Interview from September, 2000
Interview by Matt LeMay

For many musicians, sound can be very intimidating. No matter how great a batch of songs is, finding the perfect frequency, timbre, and volume to express yourself can be downright terrifying, and can turn an otherwise excellent song into an awkward mess.

When I first heard David Grubbs' work with Gastr del Sol, I was amazed by the fluidity with which he and bandmate Jim O'Rourke employed sound. Every sonic nuance seemed to be expressed perfectly through instrumentation and production-- a level of sonic mastery very few artists can lay claim to.

A few weeks after grabbing a few words with him after a remarkably well-played acoustic show at the Knitting Factory, I met up with David Grubbs at Ozzie's Coffee in Brooklyn, one of the few good coffee houses that have survived the Starbucks-ization of New York. Within seconds of my arrival, I see Grubbs approaching on a bicycle. As he dismounts, he explains to me that this is the first time in a great while that he hasn't had a car. He grins, "I feel like a hippie."

We grab a table inside Ozzie's, get some grub, and begin the interview. Right off the bat, I feel that I have to get some geeky guitar talk out of the way. I ask him if he's been to Carmine Street Guitars, my personal favorite guitar hangout in the city. "I think I'm always just afraid to go to guitar stores in Manhattan. I just assume that they're so expensive. I've never looked for an instrument in New York because I travel... we're in Ottawa and somebody will say, 'There's a really cheap guitar store.'"

Descending into the murky depths of geeky guitar talk, I ask Grubbs about the Martin Sigma guitar he was playing at the show. "I always think that there's great variance between individual guitar makers. If you're going to buy a new guitar, you try every one that they have on hand. That guitar is, believe it or not, the first steel-string acoustic I've ever owned. I bought it seven or eight years ago, and it's survived three guitar cases that have been destroyed in travel. And I've been sitting in an airplane and I've seen it... thrown."

"I'm kind of scared to buy a much nicer, much more expensive acoustic traveling instrument," he explains. "I know Jim O'Rourke had a really beautiful handmade acoustic someone in San Francisco built. One day, he just opened the guitar case after he'd been flying and he'd been forced to check it which-- I mean, despite good intentions, frequently you really are forced to check it-- he just opened it and the face-- pop!-- just smashed in. I should perhaps consider buying a really nice guitar for recording purposes, because frequently, what you're hearing a lot is the sound of the pickup."

Segueing into studio production, I ask about Nicholas Vehrnes, the man responsible not only for the crystal-clear production on The Spectrum Between, but the full-on sonic assault of fellow Brooklyn residents Les Savy Fav's last two records. "He was great. Absolutely great. Extremely personable, funny, philosophical. He'd kind of take everything as a hypothetical question. One of the reasons I enjoyed working with him is that he would be interested in what's going on in the music. His perspective, I thought, was really interesting. I would definitely work with him again."

"It's the rare, unfortunate situation when I find myself working with an engineer who really just doesn't get it, doesn't show a particular interest in it, makes aesthetic suggestions that are just, like, completely off the mark. There are lot of pressures in a recording situation, budget-wise. You know, the clock is always ticking. You always wish that you had an endless amount of time. So you can get into some really bizarre situations with an engineer who's just providing his or her very strange perspective on the situation."

Vehrnes isn't the only recent collaborator that's helped David Grubbs explore new sonic territory. On Apertura, a record released on Grubbs' own Blue Chopsticks label, insanely cool Swedish reedist Mats Gustafsson lends his immeasurable talent to Grubbs' harmonium, resulting in one of the most engaging improvised jazz pieces to come out in years. "Mats plays in Chicago a lot-- actually, he plays in Chicago more than he plays in Stockholm. It was mainly through his connection with John Corbett-- who works at the Empty Bottle and has a completely fantastic new label called the Unheard Music Series, which is primarily unreleased improvisation and free jazz recording-- that I met Mats."

"I don't know... it depends on who it is, but [jazz musicians] can be intimidating. As much as you wish that there weren't barriers between players and styles of music, sometimes it really feels like, 'Whoa! Mats Gustafsson... this guy must have played for like 10 hours today.' He is of such formidable, profound technical finesse. I was really surprised to see him at a Gastr del Sol show in Chicago. And it was this completely crazy show where there was this complete Squirrel Bait fan who had found out that Gastr del Sol was playing, and showed up and got incredibly smashed, and was throwing beer at us. Really, completely bizarre. And then afterwards, Mats was like, 'That was one of the greatest shows I've ever seen!'

Aperture, as it turns out, came together when David Grubbs invited him to play on The Thicket. Gustafsson never appeared on the album, but while they were in the studio together, they recorded two improvisations that later became Aperture. "I had brought the harmonium with me and we simply recorded two improvisations, which is really rare for me because I'm a fan of improvised music, but, in general, not a from-scratch improviser. It's a record that I really love unabashedly. And I love Mats' playing on it-- it's just really at the peak of his playing. The first 25 minutes of the record he's circular breathing, but he's doing so very quietly. I think his playing is really stunning. It has a consistency of scale that seems unlike an improviser."

Gustafsson also contributed to The Spectrum Between, lending a blistering solo to the record's standout, "Gloriette." Says Grubbs, "He basically played to a click track and an acoustic guitar. I mean, the crazier thing with that was Mats is playing that scorching solo literally just with an acoustic guitar. He'd played at Tonic, and once again, I said, 'I'm working on a record, if you want to stop by.'

"It's just a light acoustic guitar track, and he's like, 'Oh, maybe I could play something light on the fluteophone.' And I was like, 'No, no, I want you to play tenor and I want you to imagine it's a full band and John [McEntire] is playing drums.' It was really kind of an absurd fiction of him playing along with it. But then, what he played was actually decisive in terms of working out the arrangement. It was put together backwards. John's tape was slowed down and he had to try to make some not-too-subtle moves."

As I finish my coffee, I ask David Grubbs more about The Spectrum Between. Nonchalantly, I say something to the effect of "The Spectrum Between seems more song-based-- less epic-- than The Thicket." David pauses. "How so? I'm interested to hear what other people think of the difference between records." I stumble for an answer, and wind up blurting out something about more traditional song structure, verse-chorus-verse, and simpler arrangements. Before I can embarrass myself further, David chimes in. "I start four or five things at once and then, a couple of months later, I more or less finish four or five things at once. And there are parts which are kind of up for grabs, like, 'Which song is going to have the honor of getting this great part?' So, I would say differences between records have less to do with an idea of what would be the best approach for the individual than how the batch turns out."

David Grubbs forgets how long The Spectrum Between is. "34 minutes? 35 minutes? [laughs] It seemed like a tremendous amount of material when I was working on it. I mean, I was also working on a track that became an installation for the Pompadou Center, and a couple of things for compilations. It seems like a record that can easily be digested in one sitting, and that appeals to me." So, does that mean that The Spectrum Between is a more accessible record? David pauses quizzically. "I don't know, that's such a fraught term."

Accompanying Grubbs' more down-to-earth sound is a new, more down-to-earth image. Somewhere between the leather-clad, "pensive" Grubbs on the back of The Thicket to the laid-back guy I saw play an acoustic set at the Knitting Factory, there must have come a dramatic change. I stab at a tactful way to inquire about this, without using the word "older." Thankfully, David seems to see what I'm getting at. "You mean I look less like a grad student? [laughs] Well, I am less of a grad student! I guess, technically, I'm still a graduate student. I'm in a Ph.D. program in the English department of the University of Chicago. And for a couple of years, I taught a class at the U of C-- I taught at the school of the Art Institute. Things have changed professionally in that I am no longer so plugged into academia. I'm a professional musician for the first time in my life, and I also do a lot of freelance writing. I'm a music critic for the Munich newspaper."

A music critic and a musician? Seems like an odd pairing, considering that many musicians consider critics the scum of the Earth. "Well, it's published in a different language," he laughs. Is it odd, then, for him to be in the position of reviewer while being reviewed by others? "People who have made dozens if not hundreds of records still have trouble with even mixed reviews. That's a really interesting subject. I got two nasty reviews of The Spectrum Between from weeklies in Chicago. I'm not sure if it ever gets easier to read stuff like that. Certainly, after reading reviews for The Spectrum Between, it makes me really not want to hammer somebody in print-- just be a little more thoughtful of the sensitivities of the person I'm writing about. In English, I tend to write art pieces more-- I just finished a long piece on audio art. I don't know if this is something I'm moving to more seriously, or [if it's just] a way of paying the rent."

Despite being evicted from his previous residency in Brooklyn due to a sudden changeover from rental to co-op, Grubbs has found that being a full-time musician has its advantages. "On one level, I feel less pressure because the activity of working on music is something that I have so much more time for doing now. So it's not like trying to cram in all of these preparations for a show or a tour or a record while I'm trying to write a dissertation or prepare to teach a class. I have a lot more time to work. There is a certain... economic terror to doing it. [laughs] Particularly in New York. But I'm getting by, and so, it's working. I'll be frank: it's a little scary. I don't know what else to do. I'm so obviously drawn to what I like to do that I feel fortunate that I can make a living at it."

For somebody as impossibly prolific as David Grubbs, could this mean an even greater increase in recorded material? "I've been doing a lot of work on a computer at home using Pro Tools. The sound source that I use is a Moog analog synthesizer that I've had forever. And yet, I don't find myself processing the source material-- it's all in the editing and the mixing and combining, which is very similar to the effects-less approach I use to playing the guitar."

Against my better judgment, I decide that there's one cornball, James Lipton-esque question I just can't help but ask. Ranging from the post-punk angst of Squirrel Bait and Bastro, to the intricate dynamics of Gastr del Sol, to the laid-back acoustic strum of The Spectrum Between, Grubbs has spread his unique style across many genres. I ask him, unabashedly, "What album do you want to be your legacy?"

He pauses. "I haven't made it yet."