Honey Barbara Band Page

(c) Emigre music 1993

Honey Barbara interview featuring James H. Sidlo and Ross Marlow

From the Emigre music catalog no. 2

Emigre:

First of all, I'd like to give you guys the opportunity to beat the critics to the punch, and ask you to criticize your own record. Did it come out as you imagined it?

Ross:

As Far as I'm concerned, it came out far better than I imagined it would. I am really happy with the result.

James:

I hope we can do this again.

Emigre:

But now criticize it.

James:

Well, we don't play music full time and the financial resouces are limited. Even if I could play music, say, 40 hours a week as opposed to working 40 hours a week, that would let us explore the music in a deeper way, right there. And when I say "40 hours a week," that's not just composing songs; that's learning a new instrument or a new recording technique and then "unlearning" it. It's a time-proven practice that when you're doing something different, you have to do it over and over and over again before you start to get a sense of what you're doing.

Emigre:

Are you saying that some of the critics might say, for instance , that the actual playing of the instruments or the actual recording is not exactly what it could be in terms of expertise?

James:

I expect anything they say will be out of frustration, because they wont get a handle on our music. The problem with music, of course, is that they'll always rely on written media to try to explain it, which really is not always efficient. To me, the only way you judge it is by listening to it. Then you either like it or you don't. My friends ask me to describe our music and that's a loaded question, because I know their personalities, and I'll try to describe it, second guessing their taste, but ultimately I'll tell them that they'll need to listen to it. And even if you don't like it at first listen, maybe you'll need to listen to it again. But as far as the music industry today is concerned, that's considered to be a weakness, although I don't agree. If it doesn't have a really catchy riff, if it doesn't sound atleast vaguely close to anything big right now, then they're gonna have a hard time with it. You need to become the flavor of the month and our type of music might have a problem with that.

Emigre:

But you are aware of this. You are not exactly naive.

Ross:

We are both in our thirties, in 1993. We're not naive and yet we're extremely naive. This music to us has handles - it's not that impossible to grasp.

Emigre:

You told me that you have played together since July 4th, 1988. Why did it take this long to actually put together and send out a demo tape?

Ross:

We made a demo tape in 1990 and sent a few copies out. Some of the songs on that tape were the same songs that ended up on the CD. The arrangements were different, though, and they didn't have what the songs have now.

Emigre:

When you started in 1988, was it with the intention to eventually have a record out in music stores, or was that not really a big concern?

Ross:

We always wanted to be heard by as large an audience as possible, but the main thing that got us going is that making music, to us, is like one big adventure. Everything we do is totally new to us. I feel like a kid. James' guitar me feel like a kid. He's my favorite guitar player.

James:

We had been practicing, individually, before we me each other. Ross was writing songs and I played guitar, but never songs. I played guitar because I liked the sound of the guitar. My guitar playing is based more on playing with sounds than on formal song structures. When we met, and as we started developing our style, Ross would try to write songs that would fuse the two elements together. My guitar playing and certain aspects of his singing and his guitar playing would not always work right away. I had to change certain things or he had to change something or we both had to compromise. That's how it still is when we're composing. We get something and we think it's good but when we listen to it, most of the time we have to go back and try to change it by picking up a different instrument or adding a different effect or by not playing anything at all.

Emigre:

What I find most intriguing about your music is how you are able to glue together these series of seemingly unconnected little vignettes, these little licks, these tiny little discombobulated melodies, into one coherent song. It seems to me that what ties the songs together are the lyrics, the stories. The music often seems to be almost like a sound track to the words. Is the music structured or guided by the lyrics?

Ross:

Pretty much. It starts with the lyrics and after that we'll enter some chord progressions and all the little odds and ends will come after that. The core of the lyrics is the structure, although the lyrics will change during the development of the songs.

James:

See, after a while it doesn't even matter because they just fuse together, and when you're finished you think it's always been there, like statues in concrete. It's like when Michelangelo said that the statue must be freed from the marble. We would have songs recorded and think we were almost there, with just a little bit of work left, and the part we needed to finish would pop up each time in a surprising way. That final link was in there all the time but we just had to pluck it out. You wonder how we got there and often I don't remember how.

Ross:

And when we are finished, when we have the songs recorded and listen to them, they freak us out. Once the songs are recorded they become something spooky on their own, like your best friend telling you secrets nobody knows.

Emigre:

Have either one of you ever played in other bands before?

Ross:

I've played with other people before but never in a real band. I was sixteen and writing songs but I never found anyone to play them with. Honey Barbara is the only band I've ever been in.

Emigre:

To my ears, the music sounds very ambitious, and on many levels I think it fulfills the expectations that this ambition carries with it. What amazes me is that you are able to play such complex music, which fuses many styles, since you haven't played in any other bands, you play "Pards" and you sound like a weathered country band, perhaps on acid, but very country nonetheless.

Ross:

Yeah, sure, for us this album is extremely ambitious. We're two musical idiots and we have to admit it's gonna fail at some levels because it is ambitious. That's our excuse.

Emigre:

How will these ambitions develope in terms of a second album?

Ross:

The second album will simply be part of the body of work we intend to create that'll only end when we end. The goals will be the same. Both of us get board easily, so the next album will probably sound different. You know, new and improved sounds, but the goal will be the same - feedlotloophole.

Emigre:

Ross, You are actively involved in a local animal rights organization. Is this a direct result of living in Texas, the state known for beef and rodeos?

Ross:

The group is Voice for Animals. How do I come into it? Well, I was interested, so I read about animal rights and animal abuse, and I saw it's true we humans view non-humans as a resource to keep that machine we call "our lifestyle" running. We don't see animals as sentient beings like ourselves, or with an intrinsic value outside their possible uses for us and "our lifestyle." This is central to our music. It has to be. This is slavery pure and simple. And the animal rights aspect strikes me as a keen metaphor for the current human situation. We're born into the same bondage, blue collar or white collar; even the cattle barons are seen as just a means to feed the machine. So I'm sorely aware of the Feedlot I'm feeding in right now. I see us all sloppin' at the table, being fatted up, semi-oblivious for generations in a Feedlotloop. But I know there is a Hole, a way out, and I am going through that Hole. The name of the album is "FeedlotloopHOLE." I'd also like to add, april 17th is the starting date to Adopt-A-McDonalds, a world wide campaign nicely asking McDonalds to put a veggieburger on their menu, like they've already done in Holland. Change the world! Okay, I'll shut up. Thanks for asking, though.

Emigre:

It's curious to hear you talk with such concern for animals while, simultainiously, your debut album Feedlotloophole features a song such as "We Don't Know" which is a bit disturbing. Although it starts quite innocently, the final line "If she don't smile, we can always make her" is a little alarming, to say the least.

Ross:

Another name for it could be "Neo-Nazi love song." The narrator is not necessarily a simpathetic character. The narrator is a sad person unable to mind his own business, all in the name of neighborhood cleansing - his high ground.

Emigre:

People could take this the wrong way and think this is you talking.

Ross:

Well, it is part of me talking - that little capacious monster. Nah, it's all really tongue-in cheek.

Emigre:

Like when Randy Newman sang about short people?

James:

When I first read the lyics to "We Dont Know," they reminded me of a Bukowski character. One who has that want, that want what everybody has, and if you can't get it, you feel perverted and you want to get even. That song makes me think of that.

Emigre:

Do you care to explain what what "Pards" is about?

Ross:

Well, through poetical synthesis, I'm my own grandfather; call him "Opa" because because of his German Hill Country descent. By the way, the name "Pards" comes from my favorite B-movie with Clint Eastwood, "Bronco Billy." Anyway, I tell the kid, "Take the cowboy myth, son, and turn it around, inside out, or take the lonesome cowboy and follow that independence myth to the end of the line, where he takes no pay from the cattle barons, he no longer drives cows to the cattle cars and to the slaughter house but delivers them from the slaughter house." That's about it in a nutshell.

Emigre:

Explain, if you will, the term "drum de-programming" which you use in the liner notes.

James:

In some of the music that I like, the drum might be pretty basic, but it is not perfect, like the drum machine is perfect. It's flawed. Not horribly off, but flawed in small ways that actually become the signature of the drummer. By "de-programming," we mean you take the rigid pattern that the drum machine decrees and use it as a framework, and then you break it up. There are triggers on the drum machine that you can hit with your hand to add other percussion sounds, to make it sound more like a human drummer.

Ross:

You come by the drum machine with the attitude not to rely on the Bass - Snare - Bass - Snare beat. Drums are the root of the music; it's what you start with, not something you add as an afterthought. You liberate the drums and the rest will fall in behind, and the next thing you know you've got a new song. Who am I kidding?

Emigre:

I spoke to Michael Ivey from Basehead the other day and he asked me what you guys sounded like and I mentioned that you refer to your sound as "Pathetic Psychedelic." Then he said "Allright, but describe the beat." And I realized I could not for the life of me think of any particular beat. I told him I can tap my foot to it, though. Can you describe the beat of Honey Barbara?

Ross:

Like James said earlier, it's almost impossible to describe these things verbally. Let's call the beat Intestinal, which, we know is as evasive a term as it is descriptive.

Emigre:

Will you be satisfied using the drum machine in your future compositions or are you looking to eventually work with a human drummer?

Ross:

We want a complete band eventually. We want a drummer who has the same experience that we have. Someone who has a lot of different favorite drummers but who wants to fill in other gaps and be willing to blazeother trails, trails that other drummers may have only nodded at.

Emigre:

Is there someone out there like that?

Ross:

Oh sure, We know they're there, we just haven't found each other yet.

Emigre:

Are you looking for a live drummer for your performances only, or would you also prefer to have a live drummer when you are composing your songs? I can imagine when you write your songs and when you play as many of the instruments yourselves, the two of you, that you would have much more control over how these instruments are going to sound.

Ross:

Sure, we would have more control, but if we can get musicians with the same attitude as ourselves, it would enrich the gene pool and make it more interesting for us. Plus the process of composing a song wouldn't take as long. It wouldn't be a compromise so much as a marriage.

Emigre:

Do you think your music will be timeless, since it doesn't pay lip service to any popular styles?

James:

As of now it is. We've talked about the expectations we have for this record and I'm sure there will be at least a minority out there that'll like it.

Emigre:

How do you see yourselves fit into the music buisness? Do you think there is a place or a catagory for you there, somewhere? Who would you like to see yourselves be placed next to?

Ross:

All the people we've ever listened to.

James:

I'd like to be filed in between the Velvet Underground and Carl Heinz Stockhausen. When we play live, we ask people after the show whether they liked us. I remember a guy who was really enthusiastic. I asked him what types of music he liked and he said he listened to folk music a lot, so you never know. But, you asked us how we see ourselves fitting into the music buisiness. Without trying to sound too sarcastic, I would think there wouldn't be such a problem for us if there was any space left for such a thing as art within the music buisiness. When you talk buisiness , you talk about units, fast sell, windows of opportunity, quantity over quality, and right there Honey Barara might have a problem. Not in the long run though. We're in it for the long haul. But influences? John cage, of course, Harry Partch, the great hobo who designed his own instruments, Mortom Feldman. That's composer-wise. I should also mention Cecil Taylor, Herbie Nichols but also Jeff Beck, Cream...

Ross:

You can tell by our age that we are literally children of the sixties. We grew up on The Beatles, The Monkeys, The Doors, and Neil Young, of course. But there are also a lot of writers, philosophers, social critics, novelists, poets, scientists, outlaws and saints that appeal to us.

Emigre:

This range of influences is reflected in your music, but, unfortunately that is also not going to help you sell records. And you know this; we've talked about this before. I wonder what keeps you going knowing that your chances of selling lots of records is slim.

Ross:

Well, first of all, we are alive on this planet and we wanna make music that really moves us. If we were to concentrate solely on selling units, we'd certainly need to take a different road. We're not interested just in that, though. We want the music to take us somewhere that at this point seems almost practically intangible. Back in the sixties (the sixties are still ahead of their time, so it's no nostalgia trip we're on), when I listened to music as a kid, I had an older brother and sister and they brought all those records into the house and that made me listen to the radio. And I want that charge, That feeling when I was listening to that music, singing and dancing to it. There was discovery, a wonderment that I experienced and I don't get that enough from most music I'm exposed to today, with the exception of perhaps a Kendra Smith or Cleaners from Venus. Neil Young would blame it on digital technology, but I don't know. I want our music to take us to a new world, no less. I want to bump it back along the way it was going for me. That's pretty selfish but that's why I'm doing it.

Emigre:

Would you continue to make this music even if people didn't listen to it?

Ross:

We've been making music under those conditions pretty much all our lives, without a proper audience. I can't speak for James, but I get sheer joy just by playing and experimenting on our own. It's not just about the final result or what band you sound like, it even goes beyond our relatively small sound.

Emigre:

So you guys are not going to be easily discouraged?

Ross:

What are we going to do if we stop? James'll go on stewing in the civil service, maybe to the point of boiling over and talking a gun to his co-workers or something. Meanwhile, I'll just be mowing grass, spitting and pissed off under an insane sun. But maybe that's the only way to hear the song.

James:

Right now we spend about twenty hours a week on our music and I suffer a high frustration because it takes us so long to develope a simple line. You can't turn that flow on and off like a nine - to - five job. It comes in spurts and, you know, when you hear the muse call, you have to answer now, not at 1530 hrs. The interruptions are difficult.

Ross:

I don't ask the music to deliver us from the common life, but to compliment it, or rather, to shoot it though with this big back light, all the time, man. That's certainly not asking too much.

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