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Interview: Malcom Lacey + Kyle Pedersen [10/15/10]

Built to Spill guitarist and Caustic Resin frontman Brett Netson took a few minutes to talk with Kyle and I this past Tuesday. You can find our lengthy joint-interview with Netson after the jump. 

Malcom: First off, where are you currently?

(laughs) Athens, GA 

 

Malcom: You’ve got Revolt Revolt opening up the shows for you on this tour. What’s it like touring with younger groups like Revolt Revolt?

It’s cool. Especially if a band hasn’t been around the country a bunch of times, it’s really fun to share the experience with them if they’re all excited. It’s new and exciting for them and it’s nice to be around that. 

 

Malcom: It seems like you’ve toured most of the world with Built to Spill. Up until now, what have been some of your favorite places to play?

Ooh, it might be different for each of us. I still like Portland, Chicago, Philadelphia, Norway is really cool, and Italy. I like Italy quite a bit. There are some people that run a club there in Italy that are openly communist. 

 

Malcom: Would you consider yourself very politically influenced?

Yeah I am. I have been for the last 10 years. Since things got absolutely bad. Sure. I can’t speak for everybody, but it’s probably pretty close. We all came from the independent rock scene. Coming out of punk rock. We came from that. That was a specifically rebellious anti-establishment sort of thing. From Black Flag to your regular college radio rock, that’s where it all started. The DIY. The 80’s. Of course we’re all a bit political still. 

Malcom: I think it’s cool to see bands that are politically conscience.

Personally I’m probably the worst person to ever say anything about that sort of stuff, but the fact is that nobody is saying anything so I feel like somebody has to say something. It’s very strange and kind of creepy that the most hip/happening bands of the time right now couldn’t give a shit about any of that and that’s disturbing to me. Like I don’t think MGMT ever made any kind of statement at all about anything, although I love their music. It’s just like what the hell?

 

Malcom: Outside of your musical side projects, what sort of things do you tend to spend your time on when you’re not on tour? Anything you’d like to venture into creatively or otherwise, but haven’t yet had the time?

Everybody does different things, but I’ve been really into gardening and making things. I like to build motorcycles and do carpentry projects, you know, all these sorts of things, and music of course. I know that Doug’s into his basketball and dark comics. Jim makes his distortion pedals and sells amps. I do a little bit of that too. I like to build things, make things.

 

Kyle: What’s the setlist looking like on this tour?

We always just try to pick songs from each record. We’re getting a few more of the newer songs together, like we’ve been playing “Pat” lately. Which is fun, real fun. Like we weren’t sure if we could pull it off, but then we just started doing it and we’re like ‘oh yeah we can do it.’ Songs just come in rotation like weather patterns. (laughs) There are so many songs. We try to keep it mixed up as much as possible to keep it fresh.

 

Kyle: Does it ever get annoying when you hear members of the audience yelling out for BtS’s most popular tracks like  “I Would Hurt a Fly.”

When you get one person yelling the same song over and over all night long, that’s annoying. We’ve already made the setlist before the show. (pause) Then inevitably someone else will pipe up and yell “play whatever you want.” People just do the same thing they always do and that’s fine. If we hated what we we’re doing and were annoyed by our audience, maybe that would be a bit more annoying than it is. But it’s like whatever, we’re people. People just do people things and that’s just the way it goes. We’re glad to be playing music. But yeah, it’s a little bit silly, but way stupider things happen. It’s good that people can get excited and just wanna yell their favorite songs. That we like. We love it when people are excited to have a good time.

 

Kyle: Although it seems like Built To Spill flies under the radar, some forgetting the band is on a major label, and have been highly influential. Do you ever notice this or is it something easily ignored?

(pause) Well… That’s just stuff you try and not think about. I don’t. It is what is regardless of what you and me want or think. We more just try to concentrate on doing the music and making our decisions based on keeping it as simple as possible so that we can basically make the record, put the record out, and then go on tour. All the decisions in this band are based on making sure that can happen. So you try not to think about who you are or where you’ve been. You can make yourself crazy thinking about that stuff.

 

Kyle: Any plans to release another album in the new year?           

I don’t think there’s anything to come out next year, but we’ll definitely start on something. We had plans of writing songs that we soundchecked from this tour, but we have ended up just learning old songs we haven’t played in a long time. So (laughs) you know plans change. Plans change a lot. I myself am gonna push for trying to get a record going on this next summer. I don’t think we’re gonna tour much next summer, if at all.

 

Kyle: Do you still live in the pacific northwest?

Jim Roth, the other guitar player, lives in Seattle. Scott, the drummer, also lives in Seattle. Brett Nelson, and me, and Doug all live in Boise. And I grew up in Boise. I lived in California for 7 years then moved back to Boise. I love it.

 

Kyle: What influence has The Pacific Northwest had on your music? It seems a lot of people benefit from living over here. I used to make music in Portland, and now here in Idaho.

Wait, you’re in Idaho?

 

Kyle: Yeah, I’m in Post Falls, Idaho. I’m right by Spokane.

Oh okay. Well, maybe you would know this. Being in Idaho is different than being in Portland or Seattle. ‘Cause I think what in fact influenced us a lot was being isolated. Being inland. You really appreciate the good music when you can find it. You know before the Internet it was a lot harder to find all that stuff. So I think that all of us came together and became friends and it was kind of a big bond. Especially when you are with other people and everybody’s trying to seek out new music. It took a lot of effort back then and a lot of guts, because you could potentially get beat up for doing those sorts of things back then. (laughs) So everybody bonded. It was really special; it was really nice and I think we’re still friends because of that. We still have ideals and standards we adhere to because of coming from that.

 

Kyle: What are some of your major influences?

I basically grew up listening to Neil Diamond and CCR records when I was a little kid. That’s what my parents and older sisters listened to. Then I went into college radio in the ‘80s and started hearing Brian Eno records. I was also into Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd. Then you go from that to college radio and hear Brian Eno and you’re like ‘woah, that’s just like Pink Floyd, but way smarter and way more interesting in a way.’ Then you go into the alternative indie rock of the day. Some of the deathrock stuff was awesome. The Bauhaus. All that stuff was very exciting. Then you get into the ‘90s with Pavement, Big Black, The Melvins, and The Thinking Fellers Union. You ever heard of them?

 

Kyle: I’ve heard of it but never listened to ‘em.

You should look that up. That’s something Doug and me had in common when we started hanging out. We were both into that. It’s just crazy. Some of the best ‘60s bands like where it was just like ordinary people that maybe had been to college making extraordinary music. That’s what this is all about. That’s what we were into.  Like these are just ordinary dorky people that are making this incredibly weird and awesome music. Like The Pixies. They’re not particularly interesting people, I guess, I don’t know. But just by not trying to be rock stars, they just concentrated on making the coolest music they could and come out with that. It’s awesome and so incredibly good. They put away all the rock star bullshit. That was cool, because David Bowie did it. It’s been maligned and done badly so many times, why bother with any kind of rock star shit.

 

Kyle: The first Built to Spill show I went to was the first show where I witnessed the frontman not say a word to the crowd. I was enthralled with the fact that no one in the band said anything besides hello at the beginning and goodbye at the end. When I played my band’s first show, we did the same thing. I was just like ‘this is how it should be.’ Instead of telling everyone how great their city is and hyping the crowd up with cliché remarks.

(laughs) Sure. I think we all sort of thought that was kind of funny. That whole nihilism, I don’t even know what you’d call it. At the same time, if it’s someone who’s genuine about being a showman. That’s cool, but it’s just so rare that anyone’s genuinely awesome at it like Freddie Mercury or David Bowie. Those were genuine performers that just loved it. But like The Killers or something. No thanks. That’s just stupid. Narcissistic. You know there’s a difference between somebody being a true artful showman than someone that’s just a narcissistic idiot.

 

Kyle: Is there any band you’ve taken under your wing ‘per se?’

We try and help people out and take people on tour. It never really goes that far. (laughs) Like there’s a band from Australia called The Drones. We’re not that kind of a band that can take anyone under our wing, because we don’t really… I don’t know. Anyways, we took them on tour and it felt good to have a decent amount of people see them play, because they’re such a fucking amazing band. You always do what you can. If you give a shit at all you’re gonna be motivated to help people out. When The Meat Puppets were coming back, it felt good to have them tour with us. Just to let people know that they were back. It was awesome, totally awesome. And it was awkward and weird, because they were people we looked up to growing up. They’re another one of those bands that we grew up being heavily influenced by. Even if I didn’t listen to them every day, they were one of those bands that were like outsiders within the outsider group. I used to see them as an example of what you can get away with. Camper Van Beethoven we took on tour. Which is not taking them under our wing, but just helping them out. You know, you always do what you can. Especially when it’s someone real and valid, you’ll do whatever you can to help.

 

Kyle: We appreciate you taking the time to do this interview, Brett.

Sure. Come introduce yourself at the Spokane show!            

[original photo credit: neff]