Chicago- Pitchfork Festival

Hey kids-

The editing stands at about 35 minutes. I took a break last weekend to interview Clint Conley (Mission of Burma) at the 2008 Pitchfork Music Festival. The night before, we got to see Bottomless Pit play at Schuba's with the Kadane Brothers. They were astounding. I only saw SKWM once so anytime seeing these guys play is an event for me. They have a new record available at the Bottomless Pit site.

Anyway, I spent the whole night drinking and chatting with SKWM folk and left feeling very inspired about the movie

The next morning, I met up with Garland and Shawn and headed over to the Pitchfork Festival to interview Clint. (Normally, this is where I would put a qoute or a video but it's too late in the game to give out freebies anymore. Sorry.) As soon as we finished, we ran out in to the crowd and watched Mission of Burma play their debut LP "VS" from beginning to end. I jumped around like a little girl, shouting and nodding until my neck felt like it was going to break. Very few shows have dragged this kind of behavior out of me. Needless to say, I was happy to be there.

Now, I'm back in Nashville and there is too much work to do to keep rambling on this blog. Stay Tuned.

-Seth

LINKS

Mission of Burma

Editing stage one

I have begun editing the film. We still have a few interviews to do but we hope to get that wrapped up by September. I've cut about ten minutes (very roughly that is) and I feel like it's making sense. It's nice to know the film is now officialy "coming soon."

In the process of this, I've re-discovered the 1994 SKWM Record, "In The West." You should too. I would suggest "Punch Drunk Five" at very loud levels. Also, Tim and Andy's new band, Bottomless Pit, are releasing an EP called "Congress" in the next coming months. Most of the songs can be heard at their myspace page and comedyminusone.com.

Buy these records!

More Clips

Here's some more clips from past interviews:

Steve Albini


Jeff Tweedy


Stephen Malkmus


Henry Owings and Brian Teasley



More to come soon...

California Recap Part 3

After interviewing Eric Weisbard, we went back to the hotel and ate lunch. Shortly after, James Hale swung by our hotel room to do the interview. James recorded Blueblood as well as the Crust Brother's live record and Ein Heit- Lightning and The Sun.



The next morning we woke up early and drove out to Ventura to interview a long time friend of the band's from Missoula and Seattle, Howard Brown. He runs "Stewart+Brown," a very successful organic clothing line.

On seeing Silkworm live:


The next morning, we said goodbye to our bitchin' hotel room and began the long haul to San Fran. Tim Cook, former C/Z employee and co-owner of El Recordo, put us up for the night in addition to doing an interview. Throughout the nineties, Tim Cook was SKWM's biggest supporter in Seattle.

On Silkworm's later records and "Lifestyle":


We stayed at Tim's, got up the next morning, and saw the sights with Garland's friend, Amie :
(L-R) Me, Shawn and Garland

And the end of the story is Garland and I sitting in the Chicago airport for hours and hours, sleeping on our luggage, waiting for the plane to arrive. We finally got in to Nashville around 1am and went our separate ways.

We should be taking our last trip in early March and then we begin editing. Wish us luck!

-Seth

LINKin' LOGS-

Stewart+Brown

California Recap Part 2

The next day, we met with three fifth's of the Los Angeles rock band, Bluebird. The guys in Bluebird are close friends of Silkworm, and have been touring and recording for over ten years. Check out some of their music here.

First we interviewed their singer, Sam Velde:


a story about Michael:


And then we changed locations and interviewed the rhythm section of Bluebird, brothers Bryan and Jim Brown.


We killed time, eating dinner with Jim at a wonderful Vietmanese resteraunt in the neighborhood. Soon after, we drove in the pouring rain to home offices of Southern Lord Records to interview Greg Anderson. Greg was in a band called Engine Kid that became a sort of brother band to Silkworm in the overcrowed Seattle scene of the nineties. He has since played, sang and written songs in Burning Witch, Goatsnake, and Sunn O))) in addition to co-running Southern Lord Records.



The next morning, we met up with Eric Weisbard, longtime music writer and critic.
On critic's reaction to the band:


Part 3 will be up very soon and I will be posting more interview clips from past interviews within the next few weeks.


LINK TOWN-

Bluebird
Southern Lord Records

California Recap Part 1

Sorry I've been slow with the updates, I'm still recovering from our short stint in Sunny (actually Rainy) California. I wrote this on the plane ride home:

I'm writing from the skies, on our way back to Nashville from San Francisco. This trip has been so crazy, it's hard to remember the sequence of events or even what we did with most our time. What I can do is provide an incomplete list of nonsense that was discussed or experienced by myself, Shawn, and/or Garland: Nashville is better than San Diego because we have "The Sonic" fast food chain (atleast that's what we're told), sharing a king size bed before being moved down the hall to an apartment/suite complete with digital fireplace, Fat Burger (Ice Cube lyrics don't lie!), Venice Beach = buy my Cd-R for 15 dollars, many failed attempts at appearing cool and or getting laid, rising early for free hotel breakfast(Garland is the only one who did this), Driving in rainstorms, looking for people's houses/offices in rainstorms, rocking X's "Los Angeles" (can you get any more cliche?), measuring and examining the footprints and handprints of The Marx Brothers, peeing into a bottle in the CBS Studios parking lot (I'm not telling who did this one), all the while arguing over nothing as much as possible. Of course there's more but that's not why you're reading this...

We arrived in San Diego early last week and began the Cali interviews with Marco Collins, an old friend and fan of the band from the early days in Seattle. Marco has had a long career in radio and has always been a huge champion of the band. A helluva talker, full of passion and enthusiasm, how could we go wrong?

Marco Collins on Michael Dahlquist
"Michael was (an) out of control drummer. I remember Michael doing this thing where he wore gardening gloves and he duct taped the sticks to the gloves, so that when he played, because he played so friggin’ hard, that when he played they were still stuck to the gloves. And the genius thing about Michael too, in addition to being a great drummer, I just loved the fact that that guy sweat more than anybody I’ve ever met. He would start out in a friggin’ suit and he would end up in a pair of boxers by the end of the night and that was it. Most of time it would happen within the first song.”

Shortly after, fan and music writer, Dryw Keltz, showed up at the Coffee Shop we had taken hostage and gave a great interview, offering an outsider perspective on "Indie Rock" and Silkworm's place in it.

Dryw Keltz on the later era of the band
"That’s the bad thing about fans of that type of music, A lot of people are fickle with their bands. Once someone’s been around for a while it’s like, “Oh, they’re not cool anymore.” But you know, they are, they’re still cool. They’re awesome…I don’t think they continued to make good records, I think they continued to make better records. Like their best is at the end. That’s really amazing.”

As the nightime rolled around, we headed out to find the City of Angels. We never found it, so we settled for a place called Los Angeles instead.

The next morning, we drove out to Joel Mark's house. Joel is Vice President of A&R at MCA Records and was SKWM's booking agent from 1992-1997 as well as many other great bands from that time in music.

Joel Mark on Joel, Tim, and Andy's vocals
"All three of them are those kinds of singers, when they're in that room singing for you, they had those moments where the entire room was silent. And not just because it was basically empty but it was silent because they could just...grab you. That's amazing. And to have three people in the band that could do that was just too much."

That's it for part one folks! Check back soon for more quotes and pictures.
-Seth

Photo 1 and 3 by Unknown, 1994. Photo 2 by Heather Whinna, 2002. Photo 4 by Liz Clayton, 1995. Photo 5 by Jon Strymish, 2004.

California

Tomorrow we begin the first round of interviews. The files in the post below have been deleted, so I hope you all enjoyed the songs! I will write when I can get to the internet...

-Seth