Brad Lewis
The Sight-seers/Kopernik/Swimming Pool Q's

photo by Andy King, 2004

 

July 15th, 2003- In the Madcap Studio

 

LK: Talk about the first time you wanted to do music and you knew it was more than just a hobby.

Brad: My brother’s forty-five collection was an early indicator for me. There was something special about it to me. It was this little plastic yellow strange contraption with a secret compartment that opened up, and these records were in there. Zollie and I used to sit there and play them over and over, all the time. It became an integral part of hanging out, and playing. We would put on anything. It was all strange, the way the end of “Hey Jude” just kind of went on and on. That next to “Clap for the Wolfman” by The Guess Who. Just listening to music all day. It all seemed to flow together into adolescence. Just always listening. Always thinking about it. Commenting in your head about it. Then you get old enough in your middle school days, where you start to kind of fancy yourself doing that as well. You don’t know crap about music, but it all makes sense. Then MTV just blew it wide open. All of a sudden you could kind of see yourself, really see yourself in it. If those bonehead looking folks, early MTV people could do it, man…

It was really moving stuff. It was about the time you started really listening to what people are saying in the lyrics. That whole movement in the eighties of music that meant something. That big music coming out of Europe. It seemed like a whole other door was opened. So I guess that’s a longwinded way of saying that I always had a taste for it. I always thought I would be involved in some way. Zollie was my best friend growing up, since age five, and we kind of settled it early on, maybe first grade or so, that he was going to be the lead singer. I think I remember having a conversation with him, we were watching the Monkees or something, and him saying, “Well, I guess I’ll be the lead singer then.” I said, “Well, that makes sense.”

I thought maybe I’d be a bass player for a while. But the drums seemed like an obvious choice. I gravitated towards it, and understood a lot of it really fast, it made sense. It crystallized things that had been going on in my head that that was kind of what I had been keying in on the whole time. That and the moments and the music. I think there is a lot of theater involved in that. I always keyed in on that as well. The thing that isn’t just the notes, or the beat, but the thing that is that other thing. I’ve always had a sense for, in the rock bands that I have been in, the structure of the song. The structure guy. “It seems like that should go twice or half as long there.” Trying to create the moment. I always had a knack for that.

LK: What inspired you to record this Kopernik record in the way that you did. Tim commented that you had a lot to do with how the sound came about.

Brad: It was a funny process. It was almost like something that was kind of going on inside my head, on a dare, unleashed. My friend Scott Herron was starting a record label, and he had been introduced to Tim as well, a couple of years back. He was really keyed into Tim’s melody sense. He kind of said why don’t you and Tim do something. I wonder what that would sound like. I thought, I wonder what that would sound like too. So we got together and tried a couple of things. One of the things was this piece that I had thrown together using this real abstract technique I had been messing with over the last few months. He came in, and got it immediately, and he started unleashing these bass melodies on it. The thing that blows my mind about Tim is that he can just immediately hear the symphony that is supposed to be going on. All of the gigantic chords, and the flow of it just from hints, and that’s when I realized this might blossom into something cool.

I showed that piece and a couple other directions we were going towards to Scott, and he heard it and thought it was real interesting. It became the first track on the record. That was the doorway into it. I just went at it. It’s really a quest. My music technique is real shoddy. I would even say shitty. I’m just barely hanging in there when it comes to someone like Tim. I tried to find the moment, something that reaches me in a way, putting this sound and that sound together, and these notes, this long, this stretched, this squished, manipulated, and try to find a moment. It always seems to be, with that group of songs, that beautiful sad moment. Not shed a tear sadness, but that deeper longer sadness that goes through, and in and out of everything. Sort of uplifting in an odd way.

Tim picked up on it immediately.

So, we kind of took it from there, and it was really about working in that abstract kind of way. I would stay up putting together these outlines, or themes, revolving around one or two major themes or moments, and then the build up to that. I would bring it to him, and say okay, here’s where I’m at with this, here’s the story. Journey begins here, the guy is kind of questioning here, and this happens, and here is a dramatic thing that happens, he’s going across the desert, he’s being chased, and Tim would be like, “The Camel Chase. Got it-Totally see it-It’s the Camel Chase.” He’d lay down this ripping line, and we’d go from there. It’s always about the story unfolding, and everybody’s story is going to be different. That’s the fun of it. People that are digging into it are enjoying the idea of “What is this the soundtrack to?” I always like to leave it open ended. That’s were we went with it. He would bring melodies to it, and there was no way that I could hear those melodies that he comes up with, and it would push me to do something else.

Then we would stack upright bass track after upright bass track to create these little symphonies, and we would then take out things that were in there earlier. Leave these cool holes, and then come back and fill it with something else. It was add/subtract until these final mixes came out, that sounded nothing like where we had started. It was a blast. I’ve never had a working relationship with anybody that was just not a lot of talking. We’ve been messing around in a rhythm sense since he was fifteen and I was sixteen, or even earlier. But we have been playing together for so many years in that sense.

About ten years ago we found ourselves in the studio. Nobody was around, and we made a little piece that was kind of cool. Kind of a rip on Spiritualized. I don’t know what happened to it. But it was just me and him doing something, and that came rushing back to me. How cool that was. It was real freeing. Real good. I can’t wait to see what the next phase of it is.

LK: Talk about some records that have inspired you.

Brad: Of course Brian Eno’s stuff was always a real influence on me, not so much the music but the process. His process is one that really made sense to me. The way he works. I got real into music as a process and a form, and seeking as opposed to writing down notes, and things that come to your head. Using it to find emotion. Hook into things. It’s really the only way I can go at it. The piano lessons that I took as a child are long gone, and the theory that I grasped through the years,…The thing that I latch onto are the intricacies of timing and the feeling of the notes.

The first time I heard any of that stuff, I was sleeping at somebody’s house. They had put on “Music for Airports” looped. I listened to it about four hours straight. I hadn’t been sleeping. I couldn’t believe what was going on in there. When I realized part of the process of the whole thing is that you are adding to it with what’s in your head. Leaving the holes for that to happen. I could get my head around that. I had a bunch of theatre training, went to college and all that, and it’s the same kind of thing. One uses words, or one uses notes, but it’s all about that same thing. I could just feel that someday I would want to add to that.

I love the way those early Steve Reich records. The way that stuff just develops. You are listening it, and following it, but then pretty soon you end up not even thinking about it. You end up thinking about something going on in your life, I like what that stuff does to me. If you walk into the room and hear that stuff, the first thing you think is, “Ugh! Headache music!” But if you were there in the beginning, and took the journey with that stuff, you’re not even hearing it anymore.

John Hassell, this trumpet player, I got really into him. He puts his trumpet through this real eighties invention. A little harmonizer. But he used it, and was like this is my instrument, this trumpet and this harmonizer. He’s playing these Miles Davis trumpet lines with this harmonizer on, but it’s ceases to be the harmonizer. It’s just this instrument that he plays. It’s always over these rhythms, and these weird kind of noises. It just goes away, and becomes the background. I used to paint to that stuff, and play it over and over because you didn’t have to follow it. There wasn’t a verse coming up, and this chorus, and the bridge after that. Or a song three that was awesome and slow, or a song four that rocked a little harder. None of that was going on. It was just like, what record is this, I don’t even remember anymore. That was when five CD changers were just coming around. Heaven.

I’m pretty old school in my ambient and abstract avant-garde dudes. Tim knows all of these classical composers, and I’ll hear something that just blows my mind, like “Yes Sibelius, yes...” I’ll know the tunes, but I don’t know the dudes. I’ll go to him, and he’ll turn me on to something. He’s always seen classical music in a different light. He really taught me years ago, what that was. What the value of those sounds were. And I kind of fell in love with the sounds. Not so much the classical music, the public radio version of it. I fell in love with the moments. That one second in the Jupiter Symphony by Holst, that one second in there where everything just matters. Everything happens. Then it goes away. That was the thing I remember him telling me a long time ago. Is that it just does it once man. That’s the whole point. I was just like, Holy shit. That totally makes sense. It just does it once. If it does it again, it’s not the same. There’s tastes of that moment coming back, but it’s never the chorus. I kind of took that with me into making this Kopernik stuff, because it was important that that happened. There wasn’t any verses and choruses. When there was, in I think it was Faraday, we made a conscious effort to bring a little bit of that in, almost as a release. There is a repeating figure that comes and goes. There’s something different with it. But it’s about as close as that record gets to a verse and chorus.

LK: Talk about these words. Blue Screen.

Brad: Star Wars.

LK: Modern Orange Sky.

Brad: Hot lava.

LK: The Perfect Word.

Brad: A painting I bought. A painting I was given. I never paid for it. The perfect word is “guilt” and “thankfulness.”

LK: Black Feather Limbo.

Brad: A peacock at night stuck in the wrong cage at the zoo. Not too scared, but not too excited about it either. You know, that damn orange sky. It makes me think of a desert, like a perfect dessert that never quite tastes like you want it to.

LK: Lamppost and Television.

Brad: Styrofoam, something that seems like it should feel solid, but it isn’t. It’s just wired to seem more real. But you are forced to act like its real, even though you know it’s not.

LK: Pink Fuzz.

Brad: Pink fuzz is very specific. It’s the cloth store in childhood. The giant rolls of pink fuzz, and lying in between that roll, and the Red Fuzz roll above it. Feeling of safety. Feeling of excitement, and looking forward to the next time I could go to the cloth store and see the pink fuzz. Until the day that the pink fuzz roll was not there. Then it’s a horrible sad feeling. It’s so strong that I actually look for a roll of that cloth in every cloth store I go to. Even though I know it’s not going to be there.

LK: White Room.

Brad: Peace. Peaceful. Quiet. Nice. Black Curtains.

LK: Pen Lines.

Brad: The Synchronicity record. Picture of Sting getting acupuncture, I think his stripe was the yellow stripe, but I’m not sure.

LK: Adopt-A-Highway.

Brad: What the fuck does that mean? Adopt a highway. I’ve got something for that. Don’t fucking litter. That’s my response to that.

LK: I’ll let my sweater figure it out.

Brad: Jeff Calder. Sounds like something Jeff Calder would say.

LK: Porch Light.

Brad: Bugs. Dead bugs in the glass of the porch light. And the light switch which is never in a very obvious place. Always in a very odd place. Always kind of hidden. A light bulb that never ever needs changing. Always seems to last forever and ever. As do the bug carcasses that never get cleaned out.

LK: Slow Fear.

Brad: To me slow fear is pretty much a major part of all life. It’s what keeps you going. It’s what makes things amazing. Without that, we’d just be a bunch of computers.

LK: Mermaid and Pharaoh.

Brad: Mermaid and Pharaoh were never to meet. Old Pharaoh living it up in Egypt and the Mermaid living it up in Atlantis, wherever the hell that was. Old Pharaoh didn’t know, and I guess we’re with him. Poor Pharaoh. Maybe he saw her once, like somebody came by with some weed paper, what was that called, Papyrus? And he was like, check this out! Mermaid! And Pharaoh said, “I sure would like to meet her.” Dude went back; no Mermaid, no Atlantis, nothing. Gone. “Well, that bites.” said Pharaoh. “That really bites.”

LK: Orange Marmalade.

Brad: Not a fan. Marmalade in general always…sticky kind of sweet, but not the right kind of sweet. Tart, but not the right kind of tart.

LK: Diamonds.

Brad: The push and pull between the ridiculousness of the price, and the absolute unearthly value that we willingly put on them and what they represent. And the promise of something so huge that we kind of put on to those, and then once again the astronomical price associated with it, that is just so like everything else. Pretty much represents the human predicament.

LK: Vacate.

Brad: Funny, my immediate response was the beach and getting away. Then quickly after that it was, furniture on the side of the road. Not having enough money. And immediately feeling thankful that is not my present situation, and that my first response was absent mindedly a vacation. Feeling very thankful, and stupid, and naive at the same time.

LK: Evil Knievel.

Brad: Chewy head on a plastic doll. That little motorcycle toy. But most specifically I remember chewing on his head. And that little helmet that they gave you. You’d set up the ramps. You never really cared, much like a real human being, if he absolutely ate it. It was more about hitting the ramp and flying. It was more about that cape and those stars and stripes. And the look of that helmet, than the human being crashing himself on the dirt, most of the time. Or jumping the Grand Canyon. Did that happen? I barely remember.

LK: Stretch Monster.

Brad: Pinhole. Hard plastic goo dripping slowly until he was no more from a pinhole.

But dig this. Square see through plastic underneath the head. Did you pop off the head? There was just a peg where you could see the goo. I used to pull the head off every day. I’d pull the head off more that I played with it. Then I got a pinhole. And every day I would pick off what seemed like a scab of the stuff that was inside. Because once it hit the air, it kind of became hard. I would just pick his scab every day until he was just a deflated little green piece of shit. Stretch monster. That was my boy.

LK: Inspiration.

Brad: I say glossy and soft, and just in time, always. Never a minute earlier. And gone before you know it. Man you got to burn that shit when it comes. You’ve got to roll with it.

LK: Perspiration.

Brad: How wack is it that people put that crap that puts aluminum under their armpits so that they don’t sweat for five days, that they will plug it up with some liquid metal essentially. I remember the day that somebody, when you are a kid, and you grab the funny mushroom shape of Dry Idea or whatever the hell your mom has, and you start using it, and them somebody tells you it’s aluminum in there, just clogging up your pores. It clogs them up. I felt like I had been eating dog shit, and someone wasn’t telling me I was so pissed. I just had this horrendous feeling of like quarters in my pores. I’ve never been able to stand anti-perspirant since. I wear just the straight up deodorant. Just give me that alcohol shit that’s going to wear off, I’ll be okay.