continued from part one…

Bill Kopp: There seems to be less reliance on samples and keyboard-sourcing of sounds on the new music; you’re employing real players for the cello, violin, trumpet etc.

Richard X Heyman: As much as possible, yeah. We had a budget, so we’d have people come in and play one thing at a time, and then try to make it sound like an orchestra. I definitely wanted it to sound almost like a Broadway pit orchestra, with a really organic feel. I grew up to listening to stuff like West Side Story; it’s in my soul. Not just rock’n’roll: jazz, blues, gospel.

BK: You call the paired albums a “popera.” Now, even on something like Tommy or Quadrophenia there are linking pieces, short compositions that serve to tie things together but that aren’t really designed to stand on their own. On these albums I don’t really hear much of that; every piece seems to move things along. Was that by design?

RXH: A lot of that was just to keep the length down. Because as it is, it’s already thirty songs. If it was ever staged as a pop opera, we could retool it. If we just put the songs end to end…you know, if you go to an opera, it’s just a group of songs one after the other. So they just segue from one to the other, and it becomes this whole long piece.

All that’s semantics. It’s a story told in music. Songs. So what do you call that? A pop opera.

BK: What are your plans in terms of performing this music? Will you just work some of the songs into a set? Or would it be more performing it as a unified, start-to-finish piece?

RXH: I haven’t even really been thinking about performing it. I’ve been so busy with the Doughboys. I have an idea that we’re going to do a record release presentation with modern dance and ballet. We’re going to rent a theatre out. But it’s going to be the actual record being played, with live dancing and film behind it. That’s something that we’re probably going to film for a DVD. We’ll do that here in New York. So we have the beginning stages of it, and we’re getting dancers together. The songs are so visual; as we were working on it, I kept seeing [in my mind] a ballet on certain songs. I’d say, “This one would be great with a visual image; maybe we could this or that friend to do a film for this.” I’m picturing a nice theatre with a big screen. And maybe even some play actors doing a pantomime or something like that.

We’re hoping to get it onstage this summer. We can’t make any promises, because we have to get all these people together.  

BK: Aside from all this, what else are you up to? What’s next for you?

RXH: I’ve already started the next album. What happened was, we recorded a lot more songs than were included. See, this was supposed to just be a single album. I was originally going to get it all on one album. Then I came up with the idea of the twofer. We didn’t want it to seem like a double album; I know when people see two discs in one package, they think of it as a double album. And listening to the whole thing at once is too overwhelming; that’s what I was trying to avoid. I want people to concentrate on the Tiers album, and that in and of itself is long: it’s over an hour of music.

But together, it’s too much. And people are compelled to review it as all-in-one. I was hoping that people would concentrate on Tiers as the main course, and then the other album could be reviewed separately. People are set in their ways: they see two discs in one package, and it’s a double album.

The two are connected. But And Other Stories picks up the story with me moving back east, and the songs aren’t in any sort of chronological order. It touches on various things I was interested in. there are songs about 9/11 on there, and there are songs about friends dying, contemplating the baby boom generation sort of slowly disappearing. Contemplating my own death, really.

BK: In connection with some of your more recent albums, you’ve made available a bonus disc for fans. Rightovers, for example.

RXH: Not that they’re lesser songs, but the tracks on the second album are sort of a bonus album. In hindsight, that’s what I should have done. Because based on the reaction I’m getting from people, they’re so overloaded. In today’s short attention span world, it’s asking a lot.

BK: I’ve always liked the clear, straightforward sonics of your albums. I think these new discs are even a couple notches above that.

RXH: I think I finally figured out where to keep it empty, to have those “holes.” And I think the lack of a layer of guitars opens up a whole spectrum of frequencies. So my vocal is in a different spot, sitting on top of piano and strings. And I really got into how you use a trombone: what role does a trombone play, an oboe play. I based it on listening to a lot of Broadway growing up, and classical.

BK: In rock’n’roll, to some extent you can almost hide behind an electric guitar when it’s bashing away. But when you have a bunch of instruments that each can only play one note at a time, the melody and the performance have got to carry the song.

RXH: Hopefully. The arrangements serve the song. When I started this album, I said, “I want to do an album like Joni Mitchell’s Ladies of the Canyon or Blue. There’s virtually no drums on those; maybe a bit of hand percussion. So that’s the kind of album I really wanted to make. But being a drummer, I said, “I want to put drums on this.” So we rented studio time and I cut drum tracks like I normally would. But I did them last; on all my other albums I do the drums first.

I didn’t want to make a pop album. I wanted to make something a little more arty, I guess.

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Whether he likes it or not — and as you’ll read in a moment, he tends not to – Richard X Heyman is known as a powerpop artist. His string of albums began in the late 80s and continues to present day. Consistent hallmarks of his work include a refreshing DIY aesthetic (he plays nearly everything himself), an unerring ear for melody, and lyrics that are in turns witty, poignant and memorable. And while he’s often pigeonholed into a specific genre, Heyman’s music has always borne the fingerprints of a musical background immersed in many styles; prominent among his influences is a love of Broadway musicals.

And it’s that particular influence which Heyman brings to the fore on his 2011 paired albums Tiers / And Other Stories. Designed as two separate albums but packaged together, this new music is piano-based and quite different from what fans have come to expect. While in some ways the new music is wholly consistent with Heyman’s approach, it’s different enough to stir up confusion among fans and critics alike. And not surprisingly, confusion is not the reaction Heyman was aiming for. I gamely waded into the controversy in a recent conversation with Heyman. — bk

Bill Kopp: There’s a much wider sonic palette on these albums than you’ve ever displayed on record before. While you’ve always proudly worn your influences, in your previous work you seemed to filter all of those wide and sometimes disparate strains into one particular style. On these new paired records, you touch on all sorts of styles. “The Real Deal” is sort of soul-gospel. “Good to Go” is straight Nashville. Was there any sort of conscious effort with these albums to display a wide stylistic range, or was it more a function of the sonic demands for a particular song in the cycle, if you will?

Richard X Heyman: Well, the songs came very naturally, due to the fact that I bought this Yamaha electric piano. The instrument inspired me to write these songs. To simplify the whole thing, I would say this is basically my first “total piano” album. With a couple of exceptions. The piano is an instrument that…you know, you move a finger or two around and you start hitting things you just wouldn’t expect to do on guitar. So different types of songs, different types of chords can come out of the piano. So I think that is really the main ting you’re hearing as far as the style of music. The piano inspired me to write many of the songs. “Good to Go” was probably written on guitar; I can’t remember. Sometimes I’ll write a song on one instrument and then transfer it to another.

BK: Really? Because “Good to Go” has a real Floyd Cramer kind of thing happening…

RXH: I’m a big, huge Floyd Cramer fan. You’ll hear Floyd Cramer throughout all of my piano playing. I’m a combination of Floyd Cramer and Joni Mitchell. I really learned to play piano listening to Ladies of the Canyon. When that album came out, I just studied how she was playing, what the left hand was doing. I kind of based my whole style on that. And I got into Floyd Cramer, as well as Ramsey Lewis, Ray Charles. All that stuff, and the Left Banke, Paul McCartney. So it’s all in there.

BK: In terms of the lyrical content of these albums, I get the sense that you didn’t just wake up one morning and decide to take this project on. How long has this idea been knocking around in your head, and why now?

RXH: It didn’t really start out as any sort of concept. The songs were coming naturally from just sitting down at the piano. The very first song I wrote was the opening song on Tiers, “Hot on the Trail of Innocence.” And the next one was “Golden in This Town,” and then “Last Thought in My Mind.” And by that third song I realized: in a very abstract way, I’m recounting the story of how I met [my wife] Nancy [Leigh]. And at that point, it just sort of came out; I kept continuing the story: I left for L.A., and so forth. The whole story was writing itself, more or less. I wasn’t making a conscious effort to make a concept album. At a certain point, of course, I knew that that was what I was doing.

BK: So the songs came out of you in chronological order?

RXH: Yeah. If you look at the first album, it’s all written in that order. The only one that’s not in order – and it’s not even really supposed to be on the first album – is “Fire in the Country.” That one is a slightly political song, with a little social commentary. And it was supposed to be on the other album [And Other Stories]. But I felt I needed an up-tempo song, so I took “Hustler’s Last Stand,” which was supposed to be my first impression of L.A., and I switched the two. Just for musical reasons.

BK: In the spoken part of “Game Stays the Same” you recount sort of meeting Gene Clark…

RXH: That really happened. The thing at the end of that song is a letter I had written. Nancy had sent me a pair of pajamas for my birthday. I had just gotten out there; I had been there less than a week at that point. I was just getting settled in, and I was already disillusioned. So I got this package in the mail from Nancy, and in it was a pair of blue and white striped pajamas. So if you read between the lines you can see that I’m already pining to get back.

And the thing with Gene Clark is almost like a metaphor: you’d better grab what you have today. Don’t take it for granted, because it might not be there tomorrow. That was what was going on for me at the time; I had the love of my life on the other side of the country, and I wasn’t taking advantage of it. And I never did get to meet Gene Clark again.

BK: Did you just plain dig out the old letter — which I assume Nancy had — and then read it, or did you contruct it from memory and use some artistic license?

RXH: It’s pretty much the letter. I may have changed a minor thing or two.

BK: I interviewed you some four years ago, when Actual Sighs came out. At that time you told me that the next project you had planned was a collection of piano-based pieces. So this is that, basically.

RXH: It probably started back then, yes. I’ve been doing the Doughboys project, as a drummer, and doing some other things. So it kind of got stretched out a bit.

BK: Your fan base is – if you don’t mind my saying so – a bit like that of a cult artist. By that I mean that they (we, I should say) sort of value you as the whole package. You can go off in different directions, like a Todd Rundgren or a Neil Young, and they’re open to it. In fact they embrace it. That approach is different from some artists who are more or less expected to turn in the same album again and again. Do you think that’s an accurate characterization?

RXH: I don’t know yet. There’s this genre that I’ve been placed into called powerpop. And I’m not sure what that means, exactly, or if that’s what I do. I always considered myself – as far as my solo work – a traditional singer/songwriter trying to express myself with a lot of different influences. I never considered myself a powerpop artist.

I’m just getting the sense that some people who expect me to have the jangly guitar powerpop sound may not quite “get” this album. I’m not sure. It’s so different. I hope to gain a new audience from this music. While I was making the album, I thought, “I may alienate some people who like the guitar pop.”

BK: There’s some of it on there…

RXH: I tried to keep it to a minimum. I could have done a whole other album, still telling that story, but in that style. I put one or two guitar songs in there. But there were many times where I left songs off, saying, “We’ll save that for when I do a real pop album.” On this album, instead of guitar, we put on strings. Or harpsichord, or orchestration. That was sort of the theme of the album: Let’s be a bit more bold.

BK: The down side of that, of course, is that it makes an artist what the industry likes to call “hard to market.” While your music is highly melodic, accessible and impeccably crafted — what I would call “commercial” in the strict and best sense of the word – the music on Tiers / And Other Stories is a little less immediate. The songs aren’t built around catchy guitar riffs and such.

RXH: I’m sort of outside that whole argument. To me – I can’t be objective, of course; I’ve been working on these songs hundreds of time – they’re very immediate. But I guess, for a first time listener…this is what I’m hearing. And it’s a surprise to me, because they were sort of what I dug, and put together. I thought they were very hooky and immediate. But I’m getting a lot of that, that people aren’t getting it on the first listen. Maybe on the third or fourth listen. Again, I can’t really be involved in that, because it’s the listener’s perspective. I’m a little disappointed that people feel that way, and yet I know that the songs are there. And if people are willing to put the time in, they’ll be more into these songs than to some of my other songs.

BK: Not to belabor that point, but I would argue that the albums that wear the best over the long term are the ones that do reveal their charms on repeated listening.

RXH: It’s a little disappointing to me, I have to say, that reviewers so far – mainly from the powerpop community — I really don’t feel like they listened to it more than once. And they’re making that same comment abut it not being as immediate. I feel that the songs they’re not getting on the first listen will surpass the more immediate ones as far as the impact.  On an emotional level, I really poured my heart and soul into the lyrics. I know it’s got that in there; it’s just a matter of whether it affects the listener or not.

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Self-proclaimed living legends, Brooklyn’s Fleshtones are also affectionately known as America’s Garage Band. Their updated take on r&b and garage styles of rock’s greatest era has won them a cult of ardent and passionate fans the world over. Plying their trade since the late 1970s, the group has served up a consistent engaging catalog of albums. They had their brush with the big time in the early 80s while signed to IRS Records, and vocalist Peter Zaremba even hosted a show on MTV for a couple of seasons.

Yet in 2011 they’re still at it, producing the best music of their career. Their latest album Brooklyn Sound Solution (YepRoc) finds them collaborating with Lenny Kaye. The Fleshtones are currently mounting a small-scale tour to promote that record, and they’ll bring their “Super Rock” to Asheville NC’s The Admiral on March 24. I spoke by phone with Zaremba right before he headed to a show in Oklahoma City. — bk

Peter Zaremba: Well, we intend to. Yeah, we intend to keep doing this forever, because…once you understand where this music came from – y’know, what makes it click – you just keep dipping into that well. It’s not like being a purist, you know, where you have to always do the song the way it’s exactly supposed to be done. You run out of stuff that way. But if you’re inspired, then you’re doing a song from then and making it now. And I like that.

BK: As I’ve talked to people locally about the upcoming gig at The Admiral, some of them are puzzled at your choice of venues. One, they rarely have bands there at all. Two, the place holds, like, sixty people, and that’s only if you set all the tables and chairs outside. Yet, all that said, the aesthetic of the place seems completely consistent with the Fleshtones ambience. Can you tell me a little bit about the thinking that went into booking the show there instead of one of the several music venues here in town?

PZ: First of all, the band did not personally book the show. That said, we’ve never played in Asheville before. Not as far as I know. So, after thirty-five years, y’know, this might be the natural place to play. And if you think that sixty people is all that can fill it, then y’know what? Sixty people better show up! They’ll be the luckiest sixty people in town that night.

Like I always say, we play for the people that show up, not for the ones that didn’t show up. It’s like, we don’t go, “Ohhh, there could have been fifteen hundred people,” or something like that, and get all pissed off. First of all, we make sure that the people that do come have the best time they’ve ever had. Because we want to have the best time we’ve ever had. So, it starts with us. No one’s gonna get a walk-though. This might be a phone-in interview, but no one’s gonna get a phoned-in show from The Fleshtones.

BK: I watched the movie about you guys –  Geoffray Barbier’s 2009 film Pardon Us for Living But the Graveyard is Full – and that attitude comes through loud and clear.

See that? The Fleshtones: stars of film and…people write books about us, too.

BK: Lenny Kaye‘s on the new album. I am guessing that you guys knew him back when in NYC. How did he come to the project, and in what ways did his presence create something different on the record?

First of all, we’ve always been big admirers of his. Not just because of the Nuggets thing [legendary 2LP compilation of sixties garage/psych singles that Kaye put together in the early 70s – ed.].  But what he did with Patti Smith was so great. That changed things; that record [1974’s “Hey Joe” b/w “Piss Factory”] was so different from anything that was being done then. He also did this compilation of Eddie Cochran stuff [Legendary Masters from 1972] around that time. The first song that we did where we covered anybody else’s material was “Nervous Breakdown,” a song from that compilation.

A mutual friend of ours named Phast Phreddie Patterson [co-producer (with the band) of the new Brooklyn Sound Solution] – he’s a DJ, and a soul and funk expert – encouraged us to link up with Lenny. He said, “Lenny’s always been wanting to make a record with you guys.” When Lenny came in, he brought in some material; these were things that he could never, ever do with Patti’s group. Y’know what I’m sayin’? This was stuff that he wanted to do. And I have to say that Keith [Streng, Fleshtones guitarist] was really generous artistically. Because he said, “Okay, Lenny. You want to play these leads?” So Keith gave Lenny the opportunity to play all this lead guitar that he’s never played before, that Patti would never let him do. So that’s a major difference from anything we’ve ever done.

BK: I have Joe Bonomo’s book Sweat: The Story of the Fleshtones, America’s Garage Band. It’s huge, more than four hundred pages. You seem to attract creative people. You’ve had a book written about you, and the film. People love you guys. I have my own ideas about this, but I’d like to hear yours. What do you think it is about the Fleshtones that grabs people?

PZ: If I could compliment us — which I will – I think we’re kinda fresh; we’re very real, y’know? There’s an incredible amount of energy, and enjoyment of life and music. And we’re not studious about what we do. What we do is so natural. Almost anyone could do it, in a certain way. And that’s very different from what other bands do: they make one or two albums, and [by] then everyone hates each other. They all become heroin addicts or whatever. And then they quit, y’know? But after thirty-five years, we’re still very glad of our fame: it’s still gonna happen. We’re still on the frontier.

BK: With no disrespect to your earlier material, I think you guys are at the top of your game right now.

PZ: No disrespect is taken, because I agree with you one hundred percent. With a lot of the older stuff, a lot of the charm was its amateurishness. It had an almost a childlike simplicity, you might say. Now, we’re more confident in our playing, and we’re more confident in the studio. We don’t get bamboozled by fast-talking producers, fly-by-night production deals, and dazzling high technology. Blinking lights in the studio…most of that stuff doesn’t do anything, anyhow. And a lot of what it does do is negative, as far as creating live, fresh-sounding music. You can’t get dazzled by all those blinking lights and stuff; we know how to tame that stuff, y’know?

We’re already talking about doing a newer album. But we’ll let people digest this one first. [Brooklyn Sound Solution was released on March 15 2011 -- ed.]

BK: Throughout your recorded history, you’ve been one of the few bands to largely avoid trendy production tricks; even on the 80s albums, there’s no Phil Collins bullshit gated-reverb drums on Fleshtones records. Has it been a conscious effort to avoid those kinds of things?

PZ: It’s down to an approach that doesn’t consider it. Although, yes, we’ve often had to consciously avoid it. We’ve had our battles with producers and engineers, sometimes to the point of violence. But that stuff has never been a part of anything we’d like. We don’t want to be responsible for recordings that don’t sound the way we like.

Of course, everyone makes mistakes. We’ve had some, some experiments that didn’t quite gel. That happens. But the fact is, I’m pretty much proud of everything we’ve ever done. And I don’t think there’s many bands that can say that: “Oh, that’s from our New Romantic period,” or something like that. Y’know what I’m sayin’? We didn’t go through a New Romantic period.

BK: Thank god!

PZ: Believe me, we were under pressure to do so. The record company was definitely pressuring us to go that way.

BK: With the hair, and the…oh, god.

PZ: “Can you guys do something with your hair or something? Dye it blond, or white, or somethin’…” I dunno.

BK: Scary.

PZ: It is scary.

BK: I know the word is a cliché, but you guys are real survivors. Why do you think you’re bigger in Europe than here in the USA?

PZ: Okay. You know, this is an interesting question, and it does have to do with the attitudes of the public. In Europe, in a lot of the countries they don’t understand they lyrics. So they’re just going on feeling. Y’know, the feeling of the music. And if they get the emotion from the feeling of the songs, then they stick with it. If they like something, they tend to like it pretty much forever.

Now, in this country — and I think it’s a great thing about this country – this is the home of rock’n’roll, and we tend to churn this stuff out. And people always want somethin’ new, right? Now, at this point, we’ve been at it thirty-five years. And we did go through a phase of some popularity in the early 80s. Those people still like us, but it’s not like we’re gonna be the new thing.

But the paradox is, ninety-nine percent of the American listening public has not been exposed to The Fleshtones, so we still could be the next new thing. At this point, we could actually be the new thing.

BK: Look at all the bands bubbling under now that clearly draw from the same well of inspiration. You guys have influenced all kinds of bands.

PZ: We’ve positively influenced all sorts of bands. I don’t even want to embarrass myself by saying it. But they’re legion. There are many artists we’ve influenced. And for the good!

BK: What do you see as the differences between playing your music to audiences now as opposed to doing so thirty-odd years ago?

PZ: Remarkably, there’s very little [difference]. Thirty-five years ago, people really didn’t know what to expect. We still get the same thing. Like last night, we were playing and a couple of kids were goin’ crazy dancing and stuff. That kind of stuff, those are good things. And those cool things don’t change. The audience may be younger or older, but they still get down. And that’s a wonderful thing.

BK: I’ll see you next week at the show.

PZ: Yes, we’ll see you next week. And all the guys in the band said to say hello. And you’d better warn the people: if they don’t come, we’re not comin’ back. [laughs] This might be their golden opportunity. This is like buying stock in GE a hundred years ago. Go to this show.

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