Part 2
Paul Simon said, the way that I listen to my own records is not for the chords or the lyrics, my first impression is of the overall sound. What's your own take on that? And how would you define your personal sound?
Shane Parish: I kind of agree that most people just hear what something sounds like first, the timbre of it, right? When you're listening to a recording, or something's on the radio, or you hear something at the grocery store, are you hearing electric guitar, a tube amp? Or aren't you rather just immediately hit by the colour of the sound? I think I try to create colour. I think I try to do that when I'm playing with people. I ask myself: How does this hit you as a colour?
You know that track I recorded yesterday that I mentioned before? It was all electric guitar. And there's this record I've been working on for six months and I'm like, I think I need to re-record the whole album now. Because the colour I got in that session, was so right.This other music is starting to sound like a demo to me or something.
Sound, song and rhythm are all around us. From animal noises to the waves of the ocean, what, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non human made sounds? And how far would you describe them as musical?
Wes Tirey: This seems like a question that I should have been asking you, seeing you're more of a John Cage enthusiast than myself. And not to say that I don't love that stuff. It makes me think of Harry Partch too. You know, I'm not much of an authority talking on this kind of stuff. I can't relate this to what I do.
But every locale, every environment has its sound. If you listen to it, it can be intriguing. But that stuff is more on the writing side for me than the music side. Listening to a cityscape or listening to conversations at bars, listening to conversations on a street and at an airport, that's where the stream of language finds its way into your subconscious. And you never know what you're going to recall, you never know what you're going to hear in the moment, you never know what you're going to be inspired to write down in a notebook.
But for me, this relates less to instrumentation and more to language.
From very deep/high/loud/quiet sounds to very long/short/simple/ complex compositions, are their extremes in music you feel drawn to? And what responses do they elicit?
Shane Parish: Yes. All of the above? Honestly, I have a pretty large palette, and a large curiosity and interest in all types of music, and performance of it. I am drawn to complexity, but not necessarily for its own sake. I still listen to prog rock, to something like Mahavishnu Orchestra, I still like blazing John Coltrane saxophone solos and stuff.
What response do they elicit? I was talking with a bass player I'm working with in the new Ahleuchatistas lineup, Trevor Dunn. And we both talked about how we laugh at music when it's really good. You're just so blown away by whether it's really tight, or just so well executed, or they're doing something really original, or you're just surprised … and start laughing. And I have this response.
And it's the highest compliment, but whenever it happens, no one else is laughing. So it's like this Larry David thing where, people think I'm laughing at the music, but I'm laughing out of sheer joy and surprise and just abundance of life. Obviously, tears is a good one too.
[Read our Trevor Dunn interview]
From symphonies and traditional verse/chorus songs to linear techno tracks and free jazz, there are myriads ways to structure a piece of music. Which approach works best for you and why?
Wes Tirey: You know, I definitely have songs where the structure is something that I'll experiment with. I did that a lot more of that on my album, Black Wind which came out in 2016. There's a lot more experimentation there with structure.
But when you look at a lot of my songs, American folk was the kind of obvious lineage, from listening to hours and hours of Delta blues, country blues, folk ballads. I'm working on a project right now which makes use of poems from a book called The collected works of Billy the Kid by Michael Ondaatje. I took a selection of poems from that book and put music and melody to them. It was a really interesting challenge because it was all in free verse and my own material is very rhyme scheme driven lyrically.
The paradox is that structure gives you endless freedom once you internalise and understand it.
Could you describe your creative process on the basis of one of your pieces live performances or albums that's particularly dear to you please.
Shane Parish: It's gonna be hard to go into one piece because I think there's an overall ethos that I strive for. I think there needs to be an edge there for me. And then we can kind of play around that edge. I think that came from what I was saying earlier about performing immediately at a time when I couldn't really play – you just go out there and you've gotta jump in and go for it.
A question that I often get asked is how much of your performance was improvised versus composed? And the answer to that is, yes I like having elements that are completely worked out. But then I also like the ability or the necessity to play with them, and be able to be loose with them and free with them, where here's the form, but I can now have freedom within that form. And within that form can be an amalgamation of styles. Just pick up the instrument and what comes out, that's you and that's all your experiences, morphed and melted into whatever you are now in that particular moment.
I really like embracing the fluid arts, this organic art form where there are highs and lows, where there's going to be this Euclidean motion to it all. I want the improvisations to sound composed, and I want the compositions to feel improvised.
Sometimes science and art converge in unexpected ways. Do you conduct experiments or make use of scientific insights when you're making music?
Wes Tirey: NO and NO.
How does the way you make music reflects the way you live your life? Can we learn lessons about life by understanding music on a deeper level?
Shane Parish: Music is life. And life is music.
Wes, do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more mundane tasks?
Wes Tirey: Well, of course, this songwriter musician who also sells coffee for a living gets the coffee question.
They are incredibly different. I can tell you that making a cup of coffee is easier than writing a song and making a cup of coffee is far more scientific than than writing a song as well.
If our creative mind was going 24/7, we'd all need deep forms of therapy. It's not possible to be that creative all of the time. You have to be able to empty your mind in order to allow that manifestation process. It can take a long time and you can get in the way of it. So you just have to make coffee and grocery shopping and meal plans.
I'm sure that there's all kinds of shit that you're you're doing day to day, minute by minute that has absolutely nothing to do with the creative process that finds its way into your material. I'm single and live alone, I've got a lot of space for creative time, and it's still not the only thing that I think about. I read and then go on walks, and also have a full time job that requires me to not be in a creative mode. I work in sales, and I'm doing everything from having conversations with people about selling them single 152 pound bags of coffee to analysing the commodity market, thinking about a commodity trade with a huge roaster that's going to be buying multiple containers of coffee.
All that to say that you have to make space for the mundane and makes make space for the creative mind. All right, enough about coffee.
Every time I listen to “Albedo 0.39” by Vangelis, jealous. Angeles, I choke up. Yet, the lyrics are made up of nothing but numbers and values. Do you have a song, or piece of music that affects you in a way that you can't explain?
Shane Parish: There are so many songs where I'm in kind of a constant. psychedelic headspace. I have a playlist on Spotify and it probably has nine and a half hours of music of songs, all of which give me a particular feeling. And probably they're all 1-6-4-5 chord progressions or something like that. There's something there … some like formula, and it's got everything in it.
I'll cycle through this list every so often and just shuffle it. And I will sing along and it really inspires me.
If you could make a wish for the future. What are developments in music you would like to see and hear?
Wes Tirey: I was talking earlier about confessional songwriting. I just don't want to hear it anymore.
People are, are still writing this way currently, and I won't go so far as mentioning any songwriters by name, but I remember a friend of mine a few years ago trying to get me to listen to a record and she was like, Oh, it's so interesting, it's just like reading her diary. And I was like, why would I want to read anybody's diary in a song?
