Daniel's interview in Taiga

A.) The most obvious question would be: musician, poet, or both? Have you been making music longer, or writing poetry? Is there even a separation of the two “outlets” in your creative mind? Do you spend more time writing music, or verse? On a personal level, and on a more superficial level, which would you prefer to be “known” for creating?

Both, please, although I’ve definitely been writing for longer, for as far back as I can remember being me. My love of music is as at least as old, but my attempts to make my own music came later, around age 13, making naive, neolithic pre-punk, attacking a junk guitar in the garage played through a tiny amplifier my dad removed from some kind of projector. My best friend Matt massacred rhythm by hitting card-board boxes with table legs and bedsprings for cymbals. The raucous abandon of that kind of expression–striking and slicing at my instrument, screaming anything that came into my head–initially this seemed like the opposite of writing, of structuring thoughts with language.

As I continued to do both, though, the outlets did gradually become more fused. I brought some of the gleeful attack and energy out of the garage and into my poems, and I brought some structure, notes, chords, verses, choruses, and bridges to the writing of songs. Now they both feed into and feed off of each-other, are in nearly constant competition with each-other. I’m always composting words and phrases in my mind. Usually at a pretty early stage they begin to grow into one or the other, based on what form they’ll thrive in. The song lyrics usually want more rhyme, alliteration, rhythm, phrases that can repeat. The poems want what they want. They want to invent their rules as they go, only to break them. Or they want very strict rules (while continuing to look for and invent the tiniest loopholes), which means that sometimes I enjoy switching gears and writing form poems, especially ghazals, villanelles, and pantoums.

I’ve also put some poems to music and would love to do more. I adapted Stevens’ “The Dwarf” and Baudelaire’s “Invitation to the Voyage” for my band, The Ambiguities. Lately we’ve been inviting a chanteuse (ok, she’s a French teacher–but a fluent one) up on stage to perform the latter poem bilingually.

B.) With the Frost Heaves, you seem to have a “more the merrier” approach to instrumental input, which often results in a lush, layered sound. How many of these different instruments find their way to the stage when you perform live? Describe your typical songwriting process; at what point does arranging all these instruments figure into getting a song written? At what point do you write the lyrics?

The Frost Heaves began as a recording project I started for songs that were either more personal or didn’t quite fit with The Ambiguities. It was also an excuse to be somewhat musically promiscuous outside the monogamous union of a band that meets each week (monogamous? there are five of us…). I invited a bunch of amazing musicians I admired to one night stands in the studio, but a lot of the layers you’re hearing were created by producer Norm Demoura and me. In many cases I picked cool instruments that were laying around Norm’s studio that I didn’t know how to play and messed around with them until I figured out a way to weave them into the tapestry.

The Frost Heaves have played out about a bunch, but so far it’s been the Cliff Notes version: I use a loop pedal to generate beats (sampling the percussionists who play on the album). “Robo-drummer” and I have done a bunch of stripped down “duo” shows, and I’ve played a few accompanied by a dobro player, a violinist, and a background singer who perform on the album. Right now I’m in the process of coordinating the cd release show, and I’m trying to incorporate everyone who played on the album, plus auxiliary players to recreate the layers. It will either be totally sublime or a gruesome train-wreck.

As far as my songwriting process, I usually start with some words, a verse, a chorus, a resonant phrase, or even just one image, then mess around with my guitar, singing or humming, working out a melody, a mood, building the rest of the song around it. In recent years there have been more songs that began with a riff or a simple chord structure. The most fun is when both come at once, where the chords are suggesting melodies and words, and vice versa.

The core of my songs are my guitar and my voice; the rest of the instruments are arranged around those elements. I often hear specific parts for the other instruments, but I also collaborate freely with others on arrangements. I’ve also had a lot of fun occasionally by writing words and melody to someone else’s chords. This is one of the big things to recommend music: more opportunity to collaborate and build cool things with other people. Poets can become too cooped up in their garret.

C.) Because you’re both a poet and a musician, do you feel that you pay extra attention to the lyrical content of your songs? Do you find yourself paying extra attention to the lyrical content of other bands’ songs? In the past, which songwriters have impressed you as great lyricists?

I used to say that lyrics were the most important part; if the lyrics weren’t good, I couldn’t get into it. I got frustrated by how uncritical many people were about fluffy, trite, or just empty lyrics. As my ears have grown increasingly hungrier, more omnivorous–and more tolerant–I’ve become less of a lyric snob. I can dig lots of music with weak or even bad lyrics as long as there are other things going on that redeems it. Still, the lyrics are huge for me. There’s a lot of great music with mediocre/bad lyrics, which is a shame. Musicians collaborate all the time with producers, engineers, studio players–why not collaborate with a good lyricist if that’s not a strength of yours? Part of what makes Brian Wilson’s “Smile” so transcendent was his willingness to find the right lyricist (Van Dyke Parks) to collaborate with for that project (even though Brian’s written some truly beautiful lyrics himself).

There’s also a lot to be said for keeping the lyrics simple (or non-existent) if the music is doing a lot to complete the world of the song. This is increasingly true in my own songs; as I feel stronger and more confident as a singer and a musician, I put less pressure on the lyrics to do all the work. This is why song lyrics that don’t hold up on the page can sometimes work in the context of the song: there are so many other musical elements that can potentially add depth and nuance to the words. Which is why a really great, soulful singer can sometimes get away with sappy lyrics.

The first song lyrics that really got my head spinning were by prog rock bands like Rush which my sister Donna played me when I was a little kid. Oh, the profundities of Neil Peart! The first song lyrics I was unselfconsciously writing on the back of my notebooks in the 80’s were off of albums like “Fables of the Reconstruction,” “The Unforgettable Fire,” “The Queen is Dead,” and “Ocean Rain.” I still love some of those lyrics. There are a lot of songwriters that impress me as great lyricists. I make burnt offerings to the grizzled bards: Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Lou Reed (particularly the Velvety Lou). I love a lot of Neil, Joni, and Bob’s lyrics from the 60s and 70s. Ditto Ray Davies, John Lennon, George Harrison, Paul Simon, Gram Parsons, Johnny Cash, Nick Drake. Mick Jagger up until the mid 70s. I still like a lot of Paul Westerberg, Grant Hart, and Bob Mould’s lyrics from their Replacements and Husker Du days. And I like a lot of lyrics by newer cats like Andrew Bird, Jeff Tweedy, Ira Kaplan, Will Oldham, Nick Cave, Joey Burns, Kurt Heasley, Robyn Hitchcock, Stuart Murdoch, David Lowery, Patrick Porter.

Recommended reading list:

I decided to stick with poetry because right away that list swelled so large I was afraid I would wear out my welcome by the time I got to my lists of “favorite books to un-write,” “favorite bathroom reading,” “unread books that look good on my shelf,” etc. Even so, I had to prune my list; I ended up zeroing in on some of the books I fell in love with when I was an MFA student. Some have aged better than others, but they all have magic for me that comes partly from the fact that I was reading them at a time when I first really hunkered down and rooted around in poetry, into saying out loud, in public, that I was a poet. They also retain warmth because of the teachers and friends that recommended, gave, or read them out loud to me. Of course books become friends, too, and these were good friends to revisit while making this list.

Stevens “Harmonium,” the many Pessoas, The Collected Bishop, Mitchell’s “Selected Rilke,” Jules Superveille “Selected Writings,” Cesare Pavese “Hard Labor,” Pablo Neruda “Residence on Earth,” Strand and Simic’s anthology “Another Republic,” Denis Johnson “The Throne of the Third Heaven…,” Thomas Transtromer “For The Living and The Dead,” Dean Young “Strike Anywhere,” Lorine Niedecker “The Granite Pail,” Weldon Kees “Collected Poems,” Charles Simic “Charon’s Cosmology,” August Kleinzahler “Storm Over Hackensack,” James Wright “The Branch Will Not Break,” Tomaz Salamun “The Four Questions of Melancholy,” WS Merwin “The Vixen,” Attila Jozsef “Winter Night,” Richard Shelton “Selected Poems—69-’81,” Borges “Dreamtigers,” Lawrence Raab “Mysteries of the Horizon,” Frank Stanford “The Light The Dead See,” Andrew Hudgins “Saints and Strangers,” Bill Knot “Corpse and Beans,” Russell Edson “The Tunnel,” Louis Jenkins “An Almost Human Gesture,” Simon Armitage “Kid,” Marianne Boruch “Moss Burning,” James Tate “Worshipful Company of Fletchers,” Agha Shahid Ali “The Half Inch Himalayas.”

This post originally appeared in the Winter 2009 edition of Taiga.