Pitchfork Interview

By Mark Richard-San. Originally appeared in Pitchfork Media. January 2002.

Silver Jews started when David Berman began playing with Steve Malkmus and Bob Nastanovich in the late 80s at the University of Virginia. Early singles with Drag City were noisy and lo-fi, very much in step with the indie rock of the early 90s. With each new album, Berman simplified his approach and refined his writing technique, adopting a progressively countrified sound to complement his always witty and insightful lyrics. Sometimes Malkmus, Nastanovich or Steve West showed up for a record, and sometimes they didn’t, but over time the erroneous assumption that Silver Jews were a “Pavement side project” faded.

Meanwhile, Berman continued to pursue writing apart from music. The Baffler was wise enough to run his terrifically accomplished poetry regularly through the mid-90s, and he later placed his work with the highly regarded Open City. A book of poetry on Open City’s publishing imprint made some waves in 1999, and he contributed an (http://www.gpalabs.com/ entertaining essay) about high school and ecstasy to Feed Magazine.

Gore Vidal said of writer Italo Calvino, “Reading (him), I had the unnerving sense that I was also writing what he had written; thus does his art prove his case as writer and reader become One. ” This is something like the sensation I get from listening to the Silver Jews. David Berman’s writing, both with his music and in his poetry, has an uncanny ability to outline and map the blurry edges of consciousness. The following email interview took place in January.

Pitchfork: Bright Flight strikes me as a bit closer to country than your other records. In “Tennessee,” the narrator fantasizes about moving to Nashville, writing sad songs and getting paid by the tear. I’ve noticed you have an affinity for a witty couplet that also says something sad, something Nashville songwriters have long been interested in. Do you feel a kinship with the country songwriting tradition? Any particular favorites among country songwriters? How about a favorite turn of phrase?

Berman: Lyrically, country music is the most satisfying music for me. Even a cheap shot like Garth’s “Friends in Low Places” is fascinating, like a hovering cube above my bed. It has a lot to do with concision and details that spread a fabric under the song. Bobby Braddock is great. Of course Bill Anderson. Roger Miller for weirdness. Some favorite titles: ”I’m Gonna Hire a Wino to Redecorate Our Home,” a hit for David Frizzell in the early eighties, “I Got in at 3 with a 10 and Woke Up at 10 with a 3” is another. I just crack up when I hear the Bellamy Brothers’ “If I Said You Had a Beautiful Body (Would You Hold It Against Me). ” So damn gay it’s hilarious.

Pitchfork: Like most of us, the narrator of “Friday Night Feeling” loves the sound of a jukebox playing. What ten records would we find in your ultimate bar jukebox?

Berman:

Pitchfork: “I Remember Me” is one of my favorite songs on Bright Flight. It seems like a new kind of song for you, one with a very clear and direct narrative. Did you approach the writing of this song any differently? What role do you feel narrative plays in your writing in general?

Berman: I always have wanted to sustain stories over the length of a song but haven’t tried much because I figured it’s someone else’s turf. I mean, when you’re writing songs you play to your strong side, and mine had always been fractured, however slightly, composition. I had been keeping off asking this woman I love to marry me for a handful of years. I knew I was going to eventually, but was happy to think of it always as 9 months off, when I had a little more money or something. For that song, I imagined I had the chance to ask taken away from me through the insertion of a runaway truck.

Pitchfork: Do you have an interest in politics? Do you feel like political matters inform your songwriting?

Berman: Probably insofar as I have a sometimes angry relationship with an abstract enemy called “rich people” that’s been going on since I was a kid. It’s a long story. It comes out in the songs. I think in “We Are Real” off the last album which is political in a pure sense, Us vs. The Forces That Lie To Us.

Pitchfork: Silver Jews albums typically have one instrumental (my favorite is “Night Society”). What’s the idea behind putting an instrumental on a record? Do you listen to much instrumental music yourself? What are some favorites?

Berman: I always say they are put there as respite from the words and/or my voice (which doesn’t agree with everyone to say the least) and I guess that’s so. By now also it’s just the way I order the records. They are all organized the exact same way, more or less. I’m a big fan of John Oswald’s Grayfolded CD, which is 150 minutes of (the Grateful Dead’s) Darkstar instrumental passages, hundreds of live versions laid on top of each other, twisted and manipulated.

Pitchfork: Your writing is filled with place names, and it seems like you’ve moved around a fair amount. What are some of your favorite places for living and why?

Berman: I don’t think I’ve ever liked living in a city as much as I like Nashville now. The thing is you can’t just pick a city, you have to pick a time too. NYC in 1989 was wildly different than NYC 1999. Austin was great in the 80s for me, but those same great qualities in a town draw people until “it’s just not the same anymore. ”

Pitchfork: When do you think that first kid said, “Punk’s not dead, punk’s not dead? ”

Berman: Punk as it will be historically defined ended in the eighties. There were several last stands. The first Mudhoney single could have been the last. You can’t talk about stuff like this without sounding like a total asshole.

Pitchfork: How often do you pick up your guitar?

Berman: I go months, sometimes years without. I usually get set to write a new record in my mind then go at it every day for a few hours until the album’s done.

Pitchfork: In Germany, the word for “pizza” is “pizza” and the word for “hat” is “hut. ” Hence, some of the citizenry believes there’s a chain called “Pizza Hat,” a belief reinforced by the fact that the “red roof” logo for this pizza chain looks like a bright red cap. When I heard this, it seemed like something that could be a Silver Jews lyric. Do you ever work something you overhear into your writing? How much of your imagery is inspired by things you actually see?

Berman: I get a lot of ideas from mistakes like that. Sometimes I turn the TV just below where you can hear it and write down what I think they might be saying by the mumbles and rhythms. I think Derrida proposed that the reason Hegel is so revered in Western philosophy must in some small part be related to the fact that his last name sounds like “eagle” in so many Western languages.

Pitchfork: Another question about imagery: Did you actually see BB King on “General Hospital? ”

Berman: I came into the living room and a soap opera’s credits were rolling. I could have sworn I saw his name roll by. It seemed so unlikely, so incongruous that it captured my imagination. I saw him as a heart attack patient or an entertainer at a nurse’s birthday party. Whatever happened on the real show, it was then my intellectually property, “I saw BB King on General Hospital,” and I can say that with conviction.

Pitchfork: Certain words and phrases appear and reappear in your work. For example, the term “split-level ranch” appears in at least two songs and one poem. What comes to mind for you with that specific image?

Berman: Those houses with floors that were really only half floors. Half a staircase that you could leap from kitchen to den and land on your knees cause the carpet was so thick. It’s just one of those phrases that hold a lot inside of them.

Pitchfork: I’m consistently impressed by the haiku-like compression in your lyrics and poetry. I have this theory that a complex experience can be packed into just a few carefully chosen words and slipped under the door to the reader, who can then unpack the phrase and get the full experience of the writer on the other side. For example, the line, “An anchor lets you see the river move,” from “How to Rent a Room. ” I’ve spent hours thinking about all the implications of that line, many of which I imagine occurred to you when you wrote it. What technique is involved in achieving such compression?

Berman: First you have to write a lot of sentences. Then you’ve got to switch to the other side and become the reader. Be hard on yourself. Take out those things that don’t advance the cause even if you’re fond of them. Then again and again. Allen Ginsburg was wrong about a lot of things, but especially when he said, “First thought, best thought. ”

Pitchfork: A few years ago, you said you wanted to wait to publish your poetry until it could get sufficient distribution. You said you didn’t want to publish in the literary equivalent of a Drag City, because you were afraid of your poetry being lost in the shuffle. Were you satisfied with the impact that Actual Air had? Where are you publishing your writing now?

Berman: The book got around. The Open City people are well connected to say the least. I mean, a review of a small press book of poetry in GQ? They did a good job. Lately, I’m not publishing anything right now. I’m waiting for a new Me to show up in my mind.

Pitchfork: When you worked as a security guard at the Whitney, did you ever have to wrestle anybody to the ground? What were your duties?

Berman: We had walkie-talkies. But the head guard would get mad if you fooled around with them. You called code two if you had to go to the bathroom. Malkmus and I would call code twos at the same time and go get high in Central Park. There were millions of hijinx. The other guards were genuinely fascinating, each and every one. I think guarding knocks a screw lose eventually. All that thinking time.

Pitchfork: Do you make a living from your writing and music? What’s the worst job you ever had? What was so bad about it?

Berman: The best way to describe it is, “I get by. ” I probably make $23,000 a year. For a 35-year old that’s not so hot, but my goal when I left college was not to have a boss. And I’ve met it for going on 7 years. Now it looks like those days may be over. But its always looked that way and then in the last minute a check from nowheresville moved the sentencing date forward. Like a $5,000 check from The Minus Times for my essay “Why I Hate Movies. ” My worst job was working as an orderly in a hospital in Virginia that took in all the 800-lb. people from the mountains who had to be cut out of their log cabins. Took three men to turn them on their side so the nurses could change the sheets. I was heaving the ass up when this feller shit liquid green turds all over my hands and forearms. Smoking angel dust in the morgue was cool, though.

Pitchfork: What’s next for David Berman and the Silver Jews?

Berman: I actually have no fucking idea.