A Conversation with Emperor X (aka Chad Matheny) – HuffPost 12.12.11
Mike Ragogna: All hail Emperor X! Hi, Chad Matheny.
Chad Matheny: Hello, it’s nice to talk to you.
MR: It’s nice to talk to you too, especially with you’re being the son of Pat Metheny.
CM: Probably more like seventh or eighth cousin would be my guess. We spell our names differently, and I don’t have any past lineage with Pat Metheny.
MR: Don’t you know what happens when you play the game “telephone”?
CM: Of course, my name spelling is even different from my grandfather’s name spelling. The “Matheny” clan is pretty contentious. Something happened in Tennessee about three or four generations ago, they just shattered. All of the name’s spelling changes happened around then.
MR: Dear God, Emperor, what happened?
CM: I don’t know. I met another person in New York recently who had the same last name, but apparently, a couple of generations ago, we were all manic street creatures and got into a big fight and a bunch of the spellings changed. A lot of us are from rural Tennessee, like Cookeville, which is somewhere in-between Nashville and Knoxville. Something happened and nobody knows what.
MR: Where are you calling from right now?
CM: I’m coming from Sunset Park in Brooklyn, New York. We’ve got two days off on our tour that is taking us in an ever shrinking spiral, basically, from California to Chicago.
MR: Okay, it’s time to talk about the new album, Western Teleport. Western Teleport?
CM: Yeah, I think that’s how a lot of people react to the titles that I come up for things. That’s definitely the shortest title that I’ve ever had work. I don’t know, it’s hard to describe the way I pick titles. It just felt right. When I was living in California, I was obsessing over technological advances in transportation and economics and it just came out.
MR: As a former Californian, one of the songs that I related to was “Sig Alert.” The concept, to me, is pretty smart, what with your using a Middle Eastern imagery, and you also have the song called “Allahu Akbar” that touches on it. Are you saying that because we have such a focus on and involvement with the Middle East, it’s like it’s a part of our Western Culture?
CM: I’m definitely not directly saying that, but I think you can’t escape making that conclusion from listening to any number from cultural artifacts we’ve produced in the last ten to twenty years, this album being just one of hundreds of artifacts that would speak to that point. Definitely, I think it’s huge it’s in the American subconscious to think about insurrections and insurgencies. It’s very difficult for me to say that any one song is about any one thing, that’s not how I write. It’s definitely nonlinear, and I’m not trying to escape narrative judgment, I definitely believe in the narrative. It’s true that these songs are more word paintings than they are narratives. That said, I think some guy wrote in a blog recently that if you fused LA and Baghdad, that’s what I was going for, just the idea of how our personal relationships would be different in a world like that.
MR: “Sig Alert” is all that, yeah.
CM: Well sig alerts would mean something completely different, if instead of a dog was running around in the middle of the 110, there was a column of tanks or somebody has just lobbed a dirty bomb mortar onto the on ramp, it would change drastically. Having lived out there for a little under two years, I’ve definitely been more of a pedestrian than the average citizen of Los Angeles. That place is crazy if you walk. It’s very pleasant and button down and clean if you’re a car operator, but if you don’t have a car to mediate your interaction with the world, it’s insanely filthy. It’s very unhealthy, and it’s like a war walking around that thing and getting from one place to the other. They have public transportation, buses and a pretty decent train, but if you go outside of anywhere they are expecting you to be, you’re screwed. It does feel like a war. You find little homeless encampments under overpasses, you definitely have the feeling that you could be injured and no one would care. I have been fortunate enough to never have been mugged or been involved in any violence out there. I’m lucky than more than statistically average, it’s a very dangerous place.
MR: I bet most people don’t think of it like that, but yeah, of course it is. And California disseminates those ideas, in a way, since it is also on the cutting edge of what the next thing is as far as entertainment and fashion.
CM: That’s so it, and that’s why it’s so exciting and that’s why I was so happy to move out there and have that become a part of what I was doing. With my work, a lot of what it is, not every artist is this way. Jorge Luis Borges is one of my favorite writers, and he had a boring life. He woke up, read books, and he wrote about them and went to bed. Then there is the other model, the more American romantic model, of going out and getting wasted and staring up at the stars and writing hallucinogenic poetry. I think the more interesting your life is, the more interesting your work will be. Not that I’m someone that goes out and gets wasted everyday. I’m pretty clean in that respect. But my work is definitely more interesting when my life is more interesting. Western Teleport is kind of a dark record from my average kind of record. It’s coming out of a pretty dark, exploratory, sweaty, breathless place in my life.
MR: Let’s talk about these Western Teleport “nodes.” As you’ve been traveling around the country, you’ve been planting them everywhere. Really?
CM: Well the combination–I’ve been doing some of them, and the record label Bar None and I have been mailing them to people who have been helping us out. So, the combination of the two…I’ve also had friends who have been traveling and burying them. That definitely ties into the concept of how I’m experiencing the world right now. Basically, just to catch everybody up, we’ve taken all of the b-sides of the record or abortive early versions of the songs, and we’ve put them on tape cassettes. We’ve buried them at GPS coordinates or hidden them, as the case may be, and we’ve got them all around the country and one in Mexico and a couple in Canada. First of all, the GPS coordinates are published atwww.westernteleport.com. When somebody happens upon them or finds one that they’re looking for, there’s a URL and a code, and you head to that website and type in the code and then the MP3 of that tape is unlocked so everyone can hear it. So, we sort of created this game where anyone can hunt for the b-sides and any one that is found gets published. It’s interesting and I didn’t know how many were going to be opened or not, and at this point, close to half have been deployed.
MR: Some are going to be lost or impossibly hard to find, right?
CM: Well, a lot of them are going to be, because half of them are unlocked. I think what’s happened is that security guards have found them or cleaning people or just random people. I think that happens in a lot of cases. We’ve actually had a lot of them unlocked, and a lot of people have discovered the music that way not looking for the GPS, but just walking along seeing this thing sitting there, this neon green, translucent purple cassette. The places we bury them in get people into that zone that I’ve been in for two years in LA, which is just walking around the often kind of desolate parts of town and experiencing it from the perspective of a pedestrian or a cyclist instead of walking the beaten path.
MR: I have to say that’s one of the most creative things I’ve ever heard of. It’s great to add an element of interacting that isn’t just social networking.
CM: It does have the aspect too, because I’ve been posting the coordinates on Twitter as I’ve been slowly rolling them out. Some of them are never going to be deployed anyway because we’ve lost touch with the people who were going to help us bury them or various things like that. We use social networking too, but it’s definitely more about interacting with the real world. The response to the notion of physical copies of albums, they are still around for people that care about that sort of thing. I think that in 100 or 200 years, the idea of selling plastic copies of a record is going to not be as useful at it is now. What will have utility will be having the original physical copy of the album. “What is this?” There’s only going to be physical copies of these songs that exist, so if you want the original, that’s where it is. That’s the only thing that’s ever going to be produced. I always reference people to Walter Benjamin’s essay Art In The Age of Mechanical Reproduction. That sort of prefaces what this is about, when you can reproduce something mechanically in an infinite number for times or in our era digitally, than the original work doesn’t have utility anymore, but it retains something. What is that something? Is what this Walter Benjamin essay is about. I’ve been obsessed with that essay since my mentor, an older friend of mine, Joel Sternfeld, showed me that essay ages ago. He’s an amazing art photographer. Everyone should look it up.
MR: You also have a song called “Canada Day,” Canada and Mexico are frequent spots on your tours, aren’t they?
CM: Yeah, when I can, for sure. The whole North American sandwich is great. “Canada Day” is a very linear narrative song. It’s probably the most understandable on the record, it’s sort of a story song. It’s a lot like writing fiction, where I’m definitely not looking at these things as symbols or saying I’m going to write this song about this as it comes out. That one sort of formed around what it’s like to ride a Greyhound bus all over the country and be a reasonably intelligent person and start daydreaming out of the window where the other people you can communicate with are, because on the bus, it’s pretty bleak. You meet a lot of “characters,” but it’s really close to being in high school, like a really bad high school. It’s really just an intensely lonely song. The person that the first person narrator in that song meets, they don’t wind up together either. It’s also about the drainage of a lake I used to live near called Echo Park lake.
MR: I’m familiar with that lake. So, they drained that?
CM: You’re not anymore. They’ve drained it. It’s a giant pile of festering, stinking sludge right now. They’re finding some interesting things in it, I will tell you that.
MR: They’re finding skulls and everything?
CM: There are definitely rumors of things like that. A good friend of mine, who actually appears in the song, suggested to start a website called foundinechoparklake.blogspot.com, and just sift around in there and see what you could come up with. I’m sure there are wedding rings and revolvers with no serial numbers. Who knows what’s in there.
MR: Like Jimmy Hoffa.
CM: Or at least his leg.
MR: “Compressor Repair” is a really interesting song. Can you go into what gave you the idea for that?
CM: What gave me the idea was often I write things as I’m recording them, and that was completely off the cuff. I did a couple of write-ups, but the way I write lyrics is sort of a freestyle rapper, I will just sort of come up with it. If it doesn’t fit right then, I will roll over it again once or twice. That one came very quickly. It wasn’t directly from something I experienced, but it was similar to some things I’ve experienced. It’s pretty simple, it’s some guy trying to fix his girlfriend’s A/C unit and failing.
MR: Also let’s get back to one of the more serious songs, “Allahu Akbar.”
CM: That’s a religious song really, it’s a song of religious faith. It’s also kind of a jab at the anit-Muslim current in America right now. That’s the most obvious way to interpret it. I have another song called “Hallelujah” on an older release, I view “Allahu Akbar” and “Hallelujah” as two sides to the same coin. “Allahu Akbar” just means something along the lines of “God is great,” or “God is the greatest” in Arabic. It’s something that they use similarly to how we would use “hooray,” and it’s used a lot. It sort of strikes fear into the hearts of people because that’s also what terrorists say when they are about to blow things up when they happen to be Muslim. That’s because it’s their version of hooray, not because it has something to do with that faith. Whenever I sing it live, my favorite part is at the end of the song, I chant, “God is great,” a bunch, over and over. I think that really weirds people out because they aren’t used to people talking about God when you’re in the indie rock circuit. It’s sort of atheistic or agnostic or we don’t talk about that because it’s kind of serious. I’m definitely not the only one talking about it, that’s not what I mean at all, but it feels like I’ve definitely seen that song make people uncomfortable before. I’m not a Christian, but I was raised Christian and I do sympathize with some of the things I was raised with. I don’t think people are used to somebody saying something as naked as “God is great.”
MR: You believe in God?
CM: I do believe in some kind of creator entity.
MR: And probably some of the people listening to you sing that song probably believe in God in whatever way they picture a creator.
CM: Yeah, that’s an interesting question, because I don’t know what I mean when I say that. I don’t mean I believe in something with a white beard or the traditional philosophical concept of a “God,” just the suspicion there is some kind of agency going on here. It’s an interesting open question and that song does brush up against the terrorist thing again. It’s also another side of the coin to “Sig Alert,” the second track on the album, which also has a lot of imagery related to insurgencies. But really, it’s the closest thing I’ve done that’s a letter to a potential creator.
MR: To me, the simplest song on the project is “Erica Western Teleport.”
CM: That song is the most shallow song on the record. In that song, I’m just bummed out on a girl. That’s what I sound like when I get bummed out about a girl, I start talking about things like that. I also had to have the Battlestar reference too.
MR: Battlestar Galactica?
CM: Yeah, that’s the Cylon reference.
MR: You’ve got one of the worlds biggest Battlestar Galactica fans here.
CM: I’ll challenge you on that, man. I’m a huge fan.
MR: What did you think of the series finale?
CM: Really controversial to me. It’s funny that’s coming up because I think cinematically, more than anything, that’s what informed what I was thinking about when I was making this record. That whole series and the way it ended was, of course, disappointing in some ways. I thought it was cheap but it was also kind of profound, like where else are you going to go? The notion of survival, which is either a thousand or five thousand or fifty billion years from now, sentient life is going to have to think about survival. How are we going to continue to survive in a universe increasing constantly? That was the overarching burning, background, radioactive question in my mind when I was doing this stuff. Maybe it always is. I’m kind of obsessed with that, maybe to an unhealthy degree.
MR: By the way, you have some of my favorite titles for albums. The Blythe Archives…, for instance.
CM: That’s an interesting story about how that got its name. I got marooned in Blythe, California, on two separate tours at exactly the same exit. I started to feel like Blythe, California, was the Bermuda Triangle of touring bands. If you’re going to break down anywhere in-between LA and Phoenix, you’re probably going to get towed to Blythe.
MR: Have we not spoken about the song that is your favorite or on that you have another good story about?
CM: No, not really. I can’t emphasize enough the point, that nothing is directly from my life. I think a lot of great songwriters talk about things that happened to them directly.
MR: So, not even “Anti-Rage.” How disappointing.
CM: No, especially that one. Completely word painting. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t mean something, it does. When someone says this is meaningless, I get very angry, but if somebody says, “What’s the narrative,” I get very frustrated because I can’t necessarily say, which sounds like the kind of cop out a bad poet would give. If somebody wants to have that kind of discussion, then I’m interested in that, but I don’t think that’s what’s going on here. I guess my point in bringing that up is that there is no story per se. A lot of people imbue these songs with their own meaning. I have a bunch of letters from people, who think these songs are about things. For “Erica Western Teleport,” I’ve received several letters from people saying, “This is exactly what I’m going through right now,” which is crazy to me. Number one, I had no idea what they were going through, number two, I guess I just wrote in a way where people can hang their own meaning on the words.
MR: They can relate.
CM: They can relate, but not to any particular story. It’s just to the impression created by the incantation of words and concepts. It must be hitting something if people are responding that way.
MR: You get bored if you’re not busy creating, don’t you.
CM: Yeah, of course. I’ve had eras where I haven’t been, but it’s mainly been when I’m freaked out about money and generally, I end up getting into a bad place. Generally, if I’m not writing, I do consider it a bad place and I’m kind of depressed. It’s the only reason I wouldn’t write.
MR: What’s the process when you write?
CM: I have a tape recorder, like a hand held Walkman. I have a recorder on my Android phone, and I have some kind of stringed instrument with me all of the time or most of the time. If not, I’ve been out to dinner with friends, and I will get up from the table and disappear for twenty minutes and come back, and what I’ve been doing is sitting in the bathroom and drumming on the toilet while singing on top of it. It flows pretty constantly. How many of those have I used? Maybe like ten percent or less, but that’s a part of the process. I am definitely an irritating person to go out to dinner with for sure.
MR: I wonder if that could be a new project for you, gathering all of the snippets of ideas that never come to fruition from over the years.
CM: It’s something I have, a giant file on my hard drive called “several hundred songs.” It’s something that I want to put out at some point. That’s the thing I would upload to a hidden folder on my website now, and I don’t want to do that. I want to wait and see if anyone’s interested. I’ve definitely thought of that idea. It would be either really tedious or really interesting depending on what you’re looking for in an album.
MR: What advice do you have for new artists?
CM: That’s a really good question. I think, first of all, that that’s what you want to do, here’s a lot of really great music and other art stuff in the world and there’s a lot more awful music and art in the world. As affluence increases, which will happen over time, the real problem is sifting through bad art to get to the good. Just make sure what you’re doing is right. Don’t do it for lifestyle choice reasons. That said, there’s a great book called Letters To A Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke. He said it best. There are a couple of paragraphs in the first of a few letters he writes to this young struggling artist: “Do it if it’s necessary, if you’ve tried everything else and really tried to forget it and it keeps popping up, and you keep screwing up your life because of the necessity of doing what you do, then you should do what you do.” If you just sort of want to do it because it’s a cute idea, find something that’s necessary. Everyone’s life has some kind of necessity to it, just make sure yours is the arts, because if it isn’t, you’re going to screw yourself up and be really poor and miserable. The practical thing is have something else to do, don’t obsess on it all of the time. Make sure you have some other source of income that you can rely on to get you to the point where you can slide off of that source of income and rely on your art a bit more. Only recently have I’ve been able to do that, and that’s pretty tenuous right now as it is. Have something that doesn’t violate your principles that doesn’t make you feel awful, some kind of trade. And keep in mind that Baruch Spinoza, the great Dutch, Jewish philosopher, was a lens grinder until his dying day and never made much of a penny off of his writing. Have faith and be in the value of your work, whether or not it’s valued in your lifetime.
MR: One of the best answers I’ve ever heard to that question.
CM: If I can convince myself of it, then I’m in good shape.
MR: (laughs) What is one thing we should know about Chad Matheny?
CM: If you ever see me and you want to make me really happy, give me a bunch of kale. If you ever see me and I’m traveling and look hungry, show up with some kale and I will be very happy. I’m really into kale and almonds. They keep really well and are super high sources of good stuff that you don’t get much when you travel as much as I do.
MR: Kale and almonds.
CM: And black beans and garlic. Here’s I cool little known fact…I guess it’s been known for years. When you’re getting sick on tour, people are going to hate you that you’re sharing the Volvo with. If you’re feeling the tickling of the beginning of getting sick, go get some garlic, chop two or three balls up and swallow a bunch of them whole and gargle the rest of it and you will only be sick for maybe twelve hours. You will feel really strange and you will smell terrible, but you will not be sick.
MR: Though you absolutely will have people hating you in the car for other reasons.
CM: Oh yeah, they will hate you, but you won’t be sneezing.
MR: Nice advice, especially the garlic part. Thank you very much for the chat, Chad. All the best with the new album.
CM: It’s been a pleasure talking with you, Mike.
Transcribed By Theo Shier