Simian Life - Interview

by John Clarkson

published: 1 / 1 / 1

Los Angeles-based brothers and muiti-instrumenralists, Andy and Rob Campanella, about their project Simian Life and its psychedelia, folk and pop-influenced debut album, ‘Hermetic Tonal Briefing’.

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Simian Life is the project of Los Angeles-based brothers and multi-instrumentalists, Andy and Rob Campanella. Rob runs his own recording studio and is best known for spending sixteen years as a member of the Brian Jonestown Massacre, while Andy has been in Chief Nowhere, Occult Wisdom, Imogene and Stevenson Ranch Davidians. Bot\h brothers are also members of John Andrew Fredrick’s Los Angeles-based collective, the black watch, Simian Life’s debut album ‘Hermetic Tonal Brief’, which came out on Los Angeles label ATOM Records, is a sublime blend of psychedelia, fop and classic pop. Pennyblack spoke to Andy and Rob abour ‘Hermetic Tonal Briefing’. PB: It has taken five years for you to complete ‘Hermetic Tonal Briefing’. Why has it taken this long? ANDY CAMPANELLA: Well, the project basically had to be squeezed into our lives whenever possible. While we would love to put a lot more consistent time and energy into the Simian Life project, we still have to pay the bills, have family time, and all that, so this album was made during those magical moments when openings in our schedules aligned. Maybe that’s why I enjoyed making it so much as it was in those fleeting moments that stood out from the other aspects of life. ROB CAMPANELLA: We were stealing moments whenever we had a chance to work together in the studio. Andy is a teacher full-time and a father with two young daughters, and my day job is touring and working in the studio with bands which can be a blessing and a curse when it comes to working on pet projects like this. A blessing that I have this great studio right in my home. It’s a curse because if I had a different job I’d have more energy to work on this record after getting home, as opposed to the reality that my job is to spend six to 1ten hours in the studio so it’s difficult to work on your own projects after your brain and ears are fried. Add to the fact that Andy and my schedules are totally different- he’s up at the crack of dawn with his family and job, and I’m up until the wee hours of the morning in the studio. I can’t tell you how many times Andy made the time to come over and it’s after 11 p.m. and he’s already crashed out in the back of the studio… AC: We also wanted to make time for the wonderful people who contributed to the album to come into the studio and record. Oftentimes we had very specific people in mind to play certain parts so we made the time to get those folks in to record. For example, our great friend and Mark Knopfler-esque guitarist, Brian Capp was the only person who I wanted playing the solo on ‘Something’s Wrong’ and we made the time to make that happen, which I think turned out great. We also weren’t really in a rush–we wanted to make it as good as we could possibly make it. That said, I’m vowing that the next release, which is already written and partially recorded, will not take so long! PB: ‘Hermetic Tonal Briefing’ takes its name from the penultimate Eastern-influenced longest track on the album. What does that title suggest to you both? AC: I wish I had something more profound to say about the meaning of the album’s title, but the truth is, the words just sort of came to me one day and I really liked the way they sounded together. I’m big on euphony and usually start writing songs not with a subject matter in mind but initially with words that sound good together with the melody and then it goes from there. RC: It’s Andy’s title but to me it suggests a very important, and mysterious meeting… This earth and our reality is made up of tones and vibrations. This is why music means so much to me and most of the people I hang out with. AC ‘Hermetic Tonal Briefing’ became the placeholder name for the album and then it stuck as the name of the album and soon thereafter, the title track. That track was really a great example of something that took on a life of its own in the studio. It started as a very simple finger-picking ditty and before we knew it, it was a bit of a sprawling psychedelic production. PB: -How does the songwriting in the band work? Do you, Andy, as the songwriter in the band, come up with the initial idea and then bring it into Rob’s studio to work up, or does it work in another way? AC: Generally speaking I have the song written before going into the studio with an arrangement in mind. Some songs stick to the arrangement while others go in myriad other directions. Rob is really adept at coming up with various instrumental parts as well as getting everything sounding great–he’s a bit of a sonic wizard in the studio. We both like to nerd out over unusual instrumentation and studio tricks so we collaborate well with the layering process of sounds on top of the song. There are, however, no real rules that we follow for how the songs are written. For example, ‘Up On High’ was an instrumental thing that Rob came up with and had recorded on his own. I added the drums and came up with the melody and lyrics after that. RC: Most of these tunes originated with Andy bringing them in fairly formed on acoustic guitar. I guess my specialty is helping guide where they go from there- though we both worked together on this. Sometimes Andy was impatient if I wasn’t around or on tour and he would just start recording himself- he pretty much plays everything and all the vocals on ‘Wonderman’, except for flute (by Andy’s old Chief Nowhere bandmate Gabriel Lazar, and double bass by Marlena Schwenck- who is now the bass player in the Warlocks. I only played my beat-up acoustic that sounds like a sitar- long dubbed the “Shitar”, because it really is a piece of crap- but it sounds very authentic. I have fooled many people on recordings made here with the Shitar. The title track, ‘Hermetic Tonal Briefing’, was probably one of the most collaborative pieces on the whole record- and could be my favourite. It was originally a short acoustic song that Andy had- the handful of lines that you hear, but I heard it as something grander. I just remember both of us spurring each other on in adding parts and instruments- Mellotrons, Chamberlins, synthesizers, etc., until next thing you know he’s jumping into the drum room and is playing a groove with me on bass which is the climax of the song. It all happened very organically and naturally in the studio, and next thing we knew we had this epic track. The centrepiece of the album. The last frosting on the cake was when we were working on the mix, our 83-year-old mom had wandered over from her house next door. She loves to sit in and listen to her sons work on music. She was sitting on the couch in the studio while we are playing the track and we both hear this haunting but beautiful vocal coming from the back of the room. I immediately get out a microphone and some headphones and set my mom up, and we recorded her vocal right then and there. It comes in at two key parts in the song- in the middle and at the end. I am so glad she is on the record- it was one of those magical moments. Our mom was a singer and a dancer so we grew up hearing her sing around the house and in church all the time. PB: You are the second and seventh in a family of seven brothers. You must have heard a lot of music when you were growing up. What do you see as the main musical influences of this record? AC: Music was always a big thing in our family. Our dad was into classical and cowboy songs and our mom was all about showtunes. While we certainly took all that in, we definitely went in our own direction too. Rob was very key in forming my musical tastes from a very young age. I remember having my mind blown when I was about six or seven when he put on a VHS copy of ‘The Kids are Alright’ in the back of a rented motorhome while on a family trip. It went on from there: The Beatles, Zeppelin, Floyd, Hendrix, The Byrds and all the big names of yesteryear. All that stuff, along with your Nick Drake, Roy Harper, Fairport Convention, as well as lesser appreciated bands and artists probably contribute to the sound of the album. It’s worth noting that although it may not sound like it, Curtis Mayfield is a huge influence as I love all the textures of his productions. RC: My one older brother was only a year older than myself and he wasn’t into music, so I got turned onto rock by friends and older cousins. Where my younger brother Dom (my collaborator in the Quarter After) was listening to most of my 60s albums. Andy since went even deeper and turned me on to lots of stuff when he started his own record collection. AC: Also, when Rob joined the Brian Jonestown Massacre in the early 2000’s, I would latch on to the band as a de facto roadie, going to all the shows and seeing tons of bands like the Asteroid #4, The Lovetones, The High Dials and many others. All of that was very inspirational to me as I began playing in bands and all at around that same time. It’s worth mentioning that the black watch, with whom I’ve been an auxiliary member, is also a current inspiration, especially given the stark contrast to us with how quickly John Fredrick works. I think he’s released 43 albums in the time we’ve spent on our one. I admire not only his prolific output, but also his consistent quality. PB: If there is a lyrical theme to this album, it is, despite everything else that is going on in these worldwide difficult times, about the magic and wonder of life. Do you agree and do you see it in some ways as providing an antidote to some of the crueller elements of the rest of reality? AC: I would say that that is a very fair assessment of the lyrical theme. I did not consciously have a lyrical theme in mind for the album but now that you mention it, that seems appropriate. When it comes to lyrics for me, they often simply write themselves around certain phrases or passages that come to me while strumming a guitar. Having young kids of my own, I try to see what is right and good despite the other bullshit going on– it seems to beat the alternative. So, I suppose that outlook seems to make its way in there pretty consistently. Writing in this way has been helpful for me personally anyway. It’s very easy to get down on things, but fortunately for me, having my two girls around experiencing many of the beautiful aspects of life for the first time, I’m often reminded of that magic and wonder that is all around us. I’m very grateful for that. ‘Wonderman’ is a perfect example. My older daughter, Cora, came up with and would sing essentially the ‘Wonderman’ chorus while in the bathtub when she was only three and four years old. I thought it was amazing and had no idea what it meant but I thought I’d try to write the rest of the song around her singing and now it’s on the album. It was only appropriate that she sings on the track as well. RC: Andy wrote the lyrics- but I would wholly agree to that sentiment. As awful and horrid as events in this world get, music is the reminder that beautiful vibrations can and do exist, and they can change us, and the world for the better. As a musician I have a really interesting relationship with lyrics. As long as they are not too direct or corny or maudlin and as long as they leave interpretation up to the listener so the song can mean something special unto themselves, than you are doing a good job. That’s why I dig Andy’s lyrics on this record. I didn’t cringe once! Ha ha… PB: There are two short instrumentals, ‘We Were All Friends Now’ and ‘Colour’, the first of which lasts a minute and the latter 40 seconds, Why did you include those? AC: I really love instrumental music and I love it when albums have intros and interludes and such–these types of things lend themselves to listening to an album as a whole rather than the trend of single tracks in music today. ‘We Were All Friends Now’ is one of the pieces Rob wrote for the soundtrack we did for the vinyl release of the first couple of chapters of the audiobook version of Joel Gion’s ‘In the Jingle Jangle Jungle’. We had a different track as an intro to the album but it didn’t quite fit the vibe of the album so we repurposed ‘We Were All Friends Now’, keeping the title which is a line taken from the book. RC: ‘We Were All Friends Now’ is the book written by my dear friend and ex-bandmate in the Brian Jonestown Massacre, Joel Gion. It was a limited released vinyl by the publisher and the A and B sides of the vinyl are the first chapters of the book read by Joel himself. I played the acoustic guitars and Andy added in the synthesizer, which really made the track happen. I really liked the piece but had to edit it a bit for the book project. Because so much of the Simian Life tracks are based around acoustic guitars and vintage synths it seemed to fit really nicely with this record and we thought it would be a vibey opener to the album- plus we could use the un-edited version. The title comes from a phrase that Joel narrates in the scene the piece was used in. ‘Colour’ was Andy’s idea- it was basically a remixed portion of the later song ‘Colors All Around’. It’s kind of a preview of what’s to come- and it’s a nice interlude between songs. AC: While we were mixing the second side opener ‘Colors All Around’ I wanted to hear what the middle section sounded like with a bunch of the parts muted so we messed around with it. ‘Colour’ is really just a remix of that middle section with various parts muted to accentuate the cello, Mellotron, and Fender Rhodes parts, which are a bit buried by the drums and Rob’s transcendent guitar solo in the original track. I thought it would make a great interlude on the first side and sort of preview of what was to come later in the album. - The last track ‘Up On High’ is in two parts. The first part has a distorted, psychedelic sound, but then towards the end and in the last minute that stops and it transforms into a beautiful, acoustic, fluttering guitar number. Were they originally two separate tracks. Why did you choose to merge them together? RC: Well, those are really two separate pieces. The actual song ‘Up On High’ was musically demoed out by me playing all the instruments, even drums, ha ha. When Andy went in and recorded the drums proper (my favourite drums on the whole record) it became really groovy. Andy took the recording home and wrote all the lyrics to it. I’m pretty sure he based them on my cat Loomis who actually passed away the night I was recording the song. It’s also an ode to our father who had passed away a couple years before. The second part with the acoustic guitar was another one of those studio “accidents”. I was recording some vocals on the song and Andy was sitting in the room with one of my acoustics just noodling away in between takes. He was playing this finger picking piece and through the reverb I had in my headphones it sounds pretty darn great so I immediately shifted my mic over to his guitar and pressed record. It’s a little “secret” track and we left it there because we thought it would bookend the record in a gentle and mysterious way. AC: While working on ‘Up On High’, I was messing around and playing the guitar thing, which I came up with a while back. Before I knew it, Rob had thrown a microphone in front of me. He thought it would sound cool to add it into the album as a bit of hidden track, tacked on to the end of “Up On High” to sort of a bookend to the album with the other acoustic number that introduces the album. PB: How do you hope to promote this album? Will you be playing live, at least in the United States, or do you see Simian Life essentially as a studio project? AC: I certainly think Simian Life will at the very least always be a studio project, but we do have plans to play live and are putting together a band made up of various people who played on the record for a record release show this summer. From there, hopefully we build some momentum and can get a regular thing going–my dream would be to tour in the UK and Europe. Rob and I will also likely be playing some shows as a duo from time to time, doing stripped down versions of the songs. Whatever happens with the album, I think Rob and I will always make music together in some capacity as it really is good times. RC: Well, the fact of the matter is that right now it IS a studio project. Probably half the tracks are just Andy and I playing everything. The other tracks have a few, but wonderful guests playing some key parts. We are putting a band together now to play our first show in July- we have some of our best friends and favourite musicians lined up to be part of it but it will be interesting and fun to see who plays what on each song and how we will translate them live. I guess we’ll see how that show goes and proceed from there! I’d love to play more shows- maybe some festivals, but not sure how we could realistically tour. The ultimate would be to do a short tour of the UK and play some key cities- Maybe a 10 day tour or something like that. But there would be a lot of schedules and finances to work out. I think Andy will probably tell you he’s most looking forward to recording new songs and releasing another record in under five years! PB: Thank you.