Scott Kelly Interview.txt //03.12.2008

Hier also auch die Textfassung zum Video-Interview. Bei manch einem Wort bin ich mir nicht ganz sicher, ob Scott Kelly wirklich das so gemeint hat, aber im Großen und Ganzen sollte es auch mit Fragezeichen verständlich sein. Viel Spaß.

How would you describe your music to a deaf person?
That’s a good start, yeah (laughs). Well,  I think, you know, when you’re talking about the acoustic music.. hm. I think I would say it’s a lot of silence. Almost a third of it is silence, there’s a lot of space and a lot of tone. With Neurosis, I think that deaf people can actually feel Neurosis. I’ve talked to them who could, because of the vibration and the volume. So with Neurosis, I think deaf people could actually understand on the subfield of sound what we’re doing.
You know, for me, my acoustic music is kind of warren (?), this garden (?) of simplicity that I try to bring into my life. And I have a real drive to do it and it kind of expresses in simple terms the lean or the less is more to me: Stripped down to an essence of emotion and tone and sound.

What would you say inspires your music most?
My Life. Completely, really. My experiences and perceptions of the experiences of people around me. There’s not really anything else, but there is plenty there, you know?

What was the finale impulse to you that you said to yourself that you need a solo project to express yourself and what you cannot express with other bands?
I always have this need for balance. This is like a perfect balance to Neurosis to me because this is so baring. It’s a huge challenge. I’ve been in Neurosis for well over half of my life and next to like holding my 20 years old son in my arms  it’s probably the most natural and comfortable place that I have and I need to do things that are different and challenging and a little bit scaring at times and this definitely is because I don’t have the support of my brothers up there and I’m really used to that you know. So it’s something you really fall back on when you have people like that around you. I’m just that type of person that needs to do that, I need to do things that are difficult to overcome them in order to feel like I’m still doing shit that matters.
It also just kind of comes out of me. I don’t remember where the first thought came from to do it but once I started doing it it was like a kind of opening this window a little bit.. and through that time, a lot of things have changed in my life. I have a very addictive personality and had really long drug and alcohol addictions in my life that I left behind about six years ago, just after the first solo record. So in a way, this has replaced a lot of that. I feel like the windows are really open now, like the music just flows really through me - in the same way that Neurosis does.
Yeah, it just feels good, it’s a challenge, it’s difficult, you’ll see. It’s difficult to deal with the crowd in this situation, I have to deal with the crowd, but it’s good. There’s nowhere to hide, you know. It’s right there.

How do you decide whether a song you write is for Blood & Time or for Scott Kelly solo – I think there’s also an overlaps..?
Basically, I think that either project could do most of the songs. Some of the songs I play tonight – I’m playing mainly songs of the new record – but some of these songs could be done by Blood & Time. I think some of them would be more difficult but that is a little bit gray to me. Although with this album I tried to craft these songs more with the intention of performing them by myself first so that the foundation would be intact and adding on later is not simple but easier. You know you can’t .. going back and doing a foundation on a house after you really built the house is really difficult. I’m trying to make the foundations stronger and then we can do with it as we wish. But there’s a ton of other songs that is Blood & Time’s. You know Blood & Time is more of a .. it’s a band, it’s a rock band. It’s louder. I think with the next Blood & Time record the differences will become more apparent. „Remember Me“ was just a particular song that I needed to put on this particular record. That song just had to be there, it just had to do with the record itself. In the end, there was a couple of other songs that I was gonna put on there and I decided to take them off and put that on. And I wanted to do it in a different way. I had been playing it in my solo sets for a while, so I had a different arrangement and everything ready.

Other band members of Neurosis also have their side projects, like Steve von Till. Could you imagine a collaboration with his acoustic project?
Oh yeah, we’ve already talked about it many times, just need a time to do it. With Steven I have collaborated on so much music. We’ve collaborated on every single Neurosis song since Steve joined in ‘89. It’s definitely something that has to happen and it’s something that I really look forward to. Steve’s natural ability of playing guitar always far repassed mine. His first solo stuff was to my ear was much more developed and basically better than what I was able to do. I just wasn’t as comfortable with it as quickly as he was. I have been working on it and I feel now that I’m able to express myself much easier within a framework of acoustic stuff. Maybe sometime in the next two or three years we will find the time to sit down and really write something together. It would be a great thing to do.

Which band – defunct or still operational – would you most like to see live?
I guess one that I didn’t see.. yeah I would have liked to see The Germs above all. I missed The Germs. I got into punk rock right when he died so I always regretted that. I was pretty lucky otherwise.. You know I would have loved to see Pink Floyd in ‘69 or 13th Floor Elevators in ‘65 or Led Zeppelin in ‘73 or ‘74. I would have loved to see Hank Williams. Probably above all, I would have loved to see a real good Hank Williams set as from everything I heard there weren’t a lot of good ones. He was prone to not show up in the best shape to perform. Or even to be across the street where Robert Johnson is playing his guitar on some sidewalk in Mississippi. There’s a lot of places that I would like to visit, to witness live music. But I had the good fortune that in the punk rock and hardcore days I was lucky to be in California that time and see a lot of good bands at their peaks. So  I’ll take what I got and be ok with it.

What is your fondest memory in relation to music – a live concert or record that changed your life?
I don’t know if I have one – there has been a number of them. For instance, the first time Neurosis played Germany was a huge thing to me. I think to all of us, because it seemed so out of reach to us. When we started the band five years before that, I don’t think we ever considered the fact that we would possibly be able to visit the other side of the world and see things, you know. I mean we were in shock for three days when we first got here. Literally, all I could say was “I can’t believe I’m here, I can’t believe it, I can’t..” Like I’d been in an accident or something, you know. “Are we in Germany.. we’re actually here.. amazing”. Now I have friends like Ansgar (tour manager) that I have known since that day and we’ve been friends ever since, we’re good friends.
Seeing the Bad Brains in 1982 was really an impact for a moment.. probably the greatest band ever. Definitively could be argued that they were the greatest band ever to exist. I definitively hadn’t seen anything like it and I still listen to it. The majority of their music and as particular that stretch of ‘82 to ‘95… they were unbelievable. Especially at that time there was a lot of bands and I liked a lot of these bands but most of them couldn’t really play that good. There were few bands that could, you know D.R.I. could play pretty good, Circle Jerks and Black Flag played pretty good, but most of the  bands were still very primitive – and that was ok, but when you ran into a band like the Bad Brains who were like .. fuck.. monsters .. and the energy that came out of them was just incredible. Black Flag was the same but different. I think that the Black Flag experience probably because I was on acid had a lot to do with a lot of things that happened to me. They were just venomous. They had a very different approach. They would just play and it was a super violent crowd. People were just fighting all over the place and they didn’t stop. They just kept playing and feeding it, feeding the energy in the room. And it was just crazy, it was mayhem, it was very different, you know. It wasn’t like this “Everybody be nice to each other, come on, just take care of each other”, it was just like “No, fuck that, just do what you’re gonna do. Do it now, don’t hesitate”. And I like that. To me, that’s the much stronger statement than “Please don’t hurt each other” because unfortunately we are human beings and that’s what we do.

What would you do if you lost your arms or your hearing?
Well I would probably be very depressed for a very long time and hopefully I would sing. I think that’s a nightmare to any musician. You know I work with my hands and have my whole life. I’ve had numerous hand injuries, I’ve had surgery on this [left] arm twice from work injuries. Thankfully I have a bunch of children that would love me the same either way and my wife the same but I wouldn’t be a very happy person, that’s for sure. That would be a very very cruel judgment to put upon me but it may happen, I had cruel judgments before. From a personal standpoint, that would be one of the worst things that could happen to me. There’s many worse things that could happen to me than that but I would be fucked up.

Can you tell us something about Combat Music Radio? How does it feel like to be a journalist?
It’s probably a good thing that I did it, it’s a whole different thing. I actually really like.. I tend to interview people .. Because it’s for a radio station and I’m not under any pressure to it. I don’t have to do an interview a month or so. I just do them when I wanna do them. I mean I’m running the thing so I have even more control in that area. I just do them with people that interest me. You know it’s good. I’m actually working on compiling a lot of them at this point because I’ve done a few. On top of my head I did a two hour interview with Wino about a year and a half ago that was really really deep. I did a long interview with Jarboe as well that was very good.. Aaron Turner from Isis.. I just did an interview with Lee Dorian the other day when I was in Holland [on the Roadburn festival]. I actually did one with Dave Wyndorf from Monster Magnet the other day that was really really cool. The guys are fucking brilliant. I really liked a specific period of that band and somebody sent me an email saying he was available for interviews. I was like “Oh I wanna talk to him”. And, you know, when you get to know people that way – you build up this thing in your mind what this person might be like or what they mean to you and then you meet them and they become humans to you.. I think that that’s really a particular (?) gift. In his case, I didn’t know him, so we had a really nice conversation. It’s very cool when you see the human aspect of all of these people. Yeah, it’s cool. I’s very different though.
But I promoted shows, too, so that’s good - I promoted shows and I’ve interviewed bands, the two things I run into must when I’m on tour: promoters and people from the press. I have a better understanding. You know I’ve always had respect or the press and for promoters.
But yeah.. it’s cool, it’s fun, it’s different. A different sort of pressure.

Music seems to be your life, but what is it that keeps you going on and doing that?
It just is. It just runs, it’s a fucking machine. It’s not even a choice. I couldn’t stop it if I wanted to and I definitely don’t. Well I guess.. maybe I could stop it.
It’s just: You make this commitment to do this stuff, and that’s what I did when I was like 14 years old and then I have been doing it ever since and it’s a discipline. It’s like any art. It’s more like a martial art in many ways. It’s something you practice every day. You have to put your time into it in order to get back from it and that’s probably why I’m just feeling that things are flowing really strong right now because I put a lot of time and a lot of work and all of my heart into it every step of the way. And then, mixed with a little bit of luck I actually survived and I’m alive I get the chance to kind of reap what I have sown a little bit.
Music is my religion, it’s my church, it’s the place where I find sanctuary, it’s the place where I find comfort and it’s the place where I find wisdom and it’s the place that has really opened me in so many ways and to so many things. Eternally grateful. It’s the one thing that really communicates. Words fall sure (??) every time but music and sound really communicate even if you don’t know the words. There is a way that you can communicate through music that people don’t have to know the words, they just know what you mean, or they know the feeling to themselves which is even better.

How is your point of view towards that music becomes more of a commodity than a luxury in the age of Internet and downloading music and getting to know lots of bands?
That’s very gray to me because on one hand as a member of an independent band and part-owner of an independent record label I know how much it hurts bands when people just download their music and don’t buy it. And it would be easy to say as a band like Neurosis “Please buy our records because we still work jobs and pay for our own shit and we are not rich and this and that, but go ahead and download all the Metallica records that you want!” but you can’t really do that because that’s not really right. The other side of it is how much music that disappeared that keeps appearing on the Internet, records that are out of print, very rare things.. So I think in the end for me I come down on a side of communication being the number one thing. I think that’s the goal of music – to me, that is my goal with music, is communication, is give and take.. But I think if people had a better understanding how much sacrifice is involved in doing something like this. You could not calculate the amount of sacrifice that is involved in a project like Neurosis. You know you work forty hours a week and you practice the next for twenty at times. We don’t do that anymore, but for years that’s what we did. ..the time you are away from your family, the all-consuming nature of it. This isn’t something you can turn off. If I grab that guitar, it right now starts, it’s starts right now when I think about it. You know, there’s a price to be paid for this kind of endeavor and it would be nice if people just understood and respected that when they make that decision “Should I download this or should I try to find 20 dollars in my budget to pay for it. But believe me, again it’s difficult. I work, too, I work six days a week at a regular job to support my family and I know how hard it is to come up with the next twenty dollars to buy something you really want and it’s really hard to not go and take the thing that’s for free. There’s definitely a mentality in the world now that things should be free, that somehow the work that I do should then be free to someone else to have. I don’t know. Maybe it should be.

What was your most recent music discovery and what is so great about it?
Definitely would be Munly & The Lee Lewis Harlots. I walked into a club in my local town nearest where I live which is very small and in the mountains. A friend of mine had told me that I should go and see this band called Slim Cessna’s Auto Club and he said they were from Denver and they were kind of 16 Horsepower issue something like that and I did my usual thing and was “Yeah ok, I’ll go” and then when it came down to it I wasn’t answering my phone because I don’t like crowds - I know that sounds kind of weird but I don’t – and he came, knock knock knock, and my wife said come on let’s go, you said you’ll go let’s go. So we walked into the club and within about five seconds after this band had started I noticed this one guy in the band and immediately fixed on this guy like he just got this energy, he just got this aura around him. And he comes out, after about two minutes of the song, he starts singing and he starts with this almost like Tuvan throat singing, this really ultra low, very resonant tone. He starts out with that and he cycles the whole thing all the way through and up into this almost like Hank Williams high kind of vibrato and he just does it. I have never heard anybody do that before, that was fucking amazing and the whole time he did it with this out of the world energy about him. I watched the performance and they are a really good band but I was constantly like fixed on this guy. All of us were just like “who the fuck is this guy? He’s just a trippy intense guy”. I went up and talked to him a little bit afterwards and we had a few common friends and everything and I went home and started finding his music, getting CDs from friends and stuff. His solo stuff and Munly & The Lee Lewis Harlots is somewhere in the neighborhood of Woven Hand and 16 Horsepower but there’s something about this guy’s delivery (?) and his writing is incredible. I really admire people who can write stories in a song even if it’s an author of books. I don’t have that ability – yet, maybe I will someday, but probably not. He is one of these guys who can craft these stories but his stories are so fucking awesome, so bizarre, and the music and the voice is just stunning. I’m sure that he’s been here but people really need to take the time to see him if he comes through your town. It’s M-U-N-L-Y. You gotta check it out. The last time I had a moment like that was probably twenty-some years before when I walked into a club and the Melvins were playing and I was like “who the fuck is this?”. It was just like that moment to me, like “how did I miss this?” I never even heard of this before, I didn’t know it existed and all of a sudden I find this thing that is so highly developed. It wasn’t like a new thing, it was obviously something he had been working on for a good fifteen years of his life. It’s very profound to me.

Thank you. Awesome. Thank you very much.
Yeah you’re welcome, thank you.