#capnjazz

 What made you want to tour living rooms?

It was really a very practical decision.  I’ve been working as an adjunct teacher around Chicago and I have a better job that starts in February.  I didn’t want to go back to my old job yet and get lots of music done.  But by the time I found out I wasn’t working it was too late.  It was too late to book clubs; to do a normal tour.  It was very much just a backwards kind of a panic.  Dave Bazan of Pedro the Lion and Tim Kasher have been doing this. So I got hooked up with the guys who booked those.  And I’m excited this is the first one.

What subject and where did you teach?

I taught two semesters at the Art Institute [of Chicago] teaching a weird first year seminar. I taught classes on Utopia that I made up.  But that’s just while I was in school there.  But then I taught at Harold Washington, which is part of the Chicago City colleges, and I taught popular culture and mass media studies sorts of things.  In February I start teaching experimental fiction writing at the University of Chicago’s night school program.  That’ll be more exciting for me, teaching writing classes.

Are you going to write a follow up the “Karaoke Singers Guide to Self Defense”?

You know I just finished the second one and I can’t find a publisher.  I actually just finished a first draft of the third one in the last two and a half months.  So that means it’s still about two and a half years away from being done.  I sent out the second one to 28 different publishers and have gotten 12 or 13 rejections so far and haven’t heard back from the other 14.

Why not put it out with the last publisher?

That’s part of there deal they don’t do two books by anyone.  Half the people they put books out by have deals with bigger publishers, so this is like their weird side project thing.  So they’re helping me find people to send it to.  And I’ve become really good friends with them.  So they’re on my side but they won’t do the book.

I saw in another interview that you were starting to move away from song-based albums to larger instrumental pieces.  On the new self-titled album there is one side devoted to song-based material.  Do you see yourself continuing to move away from that in the future or is it kind of up in the air in terms of Joan of Arc?

It’s hard to say.  I remember when Joan of Arc Dick Cheney Mark Twain came out in 2004 and, when we finished mixing it, we met this friend of mine who’s in this band called Disappears, who’re really awesome, and telling him how excited I was about the record and gushing about how it does this and it does this and how we balanced it’s so crazy.  He was nodding along patiently and he was like ‘you know it sounds like you just described the first Joan of Arc record to me.’ And I went ‘oh…right. I guess so’ But I don’t know I feel like I’m getting better at the craft of song writing.  They’re very separate disciplines in my mind; song writing and playing music.  I feel like I’m getting better at both, but they’re definitely separate disciplines in my mind.  

Does it feel strange doing very different things under the same banner?

Yeah, from my perspective it’s very unified.  Ideally, it should have contradictions.  I don’t know. Have you ever seen a really depressing movie or read a really fun book and think ‘oh man I want to make something like that.’ That never lets up or never goes one way or the other. Realistically, I’m sad a lot of the time and I’m funny a lot of the time.

You wouldn’t want to box it in or anything?

If it’s going to representative then it needs to be multi- dimensional.  So I’m comfortable with it.  I understand it’s hard to sell.  And at the same time when I feel like I’m getting better at these things, but the business aspect of it has never been worse.  Our audience is shrinking and shrinking as I get better and better at what I mean to do.

Were any of the east coast shows canceled due to hurricane Sandy?

I guess I’m doing them. I’ve talked to all the hosts. There was one show at a friend of mine’s house in New Jersey that we moved to Brooklyn anyways so we could sell more tickets there. His street was destroyed but that show was canceled anyways. The only show that would’ve been canceled was already canceled…so it might be weird getting in and out of places…but I don’t know.  Yeah I’ve been in contact with all of them and they’ve said ‘no you have to do it everything’s fine.’ I guess it’ll go neighborhood to neighborhood.

Are you going to make another film after Orchard Vale?

It’s a thing I think about a lot.  Both novels started as script ideas.  I found I have an easier time realizing the thing when it was just me, a laptop and a notebook.  The movie was very frustrating.  It didn’t turn out like I hoped it would.  The tension of it ended my marriage because me and my ex-wife made it together.  My girlfriend now is an experimental filmmaker and she’s really great, so we collaborate on some little things.  I’ve done some music for a couple of her films and we’re constantly talking through ideas, but I don’t think…I mean I would love to, it would be my dream.

What made you want to soundtrack the Passion of Joan of Arc film?

This festival asked us to do something, it could be whatever we wanted.  But they wouldn’t tell us how much money they had.  They said ‘well how much do you guys want?’  Well for this little bit of money we’ll improvise to a 10-minute experimental film, for a lot of money we’ll do an original score to the Joan of Arc movie.  It just popped out of my mouth.  I didn’t think about it.  They said ‘oh that sounds cool let’s try that.’  The one time we preformed it was in an old church this old church that was really perfect.  There were stained glass windows, some people sitting in pews and a big pipe organ sitting to the side. We tried riding with the pipe organ, but we couldn’t get things in tune with it.  The a-lot-of-money turned out to be very little money considering the amount of time we had to put into it. They called my bluff.

How much did the film influence the band name?  Did it feel like it was coming full circle to do that?

It did feel great to do that.  My relationship with the name Joan of Arc has gone back and forth a few times over the years. At first we thought it was a good idea because we wanted this familiar thing.  Then there were some years where I was like this is a stupid band name, why are we stuck with this?  It felt like claiming it as our own.  I mean obviously it belongs to everyone.  Our original idea was Sony.  But our first label wouldn’t let us be named that.  We just wanted a name that everybody knew that we could change the meaning of the name to certain people.

How’s the Owls reunion going?

It’s going great. It’s really fun.  It took us a really long time to get momentum Sam [Zurick] moved back to Chicago last Valentine’s day. He was living on my couch so he needed to find a job and had to find a place.  Then my brother had a second baby.  I think we wrote the whole record twice and threw it away.  It just wasn’t working.  It had been 12 years since we all played together even though all of us play in Joan of Arc some of the time.  Now we finally have momentum.  We have enough songs where we’re throwing songs away.  I think if we had to record next week we could but we’re waiting until the spring because we’re enjoying playing together and not tweaking things or making it a public thing right now.  It’s fun for us to cultivate.

 Did you plan to release three albums in a year?  Is it hard to do that or is it more of a natural process?

No we’re totally backlogged right now, the labels hate us.  Two years ago we did 113 shows we were all just miserable and exhausted. So we were like OK let’s stay at home and figure things out.  It was a good year we all enjoyed it, but it’s difficult to sustain it.  We’re just staying home but we still like playing music. Most days of the week we play music together.  We throw away a lot of stuff you know.  

The three records are very different: the soundtrack is a very specific thing, Pinecone is a very specific thing and this acoustic record.  There’s three records for next year too.  We aren’t trying to, it’s just how it kind of naturally occurs.  I mean there’s the Owls record and our main focus has been our soundtrack to this performance art piece.  We did it in London in April I guess and that’s a very specific thing.  We’ve been doing this funny greatest hits record of rearranged old songs.  The label’s saying you sound better live than you ever have, you should make a record as a live band.  

They’re very distinct. And that’s a music industry thing really, I mean if you love what you do you’ll want to do it every day.  It doesn’t seem weird to me.  I understand the labels hate it because the records come out in very small pressings now.

Do you still bartend at all?

You know, I just started again and it’s fine.  I was miserable the first couple shifts, but I’m just doing it until I can start teaching again. I’m just not used to being up that late.

Did that inspire the book at all?