From PackageThf@aol.comSun May 19 13:47:41 1996 Date: Mon, 6 May 1996 17:23:19 -0400 From: PackageThf@aol.com Subject: JON WURSTER INTERVIEW An Interview With Jon Wurster by davekrinsky DaveKrinsky: Where did everyone in the band come from? JonWurster: Jim is from Mystic, Connecticut, where Mystic Pizza was filmed. Mac is from the Ft. Lauderdale [Florida] area, but moved up near Raleigh-Durham around age 14. Laura is from the Atlanta area. I'm from near Philadelphia. Actually, Laura may have been born here [in Chapel Hill], then moved to Atlanta, and then back. I'm not quite sure. DK: What are your educational backgrounds? JW: Jim went to a university in Connecticut - maybe Fairfax. Mac went to Columbia University in New York. Laura went to school here at UNC. I didn't go to college. DK: So, how old are you guys? JW: Jim and I are 29. Mac will be 29 in a few months and Laura just turned 28. DK: What made you want to start drumming? JW: It was mainly just seeing bands on TV shows like American Bandstand. I took lessons from ages 10 to 12, but I dropped that soon after. That wasn't the kind of drumming I wanted to learn. I wanted to play the stuff I heard on records, the music I liked. DK: How did you wind up joining Superchunk? JW: At first I moved to Winston-Salem, which is about a hour and a half away from here, but my brother was attending grad school at UNC so I moved to Chapel Hill. I met Mac and saw him a few parties, but I had never met Jim at all. I met Laura only once--at a Danzig concert, actually. One day, my brother told me that Mac had called, that they were having problems with their drummer. Mac was wondering if I would be interested in drumming with them. We tried it out by playing a little bit and it worked. We played our first show a two days later! It was the Madonna-thon, a benefit for WXYC, the local radio station. The rule was that the bands could do five songs, but then they would have to do a Madonna cover, too. Jack (the original guitarist) played with us that night, so we were billed as "SuperDuperchunk." DK: So what Madonna song did you do? JW: Mac came out by himself and did "Shining Star" acoustic and then we all came out. Jack played on the songs he knew, but we mostly played stuff from the first album anyway. I think the only No Pocky song we played was "Throwing Things." A week or two later, we went on a 3-week tour of the east coast and part of the midwest. After another short break, we did a full US tour. DK: So you had toured with the band long before you recorded with them. JW: I toured with them pretty much just after the No Pocky album. The first thing that I recorded with the band was the "Mower" single. We went into the studio and just recorded "Mower," "On The Mouth," "Invitation," "Girl U Want," and an alternate version of "For Tension." DK: What ever became of the alternate "For Tension?" JW: It was kept and forgotten about...someone has a copy of it somewhere. DK: Can we expect to see this on a compilation ten years from now or so? JW: It's possible.... Actually, "Girl U Want" went on the Freedom of Choice compilation--we never play it live. We tried it at sound check one day and it just didn't work, so we put it aside and we haven't done it since. DK: How do you decide what covers you're going to do? JW: Usually, we're listening to something in the van and one of us says 'that's a good song, maybe we should do that...' and then we figure out how we're going to do it. We haven't done a cover in quite a while, at least not since the time near On The Mouth. There was going to be a cover on On The Mouth that never made it. We were doing a cover of Adam and the Ants' "Beat My Guest," but it was taking us so many takes to do it - 6 or so and we usually do a song in one or two. Mike Watt was there, in the studio, that day and we were thinking: `Oh no! Now he's going to think that we can't play!' DK: Was it ever finished? JW: Yeah, we finished it, but we still didn't use it. Another cover we did that never got used was "Blending In" by Government Issue, which is Jim's real vocal debut. We probably couldn't agree on what covers to do now. DK: What kind of equipment does the band use? JW: Right now, I'm in my basement, which is the band's rehearsal area. Let's see here....Laura uses an Acoustic 370 bass head and a Ampeg cabinet. Her main bass is a Fender Precision, with a cat sticker, and her spare bass is made by Guild. Mac's guitar is a Gibson Marauder. He uses a Mesa/Boogie head and cabinet. The guitar Mac uses is the same kind of guitar that Paul Stanley of Kiss would smash every night. He'd play one guitar for the show, come back out with a Marauder that he would pretend to play, and then smash it up. It was a style of guitar that never really caught on. Jim plays a Gibson Les Paul studio model with a fender bassman amp. His spare guitar is green and made by Petite Grand. My drums are made by Darwin Drums, who have gone out of business. I use Sabian cymbals, a Brady snare drum, and Regal drum sticks, size 4B. DK: What are your personal, musical influences? JW: Growing up, say ages 10-13, I listened to Aerosmith and stuff like that. Around age 14, I moved into bands like the Clash and the Ramones. In high school and for a few years after, I listened to some hard core stuff like Minor Threat, MDC, Government Issue, etc., but also a lot of pop like 3:00, Tommy Keene, and R.E.M. My favorites were Husker Du and the Replacements. I have to say they're probably still two of my favorite bands. I also listen to the Rolling Stones, Dylan, and some other stuff. I don't like very much current music. I do like Guided by Voices and Son Volt a whole lot. I think that, out of all of the band members, my tastes are the most middle of the road. DK: Do you ever listen to Superchunk songs? JW: I only do that if I'm trying to remember how production was on a particular album or if I'm trying to remember a drum part for a song we haven't played in a long time. I never listen to them for enjoyment. DK: Does the rest of the band like listening to the bands that Superchunk has covered? JW: Not really. Jim now hates rock. He's listening to classical music now, especially avant-garde classical. DK: Like Philip Glass? JW: No, it's still traditional as far as having an orchestra, but different in arrangement. I know it isn't exactly avant-garde, but he listens to Gustav Mahler a lot. One of his other main favorite is Charles Ives, but also Robert Simpson. Well, he still likes rock a bit, but is loathe to admit it. Mac listens to the 3D's, the Bats, Stereolab, GbV, and Mark Eitzel. He also listens to some jazz artists, like Bill Evans, Coltrane, Miles Davis. Out of everyone in the band, I would have to say that Mac is the biggest music fan. Laura listens to different stuff...some Latin stuff, Tito Puente-ish....some Patsy Cline....she likes the Melvins, or at least she used to. She also likes Rocket From The Crypt, Scrawl, and Cornershop. She's been playing a lot of the Tindersticks lately, some Lambchop, too. I really only get to hear their music when we're driving the van. DK: Who drives the van? JW: Jim mostly, but then Laura, then Mac, then me. I don't think they really like me driving the van - I proved that early on. DK: You got into an accident? JW: No, nothing like that. I don't really like driving and that makes Laura really nervous. Besides, Jim would rather drive. The rest of the band likes to drive as much as I like not to, which is fine with me. I still drive every so often, but not too much. DK: Any news about a Superchunk video collection? JW: Well, we have about ten videos already, but we'll probably wait until after the next album if we were to do a video collection - more value for the money. It's not even in the planning stages as of right now. DK: How do you decide on how to do your videos? JW: We leave that up mostly to the director, but most of our directors are our friends as well. They usually come up with the main idea and run it past us...they ask us what we think, if we would be comfortable doing such-and-such. We all agree on it before we do it. That's the way we did "Driveway to Driveway" and "First Part." Those were done with two directors, Peyton Reed and Phil Morrison. They worked on both videos, but Phil worked on "First Part" more, and Peyton did more of "Driveway." Peyton had always kind of wanted to do a takeoff on the Philadelphia Story and this was his chance to do it. We did those two videos in a two-week span. My roommate, Joe Ventura, came up with the idea for the "Hyper Enough" video, with the psychiatrist and all. Then we went to a bar with the director, Norwood Cheek, and worked the whole thing out. DK: In the video for "The First Part," you're playing Belly and Breeders singles. What's the story behind that? JW: When we were filming that, "Feed The Tree" and "Cannonball" were really big songs at the time and we thought it would be funny if we were listening to those songs. My brother, who does design work for Mammoth, did up the single art for those, K-Tel-like. DK: You did some shows last week. When can we look forward to seeing more of you? JW: The shows last week went really well. There were some guys who had heard about the show on the internet and they came a long way to see us, so that was pretty cool. At one show, there were these hippie-like girls there, but they were singing along with all of the songs! It's very cool to see people you wouldn't expect to see at our shows getting into the music. We'll be hitting Australia in August, with Guided by Voices, starting August 2. The list of cities and dates is extremely tentative, but it is: Sydney (Aug. 2 - The Metro; Aug. 3 - two shows - The Metro, first show is all ages, second show is a bar show), Perth (Aug. 5&6 - The Planet), Adelaide (Aug. 7 - Tivoli), Melbourne (Aug. 9&10 - The Corner; Aug. 11 - The Corner - All ages), Canberra (Aug. 14 - AMUBAR), Newcastle (Aug. 15 - Newcastle UNI), Byron Bay (Aug. 16 - Great Northern), Brisbane (Aug. 17 - The Roxy), and a show in Auckland, New Zealand (Aug. 20 - The Powerstation). Other than that, it's all in up in the air. DK: Any idea of when we can see you live in the states? JW: Well, we haven't talked about it at all, but most likely by the end of the year. DK: You skipped over Florida on your last US tour, which resulted in numerous fan complaints. What happened? JW: We did Florida the year before and we usually do all of Florida in one whole trip, but we couldn't do that on the last tour so I guess we just skipped it all together. We'll probably hit it on the next full tour. We've more letters asking us about playing in Florida than from any other place. DK: What song do you have on the Lounge Ax Benefit compilation? JW: It's a song recorded for Strings called "Fader Rules" that just didn't make it on the album. We were going to do a new song or a live one, but we couldn't get together to record anything in time, so we gave them that song. DK: How about any other new material? JW: We haven't recorded anything recently and probably won't start working again until summer. After the Lounge Ax compilation, there might be a long gap before any new material. There probably won't be a new LP until next year, but there might be a single or two later this year. DK: Perhaps you could clear up some debate - what are "Sunshine State" and "Swallow That" about? JW: "Sunshine State" - I'm not sure about. I'm not quite sure about all the stuff Mac writes about - he's not exactly tight-lipped about it, but he wants people to get out of it whatever they want to get out of it. Once you've come up with an idea of what a song is about, the truth is usually so much less interesting that it's a let-down. I don't know about "Swallow That" either, but I do know that the chorus line, It's just a body!, is based on how, when Mac used to pick up Laura from her place for practice, there was a big roll of carpet out in front. Every time he saw it, Mac would wonder about how there could be a body in the middle of that thing, because that's kind of what it looked like. That's where that line came from, but I don't know about the rest of the song. DK: What's going on with your side project, 7 Brides for the Meatwagon? JW: We did our one show for the year at the Cat's Cradle in Chapel Hill. That was our third show and we just did our versions of the MTV Buzz-Bin songs for the past year in a way that only we can, horribly. We usually do it the second week of December, in conjunction with the Mammoth Records Christmas Party, but it is an open show. In the past we've done songs like "Seether." DK: You know Veruca Salt loves you guys? JW: No, I didn't know that. DK: Well, the love you guys, although mainly Laura- just from what I've read in articles and from the time when they hosted 120 Minutes- JW: I did see that show, but I didn't really know there was more than that. DK: Who else is in the band? JW: I play guitar; Jim plays bass; Joe Ventura, my former roommate, does drums; Rob Munk, from Tinsel, handles the vocals, and Ed Crawford, formerly of Firehose, plays the guitar and is the only one who gives true merit to our musicianship. This year, we did that Alanis song, "Hand In My Pocket" and that Cranberries' song - "Zombie." The one rule for our show is that at least one person in the band has to partially like the song....excepting the Alanis song and the Cranberries' song, but how could we not do them? The one song that we did that sent people scrambling to the bar and bathroom was Soul Asylum's "Misery." DK: Was it the song or your playing? JW: Probably a little bit of both. DK: Can we look for any solo recordings in the future? JW: I've done some 4-track recordings, so there might be a recording in the future, but knows? It's a lot more normal sounding than Superchunk- it's Tommy Keene-esque, more pop-sounding. I don't think it would appeal to most Superchunk listeners. DK (from email): Are Merge releases available in Europe? JW: Some Merge stuff gets released in Europe on City Slang Records, which is out of Berlin. Not all Merge stuff, just Superchunk, Lambchop, and a few others. DK (reading email): "I went to high school with Jon...ask him to tell you about "Hair Club For Men" - all I remember is their "World Tour" t-shirts, which listed only 3 shows, note of which were more than 10 miles away...he was also in the band "Mister Happy," which opened for the Dead Milkmen at the first concert...Jon was in the school musicals, [including] Oklahoma! We used to pick on him about his one big (and I think only) line: `He's thrifty all right!' Eventually it got to the point where I printed up ads for the play which said at the bottom: "STARRING JON WURSTER SAYING: "He's thrifty all right." JW: Yeah, Dan had a lot of time on his hands. I have never forgiven him for that! No, seriously, I still have that ad somewhere. And it was my only line...."Hair Club For Men" was a strange band - I was 14 and the oldest guy in the band was 27, so we had quite an age gap. We did half originals and half covers. The covers we did were songs by the Ramones, Robert Fripp, and the Plasmatics. I'm not sure how we got that name as the whole Hair Club for Men thing hadn't become popular yet at that time. It was also strange because the town we lived in was a little farming town that had no live music at all. DK (reading email): "It seems to me that Jon is taller than average, so...how tall is he and does he play basketball in his spare time?" JW: I'm 6'2", but I don't play basketball. I just never got into it. Some of the guys around here play, so I probably should. DK (from email): Would Superchunk ever do an unplugged concert? JW: We have done a few acoustic in-store sets, so it's not impossible. We would probably never do an unplugged CD just because that would be a little bit too much. DK: How did you wind up going back and doing older tunes like "Sick To Move" acoustically for the "Driveway To Driveway" single? JW: It's nice to hear the songs stripped down for a change, so we decided to do a few for that single. We were going to rent out a studio for that, but something fell through and we had to get the songs out in time for the single's slated release, so we just wound up recording those at Mac's house. DK (from email): Does Mac write all of the lyrics or does anyone else in the band have any input? JW: Mac writes all of the lyrics. The only exception is "Connecticut," which Jim wrote. I think Jim also helped write part of the lyrics to "Sprung A Leak." DK (from email): Do you have any particularly interesting tour or studio stories? JW: On the first day of the "Here's Where The Strings Come In Tour," I went outside of the club in Winston-Salem, N.C., after the show. I walked about half a block away and I was mugged at gunpoint - which isn't funny - but it was in the town that I had lived in for six years. That's probably the most exciting story that we ever had. I was fine, I came through it okay - no trauma, so...that's that. Also, Keanu Reeves came to see us play in Minnesota. He seemed a bit disappointed. We asked him what the problem was and he said he wished we'd played "Cut Your Hair." As far as stories from the studio, I don't think there are any, only because we record so fast that we're hardly in there. There is one story - Jim's amp sounded awful the first day of making Foolish. We opened it up to see what was wrong and we discovered a dead rat. DK (reading email): "How would you describe the evolution of Superchunk's sound (since you've been with the group since the No Pocky tour)? " JW: I think the sound is a little more complex. There's more instrumentation and the musicianship is also a little better. I think the songs are also more melodic and adventuresome. DK (from email): What would you be doing right now if you weren't in Superchunk? JW: Before I was in Superchunk, I had a lot of odd jobs, so I'd definitely be doing something. I'd probably be playing with someone else, but it would definitely have to do with music. DK (from email): What's your favorite Superchunk song? JW: My favorite song is probably "I Guess I Remembered It Wrong," but it's a song we don't do live. It's another one we've tried to do, but we never get it started the right way, so we just stopped doing it. I also like "Animated Airplanes" and "Revelations," which is one I've been campaigning for live. We never used to do it, but we've done it some recently. DK (from email): Why did Jack and Chuck leave? JW: Jack didn't really like the constant touring, or much of the touring aspect at all. With Chuck, it was just a matter of no longer getting along. The rest of the band were getting vibes that Chuck didn't want to be in the band. DK (from email): Do you own any Superchunk albums? JW: I have almost all Superchunk stuff, except for the first album and a few rand;'les, like the "Tower" import and the "Chunk" single [with "What Do I," etc.]. I also keep giving away my copy of Strings, too. DK (from email): You've also played with Portastatic. How do Portastatic recording sessions come about? JW: I did that one song, "Why Pinch Yourself," for the [Scrapbook] ep, just Mac and I. On the last album, there were a few songs that were done by the touring version of Portastatic - me, Jennifer Walker, Ben Barwick, and Claire Ashby...There was even one song that the band did without Mac. He had gone out to get a pizza or something and we just did the song without him. He wound up going back and adding his vocals. I just kind of wound up doing it, playing keyboards on five tracks and I am barely competent at keyboards... DK: But Portastatic doesn't really tour very often, right? JW: Just a few shows here and there. We haven't done any shows since the last Lollapalooza. DK: But Superchunk was also on part of the tour. JW: Portastatic only did one show, while Superchunk stayed on for about 1/3 of the tour or so. DK: Claire Ashby - where do I know that name from? JW: She often sells t-shirts and other merchandise at our shows. DK: Didn't she also do the band picture on the back of the "Hyper Enough" single? JW: She did that, too. DK: What about the kangaroo on the cover - is that real or a composite shot? JW: That's a normal camera shot. DK: Where was that shot taken? JW: It was taken near a bay in Australia, in a resort/encampment town, where the main point is just to relax. Near this one encampment, there was, for lack of a better word, a square made up of volleyball courts and so forth where all of these kangaroos would gather. There were whole families of them - about 70 kangaroos or so. DK: 70? JW: 50-70. But they were really docile. You could walk right up to them and feed them. It was very strange, but really nice. DK: I was reading a copy of Raygun from last year that has a Superchunk interview of it. In it, they say that you "upped the ante on Superchunk's sex appeal." Have you read this? JW: (chuckling) Yes. DK: They go on to say: "With his mushroom hair and wiry build, he looks like a bedhead Ian McCulloch. He's also the quiet one..." What do you think about press comments like that? JW: That's the first time I've ever heard anything like that. People will think what they want to think. I suppose it's rather flattering, actually. DK: You and Jim did an interview on AOL a year or two ago. Since it didn't specify who said what, which one of you were making the snappy comments? JW: For example? DK: Comments like: "I like my coffee like my men - strong and black." JW: Oh, that was Jim. Most of those kind of lines were Jim's. I might have had a few zingers. He's definitely the snider of the two of us. (laughs) DK: There was also the comment about how Superchunk had signed with Atlantic for a 3-record deal- JW: It was Arista, actually...that comment was mine. DK: That comment caused quite a stir afterwards. Some people took you seriously. How was that interview set up? JW: They would ask us questions and we would choose to answer them or not. It was all done on the phone. We'd be answering the questions and the guy typing our answers would keep saying "Wait, hold on, slower please!" So we'd have to the questions at half-speed. It was quite annoying. DK: Speaking of Atlantic, how did "Shallow End" wind up on the Jerky Boys soundtrack? JW: We had been a fan of the tapes when they came out. A friend of ours who was working on the soundtrack later contacted us and asked us if we wanted to do something for the record. Obviously, we didn't know what kind of a movie it was going to be... Also, we needed the money so that we could hold out until we started getting something from shows, album sales, and so forth. I saw the movie when it came out and I don't know if I even heard our song. If it was anywhere, I think it might have been when the two guys were getting out of a car and it might have been on a speaker across the street. DK: How does the band decide on tour stops and opening acts? JW: Recently, it's been mainly Merge bands like Spent, Karl Hendricks Trio, and Guv'nor or bands that we're friends with like Rocket From The Crypt, The Spinanes, and Seeweed. We get to pick now, as opposed to being virtually assigned other bands a part of a packaged tour deal. You lose some face if you're indebted to your record company. It's unpleasant when you have to deal with your record company tell you "tour with these bands or we won't promote your band." DK: Matador never did that to you, did they? JW: No, fortunately, they didn't. We don't even have to worry about it, which is another nice thing about being on your own label. DK: My friend told me that, years ago, she saw you play in L.A. with Hole, among other bands. JW: That was the first time that we had ever played the Whiskey. We played with Rocket From The Crypt, Olive Lawn, and Hole. There's a bootleg 7" of that night with "Cool" and "The Breadman" on an English label, Extra Chunky. They wrote to us and said that they didn't have the money to pay us royalties or anything, but they did send us 100 copies! DK: How does the band decide on what songs to do live? JW: We make up a master list for a tour but we usually lose it. We usually make up a set list about a half hour before the show. We've been taking a lot more requests recently, usually if people come up to us before the show, but we do take some mid-set, too. DK: But what about the people who yell out "Play ---, play ---, f*ck you, play---"? JW: There are always those people who try to prove what a fan they are by calling out some b-side from some old single that they want to hear. DK: Then do you ever do "Dance Lessons" live? JW: We used to do that a lot, especially on the stops leading up to us recording it, but not so much anymore. That was a song that we recorded for Foolish but never made it. DK: You've mentioned that a song "didn't make it" before. Do you mean that the song didn't work right or just didn't fit into the flow of the album? JW: A little of both, but it also had to do with the fact that we recorded a lot of songs for that album, 17 or so. You can't put all of them on. DK: Did you put those additional songs on things like the "First Part" single? JW: "Connecticut" and "Foolish" came out of those recordings, as did the song "Basement Life" that wound up on Dope, Guns - Vol. 8 DK: Who do you consider to be a good drummer and/or who is a personal influence on your drumming? JW: My favorite drummers aren't really involved with the same `scene` we play in. The main ones are: Charly Drayton, who mainly plays bass, but has played drums with the Replacements, Keith Richards, and the DiVinyls; Steve Jordan, who has drummed with Neil Young and Keith Richards; Levon Helm, of the Band; and Pete Thomas, who has worked with Elvis Costello. Of the harder rocking bands, I like Phil Rudd of AC/DC and Alex Van Halen. Of the younger guys, I like Atom of Rocket From The Crypt and Steve Earle, who used to be in the Afghan Whigs. DK: What are your favorite albums? JW: - The Clash - London Calling, Rolling Stones - Exile On Main Street, The Replacements - Pleased To Meet Me, Husker Du - Flip Your Wig, Son Volt - Trace, and The Band - Music From Big Pink. >>>a big thanks goes out to Jon Wurster for spending so much time with me for this>>>