Mexican Masks

Blogdigger Media search for Other Latin American Cultures
Blogdigger Media search for Other Latin American Cultures

Calexico :: An Interview with Joey Burns

Calexico successfully blends southern Americana with with world influence. Their catalog is one filled with some of the most refreshing albums in my collection and they are always an absolute treasure to witness live. Below, we’re happy to welcome Mitchell Bandur back for a very special interview with Calexico’s Joey Burns.

Muzzle of Bees: Each album is very different, and it has somewhat to do with the collaborations I assume, but how important it for you that each album remains different and distinct from one another?

Joey Burns: It’s not that important. It’s important to keep challenging ourselves. Its hard for me sometimes, I guess, because you’re question is a little bit of a surprise. Most people think that the only record that’s really different is the last record; all the other records are along a similar line. But I like your question, I do feel a lot of the records are quite different but deep down inside there is this core aesthetic to the lyrics music, everything. This album in a lot of ways is a representation of all things that we’ve done in the past and continue to do. One journalist even said it was the “crystallization of all things Calexico.�

How important is it? I guess it is important to feel like you’re bringing something new to the table each time.

MoB: What is the core of Calexico’s sound then?

JB: I think it’s an approach. It’s this kind of aesthetic the way in which John plays the drums. The way we look at the instrumentation. The way we produce it and the way we kind of bring out the sound. We leave enough ambiance and room sound to what we’re doing. It’s about having a lot of diversity, a lot of variety, but again, the drums being a very important part of the mix.

There’s also kind of this fluidness between the core instruments – the guitars, the bass, sometimes cello. There are these lines that are woven around each other that aren’t about separate parts but bringing them together in a natural and intuitive manner.

MoB: Do you set out to improvise at all in the studio?

JB: That’s how the songs get born. We don’t go in with a demo with everything mapped out and just color it in. We go in and write and make up stuff and record all the while. If something sounds good we keep it, if not so good, we sort of push it to the side and come back to it or just let it go. So the studio is like our sketchpad and the pad sometimes has great foundations and we go from there.

MoB: Considering all the time you’ve spent together, do you ever disagree creatively with John?

JB: Sure.

MoB: How do you deal with that?

JB: You just talk about it, weigh the options. Fortunately, when we are mixing the album we have a third party – we have Craig Schumacher, who is our mixing engineer. He has a basic understanding of what we’re about and the fact that we want to try new things. There are certain degrees of patience. Maybe he’ll try something crazy on the snare or the vocals and we try to balance it. We work together. The three of us come together and agree on the basic direction.

MoB: How much of a personal narrative can someone inject into an instrumental song? You write many instrumentals and I was wondering, “How does someone connect to a song without words?�

JB: I think that it’s a great question. I think the instrumentals draw on a lot more of everyone’s imagination and everyone is completely different – in the band and in the audience, too. The thing I learned is never underestimate the power of the instrumental song. By not coming out right and having every song be lyrical, but just having some space brings people in, it brings them forward. They bend their ear closer to what it is your doing.

MoB: If someone handed you a copy of Carried to Dust in 1996 what would be your reaction?

JB: (laughs) In 96? I would like it! I probably would be intrigued somewhat by the mix of vocals and language – its something you didn’t really hear in ’96, especially in the states. But I would say that comes from our European experience and after ‘96 we found ourselves a lot more in Spain and Italy. I think that’s a reason why we are where we are.

MoB: What is your impression of the crowds at your live shows? What are the vibes you get from them?

JB: It changes all over the place. I was thinking a lot about that this morning. I met some students in Chapel Hill from Spain and Portugal and they were like, “How come the audience is so stationary? How come they’re not reacting more?â€� They’re asking me that and I’m like, “I don’t know. You’re form Europe, you’ve seen the reaction to songs over there when we played in Barcelona or Lisbon and now you’ve lived here for some time. I ask you the question, “Why is it? Maybe there a difference between countries or continents.â€� One of them wrote a response on myspace this morning or yesterday. “Your success in Europe is because we like to experiment different styles, we love fusion, and we are curious. No musical conformity. As for Spain and the ‘heart’ thing. You simply have the ‘Heart’ and ‘duende.’ That’s why we love you so much.â€� -myspace

And she used the word duende, which I think is a phrase that talks about the spirit and something that goes beyond having expression or making an artistic statement. It’s about putting this passion into it. Our music draws a lot from European influence but it comes from the [American] Southwest, it has a certain regionalism to it. So when we play the west coast, the bigger cities like Chicago or New York there tends to be a response to and a reaction to some of the music that has Latin aspects or different influences shining through. When we play some of the smaller towns some of the reactions can be subdued or submerged. And I wonder if it has to do just because culturally it is quite different – I’m not sure – its hard to say I don’t have all the answers, but I do notice the crowds are different and that’s okay, too. I like the fact that it changes up, it’s only natural.

MoB: Calexico’s album artwork has always been recognizable. Where does the aesthetic come from?

JB: It’s a friend of ours Victor Gastelum who I used to work with at SST records. I love his style, I love the fact that it’s so recognizable. A lot of his characters resonate with some of the themes and narratives in our music. Sometimes we mix it, like with the last record or some tour albums. For the most part I like his style. He is kind of a parallel-hybrid, with his fonts or images, and our music. It feels good and it’s not exact all the time, which I like. He has usually used maybe three four colors and I asked him about that and he said, “Well I’m color blind. I use black, I use a metallic and maybe one more color.� It all makes sense. I though that was kind of interesting – here is an artist that is color blind.

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Calexico’s Carried To Dust is now available on Touch & Go Records. They recently wrapped up select US tour dates and resume their tour in Europe in the beginning of 2009.

Myspace: Calexico
MP3: Calexico - “Two Silver Trees”

New Conversation, New Narrative: Stanley Fish

Click to listen to Chris’s conversation with Stanley Fish. (41 minutes, 19 mb mp3)

Stanley Fish made the campaign’s most audacious — also the most thoughtful — attribution of a certain aspect of divinity to Barack Obama. Fish was a Milton scholar before he became a culture warrior and, more recently, the New York Times’ “Think Again” blogger on the life of the mind, on campus and off. When Doctor Fish pictured the taunting John McCain and the imperturbable Barack Obama as a version of Satan’s contest with Jesus, he was drawing on Milton’s Paradise Regained — “a four-book poem in which a very busy and agitated Satan dances around a preternaturally still Jesus until, driven half-crazy by the response he’s not getting, the arch-rebel (i.e. maverick) loses it… The power Jesus generates,” in Fish’s reading “is the power of not moving from the still center of his being and refusing to step into an arena of action defined by his opponent. So it is with Obama, who barely exerts himself and absorbs attack after attack, each of which, rather than wounding him, leaves him stronger. It’s rope-a-dope on a grand scale… Jesus is usually the political model for Republicans, but this time his brand of passive, patient leadership is being channeled by a Democrat.”

We are talking in this election-day conversation about what feels already like a redemptive example and a profound turn in the civic culture. Are we ready for a touch of what could also be called a Gandhian model of doing the public business? I am asking Stanley Fish about the Obama challenge to public intellectuals, and about the Obama effect on the American “narrative.” Fish speaks as a Hillary Clinton Democrat who’s ready to make a considered and very large leap of faith.

SF: There will be, I believe, a three to six month period, which we can call a window of opportunity. By that I mean: countries around the world — some allies, some neutral, some our adversaries — will think there is a new opportunity for conversation and an opening up of old questions. So that is one part of the equation, the other part of the equation, if I’m right, is the response of the Obama administration is able to make.

In the Middle East, Latin America, Russia and Africa, there will be an opportunity for the United States, especially for the Obama administration, to start talking with people in ways that might lead to concrete resolutions, not tomorrow but down a road that has a discernable end.

I just heard this morning that Hugo Chavez, who is anticipating an Obama victory, said that he would be happy to sit down with the new American president and see what areas of compatibility and mutual self-interest we might identify so that we may no longer have to think of our two countries existing in an adversarial relationship.

CL: It’s remarkable. When Ahmadinejad calls then you know something has really happened.

SF: It is remarkable. If a bunch of things like that happen, and the administration has the savvy to take advantage of it, then I think we’ll see remarkable changes…

Stanley Fish in conversation with Chris Lydon, November 4, 2008