Chattanooga Times Free Press entertainment reporter Casey Phillips spoke with Scott Carney, lead singer of the Louisville, Ky.-based experimental rock trio Waxfang, about the band’s upcoming releases and how their 17-minute space opus, “The Astronaut (Part 1),” was inspired by “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
CP: When was the last time Waxfang was in Chattanooga?
SC: Gosh, it’s been at least a year or a year or half since we’ve been there.
CP: We’re almost to the end of the year. How has 2010 been for you?
SC: It’s been great. We’ve been really busy. We’ve done a few specialty shows at the beginning of the year. We played this museum here in town and kind of revamped some songs to play in a museum setting. We did a bunch of costumed stuff, which was really neat, in February. In April, we covered Prince’s “Purple Rain” album. That’s how we got the year started off.
In May, we went to England and played a festival with Pavement, along with many other great bands. We did a BBC session. We did an interview there and did a recording session, which was awesome. Aside from that, the rest of the time we spent recording various projects that are coming out next year. .
CP: This show in Chattanooga will be a solo show. Do you do solo gigs very often or is this a new thing?
SC: It’s how Waxfang originally started off, with me playing songs off our first two records live with just me and my guitar and my loop pedals and some other pedals. I haven’t done one in a little bit, but it should be fun. I’m looking forward to it.
CP: When was the last solo show?
SC: It’s been almost a year. I got asked to a solo show here in town about six weeks ago, and it was kind of a sort of a disaster kind of thing. It was for this bar here in town that was doing this thing called Gonzofest, which was a celebration of all things Hunter S. Thompson.
It was their first year, and they didn’t’ know what they were doing, and the schedule got all screwed up. It was a big mess. I ended up playing two songs and cut it short because there were too many other people playing after me and it was already after midnight. I took one for the team.
So I don’t really count that one. The last one I did was probably last November.
CP: Do you enjoy getting a chance to perform music as you did in the early days of Waxfang or do you miss the backup from the rest of the band?
SC: I do really enjoy it. One of the things I feel gets lost a lot when we plays as a band is my vocals because we’re just so freaking loud, especially in a small club. Obviously, vocals are usually the thing that gets lost more than anything.
It’s always fun for me to play these kinds of shows, because I get to hear myself sing, which is not always a luxury I have. (Laughs.) It’s nice to do songs we don’t play off some of the albums or do different versions of songs or test out new material.
CP: Have you given any thought to your set list?
SC: It’s going to be a mix off the two albums we have out now and probably a fair amount of new stuff. I’ll probably throw in a few covers as well.
CP: Any ideas which ones?
SC: I don’t know. I might throw in The Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer.” Other than that, I don’t know. I only say that one because I rehearsed it for this show that kind of got mangled recently. That was one of the two songs I ended up playing, so it’s still fresh.
CP: The last time we spoke, you were talking about the recording process for “La La Land” and how you and the rest of the band were feeling harried from having to do all the production work yourselves. Is that still the case for the material you’re working on for next year?
SC: We’re all doing it in house. Nothing has changed. Well, much has changed, but that hasn’t changed.
CP: Is that by choice or out of necessity?
SC: Honestly, we’re kind of doing it out of necessity now because we just don’t have the money to afford to work with anyone. That being said, I would love to work with a producer at some point, or just have some other people involved along the way, different sets of ears from people who might have a different take on our music and can shed some light on parts of our music we don’t.
CP: “The Astronaut (Part 1)” release just a couple of weeks ago. All of Waxfang’s music is very eclectic, but where does a 17-minute, spacey rock odyssey like that come from?
SC: That song is definitely an extension of the kind of big, epic kind of rock we were trying to experiment with on some of the songs on “La La Land.” It’s definitely in that kind of vein, but it sort of grew into this monstrosity of its own. (Laughs.)
CP: How did it get to such monstrous proportions? Did it start off as something smaller?
SC: Well, I had a beginning. The song is kind of three sections, and the beginning section I had written on my own. Just due to the length of the verses and melody and slow tempo of the song, that section ended up being six minutes by itself.
Then, we had this idea to do this big end section with all these solos and stuff. So we worked that out as a band. Then, we had an idea for a segue, which was the middle section, and really, all we had was the bass line that goes through that whole part.
It was nothing that we intended to do, having it be 17 minutes long. It just sort of happened. The beginning was six minutes, and the solos ended up being another 4-5 minutes, and then we just decided to draw out the middle section. Before we knew it, an earlier version of it was 18-19 minutes. We just kind of shaved it down a little bit.
It was a happy accident. We finally put it all together and thought, “Wow, this thing is that long.” We were all kind of amazed. That wasn’t necessarily intentional.
CP: Are you happy with the results?
SC: Yeah, I’m very happy with it.
CP: At any point did you consider releasing it as a three-song mini-concept album?
SC: Yeah, we always just wanted it to be one song. The first part of the song could technically be its own song, but the second and third really couldn’t exist by themselves. We just like the way that they all are so dependent on one another. The middle section is really just a big set up for the end of the song. The last two-thirds is dependent on the first section to set it up. Each part sets the next up.
CP: So I take it this isn’t something you can perform during a solo gig.
SC: (Laughs.) No, not necessarily. We had joked about it when we were practicing for a show recently. We were joking about me playing the song by myself, but I don’t think it would go over very well. (Laughs.) It really needs all the bells and whistles.
CP: Why astronauts and a space theme?
SC: Well, the idea was, and I guess still is, to write a companion piece to this song and release it as a concept album. The idea was, when I started to work on the lyrics, that I was trying to write it from the perspective of an astronaut who had become detached from his ship and was slowly hurtling through space towards this black hole, which is where Part 1 ends. He gets sucked into this black hole and spit into another dimension.
All that primarily comes from “2001.” There’s a scene I’ve always like in “2001” where there are two astronauts on the ship with HAL-9000 and one of them goes off the ship to work on something and out the window, you see him just shoot him off into space as if the HAL-9000 had done something.
That’s where the impetus was for the origin of that. It’s like, “What would you do in that situation? What would be going through your mind?” You’re just completely helpless, floating to your doom. I wrote it in the wintertime, and I was really depressed. (Laughs.)
CP: I was about to say. You must have been in a really bad mood.
SC: As a matter of fact, I was. I started working on this song after the breakup of a long relationship. I was kind of in the dumps. I was in a strange place, mentally, and that’s kind of what came out of it. (Laughs.)
CP: What about “Part 2?” Now that you’re distanced from that time and those emotions, what will the tone of the follow up be?
SC: Well, I haven’t started working on it yet. I have several ideas. It’s basically going to begin the way the first part ends. It gets into this tribally, junglely, polyrhythmic drum beat. That’s where it will start.
Unfortunately, I wont have the chance to work on it for another couple of months. I’m looking to finish working on our album in the next month or so. Once we get that finished, I’ll start working on “Part 2.”
“Part 2” is going to be a lot more upbeat and a lot more rock’n’roll. I’m not necessasrily it’ll be one long piece. I’m thinking it will be two or three shorter pieces. I would like to see the astronaut get to come home to earth. It will have a happy ending. It will be pretty fun because this is when the astronaut comes off on an alien planet, fights for survival and somehow ends up getting transported back home where he belongs, or at least to his ship.
CP: It’s weird, after listening to the rampant eclecticism of “La La Land,” to hear you talking about working on a concept album. Is cohesion something you were longing for when you started working on “Astronaut?”
SC: I guess so. I’ve long been a fan of concept albums. I was a fan of Pink Floyd and bands like that, and I wanted to try my hand at that. I wanted to try my hand at telling a story, which doesn’t tell a story, per se. It’s more like a musical journey.
We’re actually talking about whipping our bass player up come up with some illustrations to accompany the record when “Part 1” and “Part 2” are released, something for the listener to guide them through as they’re listening to the song.
Believe it or not, it’s the longest song we have with the fewest amount of words. (Laughs.) If you read the words, you have an idea that it’s about space, but it’s hard to grasp exactly what’s going on, and you definitely don’t get the whole “going into the black hole” kind of thing. We’re trying to think of a visual accompaniment we can make that would guide the listener through the journey, at least until “Part 2,” which may end up being the most verbose thing I’ve ever done. Maybe I’ll do a recap right at the beginning.
CP: Like, “Last time, on ‘Astronaut’ …
SC: (Laughs.) Exactly. So yeah, cohesion isn’t necessarily my strength. I’m usually pulling things from so many different places that they do end up ultimately being comprised of little bits and pieces. It’s nice to just try something different. We try to do different things and experiment. Sometimes, they work and sometimes they don’t. But this one is working at the moment, so I think we’ll go with it.
CP: What can you tell me about the direction you’re heading with Waxfang’s next full-length project?
SC: Well, I’d say we’re about 60-70 percent done tracking it. I’m hoping to finish that in the next four weeks. I don’t foresee it coming out until summertime of next year, unfortunately. The whole thing is beyond our control, at the moment.
My approach to it was that it would be the bridge between our first record, “Black and Endless Night,” and the second one, in that it would have a lot more pop-oriented kind of songs and also some weirder, darker, structurally experimental kind of stuff. It’s going to be a kind of a split.
I personally often felt like maybe we lost some people along the way with our transition from the first to the second album because they’re so different. The first one definitely has more of a pop feel to it, and the second one is more weird, fantasy, classic rock kind of thing. I thought it would be fun to at least approach it like a bridge between the two to appeal to both.
CP: Have you thought of a name?
SC: Well, the working title is “Waxfang 3,” but I don’t think we’re going to use that. (Laughs.) That’s our Led Zeppelin joke. That’s what the folder looks like on the desktop. I don’t know.
There’s a chance I might take a lyric from a song or … I don’t know. I haven’t even gotten that far. I’m just trying to finish the damn thing. We’ve been working on it since last December, but we keep getting side tracked because we take on these shows that require so much extra practice, and we went to England and we also recorded an EP we haven’t released. We keep busy. We keep being distracted by all these super awesome things we’ve been fortunate enough to do. Once it’s finished, I’ll go into titling mode and slap a title on the sucker.
CP: When will the EP come out?
SC: We’re still trying to decide. Depending on when the album comes out, we want to set it up with an EP. That may end up being this EP because it’s more or less finished. Or if we’re able to finish the second part of “The Astronaut,” I think we might prefer to put that out.
This EP we recorded is comprised of some older songs I’ve had, like real old, like 2000. Of the songs I wrote from 1999-2001, there are three of those.
The thing that ties all of them together is that they’re all almost folkier songs, kind of folk/rock songs, with prominent use of the acoustic guitar and percussion, just a little more mellowed out. It’s not in-your-face shredding guitar and drums all over the place. That’s very different from anything we’ve done in the past. We’re pretty excited about that. Hopefully, if all goes well, we’ll have three releases next year, which would be great.
CP: It never rains but it pours. Nothing for three years and then this.
SC: Yeah, I know. That’s why we ended up doing ” The Astronaut” as a single. It was like, “Well we haven’t done anything, so maybe we should give them 17-minute song.” (Laughs.) If that doesn’t get the ball rolling, I don’t know what will.
E-mail Casey Phillips at cphillips@timesfreepress.com