A Conversation with John Common – HuffPost 6.10.11

Mike Ragogna: John, you just released your new album, Beautiful Empty. What was the creative process like?

John Common: I started thinking about what eventually became Beautiful Empty on a flight to Prague in late November of 2007. I ended up hotel-hopping and walking around that very old town by myself in the snow for about a month and then came back to Denver and started the process that ended up turning into the record. I wanted to start exploring a different direction for me, away from electric guitar-driven, indie/alt/whatever rock and more toward…toward something that breathed more, something that used orchestral sounds and arrangements instead of blunt force guitar trauma. And something with a lot more vocal harmonies. Less head, more heart.

So, when I came back from Prague, I collected about 35 songs that seemed to enjoy one another’s company and started looking for a new band. Miles Davis used to compliment a great player by saying, “He’s a motherf**ker,” so I recruited a bunch of motherf**kers for my new band from Colorado’s indie music scene. Everyone is ridiculously talented. I was standing outside a venue waiting to play one of our first shows and came up with the name “Blinding Flashes of Light” as a more polite way to say “John Common and His Motherf**kers.”

MR: Who are these Motherf**kers?

JC: Here’s the current lineup:

Jess DeNicola – backing vocals
Daren Hahn – drums 
Wes Michaels – cello, saxophone
Adam Revel – piano, Rhodes, organ, samples
Casey Sidwell – bass
John Common – vocals, guitars, piano, songs
Various other friends – various other things

MR: What was your goal with the new album?

JC: I wanted it to sound like musical conversation, I wanted it to sound like it was recorded in wooden rooms. I wanted it to be the kind of record you could listen to on a snowy Sunday morning or on a late night drive between two towns, or while you cut vegetables in the kitchen…the kind of record that immediately affects you, but unfolds the more you listen. It makes me irrationally happy when I hear a new fan write us and say how the record just keeps sticking with them. We hear it all the time. Life is good.

MR: How do you come up with the arrangements?

JC: We toss the song into the deep end of the pool and make it splash around and save itself. Our rehearsals are brutal. Poor little songs. It’s very Darwinian.

MR: Are there any songs on this project whose genesis were unusual or particularly special to you?

JC: Everyone one of them are emotionally true but biographically ambiguous. Most were written while holding a guitar, sitting in front of a piano, scribbling on the back of an envelope or gas receipt, and singing into a sh**ty tape recorder.

MR: What’s going on with Denver’s music scene these days?

JC: Colorado’s music scene is completely blowing up. I’m going to avoid doing the name-dropping thing, but if you want to get a sense of some of the amazing art/music being made in these parts, check out TheFlatResponse.com, goDonnybrook.com,Westword.com, avclub.com/denver and DenverPost.com/Reverb.

MR: How entrenched are you in it and do you find yourself trying to further its success.

JC: I think a music scene is a result of a bunch of unplanned intersections of people and ideas, I’m not sure you can engineer it. It works best as a self-reinforcing, happy accident. So, the best way to make a scene happen, grow, and evolve is to just make great music/art and connect with fans. Art inspires more art.

One thing that’s really important to me is connecting with artists of all different levels from other mediums and genres. It’s been a big theme running through the past couple of years, and it’s very tied in to our new record, Beautiful Empty. Here’s a short list of some of the creative collaborations we’ve done: http://www.avclub.com/denver/articles/john-common-gets-collaborative-again-at-tedxdu,55938/

MR: Who were your musical influences?

JC: Hmmm… I come from a really creative family. My mother is a musician. My father is a singer. My oldest brother Scott is a musician, songwriter, and a fantastic storyteller and writer. My older brother Bruce is a visual artist. None of them are “professional” artists or musicians, so if they were here right now, they’d be saying very humble things. But the truth is, I grew up in a very expressive, creative family.

Music and writing both came to me early. I started playing music when my mother insisted that I take piano lessons at an early age. I was good at it, even though I didn’t particularly enjoy playing other people’s music–fitting into that box. I came to songwriting because I’ve just always loved language and writing. Even as a little kid, I used to peck out stories and ideas on my mother’s old manual typewriter–the same one on the cover of Beautiful Empty, actually. One of my favorite books to read growing up, and still, to this day, was the dictionary. Kind of embarrassing but true. But I’ve always idolized authors and poets.

Then I saw my brother Scott playing acoustic guitar and singing songs that he loved, mostly Neil Young songs. When he joined the Navy and went off to boot camp and his tour of duty, I essentially broke into his room and stole his Neil Young guitar tab/lyric books–Decade, if I recall–and his Epiphone acoustic guitar. I taught myself to play by learning the songs my older brothers loved on his guitar.

Both of my brothers’ record collections, and to some extent, my father’s too, left a pretty big imprint on me–Neil Young, The Beatles, The Cars, Lynyrd Skynyrd, KISS, James Taylor, Dylan, Frank Sinatra…Dad’s favorite, Genesis, Jackson Browne, The Doors.

Then, when I started listening to my own music, I listened to a lot of Velvet Underground, more Dylan, more Beatles, really early R.E.M., Jason and the Scorchers, The Replacements, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Daniel Lanois, Steve Earle…

And then, I got into ’50s and ’60s jazz–Miles, Mingus, Blakey, Evans, Monk, Coltrane, Coleman, Chet, Vaughan, Fitzgerald, Holiday–that really changed how I think about song structure and melody and phrasing.

The thread running through all of it was the song. I’m still endlessly fascinated by songs. It didn’t take long before it dawned on me that I could write, perform, and sing my own songs, so I did.

MR: You’ve been honored with quite a few awards between 2006 and 2011. Are there any that surprised you when you were told you won them, and which do you consider your favorite of the batch?

JC: I think they’re all pretty cool. I mean, it’s nice to be noticed.

MR: What are you working on and what’s happening in your musical world lately?

JC: We’re about to go tour the U.S. this Summer and Fall. It’s our first time to a lot of these towns, so we’re really excited to get out there and play our music for everyone who will listen. It’s going to be a blast. I mean, a really uncomfortable, cramped, low-paying blast filled with a lot of time in the van. I’m already preparing myself mentally for months and months of urban camping. It’s all about lowering your expectations for creature comforts. I mean, if you expect to basically be homeless, penniless and friendless, then touring looks like a huge step up.

I’m always writing, of course. It scares me a little to think about it sometimes, actually, because I think there is a responsibility that comes with this stuff. Songs happen, and they start working their way into your head and your heart and your rehearsals and maybe even your live set. Then, they clump together and start acting like a gang, and then the gang starts walking around like a record. And the gangs is kind of cool and it makes you wonder, “What if that gang ran the world for a little while?” and then, the next thing you know, you’re trying to find the money to make the record. And then you realize the record was right. It has a special thing, a personality and a voice, and it wants to go meet people. So, you have to go introduce it to your friends, take it out on a date, buy it drinks and dinner.

It’s a slippery slope, man. It’s happened to me a bunch of times, and it always starts out as this innocent little baby of an idea for a song. So, I get nervous around babies…and blank sheets of paper.

MR: Any advice for new artists?

JC: Do things that make you feel uncomfortable. Learn to sing with your real voice. Be kind to everyone around you–remember what you make them endure. And write a lot.