JOHN JUGHEAD PIERSON

JOHN JUGHEAD PIERSON

Even In Blackouts as a band has always represented something unique in the pop punk culture, and has been embraced despite not conforming to the trappings that tend to define the music and the look. How do you feel about the impact EiB has made?

It is hard for me to see any great impact.  Similar to Screeching Weasel there was no goal to make an impact.  It was more about filling our time with something we thought was worth spending time doing.  If there is anything about impact, it would be of a personal sort. Creativity, especially in the arts, is very important to me, in some ways it is my connection with the seeking of truth.  It is the way I understand the world. In periods of my life where this pursuit of creativity does not manifest or is not the main focus, I tend to be very depressed and lost. So it makes sense that a band that I helped start would use this as its foundation.  I believe that we need to engage and entertain an audience. Or else why do it? But we must keep ourselves interested first and foremost.

And as to the punk aspect.  It has always been a part of my life since I discovered it with my friends in high school.  I don’t know whether to consider EiB a punk band, but it is where I am from, and I try to recreate that energy any way I can. I believe in many of the aspects of the punk ethos, and being unapologetically yourself is one of them, even when it strays away from where you started. The aggressive, think for yourself, and social aspect of punk, will always be important to me.

The focus of this blog is songwriting, and I feel that EiB is the band you've contributed the most songwriting to. How do you approach your contributions to the band, and how has that changed over the course of the band's history and evolution?

It is a collision of the intentional and the accidental.  When I start writing something, I don’t always know if it will be a poem, a novel, a play, or a song… the things that are swirling in my brain, from the stimulus inputted by my social world at the time, combines with my literary or philosophical interests, and comes out as if on their own, from another source other than myself.  Many writers talk about this… muse concept. From there the real work begins, to observe it, help give it a direction, a structure, and then multiplying its contents by using other aspects of my understanding of the world and the musical and artistic genres and styles for which I am familiar. In this way I feel all the projects a person, or a group of persons, engage in are related and progressive through time. It’s all related, and therefore increases one's knowledge. (Or hopefully)

From the beginning of EiB, this approach was both lyrical and musical, on my own, then once Liz came aboard, and I began discussing music and songs with her, my approach to songwriting branched out in many directions.  And then this was magnified once again when Gub joined the band. (And also Bice and John Szymanski, and anyone else who has been in the band to lesser and greater degrees.)  An initial idea of mine is usually created alone, but once it springs into being, it craves the help of others, and that is why I prefer to work with an ensemble of people on most all artistic projects.

Has your level of confidence as a songwriter increased as a direct result of your output with EiB? Do you feel that your songs fit that band more so than any other you've played in? Have the other band experiences informed your songwriting technique and/or voice significantly?

My confidence has most definitely grown with EiB.  I mean, I didn’t really consider myself a songwriter nearly at all before I started that band.  I was most definitely an important contributor to the sound of a song with Screeching Weasel and The Mopes, but in general the initial idea and foundation was not my own. (Not including Screeching Weasel self titled and Boogada.  I had a much more hands-on approach to the songs in the beginning of SW.)  From the start I had a bit more control of direction with The Mopes, but ultimately it was following the lead of Vapid.  But EiB is a completely different beast. I didn’t really use Screeching Weasel or Mopes to grow as an artist and musician, those bands were just keeping myself alive, moving forward and enjoying my time with fellow musicians and some of the best pop punk songwriters out there.  It was all about trying to make the things I was doing the best things I could help to make them. That combined with both me and Ben having a business sense mind very easily and quickly turned our fun pursuits into potential careers. (flailing or successful was really of no concern.)  Even though my songwriting is nothing like Ben’s, I feel he is more of a guiding force for me, structurally, than Vapid.  Ben was always trying to mutate the rules, to constantly create similar structures but to always have a moving part that feels unique with each song. I feel my nature is a bit more subtly rebellious than Ben’s, and I like for that to come out in the styles I tackle.   That part of Ben’s writing was an important lesson for me.

Something that has always struck me about Even In Blackouts is the way in which it conveys a more approachable, accessible aesthetic both musically and conceptually. There's no air of pretension to be found at all, which itself is very refreshing. Is there a sort of ethos in the band that centers around sincerity and a down to earth approach?

I think that is really the only way I know how to write, whether it be a play or a song.  And I would even go so far as to say I get a little too introspective, too real, and then I struggle to make what I write and do more universally accessible.  And that is how I tend to live my life, I can only see my world through my own eyes, but I have a hunger to share that with others. Ironically this may be what makes it feel more “down to earth” as you say.   It is important to constantly be making connections with other minds, even though I can’t get out of my own. Since I have a deep love for people in general, that may make it even more encompassing of the feel of the band and its music.  In creating a band I gravitated towards making the connection between people the most important thing, and so I feel that breeds confidence in others to do the same, and therefore that is where I believe EiB is right now. And luckily those that most fit that description were also some of the best people and musicians I know.

The feel of the EiB experience seems to have something in common with the plays you write and perform in. Do you see a commonality there? There's an intimacy and "live" quality that feels unique.

Yes, when I joined the Neo Futurists Theater Ensemble in Chicago, it made perfect sense.  As an artist I was already heading in that “intimate” direction. With the Neo Futurists all material must be from our own lives and with as little artifice as possible.  Creating art without artifice is difficult, challenging, and nearly impossible to do away with all together, and therefore to me makes a great quixotic way in which to create.  I don’t like to make things easy for myself. Trying to understand oneself, is extremely difficult. And of course can keep material generating for a life time… and longer.

The activity of EiB has increased in recent years, and the releases have spanned a long period of time by now, there hasn't ever seemed to be an intentional break from activity. Has the longevity been organic all along?

I would say yes, but it was also a very painful journey too.  The band has never made any money. I had to stop the band in 2009 because I went completely broke and couldn’t afford to keep the band functioning, especially since we all lived in different cities.  It was a controversial decision within the band, but one I felt I had to make at the time. And yet we continued to work in small groups through those years. Liz, Gub, and Bice got very close and would even take family vacations together.  And I worked with John Szymanski in theater during all the years of EiB. Even though we weren’t creating new Even In Blackouts’ music for a decade we were all still in contact and working and socializing alongside each other. We still haven’t committed to a full time band again, but we decided to make working together more of a priority.

As a guitarist, do you feel that there's a certain way that you must play your acoustic versus your electric in terms of chords and techniques? The EiB has always had the unplugged element but not a particularly "jangly" sound one might expect.

The initial idea of the band was to make an acoustic guitar sound like a punk electric guitar, but more in its energy than it’s actual timbre. I wanted to be able to hear more clearly the strings and notes of each chord I played.  Plus I really like the sound of an acoustic guitar muted and downstroked. I wanted at first to play with no electricity, to be able to set up anywhere. We have grown since then but that is still part of our aesthetic.

The strongest impetus to pursue a band completely revolved around me becoming a better musician, with the knowledge of chords, rhythm, and ultimately in songwriting.  With all that said, I did not realize I was creating a way to play that would become so integral to how I want to play for the rest of my life. This isn’t tooting my own horn, because I don’t know if it is a good thing, but I don’t no ANY other musician who plays an acoustic like this.  I destroy so many guitars playing so hard, and my fingers have been cut down to the nerves and bones many times. It has taken my body quite a long time to get good at this style. And I can’t seem to go back to NOT playing like this. An electric guitar doesn’t feel right in my hands, and even the band members, when we try it, comment on how wrong it looks and sounds.  People at shows have asked why I don’t just play an electric, and I usually say because I can’t create that chaotic, life threatening, energy that comes along with me trying to make urgent sounds out of an acoustic instrument. (Whether the acoustic is unplugged or plugged in.)

The new album ROMANTICO! is an exciting and intriguing release. Can you talk about its development and how it differs from past EiB albums? It seems that you embarked on some very interesting artistic and creative experiments in order to arrive at this collection of songs.

This is a really difficult question to answer, seeing that, like the process I talked through earlier, about how all projects are related, ROMANTICO! could never have arrived to where it is, without all that had come before it.  Not only musically but in the evolving of the relationships in the band. It may be strange to say but Fleetwood Mac and their album Rumors comes up a lot when friends talk about this record. Without the loss of past members and the complete changing of a sound and style, and the heavy amount of emotions between the band members, could Fleetwood Mac have created what they did with that record.  This is similar to our situation, but of course in very limited but specific ways.

The biggest difference with our new record is that Gub and I tackled this one on a more even playing field.  We created this as complete equals. We discuss and discussed together every song, every artistic and financial decision we made and make.  We even split the amount of songs evenly on the record. Over time the band began to recognize the odd synchronicity Gub and I had in how we think.  Even though we are so different as people, are contributions to each other’s creations makes complete sense to each other. This along with our loving relationship with the rest of the band members, feeling that we could not live lives without each other, is what formed every aspect of ROMANTICO!  The songs are about this journey of discovering this overwhelming compassion we feel about each other, as people, and as a band. And sometimes, like a family this can be beautiful, but it also can be frustrating and difficult. And with all this at play, the record came out more fierce than our prior releases, although with the same amount of diversity in songwriting and commitment to expanding each other’s knowledge of music, not only in the writing but in the production too.  This project was wholly created from within the band itself.

I feel that EIB offers a level of poetry and nuance that is not common in our pop punk universe. I dare say that it feels more like high art than low brow amusement. And yet, like I said there's no pretension or fuss about what it is - it simply is. That's quite an achievement for a band, don't you think?

It’s hard to comment on this.  The band is just a reflection of what its members want to pursue.

You and Liz have remained core members of the band and her vocals are a defining characteristic of the sound. How did the addition of Gub add to that legacy? It seems that his contributions have been significant indeed.

I answered this above, in reference to Gub. I’ll only add that he has quite a legacy of his own in the punk scene, and he has a much more hot-wired connection to its pulse than I do or ever will.  He is integral to the direction of the band from now and forever.

But let's not change a thing in this question and allow this space for the touting of Lizzie’s skills.  I don’t know how I got so lucky as to find not only a great singer, but a person that was so willing to learn styles and ways in which to live, that she was unfamiliar with.  I really don’t think I would have improved as much as I have as a lyricist and musician without her there to interpret it. She has perfect pitch and an inherent understanding of how a song moves along, even when the structures are strange and foreign to her.  She even took on assistant engineering on this record, and did a way way better job than I could have done, and I’ve been doing this two decades longer than she has. Her dedication to this band often blows me away. I think we are very similar in how we see a band as an all encompassing passion and it is hard to play in anything else when we still enjoy what we do in the band that we are in.

You've mentioned that you aren't very comfortable writing in the style of pop punk that you're perhaps best known for via your other bands. The traditional, sing-songy, peppy and upbeat 4/4 1-4-5 tunes. But you are in fact very capable in this style - do you think that the self-consciousness stems more from having played with some of the best songwriters in that style, or perhaps that the style is limiting to you compared to the breathing room that EiB allows?

I don’t think the pop punk style is limiting.  There is still plenty of room in its structure for talented writers to discover amazing gems.   And it is true I do feel I have played with some of the best pop punk songwriters out there. The reason I tend not to write these type of songs is just a gut feeling that I get, that there is very little purpose in trying to recreate what they, Vapid and Weasel for instance, instinctively do way better than I could ever hope to.  I definitely agree that I could easily write catchy poppy punk songs, but they just wouldn’t have the heart that theirs do. It’s not where I excel. When I do occasionally attempt to write one, I can just feel the lack of depth within its structure, and it makes me cringe.

What do you make of the following that EIB has earned over the years? Do you think that most of the fans are squarely in the pop punk camp and came via your other bands? How many of your fans have come from other scenes or contexts? Do you feel that EIB has its roots in the pop punk world, or elsewhere? Are there other communities in with EIB thrives that are quite separate from it?

I don’t know where our audience thrives.  We have kept a handful of pop punk fans from my other bands but in general we have had to create our own audience base.  There are plenty of my punk friends, in bands and not, who like the band, but I can see in their eyes and words that they just don’t really get it or feel too passionately about it, they just like US, the people within the band, as a band.  But when I see an actual fan, and I see how excited they get, and the questions they ask about the songs, I realize even more that our audience is elsewhere. But punk is what I know, and for better or worse it will always be a part of me, and I will always want those people to like what I do.  Like in my answer above, I can’t just fake it and give them a pop punk song, it would kill my soul.

I've always viewed EIB as a somewhat tragically underrated band. Do you agree? What do you hope people take away from what you've presented as a band over the years? What is the musical/lyrical legacy you'd hope to leave the world with?

I do find it tragic that we are not popular and making a living doing what we love, but I can’t make the call whether we are underrated or not.  I love what we do, and I think other people should love it to. I feel we are saying things, I don’t always know what we are saying, but it always feels important to me.  This is made obvious whenever I get together with the current and past members of EiB.

I have been thinking a lot about my legacy, really more about my death, and even though I don’t ever want to die, I do feel that I have created enough material and made enough friends in my years, and have had enough love and compassion in my life, to leave this world happy.  I just want people to feel invigorated, and important, when they listen to our music, or watch us live. I want them to hear or read the lyrics, feel how it all relates to them, think about it, and let it affect how they move through their days. This all sounds positive, and I think it is, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t frustration, hate, chaos, depression and jealousy to overcome.  Perhaps our band can help people work through these things.

LISA MARR

Cub circa 1994 - photo provided by Lisa Marr

LISA MARR

Your songs have always suggested an innate fluency in the language of music - were
you introduced to music at an early age? How did you begin playing music, and what
led you to begin writing your own songs? Did you have a specific reference or set of
influences that you based the early tunes on? Which instrument were you writing your
earliest songs with?

I’ve always loved music, always loved singing, always loved reading, always loved
words and they way they come together into sound and stories… The biggest early
musical influences on me were television, teachers and Top 40 radio. Sesame Street
and Shirley Temple movies and The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour came first and I’ve
been a sucker for a catchy, peppy tune ever since. In Grade 3, Mrs. Best played protest
songs on an acoustic guitar and the whole class sang along: One Tin Soldier, Black &
White, Blowin’ In The Wind. In Grade 6, Miss Ramsay taught us all the lyrics for Jesus
Christ Superstar and we performed it publicly as a pantomime musical. I can belt that
thing out start to finish to this day. By 7 th grade, my best friend Jan Loverock (yes, actual
name!) and I could identify and sing along with any tune that came on the radio within
the first three notes. I wrote poems from a super early age but didn’t start writing songs
until I was in a band… I jotted down Motel 6 on a memo pad at my secretarial job one
afternoon to give myself something to sing at Evaporators practice that night. My first
and truest instrument was and still is my brain… I write all my songs in my head.

Did you have supportive friends and family as you embarked on a musical path? Who
were you showing your early songs to for feedback? Who/what were the sources of
inspiration that kept you motivated and helped you dig deeper into songwriting as a
form? When did you become aware that your songs were taking shape in a way that
satisfied you? Do you recall the first time someone complimented your songs?

My family is super supportive of anything I choose to do, including music. When my
mom was a kid, a teacher told her she shouldn’t sing out loud, just mouth the words,
because she had a “bad” voice. In response to that, she always encouraged me to
speak up and sing out. I was a very shy child; my first solo performance—a rousing
rendition of “Here Comes Peter Cottontail” —happened after I was literally pushed
onstage at a Shakey’s Pizza during my eighth birthday party. Mom also typed up songs
assigned by my Vietnam Draft-Dodger hippie guitar teacher: Sounds of Silence, Tom
Dooley, Where Have All The Flowers Gone? (all of which my 9-year-old self found
extremely disturbing lyrically). My grandmother and my aunt on my dad’s side of the
family loved to perform… religious songs, show tunes, jazz standards… you name it,
they sang it. My dad (a terrific whistler) would proudly wear his cub t-shirt and loved it
when fans approached him to say how much they liked the band… He was always
trying to get us to take him on tour as our roadie but alas, it just wasn’t meant to be! My
Ukrainian grandmother on my mom’s side came to cub’s earliest record release shows
and, 25 years later at age 98, she performed with me on stage a few times, holding the
lyric sheets for cub sing-a-longs. I’ve also been blessed to be in bands with super
supportive co-creatives who both inspire and motivate me. Even after all these years, I
feel like every song I write is some kind of mysterious miracle...where do they come
from? Some just arrive effortlessly fully formed and some take years to finish but they’re
all rough little gems in their own way and I’m grateful to be a conduit for them. Right
from the get-go, people responded to cub with an overwhelming enthusiasm that was
totally unexpected and utterly mind-blowing. We were so green at the start that
everything about being in a band was a thrill for us; that vibe definitely came through in
the songs—both on recordings and in live performance--and I think people felt and
loved that energy.

Were you playing in bands prior to Cub? How did that band form, and were you the primary songwriter in the beginning? Where did you hope to "fit" in terms of the scene in Vancouver and beyond? Which bands were you listening to the most at the time Cub formed? Did you feel that the early 90s were a particularly special time to be part of the music scene?

My first band was The Evaporators, headed up by the legendary Nardwuar The Human
Serviette with the insanely talented David Carswell on guitar and cool cat Scott
Livingstone on drums. I am forever grateful to whoever their bass player was at the time
for suddenly quitting and leaving The Evaporators in the lurch for an upcoming show.
Maybe Nardwuar was just fed up with hearing me whinging and whining around CiTR
(the college station where we both had shows) about wanting to be in a band but he
said I was “in” if I could find a bass, learn ten songs and get together some sort of
groovy 60’s-style outfit in approximately five days. Thanks to my awesome roommate
Scott Chernoff, who was willing to loan me his Gibson SG and show me how to play it,
and the first two Ramones records in heavy rotation, I just squeaked through! The dress
was a neon green polyester mini. Hideous. (The lineup has changed over the years but
The Evaporators are still one of the most high-energy, entertaining, kick ass bands
around. Check ‘em out!). After my stint as “The Gimmick” (so christened by Nardwuar
jokingly…I think…), I was in The Bombshells, an all girl combo with a lead singer who
was the self-described “love child of Axl Rose and Ethel Merman.” They were wild and
wacky but the music wasn’t quite my thing. Then came a band called The Indecisives
where the lead singer/guitarist snarled “Get it right!” at me onstage after I hit a wrong
note and that’s when I knew it was time to start my own damn band.
Back in those days, everybody played with everybody so it wasn’t so much about
wanting to fit in to a specific niche but more just itching to be part of the scene period. It
was all about having fun and hanging out with people I loved and making something
cool together. Robynn I knew from CiTR, Valeria I knew through friends and a local art
house movie theater called The Ridge. Robynn wanted to learn how to play guitar,
Valeria’s drum teacher was the legendary Dimwit from DOA and she’d already been in
bands… I came up with the name, we started practicing in my basement and a month
later had our first show. It all came together very easily. I always wrote most of the
songs but we all contributed to the arrangements and everybody threw in ideas for
covers. We had eclectic musical taste: Valeria loved Robyn Hitchcock and Tommy Roe,
Robynn adored the Fastbacks and the Pooh Sticks and Barbara Manning, I was into
Beat Happening and the Breeders and Jonathan Richman and Johnny Cash.
Everything was fair game! And in a way, the “scene” was equally eclectic and that’s
what was so cool about the 90s! We played with everybody from the Spinanes to
Rancid to Sebadoh to De La Soul to the Softies to Rancid to They Might Be Giants to
Mary Lou Lord to the Sun Ra Arkestra. Pre-internet, pre-cell phone… it was definitely a
special time… For a while there, every day felt like a grand adventure where anything
was possible.

To what extent were you aware of "pop punk" in the earliest days of Cub? Do you feel
that people were eager to put the band into some kind of definitive category? Was there
a part of you that actually wanted to be associated with a particular genre, scene, etc.?
Did you feel that you shared much in common with other bands you were playing with at
that time?

I don’t remember hearing the term “pop punk” until a couple of years after cub started…
Maybe it was more of an American thing. I never felt the term was really a good fit for
us. In the late 80s when I joined the Evaporators, Nardwuar was obsessed with
“Garage” (as was the Pacific Northwest in general at that time), then came Grunge of
course and we went to Seattle to see Nirvana and Mudhoney and the Screaming Trees
and all those guys a million times but I can’t say it was a genre that I personally
identified with. It was the emerging lo-fi scene—especially in nearby towns like Olympia
and Bellingham--that really resonated with me. Beat Happening and Crayon and Lois
felt like kindred spirits. The reality is, when you are three girls in a band, people put you
in the definitive category of Girl Band, like it or not. Cuddlecore (coined by Nick Bragg--
then in a band called Kid Champion who were our labelmates on Mint Records, now
with Destroyer--when he was goofing around in the studio with us on one of our early
recording sessions) was initially our own little joke on that…making fun of the whole
genre thing (if people want to pigeonhole us, we’ll come up with a whole new category
to pigeonhole ourselves!) and positioning the music we were making in opposition to
hardcore which always seemed a bit absurd in its testosterone fueled self-involved
dudedom. Of course the unshakable cuddlecore moniker became as tedious and
claustrophobic as anything else after a short while. We were sort of Riot Grrrl-adjacent
(not quite cool enough, not overtly political enough). We appealed more to the nerdy-
smart-crafty-social misfit types. Some people referred to cub as a punk band which I
initially thought was funny but now in retrospect feels true, maybe not so much
musically (in the classic sense) but in considering the way we approached making
music, how we worked together as an entity, why we worked together, the DIY
community we were part of, and what we aspired to. Honestly, I’ve never been a fan of
categories. I really just always wanted to write songs and sing them with people.

Back to the songwriting - how did your approach to composing melodies and lyrics
evolve over the lifespan of Cub? I recall you remarking that listening to Betti Cola many
years later felt like listening to someone else's songs in a sense. Do you feel that the
different eras of your songwriting are like snapshots of who you were at that time?

I’m not sure my songwriting has ever really “evolved” (ha ha); my creative approach
tends to be more reflective of/influenced by current companions, happenings,
inspirations, projects and circumstances than it is a conscious linear honing of craft in
the traditional sense. So in that way, yeah, each song represents a snapshot of a
specific time and a community of some kind but they can also seem curious and strange
to me when revisited many years later…almost as if they’ve been living a parallel life of
their own all this time and then we meet and catch up like old friends.

Buck was a great band that seemed to fly under the radar despite having a uniquely
direct sound. What were your songwriting goals going into it? Were you pushing
musically in certain directions that you hadn't previously? Do you revisit those songs
very often? It seemed like the stars aligned for the project, but it didn't get the shine it
deserved.

Buck was a way of moving out of cub’s shadow… kinda like a rebound relationship in a
way, and I think the songs reflect that. You hear the ebullience of doing something new,
you hear attempts at more complex structures, you hear the desire to move in wilder,
louder directions (and definitely pushing it a bit too far now and then...some of these
songs are truly cringe-worthy!), to be more collaborative in the writing/arrangement/
instrumentation, of wanting to be, essentially, “not cub”. Initially started in Vancouver by
Lisa g, me and Dr. Robert Kozak (who plays a mean accordion), we whipped out that
first 7” super fast and then Lisa and I hit the road for LA. There was one magical year
where all we did was play music… I was married to Ronnie Barnett of the Muffs and
there were tons of cool live music venues all over the city and the bands and fans in the
local scene were super enthusiastic and welcoming. Lisa and I had a loft practice space
in a crumbling building downtown and we rehearsed from 10 in the morning until 6 at
night every single day! When we went into the studio to record the Buck album with
Sally Browder, we could play every song forwards, backwards, upside down and
sideways, blindfolded and in our sleep. It was amazing! Early in our LA stint, we were
joined by Stew, an incredibly talented and complex man who had a band at that time
called The Negro Problem, beloved by the LA Pop community. Eventually he got too
busy with other projects and eventually became a much-celebrated worldwide sensation
with his musical Passing Strange… Spike Lee even made a documentary about it! Then
Pepper Berry joined the fray, a Texas transplant and aspiring screenwriter who had
dated Kim Shattuck for a second and hung out with us on Tuesday nights at Star Lanes
in Hollywood (RIP) where a bunch of bands drank strong cocktails and flung a few balls
down the lanes. Pepper loved to play LOUD and FAST and he was just so dedicated
and determined to make things happen. He never got discouraged, he always kept his
eye on the prize. I remember being down at one point and Pepper saying (insert Texas
twang here) “Girl, you got a song on the RADIO! What do you have to be sad about?”
We played a ton and there was definitely some local buzz around the band… One of the
more surreal moments of my musical career was when Wayne Cramer said “I like your
song!” backstage at an awards ceremony where we played American Express (“Fuck
the man!”). There was definitely momentum but then Lisa g got tired of living in LA and
left and we went through a series of drummers: Sherri Solinger (one of the best
drummers EVER…we went on to play in The LMX and The Beards together), Brandon
Jay (of Ludefisk and the 88s), Slim Evans (a dear pal who played with Rank & File and
El Vez), and Corky Pigeon (former child star who appeared in Silver Spoons who had a
LOT of baggage). Yes, we were touring and we were on a great label and we were
selling records and getting airplay but it all just started seeming like a grind. The van
broke down. The band broke down. The fun was gone.
Buck was really the band that finally clued me in to the fact that I was never going to
“make it” in the traditional sense and it just wasn’t worth it to keep slogging away in
pursuit of some dream I didn’t even believe in anymore with people I didn’t like, in
situations I found abhorrent or just plain boring. It was time to let go of old ambitions and
tired paradigms and explore some other creative paths.

Going into the Lisa Marr Experiment era, is it safe to say that you were more
comfortable exploring different shades of your songwriting personality? Were there
certain genres that you wanted to explore specifically for that project? Were you also
inviting other "cooks into the kitchen" as songwriters? Was it liberating having a band
that didn't necessarily have to sound like your previous bands?

I tend to have these grand plans that get immediately derailed and reshaped by reality,
taking me on entirely new journeys. I’d done some solo project demos before I moved to
LA under the name Nitely with production and instrumentation help from Dave Carswell,
John Collins and Jason Zumpano. Some of the songs, like My Fascination, later
became Buck songs. Others like Another Light and The Rain were still sitting around
and I thought it would be interesting to resurrect the Nitely concept with other players,
imagining it would mainly be a studio-only thing. I’d been playing music with Sherri
Solinger in Buck and then she introduced me to Mike Flanagan and somehow we roped
in Dave Phillips who was playing with Tommy Stinson in Perfect at the time and
suddenly we were a band, playing a bunch and recording an album in a series of very
intense and rather surreal all-night sessions in Joshua Tree at Fred Drake’s legendary
Rancho de la Luna analog studio. Petra Haden was hanging out so she ended up
playing fiddle and doing some singing as well. A German engineer who was kind of
interning there caused a lot of drama and actually tried to steal our master tapes at one
point so he could hold them for ransom—god knows why--and everyone was crying and
yelling and having nervous breakdowns. Meanwhile, Fred was riding around the full
moon midnight desert on his beautiful horse Cashmere and then he’d come in and edit
the audio tape with a razor and we’d talk about all kinds of stuff and I’d drift off to sleep
on the couch and he’d still be working on cutting everything together. Somehow it’s
these quiet little middle-of-the-night moments (or staring out the window of the van at
the New Mexico sky moments or the circus train going by behind the Minnesota gas
station moments) that are the most vivid and precious to me… way more than anything
related to being on stage… Anyway, as was the case with the Nitely players, Sherri and
Mike and Dave (and Marty Beal, after Dave got poached by Frank Black) are incredibly
talented musicians with huge musical vocabularies so that really opened up the
possibilities of what we could do… And if the opportunity is there, why not try a little bit
of everything? Of course, once we started trying to act like a “real” band with attempts at
touring and making videos and all that jazz, everything went totally haywire! But that led
to me making my first documentary film Learning How To Fail as part of a solo road trip
around the US so, once again, something good came out of a bad situation. Officially,
The LMX is “on hiatus” and we’re all still friends who’ve continued to work together
various little projects over the years.

In your performances you project a certain honesty and sincerity that is also present
in your songs - it feels to me like someone who is passionate but also instinctually
considerate. Does that description resonate at all? Even the darker lyrics you've written
seem to convey a certain warmth and familiarity that invites the listener into what feels
like a fairly candid and human portrait of yourself, flaws and all.

Ha ha… passionate but considerate! I like that! Very Canadian. The songs I write are
definitely “me” but they’re not necessarily autobiographical. Hopefully they’re
approachable in a way that all kinds of folks find relatable in a universal way while still
having enough personal perspective and creative quirk to make them spark as
individual moments in time.

I find myself revisiting the music video for "All of This Pain" often - it's a great song
and the production suits it perfectly in my opinion. Kim Shattuck directed that one, yes?
What's your history with her as a collaborator and musical colleague? What was the
experience like playing in The Beards with her? Was it somewhat difficult to combine
two respective band "leaders"into a project that was supposed to have its own sound?
Have any of Kim's songwriting instincts appealed to you in particular? Like you she has
a distinct personality that comes through, and a way of composing that is authentic and
unique.

I love that song too! Mike Flanagan wrote “All of This Pain”; Kim and her little sister
Kristen directed the video and it was super fun to make. I’ve known Kim for such a long
time… we first met when The Pandoras played Vancouver around 1988… she was so
brash and raw and entirely unfettered, she totally freaked me out! We were reintroduced
years later when the Muffs played Vancouver in 1994, then cub opened for them at a
place called Hell’s Gate in Hollywood which led to us (with Neko Case subbing for Lisa
g on drums) doing a whole US tour together along with the Queers in August 1995. That
tour was A-MAZING… great shows, great crowds, instant camaraderie, crazy crushes
and mad antics… All the bands were at the top of their game; it was such a kick to
perform and then watch the other sets night after night because the songs and the
energy were just so good. It really was just one those very rare magical moments in
time when everything and everybody just clicks and you know it won’t last forever and
that’s what makes it even better. And Kim, of course, was at the center of it all… loud,
proud and relentless with the incredible talent to back it all up… she’s a force of nature!
I learned a lot from Kim about having the courage of your convictions when it comes to
creativity, that it’s perfectly okay and even necessary to be unapologetically demanding
of yourself and others in getting what you need to do your best work. I’ll never be able to
achieve that kind of moxie, but I’ll always be in awe of it! The Beards was hatched as a
vehicle to play around with some songs that were Buck and Muffs “leftovers”; it was
more of a compilation mash up than a collaboration but I loved switching it up to be
“just” the bass player on Kim’s songs and I still really love the songs and the sound of
that record all these years later. We also did an insane cover of “(I’m Always Touched
By Your) Presence, Dear” for Long Gone John’s Blondie Tribute…soooo over the top
thanks to Jeff McDonald’s totally koo koo production and one of my very favorite
recordings ever. Kim and I always planned to get together for some true songwriting
collaboration but somehow we never got around to it…until a couple of months ago
when we decided to give it a go! Excited to see where the process leads…

At what point in your life did filmmaking become appealing as a path to follow? Do
you see the form as providing a similar feeling compared to songwriting and recording
albums? Is there a similar DIY ethic that applies? Are there commonalities among
filmmakers as a community that reminds you in any way of the music community you
were/are a part of?

I got into filmmaking as a fluke when Kim, Sherri and I decided to invite friends to create
videos for every song on The Beards album and I signed up to make one too. I’d
recently picked up an old Super 8 Camera on a whim in a Joshua Tree thrift store for
$15. Turns out Super 8 is a good fit for my creative sensibilities…the format is intended
for amateurs… meant to be shared intimately as “home movies”… the gear is super
easy and fun to operate… the results are dreamy and a bit nostalgic… the cameras are
old and often quirky so you never know quite what you’re going to get (especially when
you’re shooting with expired film and hand processing the footage with fruit and flowers
– my favorite!) so there tends to be a lot of happy accidents and weird, unexpected,
unduplicatable surprises… It definitely encourages you to use your imagination and also
to embrace mistakes. Making films became even more appealing when the Echo Park
Film Center, a community media arts organization celebrating all things analog, opened
up a couple of blocks from my house and I happened to walk in on opening day. First I
fell in love the Film Center and then I fell in love with its founder, Paolo Davanzo. And
we’re still in love with Super 8 and each other 17 years later! I feel super blessed to
have the opportunity to make analog films with communities all over the world, make
music with our “hobo rock” band The Here & Now, and host local and touring
filmmakers at EPFC. The global experimental analog film community definitely has a
kinship to the ‘90s lo-fi music scene: diverse visions, inspiring individuals operating
outside the mainstream with limited funds and loads of passion… I love being part of a
supportive and welcoming tight-knit family where everybody shares resources and
knowledge.

Have you remained in touch with former band members over the years? When you
communicate with them, is there a tendency towards strolling down the memory lanes
leading back to Cub, Buck, and those years when you were part of an emerging scene
that became historic and very sentimental to many people? Have you often
communicated with other songwriters who would cite you as a direct influence? How do
you feel about that?

Personally, I don’t spend too much time strolling down memory lane because 1. I have a
terrible memory and 2. there’s too much interesting stuff going on right now that keeps
me plenty occupied! But yes, I’m still in contact with all but a couple of my past
bandmates; most are still involved with creative endeavors in some capacity so
sometimes there’s even opportunities to work together again in various configurations.
And it can be fun to revisit past shared experience in new ways… Lisa g and I recently
spent a week in Toronto watching and digitizing 50 hours of cub tour footage from the
mid-1990s (yikes!!!) for a project we’re launching called GIRLBAND that will use the
extensive cub archive of music, video, photos, posters, fan mail, journal entries, merch
and related ephemera as a starting point for collaborative artworks examining and
celebrating the extended community of friends, fans and fellow artists at a certain
moment in musical history, and how that moment continues to activate and resonate in
a myriad of ways more than 25 years later. The idea is to use the archive to investigate
and appreciate the ways we ALL participated in making something cool together. And in
a related way, anytime anyone appreciates a song I wrote and/or performed, it’s just a
huge delight. And if that song can inspire that person to pick up an instrument or raise
their voice and create their own music, well, that’s even more of an honor! Of course
people have written me or come up to chat with me at shows over the years who are
amazing songwriters/performers in their own right and many have become dear friends
and even creative collaborators. I first met Joff Winterhart--one of my dearest pals in the
whole wide world—when he sent me mailorder request from Bristol UK for some cub
vinyl. Since then we’ve collaborated on songs, films, drawings, ceramics and all kinds of
other stuff, including an animated musical about a one-legged punk rocker who
becomes a nun!

I tend to ask this question to everyone no matter how irrelevant it may seem - so
here it goes: Has heavy metal music in particular ever been a genre that you found
compelling or interesting? Could you ever imagine writing a song in that style? Do you
like any heavy metal bands/albums/songs? Do you feel that there's some connection
between musicians of all genres despite stark differences in style?

Uh, no.
No.
No.
Definitely.

At this point in your life/career, do you still have musical ambitions and goals left
unfulfilled? Is songwriting something that you just naturally do for its own sake, or do
you find that the inspiration comes and goes depending on your goals and inspiration at
the time? Can we expect to hear more Lisa Marr recordings in the future?

No ambitions, no goals, just excited to see what every day brings! If there’s one thing
I’m in the process of learning after all this time it’s that the less I fret and machinate, and
the more I just concentrate on doing what I love and consider songs as “gifts” with
certain people in mind, suddenly the most amazing opportunities appear. There’s
usually a couple of things in the hopper…an invitation to contribute to a compilation or
to write and record something for a film…but recently there’s been more action than
usual. Artoffact Records released a session cub did for the CBC radio program Brave
New Waves in Montreal on our first cross Canada tour back in 1993. It’s a nice blast
from the past and the packaging is incredible (thanks, Robynn!). In conjunction with
fabulous singer/songwriter Steve Espinola (notorious for playing the electric tennis
racket during cub’s set opening for TMBG at Roseland), I recorded a 78rpm record of
an extremely obscure 1919 song that I then played live on a hand-cranked Victrola as
the soundtrack to an 8-projector Super 8 film I made called Beauties. In December, Los
Gatitos (a band I’m in along with Paul Gailiunas whose former combo Piggy is definitely
the best Maritime Calypso music you will ever hear!) released a two-song 7” called Big
In Puglia. And Top Drawer just put out a sweet 4-song 7” collaboration between me and
Vancouver’s mighty Tranzmitors, with artwork by Mecca Normal’s Jean Smith and all
proceeds going to the Girls Rock Camp Vancouver. Scheduled to come out this year on
All Ball Recordings is another 7” for a project called Miss Marr and the Crybabies
featuring my pal Beaux Mingus on the musical saw, a collection of songs from Robert
Altman films with my friends Slim (drums) and Kim (guitar, marimba), and a 7” by
PenPals which is a long-distance collaboration between me and my Venezuelan friend
Eduardo Hernandez who is also a My Little Pony expert. In the words of the dear
departed Jonas Mekas,”Have you ever thought about how amazing, really amazing, life
is?” As far as inspiration goes, I come up with parts for a hundred new songs every day
but unless there’s a specific project I’m working on, most of them just come and go like
little clouds because I don’t get around to writing them down! I love ephemeral art,
though, so that’s a-okay by me…

Finally, could you name some of the most important songwriters or musicians
who've inspired you then and now? Do you have any "all time"favorites? Are there any
people outside of the music world who've been particularly supportive and helpful to
your musical endeavors? What advice would you give to the aspiring songwriter?

I love all kinds of music and I’m inspired by so many singers and songs but here are a
few singers/songwriters/bands I’ve been particularly obsessed with at various times
over the years (in no particular order): Lou Reed/Velvet Underground, The Ramones,
Nina Simone, Aretha Franklin, Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris, X, Billie Holliday,
Yoko Ono, Shangri-Las, Ronnie Spector, Jonathan Richman, Bob Dylan (but only
Nashville Skyline), Kim Deal, Kim Shattuck, Defiance Ohio, Françoise Hardy, Patsy
Cline, Elvis Costello, Jean Smith/Mecca Normal, Bright Eyes, Beat Happening, Joff
Winterhart/Bucky, Joanna Newsom, Piggy: Calypso Orchestra of the Maritimes, Mazzy
Star, Lucinda Williams, Johnny Cash, Chet Baker, Joan Jett, The Beatles, Lavender
Diamond, Mozart, Matt Adams/The Blank Tapes, Pauline Oliveros. No big surprises
there, folks!
I can’t even begin to name all the sweet people who’ve been supportive and helpful
over the years. I’m a lucky girl.
Want to write a song? Write it! Want to sing a song? Sing it! What are you waiting for?
You can sleep when you’re dead.

Bonus links!
https://vimeo.com/213101790
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2Egf20nUkM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_0dBwOE0Hk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lcyO27Rb4s
https://www.facebook.com/TheSeattlePopPunkFestival/videos/232832344265878/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBV6rFiat7E
https://vimeo.com/217344732
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2VIZf9pLTQ
https://artoffact.com/merch?filter_band=2893565710
https://allballrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/happy-hour-blues-come-on-up-to-the-
house
https://vimeo.com/105009665
https://missmarr.bandcamp.com/
https://sellyourtvandcometothecinema.org/
http://www.arterritory.com/en/lifestyle/cinema/6845-film_can_change_your_life_lisa_marr_and_paolo_davanzo_from_echo_park_film_center_/