Verdun is one of those rare records that is indefinable
-- other than to
say it's Verdun music. As producer/composer/guitarist/keyboardist/vocalist
Neal Barnard says on the Verdun website: "I'm definitely not
aiming for
'fusion' where you throw in a bit of this and a bit of that' where
they all
lose out." And he's right -- that is one of the dangers
when you combine musical elements that don't traditionally sit together.
Verdun not only
avoids the fusion "trap" that Neal was talking about, but
has succeeded
in creating a cohesive and stirringly beautiful record.
Verdun, the band, consists of Neal (guitars, keyboards, vocals),
Martha Roebuck (vocals), Ngoc Hoang (vocals) and Mike Stetina
(drums). Verdun, the album, adds to the mix of musicians:
Jon Best
(bass), Bob Gray (saxophone), Viet (Bau) Nguyen (dan tranh, dan bau,
dan co, dan nguyet), Carter Melin (cello) and Sam Dorsey
(classical guitar). You could say this makes for quite
an interesting (and talented!) group.
You can learn more about Neal and Verdun, by checking out
VerdunMusic.com.
Jamie
:
Verdun has many of the things I enjoy listening to:
a defined
point-of-view/aesthetic, interesting and unexpected arrangements
and
great musicianship. But what stands out most to me, is that Verdun
feels great! Odd time signatures in particular can feel "forced" in the
wrong hands, but that's certainly not the case here. Was it difficult
retaining the overall feel when dealing with odd/complex time
signatures?
Neal: Thanks for that kind comment.
I should say it's just impatience-it's
too hard to wait around for that eighth beat in every measure, so
I
smacked the guitar after 7.
Seriously, I know what you mean. Odd meters-like 7 or 11, instead
of the
usual 4/4-tilt the song ever so slightly and give you that little
jolt between
the ears. And you can overlay time signatures on each other-one
instrument plays in 4/4 over others playing in 3/4. The ear follows
one
track, and the rest affects the mood. But you know it's becoming
heavy-
handed and self-conscious if you find yourself counting out the
beats or
naming a song after the time signature or maybe having a sudden
urge
to do your taxes. You've lost the emotion, which is the blood of
the
music, and wandered into dull left-brain logic.
Same thing with lyrics. They have to be emotional, love-driven,
angry,
crazy-what Freud called the Primary Process. Step into logic and
the
music is dead.
I'm glad to hear you say it worked. I was lucky to find Mike Stetina,
our
drummer, who has such surgical precision, and Martha's and Ngoc's
vocals just skate beautifully over the top.
Jamie
:
I definitely think Verdun works! The combination of
players on
the record is, in my view, perfectly balanced. Did you have a group/album
sound in mind before you began recording?
Neal: The original intention
was to combine two forces: Starting with a
landscape of driving hormonal and somewhat dissonant rock, and then
overlaying it with very light ethereal sounds. For that part I wanted
delicate
female vocals and Vietnamese instruments. Traditional Vietnamese
music
has such incredibly delicate sounds, and because it uses a pentatonic
scale, it blends seamlessly with rock and blues.
But then things turned in a direction I didn't anticipate. I asked
Martha
Roebuck to sing rough drafts that I would then translate into Vietnamese.
But Martha's singing was just so pure and angelic, I left a lot
of it in
English and started writing with that in mind. The first track on
the
album has Martha singing the English part, which I'd based on a
very
old Vietnamese song, and then Ngoc and Bau come in with the actual
traditional song in the middle, before we cut back to the more
modern version.
I love this group of musicians. In addition to Mike on drums, Bob
Gray
played sax and Jon Best played bass, both of whom are fantastic.
Ngoc
Hoang is a wonderful singer, originally from Saigon, who now lives
in
Houston. And Bau has a hardcore band in Atlanta and is also very
skilled on traditional stringed instruments. His nickname, "Bau," is
actually the name of the one-stringed instrument that is so characteristic
of Vietnamese music. It is plucked with one hand, while the palm
rests
lightly on the string, creating a harmonic, and the other hand adjusts
the
string's tension with a little lever. You'll hear just a tiny touch
of it on this
album. The opening sounds of the album are the dan tranh, which
is like
a Japanese koto, and Bau is playing an electronic version of this
as a
keyboard instrument.
And on the classical side of things, Carter Melin's cello blends
so
beautifully with Martha's voice on "Song to a Sparrow." I wrote the song
for Ngoc, and she felt it needed classical guitar, which Sam Dorsey
played for us. He is really something. In addition to his solo work,
Sam
has a group of twelve classical guitarists who play simultaneously,
and
they are as clear as crystal. You have to hear it to believe it.
Anyway, yes, I had a sound in mind, but it got pushed around by
the
talents of the musicians.
Jamie
:
And they certainly are talented players. Just to do a little shop
talk... the sound quality on Verdun is terrific. The
various elements in
the mix are distinct but also blend well. The challenge, I would
imagine,
in combining these sounds, was not to lose the physicality of the
"driving
hormonal and somewhat dissonant rock" or the delicate quality
of the
"very light ethereal sounds". To not have the two sonic
worlds act against,
or diminish, one another. How important was Jon Best's engineering
in the
recording and mixing of Verdun?
Neal: A good engineer sets the
mikes in the right place and turns the
dials on the mixing board or computer to get the best possible sound.
But a great engineer also turns the intrapsychic dials of the musicians.
When it's 11:30 at night and the recording is not quite where you
want
it to be, the ability to hear what's slightly off and communicate
it in a way
that pumps up the musicians is a real gift. Jon is great at that,
as well as
being a heck of musician himself. He played several of the bass
lines on
the record.
Also, the CD was mastered by Brent Lambert at The Kitchen, in Chapel
Hill. It's just a joy to watch Brent focus on the music coming out
of the
speakers like a bloodhound sniffing the wind, twisting the dials
faster
than a kid playing foosball.
Jamie
:
HaHaHa -- that's great! Sounds like you like to have fun in the
studio and with music in general. You also seem to be someone who
likes to colour outside of the lines -- putting your own spin on
things --
which brings me to your cover of "Purple Haze". Personally,
I think a
good, or successful, cover is one that gives the listener a taste
of the
original but still allows the personality of the artist, who is
covering the
song, to come through. And this is a lot tougher with some material.
Hendrix, for example, has such a powerful musical voice that some
artists covering his tunes cannot seem to break away from the original
recording -- which is definitely not the case here! Could you talk
a bit
about the recording of this track?
Neal: Well, obviously the song
is a classic. But sometimes, when you
change a song's tempo, it becomes something entirely different.
I kept
hearing it very, very slow--letting the guitar really linger and
bringing out
the drums.
Now, most Hendrix covers make you want to hang yourself: the arty
quartet, the tuba version, the marching band, you name it. They
just
really don't work, it seems to me. But in "Purple Haze",
Jimi's solo
was like an oration where he really had something to say, but he
sped through so quickly that you couldn't concentrate. So, for
better or worse, we used a very slow beat with lots of drums
and shunted it into 7/4 time. The guitar part is the original,
note-for-note, except very slow.
Although it might be a bit odd to hear a plaintive woman's voice
handle
the lyrics, somehow it works. We recorded it very late at night,
and I
asked Martha to give it as little energy as possible--just a whisper
of
a vocal weaving into the instruments.
By the way, slowing down or speeding up a song can be very handy.
If you're writing a song and it's just not quite working, take it
into a
different gear, and it can just transform.
Jamie
:
And switching gears totally here... I was just looking through
your website and I didn't see any mention of live performances.
Does
Verdun perform live or is it strictly a studio/recording project?
Neal: We would love to perform
live and have envisioned that from the
start. With the wide-ranging mixture of instruments, it would really
be
something. But it will be quite an undertaking, and so far we've
focused
on the studio side of things.
Jamie
:
Well if you ever take the band out live, please think about
heading up to Toronto!
So I have to ask...is it sometimes "hard to be a woman giving
all your
love to just one man"?
Neal: In other words, why did
we turn a country music classic into a
Verdun song? Well, years ago, I was up very early one morning,
walking around the neighborhood, thinking through a set of lyrics
for
a slow, churning, minor key piece of music I had written. Now, lyrics
evolve in tangents, and in this case, perhaps because I was working
very hard at the time and sleeping very little, the lyrical stream
wandered
toward the notion of being abused and beaten up. An image of Tammy
Wynette started to plant itself into the song. She had reportedly
been
abducted and beaten up, although it was later suggested that the
abduction had been a ruse to cover up the abuse meted out by her
husband. Anyway, the lyrics she sang in "Stand By Your Man"--
which basically say, you might have a miserable time at the hands
of the lout you're married to, but just hang in their anyway--kept
playing in my mind, and eventually took over the song.
The song is not intended as a polemic. It simply unearths a piece
of cultural shrapnel and shines a bit of a cold neon light on it.
Recording this song was wonderful. Mike did the drums in one take--
7/4 time, fills and all. And Bob Gray's horn just wailed over the
top
with such mournful simplicity, and then these words sort of come
out of nowhere.
Jamie
:
I hope my last question didn't take away from the seriousness
of the song -- that wasn't my intent. It's just that I hear a tongue
in
cheek/sense of humour in the track.
Neal: I liked your question.
The song really IS tongue in cheek, in a way,
and I was hoping that a bit of odd humor would come through. It
puts the
abusive parts in sharp contrast with the message to "stand
by," and
having a male voice sing it makes it all the weirder. I didn't want
to
be too didactic with it, and I do hope that it has that mixture
of
humor and morosity that makes for good art.
Jamie
:
I'd sure say it does -- it's one of my favourite tracks on
the record!
I know you just released Verdun this year, but do
you have any plans
to start recording a follow-up record any time soon?
Neal: Well, does 2012 count
as soon? Seriously, I've been writing
some new material with fairly odd vocal harmonies and some harder
edged bits, and I'm really looking forward to getting back into
the studio.
But there is a step between writing and recording, which I think
of as a
culling process. I throw away everything that strikes me as good,
but
not REALLY good.
One of the great temptations in writing is to get swept up with
things
you want to say, rather than things you want to hear. So songs of
angst, anger, shock, lectures disguised as poetry can proliferate--
these are things people want to throw into music--but you don't
necessarily want to be on the receiving end of it. It is important
to
write, not as a musician, but as the listener. It's easy to violate
that
rule, and that's when it's important to throw your creations away.
And
that takes time, because you can't be objective about something
until
you have a little distance from it.
Jamie
:
Perfect... truly astute. And yes, at least from my take-as-long-
as-necessary-between-albums perspective, 2012 is soon.
So besides writing and culling, do you have anything else on the
go
that you'd like to talk about?
Neal: Just two quick things:
I've been surprised to find that this CD is
a bit of a Rorschach ink blot. The same song can be described as
wildly
aggressive, anxiety-provoking, or serene, depending on who is telling
me
about it. I'm blaming these varying reactions on their parents or
maybe
their caffeine levels.
Also, I wanted to let readers know that our Web site is
VerdunMusic.com,
and they will find the CD at Amazon.com and CDBaby.com.
Jamie
:
HaHaHa! You really can't lose blaming parents and caffeine,
can you? A bit like shooting fish in a barrel...
Thanks for taking the time to do this artist-to-artist conversation
--
it really has been a lot of fun! Please stay in touch!
|
