Jack: Hey, what's up guys? Thanks for joining me on my podcast.
Samara: Hi, Jack.
Bill: Hi, Jack.
Jack: Hey. So I've known both of you for over a decade at this point. I think, Bill, I met you 13 or 14 years ago in Western Mass, and Samara I met you probably 11 years, 2011?
Samara: Sounds right.
Jack: Yeah, also in Western Mass. I guess I'll start with you, Samara. What was your introduction to music? You have a pretty interesting history and a pretty special and unique upbringing in New York, so I'm really curious to hear more about that because you've told me a little bit about it, but I know it's pretty storied and stuff of legend.
Samara: Ooo! [laughter] I was raised by kind of hippie, very political types down in Soho in Manhattan. My father was a visual artist and my mom liked doing a lot of reading. They started me on violin when I was five and we lived in a massive loft, first on Spring Street, and then in '72 onward we lived on Broadway between Broome and Grand.
Jack: Wow, right there. That's amazing.
Samara: Yeah. They had a very social life. And it's interesting, Danny Kalb passed away a few days ago, he was the guitarist for the Blues Project.
Jack: Oh yeah, right. I saw that.
Samara: He had been the boyfriend of my mom's best friend for a while and I remember he would come over and play guitar and then my mom's best friend would play, "Diamonds and Rust," you know? Some Joan Baez.
Jack: Wow, yes.
Samara: But even then, I was just like, "Damn, this is really too precious for me." [laughter]
Bill: New York from the start!
Samara: All the hush, the quiet, the intensity, the depths. So, yeah, they got me started on violin lessons when I was five. And I had a very typical New York City experience - private lessons, but also playing instruments in school bands and doing the orchestras that were part of the education system. But always wanting to do the band thing, always listening to the radio and being more into that stuff and going to a lot of shows.
Jack: What kind of shows would you go to?
Samara: It depends on who I was just following around. But in junior high school there was an older guy who I befriended and we went and saw The Cure, in between Faith and Pornography over at what was then the Ritz.
Jack: Oh, wow. Where was that?
Samara: 12th between 3rd and 2nd.
Bill: That's Webster Hall now?
Samara: Yeah, exactly. I saw a lot of shows there. The Stranglers. Went to Danceteria, saw a ton of stuff there, the first NYC Fall gig, Einstürzende Neubauten.
Bill: Did you ever see Madonna hanging at Danceteria?
Samara: Maybe, but not that I recall. It was all pretty fluid back then. Iggy Pop at the Peppermint Lounge, the Cramps at the Peppermint Lounge all around '82, '83. Sometimes some hardcore stuff, went to a Black Flag gig at the Mudd Club very early, '81-ish, I think. Bad Brains at Irving Plaza. Loads and loads of stuff. And then started playing in a band I think around 17, around '84 or something like that.
Jack: Yeah, so what's up with that band? I think you've told me a little bit about that. Or maybe I've seen a photo of it online.
Bill: Is that Of A Mesh?
Samara: It is Of A Mesh. Well, I met some older hanger around types at Danceteria and I think back then the whole thing was if you could play an instrument, there was no reason to not be in a band. It was just in like that. So we did.
Bill: Back when you wanted to be in bands. [laughter]
Samara: Yeah. I don't know, it was also another gateway to an older world. I read a lot of Forced Exposure at that point and figured out how you can do this and make it work and would bring boxes to the post office for distro or Caroline Records was around the corner, I would bring them a box every once in a while and just consign. Actually Tower Records, weirdly enough, were the biggest seller of that stuff back then.
Jack: How did you put it out? On what medium, cassette?
Samara: No, two vinyl EPs.
Jack: Nice! I'm curious - whether or not this makes the final cut or not - what was the process back then of actually making the records, compared to now?
Samara: I don't know, it seemed to be about the same. Pretty straightforward. In terms of recording, we went to Martin Bisi's studio.
Jack: Oh, wow. That's crazy.
Samara: Yeah, everyone was older than me in the band and they were a bit more experienced. Our guitarist played with Glenn Branca, her name was Ellen Watkins. And the musicianship level looking back was kind of high, so they wanted to do a quality thing. So we worked with him, which was great.
Jack: That's amazing.
Samara: He used to have this couch in a slight alcove, and it was just all the records he'd worked on on the walls, which of course was very intimidating. But he's great to work with, of course.
Jack: For the record, can you think of some of the prominent records that he has recorded?
Samara: Yes, I remember them well. There was Nona Hendryx, a lot of Bill Laswell, some Live Skull, some Sonic Youth.
Jack: For those who don't know in radioland out there, legendary engineer.
Samara: Yeah, legendary and wonderful. Still going. So in terms of everything else, I can't remember how the layout was done. I feel like I did it by hand, mostly. My mom was working at a magazine at that point, and I think she helped me out. Someone in her production department helped me get the final imaging ready for production. But everything seemed really easy. And just like I said, reading Forced Exposure, it was pretty clear who the distros were at that time. I don't know, it was just an easy entry into how to take care of that stuff. And back then if you pressed a thousand, it was gone in a pretty short period of time.
Jack: God, another example of how things were a little different back then. [laughter]
Bill: Now you just sit on those forever and end up throwing them in the river and quit music.
Jack: Yeah, exactly. You make a hundred and you're lucky if you get rid of them. What did your parents think of this? Were they able to relate, being artists, to the downtown underground scene? Were they able to appreciate it, even if they weren't necessarily into the music, as an artful thing?
Samara: It was a little tricky at first. They had a pretty tough time with the teenage rebellion. They had been rebels, they had gone down to Mexico when I was just born to do drugs and, you know, wear hippie clothes, whatever. But when my dark side came out, they really couldn't deal with it. It took them a long time to get a grip on it.
Jack: That's so funny.
Samara: Right? The irony. But ultimately we played out a lot; we played at CBGB's a ton, we played at Danceteria, we played at Irving Plaza, and I think my parents, when they saw how much work I was putting into it, really kind of came around and were very supportive.
Jack: That's great.
Samara: Ultimately, yeah. I do remember though, when the Clash played at Bonds, they did that series of gigs...
Jack: The legendary gigs, in Times Square or something?
Samara: Exactly. For some fucked up reason, my dad let me get on line overnight. I just turned 14.
Jack: 14! Oh my God! [laughter]
Samara: Yeah. Little chicky. And they let me do it, so I got to see a couple of those shows.
Jack: So how long did that band continue? How old were you when it started?
Samara: I was 17. I think I was 21 when I was like, "No, I can't do any more."
Jack: After the dissolution of that band, where did that take you?
Samara: I finished up college.
Jack: Where did you go?
Samara: I went to Hunter College. I didn't like it, but I did it for my mom and she's left me the fuck alone ever since I graduated. [laughter]
Jack: That's great. And you finished, which is also not a not an entirely common thing in our community, you know?
Samara: That's right. Thurston [Moore] said... What did he say? "Graduating college is for losers, real rockers don't graduate." [laughter]
Jack: Damn it!
Samara: Yeah, too late. So I fucked around New York, but it was kind of a weird time there. I couldn't really find people to play with. I don't know. So I split town.
Jack: This is the early '90s, late '80s?
Samara: Exactly, end of '91. And that's when I met this band called Metabolismus. I split town and went to Europe.
Jack: That's a long term collaboration for you.
Samara: Long, long, in many ways. I've recorded almost every single solo record, partly or wholly at their place, their studio.
Jack: They have a crazy studio, right? Where are they based?
Samara: They're in this tiny village called Degenfeld, but it's outside of Stuttgart, in southwest Germany. They were a big deal for me because it was improvising, or jamming, in a rock context. Jamming not to write a song, but jamming as music in itself. That was the first time I experienced that. So it was a mind blower.
Jack: Were they connected to a larger underground scene there?
Samara: I think there was a deep love among the whole crew for '60s music, and I think that's because there was a real lack of stuff going on. The obvious reference is 39 Clocks or something like that. But because there was an American base really close by, I think in Göppingen, along with the largest heroin problem in all of Europe, there was lots of records and American culture and they were just all over that shit.
Jack: Yeah, I guess they probably go hand in hand sometimes. I don't know if that happens anymore with so much widely available culture online that's so decentralized. That's a blast from the past, that that's how they got exposure in the '80s, even before.
Samara: Totally, a very particular thing. And also, weirdly enough, their anti-imperialism hadn't kicked in yet. Werner, one of their members, told me they'd have German-American Friendship Day when the tanks would roll through the town and they were just like, "Yeah!!! Yeah!!!" [laughter] Loved it, loved it.
Jack: Yeah, again, I guess it hadn't really rolled over yet into our current moment. How long were you over there before you came back to the States?
Samara: First time was eight months, I think. Something like that. I don't know, I was just super turned on. Came back to New York, started Pacer. Didn't start it, joined it, or formed it with others and then did Hall of Fame.
Jack: I actually don't know Pacer. What is Pacer?
Samara: It's just, like, indie rock. [laughter]
Jack: Right. Well, yeah, cue a Pacer track.
Samara: We released a 10", but the thing that was really interesting is we were good friends with James Murphy at that time, so we recorded at a very early version of his Plantain Studio.
Jack: Oh, that's funny. I don't really know his history, that's cool. This is mid '90s? At this point we're fully in the middle of it.
Samara: Yeah, maybe '93.
Jack: Oh okay, I didn't realize his roots go earlier than I would have expected to '92 or '93. That's cool.
Samara: Yeah, he had this band called Pony that would play around. I thought they were very charming. I liked them early on.
Jack: Hall of Fame is probably one of the projects that you're best known for or most associated with. Could you talk about how you got started?
Samara: I met Dan Brown via Pacer, he was in Pacer.
Jack: Ah okay, so a little bit of a precursor group.
Samara: Exactly. And we met via this drummer Laura Cromwell, who was really deep in that first wave Knitting Factory scene. But we really gelled, always massive chemistry with that guy. And when Pacer broke up, I was like, "Let's do this." And really just clicked. Still does, we’re super tight. And then Theo Angell moved to New York and he joined and made it a trio.
Jack: Did you guys tour? I assume you did.
Samara: Not a lot. We went down to Virginia. The final tour was with Heathen Shame and Double Leopards.
Bill: Yes!
Jack: I just played in Providence a couple of days ago and Greg [Kelley] rolled down. I hadn't seen Greg since he lived in Seattle for years.
Bill: Greg's the best.
Samara: Yeah, he's the best.
Jack: He's one of the greatest ever.
Bill: Heathen Shame is one of my favorite bands.
Jack: I was recalling seeing Heathen Shame at the Hampshire dining commons in 2008. [laughter]
Bill: Oh yeah, I was at that gig.
Jack: What year do you think that was? The last tour with Heathen Shame.
Samara: 2002.
Jack: Okay, cool. What year did you start Hall of Fame?
Samara: I'm pretty sure it's '96.
Jack: So you had a pretty decent run. And within that six year span that was the coalescing of a larger U.S. music scene awareness.
Samara: Obviously, Tower Recordings was a big one, but there were not that many. No-Neck Blues Band was a big deal for me, we did shows with them or I'd set up shows with them. But that was pretty disparate. But the thing that you were saying about the coalescing, in 2002, part of that tour was the first De Stijl fest.
Jack: Right, okay, this was something that I was like, "Oh, I kind of know a little bit about that." And I remember you saying this was the thing that connected all of these people.
Samara: It was! Yeah, it was incredible.
Jack: Could you talk a little bit about that?
Samara: So it was De Stijl and Freedom From. So you have Michael Yonkers, you have Double Leopards, you have Hall of Fame, you have...
Bill: Son of Earth.
Jack: Shout out.
Bill: Hair Police.
Samara: Nautical Almanac, Hair Police, Wolf Eyes, Charalambides.
Jack: Were you aware of some of these other people you hadn't met from the Midwest or from New England?
Samara: I was aware of everyone, but I hadn't met Charalambides before.
Jack: Yeah, which is a big, important connection.
Samara: Yeah, I knew their stuff from Siltbreeze, they were awesome live. Really blew my mind. But prior to that, it was actually the Amish record label that put together a night and was the first time Tower Recordings and Hall of Fame played together. And we immediately bonded with Matt Valentine and we started working together. That would have been like around '96, a good bit earlier than the Freedom From festival.
Jack: Hall of Fame and Tower Recordings started sort of around the same time.
Samara: Yeah, Tower I recall was slightly older. They were very well-established and I was always an auxiliary member. I thought of their real strength being these three songwriters, but all having a love of similar music.
Jack: Who were those songwriters?
Samara: It was PG Six, Helen Rush and Matt Valentine.
Jack: Yep, totally. So then that Amish showcase was the first time you met those guys and played with Tower.
Samara: But they lived in the next neighborhood over, so a lot of socializing, a lot of 4-track playing at home.
Jack: Where did you live and where did they live? Maybe this won't be as interesting for everyone else, but I'm very curious about it.
Samara: I'm over on Ridge between Stanton and Rivington in the Lower East Side. I've been in this neighborhood or the East Village since the late '80s, and I've been in the same place since the '90s. And they were over in the East Village, I think on 3rd Street, so just a short walk over.
Jack: At that time, so this is like '96, '97, did you feel like you were part of a larger context for what you were making?
Samara: I did not. I don't know, like I said, we found out about Tower, which we had a strong connection to, and there was No-Neck. But we felt very isolated otherwise, which I'm going to defend as a positive in that it allowed us to just not be distracted by what other people were doing or desirous of what other people were achieving and just allowed us to do our thing. We set up a 4-track in one of the rooms of the places we lived in and just recorded constantly.
Jack: I mean, obviously you guys - you specifically, I know - were aware of a history of downtown New York music and scene. You felt like you were on your own doing it at least before meeting maybe Tower and No-Neck, etc., but did you feel like there was a scene that existed but you were not a part of it? Or there was a larger scene or something that you didn't feel like you fit into rather than just there being nothing and you didn't have anyone.
Samara: The strongest connection I felt was obviously to Metabolismus, and that was huge, but they were very isolated as well - it's a very social thing, but I think we were at that age where we kind of wanted to have blinders on and just do our thing. I was not aware... I mean, even when we talk about the Freedom From thing, a lot of those bands, none of them are exactly the same. It's a pretty wide range aesthetic. And what brings them all together? Why those bands? I don't know. Is it open-mindedness? Is it an awareness of music through the ages? I'm not really sure, but when we met Tower, that was a really big deal because it was a strong, like... Okay, we think the same and our approach is the same musically.
Jack: Totally. So Siltbreeze is obviously an important touchstone there because you guys both had records on that. And Tom started that in 1991 or something. Does that sound right? Did that feel like there was some sort of thing there? I guess at that point it would have been, like, the Shadow Ring, Dead C, etc. Did you feel like that was some sort of generating context?
Samara: Yeah, the big connection there was with Un, obviously. Marcia and I connected and stayed very connected. They also were in that whole vibe and she had been already playing with Matt Valentine. And she befriended me pretty quickly, I think the first time we played Philly or the second time, Hall of Fame did. That was definitely the first opening up of things. But, then I also had this other world going a little bit with the Sonora Pine and doing a lot touring with that. There's this underground thing that we've been speaking about, and then there's this kind of other thing that's going on at the same time, that's still pretty underground, actually.
Jack: Do you want to just talk a little bit about that, since we haven't maybe really talked about that side?
Samara: Tara Jane O'Neil moved to New York and because of Pacer, the woman she was seeing at the time, Cynthia Nelson from Ruby Falls, introduced us because she thought I'd be good for Tara. And initially we did Dan from Hall of Fame playing drums, and I played bass with her and Sean [Meadows], and did a show. It just wasn't really clicking and then I started playing violin and it immediately clicked.
Jack: Who else was in that band? It was... He was in Lungfish, the guitarist?
Samara: Yeah, Sean Meadows. It was originally Sean and Tara's thing, and then Kevin [Coultas], the drummer from Rodan, as well.
Jack: So that opens your story up to this whole other wide mid-'90s kind of scene.
[The Tower Recordings "Probe Throwed Up A Skin Tower"]
Jack: Bill, how did you get into music? What was your early experience with music, with your family, with everything? And how did you come around?
Bill: I think my story couldn't be more opposite of Samara's. [laughter] She had so much access, it seems, and my thing was more finding stuff... My mom was a nun before she had me.
Jack: Wow, okay. Talk about context!
Bill: Yeah, for five or six years. My dad was in the seminary before they got together and then they both left and got into education. My mom taught in a pretty pretty poor district in Jersey and my dad worked in a high school in Jersey.
Jack: Where in Jersey?
Bill: My mom was out kind of near Vincentown, out near Fort Dix Army Base. And then my dad was in Mount Holly, kind of like Exit 5 off the turnpike. So, yeah, it's the same story every time, but an early musical experience is definitely hearing the Ad Libs "Boy from New York City" in my uncle Vince and aunt Tish's van up in North Philly. I wasn't really exposed to much in terms of family or where I lived. I didn't have a car until I was 17 or 18, so getting to Philly involved a lot of begging for rides or friends or whatever. And Philly wasn't, at the time, great for all-ages gigs.
Jack: Right, yeah. So because of where in Jersey you grew up, Philly was the city rather than New York.
Bill: Yeah, definitely. My whole family's from Philly and then I grew up kind of outside of it. Pretty opposite from Samara's experience. Mine was more finding little breadcrumb trails, you know, little pictures of bands in a magazine. There's something really great about not knowing exactly what something is. So I always liked music growing up and then around middle school, I was starting to get into more like R.E.M., shit like that. Because I was from Jersey, when I was ten I liked hair metal.
Jack: Yeah, that shows. [laughter]
Bill: Yeah, "Duh!" Then when I was 12, that started changing. Another big moment was this kid, Charles Harper - his nickname was Fati - came over with the first Corrosion of Conformity on cassette and It Takes a Nation of Millions. The way that that experience felt was kind of one that I would feel again over the next few years, where it wasn't like I heard it and was like, "Oh, I love this." I was like, "What the fuck is this?" And when you have that, your world starts getting a little bigger, you know? And I was like, I don't even know what this is, so I really have to engage with this. And then I had an older cousin who got me into, like, Joy Division and shit and that was huge. And she got me into Sonic Youth. Then through that, I just kind of... You know, once I had a few pieces, coupled with I started to send them away for catalogs all the time.
Jack: Yeah, totally. What catalogs would you get?
Bill: Definitely Dischord. Especially when you could send the extra three stamps in and get the illustrated catalog, which was all the photos. Noise catalogs, like Very Friendly and stuff like that I would get. I told [Aaron] Dilloway this recently, I didn't know that Stomach Ache was just a bootleg thing, and I sent a fucking letter to that Mexican address on the record. [laughter]
Jack: Oh my god. Yeah, there's some small village or whatever and they're like, "What is this?"
Bill: Yeah, because I heard the Church Police 7", so I sent off for that and never got anything back. [laughter]
Jack: You're like, "I'm still waiting for that, man..."
Bill: I was like, "What the fuck?" But even Matador at the time had a cool catalog because they carried a lot then, a lot of the Atavistic stuff that was a lot of reissues, I got a lot of Sun Ra through that. So really just anything, Smells Like Records, because it was in Jersey. That was another thing, did you ever hear this band Flowchart?
Jack: Sounds familiar, but I can't say I have.
Bill: They were actually from my town, which, if you knew my town, for me and my friends was absolutely mind blowing, that not only was there a band from our town, but that the guy ran a label. It was just absolutely mind blowing. And he was more on the other, like... Jessamine and stuff like that, but I ended up playing with them for a little bit, so my first gigs in New York were with them at Brownies. We opened for Chris Knox.
Samara: Wow.
Bill: And then one with the Coctails. I wasn't a Coctails fan, but it was the same thing with them. Same thing with, like... I had this bass teacher at the time. All those people talked to me like I was like a person or a peer, which I think was the most punk rock thing, I really got a lot out of that. That was huge, it made it feel this kind of open thing, there wasn't a lot of gatekeeper-y kind of shit in terms of that. And I was really into hardcore at the time, but I didn't like whatever the current iteration of that in Jersey was.
Jack: Yeah, like youth crew?
Bill: I hated that shit, it felt super jock-y and lame and just didn't have whatever element... You know, and that could have just been me again projecting onto history.
Jack: I mean, I think there's a clear division from '81 hardcore and, like, '91 hardcore.
Bill: Totally, totally. And this guy played me a lot of shit I'd never heard, like Neu!, Faust, all the krautrock shit, when I was, like, 15. And it was mind-blowing. So I think this kind of thing developed where all the energy that I got from being into punk and stuff like that, whatever the modern version of that was, I just thought was so lame. So I kind of ended up trying to find that. in other places.
Jack: You already, at that high school age, were like, "This sucks." Like, "This version of it sucks."
Bill: Yeah, like, "I like Minor Threat, but I don't like whatever this shit is." I heard my first noise thing and, like, [John] Coltrane around the same time, and it just started kind of, like...
Jack: This is early '90s at this point.
Bill: Early to mid '90s, yeah. But yeah, I was in a couple bands in high school with the same group of people.
Jack: Were you sharing that with those guys or was that more of a personal thing?
Bill: Yeah, I was sharing it.
Jack: Were they getting into it also?
Bill: Here and there. I always wanted it to be noisier. I always wanted it to be more experimental. My friend was really into pop. I heard Beat Happening and stuff and I played it for him and was like, "Dude, check this out. This guy can barely sing." And he got so into it, he took the ball and fucking ran with it. He ended up making a couple kind of free pop records for Blackbean and Placenta. Remember that label? So, yeah, I was sharing it, but I think we were still, even with that, getting into different elements of it. Then in '95 I moved to Boston and met John Truscinski. I put up a sign looking for someone to play with. [laughter]
Jack: Wow, that’s so funny. What brought you to Boston in the first place?
Bill: My friend was going and I had no fucking idea what I wanted to do, but I knew I just wanted to get out of Jersey. I wanted to think about what I wanted to do somewhere else. And I just wanted to experience some life and just get the fuck out, you know? It was a very impulsive move, I knew I really didn't have an idea. I did want to play music, but I also wasn't convinced yet that that was like something I could do.
Jack: Like a viable thing.
Bill: Yeah. So I was still hesitant about it, you know? Oh, and I went to S.F. in between.
Samara: How long?
Bill: I was in S.F. for a year.
Samara: Wow.
[Samara Lubelski & Bill Nace "Spiral Reflector"]
Bill: Boston was cool because not only did I work at Rounder Records, the label, but I also discovered Twisted Village.
Jack: I was about to say, Wayne [Rogers] and Kate [Biggar], at what point did you meet those guys?
Bill: Well, I worked with this guy Christian, who was in this band, Juneau, with Marc Orleans.
Jack: Oh damn.
Samara: Whoa.
Bill: And they were a fucking great band. But like Samara was saying about Metabolismus, I was 18 at the time and the band I was in Boston with John and a couple of other friends was getting this idea of wanting to improvise, but still in more of a rock context. And Juneau just did that and nailed it, so they were a huge, big band for us. And then dipping into Twisted Village was amazing.
Jack: Yeah, for sure. So then at that point - this is, like, '95 - was Sunburned [Hand of the Man] going at that point? Had they started yet?
Bill: Sunburned was going, yeah. I don't know if it was still Shit Spangled Banner.
Jack: Right, right. Did you meet those guys then or did you know later on?
Bill: Later on. I met Paul LaBrecque and Paul's brother and there was this other guy I worked with, Chris Lichatz at Rounder.
Jack: Yeah, I've heard that name before.
Bill: He did that project Foom, a couple of things on RRR. So he turned me on to some shit. But I would just go see anything I could go see. I saw Thinking Fellers Union, I just saw so much shit up there, it was amazing. And then I moved to S.F. I feel like everything pre Western Mass was. kind of me just collecting ideas. I wasn't sure about it. I was kind of uncomfortable in my own skin. In S.F. I wasn't making any music. I moved out there on the bus with a bag of clothes, that's it.
Jack: Oh God, that's brutal.
Bill: Then I came back to Western Mass. I had lived in Olympia for a summer and it was the first time the idea of a small town was ever appealing to me. And my friend was in Western Mass and was like, "Come back, we'll get a basement, we'll play, etc." That's how I came back to Western Mass. The beginning of that was I was playing a lot, things were cool, but it wasn't until I moved to England for a year, that I got, like... I don't know what the word is, but I came back from England ready to fucking go, really just fully committed. Like, not only is this what I want to do, but this is how I want to live. I think a lot of that was like. You know, I met up with Dylan [Nyoukis] and Karen [Constance], I actually lived with them for a little, and they were just so supportive. I started drawing when I lived over there, I had never drawn before. It could just be the most ridiculous thing and they're like, "Yeah, cool. Keep doing it." I think I needed that just to let the fucking steam out a little because there was no precedent, there's no one in my family that was doing music. There was all this pressure of like, I'm doing this thing, I don't even know if I'm allowed to do or whatever. But I needed that a little to just say, "Fuck it." And then when I got back from that, I was like, "Alright, let's go."
Jack: To locate this in the history, what year did you move to S.F.?
Bill: S.F. was '97, '98. I moved to Western Mass in '99.
Jack: And then you moved to England a year or two later?
Bill: 2002, yeah.
Jack: So you were there for a year and then came back?
Bill: Yeah.
Jack: This is obviously, for me, of personal interest because we met each other when I was at Hampshire College as a freshman in 2008. And sort of knowing it was this storied place, Thurston and Kim [Gordon] bought a place there in the mid '90s.
Bill: '99.
Jack: Oh, wow, I thought it was a little early.
Bill: A lot of people all went there in, like, '98, '99.
Jack: Yeah, totally. What year did [Chris] Corsano start?
Bill: '98, I think.
Jack: So he's an early adopter. How long had Byron [Coley] been there for? A while, right?
Bill: Byron may have been there earlier because I think he was pitching the idea of that area for Kim and Thurston. I think he had already been there for a little bit.
Jack: He had scoped it out. And then, of course, the originator in many ways: J [Mascis], who grew up in Amherst.
Bill: I do think there is overlap, obviously, but when I moved there... Yes, I think there's a thread between this weirdo thing, but when I moved there it was the remnants of Dino/Pixies stuff. It was kind of just bar bands and shit. The scene that's there now really didn't exist
Jack: Stuff that wasn't bands, not just rock music or whatever.
Bill: Yes. All these people moved there at once and the scene just kind of sprang up. It was pretty amazing.
Jack: That's really interesting. Maybe we can talk about that for a little bit, you being there and having moved there initially at the beginning of that movement. What did you see being like the catalyst for that? Why did so many people move there?
Bill: I think it was just slow going. I mean, in some ways, it's a very easy place to live. And obviously the school thing.
Jack: There's a constant influx of younger people, and artists coming by.
Bill: To me it was also a lot of threads coming together at once. I think from the outside there's this notion that because Kim and Thurston lived there...
Jack: That was the driving factor.
Bill: Yeah, but that's not personally how I see it. There were so many other things already, you had like Matt Weston and Helen and [Chris] Cooper booking at the old Flywheel. Then you had Matt [Krefting] and all of them doing Hampshire. When Kim and Thurston first moved there they would kind of dip their toe in. It would still be awkward at a gig because everyone would be trying to pretend they didn't know it was them, you know, it would be like, "Uh..." [laughter] And then everyone just got comfortable was like, "Whatever." But there were a bunch of people already doing their own thing and I think it was more all of that shit all coalescing at once.
Jack: I forgot that, of course, Chris Cooper and Jess Goddard, who both played in Caroliner in the '90s...
Bill: And Deerhoof.
Jack: Of course, founding members. That's a whole other thread; you probably didn't meet them in S.F., they might have already moved at that point.
Bill: They had already moved. It's weird because I met Chris and Jess pretty early on, through not even through music, but through someone I worked with at the movie theater, because I used to work at Pleasant Street. I remember Jack was like, "Oh, Chris plays guitar too," and Chris was like, "Electronics!" [laughter] But yeah, to me it was more about a bunch of things coming together at once. I do think those guys doing Fat Worm, in my mind there was something really congealing about that.
Jack: That's really cool to hear because I remember my high school noise rock band played with Fat Worm [of Error] in 2007, before I got into Hampshire and I was like, "Yeah, I think I want to go to Hampshire." And they were like, "Dude, you should do it, for sure." [laughter] I loved that band, I loved Fat Worm at that time.
Bill: Great band!
Jack: Fucking great band. For me personally, that was a huge thing, aside from knowing Thurston was there.
Bill: There was a lot of other stuff, same with Chris and Paul [Flaherty], and then me, Jake and John started doing X.O.4. So I think there was a lot of stuff at once of people just really throwing down, like Son of Earth, and each thing was its own thing. That's one thing I love about Western Mass, and I would leave this to Samara, but I think New York has a bit of this too, if only by default because it's so fucking big, but no one really does genre in Western Mass. Even the noise stuff, it's not, like, a table top noise guy pumping his fists in the air, nothing wrong with that, but it's, like, whether they want to do it or they just can't do it. [laughter]
Jack: There's something to be uncovered there.
Bill: There's not really a genre thing in the scene there, totally across the board, the noise stuff, the bands, the folky stuff, whatever, which I think was for me. It finally was like, okay, this makes sense, this is cool, you know?
Jack: Totally.
Samara: I was going to say, Byron was a really big deal because people knew he was doing bootleg records, he did that early No-Neck record. But the legend of the store was a really big deal for New Yorkers because he was such a head, you know? And for a lot of us, he symbolized Northampton.
Jack: Yeah, the Yod space.
Bill: Oh, yeah. Yod was like, "What is this?" And you need to make an appointment. The idea of making an appointment to go to a store, you're like, "What?" I remember there was a Dunkin Donuts on King Street and it was the only old one left and it always made me think of that old Black Flag photo where they're sitting at Dunkin Donuts, it still had that old diner counter. We used to hang out there at night and I remember walking in there once and just hearing this voice talking about Stooges demos.
Jack: And you're like, "There's only one person this could be."
Bill: And it was Thurston. I remember he had a suit jacket with the elbow patches and we were like, "What the fuck?" [laughter]
Jack: College Thurston.
Bill: It was amazing.
Samara: Hall of Fame played at Yod in 2002 and he made us play in front of this massive wall of records. And you just felt the weight of musical history was going to fall on you while you're playing.
Jack: Physically and emotionally.
Samara: Yes.
Bill: I think it was a lot of that, like I said, a lot of stuff at once. It was Yod, Hampshire, anyone else doing house gigs. Also all those Actuel records were starting to get reissued at that point, which was huge for me. Michael Ehlers was doing Fire in the Valley, the only other place you saw those gigs was New York, maybe. So to me, it was a lot of things at once and then how that inspired people to do their own thing, you know, "Well, I'm going to have my thing." You know, I had the Eleven's thing for like almost 10 years.
Jack: Oh yeah, of course.
Bill: And so and so had this, you know. And everyone kind of was inspired to have their own little corner of that. But to me they all existed in relation to each other.
Jack: But no one was doing the same thing.
Bill: Right, no. I always wanted a context. I didn't necessarily want to be part of a scene per se, but I think having a context like that, I was always reading about punk and hardcore when I was younger. I think the regional aspect of it was always so exciting to me and I think moving there and getting to experience a bit of that, a lot of it pre-internet I think was, like...
Jack: You can't buy that shit, you know?
Samara: No.
Bill: What I do is inextricably linked to that place.
[Bill Nace Solo Guitar "Side A"]
Jack: How did you find your first gigs, going to shows in Western Mass? Well, first of all, what were some of the first "weird" shows that you saw in Western Mass?
Bill: Fuck... I mean, there was definitely a whole scene that was still kind of a slight leftover. We were talking about '90s bands, but kind of mixed with weirder stuff. So there were still a lot of house shows that would have that. The Hampshire thing to me was a little more focused.
Jack: Yeah, that's interesting.
Bill: I mean, I can tell you the first show I booked there, which was my friend Jason that I told you had the record on Blackbean and Placenta. And then I want to say it was Magik Markers' first or second show when they were called Black & Blue Magik Markers. It was just Elisa Ambrogio and Pete [Nolan] duo, and I remember they set up all this shit, it took forever to set up, like, a vacuum tube with, like, this suitcase and shit. [laughter] And then they played for, like, 5 minutes. And I was like, "What the fuck?!" [laughter] I felt like I had this time to fill and I was like, "Holy shit, you can play longer if you want." They were like, "Nah, that's it." And then I think John and I played duo and that was X.O.4. as it was a duo first.
Jack: So then when did you meet, like, Corsano? Because then that's a whole wing of your musical past.
Bill: No, I'll say this: the first gig I booked was at the fucking bowling alley.
Jack: Oh man.
Bill: And it was a band I had with Jake, John and this guy, Sean Matteo, that I grew up with, who I was in my high school bands with. He lives up in Rhode Island now. And I remember seeing Chris around and he was doing the monochromatic thing, because he used to dress all one color. And I saw him and I thought it was because he was a Domino's delivery guy. [laughter] Because he had all blue on. But I used to see him at Hugo's all the time playing pool. So we ended up just shooting the shit with him and asked him to play this gig that we were booking. And he's like, "Yeah, what do you want me to do, solo or?" I was like, "Yeah, whatever." So it was, like, him, Paul and he's like, "Yeah, book it as me and Paul Flaherty and 'Mirror Moore.'" Thinking of the Sister record where it says "Mirror Moore," and I was like, "That's fucking Thurston." And I remember Thurston had a Seals & Crofts shirt on, which I thought was so... [laughter] I was like, "What?"
Jack: Oh man, that's classic.
Bill: That may have been the first gig we all booked as a band and where we were kind of interacting with him, and then him and John T started playing a little together. And then me, John T and Pete Nolan were jamming for a bit. That was called the Stabs, we only did one gig with that. We played a bunch and then out of that Chris and I started playing duo.
Jack: Oh, amazing. When did you guys meet each other? Do you remember that?
Bill: Me and Samara?
Jack: Yeah.
Samara: We were debating this recently. I say it's the Ecstatic Peace showcase at South by Southwest.
Bill: Maybe.
Jack: What year was that?
Samara: I don't know, but I distinctly remember Bill during the Sightings set. [laughter]
Bill: What was I doing?
Samara: You were enjoying it. [laughing]
Bill: I was always getting a pit going for Sightings! Like, the only guy.
Jack: The best band in New York.
Bill: I love those guys.
Jack: So it was the Ecstatic Peace showcase or what?
Bill: I thought it was that or I thought, okay, there was a weird time where I was not really living anywhere and so if I was in town, Thurston would let me stay at their place. Samara was there, I think working on something with him, and we watched a movie together. To me, whether it was the first time we met, I do think it was the first time we hung out.
Samara: Yeah, we watched the Holy Modal Rounders documentary.
Jack: Yeah, classic.
Bill: And then I can't even remember, though, the first I think the first time we played was...
Samara: I think it was that recording in Thurston's basement, no?
Bill: Whatever happened with that?
Samara: Justin [Pizzoferrato] has them.
Bill: We did a trio opening for Lou [Barlow] in Northampton.
Samara: Yes.
Bill: We got applauded offstage. [laughter]
Samara: It was terrible, truly awful. So bad.
Bill: People were, like, done with it and they were just like, [applause].
Jack: That's the most humiliating way, it's worse than booing, clapping over you.
Bill: Lou liked it! Lou came out and he just said, "I really like that kind of stuff, guys."
Samara: I've done that before.
Bill: And Jake, was there in the audience, and I came out, and the guy next to Jake was like, "What is this, Thurston's fucking autistic friend?" [laughter]
Samara: It was truly awful.
Jack: Oh no! Where was that show?
Bill: The Calvin. Academy of Music? No, the Calvin. I don't even remember when the first duo gig was.
Jack: But you guys have been doing stuff as a duo for a while.
Bill: We've been playing together, but I think the duo was when I got back from L.A., so, like, eight years ago.
Samara: Not totally sure what Thurston's motivation was, but he did a few shows as a quartet with me, Bill, Mary Lattimore and him, and we did Philly, New York... Where else do we do, Bill?
Bill: Philly, New York... Oh, Northampton! One was at my Eleven's night.
Samara: I always wondered if it was a way of breaking Mary into improv because they were straight improv.
Bill: Thurston and I played some show in Manhattan to kids, it was, like, to little kids. It ruled.
Jack: Whoa, amazing.
Bill: And Mary was set up at the door playing as the kids came in, she would play and then we played. And there was a point where we were sound checking and she was just playing, I think, and no one was listening to each other because we weren't playing together. And it sounded really cool. And I think that kind of planted the seed. But then it was weird because we went to do those gigs, stopped at Feeding Tube when it was on King Street and [John] Moloney was there, and Moloney ended up just hopping in with us for the gigs. And then that pretty much became, minus me, the band. So I have to wonder, because with Thurston, the gears are always turning. So I wondered if that was a way to road test, I don't know, you guys hanging out or playing or whatever the fuck, because it was pretty soon after that that became the band.
Samara: Well, I'd already been working with them on the previous record.
Jack: Was that Trees Outside the Academy?
Samara: Yeah.
Jack: That's interesting, though, because that's my intro also. That was the band that I started doing sound for. Moloney roped me into that and was like, "You want to go on tour with us?"
Samara: You did the Demolished Thoughts band?
Jack: Yeah!
Samara: Wow, cool.
Jack: Yeah, I did the last tour with Mary.
Samara: Oh, whoa.
Jack: Yeah. Obviously we've been mentioning Thurston and Kim the whole night, but that's obviously a big, huge part in all of our lives.
Samara: But it is the thing that connects us.
Jack: Yeah, totally.
Samara: And me and Jack.
Bill: I like to think we would have played anyway.
Samara: Yeah, I like to think so.
Jack: I'm sure that would have happened, no doubt. Just with even what you guys do on your own or with other people It's like a very natural to me. It's a very natural pairing. Well, I'm curious, Bill, talking about the Sonic Youth connection, I know the Thurston connection, but how did you and Kim start playing together, actually?
Bill: Oh God, I'm trying to remember. I do remember the first time Thurston introduced me to Kim, which was at the Red Barn. I think it was one of the Gladtree fests. He was just like, "Oh, have you ever met Kim?" I was like, "No." And then he just walked away. [laughter]
Jack: Oh, yeah, great. Sparks fly. [laughter]
Bill: It was two shy people, like, just sitting. And she had a flask and was like, "Do you want a sip of whiskey?" Like, "Yeah." [laughter]
Jack: That's pretty cool.
Bill: And then we kind of became friends. We just became friends first. I remember we went to see fucking It's Complicated with Steve Martin and Meryl Streep, in the movie theater, like, a matinee or some shit. So we started just hanging out first. Then I would go over there a lot to hang and then, everyone says this, like, "Oh, we played and we didn't think it was for anyone," but we really weren't... We would just play in the basement and press record and didn't really think of it as anything. Do you remember Sarah Jaffe who lived in Western Mass?
Jack: Oh, yeah, totally.
Bill: I did gigs with her, we played once, the three of us. So it's kind of just loose like that. And then me, Kim and Thurston started doing trio gigs here and there. So it'd be, like, Mirror Dash with me or just Northampton Wools with Kim, whatever. We just liked playing with each other in the basement. She had a gig in France, in Paris? Or no, sorry, before that Thurston found one of those tapes we had done in the basement and thought it was Leslie Keffer and wrote her and was like, "Oh, man, I really like this new tape." And she's like, "Oh, cool. You're okay with all the beats and stuff?" And he's like, "What beats? What are you talking about?" [laughter] And it was us. So we ended up coming up with a band name for it. And then fast forward to the thing in Paris.That was the start of it, and then it just snowballed from there, but really became a band on the road because the thing in the basement was so loose with no really no sense of identity whatsoever. I'd be curious to hear some of those shows from that first tour on the two weeks, because I bet some of them are whatever, and maybe some are cool. But it really became a band on tour. It's cool, you really learn fast what works and what doesn't.
Jack: Oh yeah, road testing something is really, no matter how much shit you do at home... Road testing is the only way.
Bill: Well, we didn't have that time where you get to get in your own head and have this idea what the band should be and all this shit.
Jack: Yeah, it's just whatever works. I mean, you have to conceptualize it to some extent, but it's just, like, what works, works.
Bill: Exactly. Well, it's still us. So that was kind of the first, and then it just snowballed from there. And we were like, let's make a record but there were really never plans, you know? It was just, like, anything.
Jack: It happened and it worked well enough on tour that you were like, "Let's do more."
Bill: Yeah, let's do a record, let's tour more, let's do another record. Kind of like anything else that I've done.
Jack: You know what? I think we got everything we needed. Thank you guys so much.
Bill: Thanks, Jack!
Samara: Thank you!
Jack: Yeah, I'll talk to you guys soon and I'll see you in the emails.
