The web is full of all kinds of bullshit about Cass McCombs. I expected the musician behind the much-lauded Catacombs to be from Baltimore and to be someone who hated interviews. Even his web site says, “he shies away from interviews” and cites his “aversion to interviews.” So part of me was shocked when he agreed to sit down with me before a show at Portland’s Mississippi Studios.
After some coordinating problems, McCombs and I walked to a site where a new condominium was being built and sat on some steps. I found him to be a gentle and kind musician who doesn’t shy away from anything but untruths. As I started the recorder, McCombs stripped off his shoes and socks and then we got down to business.
Why do you think a person wants to read an interview with a musician?
(coughs) That’s funny. That’s really funny. There’s no answer that could possibly top that question. That question is too good. I wouldn’t know.
Do you think that we’re searching for greater meaning from the musician beyond what they are putting out on the record?
Hmmm, an interview. I don’t know. What is the virtue of the interview? That’s a giant question. It’s another medium. There’s music. There’s writing. There’s dance. There’s so many different mediums to express oneself.
Have you ever looked for or read an interview with an artist that you admire?
Yeah. A lot of interviews.
Can you think of one that gave you a portal into the artist’s mind that you were appreciative for reading?
Sure, all the John Lennon interviews were really interesting when I was a kid. I was real young reading those interviews in several of those books. There’s that Songwriters on Songwriting. Do you know that book?
Yeah.
A close friend of mine gave me that book a long time ago when I was just a musical infant. It really taught me a lot.
Like?
Just about different techniques in songwriting. Just to hear the possibilities. It’s not like you have to copy those techniques or anything like that. It’s more like, “Oh yeah! You don’t have to do it that way all the time. “
Have you read any interviews where the artist has come off worse than you had hoped and you lost some esteem for them?
No. Even that supposedly controversial Michael Jackson BBC documentary with him and his kids. I think Michael ends up coming off as righteous. I know a lot of other people don’t share that. No, I can’t even think of an interview like that.
Were you a Michael Jackson fan?
Of course I am. Who isn’t?
The first concert I ever saw was the Victory tour in Philadelphia.
Oh, right! I got the program. I wasn’t allowed to go.
I think we were born in the same year.
’77.
Yeah, ’77. It was a good year.
Yeah, it’s all for us.
Do you feel an album should stand alone as the final word in what an artist has to say with their music or are things like this necessary?
They aren’t unnecessary. I don’t think it has to be as black and white as that. I don’t know where this came from that I don’t like doing interviews. I’ve always done every interview that someone has asked me to do. Somehow people think that I’m evasive. I don’t know what it is. I think it’s challenging for me to do interviews. I used to do email interviews and I saved all of them. When I’m writing for a record or something I look through all those interviews and I look for ideas. It’s like it’s a diary.
Do you think that is where this line of questioning is coming from?
(laughs) Yeah, the serpent that eats its tail. To me, it’s a dialogue. It’s a dialogue with myself, it’s a dialogue with you and it’s a dialogue with the reader or the listener. Then I get to use this as notes. I just say nonsense this whole time. I just use my mind and make up a bunch of garbage and maybe something eventually will pop out that’s worth keeping.
Well, we would never know if you are telling the truth or not in some situations. So you could say whatever you wanted.
I tell the truth. I don’t lie. I promise. I try not to lie.
So you don’t have a Bob Dylan genesis story where you ran off and joined the circus?
No. I’m not from Baltimore and I’ve never been evasive about who I am.
What’s with the Baltimore thing anyway?
I lived there and my first record label is there. There and New York is where I got my start with music. My early bands were out of Baltimore. One of my first tours was with the Oxes from Baltimore. Over the years people from that town continued to be in the band even though I moved on. That’s weird. I never put that in any press of mine. Where did you read that?
I think Allmusic.com says, “Baltimore-based musician.”
Oh snap. I’m going to get to that right away. Thanks for telling me that. How do you change something like that?
I don’t know.
Yeah, I’ve never been on my own page. I don’t even know what it says.
There’s not that much. It’s a paragraph. Well, you’re lucky because I was going to ask you about The Wire and crab chips. You got out of that.
(laughs) I got out of it.
Earlier you told me you live nowhere but it seems you live everywhere.
It’s not that deep. I live in Chicago a lot of the time. This band is from New York so I’ve been spending time back in New York. Before that a lot of my band was from Baltimore and we were making a record in Los Angeles.
You grew up in California?
Yeah, Northern California.
So we’re not too far away from home then.
Oh no. I used to live here too.
Where did you live here?
(points) That way. I don’t know what the name of the neighborhood is. What’s the freeway that goes east? 84? Then you go to Hollywood and take a street north past the Beverly Cleary statues.
So you’ve lived all over the place then.
Not all over the place. Just a handful of American towns.
Do any of them speak to you specifically?
Yeah, I love all of these towns. Recently I feel like I’m aging at a quicker rate. We went into to Canada and my passport photo is from six years ago. It was only six years ago! I look completely different. The immigration officer was looking at it and he had to do a double take. It’s a shame you can’t live everywhere because you get old.
You can look at it that way or you can look at it like isn’t it amazing that we get to change so much. Think about what you looked like 20 years ago. I think we get into this situation when we reach adulthood where we think, “Okay. This is how I should look.” When you were 18 and you think about how you looked five years before that you were 13.
It would also be nice of having a whole lifetime of staying put. That would be kind of nice too. It’s not easy to travel around. I think that’s where my features change.
Do you have a family?
Yeah.
Does that help ground you at all?
Yeah.
I can keep going with this stuff or I can you ask about Karen Black and what your songs mean if you prefer.
Okay. I like talking about beauty. I’ve been talking about that with Christian (Owens), my bass player. What did you say? That we get obsessed with having our faces stay the same? That lines in our face symbolize what?
It’s comforting to think that everyone goes through it and that it’s not just you specifically. I think we’re so egocentric that in some ways we forget that ageing is part of the experience of being human.
Beauty is only skin deep. Is that what they say? (laughs) She was saying that when she encounters a beautiful person she walks right up to their face and says, “Hello. Who are you?” I kind of understand that.
Did she do that to you when you first met?
No. I kind of understand that in the sense that beauty is attractive.
But if we’re looking at physicality, doesn’t it just come down to symmetrics?
What I was going to say is there is physical beauty and then there is spiritual beauty and inner beauty for intelligent people.
When you write your music is beauty a goal you aspire to?
Yes. I want to make beauty for this world. Beauty and truth can be the same thing.
Your newest album, Catacombs, is definitely the closest towards minimalism. Do you think the back to basics aesthetic is the most beautiful or is that where you are right now?
Yeah, it’s just where I am at but I am always following the same code of trying to get to honesty and truth and passion and to the soul.
What are you passionate about?
The soul.
The soul? What does that mean to you?
The soul is my highest self. My highest sense of myself. My soul is my beauty.
Is it the same for others?
Yeah, and collectively our soul is our beauty.
I could make a bad Collective Soul joke here.
(laughs) Ah! Oh! I didn’t think about that! You set me up!
Seriously, I understand that. Some people believe that rather than the monotheistic god the major religions, God is the collectivity of everyone’s soul put together.
Yeah, the concept from which all things come from and which all things will return to.
I guess the whole point of writing a book, or dancing or any form of art is to attain closeness to the essential soul. Yeah. You have to stay very active. There’s no answer. I think a lot of people are looking for the one-liner. This line will sum up all of their pain and it’s not going to be like that. You’re not going to find it in a mushroom trip and write it down on a piece of paper and wake up the next day and there you go for the rest of your life. It’s active. It’s for the searcher. The soul is for the searcher.
A lot of songs on Catacombs are first person narrative story-songs. I’m sure you’ve been asked if they are autobiographical or not. I’m not going to ask you that. I’m looking at them at as fictions or vignettes. The line between fiction and truth is blurred. How do you search for yourself by writing a fictional piece?
You’re good. You’re good. This is hard.
Once again, I can always ask, “How did you get Karen Black?”
No, don’t say that! (laughs) No, I know I need to answer these questions for myself. Fiction. What is fiction? Is there such a thing as fiction? More importantly, is there such a thing as non-fiction?
Is there?
I don’t know. It doesn’t seem likely.
You and I are going to walk away from this little session and each of us is going to have our own perception.
Exactly.
Has there been any music lately that you’ve bought or heard that has spoken to you?
No, I don’t think so. I’ve been traveling too much. I haven’t been buying records the last couple of months.
Do you listen to your own stuff?
Some of it. When we’re rehearsing we go over a few tracks.
I was scrolling through my iTunes today and they give a generic classification to everything. Like pop, jazz. I got to your album and it said “unclassifiable.”
Who decides that?
The little man inside my machine. Are you okay with that?
What? To be unclassifiable? I think it’s pretty classifiable. It’s not really that new. It’s one of the oldest jobs in the world. Songwriter.
Yet you reject the “new old school” and “nostalgic” labels.
Well, nostalgic for what? We’re both from 1977. Am I nostalgic for Guns ‘n’ Roses?
Michael Jackson?
Okay! I am a little nostalgic for Michael Jackson. This jacket is kind of a Michael Jackson jacket.
Did you have the glove as a kid?
No.
I heard of an acoustic version of “When Doves Cry” by Brett Anderson. I got out my acoustic guitar and played it just to see what it would sound like. That’s a pretty damned, good and haunting folk song if you strip it down. We can make a joke about nostalgic for ’80s music but at the same time it goes into what we do.
It’s not music that I am nostalgic about. It’s my feeling of my youth. That’s what nostalgia is.
Do you still feel young?
Occasionally. Not all the time. The body deteriorates. It reminds you that you are not young. The soul or the spirit wants to go in the opposite direction.
Does that make you sad?
I think sadness is everywhere and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. You expect to go through life without being sad? What kind of inchworm would think something like that? Some people are all about positivity. I don’t want that positivity. Not that version of it. That’s not truth.
That’s the whole notion of our society. If something bothers us, let’s take a pill or let’s put a bandage over it rather than figure out why, systemically, it’s bothering us and embracing the feeling of being sick. There is a big furor over the swine flu, but it comes down to the fear of being ill.
Yeah, it’s the same fear. We’re afraid of the songs that will make us sick. Mentally sick and spiritually sick. But if it’s true, it’s good for you. Even if it’s dark, heavy stuff.
Well, the stuff that makes money is the confectionery stuff that turns off the reality button. Music, film and books as escapism. A lot of people don’t like to look at art as a reflection but rather a way to hit the pleasure center or escape from sadness. This is why Sandra Bullock has a career.
(laughs) She’s cute. Not always. Maybe, now everyone is all happy-happy. Party bands are the most successful bands but not in our era. Punk rock, metal, hip hop. Those three art forms aren’t giddy, happy-go-lucky and uplifting.
Neither is folk.
Exactly! That’s the same thing.
