I'd wager my boots on it - a Cassie Berman interview

Le point de départ de l'interview de Coming Soon que je publiais un peu plus tôt était la participation de Cassie Berman à l'un des titres de leur nouvel album.

Quant aux motivations premières : Curiosité artistique, mais aussi une simple envie d'avoir des nouvelles de Silver Jews, silencieux depuis 2009.

Consécutivement à nos premiers échanges, Howard Hugues (de Coming Soon, hein, vous suivez) m'a fait la bonne surprise de pousser quelques questions à l'attention de Cassie Berman.

Et voici ses réponses (sur un ton assez badin)

So, what's with music, currently in your life ?

David and I live in a four bedroom house. It’s just us and our dog, so we each get our own room to be whatever we want in. I call my room the teenager room, because it is filled with all my favorite things and has a little pink bed. Whenever I find myself lonely, or brave feeling, or missing music, or I have a beat in my head, or I want to learn a Tammy Wynette song, I hang out in my teenager room. There I strum an old, out of tune guitar, jot down ideas, thumb through ancient books of Chinese poetry, punk photography and other oddities, sometimes plug in my bass to make a drone, etc. I sing to myself while doing any or all of those things, and if it’s good enough to remember, it becomes a song of sorts. I haven’t really done anything with these songs…But I have a name for them: “Sullen Juvenalia.”

David, Cassie... et leur chien, donc (Pochette du Tennessee EP, 2001)

Anything recorded yet?

Yes! Thanks to my dear brother, Joseph and his friend Elio. Like I said, I have no ambition for my songs to be heard. But if you make music all by yourself with no time constraint and no technological know-how, what ends up happening is that you pour out your heart. I played a few songs I’d written for Joseph, and he could not believe he was the only person in the world to hear them besides my dog. My brother is an amazing musician who lives in Boston, and he has all kinds of talented friends. Joseph arranged a session for me in Boston with our friend, Elio DeLuca, who runs The Soul Shop, an insanely awesome, all-analog studio. In one day Elio and Joseph managed to convince me that the 5 songs I brought were the greatest thing I could do. It was just me playing by myself, on a guitar my brother picked up in the junk shop a week before, and singing as quietly as I wanted to due to the fantastic mice. In the end, my songs sounded just like I’d dreamt them to sound. We were all really proud of the work. Then I went back to Nashville and completely chickened out of playing them for anyone else...

By the way, when did you join the band?

Which band : Aerial M, Hallelujah the Hills, Silver Jews, Coming Soon or Led Zeppelin?

David Pajo et Cassie - alors - Marrett lors d'une Peel Session d'Aerial M
le 3 mars 1998

What's about this collaboration with Coming Soon?

I adored working with Coming Soon! I’ve loved Coming Soon from the first recordings, but have never seen the group play live. Howard and I became fast friends in 2006, when the Silver Jews played Paris for the first time, and he’s been kind enough to supply me with regular doses of new Coming Soon music ever since. Their records have brought me tons of joy, and yet, here I am in Nashville, TN, and there they are in Paris, France. In other words, our paths don’t cross much. So the opportunity to collaborate with a group that was very real in sound, yet with musicians who were mostly imaginary to me was a fun concept. I suspect this may be what Barbra Streisand felt like when she got the call to record with the Bee Gees.

How did you work together?

I pretended I was in a tiny, tiny room with Coming Soon playing super loud. Then I dipped my mouth into tropical water on the Gulf of Mexico and sang a few notes. Coming Soon was there on the beach in France to catch the notes. They put them in a jar, carried the jar back to the studio and made my voice part of the band in the tiny, tiny room.

Last but inevitable question: will the Joos record/play live ever again?
I'd wager my boots on it.

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Wager (wagered, wagered) : v.t., parier.

On termine cette interview sur une note pleine de promesses !

Merci encore à Howard Hugues, et puis, pour poursuivre sur ma lancée, peut-être que je prendrai le temps de retranscrire l'interview de David Berman quasi-inédite que j'avais réalisée  en 2006.

Ceci dit, chers lect-eurs/-rices potentiellement insensibles à la musique de Silver Jews, rassurez-vous, Arise Therefore gardera dans les jours à venir la même variété de sujets.