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| Divulgação — Gary Lee Conner |
SAN ANGELO, TX — Exclusive interview with guitarist Gary Lee Conner, originally published on Scream & Yell.
Mr. Conner, tell us a little about your most
recent album, Unicorn Curry. It
sounds like it was heavily influenced by psychedelic 60s bands. How were the
song writing and recording processes?
Well, I’ve always been
really influenced by 60s psychedelia, especially in the early days. The last
record I did was a little more prog rock. And I always listen to
a lot of psychedelic music. This time I was listening to a lot of Donovan,
and a lot of stuff from the English Freakbeat collection, which is stuff I’ve
been listening to since I first started listening to music. That definitely
influenced the songwriting a lot. I don’t want it to sound like it was done in
the 60s, cause you don’t want to be retro, you want it to sound like it is
something new, but on the other hand, it definitely has that spirit.
It was
done totally in a digital manner. Except for the guitar and the voice, everything
else on the record is totally digital. But it’s cool cause, nowadays, you can
make stuff sound the way you want to digitally, because the resolution is so
high. It doesn’t have to sound digital just because it is. I know a lot of
people are into the analog, you know, still use all of the old stuff. It’s kind
of ironic too, things are coming out on vinyl, CD and even cassette too.
Did you record it at home?
Yeah, I do everything
on my computer at home. I call it a studio, but it’s just my computer and all
my guitars and stuff. This is my third actual album I’ve done since 2010. After
the Screaming Trees disbanded, I really didn’t do much. I recorded some stuff
but I didn’t put out anything. Mainly cause there wasn’t
something like Bandcamp. There was MySpace. But doing stuff online, there
wasn’t an available place to put out stuff by yourself until about 10 years ago
or so. That’s when I started doing a lot more recording.
The first thing I put
out was something named The Microdot Gnome, like a band, but that was really
just me. I switched that, now that’s just called Gary Lee Conner and the name
of the album is The Microdot Gnome.
And that was like my first solo album after the band, I think in 2010. And then
I did a couple of albums which are also on Bandcamp, of demos from way back,
from the 80s all the way until about 10 or 15 years ago. There’s like about 100
songs on those.
And then, after that, the last record I did that actually came
out on vinyl and CD, was called Ether
Trippers, that was on my brother Van’s label, Strange Earth Records. You
can still get that on my Bandcamp page. That was about 3 years ago. I seem to
take around 3 years between records. Although
I have a goal to have a new album out this year, because I got a lot of new
songs written that I want to use, although I haven’t started recording yet.
You recorded and produced it all by yourself,
right? No one else played anything on any of the songs? The drum sound caught
my attention — did you play it?
Yeah, completely, I
did everything. I hate mixing so much, cause I have no idea if it sounds
alright. Actually, I had Jack Endino to mix Ether Trippers, so it sounds a
little bit different from my other stuff. I like really dry sounding
production, with not a lot of effects, especially around the drums and
everything. It just seems to suit better the digital sound, I think it sounds
less digital that way.
A lot of the instruments I use, specially the keyboard
mellotrons and the drums, they sound a certain way, cause a lot of it is
sampled. The problem is when you put a lot of effects on — it doesn’t sound so
good.
The drums sound comes
from a drum sample program. They record all these drum samples and then I use a
sort of primitive sequencer. It sucks because the manufacturer went out of
business, so they are not doing updates anymore. It's basically a kind of
ProTools, which is used in most of the studios, just made by another company.
Would
you say there is any thematic concept behind the songs? What does Unicorn Curry mean?
I don’t know, I just
thought of that… I just listen to a lot of old psychedelic stuff, the lyrics
just go into my brain and get all jumbled up and then it comes out, like, it’s
sort of a synthesis of everything I ever listened to over the years.
You live in San Angelo (Texas), right? Since
when do you live there? And what made you choose it as your hometown?
Yeah, middle of
nowhere in Texas. My wife and I, well, around the end of the Trees, I was
living in New York, where I met my wife. So I was commuting back and forth to
Seattle. So when the Trees broke up we decided to move, she decided to get
closer to where her parents live in Oklahoma, and Texas was as close as we wanted
to get. So she took a job here — she’s a college professor, she teaches
chemistry — that’s the main reason why we live here. She’s been working here
since 2001. I know, it feels like, 'what are you doing in there?', but like, I
was born in California, then I spent a lot of my life in Ellensburg and
Seattle, then NY and now I’m here.
Do you visit Ellensburg and/or Seattle often?
No, I haven’t been out
there since the early 2000s. So it’s been almost 20 years now. I keep track of
it online, I see what’s going on in Ellensburg, but I haven’t visited. Most of
my family got out of there now, so I
just have a few friends there.
Have you ever come to Brazil?
We never did make it down there. Maybe someday, you know.
Have you been doing live shows and touring in
the past few years?
Not yet, I have been
thinking about it. I don’t have a band. I made a few acoustic solo shows. I’m
not sure, really. I just sort of been playing by ear and see what happens.
Because for this record I’ve been doing a lot more, like, trying to promote the
record.
I managed to get a couple small record labels to put out stuff on CD,
and then vinyl, so I’m getting more attention than with the past ones. I don’t
know if I’m selling more, but at least I’m getting more attention. If you go to Bandcamp you can listen to all my stuff for free on streaming, you just have
to pay if you want to download it. A lot of people want the physical formats more
nowadays, like vinyl and even CDs.
Any chance we could catch you here in Brazil
sometime?
Oh, well, I don’t
know, I have played solo shows before. If I’m going to do it, I’d have to do
some intense rehearsing for a month or so.
You seem to enjoy interacting with fans on
social media, especially on Facebook, reminiscing old stories from the
Screaming Trees days and playing your new material. How important is social
media for an artist such as yourself in our current day and age?
For me, that’s all I
got really, is Facebook. Cause I don’t play shows or anything. So it’s really
important to me. I’ve always been a hermit, and really introverted, and really
shy. Up until this record, I did not like talking to people on the internet
very long. But I found that, I got a lot more people interested, and I’ve
actually been liking to do it, so I’m forcing myself to come out of my shell a
little bit by talking to people and telling stories about the Screaming Trees
days and stuff. I also share songs from my demos and other stuff. So, yeah, I’m
going to keep doing that.
Streaming services are the most recent trend
on music consumption, but artists are often complaining that they are poorly
paid by these services. On Twitter, David Crosby is constantly answering about
this issue, saying that he is better paid when people buy his CDs or other
physical formats, when compared to the money he makes when people purchase his
music on iTunes or just listen to it on Spotify. Is there an ideal way for fans
to consume your music, considering you are mostly an independent artist these
days?
It’s a huge change,
and I really can see the difference between the digital sales when this album
came out in the fall, and my previous demo records two or three years ago. This new
one is being listened to quite a bit, but is not selling as much as the
previous one. There are so many places to listen to music for free nowadays,
that I feel there are less people buying it. That’s good and bad, I mean,
there’s more people listening to your music, but on the other hand, you are
making less money doing it.
But that’s not why I’m doing this now. There’s no
way I could make a living on doing my own stuff, at least I’m 6 months out of
the year on the road making shows. I’m selling records, it’s a completely
changed situation, where some bands could sell a lot of records and make a lot
of money, but now, I doubt even the big artists are making money with them.
And then, with vinyl, of course, it’s so darn expensive to make the vinyl in
the first place, I couldn’t afford to press my album on vinyl, but I could find
someone on a record label interested in doing it.
So yeah, I think that as far
as revenue… The Screaming Trees never really made that much money anyway. If we
had done just a little bit better, we probably could have made a decent amount
of money. I mean, we still make a few thousand dollars a year worth of royalties.
We are still selling records and stuff, so. Enough to at least say, 'geez, we
are getting something from what we did'. But it’s not enough to sit back and
retire on.
We didn’t really sell nearly as many records as other Seattle bands.
I don’t know the exact numbers, but, like, our most sold record was Sweet Oblivion, just something like 350,000 in the US… Maybe some of the bands sold 1 or 2 million records, they
might still make money, but it’s hard to tell, there’s a lot of publishing
deals and stuff like that. We gave away half our publishing in the beginning of
our career, because we didn’t understand what we were doing exactly. We got
something like a US$ 10,000 advance to give half of our publishing
rights to Sony, forever I guess… So, I could make twice as much as I do now.
So, I don’t know.
The problem with that whole money thing is, you know, music…
We started out on a small label, SST, and we toured and we did work like a real
band. But then, like, we got to a point where, we are going to get signed by a
major label, because, it was kind of, like, what else is there to do? We had
done everything else. And a few of the other bands were doing that too — this
was like 1989, I guess.
But then things changed, especially when Nirvana got
big, and Pearl Jam, you know. Not only did things change for us, it
changed for the entire industry, where a lot of bands like us, suddenly people
were throwing a lot of money at them. It changed from something that was
artistic to a job. Not completely, but a very large extent of it did. That’s
kind of the thing like, now, it’s not like that at all. The only reason I do it
now is artistic, just cause I love to write songs, it doesn’t have much to do
with making money, except for a tiny bit here and there. It’s fun to sell your
stuff, like, 'geez, I just made 20 bucks, cool!'
What are your thoughts on rock music today?
Do you think music is still important to kids as much as it was back in the
day?
I don’t know. My
daughter listens to stuff, like, online, on YouTube. She’s got access to
all this really cool music, with me and her mom. My wife has a really big
record collection. But she doesn’t really take advantage of it. Everything she
listens to is online. But that is the way I’ve become too. I have records and
CDs, but I listen to YouTube almost exclusively.
YouTube, for old garage rock
and psychedelic stuff, is like a gold mine. There’s so much old stuff. Every
day or two, I find a new song I have never heard before. Which, for me, is
amazing. Like, old 60s psychedelic songs. Cause I thought I heard everything,
but the last few years, going through YouTube, I keep finding this stuff. It’s
hard to believe but there’s so much stuff on there.
What current bands do you recommend?
Not much. I keep
trying to find stuff that I like that’s new, but the closest thing I’ve got to
listen to are the Black Angels, a band from Austin (Texas), and it’s not even
that new, I think they started in 2005 or something like that. That’s probably
as far as a band that I like, the closest to a new thing. I really wish I could
find some more stuff, but I think it’s like a combination of what I like… The main thing I like is psychedelic 60s music, but on the other hand, over my
life I’ve listened to every kind of rock music, and folk, and classical and
stuff like that. I just like music in general.
Do you go to concerts often?
No, there’s nothing
here in town, really. Just a few country bands. San Angelo is like 200 miles
away from anything, Austin, Dallas and San Antonio are all 200 miles away. Once
in a while I go there, but I’ve never been to a concert since the last time we
played here, I guess.
People are often asking you about a Screaming
Trees reunion. Have you had any offers to do a tour or a new album?
People keep saying we
should do it. We thought about it 5 or 6 years ago. But it just turned out that
we didn’t want to do it. Maybe one of these days we’ll decide to do it. But,
I don't know, there’s not much… Seems like a lot of people want us to do it, but, yeah.
On the other hand, Mark Lanegan is always really busy with his solo albums and
stuff, and he’s touring two or three times a year.
Yeah, he comes to Brazil often.
If he decides to do
it, it might happen. Otherwise, it’s just not going to happen.
Not to get too much into it, but do you still
get along with those guys?
I talk to my brother
some. And with Barrett a little bit. Mostly through email. I haven’t talked to Mark for
sometime. He called me three, four years ago. Probably around the time we were talking
about getting back together, possibly. We had a nice conversation, but I
haven’t talked to him since that.
It’s weird when you’re in a band, especially
the way our band members were, because with me and Mark, it was like, at one
point we wrote songs together, and then it became a thing where I would write
songs and give them to Mark and he would take them and do whatever he wanted
with it — he would change all the lyrics or he would change none of the lyrics, it
depends on which song it is, you know? So, especially in the later days, when
there were drug problems getting in the way, we kind of like, at one point,
Mark was the main thing in my life — he was the guy who was siding me in
everything I was doing, and now, it’s completely… nothing! I haven’t got
anything to do with him, except once in a while I listen to his music — I like
his solo stuff. And I listen to the Screaming Trees once in a while. It’s like
a family, it’s what our band is. Our band was like a dysfunctional family,
especially having two brothers from one thing, and everyone had their own
problems and stuff. And now, everyone’s older and should be able to get along,
but it isn’t what happened.
What is (brother) Van up to these days?
He had that record
label for a while, Strange Earth. I think he’s working on getting it going
again. I know he had a solo album a while back, also on Bandcamp. He plays out
a little. He’s in the Seattle area, he does a little more playing around, getting
out to show his stuff more than I do.
Do you feel the Screaming Trees were an
underrated band in any way? Why is that?
Most of it, I think…
We had a really nice career on SST, as far as making records that we wanted to
and being a real band. Cause when we first started, how to be an actual band?
We didn’t know. And we, you know, had three, four years in which we made a record
every year, toured, and that was like, you know, what we thought it was all
about.
And then, suddenly, it was like, wait: we could go further, maybe be in a major label and maybe sell a lot of records, or something. We sold a
decent amount of records for an indie band on SST, but the allure of rock music
is like, 'we could be famous, or rich, or both, or whatever'. But what
happened is we were signed to Epic, and suddenly, the first record, Uncle Anesthesia, they didn’t really
know what to do with it. We sold a decent amount because we still had a pretty
good fanbase. I think we sold something like 50,000 records. At
least at the time, for a first record, where supposedly no one ever heard of you
before, and major labels sign you and think that, so that was pretty good.
Later on, when we were making Sweet Oblivion, suddenly Nirvana exploded, and so did
Pearl Jam right after that. So, by the time we got that record out, it was
suddenly a completely different environment for a band that was from Seattle.
Even though we were never really 'grunge' at all. In the early days we were
half punk, half psychedelic, especially live — we were more punkish, you know.
But by the time Sweet Oblivion got out, we were a bit more hard rock, probably.
But, you know, that didn’t matter, we were from Seattle, so we were considered
grunge as well.
A lot more people bought our records and we got a lot more
opportunities to be able to be on the Letterman show and the Jay Leno show, all
that kind of stuff. And, you know, it actually took it to the next level. We
didn’t take it to the really high level, where we were selling millions of
records, but we got at a level where we, at least, were a band that was working
and getting more attention.
But then, what
happened, is we came off of the Sweet Oblivion record, and I wasn’t really
writing much. We were doing a lot of touring for a year. So we had to sit down
and say: 'we have to write a bunch of songs for the next records'. And we wanted
to get the record out quick, to capitalize on the rock scene that was going on
in 93, early 94. But we just didn’t come together.
We recorded a record that
just didn’t do it. We didn’t really like it. If we had released it at the time,
maybe things would have been different, but I have no idea. We ended up taking
two more years to get the Dust album
out, which is a completely different record then the one we came up with in 94.
It took two years of intensive songwriting, every damn day. That was like when it
really became like a job. I spent all of 94, most of 95, sitting in my
apartment in Seattle — I had just gotten married, my wife was in New York — but
I had to stay in Seattle.
I was writing, at least, a song a day and taking it up
to Mark, and getting the thumbs up or thumbs down... maybe. I would get a phone
call he liked it. If he didn’t like it, I wouldn’t hear anything. So, I was not
getting very positive feedback sometimes, so that was a really hard time. But
we managed somehow to pull out all of the songs from Dust, and then we got
together with George Drakoulias to produce it.
Dust is actually one of the
records I’m most proud of. Actually, my favourite record is Invisible Lantern,
cause it’s more rooted in psychedelic stuff, but as far as records that we got
what we really wanted to achieve as a record, the last one, Dust, is the one,
you know?
The Trees were also 'responsible', in a way,
to present Josh Homme to the world. Twenty years later, he is considered one of
the greatest rockstars of our time. Are you still in touch with him? What are
your thoughts on Queens of the Stone Age?
He was in Kyuss, and
not many people knew about them at the time. He was always really cool. I
haven’t talked to him in a while, but we get along fine. It was nice having him
in the band, I think it was about a year, I guess, when we did Lollapalooza and
then an European tour with him.
Later, in 99 or 2000, we recorded with him.
He’s on 'Crawlspace' and I think 'Anita Grey', on the Last Words album. So he did
record some stuff with us — we were doing demos at the time. We kind of got
tired of Epic. They didn’t kick us out or anything, but we wanted to get out of
that contract. They weren’t doing anything for us.
We spent the last two or
three years trying to find a new label, and it never worked out, so... We did
play our last big show at the Experience Music Project. That was kind of a
weird last show, because we made 65,000 dollars for that show, I couldn’t
believe it — it seemed, like, kind of a lot for one show. Back then, I was living
in New York. We got together to do a few shows, but it kind of was not working
anymore.
You have also worked with the late Chris
Cornell (he was one of the producers on Uncle
Anesthesia, released in 1991). He is very well-known as a singer, writer
and performer, but not much is known about him as a producer. What do you
remember the most about that experience and how did he influence that
particular album’s sound?
I think the main
reason we got him was because, you know, we got Terry Date as a producer, who
had worked with Soundgarden on Louder
Than Love. Most of the stuff he had done before was more of on a metal
direction. And we weren’t metal at all.
So we thought, Chris Cornell obviously
understand what kind of band we are, and we had the same manager as
Soundgarden — that’s how we got tied up with Terry Date. So, we were friends with
Chris and we asked him to be kind of a go between Terry Date and ourselves. And
he was able to, kind of, trying to convey to Terry what we were about. And he
ended up singing back up on a few of the songs too.
It was fun having him
around. He definitely contributed to that album, especially trying to, you
know, being a go between the producer, who might not understand what we were
about, as opposed to Chris, who did understand it.
Is there any unreleased Screaming Trees
material? It was a real joy when you guys released Last Words in 2011.
Yeah, I don’t know
where it is, but I know there’s a bunch of stuff. There are two aborted
records, one of them we recorded in LA when we were still on SST. Some of the
songs were re-recorded for Buzz Factory, some of them we didn’t. And then, there’s
another record from 93/94, which a couple of songs were on the Ocean
of Confusion compilation, 'Watchpocket Blues' and 'Paperback Bible'. There’s an
early version of 'Dying Days' as well.
And several other songs, from the Epic
days, a few tracks here and there. But, like I said, I don’t know where those
tapes are. No idea. Van had some tapes of
demos we did, and live stuff we recorded with Dan Peters. A couple of years
ago he was talking about putting that out, but I don’t know if anything ever
came from it.
What do you consider to be your legacy after
over three decades making music? And specifically about the Trees, are you
planning on releasing any kind of reissues of your albums? I know Sweet Oblivion received the reissue
treatment, but what about the other records?
I would like to plan
reissues, the problem is our stuff is mostly on SST. I haven’t heard from them
in a while. They paid us for a while, and in the last five or six years, they have
been selling stuff online, and I think even some of the records are still in
print. But I haven’t heard from them, so I don’t know if they owe us any money.
It would be cool if they contacted us to tell us if they owe us any money or if
they don’t.
But, at Epic, they did re-release a small box of the three albums we
did with them, and they re-released Dust expanded with some live stuff and
b-sides. It would be cool to release something with all the records,
but I don’t know if it’s possible because of all the copyright issues. Apparently they
own it forever, or until it completes 70 years or something, so I won’t be
around for that anymore.
Any plans to release a live album, DVD,
Blu-ray or something of the sort? Do you have any old footage that would make for a DVD?
There’s some around.
There’s one that Van has. We played a set in a studio, no audience, with Dan
Peters from Mudhoney in the band. We played a set on an 8-track and mixed it.
Along with some demos with Dan Peters too. Stuff we were thinking about doing
for Sweet Oblivion.
Dan played with us for several months, and then we were
going on tour and he had to decide if he was going to stay with us or if he was going to
stay with Mudhoney, and he chose to be in Mudhoney, what we completely
understood.
Every time a new member came along, it ended up affecting our sound
a lot. Pickerel, in the old days, played a wild, all over the place style,
while Barrett had more of a John Bonham beat, which worked well with the material
we were playing back then. I remember we were trying to play 'Shadow of the
Season' with Dan Peters. It’s much more of a Led Zeppelin thing than a
Mudhoney punk rock thing. He was kind of, like ,'what is this?' While Barrett got
it right away, it’s more he’s kind of thing.
As for the future, what can we expect from
you as an artist in the years to come?
Yeah, I’m hoping to do
a new album this year, because I have a lot of songs. Three years or four years
between records seems kind of stupid, especially because I’m not doing anything
else. Maybe around summer I’ll have something new to put out. I don’t know if
it will be on Basecamp or some other record label will release it, but you can
definitely expect more music from me.
