Jason Falkner – Interview

If you are reading this and wondering who exactly Jason Falkner is, you are not alone. But that doesn’t make up for your oversight.

I caught up with him shortly after the release of his brilliant album, Can You Still Feel?. Not only did his album reassure me that there is still great music being made, but also that there are some real rock stars out there, lurking in the shadows. Imagine that.

Jason Falkner doesn’t act like a rock star. His nature is kind and humorous. He is handsome, resembling Matt Damon, and could easily qualify as a teen heartthrob. Well, we can all be thankful that hasn’t happened. But with a great voice, slick songwriting, and an ability to play any instrument put before him, it is amazing that Jason hasn’t yet taken the music world by storm.

Armed with nothing but a tape recorder and having Can You Still Feel? dancing in my skull, I took a journey into the world of Jason Falkner.

I read a quote from a few years ago where you called Elektra ‘neglectra’. Do you still feel the same way?

Oh, man! Did that come out somewhere? Oh no. Um, that wasn’t supposed to be printed.

No?

No. I mean, I was definitely the overlooked sort of uglier child with my last album, and I couldn’t figure out why because everybody was like, ‘You’re a genius! You’re incredible!’ and it wasn’t promoted.

It didn’t instantly get on radio and I know that radio is running the entire universe, but I felt that it was the kind of record that should have had more of a chance at radio. There is no one to point my finger at and I don’t really care anymore about that, but at the time it was very disheartening to me because you had something in and it is met with such positive response and then it’s like, ‘What happened?’ And it’s like, ‘Well, I guess the record wasn’t as brilliant as we thought it was,’ and I’m like, ‘What changed your mind? Somebody else’s lack of understanding it?’ That is really weak. But I also think to Elektra’s credit and defense that I made another one and they are promoting this one better than the last one. I guess, I’m told this all the time, it’s not easy to sell what I am doing. I don’t see it being as hard as I’m told it is, but then I just turn on the radio for five minutes and then I understand.

There is not a lot of fearless music being made, and while my music to a lot of people that think they are fearless would sound safe, it’s not safe in the way that I make these records. My mind set is not about the bottom line. I’m not even thinking about getting on radio. I’m thinking about trying to make as honest a statement as possible. That is a much more fearless thing that pulling out your sequencer and cranking up your guitars and putting on some eye shadow. Trying to make something beautiful and grand, dare I say epic, in this particular time of pop culture history is far more courageous and ballsy than just a big, loud and obnoxious rock thing. I don’t think people recognize that and therein lies my trouble. Because it became such a dirty word to do something big, I don’t mean big like just for the sake of it, not some giant Diane Warren thing, but I just mean stuff that is trying to transcend.

Did you hook up with Nigel Goodrich to produce your album because you liked Radiohead’s Ok Computer and its sort of big epic sound?

I hooked up with Nigel because I heard that record, it wasn’t because of the band Radiohead who I love. But I didn’t pick him so that I was more like Radiohead or anything. I listened to the record when I was falling asleep one day, about a month after I bought it, and I got to the fifth song and I just freaked. I just turned on the light and ripped open the book and was like, ‘Who the hell recorded this album?’ and I saw his name and I didn’t recognize it and I thought ‘Cool, he’s gonna be cheap.’ (laughs) That was just my ignorance because I didn’t know who he was, but I hired him because of the sound of that record. I loved the space of it, I loved some of the mono panning and I listened to a lot of stuff with producer ears, I can’t help that, and I was listening to that record realizing that it has a beautiful space to it. I really think that that band, Radiohead, could set up in your closet and sound amazing. They are really good, so they don’t need a lot of help. Just like I didn’t need a lot of musical help, I just need an engineer and a co-conspirator that would be like my brother for the few months that we get extremely close while making a record.

Why did you choose to play all of the instruments on both albums?

Really, just because it is fun for me. I just love playing all the instruments. I don’t have a favorite, I never did. I studied classical piano for a while and taught myself how to play all of the other instruments.

When I was a kid, the thing that I did instead of asking for a catcher’s mitt, I was building drum sets out of the cartons from Baskin-Robbins. Seriously, me and my dad would go rifling through the trash and those would be my tom toms. I would try ones that had different pitches. They sounded like Ringo drums. (mimics the sound) They sounded totally dead, but I made these mammoth, like Alex VanHalen, kits out of those cartons.

Like from the 1984 album?

Totally. (laughs) Like the “Jump” set. I was totally into it. When I first got a real drumset, when I was like eight or nine, what I did was, I would have my headphones, my dad had these crazy Koss headphones, like air traffic controller headphones, and I would have those plugged into the stereo with the turntable. And I would listen to his records, which happen to be real funky records for a kid’s musical diet. The first record I was listening to when I was really little was Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, which is the first Pink Floyd record with Syd Barrett and a band out of LA called Love. And I would play drums to these records and I would try to turn the volume up just loud enough to where it is almost drowning me out too, but I could still hear my cymbal crashes and my snare. I would become that drummer. I owe a lot to Pete Thomas from Elvis Costello and the Attractions, Stewart Copeland from The Police, and all the records I was into. When I was really young I would play to records like Boston and Kansas and stuff like that. (laughs) I mean, I was totally into that. Also, I had a prog-rock phase so I was looking for the most intelligent form of life in the rock thing, and to a nine or ten year old, prog-rock was like the best of both worlds.

I was never a total technician. I was never that into, like to learn how to shred at any instrument, it was much more of a musical thing for me. Even when all of my friends were fretting, I was like making these weird positions with my hand on the fretboard. I was kind of transposing stuff that I knew from piano and that is how I play guitar. And still to this day people come up to me and say, ‘What the hell was that chord you were playing?’ I can name it like ‘It’s a flat five with a nine.’ That is how I am thinking about it. I’m just playing what I am hearing. The reason I play everything is because I just love it. It is like the most fun I can have on the planet is building a song up from the drums, I play the drums first, and I just add all the music after that. I arrange it on the spot, and if I record it a week later the arrangement would be different. It’s not as methodical and lab coat as a lot of people think that I am. It’s very spontaneous and improvised as far as the arrangements and the parts. I do kind of miss the camaraderie of playing with other people, but I get those yah-yahs out when I’m playing out live.

Do you have a songwriting process?

Well, it’s kind of a weird one actually. Maybe once or twice in my life have I ever written a song from beginning to end and finished it on one particular instrument. I usually have an idea for a verse, maybe have guitar pattern for a verse and a chorus and then I do the production in my head. I kind of figure out which direction I want to go because it can go any direction. I let the melody dictate to me how the production should be.

Clearly, if you listen to my records, I’m coming from a lot of different angles. So when I’m doing pre-production, if you will, in my head, I figure out which angle that particular song is going to take and then I start recording it. I write when I’m recording. For the last twelve years I’ve had a four-track. Just a cassette four-track

Me too.

I have a Tascam Porta One, which is a great machine.

That’s the same one I have.

Really? It’s a little square one and it’s sort of heavy?

Yeah. You can record like two tracks at a time on mine. Can you do two or four on yours?

Yeah, two at a time because it is either track one or three, but it is five faders. You know what? Don’t ever get rid of that. That is one of the best four tracks ever made. It’s a really good one because the ones they make now suck. Everybody buys ADAT’s and stuff, so why would you buy a cassette four track anymore? The new ones are really light and they suck.

Am I repeating myself?

Not really.

What was I talking about? (laughs) Oh yeah, the process of writing. So I’ll do the drums, and let’s say I don’t have a bridge yet, but that I have an idea of how long I want it to be. I’ll just figure out a drum pattern on the spot, then record everything else so I’m writing the song as I’m recording it. Like if do a guitar track and I don’t really know what I’m going to do with it and I’m playing it down. I’ll keep that guitar track even if there is a bunch of fuck ups on it because it’s got that kind of energy and maybe sounds like somebody else was doing it. So, that is how I am able to not sound like one bozo in a room playing all of the instruments. Because I’ll keep tracks that are flawed or I’ll keep tracks where I’m like so excited playing bass that I’ll bump into something and all of the strings ring out. They just have that kind of energy and urgency that is really important to me.

How did “Author Unknown” end up on this album when your last was actually entitled Author Unknown?

It was just totally random. I had recorded it for the last one and thought the performance sucked. I didn’t like the way it sounded and figured I’d put it on the next album. I didn’t think I was gonna join that little club of like Led Zepplin with “The Song Remains The Same” thing. It was totally accidental. I thought it was a cool song, but I thought the version was wrong and I didn’t have any money to redo it and put it on the first album. I always over-track when recording because you just miss some things when recording. It’s just inevitable that you are gonna miss some things that are good songs and shouldn’t be missed, yet you don’t want to release them if they are wrong. You have this sort of thing in your songs where your chorus will build on the first go around, but doesn’t really climax until the next time you sing the chorus.

Is this something you picked up from your contemporaries? Or do you like the drama?

I didn’t consciously pick that up from anybody and it’s also not conscious as a style thing. (pauses) Maybe it is a style thing, but it is inadvertent. I like taking people on a roller coaster ride. And if I sort of gave you what you expected, it wouldn’t have that depth to it. I don’t know if that is the right word, but I don’t intentionally throw curve balls at the listener. It’s just that it’s what is exciting to me. I really do have to entertain myself first, and then hopefully it is entertaining to other people. When I’m writing a song, I’ve got to freak myself out.

I’ve been recording albums for a lot longer than people think and so my standards are in a different place and I don’t really care if it is easy to get. I think it is easier to get than a lot of people say. A lot of people in my (puts on a proper, snobbish accent) professional life say that the stuff is hard to digest. I think that is rubbish. My record probably isn’t going to strike you first chord, it’s gonna take you a few listens before you are like, ‘Oh, I see what is going on here.’ It’s not just gonna bang you over the head with its directness. So I think you need to really check it out more than stuff that is on the radio right now.

I agree. The song “I Already Know” sounds like The Police. Was that influenced by them?

I never heard that before.

Really? (feeling a bit embarrassed)

No, but that is cool.

That is the song with the guitar crashing in, right? Maybe I’m thinking of the wrong one.

No, that is it.

I thought it was weird how the guitar crashes in like that because the song is very serene and then, ‘boom,’ the guitar starts screeching like crazy.

That’s an edit. That’s a hard, old-fashioned, cutting two-inch tape edit. I wrote that song about two years ago and I wanted to have this completely unexpected edit. And on my original four track, I can’t edit, so I literally played it like that. But if you listen to this one you can hear all of the sounds getting different. The bass and the drums are totally different recordings. They were recorded in different states. The bulk of the verse and pre-chorus section are recorded in New Orleans and the heavy section is recorded in LA. I wanted it to be a hard edit. I wanted it to totally screw you up. The lyric of the song is not a happy one, and that should come in and rip your face off. I think that we’ve successfully nailed that one.

It definitely comes in unexpectedly, because you are just strolling along through that song and then

(laughs) Yeah.

Crunch.

You’re like ‘Dear God.’ (laughs hysterically)

I’m like, ‘Woah.’

‘Dear mother of God.’ (still laughing) ‘What is this guy doing to me?’ That one is probably not going to make it on the radio, but wouldn’t it be a cool planet if that did?

Yeah.

Wouldn’t it be a cool universe where that song was something that people really got?

So don’t you think you should have taken over the world by now?

Well, yeah. (laughs) It was part of my master plan at eighteen years old that I would be taking over the world.

I guess I probably think about this stuff too much and it does bother me even though I’d love to say I don’t care and that I’m artistically independent, which I am, and that is enough. I just feel like I’m operating so far on the periphery and yet every big band is like, ‘We love Jason Falkner,’ and I’m like, ‘Well, why don’t you take me on the road and give me a break?’ Julian Cope, who was in a band called Teardrop Explodes, and he has been like a big influence on a lot of Brit pop people. Like Damon from Blur sounds a lot like him.

I love Blur.

Then you should check out an album of theirs called Wilder. It’s very ’80’s so it sounds a bit dated now. And I heard him on MTV in the late ’80’s and the interviewer was like, ‘How does it feel to be such an influence?’ and he was like (putting on a British accent), ‘It just means that I don’t make any fucking money.’ And I remember thinking it is sad, but he still has a sense of humor about it and then it’s like fast forward ten years later and a lot of people like what I do and yet I can’t get arrested on television or radio, thus far. We’ll see. And my point is, I have always searched out those types of people because I liked what they were doing, like Julian Cope or Elvis Costello or David Bowie, pre-“Let’s Dance”. It was like this guy is doing something really fringe and it’s brilliant, but it’s not like impossible to ingest. It’s not art for art’s sake and yet it’s artistic pop music. I went down that path and checking those people out and they were my mentors. So, what do I expect? I’m having a similar fate.

I turn on the radio, and the first five minutes I’m almost nauseous. So what do I expect? Do I expect to change the radio of alternative or modern radio? Yes, I do, actually. (laughs) I would love to be in the upper echelon of rock personalities. Who knows, maybe I will be, but a lot of those people have contacted me and said they like what I do. If it doesn’t, then I’d rather be recognized as a true vision and not a compromised one, rather than be in the ‘Random Notes’ in Rolling Stone.

directed and written by charlie craine