A Conversation with Tommy Keene – HuffPost 10.31.11

Mike Ragogna: Places That Are Gone became the #1 best selling Indie EP of 1984, a poll by The Village Voice in NY gave it a nod, and Rolling Stone gave it 4 stars.

Tommy Keene: Right!

MR: (laughs) So you’re THAT Tommy Keene. Hello there, Mr. Keene.

TK: Hello.

MR: So, you’ve got a new album titled Behind The Parade. It could have a couple of interpretations: One, there’s that parade and here I am behind it, or two, here’s what’s really behind the parade.

TK: (laughs). I like either one of those.

MR: Okay, so tell me, how did you approach this album creatively?

TK: Well last year, in 2010, we put out a retrospective, which in layman’s terms is aGreatest Hits. It’s basically the best of Tommy Keene. It’s called Tommy, Can You Hear Me. A lot of people didn’t like the title, which I was surprised at because people have always criticized me for being overly serious, not having a sense of humor. They loved everything about it except the title. But anyway, we put that out last year and I tested myself. I wanted to see if I could get a new album out quickly after that, and I’m not the type of person who gets up every morning and writes songs. I have to get into a songwriting mode. A year will go by and I won’t pick up a guitar or sit at the piano and write a song. I think it’s good to let those things sort of store up, and when you’re ready, it all comes spilling out.

MR: Right.

TK: That’s pretty much the case with this record. My main objective was to see if I could get out a new record of original stuff within the following year. So, I sat down for a week and came up with the first few songs on the record, which I was very pleased with because it gave me the impetus to push ahead to do a record right and record a record faster than I ever have before. In order to get it out the next year, I actually had to finish it early.

MR: Which songs did you write first?

TK: “Deep Six Saturday” and “Already Made Up Your Mind,” the first two songs on the record.

MR: Did you approach this album differently in the studio than your other albums?

TK: Well, on the last record, In The Late Bright, I had a song called “Elevated” which was an instrumental. It was basically a guitar instrumental, kind of atmospheric and psychedelic. On this new record, I also wanted to do an instrumental, so I took the approach of all keyboard. I started the song on Halloween 2010 at about eight o’clock, I sat down and was noodling around on this little keyboard I have called a “fun machine,” and if you have the album, you can see it on the inside, it’s a little bulb and kind of home organ with all these cool sounds. It’s cheesy, but it sounds really cool. So, I started noodling around and got the idea to go over to the board where I have a sampling of all kinds of keyboard sounds from the sixties and seventies–like mellotrons, strings, and synthesizers. I just kept layering and layering tracks, and I would say I was done with song by about five in the morning. It’s funny because I always notate when I start things and it was October 31st. I’m not a big Halloween guy…I don’t go out because all the crazies are out driving. (laughs)

MR: Yeah. (laughs)

TK: So, that was my Halloween, when I came up with the song “La Castana,” which is the street I used to live on in Los Angeles. It’s really inspired by sort of the Bowie/Eno tracks from Bowie’s albums Low and Heroes–sort of ambient, electronic, and melodic.

MR: Right. Oh and by the way, I want to dispute those who would say you have no sense of humor. Your song titles? “Based On Happy Times,” “Driving Into The Sun,” “Merry-Go-Round Broke Down,” and “Crashing the Ether.” Come on people! YOU get a sense of humor!

TK: I know, I know, they’re kind of tragic, ironic titles too.

MR: (laughs) When you sit down and write, where does it come from?

TK: (sound of wind blowing) Did you hear that?

MR: Yeah, what the hell was that?

TK: Thunder and kids coming home from school.

MR: Those two are relative, aren’t they.

TK: Yeah. They’re all running and screaming. Lots of sounds effects here on the East Coast.

MR: Nice Coast. Where are you right now?

TK: Bethesda, Maryland…the house I grew up in.

MR: Are you of D.C. origin, or of Bethesda?

TK: Bethesda, but we’re ten minutes from the district line. Technically, I’m a Maryland native, but we’re right by the big city where all the action is.

MR: So, you have a great sense of pop music. Everyone says it, go to the internet, it’s all over the place. And you’ve been referred to as being quite edgier than the usual pop fare.

TK: Thank you for that.

MR: I can tell you’ve been influenced by The Beatles; I can hear it in your music. But growing up, who else influenced you?

TK: The Who, the number two influence.

MR: Nice.

TK: The Beatles, The Who, and The Stones are the big ones. I saw The Who at DAR Constitution Hall when I was nine in 1968. I went with my older brother and dad dropped us off. It was The Who Sell Out tour, and they were still smashing up their gear in the States because that was their gimmick. That was completely mind-blowing, probably second to seeing The Beatles on Ed Sullivan when I was four and a half. So, those are the two most mind-blowing moments that led me down this path.

MR: Now, you’ve worked with Mr. Organic, T-Bone Burnett as well as Don Dixon. I bet they both had some influence on you.

TK: Yeah, I saw T Bone in a restaurant in Venice, California, a month ago.

MR: Did he ask, “Hey, Tommy, when are we getting together again?”

TK: Nah. (laughs)

MR: I wouldn’t take that personally.

TK: No, no, no, I didn’t. I was sitting right next to him at this really–and I don’t usually do this–snazzy, hot restaurant that we used to wait months to get into. My friend lives down the street, so he got us in and he said, “I’m sure we’re gonna see Jennifer Aniston,” and what celebrity do we see sitting next to us? T-Bone.

MR: (laughs) Eh, Jennifer, T-Bone, same thing. To me, T-Bone’s totally a celebrity. I think Gillian Welch was the only he’s worked with for more than one album in a row.

TK: He’s a very charming, intelligent, entertaining guy. He really hadn’t done a lot of production. He’d just finished doing Los Lobos, their breakout record How Will The Wolf Survive?

MR: Fantastic album…

TK: Well, he sat me and Ted Nicely down, the bass-player at the time. He said “I gotta play you guys a song. I don’t think it should go on the record. It’s a pop song, you’re not a pop band.” He played it and we both said, “That’s a pretty good song, T-Bone.” He just shook his head because it wasn’t the answer he wanted to hear. So, the record comes out as a hit. I go to see them and I walk up to Steve Berlin who was kind of the co-producer and he says to me, “Well Tommy, that just goes to show you that producers aren’t always right.”

MR: Wow.

TK: How ’bout that.

MR: Well, cream rises…or hope floats, something like that. Did you know that Waylon Jennings had a hit with that song as well?

TK: Did he?

MR: Yeah. So, let’s keep finding out what’s behind Behind The Parade.

TK: Kind of like beyond Bed Bath & Beyond.

MR: (laughs)

TK: That’s my concept, I should’ve called it that.

MR: (English accent) Brilliant! Another marketing genius moment!

TK: (laughs)

MR: Tommy, this is this your 8th or 9th or 15th album?

TK: It’s hard to say. I’ve been putting out so many EPs, collections, and there’s the live album.

MR: Maybe it’s 11. That’s a nice number. Eleven it is.

TK: I think it’s 9, but there were a couple periods in there where we were being courted once again by major labels and I had two record deals fall through at the last minute because people at the labels got fired.

MR: That sucks.

TK: So, there was a time between “Based On Happy Times” and “Ten Years After,” where I really had a couple of albums worth of material, and some of it came out on the first E.P. Matador put out, it was called Sleeping On A Roller Coaster. I lost a couple records in there due to business things. So, I think its either the eighth or ninth if you count Strange Alliance, my first D.I.Y. record that was released in ’82. I have about fifteen releases.

MR: Then we’re agreed. It’s twenty-eight.

TK: It might be more like eighteen.

MR: I’m kidding, I’m kidding, I kid because…

TK: …and 7 inches.

MR: What? Oh no, you brought it up vinyl single…at least I hope that’s what we’re talking about. So? Analog versus digital? You recorded in both mediums.

TK: Based On Happy Times is all digital because I did it at Ardent (Recording Studios) in Memphis, and John Hampton and Joe Hardy, the guys that basically played and co-produced the record with me, had just finished Pleased To Meet Me by The Replacements, which was also all digital. They had a Mitsubishi 32-track digital machine, which was all the rage, so that’s what those albums were done on, and you can hear that. A year later, they ditched it and went back to analog. I would say in the ’90s, I was still analog. In the ’00s, I really got my own studio together, so that was obviously digital. But talking about the vinyl new record–even though this new record was all digital–the vinyl warms up the guitars, which is nice. That’s essentially what the pros of analog are. Acoustic instruments–drums, guitars, and such certain frequencies–sound warmer. That’s always the difference between analog and digital. So, digital is easier, more convenient, and quicker. But I’m really thrilled that the album’s out in vinyl–it’s the first record I’ve had on vinyl since ’96 when the first Matador full length album, and that was 10 years after that. That was the last album I had out on vinyl.

MR: I have to ask you about another project you worked on, one with Robert Pollard, the guy from the band Guided By Voices. It was called The Keene Brothers. Why not The Pollard Brothers?

TK: (laughs) Well it was his idea.

MR: Uh huh.

TK: He said, “Let’s call it the Keene Brothers,” and I said, “Okay, fine,” because my older brother’s Bobby. He said, “Great, we’ll be Bobby and Tommy Keene,” which we’ve always been. Then a year or so later, I was touring with the group Boston Spaceships, and he’s looking at me and says, “Next time we do a record, it’s gonna be The Pollard Brothers!”

MR: (laughs)

TK: I said, “Fine. It was your idea.”

MR: What advice would you give to new artists these days?

TK: As far as labels?

MR: As far as what an artist should be doing. Like, where does one start?

TK: Well, the internet. Nowadays, all you have to do is put a song up on MySpace or whatever. I think a lot of these bands in the last seven years or so, that’s how they’ve gotten their start, so it’s a lot easier for them, though it’s worse for the whole music industry in general because it reminds me of a time in the mid to late seventies when funk bands started, like the Ramones. There was thinking that, “Hey, these songs are three cords, anyone can pick up a guitar and play these punk rock songs.” But they weren’t getting it because they were excellent musicians and they had a certain style, which was very sophisticated, even though it seemed very primitive and raw. I think they’ve shortchanged a lot of these bands, that they were doing this very easy, anyone can do it yourself music, which is not true. They were really talented people, and I’m not just talking about The Ramones; I mean The Heartbreakers, Patti Smith, The Sex Pistols, and all this and such. So, it created this whole explosion of putting out your own little record, which was great in itself, but I compare that to when the internet first started music trading. Putting up a MySpace page–“Here’s my album for the world to listen to.” You’ve got a lot of low quality stuff out there, and then you’ve got people who are 58-year-old lawyers whose kids have just gone off to school and they say, “I’ve always wanted to make a rock record. I can afford this.” I can just put it on the internet and maybe I’ll become somebody. So, I think it’s a great thing and it’s also a bad thing. It’s an over-explosion of “anyone can do anything they want” in this medium.

MR: How do you think a new artist can cut through that?

TK: A break or a connection. Knowing somebody that works at this publishing company. Knowing some buddy who has a hook into Live Nation. The music business is all about breaks, luck, right place/right time timing. I know that’s cliché, but there’s absolutely no getting around it.

MR: I absolutely agree with you. New artists can be led by the delusion created by things like American Idol. They’re being force-fed images that aren’t real as far as being able to navigate their own craft. It’s sort of like, “Let’s find the marketing angle,” before they even get their own craft down. And there’s just too much noise in the social mediums. Like, how does one ever find anybody? You have to be led there; there’s got to be word of mouth, of course, and if it’s going to be lasting, there should at least be talent, no?

TK: Yeah, well the American Idol thing is really distressing because it’s people plucked out of nowhere…we’ll get you to look right, and we’ll get the right song that’s just right for you, and you’re on national TV on the #1 rated show in America…boom, there you are! So, therefore, we get guys that sing “Over the Rainbow,” and then four months later, they’re selling out arenas. I don’t get it. They’re not nurturing artists.

MR: There you go, that’s it, exactly.

TK: The people that write their songs, they all sort of emulate these “soul,” over the top, histrionic singing. They’re not artists, they’re not interesting, they have nothing new to offer, they’re just kids, they’re puppets. There are a lot of puppets out there that have major label deals and faded, or are still going. It’s kind of sad, and demeaning I think. The harder they come, the harder they fall. Instantaneous superstardom–how long is that going to last? Then you look at someone like me who’s been knocking his head against a wall for 30 years and you see two opposite sides of the spectrum. Which would I want? I wouldn’t trade my experiences in a second to be on American Idol and hot for fifteen minutes. That’s not going to buy me a cup of coffee at Starbucks. It’s both sides of the coin.

MR: Nicely said. Okay, let’s get back to Behind The Parade. What is the most personal song on this record?

TK: Probably “Already Made Up Your Mind.”

MR: The second song you wrote for this album?

TK: Right. But I think you meant sort of lyrically?

MR: Right.

TK: Yeah, it’s an old-fashioned kind of romantic song on this record. I’ve really been trying to get away from that because I think I have this romantic, unrequited love relationship thing beating over my head from Day One starting out with The Beatles. I grew tired of writing these lyrics that people sort of wanted me to write that everyone can relate to. I stopped trying to reach out to everyone. My lyrics have gone towards a literary, fictional style. About ten years ago, I got really interested in books on pulp fiction, hipster slang, and a lot of the great jazz and blues artists, who pretty much came up with all the rock ‘n’ roll language, which started with black Americans in the South. You know, you’ve got the word “gig.” You listen to the old “rock ‘n’ roll” songs all the way up to Chuck Berry, this sort of hipster slang, which I got a lot of ideas from. I sort of write these little vignettes of people on the fringes of society that are maybe criminals, drug addicts, or sexual revolutionaries; people pushing the envelope and living on the edge always seemed really interesting to me. Of course, this whole banner was picked up in the fifties with (Jack) Kerouac, The Beats, and (Alan) Ginsberg. It’s very bohemian, but that’s always fascinated me, and so I’ve moved more toward that way of writing.

MR: In your opinion, have you been growing from album to album?

TK: I think so. I think my lyrics on these last three records have taken a couple leaps up. It’s hard for me to be objective, but, you know.

MR: You’re also going on tour?

TK: We’re kind of on tour right now, hence the commotion in the background. (laughs).

MR: So, predictions…this time next year, are you writing your next album already?

TK: That’s an excellent question. No, I’m not. As soon as I get into the whole record coming out mode, then I plan the tour. That takes months and months. Then we’ve got the interviews, promotion, touring, and it takes too much out of me, so we’re done at the end of the month. Perhaps we’ll see what my mood is like when I get back to California. I doubt I’ll get another record out next year, but I would say probably 2013.

MR: 2013, okay we’ll take it.

TK: If someone will put it out. That’s always the question. (laughs) I’ll make it if they’ll put it out and then will they buy it? Will it make people money and will it make it worth their while. So, it’s commerce that dictates a lot of this.

MR: Exactly, circling back to our earlier conversation. So, then what you do is go to a fan-funded site, you get fans and passers-by to fund the record, and then the delivery system of music will probably be something totally different than what we’re thinking about right now. Bam.

TK: (laughs) Well a lot of people are doing that.

MR: I don’t know what to think of that yet. What do you think?

TK: I don’t particularly like that. I mean, it’s a gimmick. Everyone’s got to have a gimmick, like Gypsy Rose Lee said, right? I think it’s a little bogus. I think there are some artists who say, “I need $75,000 to make this record.” Unless you’re recording with Roy Thomas Baker at AIR Studios in London, it doesn’t cost $75,000 to make a record these days. Perhaps they’re using that money to live on for a year or something plus make the record. The most expensive thing about making records is mixing. You still have to pay someone a reasonable amount of money if you want a good mix. If you figure 10 songs, your record shouldn’t cost more than $10k.

MR: That’s a very good point. Most of these albums are being recorded at home. So, remember that, all you people donating thousands of dollars to your favorite artist’s new album.

TK: Well, if they get something out of it…I hear people say, “I’ll write a song about you.” There are some people that think giving your favorite artist $10,000 is pretty cool. If Bruce Springsteen would write a song about me, if I had the money, I’d give him $10k, but he doesn’t need any more money. (laughs) And he doesn’t want to write a song about me, so what’s the point. That’s kind of interfering with the artist’s vision, right? It’s distracting. I’m talking about you from Nome, Alaska. (laughs)

MR: Tommy, no, I think we should ask Bruce if he wants to write a song about you. I think we should test this. I’m sending an email…where did I put that address…

TK: You know, I grew up with Nils Lofgren’s younger brother. Nils Lofgren is probably about 10 years older than me, but we went to the same junior high school and high school, and I kind of know him because I used to go see his band Grin a lot. I participated in a tribute to Nils in ’04, which had a lot of local D.C. musicians, and I got up and sang a song with him, an old Grin song. There’s actually a DVD of if it out. I have kind of a Nils connection.

MR: So, you have an in. This Springsteen song is just weeks, no, days away from being written.

TK: Well, I have a Nils connection, but not really a Bruce connection. (laughs) I think Bruce might have heard of me somewhere along the line, but…

MR: …don’t worry kid, got everyone workin’ on it now.

TK: I would appreciate that.

MR: (laughs) Well enough of this tomfoolery, I say. Is there anything else we haven’t covered that you want folks to know both in The Huffington Post?

TK: That if they want me to write a song for them, they’re probably out of luck.

MR: Great. You tease you.

TK: I’m kidding, I’m kidding.

MR: (laughs) Alright Tommy…

TK: Anything for money…I’m kidding…

MR: Wait, isn’t it “money for nothing, and chicks for free”? Man, I’m all confused now.

TK: I know.

MR: Alright (laughter). So, many rock ‘n’ roll messages, so little time.

TK: Yes, yes.

MR: Tommy this has been a lot of fun. I wish you very good luck with the new album and touring. Good luck with fan funding your next album to the tune of $100k, at least!

TK: That’d be great. I want to do it someplace, maybe in New Zealand on a cliff over the ocean. So, that money will help me. I’m kidding.

MR: Well, New Zealand…that would be the argument for your dough.

TK: I need that atmosphere!

MR: Yes, yes you do. And so do I. May I join you as you’re recording this record?

TK: Yeah! We’ll just vacation and party out by the beach on some deserted beach village and go snorkeling.

MR: Alright, it’s a deal. So, our next show together will be from New Zealand post-snorkeling.

TK: Uh-huh.

MR: Okay, Tommy, I’m keeping you to your word, man! All the best with everything, and I appreciate your time here with us.

TK: Alright, well thanks so much!

Transcribed by Lani Aulicino