Press and Radio
Low Lives the Rock and Roll Lifestyle
Low in Los Angeles is nothing but incongruous. There are two L.A.s, the West Hollywood
fantasy and the Hollywood proper reality, and Low fits poorly in both of them. I met
up with Alan Sparhawk (guitar, vocals) on a sunny afternoon and we checked out the
rock and roll detritus of each side of the City of Angels.
First we went to the Guitar Center on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood ('cause Alan thought it
would be "funny"). We checked out Fender Telecasters (his axe of choice, though he opted
not to buy the one with the $3,500 price tag) and the Rock Walk Hall of Fame. Here is where
the young hopefuls come after cashing fat advance checks from the major labels. They buy
their new gear (a translucent green B.C. Rich was on sale for under $200!) from the
mullethead believers who go see Bret Michaels and Steve Vai and believe that metal is
still heavy (though the musicians are reduced to playing the same pay for play clubs
they started at). We compared the clean Eddie Van Halen 1984-era Kramer on
display, to the jacked-up, hot-rodded version he played in the display photo. We discussed
our favorite AC/DC albums in front of a Malcolm Young Gretsch (his: Highway to Hell;
mine: Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap).
Next was Black Market Music. A dusty refuse depository where, when those fat advance checks
run out, the has-beens and never-rans can pawn their Guitar Center gear, to be resold at
inflated prices to trend-hoppers who don't know any better. Walking through the stacks of
abandoned equipment is like perusing a warehouse of dead dreams. The most striking thing
about Black Market is just how much stuff they have for sale. A memorial to all those
fallen bands who came and played on the marketplace's terms.
One might think that Low could not play L.A. There is nothing fancy about Low, nothing
showy, they do not draw attention to themselves, and they play one their own terms. For
these reasons, however, Low has and will continue to outlast nearly everyone who has
played at the Whiskey, the Roxy, and the Troubadour. And, apparently, it are these same
qualities that have allowed Low to take over their L.A. audience.
Not only was Low playing larger venues this tour, but they were playing (at the shows
I saw, at least) to silent, reverential audiences. Those who have been around for a
while will know that Low fans can be a bit like militant librarians about enforcing
the 12-inch whisper at shows. It goes without saying that rock and roll crowds are
unlikely to comply. However, I stood in the middle of 500 Angelenos and the crowd
was dead silent.
After Black Market Music, we retired to the West Hollywood penthouse apartment where
Low was staying, with panoramic views of all of Los Angeles. I spent some time with
Alan, Mimi (drums, vocals), Hollis (their tiny daughter), and Starfire, the rock and
roll nanny (Zak, bass, was unaccounted for). One thing that the reader should be aware
of, that I am not sure comes across clearly enough in the following transcript, is how
good-humored Low is. So, now you know.
fakejazz: You are playing big, huge venues on this tour, crowds of thousands.
How is that going for you?
alan: Thousands?
mimi: If you add them all together.
fakejazz: There were about 500 people at the show last night.
alan: It's kind of just slowly crept up on us. A year ago when Secret Name was out we were playing for maybe two thirds of that. I guess we played the Troubadour
[in Los Angeles] last time, and that's about 350 or 400 people.
mimi: LA isn't that much bigger, maybe a hundred more people.
alan: San Francisco was definitely bigger this time. It's kind of been growing at
that pace.
mimi: It's been gradual enough that we haven't been too shocked.
alan: Yeah it's not like it's suddenly, "Whoa, what are we doing, we're playing
in front of fifteen times as many people?"
mimi: But when we went to London, there were tons of people. It has a lot to do
with the venue, with the space.
alan: If it feels like a big rock show.
mimi: If it feels impersonal.
fakejazz: You played with Nick Cave a couple of weeks ago in New York, I imagine
that was a good sized show.
mimi: About 1400, I think.
alan: It wasn't a huge place.
mimi: He was playing smaller shows.
fakejazz: How did you hook up with him?
alan: We're friends with the Dirty Three, and those guys play with Nick. Also, Nick
Cave is booked by the same agency as us, so our agent knows that he is gonna be on tour,
so he just pitches our name in there early enough. I've heard that he likes our stuff,
but I don't know if that's substantiated. We've never actually sat and talked to him and
gotten any sort of idea of whether he's even aware of us or not. Someone told me he liked
our stuff. It was alright. It wasn't quite the right vibe for us.
mimi: Yeah, we were playing and people were still coming in, getting seated.
alan: The guy who was doing the lights just basically just turned on white lights
and went to go talk to his girlfriend or something. So it didn't have as much of a vibe
at all as we'd like to have.
fakejazz: After the demise of Vernon Yard, when your records started being
released by Kranky, the band seemed to go in a more adventurous, experimental direction. Songs for a Dead Pilot and Secret Name were not quite as polished, a little
more dissonant. Do you credit that to something?
alan: I don't know. It's kind of hard to tell whether it was because we were on
a new label or whether it was just because that was where we were and that's kind of
what we were shooting for. It was maybe a little bit of both. I thought with Curtain
Hits the Cast we were starting to get a little bit more dissonant, a little bit more
edgy, a little more raw, and yet hopefully a little more refined.
mimi: I think Kramer had a lot...
alan: But we did it with Steve Fisk as well.
mimi: Yeah, I know, but with the recordings with Kramer, they are very polished.
alan: Yeah, they're a little more reverb-y. It wasn't like there was any big
pressure from Vernon Yard to be like, "Oh its gotta be a really clean sounding record, and
you can't experiment." We, in essence, were able to do what we wanted on Vernon Yard. I
think that opportunity to be on Kranky opened it up a little bit more for us. Just knowing
the bands that were on there. We just kind of went, "Wow, we could do anything, we could
go completely out of bounds here, and it would almost be more appropriate." It was nice to
have that kind of overshadowing vibe. Especially with Songs for a Dead Pilot, we went
into it thinking, "let's not even bother with our pop songs on this, let's just experiment
a little bit, let's try some stuff fully knowing that we're just gonna try things." We
intended for it to be an EP because to me an EP is something you kind of go off on a
little thing and try something; it's not necessarily your full on. A full length to me
is, "Here we are, this is where we are right now, this is our thing," whereas an EP
feels like, to me it's like "We're gonna go mess around with some stuff here and put
this thing out and not make a big deal about it and if some people are into it, great,
and if not, stick around and we'll have an LP out sometime later." Plus we had just bought
some equipment to record, and we were kind of learning how to record. There were a lot of
factors that led to that perceived transition.
fakejazz: The new record, Things We Lost in the Fire, seems to have moved a
little bit away from that. It's got, sonically, more of a harmonious, smooth feel to it.
alan: We actually went into it knowing that we were going to make a pop record. Or at
least a Low pop record. If we were to make a pop record, this is probably what it would
sound like. We had written some of the songs, we realized that, "Wow, we're writing a
lot of poppy songs, and they sound like they want all this stuff: they want strings, they
want keyboards, they want multi-harmonies." We just decided to let ourselves do that for a
record and not stifle it as much as maybe we did in the past. It's not the darkest record
we've ever done for sure, but I think we had to go that direction. You have to lean to
one side or the other from time to time, otherwise you're trying to straddle both and
you get something bland. If it was a mixture of dark dissonant songs and pop songs it
would be less effective.
fakejazz: Could Live in Hope is kind of distinct from the other records, it
doesn't seem that it has the "Low" quality. With Long Division, the band really
seems to find its voice. What are your thoughts on that?
alan: Right. That's kind of an interesting and accurate description that almost
describes exactly where we were. We started recording that record after only being a
band for five months. All we had was a few songs and kind of an idea of what were
trying to do. It went very quick and we did the record very fast. We had no idea about
the recording process; we just had these songs that we kind of knew how to play and
kind of could sing. We hadn't toured, we had done literally maybe three or four shows
by the time we recorded that record so we didn't have as much a feel for what we were
until Long Division. When we went to record Long Division we had toured
quite a bit and gotten a little bit of a feeling for what we were and what we could
and couldn't do. A person could argue one way or the other, ignorance sometimes is
bliss and, yes, sometimes the best record a band makes is the first record because
they don't know what they're doing. It was an innocent and ignorant record. Some
people are very close to that record, and I feel like we can look back on it and I'm
still happy with what we did and pretty surprised with what we were able to do with
how little we had.
fakejazz: In all the times I have seen you live it seems rare that you play
songs from that album. Do you still play songs from that record?
alan: Actually, yeah.
mimi: A lot, actually a lot.
alan: We play "Words" from time to time, we play...
mimi: "Lazy"
alan: ... "Lazy" from time to time. We play "Fear" every once and a while. Even
on a real rare occasion we'll play "Lullaby." It's one of those things, when we did it
eight years ago, we played those songs a lot because that's all the songs we had the
first year. And the second year when we had Long Division, half the set was
still stuff from that. There was a good two or three years there where we were
playing "Words" every night. The first year we were playing "Lullaby" every night.
Now we have a lot of options. We've got eighty songs. Chances are you're not going
to play those first eight or ten that you had all that time as much as the new ones
or newer songs. We play them every once and a while. We probably play songs from I Could Live in Hope as much as we do from Long Division and definitely
more than we do from Transmission or even . . .
mimi: Curtain.
alan: No, we still play...
mimi: What are you thinking of? Dead Pilot?
alan: Songs from a Dead Pilot. We don't really, other than that particular
tour, we don't really play a lot of the songs on Songs from a Dead Pilot.
fakejazz: Do you like the Cure's album Seventeen Seconds?
alan: I do, actually I like Faith a lot. That one, for some reason, is the
one I like the most. Or that I find myself listening to that one more than Seventeen
Seconds.
fakejazz: Seventeen Seconds is the one I always think of when I listen to I Could Live in Hope.
alan: I can see that actually. For years and years I had a tape with Faith on one side and Seventeen Seconds on the other so I'd always go back on forth.
But I think Faith is the only one I've actually gone out and finally bought the CD of.
fakejazz: The first time I saw you live, you played "Do You Know How to Waltz," and
I've never seen you play it since. I know that you have because it's on the live record.
alan: I don't know. We played that...
mimi: We kind of played that initially when the record came out a lot.
fakejazz: Is it difficult to do live?
mimi: No.
alan: In many ways, no. It's certainly kind of a touchy song. There are times
when it feels right and it feels really good and it really works. And there are times
when it feels really stupid, and we feel like we are just doing a trick. In many ways
it is, it's just a trick: play three chords over and over again for a long time and
get it really, really, really loud. It got to the point where it was like, "Well,
geez, that's all anybody's going to remember when they go home."
fakejazz: It really creates an impression. When I saw you play it, Curtain
Hits the Cast hadn't come out yet, and it was such an overwhelming experience
the way it just built and built.
alan: I think it's a very powerful song, and I think especially live there have
been times when it's very powerful and I like it. It's kind of one of those things where,
I think, we went out, we toured, we played that song for like a year and half, everybody
that came to see us probably heard that song, and, to me, if you've heard it once or twice,
I think that's kind of enough. If we were to keep playing it for years and years, and it
would be "Space Drums" at a Dead show, "Alright, man, here's the part where they're gonna
play this really cool thing, and then they're gonna get back to the real songs." More than
anything, that song feels to me like a moment, and to do it again, it's going to fall short.
fakejazz: Last night when you did "Laser Beam," and you played it slower than it
appears on the record.
alan: We do that a lot actually. There are a lot of songs that we play either
faster or slow.
fakejazz: It reminded me of a conversation I was a party to once where the
discussion was, "Does Low suck because their songs seems so basic and simple or is Low
great because of the kind of restraint they put into their music?" How difficult is it
to play something at such a deliberate pace? Is that naturally how it feels to you or
is there a desire to move things along?
alan: We've been doing it a long time; it's pretty natural to us. It feels
natural. I remember playing it last night, thinking, "Is this too fast?"
mimi: Really?
alan: Yeah.
mimi: You've been playing it slower.
alan: I've keep thinking that we've been playing it faster than the record. Yeah,
it's a restraint thing, but it's been something we've been building up. In many ways, it
feels natural.
mimi: Uh-huh.
alan: But we've fully recognized that, yes, we're playing stuff very slowly, and
someone who's not used to the pace will probably be kind of overwhelmed.
fakejazz: Early in the band's career was it more difficult to play slowly?
alan: I think we were a little bit more aware of our goal at that point which
was to play slower and play more minimally and to try to really open up stuff and kind
of recognize this ethic or these kind of rules or particular approaches early on in
the band, and we kind of consciously pursued that feeling of things being too slow,
and by doing that you get used to it, and then you'd have to push to go slower, and
you'd get used to that feeling, and then you'd have to push it slower to get that feeling.
So for a while, especially up until and around Long Division and actually up to Curtain Hits the Cast was really when we were arriving at that point. And once
arriving at that, it kind of bottomed out, so to speak, and we said "OK now this is as
far as we should do this, let's now try to figure out all the possibilities here." And
I think that's when we started to become more experimental with texture and instrumentation
and stuff and not so obsessed with slower, slower, slower, while at the same time, since
we've gotten to that point, it's always there. I would challenge anybody to take it
seriously and try to actually play that slow and try to make some decent music. It isn't
just easy because it's slow.
fakejazz: The first album I heard was Long Division, and I loved it, then
I got the Transmission EP and loved that, but I remember before The Curtain
Hits the Cast came out thinking "Oh, man, how far can they push this?"
alan: By Curtain Hits the Cast, we had kind of reached that point. There
are a couple of songs on Curtain Hits the Cast that are practically not moving
at all, whether it's "Laugh" or "Do You Know How to Waltz" has a certain static. Yeah,
static. We'd actually arrived at a point where the music, to me at least, sounds like it's
not moving at all. It's just there. Once you're there you kind of go, "OK, now where do
we go now that the motion has stopped."
fakejazz: The experience I had, and many people I know had this, where, before
seeing you live though, "OK, we love the records, let's go see them live and maybe it will
be boring, but who knows?" Then people have this experience of being caught up in the
music, an almost transcendent experience, which we were not expecting. I imagine people
have talked to you about this and wonder what your take is on what it is about your
music that seems to create that kind of effect?
alan: I don't know. I think it would be really hard to talk about without ruining it.
mimi: Do you know what it is?
starfire: I know.
mimi [to starfire]: You know what it is?
fakejazz [to starfire]: What is it?
starfire: I'll tell you later.
alan: I have certain ideas about it, but I'm not sure. It's actually just become
apparent to me recently how much people do get that out of it. From the beginning of the
band, we always kind of felt like, "Wow we have a certain feeling when we make this
music, I wonder if that comes across, or it's just us." Yeah, there were indicators
early on that some people really get affected by this music. There would indications
here and there, but I always just thought it was just kind of a unique experience. It's
just been really recently, more people talking about it, trying to define it. [To Starfire]
I think actually you've talked to me about it and the idea just hadn't really dawned on
me that way.
fakejazz [to starfire]: what is you're take?
starfire: I first noticed it... I mean I felt it all along too, I've been to a
million Low shows... but when I first saw him play in the Tooth Fairies I started
noticing it. If you ever watch when he busts loose and really plays loud, he becomes
this other character. There's the guitar posing, and there's all sort of other faces
that some people are just wearing and some people are channeling. Then, in Black Eyed
Snakes, I really started noticing it. I mean, I've seen him jump off his amp, two days
before tour, his best amp and knock it over and do flips and land on his back. I don't
get the feeling that you have any control over that.
alan: [Laughing] I kind of don't.
starfire: So you take all of that and put it in the Low context and then add Mim
and their harmonies and everything. All that energy that he jumps off amps with is still
there except you just don't see it. It's coming from so deep.
fakejazz: You had these 500 hundred people in the El Rey last night and during the
quiet parts of the music, or in the spaces between sounds, it was dead silent. To do that
with 500 people, particularly in the middle of Los Angeles, where usually the band on
stage is the last thing of interest to the audience, that's quite a feat.
alan: I think part of it is because we're doing music that's off-putting enough to
the shallow observer that by now they don't even come around. I'm glad we attract an audience
that cares about music and cares to listen. If we were a band that attracted that and
just whatever crowd, it wouldn't be the same. We're not ever gonna be famous famous, but
the people that do come see us have a deeper connection that way. That's a much greater
accomplishment than if we become famous at all. All I know is that in the beginning of
this band, we kind of get used to it, we're accustomed to it, its kind of like looking
at the sun--eventually it doesn't burn your eyes quite so harshly. That's not a good analogy.
mimi: That's not a good analogy.
starfire: Jump in cold water.
mimi: You get used to the shock.
alan: If you live in Duluth for a few months...
mimi: You get used to it after a while.
alan: ...a few winters you know that 40 below isn't quite as bad as it was the first
time you were there. Similarly, the first few shows when we played this music, I remember
it being very emotionally and spiritually impacting to us, and we used to talk about it a
lot and what a strange feeling it was to play this music and to be striving for this
certain thing, whatever it is we're trying to do. So I guess that's kind of the only
way I can really imagine what maybe other people are feeling when they are that impacted
by it. We go up there and we try really hard to play well. We put our hearts into it. We
feel really bad when it's not a good show, when it's not in a place where people can
enjoy it. Sometimes we're frustrated and that tension can explode onstage without
people even noticing. We just played in Prague a month ago, and it was absolutely the
most horrendously...
mimi: We just had a really bad day.
alan: ...like [the most] emotionally frustrating show we've ever done.
mimi: The show was great; it was just the day. We were all frustrated, we were
fighting, there was tension in the air.
alan: I was completely losing my mind.
mimi: Sometimes that really adds to it.
fakejazz: You mentioned spirituality a minute ago, to what extent does your
spiritually or religious convictions find their way into or impact your music.
alan: Spirituality impacts the music and ultimately spirituality, I guess, is our
religion. Unfortunately, if you say religion first, then there's all kinds of connotations
that 95% of the population assume when you use those kinds of words. This is something
that's very wrapped up and defines how we understand who we are and what life means
and what we're trying to accomplish and defines the struggles and frustrations of
being a human being, and therefore those factors are directly tied in to what we are
singing about because that's what most of our songs are about, being a human being. For me,
being a human being is a very spiritual thing, and yes I feel like this is perhaps something
we are supposed to do. I feel like our talents, whatever talents we have or don't have, are
given to us and that it's our responsibility to use them wisely and in a way to serving
our fellow man and serving God, ultimately. However, of course, we've kind of picked a
really weird way of doing it, that being in a rock band that tours around the country
and plays in bars sometimes. So it's kind of a hard thing to explain. In many ways it's
much easier to actually not talk about it. I feel like this is directly tied in with
spirituality. In fact, we've talked about this before. It's like, what kind of music
that we do? We've actually kind of come to a conclusion that we make spiritual music.
mimi: We've never answered it that way.
fakejazz: On Secret Name, there seemed to be some fairly explicit
references to being LDS [the Church of Latter Day Saints] and people were talking
about it, throwing out questions, and the few of us out there were doing our best
to explain things accurately. What was the experience like when people would
ask you about the things you talking about on the record?
alan: We haven't got a lot of people who have directly asked us. Unfortunately,
I think what happens is that people get curious and don't ask us directly, and they
end up asking someone else who unfortunately sometimes will give them the wrong
information. We haven't been asked very much about it. I'm comfortable talking about
some of it, I guess. For some reason Secret Name was the most blatant. There
isn't quite as much direct reference on this new record. We just kind of let it naturally
come out when it comes out and not when it doesn't.
We've not really run into too much hostility about it or anything like that. People are
curious but its not a big...
mimi: A lot of people don't care; they don't know.
alan: Most people don't hear that and that's fine; we didn't intend for people to
listen to that record and go, "Hmmmm, Mormons!"
fakejazz: What about going the other way as far as being Mormon but being in a crazy
rock and roll band. Do you find that Mormons are accepting of that?
alan: Oh, I don't know. I think so. Our [congregation] is pretty excited about it,
other than I am 1st Counselor in Elder's Quorum, and I'm not there a lot of the time to
take care of what needs to be taken care of. They're kind of excited about it--they're
curious about it. I don't think they necessarily totally understand what we're trying to do,
just like a normal person wouldn't understand a person doing music like we do anyway. They
think it's neat that we travel around the country playing music, and they got really excited
when they got to see us on the TV commercial. No nobody's ever questioned us and said "Are
you sure this is an appropriate lifestyle?"
fakejazz: You can always cite the Osmonds. One last question: what are your favorite
children's books?
alan: We just got one called Olivia that's good, Olivia the Pig.
mimi: The Seven Chinese Brothers.
alan: Seven Chinese Brothers.
starfire: Hollis' favorite is the kittens.
mimi: Anything with kittens in it.
alan: The book that just has pictures of kittens.
mimi: No words.
alan: That one is really great, that's our favorite one right now.
mimi: Exploring Kittens.
dave christensen
2001 june 8
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