Chris : I'm starting this Roe-is-me interview where
the tape's problems end. I will work on deciphering more of it. Whether
you use it or not, at least you know of it. Thanks.
RHL : In other words, it was written like a band?
MR : yeah, and then I usually arranged them. Then the band gets together
and starts hammering them out, and everyone starts adding their own ideas
and stuff. It truly is collaborative.
RHL : I was wondering how much of a band this is, as a band?
MR : It's very much a band. It's more so now than ever before. It's always
been a group, although because of the fact that we don't play live very
much, some people have considered it more of a concept than a reality. But
I'd say it's more of a reality now than it's ever been.
RHL : This is what... the second new album with the new band?
MR : this is really the *first* album [that's an] all-group effort all at
one time. The *Pray Naked* album was done stretched out over a *long* period
of time. A lot of those were demos that either I had done or were David
and Mark had done with their previous band the Strawmen.
RHL : I have here at home the Strawmen's 1989 demo *The Strawmen At Home*,
with Jimmy Abegg's rudimentary artwork on it. [It has "Sometimes",
"Phony Eyes", "Deep End", "Come Back", "Rattles",
and "Hard To Say".]
MR : I had no idea there was such a thing. In fact, I don't even know if
*they* knew there was such a thing. Oh, oh, yeah, I remember now some sort
[of tape]. They pressed only 60 copies of it. But their fame spread across
the land. [I was told at the time there were almost 100 copies, almost all
of which were, from what I could see, right in front of me when I got mine.]
RHL : I played one of the tracks regularly on the Morning Star radio show
[at WUSB].
MR : They'd be really tickled to hear that. They talked about putting their
[demo] on CD because a lot of people liked it. I thought it was terrific...
RHL : Obviously, *you* thought it was terrific, so terrific that you took
them into your band !
MR : Dave was a student of mine, and so was the lead singer Bill [Harmon,
Mark's brother]. And it got to the point that I was getting jealous of them
because I liked their group better than the 77s at the time. It just sounded
more like what I wanted to do. I liked the unity of their vibe, the guitar
sound. It was just an interesting twist of fate, how it all came together
in the end.
RHL : What's the basic difference in feel [or vibe?] from the earlier 77s?
MR : It's a much more unified band marriage. The other group was kind of
a split group. You had Jan [Eric Volz] and myself, which was one faction,
and then you had Mark Tootle and Aaron [Smith], which was another faction.
And those guys were a bit more snobbish about their influences, with jazz
and classical and more serious kinds of music. Jan and I were into the oldies.
There was a lot of tension in that group. Whereas this group... it's real
smooth. We all agree pretty much about everything. Aaron's a bit of an odd
man out, because he's coming from a different place. But even he's more
into it now. We've really unified over the last year or so. And exciting,
too, because after all this time I can't believe we're still doing this.
It's a really healthy relationship. Plus, it's more musically proficient
than the earlier band, because Jan and Mark Tootle were playing instruments
which were not their first [best] instruments. Jan was the bass player,
Mark was the guitarist, yet they were creative. It's strange that we got
as good as we did. This one is just way more....it's got a lot more potential.
RHL : and another thing about it is that you're actually getting your material
out
MR : Well, part of that had to do with that whole Exit record conglomeration.
Once we got away from that whole situation, we were highly motivated to
be very active all the time. Getting records out instead of trying to shop
them and get 'big time deals' (snicker). We just wanted to make music. We're
still trying to get that goal, but the point is that you get out there and
play and make the records, rather than hide from the world, which was the
Exit mode. I can't imagine why, because........ well, it had to do with
that situation being part of a local community church effort. So there was
a conflict of interest between serving that body of people and going and
leaving town and doing your career. There were a lot of conflicts. It was
just... in the end, it didn't work, it became very unhealthy, and so we
all quit.
RHL : all at once, it seemed.
MR : It was a very valuable time for us. We learned how to make records
by ourselves, from coming up with the artwork to engineering to production,
and we built a core audience, and had a lot of time to think about art and
its role in our lives and in the church and in the world. It was kind of
like a long-term workshop were you learned what you needed to know so you
could do what you wanted to do. So it was an important time, but not a productive
time and so in the end we had to get away from it to really use it.
RHL : There was one thing about those times that was very interesting. There
was a whole bunch of new acts that came out of that Exit scene. Are you
now involved with any new acts that are getting started?
MR : I would like to do that more than I do. The town we're in, Sacramento,
we're not as in touch now as I was with the local music scene. And occasionally
a group will call on me to produce them, like Perry and the Poor Boys --
you ever heard of them? I produced an album for them a couple years ago.
They've done some touring in Russia, Estonia...they play places like that.
They're sorta a weird band. But they sensed in me a kindred spirit, so I
helped them produce their record, and will probably do another one for them
this year. Occasionally I get calls like that, but not very often. Unfortunately,
because I'd like to do that more.
RHL : There's something about your albums.... they're....well...not always
happy. Pleased, occasionally. But just about *never* flat-out happy. Is
it really *that* hard for the 77s to do a happy song?
MR : That's a really good question, but I don't think I can answer that
because I just don't think of that kind of thing when I come up with songs.
Usually, it's derived from how the music makes me feel. Sometimes, when
I'm working with one of the other guys' rhythm tracks, say, they've written
a whole series of chord changes with guitar lines and hooks. A lot of times
what I do is play their track over and over and sing nonsense words over
it, and sometimes phrases will come through that which will inspire me to
write the entire lyric around that idea. I don't feel I'm completely in
control of it. I can guide it and shape it, but if something comes out of
me then I just let it come out.
I have the feeling that part of it comes from the fact that we're going
through a lot of intense personal issues at one time. Certainly with Dave,
he was gravely ill. Being artists, we resonate emotionally to what's going
on around us so intensely, so it will be reflect in [the music]. I'm not
the kind to just sit down and write "happy, happy, I'm so happy".
Lyrics for me are more serious than they are jovial. Yet I would not want
them to be oppressive or depressing, but sometimes they might need to be
to bring that sort of thing out. [Such songs] tend to have a therapeutic
effect on the audience, where a lot of people are going through something
personally and it's a heavy thing, and I've been told that our songs have
helped them just from the fact that they can identify with the pain, that
someone else was going through it at the same time.
RHL : That sometimes shows up on this album, *Drowning With Land In Sight*.
MR : Right. It's probably the deepest and darkest of all the records. I'd
like to make a more positive record next time. It depends on the music itself,
too. There comes a point where you want to do something different. We've
talked lately about moving on somewhat from this kind of thing, to just
clean the slate musically and lyrically and start over, go into another
realm. I don't know what's going to happen, but I think there's going to
be a lot more talk and planning next time. Most of our albums tend to be
collections of songs rather than conceptual albums. That's the way most
great rock albums in the old days were done. I think it would be interesting
for us to just sit down and focus and say, 'we're gonna approach it from
this point of view', like, choose a theme, make real specific boundaries
and stay within them....well, mostly....I think it would be a good discipline
for us. But then, the group is a very populist, working-class group, it's
a lot more meat-and-potatoes, cheeseburger kind of band than it is this
artsy-fartsy thing. But we would like to do something more sophisticated
and artistic, but typically the group is more mainstream than that.
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(transcription incomplete. Will finish upon electronic fudging at WUSB studios.)