Music that Pushes: An Interview with Andrew Weathers

Andrew Weathers is a guitarist, banjo player, and mastering engineer based in Oakland California. He leads the Andrew Weathers Ensemble and regularly performs with Talk More. He’s recorded and performed with Kirtan Choir, Weathers/Glover, Tethers, Parties, Acid of All Ruins, Bicameral Mind, Northern Valentine, Tatsuya Nakatani, Laurent Estoppey, and Hal McGee, among others. Weathers also started Full Spectrum Records in 2008 and steers the ship with three others.

Weathers and his Ensemble released Fuck Everybody, You Can Do Anything in June, a high-water mark in Weathers’ relatively young, but still prolific run through American experimental music. It is “contemporary folk” music, from the perspective that it draws on many varied musical disciplines that have thrived across the US of A, stretching over mountain ranges, city limits, epochs, and generations. Pieced together from a series of studio improvisations featuring a swath of performers from around the country, he mixed and matched disparate influences: mid-aughts emo to Appalachian folk; mainstream rap to noise. The improvisations were deconstructed by Weathers and reshaped into a blissful, reflective, transcendent tapestry that pushes toward some other state.

Adam: I’m interested in hearing about your experience earning a theoretical MFA at Mills College. But it wasn’t very theoretical, was it?
Andrew: No, the program is pretty hands on. I did my undergrad degree in composition at University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and that included music theory, site singing, and harmony. I was a percussion major, which is totally messed up because I don’t play drums or percussion — I’ve abandoned it completely. And the technical title of my MFA at Mills is in Electronic Music and Recorded Media.

The educational experience was an interesting mix because there are technical classes and there are also circuit building classes. You learn these technical skills, but the approach is very heady and theoretical. The ends are very open. And you’re encouraged to go as far as you can — the farther out, the better. And the good thing about Mills is that no one is ever going to tell you that your ideas are bogus, because that’s the kind of learning environment it is.

All music is good music?
Andrew Weathers: This is the nature of playing weirdo music- to be honest; I don’t even know what’s good sometimes. I actually get confused because I hear performances, and I don’t know if it’s bad music, if I just don’t get it, or if I just don’t like it. So I try to keep as open of a mind as I possibly can. But because of the nature of this work, it is really difficult to make judgments in an academic setting.

I really loved my time at Mills.

Do you feel like people do noise music because there’s something atypical about them or because they’re warbled up in the head?
That’s totally what attracted me to that scene and the different avant-garde scenes. Everyone in it is fucking buck wild and they’re all total weirdos! Me included. That’s where I want to be.

I think in music, it doesn’t really matter if it’s good. If you feel good about it, then that’s good! That’s the end of it.

Like a lot of people right now, I’ve been getting down to new age music. I’m talking about Windham Hill Records and stuff like that… and it’s just total bullshit musically. It’s cheesy and totally bland and fake in this very Northern California way. But I dig it. I dig that it’s so bland and fake. There’s something in there that I like. And a lot of that music is really deep. Like Constance Demby builds her own instruments and makes music with them. There’s something there. I think it’s possible to say, “this on paper is bad music, but I like this and I want to listen to this, and it makes me feel good.” And that’s something that I value when I listen to music. For example, I love pop punk. That makes me feel great. If you listen to it in a certain light, it’s bad!

It can sound commercial.
Yeah, you can hear it — “this is a group of teenagers being exploited by an old guy with a recording studio.” It’s possible to keep all these things in mind when you’re consuming it. And that’s an important way to listen.

If I remember correctly from psychology class in high school, holding cognitively dissonant opinions and being able to accept and acknowledge them as potentially both being true and real, is a sign of maturity and survival strength.
I think that our generation is getting really good at that. We are better at that than our parents are. We’ve grown up with the internet where all this information is coming at you, and we handle it horizontally, where we catch so many different things. Since birth we’ve had to cope with that.

We internalize the truth that we feel rings most true because there are a million truths.
And that’s exciting to me. We’re entering this era where everyone is able to understand that nothing is really real. There’s nothing that is the one truth. When you can have your bogus privileged comment screenshotted and posted around the internet, and you can view that — that points at that fact that there is no innate truth. You can tap into another person’s reality and see where things are problematic. To have that media in your face all the time — I think that’s a good learning experience.

[Order beers and relocate to a different part of the beer garden… cheers.]

We were just talking in line about how great it is to play music with friends. One of the tenser topics of late in my circle is whether or not to cover other artists. We will have this back-and-forth about mining the unique energy of an intuitive, responsive group dynamic vs. forcing some kind of shroud around the music.
I think it’s natural to stray away from covers. But I don’t really think of them as covers. They are sources. You can take songs and you can be as true to the song or as far away from it as you want. It’s incredible to have a little germ off of which to build everything.

I remember as a teenager trying to learn other people’s tunes, when I wasn’t good at guitar. I’m still not good at guitar. But I couldn’t play the exact thing that I heard on the recording, and so I would just play it my way and it’d become something else. That was appealing. I had this limitation and couldn’t quite play it, so I did it my way. And that’s wrong technically, but it creates a new thing. There’s just so much music out there and you want to touch it all and spin off from all the music you enjoy.

Constraints elicit creativity as well. Even if it’s something like a chord progression — that’s a lot of structure to work with. You can mangle the arrangement or change the composition. It’s helpful to have some kind of buoy, though.
Constraints are incredible. I’m always trying to do stuff like that. “Let’s only play with guitars. No effects. Nothing.” [Laughs.]

I’m always proposing stupid, almost moronic constraints to put myself in a box. That’s appealing to me. Many of my solo shows lately have been electric guitar, no effects. And that is not something that I’ve ever done before. And it’s hard for me to try to figure out how to play for 20 minutes and not be boring. I think I’m better off for trying it.

Let’s talk about your label, Full Spectrum Records. You mentioned you love to collaborate with your friends. How does that relate to your label? You started Full Spectrum a while ago. How has it evolved? What is your vision for it moving forward? What is your day-to-day role?
At its core, it has always been a group of friends. I started with my friend, Andrew Marino (we’re best friend type bros). We were the only dudes in Greensboro who got down on drone. We spent a lot of time drinking tea and listening to those records. Andy was making music. We had a band called Acid of All Ruins and I was doing solo stuff. That was when I was touring and meeting musical friends.

Just like anything else, we started Full Spectrum as an outlet for our own stuff and the music all our friends were making. We’ve been doing it since 2008. The label has evolved so that it’s not just me and him anymore. Carl Ritger, whose main project is Radere, helps out. My partner, Gretchen Korsmo helps out. Her role is huge. I can say, “we should do a tape loop album in a box set!” And she’ll say, “Yeah, that sounds good.” We’re always together, and it’s helpful to be able to think out loud.

Now Full Spectrum is the four of us. My friend Blaine Todd curates our sub-label Editions Littlefield with me, too. I feel like in 2015 the label is reaching a new peak, in terms of what we wanted it to be. We have spent a lot of time playing music — people playing on my records, me playing on the records of other musicians — and it feels like we’re creating a sea of people. All across the country they are doing different work, but it’s all related because we’ve worked together and there are certain aesthetic elements that we’ve discussed.

I’m so amped on the label. I’ve gotten to work with so much cool music through Full Spectrum. The people are not all 100% tight friends, but the music is all material that I love. The records made by friends are the most special. Did you hear the Eric Perreault and Austin Glover album, titled Freight 1110 Through Greensboro? It’s got a red cover with train tracks on it.

No, I haven’t heard it yet.
That one was really special. It came out in March. Eric and Austin have played with me from the very beginning. I always want my friends to make their own music. This was their first album together. They’d been working on it for so long! They had all these technical difficulties and it finally was finished.

So you feel like it’s a direct product of you wanting to make beautiful music with wonderful people?
Yeah.

And they went off and did their own thing, culminating in a release on your label.
It’s the difference between “I did this” and “we’re doing this”. And “we’re doing this” is a lot more valuable. I can put out all the records that I want, but that doesn’t mean much if it’s not in the context of my friends’ records and my friends’ performances. That’s where all of our work exists, in my mind at least.

We have more of that planned. Blaine Todd, who I mentioned earlier, is putting out his first solo album. I’ve helped him with it, including some of the production. And Lindsay Smith who plays as Rin Larping is doing her first solo album. She’s played with me forever and this is her first release. It’s so rad. I find it exciting to get to work with my friends. The label is pretty low-key in terms of how much gets put into it… And terms and agreements… As far as actual business, it’s super low-key. Full Spectrum is something that I’m thinking about constantly and one of the more satisfying things that I do.

Sounds like every new record is a new labor love — a new project where you’re directly helping out and participating in its creation, or in some ways connecting friends.
It’s really fun, but also because my work in it is all logistical. I don’t make covers. I master all the releases. I’m not making the music. It’s exciting to be on that end and to have this beautiful product. “Ahh, I just kind of pushed and it’s here!”

Full Spectrum is great. I love doing it. Since there are four of us now, there’s a lot more feedback and talking and developing ideas. And that’s where it happens.

The new record you’ve released as the Andrew Weathers Ensemble, ‘Fuck Everybody, You Can Do Anything’ is incredible. My friend Emmerich called it a “San Francisco Bay Area version of ‘Spirit of Eden’ with auto-tune.”
Spirit of Eden?

Yeah, the record by Talk Talk.
That’s funny you mention that! Talk Talk is a reference point that I do not know is a reference point. I’ve been working in this way of piecing together improvisations for years now. That’s what defines the Andrew Weathers Ensemble material to me, and that’s how I think about it. I think about it in a David Sylvian kind of way. The accordion player and engineer on the record, Aaron Oppenheim, who knows a lot more music than I do, said, “Talk Talk did that in the 80s”, and I said, “oh, the band that was covered by No Doubt?” [Laughs.]

I know nothing about Talk Talk. But that’s awesome.

That’s exactly why he made the analogy. I’ve read about how your sessions worked. And Talk Talk — yes, they were the band that No Doubt covered — a mainstream pop band that used this capital of freedom that they were able to establish with the label to get artsy and move so far away from top-40 pop. On ‘Laughing Stock,’ they spent a year improvising in the studio with the windows blacked out and clocks removed.
And thinking about working that way when they were working is completely fucked. I could barely operate a reel-to-reel if I had to. There’s so much technical knowledge required to do that. Those Talk Talk sessions are very impressive. I’m so thankful to be able to work with a computer and to be able to know how recordings sound without half an hour of splicing. I can’t believe that people worked that way.

‘Fuck Everybody, You Can Do Anything’ is clearly a statement and hauntingly beautiful piece of music. All of your works by the Ensemble have been. The thrust here is why are you so proud of this one? What were your goals at the start that might have been different this time around, if any?
That one feels like a marker. I made these records and I’ve been working through these different processes. I’ve been trying to make this kind of music that encompasses these different elements that I am interested in, and has a mood that is serious and uplifting. Revolutionary is the wrong word… But pushing. Yes, that’s what I want from my music — to push people to do whatever it is that they need to do.

It’s like inspiration.
I want to make music that makes people feel inspired. The concept of inspiration is something that I don’t know about. I think it’s all just work. It’s just effort. Inspiration to me implies a sense of waiting, or waiting for this thing to hit you. That’s not what it is. You’re just going to keep waiting. If you put in work and keep pushing forward, that’s when you do the good work, the inspired work, if that makes sense. To me, our typical conception of what inspiration is too passive. “Inspiration” is a word that I stray away from because of that.

Very fair.
I feel like I’ve been trying to make music that pushes for a very long time. And I feel like I’ve done it. It’s a totally egotistical thing to say. I had goals and I think I accomplished those goals to the point where now I have to do something else. That’s it.

You had goals and you reached them.
Yeah, I did what I wanted and now the Ensemble is changing. And I probably won’t make a record like that again. And the band might not be the “Andrew Weathers Ensemble” anymore. It might be something else.

I feel like Fuck Everybody, You Can Do Anything is the record I’ve been trying to make since 2011. We’re not Cautious just wasn’t there yet. The new record is something I’m excited about. It was a very intense year and so many things happened from January 2014 through January 2015. There were major changes — day job work, building a music practice of my own, and working on my craft from a separate studio, which made a huge difference.

Is that the one in Emeryville?
I had a studio in Emeryville, but it has unfortunately been converted to condos. It’s a shame. That was a beautiful spot and my friend Lydia put so much of herself and her money and her time into building this beautiful space for artists under the assumption that she’d be able to be there for 7 years. And they just sold it.

Now I have a space in a rock n’ roll rehearsal space. It’s clean. I can walk to it from my house. But it doesn’t even compare to the other space. That sense of time and space is pretty important when you’re making art.

Absolutely.
The particular year that this record captures includes a lot of different spaces like that. It’s important to me to record in a variety of spaces. I’ve made records where bits and pieces were recorded in hotel rooms and houses of friends.

You get inspired by different spaces and hear different things in different places.
Yeah, there are all these different elements that are of particular interest to me, including the sound of the space itself. It’s about channeling a certain feeling. And what makes it all possible is that technology is available to you.

I was listening to your recent ‘Littlefield’ tape, which is American primitive folk music recorded with an off the cuff, live feel. What was the device that you used to record?
It was just a four-track that I used and it was recorded at the office of my day job! Blaine Todd and I stayed late one night and it was fucking hot. It was recorded in this storage room, which was the only place we could get quiet. We had to close the door and we were sweating. It was kind of miserable. I kept thinking, “I only have two more songs.” There was this moment where I thought, “I know that this completely sucks, but we have to just finish.” And that was the whole session. We did the main tracks for all of that in that one session and it was kind of horrible. There was just so much to do. I think the whole record was unified because of that. It’s got this sweaty feel.

The sweaty, warm, humid feel definitely comes through.
And that’s what those jams are. I’ve been working on them for a long time. There are a few things I would’ve done differently — I would’ve cleaned the tape head better — but for the most part that turned out ideally.

The tape is a great example of the setting matching the sound. I also listened to the recent Dronelife flexidisc, ‘This World Is Not My Home / Fifty Miles of Elbow Room.’ Dronelife is your thing, right?
It’s kind of everybody’s thing, but especially in my social circle! #dronelife started with a hashtag. It started with my band Parties. We were on tour and we started to talk about it as an actual concept and a lifestyle. We were planning to make our own tapes anyway; we thought we might as well put Dronelife on them. I’ve started using it as a catch-all for off-label releases.

An imprint for material that feels like Dronelife?
Yeah. The flexidisc is a 7” single that my friend Aaron Canipe, who did the photography for What Happens When We Stop, wanted to come with his MFA thesis book, Plateau. He came to me and said, “they need a catalog number and the name of a record label.” And I just said, “Dronelife. Dronelife; it’s fine.”

When I put something on bandcamp for free, it’s Dronelife. Hand-made Parties releases go out on Dronelife. And since then Erik Schoster (whose project is He Can Jog) has had a dronelife forum. I think Andy Marino built it. And then Erik Schoster took it over and has built this crazy forum thing on the interwebs. Dronelife.org.

I follow @thisisdronelife on twitter and I think @thisisdronelife follows me.
I’m sure dronelife follows you too. There are a bunch of different people who handle the twitter account.

You’re on there, too, right!?
Yeah, yeah. [Laughs.]

I could tell when you’re tweeting from that handle!
It’s good to know that there are some people out there that think, “that seems to be Andrew Weathers tweeting”

Now we’ve got it on the record.
Yeah, it’s official. [Laughs.]

Up until this point, we’ve talked about lush acoustic Americana, ambient washes, and the varying styles you play. Performing in different genres seems fluid for you. Your recent record ‘Littlefield’ is a marker in its own American Primitive way; you can come down to KZSU and play an hour of noise when you want; Talk More played some incredible “post-drone” when I saw you guys at Studio Grand in July.
Thanks, thanks.

How do you in your mind decide, “now I’m in Talk More mode?”
It’s all contextual. I kind of do the same thing. I have developed a style and vocabulary of playing that I think is unique to me, whether I’m on guitar, synth, or the computer. And it has a way to fit into American Primitive Guitar music or drone. It’s flexible, but there are certain aspects that I’m cognizant of and want to keep consistent. But then if I bring in different collaborators, I’m here [motioning to the middle of the table] and they’re here [motioning to a far side of the table]. It puts my playing in a different light and makes the composition a totally different thing. If I’m playing in Parties, it’s not that different than playing in Talk More. The difference is what the other two people in the band are doing. They are totally different bands and worlds apart.

I just read an interview with Alan Sparhawk of Low, and it was about his Retribution Gospel Choir project, which essentially the antithesis of Low — a cock rock, aggressive, upbeat band. He was saying something almost identical.
Really?

When he plays guitar, he responds to what is around him. When he plays in Low, he’s responding to Mimi on drums, who plays slow, minimal, and measured parts. When he plays with this other guy in Retribution Gospel Choir, who is loud and aggressive, Alan wants to let it rip.
You do what works with your bandmates. Yeah, that’s all you can do. I’m lucky to have some kind of bandleader complex, where I organize and put groups of people together and bring people into new projects. I force that to happen. And I want to play in all those different styles.

It might get boring otherwise!
Andrew Weathers: Yeah I get bored! I’m so ADD. I can’t focus on shit. I’ll spend a day and listen to 15 different kinds of music and that feels natural to me. And I don’t think that’s unusual in 2015. I think it’s a shame that some people only want to play one thing. I could probably benefit from chilling out a bit. But I’m at the point where I like to play tunes and I want to do as much as I can. It’s a way of operating that feels natural to me.

I play with a few overlapping groups for my own pleasure. Depending on who I’m with, we could be making anything from emo to psychedelic doom to spaced-out ambient — totally different worlds, but it doesn’t feel weird to me. I love it.
You guys all have your own listening interests, but then when you’re together, you have to find the overlap. Maybe there’s something in those emo songs that you can bring into your psychedelic doom project. And that’s fucking interesting. That’s where the cool shit happens.

I remember reading this Pitchfork end of year article. And it was atypically Pitchfork in that the writer was diverging from celebrating indie rock. He wrote something like, “Indie rock is fine. Indie rock has been doing its own thing and evolving. But seriously, have any of you checked out what’s going on in the Warped Tour circuit? Crabcore is going on.” Crabcore is a hybrid of screamo with hip hop. And the Pitchfork writer was arguing that that was where the real energy was!

That’s kind of great!
I don’t know if you know about crabcore, but it is truly bizarre music. It’s screamo matched with pop/hip-hop vocal effects and drum production values. It’s strange. I can get down. I remember reading that thinking, “yeah, that is probably more interesting to think about than new Decemberists music.” Since then I’ve tried to seek out where people are being ridiculous.

The fringe.
Music like that on the fringes — yeah it’s goony with its neon colors and it’s made for 15 year olds — but…

It’s tapping into something.
It’s tapping into something and I don’t know what the fuck that is. And that’s interesting.

I think in many ways I’m more close minded than I was when I first got to college, because I know exactly who I want to listen to and I know exactly who I want to pay attention to when a new album comes out. I’m probably not pushing myself outside of my usual, comfortable genres.
It takes effort. I feel stuck all the time. I listen to new age music when I’m hanging out, I listen to pop punk in the car, and if I’m feeling adventurous, I listen to weird noise. It’s easy to think that you’re being adventurous when you’re listening to all this disparate music, but in many ways it’s not. It’s just as bland as taking in some top-40 music. It’s just a different kind of homogeneity.

I do that too. I think it’s a human thing.
Totally.

It’s a component of decision making. From an evolutionary biology perspective, we have to make decisions quickly. If we listen to the radio for a second and decide, “this is annoying and awful,” we turn it off. On the other hand, I’m sure you are like me and have records that you love now that you probably hated the first time you listened to them.
Yeah. You have to work hard to dig into new stuff. It’s never easy.

You have to make a series of many quick decisions. It’s this crazy dichotomy: our judgmental listening behavior shoves out a significant volume of interesting music. But at the same time it has also exposed us to music that we would otherwise not explore.
I try to keep in mind the value of being confused.

Yeah! Embrace it.
If we’re talking intellectually about the music I want to pursue, I want to listen to music confusing to the point where I don’t know what the fuck it is I’m listening to. That being said, I don’t want to pursue intellectual music consumption all the time.

Those moments that we remember forever with music are the ones where we’re surprised. We might think, “wow, this is pushing all my buttons right now.”
The way we listen to music in 2015 is unique, obviously. We know everything is changing. But it’s not just about the medium of streaming, or the awareness that artists are not getting paid through Spotify… The question I keep thinking about is, “what is this doing to our brains, and how is it affecting the way in which we conceive of what makes music good?” Do we value a tune that sits good on a playlist? Do we value sounds and arrangements that grab us in a certain way that radio sounds and arrangements do not?

There are many different modes for listening. One of the responses that gains in volume whenever there is a new medium for music consumption is the conservative, nostalgic perspective: “Well, forget your cassettes. I’m going to stick to my vinyl because I am very comfortable with how that makes me feel. I know the listening experience, and so I don’t want to dabble in new media.”
That argument pisses me off. Listen to Nicki Minaj. Listen to DJ Taye, the Chicago Footwork guy. That music is made for listening to on your fucking cell phone. It’s made for that. And it sounds great on your cell phone with all that high end. Nicki’s voice pierces through and the arrangements are sparse so you can make sense of it. DJ Taye’s music is the same way, with so much hi-hat.

It’s awesome that these artists are, intentionally or not, making music for a mode of listening that matches what teenagers are doing! That doesn’t mean that that is the best way to listen to that music. It’s where it excels.

Who are we to judge what a “good” way of listening to music is? Nobody would, at a philosophical level, try to make such an argument. “I’m correct that listening to a vinyl record on my home stereo on my couch is the premiere music listening method.” Nobody’s going to argue that.
Yeah, I’m sure music sounds great with that kind of setup. But I don’t have $2000 to drop on a stereo. And most of the music I listen to is on laptop speakers. If it doesn’t grab me in that context, I might not listen again. Maybe that’s not the best thing I can do, but it is a fact of life. And you can’t be down on that. It doesn’t make any sense to me.

It’s more interesting to me to consider that there are whole genres of music that are good for cellphones. It’s my favorite thing to walk around and see the kids hanging out, wielding their cell phones.

“What kind of jams you got there?”
Yeah. And it’s always the same thing! They are always playing hi-hat heavy music with nasally voices. The thing is, there are precedents for this. If you listen to jazz singers from the 20s to 40s, you’ll hear nasally voices. That had to do with radio and the microphones they used. That was the best way to record that music. The technology doesn’t dictate, but rather informs what music you make. And that’s beautiful and fantastic.