The Daily Cardinal: Your band name also has the name of a company specializing in not quite the finest-quality audio products. Have they ever contacted you about changing your name or do they care?
Tim Rutili: The president wrote us a letter saying we could use the name as long as we don't get in trouble with the law and get arrested for drugs. So we are just trying not to get arrested for drugs and stuff like that. I didn't know when we took the name that they were still an existing company. I thought they were shut down because the only Califones I ever saw were in thrift stores and super old.
How would you describe your sound to someone who has never heard it?
I think we sound like ourselves and it's really hard for me to describe it. All we are trying to do is sound like ourselves. We try to use elements from all of the music we've ever loved and put our own twist on it. You can hear a lot of West African music, electronic music, American folk music, classic rock and Pink Floyd, Sonic Youth and different '80s punk rock like Black Flag in there, but that's just me. Everyone is going to hear what they want.
What made you decide to play improvisational shows instead of just occasional solos?
When we started making Califone records it was just me, Ben [Masserella] and Tim Hurley, this guy who was in Red Red Meat with us. We made the first two records that way. To me it was a small studio project and hasn't felt like a live studio project until now with Jim Becker and Joe Adamick and Ben and me. We never really brought what we did live in the studio. When playing the songs live we would just use the chord progression, melodies and words and we did whatever we wanted with those ideas. We would treat them in completely different ways. Whatever happens, happens. Right now the different people and the contributions they bring is finding its way into the music. So it's all over Heron King and Quicksand. I image the next stuff we do it will be all over that too.
Heron King Blues has a very dark mood and soundscape. Is that hard to capture live?
We try to treat it live as its own entity. We try to take the ideas and see where they go. So it's not trying to replicate what the records are at all. It is just trying to play the music.
Heron King Blues has received almost unanimously good reviews. After releasing so many albums does this still affect you?
I don't really read that stuff or care too much. I hope people like it and it's nice when they do.
You don't just follow the 12-bar band format of blues. Who are you influences when it comes to the blues?
I always enjoyed the feel of old Robert Johnson and Charlie Patton and country blues like that. On those records it sounds like there are four people playing guitars, but it's just one guy and one microphone. I'm not a good enough of player to copy the way they play. Within yourself you try to find that feel and that mood. So it was those records that got me started on that music. Also the drones of John Lee Hooker and also listening to music of Mali and West Africa and how they play guitar in that music and the drones they use. So all of it is about loving drones and relate the feel of those records to your own feel in your own body.
Heron King Blues was supposedly a way of coping with a lifelong fear of birds. Do you think playing and recording these songs helped you cope with this fear?
Quite a bit. It's almost all gone. I haven't been able to pick up a bird yet. That is my next psychological test so that I can pick up a dead one off the ground or have a live one in my hand, then I'm completely cured.
There is a lot of collaboration on your records. How do they come about?
It's people we want to play with. We call them. Usually an invite. We say this guy would be great and we would love to hear what he would do here. We give him a call, he comes down and throws some shit down and it either works or it doesn't.
Do you change your set to play to a general public instead of fans?
No we will just do what we feel like doing and hopefully people will like it.
