Milwaukee’s Old Earth has been a real favourite of ours over the last few months. After including More Wrung In The Wrong on our list of Best Free Music in 2011, this year we have featured both a low place at The Old Place and Small Hours. Now we have been fortunate enough to have a chat with Todd Umhoefer about all things Old Earth.
First of all, how did Old Earth come into being? Was it something personal that developed into something bigger? Or did you always plan to have collaborators?
It started out personal by necessity… I’ve always been a collaborator for other people’s projects, but didn’t write full songs until I was about 26 (I’ve been playing guitar since I was 15, and I turn 34 tomorrow). In ‘05, I didn’t have a band, so I bought an acoustic guitar and started from the ground up.
I met most of my collaborators in ’06 doing open mics around Milwaukee. They focus on Field Report now, but back then, we regularly shared members and shows. I drummed for Conrad Plymouth, which became Field Report, and it was the most fun I’ve ever had as a collaborator. I think of Berg, Porterfield, and Whitty as my core team. They’re my go-to guys when I start recording, and my network grew through them. We’re friends first, though, because I’m hard to work with. I’m untrained. I use my own tuning, my own structures, and I don’t know a thing about theory. When people ask what key I’m in, they might as well be speaking another language.
The pool I’m able to draw from right now is incredible, and there’ll probably be about a dozen people on the next record.
What inspires your song writing process? Are you mostly influenced by other musical acts? Or do things like literature play a part too?
Rap has inspired me since I was 11. That genre is propelled by innovation, competition, and a sense of hustle that isn’t present in the indie rock scene. I’m equally motivated by acts that disgust me by their lack of ideas, energy, and hard work… Small Hours was very driven by things I don’t like. It’s what I’m NOT doing on that record that’s important to me.
Yes, other mediums play a huge part, and finding ways for it all to interweave makes for a rich experience. I have my hands in a lot of disciplines and my mind in even more. I like poetry (esp. the Beat poets) and short stories, visual art, and always have movies on (mainly for atmosphere).
For me, many Old Earth songs are cinematic, not in way that the word is often used (you know, big orchestral sounds and over-production) but in that they conjure imagery. This is very difficult to properly describe but the sounds have an underlying sense of action or violence that produces pictures or events without the need for words. Maybe it is because the music is so psychological, with abstract sounds and phrases rather than a traditional narrative. Does film have any impact on your work? Or is this just a consequence of releasing your mind through your music?
Film has a huge impact on my work- movies are about pacing and dynamics, creating and changing a mood in an instant, and marrying words and images to sound. I’d say that has more to do with my work than any other medium. I even think of certain riffs or words as characters, because they recur and represent a time, place, or person to me. When I do recordings, I put myself in the role of director, composer, and most often, curator. I’m also doing more scoring for other people’s film work, and it feels very natural.
The process of writing music such as this is really interesting to me. I find the idea of sitting down with the intention of putting together a song that will eventually sound organic and fully intended overwhelming in the extreme. I can see how people sit and write traditional folk songs, with maybe a poem or a story set to guitar strumming, but when the instrumentation plays such an important, visceral role I find it hard to imagine someone sitting down and working it out. How do you assemble something so convincing from the basic units of notes and words? Do you focus equally on the lyrics and the music? Or are the words governed by the music (or vice versa)?
Well, you have to bear in mind that I’m never starting from scratch. I have riffs and words and half-formed songs that I’ve been playing on for years, and I don’t have rules about one element governing another. For me, the song is the basic unit, and the riffs and words arrange themselves around it. Patiently living with the songs will tease out what they want to be… Writing never happens the same way twice, and it’s best for me to think of it as magic and leave it at that.
I’ve found that working on a few songs at once is really useful because they innately speak to each other, and the motifs become inherent. And, sometimes, you have to write three (or more) to get the one you want. Sometimes a song will spring from practicing an older one, or trying to play someone else’s.
Writing is constant, though. Singing with a guitar is only part of the process… As I’m doing a chore, running errands, or riding the bus, I’m working in my mind or on paper. I don’t think I can completely isolate the process from myself and describe it, it’s just what I do.
I once heard Damien Jurado speak on his writing process, something I’ve mentioned before on the blog, where he stated that songs always exist in some unknowable place within an artist, and that there is a spontaneous moment where each song is realised and takes form. Is this the case for you? Do songs tumble from your mind in something like a cohesive manner? Or is it more of an arduous process of trial and error, experimenting with different things?
Some seem to pop out fully-formed, but again, that’s only because I’ve played guitar basically every day for over half my life. You could argue that every song I make now has taken my entire life to write, rendering any spontenaity an illusion.
Trial and error plays a role, and it can be challenging at times, but I’m lucky if music is the most arduous part of my life. Cohesive moments are rare and can’t be counted on, so I just keep working. As for what Mr. Jurado is saying, I instead think of my songs as existing somewhere outside of myself, and I’m just witnessing and interpreting them.
For me there is a duality in your music, two aspects which combine to form a very convincing whole. The instrumentation represents the atavistic emotions and sensations, the instinctive things like fear and joy and unease, and the words are the complex thought, the reasoning that tries to bind the first category together into something that can be understood or shared. The music and lyrics together form something that is very human. Is this something you ever consider? Or is it a by-product of writing your mind?
I don’t think reason enters into it, especially with the lyrics. They’re intentionally vague, contradictory, and sometimes irrational. I like homonyms and multiple interpretations- sometimes the lines are a conversation, sometimes narration, and sometimes simply a human voice needed to be present and it felt good to sing there.
Music is inhuman if it isn’t saying “I love everything and it all makes sense” one moment and then “I’m confused and hateful” the next. The duality is more honest about the experience of being alive.
In our review of your album we included a quote where you essentially say that you take risks in order to make your art, and that pleasing people is not at the forefront of your thinking when trying to create something true to yourself. I read an interview with the Steinberg Principle where you go on to say that it is easy to pad yourself against criticism by being ironic. This remark brought to mind an essay by David Foster Wallace on TV and literature where he basically says that whole generations have grown up into superficial/empty people because they have been continually pumped full of ironic and clever TV characters who make fun of everything to appear ‘cool’. He pointed out that cynicism and irony can only ever be destructive, and truly brave art will stop poking fun at things and be itself, however hideously revealing that may be. Do you think this applies to music too, where it’s maybe not as clear as Family Guy or The Simpsons or a Mark Leyner novel? I’m thinking of artists such as yourself versus the current trend of ‘folk’ bands.
Overall, much of what’s popular is very sad and shallow to me, and I don’t need that kind of trash in my life. I’m not worried about any current trend because I’ve seen so many of them come and go. The joke’s on those bands, really. They’ll look back and feel foolish for dressing up and behaving that way. Fuck irony. I’m trying to make something to uplift myself, and it’s reassuring to me that other people can relate to it.
Finally, could you name 4-5 artists that you are currently listening too? They could be brand new or decades old, whatever you are enjoying at the moment.
My lady plays a lot of 60’s country and punk, I love Golden Oldies, I always have Gucci Mane in my headphones, and I couldn’t fairly list all my friends who are doing music that excites me. Milwaukee is an amazing place to be right now. The stuff that I’ve bought on bandcamp and shows up in the “collection” tab has a lot of good suggestions.
To better answer your question, though, the last month has been a lot of Drake’s Take Care, Fabolous’s The Soul Tape 2, J. Cole’s Truly Yours 2, and as for rock stuff, Ladyhawk’s No Can Do is ruling my world.
Jon: If you want to get some Old Earth music then head on over to his Bandcamp page. Mini50 Records have put out Small Hours, and a low place at The Old Place is now available on vinyl.
Also, in some strange twist of fate, Old Earth is playing with Small Sur and Peals, bands we featured just last Friday, this Tuesday (11th June ’13). If you are in the Milwaukee area then you would be silly to miss it. More information can be found here.