea comes or something happens that you think is interesting, or you come upon a way to express something that you’ve been curious about. I do a lot of writing and no editing as I’m writing. Zero. I think that’s so important. Then I will look at it some time later, and sometimes nothing resonates for me so I don’t act on any of it. But sometimes pieces of it will resonate and will connect to other ideas I have at the moment. Maybe drum ideas, or they’ll connect to other things I’ve written. Now my process includes speaking those written words in the editing process, because I’m now thinking that way for live and for the next record–hearing how it sounds and seeing how it feels to speak particular lines and then making editing adjustments based on that.

Like working on cadence and intonation?
Yeah, which is all stuff that I’d never really explored before. But it’s all very rewarding for me right now. I also don’t have a lot of frames of reference necessarily, and I want to stay that way.

In terms of spoken word artists?
Yeah, and just for the written word. I don’t have a lot of writers who are heroes of mine in that form. I’m kind of limited in that way.

You haven’t gravitated toward spoken word artists, now that you really enjoy it artistically for yourself?
No, I haven’t done that. I’ve read some more poetry in the past year, but I like so little of it. It’s really wild. But I also don’t devour it. If I read a lot more, I’m sure I would find a lot more I would like. But I really hate a lot of what friends have given me and said, “Oh yeah, this is a great poet, a great book.” I just don’t like it, like 90 percent of it [laughs]. When I’m working on music, I tend to not want to hear much at all. I just want to keep those first impulses what they are without having other ideas flying around.

Neal Morgan performs at the Milk Gallery in Sacramento, Friday, Jan. 27, 2012. The show is all-ages and has a $5 cover. Show starts at 8 p.m. Morgan will also play at the Haven Underground in Nevada City Saturday, Jan. 28, 2012 (also a $5 cover). For more info, go to Havenunderground.org. Both shows feature Aaron Ross opening.

Thrice’s Ed Breckenridge talks about his band’s new album and the struggles of losing a parent

Family can take on many forms, but there is no doubting that it’s important. Thrice could be considered as strong a family unit as there is in modern rock music. The band formed in 1998 and has been together ever since, fronted by singer Dustin Kensrue with Teppei Teranishi on guitar and two brothers in the rhythm section, Riley (drums) and Eddie (bass) Breckenridge. Sure, family can be a headache. The oncoming holidays are always a reminder of that, but during the most difficult times, such as the trying period the members of Thrice endured during the making of their most recent album Major/Minor, it’s always good to know you have someone to rely on.

Submerge caught up with Eddie over the phone before a show in Grand Rapids, Mich. The group had something of a “family day” the day before in Grand Haven, about half an hour west of Grand Rapids, on the shore of Lake Michigan.

“We spent the time walking around and sightseeing,” Eddie says of the much-needed day off. The band has already been out on tour for over a month supporting the release of Major/Minor, which was released on Vagrant Records on Sept. 20, 2011. “The day before, we acquired a bunch of barbecuing stuff, so we ended up doing a little barbecue outside the bus at the hotel where we were staying. Thank God we didn’t get harassed by any police for loitering in the hotel parking lot. It ended up being pretty fun.”

These family dinners have been a tradition for Thrice almost since their inception, Eddie says.

“I think that some of the earlier bands that we toured with, we always tried to meet up and go out to dinner,” he explains. “Whether we’re in the same town as another band or not, we try to have everyone in on a family-type meal.”

These sort of gatherings have probably become even more important during the most recent tour. The Thrice family suffered serious losses during the writing process of Major/Minor. Teranishi mourned the death of his mother, and the Breckenridge brothers’ father also passed away. The pain of these losses is certainly noticeable in Major/Minor, which is a potent mixture of hope and sadness. “Treading Paper,” placed in the middle of this sequence of songs, has Kensrue wailing in a scratchy but forceful voice “Carrying on; unwitting orphans of an unyielding despair.” Later on in the same track, the words look for the light at the end of the tunnel, “If anything means anything / There must be something meant for us to be.” It’s this interplay between light and dark that works its way throughout the album. Musically, Major/Minor is rife with big, crunchy riffs, pounding rhythms and raw vocals. Eddie says the album’s songs have caught on almost immediately by fans.

“When we did a record like Vheissu, it seemed to take a full touring cycle before people seemed like they wanted to hear those songs,” he says. “It’s cool, but at the same time, I can’t help but think, ‘Are we doing something wrong?’”

The album’s producer, David Schiffman, who worked on Thrice’s 2005 album Vheissu, went as far to describe Major/Minor as a grunge record. Eddie Breckenridge doesn’t necessarily agree with that sentiment, but during our interview, he does confess his growing love for Pearl Jam and he also touches upon the loss of his father. Thrice is currently on the road with O’Brother, Moving Mountains and La Dispute.

You’ve been touring for almost a month now on the new record. How has it been going?
It’s been great. It’s been going pretty well. All the bands are a bit different, but I think they all work together really well as far as like a cool-sounding show for everyone. There’s a lot of different dynamics to the music. The people are pretty great too. It’s been really fun. I can’t believe we’ve been on it for as long as we have. It doesn’t feel like that.

You mention that the sounds are really different between the bands. Was that what you were looking for when you headed out on the road?
I think you always try to make it so there’s no band that’s like an odd ball, but I think this tour, we’ve been really fortunate in picking bands, because I think nobody is an odd ball, but nobody sounds too much like everyone else. I think it’s a cool lineup. I think O’ Brother is a bit heavy, and their songs are a bit darker. Moving Mountains is more atmospheric, but they still have some heavy stuff. La Dispute has some really cool instrumental stuff, and their energy is a little more intense than the other bands–maybe not as dark or as heavy, but intense. And then there’s us. Whatever we are.

I definitely want to talk about Major/Minor. It’s funny because when I first listened to it, my first impression was that it reminded me of an old Soundgarden record. After I started reading up on it, I saw that your producer had likened it to a grunge record. Is that something you get when you listen to it?
We weren’t going for anything specifically. When we were writing the record, we were experimenting a lot with major and minor chords in the songs, and I think that’s the thing that sounds grunge-y. I think a lot of bands in that time period were experimenting with a lot of the same kind of stuff. They might have a song that’s really heavy, but it’s in a major chord. I think that ended up stylistically being a grunge-y sound. Maybe that’s where that came from, but it wasn’t an intentional attempt to make stuff grunge-y. I can see how you can relate it, but I don’t think the album on a whole sounds like a grunge-y record.

Definitely. There are some songs that give you that impression–maybe because of Dustin’s vocal delivery–but it definitely sounds like a Thrice record. It definitely doesn’t sound like Mother Love Bone or something like that.
Did you see that documentary, by the way? Pearl Jam 20?

No, I really want to though. Have you?
Oh, it’s amazing.

Why did you like it so much?
I’ve been a fan of Pearl Jam. I didn’t really follow them as much as I would have liked to now after seeing the documentary. It’s just really awesome seeing how they came about and how they tried to deal with what was going on. It was just inspiring. I think two weeks later all I could sing in my head were Pearl Jam songs.

Well you guys have been together for 13 years now. Were you able to see any parallels between that movie and your own band’s career?
Maybe, but not really. They became a huge band pretty quick. I think there were some parts where Eddie Vedder was talking about how hard it was to be in a huge band, but still wanting to play songs that reminded him of Fugazi and people not understanding that–struggling with what people think your identity is, and you wanting them to understand your real identity, but also not wanting them to be too close because you still want to be yourself in private. On their scale, that’s insane. I couldn’t imagine dealing with that, but I can definitely see where they were coming from, on a much smaller scale.

As a band that’s not afraid to do different things, is that something that plays into what you’re saying? Dealing with what people expect of you?
I think it’s important not to give into what people expect, because then you lose your identity as a musician. You need to create. You need to be inspired by things that inspire you, not inspired by people’s assumptions of what they think you should be. That would be a really rough spot to be in, and I don’t think our band would have lasted as long as it has if we were catering to other people’s tastes. It might be selfish in a way, but it’s really important to have it come from a natural place.

You and your brother Riley lost your father during the making of this album, and Teppei lost his mother. Now that other people are hearing the music, does that make it feel less personal to see other people react to it?
It’s hard for me to really play the music with my emotions that were involved with losing my dad. I think playing the music live is a huge release as far as that. I would never want to exploit my feeling for the sake of the music, but I definitely will be playing shows and think of my dad at moments, but I know my dad would enjoy it, because he supported us a ton. I can’t help but feel that sadness turn into some sort of energy. I become, I don’t know, strangely empowered by his memory. It’s crazy. It’s so hard for me to describe because there’s so much involved in it, as far as losing somebody, but also, I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m saying. It’s just been a rough, rough year. There’s no escaping it. Not that I’d want to escape it either. It’s this struggle that I don’t want to escape, but it’s hard not to let it ruin my ability to be happy, I guess.

Thrice and company will play Sacramento on Nov. 6, 2011 when their tour takes them to Ace of Spades. Tickets are $20 and can be purchased through Aceofspadessac.com.

Florence and the Machine is well into album number two, and according to producer Paul Epworth, it’s going to be much heavier. He told the BBC, “It’s going to be more stripped down, but it’s heavy, rhythmically. It’s a much heavier record than the first album.” There are 16 songs up for consideration for the new album, though Epworth said they would be whittled down to fewer than that. Florence and Epworth have been hard at work on the new album, described “as a lot less indie and a lot more soulful,” in the infamous Abbey Road studios. Epworth most recently co-wrote and produced a few tracks on Adele’s latest record, including the gem “Rolling in the Deep.”
-Brad F.

Papa Roach’s Jacoby Shaddix is addicted to bringing the rock

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, there is no denying that Papa Roach has earned their rank as one of the most successful bands to come from the Sacramento region. They’ve sold upwards of 10 million records worldwide, have toured the globe for over a decade playing venues packed with adoring fans and have truly lived the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle. But for every high point, there’s been a low. Be it battles with their record label or battles within the band itself, Papa Roach has shed its fair share of blood, sweat and tears, most notably when they parted ways with long-time drummer Dave Buckner in 2008. It wasn’t a smooth split. Buckner, who in the early ‘90s co-founded the band with vocalist Jacoby Shaddix, filed suit against the band saying that they owed him money. They ultimately settled out of court. Papa Roach has since continued on with new drummer Tony Palermo of the San Diego rock group Unwritten Law.

Through all the ups and downs, there have been a number of things keeping P-Roach pushing ahead, Shaddix explained during a recent interview with Submerge. “I would say our relationship with our fan base, the kids that are coming out to the shows being affected by the music,” he said. “We’ve just got that drive inside of us as a band. We’ve got this heart that just fucking pops. It’s all we got and it’s all we need. We all are living this dream, which sometimes can seem like a nightmare, but I’d sound like a bitch if I were to complain. We just love it.”

As for the incalculable hardships that always seem to creep their way into the picture, Shaddix said that after a career like theirs, he and his crew are ready to take on anything. “It’s always a challenge. You’re always up against a challenge,” he said. “But the members of this band are always up for it. I think it makes it easier for us as time goes by too because we’ve just seen so many genres come and go and so many trends come and go.” He chuckles. “We almost came and went.”

In the following interview, we chat with Shaddix about his band’s deep Sacramento roots, how making music is like a drug, their plans for a new full-length record and more. Be sure to catch Papa Roach live in Sacramento for their first time in years when they headline Ace of Spades two nights in a row on Feb. 25 and 26, 2011.

What are some of the first thoughts that come to mind when you think back to Papa Roach’s humble beginnings when you were gigging in and around Sacramento all of the time? Do you ever trip out on how far you’ve come?
For me it’s a daily kind of realization, more so when I’m home around the people that I was with. Not only am I with my band on the road, but then it’s like we’ve got sound guys and light guys, a whole crew, you know? I never had that back in the day. Then I come home, and I’m back around my wife. She’s been with me since I had Papa Roach in the very beginning. We’re old school. We go through our old photos, and we see pictures of me and my wife and my band from way back in the day. My band was in my wedding way back. It’s a trip, you know, especially when I come back home.

I used to go watch you guys in the late ‘90s at this little club near where I grew up, the Gaslighter Theater in Gilroy, Calif. Do you remember that place? That was right on the brink of when you guys were getting the major label deal and whatnot I think.
Fuck yeah, dude! That was a really cool time for P-Roach.

I tripped out when talking to Eric Rushing, longtime Sacramento music enthusiast and promoter, the other day about that era of P-Roach because he was like, “Yeah those were my shows even down there. I was at most of those shows!”
Yeah for these upcoming shows that we’re doing in Sacramento, just to interject on that point, it’s kind of a full circle for us 10 years later. Eric and Brett [Bair] have been very successful. Brett used to manage Papa Roach; we split the sheets, we’re still OK, and we’re friends and such. But it’s cool to see that people who started in Sacramento are all still around here killing it. That’s even kind of why we wanted to put the type of bill together that we put together.

Yeah that’s cool. It’s all Sacramento cred-bands.
Yeah, bring it on home!

So the first night it’s Track Fighter, Will Haven and you guys. The second night it’s Lonely Kings, MC Rut and you guys. So many good Sacramento-based bands! I’m especially digging MC Rut lately. They’ve got a crazy work ethic. Are you familiar?
Fuck yeah, dude. That record is one of my favorites. I mean you’ve got to work hard in this business no matter what. If you want to make it, you’ve got to go in and slug it out in the trenches and build a fan base by playing rock shows. That’s the proving ground for rock music is touring. If you come with a hot song for a minute, that’s all good, but can you go out and tour and pack houses and rock audiences throughout America? Not just like San Francisco and New York, I’m talking, like America, you know what I mean?

Bringing it back to Sacramento for a second, don’t you guys own a studio space downtown? What’s that space all about?
Yeah right now it’s just pretty much essentially a demo studio for Papa Roach, and we’ll have some bands go in there. Like Dance Gavin Dance is going in a few days. They’ll be in there making some noise. Michael Rosen, he used to run out of J Street Recorders, Brian Wheat’s studio, he’s been bringing down some of his gear. He’s got really good gear, and he’s pretty much running it like a proper studio at times with bands. So that’s cool as well. We just don’t want it to collect dust while we’re out on the road.

Must be nice to just to get new riffs and song ideas recorded fast?
Yeah, exactly. I just got a new jam from Tobin [Esperance, bass] today actually. He programmed it on his computer, did the beats himself. There’s no guitar on it yet. It’s just keyboard sounds right now, but it’s like Papa Roach meets…I don’t know, it’s real good though.

So it’s sounding like there’s going to be another full-length ready for release sometime when? Next year?
Pretty much what we’re doing is this, Doomsday Radio, 2012, Papa Roach.

Oh really? I didn’t see that anywhere in any of my research! Is that a working title?
Yup. Working title, Doomsday Radio. There you go, print it.

Throughout the years Papa Roach has morphed quite a bit musically; it always seems like you’re progressing your sound. Can you talk a little about the many phases of your band?
I think for us it’s always been, “Go where the music takes us.” That’s the goal with Papa Roach: If it moves us, we think it will move our fans, and sometimes that’s true and sometimes it’s not. I think more times than not it has moved our fans. That progression that you speak of, we’re still in it. The track that Tobin just sent me, I was like, “Oh shit here we going again, we’re flippin’ it up.” But I’m into it, man. Music is this drug, and you want to try all different types of them. It’s like sex, you know, it’s like you do it the same way over and over and it just gets boring, so you’ve got to flip it up, put a wig on her, hit it doggy style. Switch it up.

What sort of vibe does the new song that Tobin sent you have? I read somewhere that Jerry [Horton, guitar] said the new record will have more electronic elements or something like that?
Oh yeah, for sure. It’s like somewhere between Prodigy meets Nine Inch Nails meets Papa Roach. It’s still got our sound to it, though, like when you hear the groove and the vibe, it’s still us, it’s just sometimes we want to use that texture in the music. I think we started to dabble in it with songs like “Burn” and “Kick in the Teeth” [off of 2010’s Time for Annihilation…On the Record and On the Road]. I think that it’s fun and our fans are receptive to it, and we like it because it opens up a whole new floodgate for us. I think it can make our music more beat-driven at times, which will be fun.

What’s one big goal of yours for the next record?
I don’t want to make a record that sounds like I’m a 35-year-old man, because I am a 35-year-old man, or I’m going to be, but I’m an exciting motherfucker when it comes to making music. I don’t want to make music that sounds compromised. That’s the goal for the next record is to kind of–and we’ve discussed this together–is to make a record that’s a little bit more experimental at times and a little bit more progressive. The last couple records have been song, song, song, etc. If you look back at one of our first releases, Old Friends from Young Years, there was a whole concept behind the way the record was laid out. I think we want to do something like that again.

Like as far as flow and transition tracks and whatnot?
Exactly, just to kind of dig deeper and make it more of an experience this time around. Not really a concept record, but something that is more than just song, song, song, song.

Even to the way that we’re going to do music videos in the future and the way that the band is imaged as well. For us, it’s a goal to kind of evolve all elements of what we do just a bit.

You might be getting older, but I sense that you are just as hungry as ever to succeed.

Yeah, look at the Chili Peppers. You don’t think of it that way. You think it’s just timeless. That’s what we’re going for. We’ve got a long, long road ahead of us. This is just another step in the path for us.

Papa Roach has heavy staying power in the music business, doesn’t it? It’s been so many years, but you guys remain relevant.
We definitely don’t take that shit for granted. But the fight is not over, dude. You look at a band like Green Day, they made that record, you know what I’m saying? For us, we still feel like we have that record in us. We still feel like we haven’t made the record of our career. Maybe it’s just that junkie inside me.

Papa Roach will play live in Sacramento for the first time in years at Ace of Spades (1417 R Street) on Feb. 25 and 26, 2011. Tickets are available at Dimple Records, The Beat, Armadillo (in Davis) and online at aceofspadessac.com. Grab their latest album, Time for Annihilation…On the Record and On the Road, a collection of nine live renditions of P-Roach hits and five newly recorded tracks, at record stores everywhere or through any major online retailer.