A chat with… John Roderick

John Roderick is undoubtedly one of the most particular talents from the prolific indie scene in the Northwest of the United States. Heart and soul of The Long Winters , a barely known  band in Spain, Roderick formerly worked as a history professor. Now, this friend and longtime collaborator of artists such as Ben Gibbard or David Bazan, stands out for his ability to create superb pop tunes along with tons of clever lyrics. Despite being in the studio recording the follow-up to Putting The Days To Bed, good old John was kind enough to answer our questions about the band’s current status and everything he’s up to.

“Maybe it’s time to release a solo album”

Arnau Roma – BARCELONA

I have read that you are in the studio right now. How is the new The Long Winters album going and when are you planning to realease it?
We started a new recording over the summer of 2008 with producer John Goodmanson.  Then my wife had a baby, and shortly thereafter two of the Long Winters, Nabil and Jonathan, moved to New York City, so Eric and I were left to finish it on our own.  We built a little studio in the basement and have been working on the recording sporadically ever since. It is hard to say when it will be ready for release, but we hope to have it out by the end of 2009.

You recently released a live DVD album called “Live at the Showbox”. What can we expect from it?
It was recorded at the end of our last big tour in 2007, not long after our shows in Spain of that same year. You can order it directly from our American label, Barsuk, or get it from Amazon.  It’s a fun show, a nice long show in our home town where some friends get up to play with us and we play some covers. I’m happy with how it turned out.

It was a surprise to see you in Barcelona last September. You were not on tour and suddenly you came all the way from the States just to play a bunch of shows in our country. How did this happen?
The Long Winters are lucky.  We always had a very good reception in Spain when we first played there in 2004, and we made good friends with people there right away.  When we get asked to come and play we always try to make it happen, and if the money is right we’ll usually drop what we’re doing and come.  We have a few traditions, like we try to eat the local food in each region we visit, but mostly we just love the audiences there.

The first time I saw you live (February 2007 at La [2], Barcelona) I was surprised at how much you talk and interact with the audience. That day you accepted song requests and you played for almost two and a half hours until the promoters politely kicked you out of the stage. Is it always like this?
We did play for a long time that night, because we had not been to Spain in a long time and wanted to give everyone their money’s worth. I like to talk to the audience too, just to make everyone feel comfortable with us, but I know that in Europe I might talk too much considering that not everyone in the audience understands my English. Plus, my bandmates sometimes ask me not to play for so long because it is very tiring and, after two hours everyone has had plenty of music and just wants to go to the bar and have a beer. But yes, that night in Barcelona we did play for a long time, until the venue was closing, but the audience seemed to like it.

Do you live off the music or do you have a normal life where you work from 9 to 5?
Music is my job, and I spend most of the day thinking about it in one way or another. But I like to work in the garden too, and I sit and stare into space for a few hours a day as well.

Which part of your job as a musician do you like the most and which one do you like the least?
The best part of my job as a musician is that it lets me live my life the way I want.  I travel and play for people, which is what most people consider a vacation or a fantasy.  The worst part of the job is that we are part of the much larger entertainment business, that has its own rules and its own logic, and we are a very small fish.  So we do not get to be as free as we would like.

Nowadays, people download music for free more than ever. Regarding this fact, do you think it is detrimental for the artists or on the contrary it gives them a boost because more people end up listening to what they do?
I know everyone on both sides of the question has a really passionate argument, but I prefer to think of it as a fait accompli. Music is going to be traded among fans and musicians and record labels will have to find other ways to get paid for it. I remember when all the talk was about how cassette tapes and home taping were going to kill the music business, so it’s nothing new. On the other hand, you must know that the “boost your career” explanation is self-serving.

What do you mean?
I get requests all the time to play for free, or let my music be used in a film for free, or to appear for free, and every time the justification is that it will “boost my career”. Most musicians at some point have to say, “THIS is my career, right now, and I need to get paid for THIS work I’m doing. I do not want to be paid in a promise that someday in the future I will be more popular.” If everyone downloads our music for free, and wants us to play for free, it becomes impossible to continue to make music unless your parents are rich.

On the band’s official website, you describe yourself as a “a little bit of a dictator”, an “unlikable and grouchy little Napoleon”  and you say that you have “a sharp tongue”. You always looked nice onstage, so I guess that you were joking…
Thank you for saying so.  I wrote that partly as a joke, and partly because I have a reputation of being “difficult” to work with. Here on the Northwest Coast people are very polite, and they often will not say what is on their mind if something is bothering them.  It is not like Spain, more like Denmark. So people get very upset over small things because their energy is very pent-up.  I do not have this personality and I think people are crazy to bottle up their feelings this way, so people in my part of the country sometimes think I am rude or inconsiderate. I try to make a joke out of it, but the reputation takes on a life of its own. Belive me, in Spain I would be considered very polite.

Good old John. / Source: Seattle Weekly

You have often collaborated with many big names from the Seattle indie scene such as Death Cab For Cutie, Chris Walla or Nada Surf… What’s up with Seattle that all the musicians seem to know each other and get along well?
The Seattle music scene is very close-knit and we are mostly all good friends, although Nada Surf lives in New York and Chris Walla moved down to Portland.  But there are so many good bands coming from there, David Bazan from Pedro the Lion, the Fleet Foxes, J. Tillman and many more. Plus, if you include Portland in the Northwest music scene you have all those great bands, like the Decembrists and Menomena. We are all on good terms together.

You also do some solo shows every once in a while. Have you ever thought of going further down this path and releasing a solo album?
My record label very much would like me to do a solo record, and maybe that is next for me. I like playing solo shows and actually did a European tour with Centro-Matic in Spring of 2006. We played at the Primavera festival, and many other Spanish shows as well. I played a small concert at the Heliogabal in Barcelona that was one of my  favorite shows ever. Also, Eric and I played a show in Madrid, just as a duo, in 2007 that was very enjoyable.

Although being on a literary hiatus, you write articles (some of them, such as “Things your dad won’t tell you about keeping a beard” are hilarious) for the Seattle Weekly. How did this journalistic project arise?
The Seattle Weekly asked me to write a column as part of some publicity they were doing for the paper, like “Check out the rock stars writing in the newspaper!”. They got Duff McKagan (Guns N’ Roses, Velvet Revolver) to write a column too, which I recommend.  I did it just for fun, but people seemed to like it so I kept doing it and only stopped when we started to record. I might pick it up again at some point but I am not interested in being a music journalist. I am sure I will write more prose in my life, but it is hard to say what kind.

Let’s try to define your music: If your band was a Frankenstein made out of several different bands, which ones would these be?
I do not really think of my music in those terms; that’s better left to the critics.  But my band IS sort of a Frankenstein, in the sense that everyone in The Long Winters has played in other bands and brings different influences to the table. Nabil has played the drums in a lot of heavy, glam-rock bands, where Jonathan comes from a total Southern post-rock, math-punk scene. Eric and I are both Pacific Northwest indie-rockers, but Eric is more jammy and prog, while I am sort of a mash-up of different styles of pop.  The different styles influence our music without us even thinking about it.

Finally, the Primavera Sound festival takes place at the end of May. What are the odds of you paying us a visit for the occasion?
Right now we are trying to finish our next record, so we may not come back to Spain until it is finished. We love Primavera, but they probably would rather have us come when we have new music to play. So keep in touch with us, look for us on the internet, and we will be back to Spain as soon as we can.

Roderick rocking it. / Source: Greg Perez's Flickr

Mp3:

The Long Winters – Pushover (gentileza de The Long Winters y Barsuk Records)
The Long Winters – Stupid (gentileza de The Long Winters y Barsuk Records)

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