LOU BARLOW

Sundance Channel: So Lou, where are you right now?

Lou Barlow: I’m in Ann Arbor, Michigan in a Best Western hotel just off of 85 and 94.

SC: How far into the tour with Dinosaur Jr. are you?

Lou Barlow: Oh, we have a lot left. I think we’re probably four weeks into it; probably could be called a world tour. We’ll be at the end of the touring cycle a year from now.

SC: So after this US leg of the tour, you’re going worldwide?

Lou Barlow: Yes, I think we go from Nashville to London and then do a little jumping around Europe. Hopefully I’ll be able to marry my sister in Massachusetts in July……then we resume European touring.

SC: Will you be the presiding “reverend” at your sister’s wedding?

Lou Barlow: I guess so.

SC: An internet “reverend”?

Lou Barlow: No, but I filled out some kind of official Commonwealth of Massachusetts forms to be a one-day minister - so that’s kind of the plan.

SC: Very nice. OK - back to the interview. Are there any plans for another Dinosaur Jr. record?

Lou Barlow: There are no plans for it yet. I think that we very seriously have to take this one step at a time. I’ve got a lot of things that I could be doing other than Dinosaur Jr.. On certain days I feel a really strong pull - like I wish I had more control of our stuff and I wish I was playing my own songs all the time. But I’m very dedicated to this project. You just never know when they could conspire to make another Dinosaur Jr. record. We’ll have to wait and see.

SC: If I asked you two years ago about the possibility of the original line up of Dinosaur Jr. touring and recording a new record – would you have said “no way”?

Lou Barlow: Exactly. I actually would have said definitely not. We would never do another record and I would have been very, very proud of myself, very assured in saying that……..but of course that wasn’t the case.

SC: How did the writing process for the new record Beyond come about and how was if different from the last time the original line up last recorded back in ‘88?

Lou Barlow: J has nine songs on the record and I have two - it really seems like a very different writing processes. J comes from a drumming background and he sort of had these loose demos which he then presented to Murph (drummer). Then it was onto the job of Murph learning how to play the drum parts that J wrote. They’re very different drummers so it’s a pretty difficult task for a drummer to learn. The early days of recording were spent just getting the basic architecture of the drums down. Then I put bass parts on the songs and if J saw them fitting melodically in the song - we’d try to keep them. Otherwise, J might sort of fine tune what I was playing - but there wasn’t really a whole lot of discussion going on. J is not a real communicator when it comes to a lot of things. Getting to know J again, I found that he is a very honest person and he’s very intelligent. But when it comes to writing songs, it’s a little tough to get a momentum out of him. But having said that, that’s the way it has always been and if it was any different, it probably wouldn’t be Dinosaur Jr.. It would probably just freak me out. If J sat down across from me with an acoustic guitar, looked me in the eye and played his newest creation – it would absolutely freak me out.

SC: So recording the new record wasn’t that different from going in and recording the first three?

Lou Barlow: No. The really big difference was that we did it in J’s house. The recording schedule was incredibly relaxed in comparison to what we were used to in the past. Back then we got X amount of money, spent 10 hours a day in the studio for two weeks and the record had to be finished by then. So yeah, in that way, it’s incredibly different and since we did it in J’s house….it’s not really a studio situation. His house is very casual and I really grew into that. I really got into that whole way of doing the record.

SC: How did the two songs you have on the new record come about?

Lou Barlow: Maybe 75% of the way into the record - when J’s songs started really coming together and he was actually finishing some of them, that’s when the manager actually called me to tell me that J was like “Okay, he wants you to write a couple of songs on the record.” I had literally been sitting five feet from J for probably two months, right directly across from him and never once did he say “Do you have any songs”...and then I knew it was just one of those things. I knew at some point during the process of the record that I was going to be asked if I wanted to contribute something, but I had sort of this morbid fascination……. let’s just see if (laughing)...let’s just see if I get invited into it in any sort of conventional way. I’ve spent a lot of time writing with other people and had really fruitful relationships -- and I’ve had all kinds of arrangements with other people writing songs and this situation is so unique. So I got a call from management and they’re like “J wants you to write two songs” and I’m like “Great.” When I went about the business of writing my songs, I let Murph pretty much have free reign on drums and I really let the songs come together based on J and Murph’s input. J’s songwriting sensibility is especially great when it comes to structural stuff - the way the general parts sort of breathe into one another…..just little things that make songs flow better. He’s really good at that so I didn’t really want to walk in and tell everybody what to do. I wanted it to come together as a band - but I was writing the predominant melodies, the lyrics and the chords.

SC: So you didn’t have those songs in your back pocket ready to go?

Lou Barlow: No, not at all. Actually, on purpose I chose songs or things that were the sketchiest out of the ideas that I had. I figured the sketchier they were - as long as I had a sort of a melody or a philosophy about what I wanted the song to be - that was more important than trying to come in with something like “Here it is”. I wanted it to be something that came together and reflected what I thought the strength of the band was and that’s pretty much what happened with the two songs that I did. I’m very proud of them because of that.

SC: The two songs you have on the new record are “Back to Your Heart” and “Lightning Bulb”. Any significance to either one of those song titles?

Lou Barlow: Actually, the day that we laid down the basic drums to my first song, “Back to Your Heart” - that day was kind of momentous for me. It was about six o’clock in the evening and we’d spent all day getting the drums down - which was a huge thing for me. It was like “wow, I’m sitting in J’s kitchen and I have the structure for a song I’m really excited about down, and we all worked on it”. It was a really cool feeling and we got this call and J’s wife - she’s German, which is very cute sometimes because she’s sort of mixes up English. So she got a call from Kim Gordon (of Sonic Youth) and J’s wife thought she heard that Lightning Bolt was going to be playing a show at this tiny club and we’re like “Oh my God, Lightning Bolt, they’re an amazing band. We’re going to go see them play.” So we got to the show and there was nothing really going on. We’re like “So, where’s Lightning Bolt”? People just kind of looked at us. So we walked outside and Kim Gordon had just pulled up in their white Volvo station wagon and three little girls get out - one of them being Coco, Kim and Thurston’s daughter, and two of her friends. Then Kim says “So, you’ve come to see Light Bulb play?” And that’s when we realized that J’s wife had heard Light Bulb as Lightning Bolt on the phone and it was really these three little pre-pubescent girls and their punk rock band Light Bulb playing.

SC: Not exactly what you had come to see?

Lou Barlow: No. But I had actually gone to the show with Bob Faye – the drummer that I had booted out of Sebadoh due to a string of circumstances years before. We’d actually become friends again so it was kind of cool that we were even hanging out together. But anyway, in commemoration of that day - upon finishing “Back to your Heart”, an instrumental track, seeing Bob Faye again and just the comedy of this whole misunderstanding, the next song of mine that we worked on was a bit more aggressive and I just thought - why not call it “Lightning Bulb”.

SC: In the new Dinosaur Jr. video for “Been There All the Time” you’re playing a very “interesting” bass – it looks like a big flower – is it yours?

Lou Barlow: We shot the video in Thurston and Kim’s basement. Thurston and Kim are like the total default for anything that you could think of - whether its liner notes or video shoots. But I showed up and they’re like “So where’s your bass and I’m like “What do you mean?” I was supposed to bring my bass to the video shoot and I sort of purposely didn’t bring it because I didn’t want to check any luggage. So we’re sitting in the basement and I needed a bass to be pretending to play in the video. There was one that someone had just given to Thurston which was a big normal bass but for some reason I just said, “Whatever, here’s the closest one, I’ll just pretend to play that” and it happened to be a bass from a series of guitars called Daisy Rock. They are sort of low-priced, pretty cheaply made electric instruments that are meant to be more inviting to young girls playing rock and roll. I think the bass was a sunflower or something.

SC: Have you since gotten a “flower bass” of your own?

Lou Barlow: No, and I ended up bleeding all over that one too because my style of bass playing is really thrashing the shit out of the stings. That bass wasn’t really designed to be hit that way and of course - I just bloodied my fingers pretending to play the song over and over again.

SC: Funny. So who is the person on the cover of the new Dinosaur Jr. album Beyond?

Lou Barlow: We don’t really know - but that picture was taken in the ‘60s and it was taken by the same guy who took the photograph of the hippies on the blanket that’s on the cover of the Woodstock Live album. The photo is actually from a collection of photographs that appear in a coffee table type book but that I can’t recall the name now. There’s a series of them. The same photographer has a collection of poignant shots of children and in that same book there’s the picture that J used for the cover of the Dinosaur Jr. record Green Mind, the young girl smoking. We were actually in Brighton, England and the manager was like “Come on you guys; we need a cover for this record. Here’s a book, choose something. Come on, choose it!” So we were just flipping through and that picture of the kid buried under the couch cushion with the bass on the floor was the one that everyone sort of responded to. Then later on J okayed it and he had an artist friend of his doctored the photograph a little bit with some splashes of paint and reprising the old Dinosaur Jr. logo.

SC: So, you just wrapped up a tour with Sebadoh and the original lineup. I’m curious as to how that tour went and are there any plans for a new Sebadoh record?

Lou Barlow: Well, the tour was really fun. In some ways it was probably more unlikely that this particular lineup of Sebadoh reunited – even more than Dinosaur Jr.. Unlikely for a variety of reasons - most of which involve money. But after two or three years of an email conversation that Eric Gaffney (original Sebadoh drummer) and I had – we went through and hashed out all of the concerns about money and other stuff. Things like what he understood, his history in the band, his take on it and my take on it. This all culminated with us re-releasing the Sebadoh III record. So then the conversation shifted to maybe we could play some shows and Eric was really, really, really eager to do that. He was really eager to tour with us and make some money. Jason and I have kind of sustained contact and kept Sebadoh going here and there as we found time to do it. We knew that our next step was getting a drummer and really going out and playing these full band versions of our songs and it just seemed logical that Eric was the person that would be the drummer. I wasn’t so surprised when it all clicked in the minute we played again. But, I’m definitely on board with the Dinosaur Jr. thing for awhile. Where the gaps in that schedule arise, my first thought is “Well, what can I do with Eric and Jason?”

SC: What about Folk Implosion – anything new planned or is the project over?

Lou Barlow: Yes, I would imagine it’s over. The beginning of Folk Implosion was an amazing period of collaboration I had with John Davis, who was a friend of mine and I got close to him in the early 90s in Boston. We were both living in that area and struck up a friendship that blossomed into this songwriting partnership. The peak of that was when I was asked to score a song for the Larry Clark film, Kids. When I was invited to do that - I was having a really creative period with John so I pulled him into the project and we both worked on the Kids soundtrack. Then we had this fluke radio hit with the song Natural One and that led to a major label record deal and we did one record for Interscope. Then my partnership with John collapsed under the weight of those obligations and that kind of pressure, which was really unfortunate. But in order to fulfill my obligations surrounding the Folk Implosion and against my better judgment - I kept the band going. Although creatively it was a great thing to do - I really loved the record that I did with Folk Implosion after John left. I did that record with Imaad Wasif and Russ Pollard and we called it the New Folk Implosion. I loved that record but it wasn’t really a Folk Implosion record. I was always ambivalent about even using that name after John had left. Once it was clear that the New Folk Implosion record did abysmally and it was just horribly reviewed and people didn’t go to the shows - I found I couldn’t even keep the band into it. It just died out with total lack of support. Then all of the new stuff that I had been working on at that time - I realized they were just solo recordings and that it was probably best to just use my own name. That is where the Emoh record came from. But the New Folk Implosion record and Emoh, that is a body of work that I’m really proud of.

SC: Do you think there will be another Lou Barlow solo record?

Lou Barlow: Definitely. I did a short solo tour for the Emoh record and it was incredibly satisfying. It was really cool and it actually set me up really well for going in to do Dinosaur Jr. because I did a fairly extensive tour for Emoh and it was just me, an acoustic guitar and a synthesizer. I was playing for small audiences but it was really nice and I felt the sense that yes, I could do this. This could be what I do from now until whenever - I could be perfectly happy just doing this. So just getting a taste of that simplicity - of working by myself was great. I’ll definitely come back to that but when and where I’m not certain. Actually, this summer I put together a new solo EP that I put out on a small Spanish label. It’s got five songs on it and it’s also available for download on my website at http://loobiecore.com/

SC: What are some of the new bands or artists out there that you’re really like?

Lou Barlow: Well, lately it’s kind of weird. A couple of years ago I had this cousin who was obsessed with Bjork. He’s totally obsessed! He made this crazy obscene mural of her - but I had asked him “So what else do you listen to?” He was like “I really liked this band called The Knife? So it’s been on my mind for awhile that my little cousin really loves The Knife and recently I was on tour with Sebadoh and we were in Philadelphia driving back to the hotel. I heard this amazing song on the radio - this crazy synthesizer song - not quite dancy but really aggressive with this strange female vocal over the top of it. I’m like “What the hell is that?” And of course they didn’t back announce it and it was driving me crazy. It was driving me nuts and then in LA we’ve got this radio station Indie 103, which plays like two Smiths songs every few hours. Anyway - I heard the song again on Indie 103 and I was like “That’s the band”. Who are they? So I finally heard who it was and it was The Knife -- so I went out and bought The Knife record. I love it! This band just totally captured my imagination.

SC I’ll have to check it out.

Lou Barlow: I don’t know if you’re going to like it. It’s just one of those records. Once in a while there’s some switch that’s flipped in my head. It kind of happened a few years ago too. I was really into Everything but the Girl - when they had their big crossover dance record. I was obsessed with that record. I just thought it was just beautiful. The lyrics were just wonderful – but of course that one that one was a pretty hard sell. “What do you listen to?” “Everything but the Girl man, that’s my favorite record.”

SC: Do you still buy CDs or do you download you’re new music?

Lou Barlow: Actually, when we were recording the Dinosaur Jr. record at J’s house I got back into listening to vinyl. J really only listens to vinyl. The stuff that I’ve downloaded - when I listened to it - I think it just sounds weird. I’m not like a big audiophile and I’m not one of those people like “You’re corrupting the way we listen to music” but when I download a record and I listen to it - I think it sounds thin. It just sounds strange and it doesn’t have the fullness that a CD or especially vinyl would have so it’s kind of weird.

SC: So you’re going back to vinyl these days?

Lou Barlow: Yes, although now that I’m pretty much on the road all the time these days - listening to vinyl isn’t that easy.

SC: Okay, one more question. Who would you like to see paired up on our series Iconoclasts?

Low Barlow: Gore Vidal and Neil Young - that would be interesting. I don’t think that would go very far. I just can’t imagine them sitting down together and talking – it would be bizarre. Gore Vidal is a fascinating person and Neil Young of course, my favorite.

SC: Well done. Alright, on that note, I think we’re finished. Thanks Lou!

Lou Barlow: Thanks.

SC: See ya.

Lou: Bye.