An e-conversation with David Berman

By Adam McKibbin. Originally appeared in The Red Alert.

So I had that on my mind when I saw an old picture I hadn’t seen in years. It hung beside the basement door when I was a boy. It was called “Forgotten.” It was a sad scene. A horse behind a fence in a pasture as a terrible snowstorm comes down on the field. Far off you can see the farmhouse and the warmth conveyed by the windows. Now I started seeing the world through the eyes of a miniature pony…The humans have absconded. With all their problems left behind. The other animals don’t give a flying fuck. A good night’s rest is out of the question. I had to get out of that pony’s head! Once I emerged and could truly “hear” the pony for the first time, I realized he sounded like an elderly Jewish man kvetching, which is all the time when you’re an elderly Jewish man. “In your recent Pitchfork interview, you said that you don’t play songs at readings because you weren’t born to be the center of attention. Having gone through a university creative writing program, though, it’s been my experience that typical readings have a much more focused “center of attention” than typical music gigs. What makes it easier, then, for you to get up and read than get up and play? “One of the first things I knew about myself was that I was not an exhibitionist. There are shades of “acting” to all live music performances. I can’t act. Or at least not without a script. For readings, of course, you have a script. You don’t even have to memorize it. “Typical touring songwriters have ongoing relationships with their songs, often quite possibly for a longer duration of time than they’d like. Because you’re not playing 200 shows a year, do you think that you are more detached from your back catalog than those peers? “This is definitely the case. I am a stranger to most of the songs I’ve written; there’s never an occasion when I need to play them. Lately I have dug up some of the songs as I have saved them written down. It’s like eating fried shrimp. Strangely pleasurable. “Does it look like you’re going to wind up on the road for a bit once Tanglewood sees its release? If so, how much of that is pragmatic and how much is that the album lends itself better to a full-band type touring experience? “It’s just like a lateral career move. It’s not the same job. There are tradeoffs. Less privacy. More…what…affirmation. More financial solvency. More chances to do some kind of help for people outside my immediate call list. “In the aforementioned writing program, there were two competing methodological camps: 1) A writer must write constantly and on a disciplined schedule and 2) Take inspiration and run with it when it comes, but don’t sit around trying to force it. Which have you found to be truer to your processes as a poet and songwriter? “#2 most of the time. But most of what I’ve written in my life has come in periods of three months to a year where I live like method #1. “Were all of the members of the Tanglewood Numbers Band old friends, or were there some newer faces in the mix? “95% of it was old friends. You don’t have to worry that your session players don’t get your “vision” that way. One new guy was Pete Cummings. He’s Brian Kotzur’s (the drummer) uncle. When he was 14 and 15 he played guitar in Elvis’s little pocket band. He had a little band that was there for after the show, to unwind – who knows, Elvis might want to sing something. Or just listen to a teen rock quartet. “How much reworking would you do once they came in with their written parts? “The core band wrote their own parts during the four practice sessions we had in my basement. For overdubs, I had people play several to be sifted through later. I was concentrating on getting my friends in the right mood the whole time. Knowing the people well made that easier, too. Some I knew would do better without me there. And that’s where I got the idea to have them do a couple different things for me to check out later. I think these are brilliant people, right, so to me this method works to produce an “embarrassment of riches,” as they say. And it helps if you have a great mix engineer from there. “Steve Malkmus said in one recent interview that, even though he’s again played his part on this album, he had no idea of what the album was going to sound like. Is that true for most of the collaborators? It seems like Malkmus leaves a little more of a stamp on the final product than he might give himself credit for. “I think he means that after he left is when I brought in the outer band and changed engineers and even wrote a lot of the lyrics. I didn’t finish until June. He was there for the 12 most important days. The first 12. And he leaves a big stamp, yes he does. “Has writing music remained a constant, throughout everything? Has listening? “No, I have only written music in certain years. After The Natural Bridge, which was a rough experience to record, I couldn’t listen to music. I could only listen to Urge Overkill’s Exit the Dragon because it seemed to close to not being music at all. They were nearing TV pilot status. “I’ve been told several times that it’s “nitpicky” to assail an album because of its lyrics, yet no one has ever said the same thing about, say, overproduction or derivative guitar work. Why are words such a second-class citizen in the music world? “I think there is a certain “keep the drummer down on the farm” attitude among a lot of music critics. They like to perceive rock bands as “noble savages” they hold above the workaday pedestrian world. The Stooges, The Ramones, Guns N’ Roses. This is why other humanitarian critics embrace stuff like Whitehouse or violent rap music.

It’s the same old story, though, of the well-to-do bewitched by “working class” authenticity. These are the kinds of bands critics are most themselves while describing. Bands like these are too hard, too real, too unselfconscious to explain themselves. They need critics to do it for them. “How did you seek out music in Dallas in the early 80s? “There were a couple sources. There was VVV record store on Cedar Springs. The owner later became MC 900 Ft Jesus. There was KNON community radio. And on Sunday nights a radio show with George Gimarc playing strange things from England. Bauhaus, Jesus and Mary Chain. And the other “new waves” at your high school. “I guess the natural follow to that is…how do you seek out new music now? Or do you? “I listen to maybe four CDs a week. “I tend to do a lot of digging during interview prep, but this is only the second time that I’ve found explicit references to football in past interviews. I’ve talked to friends before who have had similar experiences of being treated like enjoying sports is a dirty little secret in the world of actors and writers and musicians. “Oh, you’re into football?” Have you noticed a similar phenomenon, where those high school lines between “jocks” and the “artsy” kids stay drawn? “It’s true. It’s a complete reversal of high school when the jocks had the cultural authority. “Pacman had a pretty rough preseason. Are you feeling that he can still be a boom, or is your gut saying “bust?””He is the first Titan since 1998 that has generated general animus in the city. Of course, he can change everybody’s minds by becoming a star. I think Maurice Clarett might no longer have that option. The jig seems up for him. “What’s your most frequent armchair quarterback complaint about the organization? “My most frequent complaint is the favoritism shown to Drew Bennett because he’s a good looking white guy the girls cream over. He’s like the Duran Duran of the NFL. I thought they were insane to give up Justin McCareins. “And, finally, do you have a pet cause to which you wish John Q. Public would devote more attention? “I wish people were more aware of the K Street Project. I consider its enactors to be less than sewage.